The point is, we can have a much better oven without an increase in price. Same amount of material, or even less material. There is low hanging fruit that is being ignored. Consider how long it took for toaster ovens to get timers. Years after the introduction of microwave ovens, all of which have timers and automatic shutoff, most toaster ovens still had nothing more than a cheap thermostat.

It's a similar story in housing. The features of the site are routinely ignored. Air conditioning coils should be placed on the east side of a building. It would be so easy and zero cost to simply flip and rotate the plans to position the coils there, but they don't. In most places, half the energy used by a house is spent on mere heating and cooling. Houses should have much better insulation. Instead, money is spend on useless bling like the unnecessarily complicated rooflines that will cost a fortune to reshingle. A simple roof would be better and cheaper. Then there is the completely stupid fireplace that was recognized as inefficient in the 18th century by none other than Benjamin Franklin. He advocated a wood burning stove. But we still put badly deisgned fireplaces in every house today. They are not serious methods of heating homes, they are entertainment devices so people can watch pretty flames. But a lot of people are fooled by them, think a fireplace can serve as heat if the furnace is out of commission.

What's with this knee jerk thinking that improvements are always costly?

High bridges are magnets for suicidal people. Not only is death nearly guaranteed, it's nicely public and dramatic. Might even shut down a major route for a few hours. The Golden Gate Bridge has had problems with suicides ever since it was built. Authorities are finally taking some preventative measures, like adding netting so it's not quite so easy to throw yourself off. We have rails that make it difficult for cars to drive off the side, but human bodies slipped through the cracks, so to speak.

If high bridges are so attractive as a means of suicide, it makes sense that a tool purposely built to kill would also be attractive.

DOSBox is good.

I recommend against a native DOS setup like FreeDOS, unless you don't care about graphics and audio. FreeDOS actually works fine on modern hardware. The problem is that there are no drivers for modern video and audio. As far as I know, there are no emulation layers either-- no way to glue a Soundblaster interface to a modern audio interface with a DOS driver that DOS games can use. Graphics are worse. Without drivers, you're stuck with 320x200x256 color VGA or 640x480x16 color EGA/VGA. Ever try to use Windows at 320x200 resolution? Many old DOS games had their own graphics drivers for the most common graphics hardware, and simply will not run if the hardware they're built for doesn't exist. An emulator like DOSBox takes care of those issues.

As to well aged Linux, there's a huge dividing point at the change from libc5 to libc6 which happened in the late 90s. Binaries compiled in the days of libc5 are going to complain and crash because they can't work with libc6. Expect lots of library hell. Another big change is the still ongoing shift from 32bit to 64bit that reached a tipping point in the mid 2000s. Nearly everything from the early 2000s is going to be 32bit. Although 64bit OSes include many 32bit libraries, you'll likely find it easier to just install a 32bit OS. There are extensions for using more than 4G of RAM in 32bit mode, but it may be easier to just work within 4G.

Digging out and installing an old Linux distribution is going to be more trouble. If it's from the days of libc5, X won't have drivers for GeForce or Radeon graphics hardware. You'll have to settle for slow performance and low resolution from standard VESA modes, or even VGA modes. 1024x768 is nice to have, but don't be too surprised if you have to settle for 800x600 or even 640x480. Another problem is USB. An old Linux probably can't read a USB keyboard and mouse, must have the old PS/2 connectors. Then there's the hard drive. An old Linux may not be able to handle SATA let alone SAS. Has to be SCSI or IDE. The hardware may be able to help here, as the BIOS may have options to run an emulation layer, provide the old bus interfaces that the software expects. To install vintage Linux, likely need a CDROM drive, or even a 1.44M floppy drive.

Few issues are completely one sided, but slavery is about as close as you can get. That roof over their heads is just cheap rationalising to help the masters feel good. Like patting yourself on the back for feeding someone a fish today, when you could have taught them how to fish but you won't because you want to keep control. You even go as far as stopping them from figuring out how to fish on their own, on the notion that they can't handle such dangerous knowledge. Slavery wasn't even really good for the plantation owners. Their world view was seriously warped by the prejudice they ingrained in themselves. They really believed their self justifying propaganda about blacks being inferior, latched hard onto the whole idea of the White Man's Burden. Laboring under such wrong thinking leads to systemic weakness.

