"I'm getting really sick of this tiresome rant popping up on every single Slashdot story. Government is corrupt. Corporations rule the world. We are all slaves. blah blah blah!

Can't you guys give it a rest?

Why do you always post your rants as AC anyway?"

Sadly, while I might once have agreed with everything you said, I fear that times have changed -- or perhaps it's just that the Net has allowed the truth to be revealed in a way that governments can no longer control.

Everywhere you look these days, there are many and varied examples of government being driven, directed and controlled by industries and those with lots (of money) at stake.

Look at Kim Dotcom for instance -- the MPAA/RIAA may have had plenty of legal justification for some of what they did -- but certainly not all of it and not the way it was done. Hell, the FBI/MPAA/RIAA triad even bullied the New Zealand government in engaging in "unlawful acts" to carry out their dirty deeds.

We've seen the problem of politicians protecting the rich at the cost of the poor grow to become a major problem down in this part of the world (NZL) and it's plainly obvious that the situation is far worse elsewhere.

Bureaucrats (ie: central and local government) spend most of their time simply working to cover it's own ass -- in case things go wrong.

Just look at most of the laws and regulations out there. They're not to improve the safety or to benefit the public nearly so much as they are to ensure that when something goes wrong, some bureaucrat somewhere can say "not my fault, we passed a law/regulation against that and the offender(s) broke those laws/regulations".

Look at gun control for instance...

It's illegal to murder someone with a firearm (or anything else for that matter) -- so the problem of firearms is solved! If someone goes postal or kills innocent pupils/teachers in a rampage -- it's not the fault of any bureaucrat - after all, they've made killing illegal so it's not *their* fault that kids can get their hands on assault rifles so easily.

And they're doing it again with terrorism... they're making just about *everything* illegal -- so when a terrorist does attack and innocent folk are killed, they can turn around and say "not our fault, we made everything illegal -- what more could we do?"

As for drones -- well yes, they're almost certainly going to make them illegal (in the hands of private individuals) too. After all, if there's one thing that bureaucrats *don't* like, it's having their actions spied on by those they're allegedly employed to protect.

Sorry but the "perfect" world never existed and never will.

And look... not posting as an AC! :-o

Damn you MacGyver, look what you've done to our society! :-)

Why the hell should other sovereign nations bow to Western pressure not to develop their weapons?

Surely every country has a right to develop its own technologies if it wishes to. It seems awfully hypocritical of the USA and other nuclear powers to say "no, *you* can't have nukes" to nations that want them.

Now I have no time for Iran or N. Korea - but it's just bitchy for those who have nukes and ICBMs to criticise those who don't but are developing them.

Maybe, if these little renegade states end up with nukes on ICBMs, there'll be a lot more double-sided discussion rather than demands and sanctions. Isn't that what we need to preserve world peace?

Hell, imagine what the world would be like today if Hitler had invented the nuke and said to the USA -- no, sorry, you can't have any -- shortly before turning NYC into a smouldering hole in the ground.

Imagine how long the cold war would have lasted if only Russia had nukes!

It seems to me that MAD is working just fine -- but for it to work, all parties have to have nukes of their own.

The way I see it -- either every nation has a right to nuclear weapons and ICBMs -- or none do.

What do you mean I can't get a laptop with a Hercules mono graphics card in it?

And who said CGA was "so last century".

Hell, maybe it's time I upgraded.

I noticed that I became much better at playing minesweeper after switching to an NVIDIA card.

Hmmm... I think this morning's earthquakes may have rattled something loose in my head ;-)

How about just carrying some of those "warranty void" stickers with you and place one so that it bridges the keyboard and screen on the opposite edge to the hinge.

Now the "maid" can't open your laptop without knowing their intrusion would be very obvious to the owner.

I wonder if they still would?

"Tandy got its wish: nobody ever writes about Radio Shack computers today."

Except you, so it would appear :D

If that was the case then what about the incandescent bulbs still found in some old flashlights or even in the "overhead lighting" above your seat?

