This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7 gangly wrench. Just then, this little apprentice leaned over and said, “You can’t work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7 wrench.” Well this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, “The Langstrom 7 wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.” Just then, the little apprentice leaned over and said, “It says sprocket not socket!

Having this in offices/factories would eliminate 'network' from the list of worries when you restack cubes, or re-arrange focus factories.

This is not a problem: leave the modem on the desk.

I love a story that answers it's own question. No need to click and read, move along.

headline / question
SatPhones — Why Can't They Make It Work?

answer
it carries a $799 price tag.

If cell phone coverage goes down, they could still use carrier pigeons to send Flash drives to China or South Korea...

There is the small problem of getting Chinese or South Korean carrier pigeons _into_ North Korea, first.

And the not-so-small problem keeping them un-eaten long enough to fly home with the data.

Firefighting is a perfect example of a shared good where the public MUST be taxed to ensure fair and equal access.

And yet, fire-fighting works really well as a volunteer function in many smaller cities and towns.

They were operating like a business that preferred to sell service contracts and deliver their services on that basis. They did not, at that time, wish to offer a fee-for-service model, and their front-line servicepeople weren't empowered to change company policy and invent new products on a whim.

We're all informed by our experience. I did work for a small-business man who offered 'IT solutions' to other small businesses. He wanted to make his company work on a subscription model, and do a lot of preventative maintenance.

In the long run, this would cost the customer less.

He had to give up on that model: too much of his business was coming from guys who had an IT version of their house burning down without coverage from a fire-fighting company.

He had no problem sailing out in the middle of the night, or day, or weekend to put out fires. But we live in a smaller town and you know pretty much in advance if a guy is going to pay up or not.

No. They were running their government service the way the government runs a business. That is, badly, and without regard for making a profit.

And ... everyone will see this as an obvious flaw in libertarianism.

Except these guys worked for the government.

most people prefer sex with a real partner as opposed to jerking-off to porn?

You're on /.

Most people _here_ ... ah the joke writes itself.

Everyone is too young to be a grumpy old man.

You're too young to be a grumpy old man.

which might encourage you to not remember (cache) things in the first place.

I don't think that retention works that way.

Unless the problem is very simple, you obviously have to know something about a subject before you'll be able to effectively deal with problems germaine to that subject.

I was not trying to say all learning is useless. Clearly one needs a baseline of information in order to synthesize, and to know what to lookup.

"Search engines(TM) function of providing us with information almost instantly means people are losing their intellectual capacity to store information,

Oh, please. Before we had the internet, we had reference books.

The key to getting things done is not in memorizing sheaves of information but knowing how to look things up and synthesize.