I think I speak for all foreigners when I say that America is already very taxing.
You speak for a growing percentage of Americans as well.
Computer systems can have more sensors with longer range. Computers can track more objects coming from more directions than the human eye can track simultaneously.
While all the sensors in the world may be technically better than my two eyes, if it is a matter of dying in a pile of metal or not running over an unsupervised, poorly raised child, I would rather continue to trust my instincts and experience more than dozens of sensors and millions of lines of code written by the least expensive coder the car companies are willing to keep on staff/contract. If I cannot take my truck which has the check engine light lit to the dealer who made the vehicle and have them tell me exactly what the hell is wrong, I think the last thing we need is more electronics in the damn thing. I don't mind help or additional info from technology but I will never trust a machine like my car to steer, accelerate or stop itself. On a separate rant, if you are not in control who will be? "This is Onstar, your doors have been locked and you are being redirected to the Police Station because your Kindle is reporting you have removed the Amazon DRM from the "Davinci Code". Please remain calm." On a related note, why don't you Google "Intellidrive", and figure out what magical benefit our tax dollars will be bringing us with that crap?
But it contains an amount of sugar that is the recommended amount for 3 days!
Key word here is *recommended*. USDA recommends I have a certain amounts of sugar/fat/sodium/vitamin C/Zinc, assuming I am a healthy person on x amount of calories a day. There are health implications to over- and under-indulging in pretty much anything. Enough water to flush all electrolytes out of your system can kill you, it doesn't mean we should be banned from drinking water during sports activities. If I understand the risks involved to my own health, I may, for instance have 2 super sized big mac meals for lunch today. In the end, we are all responsible for ourselves in this supposedly free nation.
A service mentality focuses on what works best for the company and saves money, not what your technical people know and where they've invested their training. Yet I see that a lot. Not what works best, but what the techs know. Their expertise limits their technology choices instead of expanding them.
I agree with your philosophy, but there is a limit. When you are critically and chronically understaffed and underfunded to the point that you do not have spares, or training dollars, or more than one person to handle multiple enterprise systems, you cannot keep up with what is already installed, let alone use a different vendor or solution for every new item coming in the door. When my "internal customers" continue to expand operations sometimes my expertise in one particular product or vendor is what allows me to even get them working, but I can't do it optimally, or cheaply when I don't have any time to work on it or money for R&D or training. Optimally, the bean counters would look at it and see that the waste we are forced to choose every day would easily be lessened by directing some people and funding to us before funding all the projects that require our input and efforts to make work.
In fact, it seems that less than 50% of the computer-using population now understands the difference between the hard drive and the case holding the computer
If they are not smart enough to understand the difference between the case and a hard drive then I doubt they have bought any storage solution I would be considering. The NAS I bought did not include hard drives, so I assume that would rule out anyone buying it that didn't know what a hard drive was. Aside from that, hopefully their comments on Newegg would honestly point out that their technical knowledge is low or they have only owned it for a month, both are required fields to leave a review. If not then hopefully their notes in the pros and cons would give away their lack of understanding of the technology they are reviewing. I am obviously a fan of Newegg and the review system is one of the reasons, if I am buying something tech, I look at the reviews there no matter where I purchase.
While it's certainly unethical for a vendor to censor reviews -- without at least prominently announcing that they are censoring them -- I have to question the value of reviews by the general public in the first place.
The thing is that the educated buyer sees that even the people not smart enough to understand the technology before trouncing it in an online review get to post their thoughts without it getting wiped, so you know that the knowledgeable who post either good or bad get on there also. On popular items, it is more info to sort through but with more reviews, you can pretty quickly get the picture on what common praises and issues go with that product, breezing by the trolls or flamebait. I also like the feature on Newegg where you can "sort by helpfulness" so that you can see the reviews others have already noted were helpful to them, both positive and negative.
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.