The ultimate reason the Confederacy lost was that when they started the war, they were already way behind economically, and that was thanks to slavery. Slave powered economies simply are not competitive. Very static, resistant to change, and lacking innovation. They deluded themselves that southerners were more manly than northerners. Hoped that, a few other advantages like King Cotton, and most of all the advantage of being the defender would be enough to tip the scale against the Union's huge numeric advantages. But often their leadership would squander the defensive advantage by making reckless assaults, possibly out of that misplaced sense of greater manliness. Lots of battles in Confederate territory have more confederate than union casualties. General Hood was the ultimate in reckless aggressiveness, and President Davis put him in command because he wanted aggressive action. The result was that Hood got his army killed, first seriously reduced at Atlanta, then finsihed at Nashville.

What I don't like is the "blame the victim" angle of this data mining. Instead of this approach of mitigating things the consumer did, as if they might be bad for our health, why not grill the store? Like, instead of haranging the consumer about a pizza they ate, what about a talk with the pizza vendor for using too much salt or fat or whatever? One thing that the US does is pour way too much salt on our food. There is precedent. I think bars are legally constrained not to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk, and/or required to prevent them from driving away.

For much of the 20th century, it was thought chess made a good proxy for intelligence. Skill at chess correlated with high intelligence. Though it was clear that lack of chess skill didn't mean a person was stupid. This correlation was believed so strongly that the AI community bought into it and tried for decades to make a computer beat highly skilled human chess players. When this effort finally succeeded, it only further confirmed what many had suspected for some time, which is that skill at chess can be obatined through sheer brute force calculation. It doesn't require intelligence, whatever that is exactly, though that helps. We need better measures and definitions. And, yes, most IQ tests aren't it.

That is among the most hypocritical phrases commonly used in the workplace today, ranking up there with "show your commitment". Most of the time it's management trying to whitewash that they've just demanded something unfair or illegal of a worker, and threatened their job over it. You should buy a new car, show your commitment (and, uh, set yourself up so that if you lose yoru job you can't pay your car note and will lose it too). Of course they can't say that, so they turn to hinting. And a few times, they honestly mean be a team player, in a good way. They have to mean it sometimes, or the phrase wouldn't work as well. Be a team player, yeah!

That's another huge problem. This mentality that people are naturally lazy and have to be forced to work is wrong, but so few people believe that anymore. They accept a whipping for being a slacker as for their own good. I wonder if we'll have to fight the US Civil War over again someday, stop the new slavery.

Buildings and lots all have addresses, assigned by the US Post Office if necessary. Highways and streets all have numbers or names or both.

We all ought to have our own addresses on the Internet. No one thinks anything of having an IP address, and everyone who knows anything about the Internet realizes an address is necessary. Why aren't names accorded the same importance and privilege? We need stable addresses, and with dynamic IP, we don't have that. I don't like such vital connectivity being in the hands of a private company no matter how good they are.

WCIA 2 time champ, too. We all understand the mergers are about extending monopolies and gaining power, the better to gouge consumers.

And what will be done about it? Nothing, as usual. Our national government will even help the poor things gouge us harder. Give them lots of infrastructure, redefine broadband to include even slower speeds, and keep squashing competition from local governments because it's unfair that they should have to compete against a government.

Oh, and Net Neutrality? Just a bargaining chip. Worth a few hundred sinecures.

I've heard snakes are the reason people see short grass as beautiful. There isn't anything intrinsically prettier about shortness. Lakes create far more snake habitat than tall grass, but somehow it's okay to have lots of man made lakes, to insure a stable water supply. Then there's the Smokey Bear angle-- short grass doesn't provide as much fuel for fires.

"Weed" is another of those overused terms. What is a weed? If plant nurseries had their way, every native plant would be considered a weed. More profitable for them if you have to constantly buy "weed" killer and replacement plants.

Trying to stop erosion. Not much sunlight gets past the trees and the neighbors' wooden fences, and the grass was barely hanging on. Then another neighbor added another fence which had the unfortunate effect of blocking what little sunlight still got through. He moved away shortly after, but the damage his little improvement did remains. Most of the grass died. What's left grows in clumps, with large areas of bare dirt between.

I know what's going on with the yard. I don't need the city horning in with their dumb rules. Why don't they make that neighbor tear that fence down? "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Nah, this isn't about going to war against citizens. It's about allowing some idiot to use security as an excuse to buy toys. Could be some kind of kickback involved. Someone's nephew needs a job, perhaps.

Everything can be cast in terms of security. Just this week we received a reprimand for letting the grass get too high, and it invoked safety as a reason why everyone should have to mow the grass often. Here are some excerpts from the letter:

"The City ... takes great pride in the health, safety, welfare, and appearance of our community.... Every individual property owner's maintenance contributes to the overall positive appearance of their neighborhood...." The letter states that a Community Image Officer noticed that the property is in violation of the ordinance that states a person may not allow weeds or grass more than twelve (12") tall to accumulate. It concludes with this: "With your help, we can keep our community clean and safe."

