Looser "building" codes?

Traditionally, the sailor's greatest fear has always been fire, not water, but there are countless ways a poorly designed and engineered boat can kill you. Not that drowning is a particularly easy way to go.

No welfare? No minimum wage?

The Potemkin School of Maritine Management:

Rampant incompetence at very top, Long hours. Hard Work. Low Pay. Bad food, Unforgiving and hazardous environments. Not a trace of concern for the sick, injured or aging.

No wonder all those upper-class libertarian idealists on board are packing a rod.

Amazon isn't your host.

It's your printer and publisher --- and both have always had a say in grammar, style and formatting.

The subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, has taken a lot of flack because these mostly self-published (aka vanity press) books have been edited so sloppily they wouldn't pass muster with your high school English teacher.

I posted earlier about my own growing weariness with fan remakes of Star Trek: TOS.

This slavish obsession with recreating the original sets with all their flaws and limitations being one of the reasons.

I can appreciate the energy and enthusiasm that goes into these projects.

But with 85 years of modern science fiction to explore, with excellent examples available to draw upon in from all media, you would think even the die-hard fan would have grown a little weary of gearing up to prduce yet another retread of Star Trek: TOS.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

The "presumption of innocence" is where you begin in a US criminal trial.

It does not define the geek's every encounter with the law.

Driving a car or truck on the public roads is not a right but a privilege. It has never been out-of-bounds to demand proof of your sobriety or a show of your license.

what are the chances of making a blind crossing in the fog in a homemade rubber raft?

June 1962 Alcatraz escape

In other words, habitual criminals with limited skills and prospects.

Morris, with an IQ of 133. had never found a way to walk away from a crime that would not end in his arrest.

The timing would have had to have been damn near perfect based on computer models constructed some fifty years later.

The atom powered car, ship, train or aircraft as imagined in the late forties, fifties and sixties was powered by an internal nuclear reactor.

The ideal would be a vehicle or a vessel that would never need refueling.

Property is whatever bundle of rights, interests and privileges you hold that the state* defines as property and will defend by force if necessary.

Intangible property is still property.

The geek can live out his entire life defined by endless streams of ones and zeroes stored and processed god knows where and still not see them as property until their loss, theft or abuse affects him personally.

Careless thinking or intellectually dishonest? Your choice.

What is Intellectual Property?

This is BTW almost word-for-word how IP is defined by the Wikipedia.

In a lifetime of reading I have owned about 6,000 books, fiction and non-fiction. No two of these writers ever spoke in the same voice, and almost all were paid by the word, writing for a popular --- democratic --- audience.

The number of creative talents active in any generation is small, and that is a problem the Pirate Bay cannot solve.

or maybe their curiosity is focused elsewhere, on subjects in which the geek shows no interest in pursuing.

one size does not fit all.

Bennett Haselton fans rejoice. We have a new candidate for the most incoherent and mangled prose ever posted to Slashdot.

The geek's natural instinct to assert his god-given superiority at the worst possible moment can ruin the experience for everyone.

This isn't about "dumbing down," it's about getting the know-it-alls, the intellectual bullies, the inflated egos, out of the room, so others can prosper.

Those who pay the premium for vinyl are getting the best in audio editing, not the cut for FM radio or the 99 cent mp3.

They are also paying for turntables, amps and speakers that cost a bit more and demand more space than the integrated audio of your smartphone or tablet.

Analog audio from its earliest beginnings was marketed as a social experience. In which many elements come into play and "perfection" as a whole is difficult to quantify. There was always a tension between those who would disguise a phonograph as a piece of furniture and those would celebrate its workings openly.

The high end modern turntable is both sculpture and machine.

Polio History

Charts. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF IMMUNIZATIONS

Chart 1. Reported cases of H. influenzae type b, United States, 1991 - 1997

Chart 2. Hib meningitis in children less than 5 years old according to the National Bacterial Meningitis Reporting System, 1980 through 1991.

Chart 3. Reported cases of measles, United States, 1960-1997

Chart 4. Reported mumps cases, United States, 1968-1997

Chart 5. Reported pertussis cases, United States, 1922-1997

Chart 6. Reported poliomyelitis cases, United States, 1920-1997

Chart 7. Reported rubella cases, United States, 1966-1997