I don't care for this.

Nostalgia has its place (among the aged and decrepit population). This space suit was built by committees and entrepreneurs who did their best to meet the anticipated requirements. A laudable goal. The primitive nature of this space suit is worthy of consideration as we consider future designs, and yet even our future designs fail to fully understand the reality of space.

Yes, this space suit (or a replica) deserves a place in some stupid museum for future earthlings to snicker at, but please--spend your donation dollars to fund a future suit that will protect astronauts of the future.

"Also, why the fuck are you calling brazillians "primitive", you mook?"

I have family there who will read these posts. I take every opportunity to annoy them. Maybe some day they will come back to the US and I can annoy them face to face in the comfort of my home. But I'm happy to insult a few /. readers while I'm at it. (I had to research 'mook'; hey, that's not a nice appellation!)

OS X and iOS constantly nag users to update system software and user apps. Sometimes an app is really improved, but far more often the update includes adware and other crap. There's no way to know because those 'enhancements' are not mentioned when you are asked to update. It's best to look around for other users who updated and reported on the result--if you have lots of time on your hands...

My question to you is: Is Fred a common name in Brasil? Or is this another case of Americans imposing their culture on a primitive, unsuspecting people?

Headlights that turn have been around a while. Citroen & BMW seem to have had them. The American car, Tucker, had many such innovations. BMW also had side lights that help in tight turns. Here are some links:

1948 Tucker- great photos: http://www.laubly.com/1948tuck...
How Adaptive Headlights Work: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/...
1934 patent US1952346 A: https://www.google.com/patents...

Interacting with a car or motorcycle on a country road or mountain curve can be a pleasure, a form of meditation sometimes. We will lose that as vehicles get smarter and more independent.

First, TFA is a very poorly structured blog post. It meanders like the Mississippi river and doesn't properly support the points it tries to make. It makes assumptions that no grad student or wiki editor would get away with.

It's true, we pay in this way for much of our content. And we pay ceaselessly with distractions that have no relevance in our lives. Do we really need to see 17 ads for furniture stores, 36 ads for alcohol products and 7 ads for feminine intimate garments every day? Even if they are erotic, they are not part of our scheduled activities and they detract from our productivity. The problem is that companies believe that mass advertising will work for them. They are victims, just as we are, of the ad industry.

Now, here is the problem: All these companies are selling a commodity. None of them have a unique product or service. Their survival depends upon convincing people otherwise through advertising and SEO. They are 'me too' companies who jumped on some bandwagon. They sell cars or tacos or pest control in a market with many competitors. Apparently they never stopped to consider whether the market needed what they want to sell.

There are companies that sell commodities with a unique flair: Victoria Secret, Apple, Tesla and I hate to say it, Nike. They really have elevated a category of products above the crowd. Is it the product or is it the branding that makes it interesting?

If you are/have a company you can avoid the mass advertising circus by offering something unique. Something not obtainable elsewhere. Something that is needed or something (like an Apple watch) that people will covet. If you can't do this, please close your useless business and stop polluting the air with your advertising.

"Before you splash out on a dedicated tool such as Camtasia, you might want to try out Windows 10's hidden tool."

And before you splash out (?) on writing a clever app for Windows users, remember that M$ will incorporate your functionality in their next update.

Users win of course; but developers may stop innovating if there is no $ reward. Then M$ would have to do their own innovating. Nobody wins if that happens.

"...particularly acute at start-ups, where black founders are just 1 percent ..."

Of course we need legislation to assure that 10% of founders are black. Yes, 50% female, and what about me- 10% left handed. Every day we see founders doing well, getting rich with their IPOs and starting spaceship companies. Perhaps the law should say that no white male with a great business idea should be allowed to go forward until a certain number of minorities have had their chance. No doubt there are many minorities waiting patiently to bring their great idea forward, but they are held back by ... by ... well unfairness of course.

Geez, just dripping with sarcasm. Now I need to understand why there is such an imbalance in basketball, pop music, healthcare and child care. It seems to me that certain ethnic/gender groups are under represented. In my accounting classes, only one percent of my mates were left handed- a sure sign of unfairness!

"Slightly fewer millions"? Cute.

This has been a really interesting thread. Yeah, those millions were in my dreams but that was because I was essentially offering a commodity. I had developed some work methods for efficiency, a price structure that accurately reflected my costs, and a powerful sales tactic, but to most buyers I was indistinguishable from other contractors.

