+1, Insightful. How in the hell did you get modded down for this comment?

As they should be. However, when much of their funding comes from the public purse, perhaps it's appropriate for scientists to acquaint the people paying the bills with the reasons for and the importance of their research. Also, I'm all for everyone becoming more scientifically-minded. 'Elite' science may be for those who have studied hard and made it their life's work; but 'day-to-day' science is the province of everyone, and ought to be encouraged as such. A scientific framework promotes curiosity, rationality, and logic - qualities sorely lacking in a large percentage of citizens.

Just as Digital Restrictions Management and various schemes for 'protecting' 'intellectual property' have not been unqualified successes, this trend also will be undercut, to some extent, by people who hack, make, reverse engineer, re-purpose, and repair hardware, firmware, and software. It just remains to be seen how the legislative and enforcement aspects play out. And that depends largely on Joe and Jane Average's opposition to A) basically renting or leasing most of the stuff in their lives, and B) paying to be spied upon, advertised to, and held hostage by corporate interests.

If even a large minority of citizens refuse to put up with this crap and instead have old stuff fixed and new stuff modified or boutique-built, then it will be hard for governments to justify what will otherwise be a very heavy hand in favour of laws enforcing corporate control. I'm not optimistic that people who have been lulled into thinking there is no alternative, (or that planned obsolescence and corporate nosiness are somehow right and inevitable), will do anything other than cave and roll over. But there is some hope.

I volunteer as a fixer for an organisation called Repair Cafe - we run events wherein once a month people bring items in to be fixed for free. Not just computers, printers, phones, earbuds, and the like, but also household appliances, clothing, books, etc. Many of these people aren't bringing things in because they can't afford replacements; rather, they recognize the quality is better in their older items, and they hate the wasteful and controlling aspects of planned obsolescence. So we may yet see large numbers of average citizens who reject the dystopian plans of those who call their greed-driven view of the future 'Utopia'.

In the category of 'not likely', but still worth considering, is the possibility of simplifying our lives. All of these technological innovations are cool, and they drive our economies, and some of them are significant. But really, how many new shinies contribute to our fundamental sense of worth, fulfillment, happiness, and meaning? I would argue that they tend to undermine those values - and many sociologists and psychologists would agree with me. It's probably too late to try stuffing that genie back in the bottle though...

This, exactly. I use Yahoo accounts as spam-catchers - I don't even use spam filtering on my 'real' email address, as I don't need it.

AdBlock and NoScript fix that crap to a large extent. It's annoying to have to click on the 'proceed without updating JavaScript' link every time I log in, and it's annoying to have to temporarily re-enable JS when I want to send an attachment; but the result is an interface that is (just barely) useable, and devoid of ads. If I couldn't turn off all the shitty 'features' that Yahoo has introduced to 'improve' their service, I'd have left long ago - the current stock interface is simply unuseable.

I've stuck with Yahoo the same reasons; plus, I find the GMail interface to be not much better than the stock Yahoo interface.

That may be why I liked it. I've read and enjoyed a lot of books with more fully realized characters and more nuanced plots; it was refreshing to read a stripped-down actioner that had a lot of geeky ingenuity and kept me reading waaay past bedtime. Plus, as far as I could tell it got the science and tech mostly right.

"The Martian" by Andy Weir is one of the best SF books I've read, and I highly recommend it. Even if you're not into SF, if you're a member here, there's a good chance you'll like it.

Odd - I have three Philips 60W bulbs in a diningroom fixture on an old, cheap, standard dimmer. The dimming is non-linear and a bit jumpy, (not unexpected given the difficulties in designing a dimmable, flicker-free LED bulb), but otherwise just fine.

This is also why dimmed incandescent bulbs often squeal - the waveform is rich in harmonics and causes the filament to vibrate audibly, sometimes into the kilohertz range.

Before thyristors were created, light dimmers were in fact wire-wound rheostats. I've seen one or two wall-mounted rheostatic dimmers - big units with noticeable resistance to being turned. In high school I spent some time manning the theatre lights in the auditorium - banks of drum pots with levers and wooden handles that were hot enough to give a nasty burn when they had been in use for a while.