Do you know how hot that tungsten filament gets when energized?

The total amount of *heat* being used for refreshing your memory chip will be infinitesimal by comparison to the average bulb filament. Remember -- temperature without heat is pretty harmless.

Hey, I picked up a microUSB 5V wall-wart supply for $9.99 at the local equivalent of Walmart and just used an old Class 4 SD card I had laying about so my $94 Raspberry Pi only cost me $44.99.

Actually I lie -- I had to buy an HDMI cable and I can't find a spare ethernet cable either so I'll have to fork out some more cash.

But come to think of it -- neither my DVD player nor my TV came with an HDMI and my PC didn't come with a network cable so I guess that no matter what you buy, there are always "essential extras" to factor in.

And my Pi didn't come with a mouse or keyboard either -- what's with that?? :D

I'm wondering if the model A will really have much of a market.

The end of the market that the A might have been useful in may well have been overtaken by the top-end of the M-series ARM processors, especially with companies like STM now pitching boards like the Discovery STM32F4 for $20 or so.

Yes, it's got less RAM, less MIPS and so forth -- but it *is* 100% open and incredibly capable for what it is.

Is TechWorld for real or is it someone's blog?

"The best overall winner will also be given a tour of Sony’s Welsh in which the Raspberry Pi is manufactured"

Proof-reader sick today?

Actually, I'm not usually so grumpy but that full-page interstitial ad I had to dismiss before I got to the 7-paragraph ultra-lightweight "story" kind of ticked me off.

Yeah... big ones and smaller ones.

Back in 2003, I built the world's first DIY cruise missile in a garage here in New Zealand.

When the media found out, they approached the government for comment and the Prime MInister of the day (Helen Clark) admitted that in doing this, I had broken no laws.

Well when the US government found out what I'd been doing they were outraged and intense pressure was applied to the NZ government to shut down this low-cost-cruise-missile project.

But how could they do that? -- after all, the PM had admitted I'd broken no laws in doing so.

Well as we all (now) know, governments can do any damned thing they want and if they can't achieve their ends by fair means, they'll use foul ones.

As a result, they "Caponed" me and used the NZ equivalent of the IRS to bankrupt me by coming up with all manner of "assessed" tax liabilities and breaching an agreement I already had in place.

A local TV current affairs program did a piece on my plight:

Part 1
Part 2

and you can see from that, just how governments are able to sidestep or force the courts to do whatever they want -- when there's an agenda involved.

So Kim Dotcom ought to be very careful -- who knows what a savage dog will do when you back it into a corner?

I've written a book about this chapter (and others) of my life but suffice to say I have had some issues with publishers who don't want to get involved in a case where it's obvious that the rulebook gets tossed out the door in favor of covering asses at high levels.

Why buy them before you're going to use them?

This technology is advancing so rapidly that anything you buy *today* will cost half the price in a couple of month's time and be twice as capable.

There's a Moore's law involved here so it seems stupid to tie up capital in something that will be unused and depreciating at such a rapid rate.

Think of all the donuts and coffee they could buy for that money!

What do you mean nobody uses Cobol 60 any more?

WTF?

I knew I shouldn't have taken a nap at the keyboard -- a quick zzz and you wake up with outdated skills!

Yeah, I'm a grey-beard too (started hand-coding 2650 assembler into hex-digits for keypad entry back in the 1970s) and was hardcore programming right up until about 1995 when I got into "content" creation for the WWW.

I still do some coding these days but it's mainly microcontroller stuff (because I also have a strong hardware background). I use C and some assembler for that. I like microcontroller programming -- usually there are fewer human inputs to stuff you up.

I wouldn't go back to coding as a job (I'm 58) because I find that my mind just isn't agile enough to work the way it did 30 years ago when I could keep so much contextual information in my memory at once that it was *easy*. These days, I live in a sea of paper and post-it notes.

No... find something more enjoyable than programming -- there are *lots* of alternatives.