In my current businesses I have things that are not available anywhere else. I compete with nobody. I have intellectual property. It's too late in my lifecycle to expect millions, but it's fun and gets me up in the morning with a smile. Find a way to add that kind of value to your business. Best wishes.

micahraleigh says: "When the government of Fiji comes in and says the fishing companies have to pay for free health care and the companies relocate and everyone loses their jobs (true story) the workers are the ones who lose."

In an ideal universe, the free press would tell consumers what had happened. In an ideal world, consumers would re-think doing business with those fishing companies. In an ideal world, fishing companies who were respectable, who provided for employees, who didn't kill other species, who went 'green' etc; those companies would find thoughtful consumers flocking to them.

Wouldn't it be great to have a free press? Free to tell us about defective products, and dangerous products like cigarettes? Free to tell us about worker exploitation? Free to tell us about suicides among Chinese workers who make our toys? As long as they depend on corporations for advertising, they are unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. There is some free press but it's not easy to find and some times you have to pay to keep them going.

There are many people who NEED the low priced products available from McDonalds and Walmart. But there are many more who could be more thoughtful in their purchases.

micahraleigh says: "Most people who buy lunch at McDonald's just want to pay for their meal. They don't want to pay for someone's children's college. "

True, but you've mistaken the tree for the forest. The reality is most people don't want to pay for anything. We live in the time where 'something for nothing' is the goal. If it comes from slave labor in some far away country, that's someone else' problem.

We also live in a time when few people will accept responsibility. That's why we have the government, the corporations and the 1% we have. We vote with our dollars, we vote with our apathy, we vote with ignorance and we will pay the price in the long run.

That's an interesting reply to my original '1%' post. You've taken the employer perspective as many other employers would.

But you say: " I'm guessing you've never run a company. I do run a manufacturing company. Paying people to do nothing (read work inefficiently) is pretty much the best way I know of to put a company into bankruptcy." - and that's quite wrong.

I ran my own construction company and helped run another. There is plenty of room in construction work for people to drag their feet, to slack off and take advantage of their employer. In our companies, we took a personal interest in our employees (typically around 30) and their families. During the inevitable slow periods we tried everything imaginable to keep everyone on payroll. We bid jobs below cost at times just to keep them active. The benefit was (as you suggested) quality work, but even more we learned that their loyalty paid of in monetary and other ways.

There have been companies that cared about employees, and employees who respond with loyalty. There was an entire nation (Japan) with this attitude. This is out of fashion lately but can be found to some extent at companies like Starbucks and Costco and many smaller companies. OTOH there are profitable companies like Walmart whose employees depend on welfare to survive.

You may choose how to run your company. I'd prefer to make slightly fewer millions knowing that my employees can thrive.

Not long before you were born there was a system of employment called 'piece work'. If you work in a sweat shop or on a farm or in a factory, you got paid according to what you produced. Usually this meant that you worked your butt off and still got paid less than hourly workers. This has been frowned upon until recently.

People raising a family, paying a mortgage, saving for retirement or children's education need a reliable income. Corporations don't want to get weighed down with that burden--they want people that they can call when needed and dump when the need passes.

Corporations have been winning for a long time now and this 'gig economy' is the next step.

This is a hard reality for humans to accept, but there is a permanent cure for many terrible diseases.
We call it DEATH.

Am I joking? No.

We have all seen those dramatic nature shows where the lion catches the gazelle and rips it apart. The narrator of the show explains that by catching and eliminating the slower gazelle, the lion benefits the gazelle species by removing defective elements that otherwise would reproduce.

Human evolution has taken a turn for the worse. Rather than eliminating the weak elements and promoting the strong, we have reversed the evolutionary direction. We expend great resources to help the weak survive. OTOH, If a certain deadly disease was allowed to run its course, and all victims died before they could reproduce, the disease would kill itself. It would be removed from the gene pool.

If we live long enough as a species, and don't blow up the planet, we may well solve these problems without too much death and discomfort. Nature's way is not pretty to watch.

When we talk about what people want, we are talking about what they are programmed to want. This discussion has already pointed out environmental programming that goes into each of us: the roles we are expected to play; the attitudes we should have; etc ... but this discussion has entirely missed a far more essential programming that influences us all.

We, many of us programmers, tend to forget that we are exquisitely programmed ourselves by our DNA. We do its bidding without question. Do you think that the enjoyment of sex is a rational choice that you consciously made? Do you think that it is rational to judge a person by their appearance? Our attitudes and behavior and life choices are powerfully influenced by forces we can not control and do not understand. Forces that have evolved over a billion years.

We live to serve our DNA, Our individual lives are irrelevant. We are simply a step in an evolutionary process that works toward the perfection that we haven't reached.