Gosh. The power to do good comes intertwined with the ability to do evil. So what if Occupy was using techniques frequently used by criminals? Most of life is grey and the powers that be will cheerfully point at the dark in some grey in order to ban the white, all done to benefit a particular group, most often a group in power looking out for itself. The Guardian posted a vile tale, all too believable.

It costs money to make power and large expensive facilities. You can supplement with wind and solar. Those certainly are worth it for the individual, but not for the group. Power generation must always consider the worst case. If the Fimbulwinter strikes for a month, covering everything with snow and wind turbines with ice, society will require power supplied by industrial grade facilities.

People should install solar panels, yet someone must pay to maintain the huge infrastructure and facilities for when all else fails. A possible solution is that when a person with solar panels requires power from the grid, the rates shoot way up to help pay for having that power available instantaneously when they have a problem with their own. This would discourage some people from installing solar panels, it would encourage others to become completely self-sufficient. In the long run this will prove the best solution; in the short run the power infra-structure must be maintained and paid for whether or not people use solar panels.

Solar panels should not be allowed to put power to the grid. It will cost everybody more in the long run, but people will insist on this and so those costs will just get added to the bills. The costs won't be a sudden hit, just slow and incremental. By the time people realize the cost, a loud vocal minority with a vested interest in selling power from their solar cells to the grid will be able to beat off attacks. That may already be the case.

As are women who work hard, do a disproportionate share of the housework, and still manage to look a lot nicer than the guy. This article sounds like a male teenager pontificating.

You are welcome. Thanks are better than karma. John

Kneeling has good advantages, especially if you wear shorts. It straightens out the core and you can switch back and forth between sitting and kneeling. With any luck the desktop will be just fine for your height when kneeling, otherwise you might need a low kneeler.

The only way to get rid of software patents is to make the system too expensive for companies to support the current system. One way to do this is to create a large growing patent pool that is not available to commercial companies. The organization holding the pool would have to vigorously defend the patents. Some issues would exist, none insurmountable. One is the money needed to pay for the new patents and to litigate against those violating the patents. (Not wanting to write a manifesto, I will touch on this.) Say the EFF chose to do it. The issue branches into minimizing the cost and optimizing the money invested in patents. The application cost is fixed, the cost of preparing the application can be reduced a little, especially if EFF were handling writing the patent applications and writing all of them with a common goal. Consider a company that wanted to help the cause. Paying for some patents used in this way is a solid long-term investment if it helps break the patent system. It may even be possible to include commercial companies. Allow them to join possibly by transferring all patents to the organization. If a company has no patents, maybe they could join by paying for a patent or two. The solution is not a big deal. It is only a case of setting up an organization that constantly gets more patents and completely blocks any company that won't join. Such a system, once going, accelerates quickly. Oh yes. It should be set up that when a company joins, it joins irrevocably. This prevents large companies with patents forcing it to withdraw. Patent trolls are not an issue. Forcing the large companies into patent gridlock is all that is necessary. They will get the law changed.

Also raises hand. On one project I loaded the software, powered down, pulled the memory card with its core memory, walked though a food processing plant, plugged it back in, and started debugging. It was quicker. The customer insisted on receiving a paper tape copy and only had the printer on the tty. 40+k used almost an entire roll. I don't think anyone ever tried to read it back in.

I took both Latin and classical Greek in high school. Those languages provide great long term intellectual benefit. Learning those languages also teaches the student about English. You learn a dead language differently because you don't waste any time on the speaking part. The written language contains its truth worth as a language since it gets defined by its best writers. You deal with the words of really intelligent people, how they formulate their thoughts and how they use their language to express their thoughts. Really good stuff.

I side with Palin most of the time and find the anti-Palin diatribe in the majority of the comments depressing. The mob on Slashdot is just like mobs everywhere. Now, while I don't side with Palin on this issue, because I have a small fondness for anarchy, she has a very legitimate position. When two people talk, they talk with a level of trust. Wikileaks shattered a lot of the mutual trust. People seem to think that everything government does should be out in the open. What foolishness. There is no perfect form of government. Assuming that having everything out in the open would work better is a long long shot. You just change one system of corruption for another.

It's not a matter of intimidation or fear of losing. Memorizing sequences requires memorization skills and the desire to use them, nothing more. If I choose not to memorize, for whatever reason, playing against one who does becomes unsatisfying. If I out-think their canned routine, what satisfaction do I get? If I slip and their canned routine runs over me, what have I learned? The other player wasn't really responding to my moves. I would learn as much from studying a book. Why am I playing this person if they are going to act like a machine? They are not personally engaged in what we are doing. It's like going for a walk on a fine sunny day and meeting people who are plugged into their music systems. We are in two different worlds; they don't hear the birds I hear nor can they adequately respond to a greeting.

There is a lot good advice posted. Much depends on the operations that will take place in the room. Most control rooms have daily cycles consisting of the day shift with maintenance working on things and interacting with the operators, a swing shift where things quiet down, and a graveyard shift that consists of long hours of quiet and talk among the operators to pass the time. When a process upset or emergency occurs the operators must respond quickly, but with a well-run process upsets don't happen very often.

I have spent too much of my life in control rooms, paper industry and power plant. Control rooms existed before computers, consisting of expanses panels of controllers and switches. Since there were so many controls, at least half of them could only be reached by standing. The operators were trim and in good shape. They frequently spent their time sitting down because there was nothing to do, then immediately came to their feet when action was required. Humans function much better standing up. They think better and it is best for them physically, the two go hand in hand. Many control displays work by touch. Proper display design is an elite craft. Arrange the displays so that normal operator input occurs standing and dealing with the display at eye level. People will object that keyboard input is required and keyboards have to be horizontal. I don't know your processes, but the vast majority of keyboard interactions involve display selection, alarm interaction, and numerical entry (setpoints, etc.). Sometimes tags get typed, it isn't frequent or common and almost always results from bad display design. Anyway, numerical entry can easily be handled by a vertical keypad. It certainly doesn't need to be horizontal. Display selection should primarily be handled through the displays, using proper design. Alarm interaction needs its own small keypad beneath the numerical one. In the future, voice recognition will be used with the displays, but right now it would be a gimmick.

By the way, my company provides simulations for operator training. Contact me if you are interested. Start-ups, shutdowns, upsets, alarms, tags, etc. All the usual suspects.

You wrote a nice response, thank you. I am an American, and you are right in that I could do more to get rid of copyright. I shall try to remember to do so.

History does not show that the human race needs intellectual property such as patents and copyright. I say this in spite of having a small software company with its key asset being a software package. However it would be a long discussion with us starting so far apart.

Thank you for responding,

John

If a person buys into the current scheme of intellectual property and finds a niche there, then they find themselves defending their niche and the scheme. The human race got along quite well for a very long time without the idea. The scheme works well for the lawyers and corporations and the individuals who rely on it. It doesn't work well for the normal person who has to act in an unnatural way because of it. The fact that a person pays for an education and feels committed to the scheme does not make it right. Repeating the behavior of others is a natural human instinct; lawyers saying you can't sing this song because it belongs to someone else is a great foolishness and harmful to society.