We certainly can't allow grass to grow dangerously high!

If a law is so easy to casually disregard, and violating it provides a clear benefit to the violators and the harm it causes is theoretical, that's a sign the law itself is bad. Eating at Burger King should not be thought such a harm to McDonalds that it should be outlawed.

We ought to have digital public libraries by now. Such a thing is a clear benefit to society. Searchable works of art! No more archaic card catalogs. No more denying a patron because all the copies are currently checked out. No more losses from patrons being careless with the physical media and damaging it. Far less storage space needed, space which can be used to hold more works, or repurposed. No more late fees and returns. No more having to physically travel to the library, twice, spending time and most likely gas. Did you see the article some days ago about streaming saving society lots of money compared to fooling around with DVDs? We could have all of this, now, if not for copyright law.

Everyone should be willing to practice civil disobedience of bad laws. Be like Rosa Parks and don't meekly go along with racist seating arrangements. If US citizens are no longer willing to do that, maybe we ought to petition the British Monarchy to let us back in the fold, and we'll all issue a national apology to George III.

Are you the kind of asshole who runs around your neighborhood and rats out all your neighbors who don't mow often enough? Maybe you ought to add listening for loud music to your activities, so you can file a noise complaint too, and try to identify the songs while you're at it so you can go running to your pals in the MAFIAA to complain that because you overheard a copyrighted song, their rights were infringed. Even better if you have to trespass to get close enough to identify the songs.

File sharing IS a legitimate activity. In many cases the user doesn't know the copyright status. Shouldn't have to know. But even if it is copyrighted by someone else, and the user knows that and does not have their permission, so what? Last I heard, you can still trade books among your friends, and check out works from the public library. If this activity is illegal, that is reason to change the law, not blow the public's money on futile and damaging policing efforts. Copyright law is against the public interest, and needs drastic reform or abolishment.

Not having to do or help with policing is a basic right. The 4th Amendment has a bit to say on the subject of searches. The police can't just search your home, they have to have probable cause and a warrant. Equally, you shouldn't have to search your own home. The 3rd Amendment might even be applicable. You can't be forced to house a soldier in your home. Seems like you shouldn't have to allow a digital cop program on your servers either. A business based on file storage should not have to bear the burden of checking the copyright status of all the files stored on its servers. Cloud vendors don't have to do that, why should Megaupload?

You have to fight more creatively than that. As others have noted, many authorities cynically use situations like this to "generate" revenue. They've set the system up to make it difficult to fight and change. Going through whatever process they set up is not likely to have any effect.

I tried their system on a red light camera ticket. Had my evidence that their yellow was too short and requested a hearing. The hearing was a total kangaroo trial. My evidence was ignored. It was picture number one showing that the light was red before the car crossed the painted line, and picture number two showing the red light and the car in the intersection. Verdict: guilty. End of discussion. That the light in picture number one would have been yellow if it had been set to the correct time was not considered. The judge advised me that I could go on to municipal court and raise that question there, where it would be considered. Well, maybe. But I was through with them. What would happen next if I went on? The muni court would rule against me and tell me I could appeal?

They've also cunningly set their shakedown price at a low enough level that it's not worth fighting. The ticket was "only" $75. I fought anyway, but lost of course. Also, to dodge around the requirement that the accused gets to confront the accuser, they made this an offense against a city ordinance, not a traffic violation. So you don't get screwed by your auto insurance company seizing on this as an excuse to consider you a more dangerous driver, and raising your rates. This dodges around another problem, which is that they have nothing to show who was actually driving the car. They simply fine the owner, never mind who was driving.

There's a flip side to this weaseling out of those legal requirements. The simplest way to fight is to refuse to pay. Their power to compel payment is much more limited. They can't put a black mark on your record and have the state stop you from renewing your driver's license or car license, because it's not a traffic violation.

So, what to do? I can't vote against the politicians who set this all up, as I don't live in that city. I can however boycott businesses in that city, and I do. It's not just pure revenge, it's also prudence. I don't risk any more tickets if I never drive there.

In a similar vein, I fight against the MAFIAA creatively. One can pirate, of course, and millions do. But what I did was dig into the backgrounds of the people they use in their battles to terrorize ordinary citizens. Specifically, their expert witnesses. In one case, the witness was affiliated with a university, and was using their name. I inquired of that university's provost whether they approved of this activity by their employee. Turned out, they didn't even know about it. And when they found out thanks to me telling them about it, they definitely didn't like it. Haven't heard a peep out of that expert witness since.