But did they have refrigerators?

Back in the 80s and 90s, there was sort of a stigma to having a cell phone in America--namely only rich/important people had cell phones because wired phones in the home were relatively inexpensive. We spent a ton of money wiring America back in the 1930s and 1940s because that was the only way to do it back then. So people had telephones in their houses because the government essentially subsidized the expense of a phone.

Compared with the expense of running wires all over the place, cell towers are a heck of a lot cheaper. Build a tower over here, serve 1000 people. No need to run 1000 wires. Which is why they became popular in countries which didn't have the infrastructure to begin with.

And the reason you have to think that way is due to various real world limitations.

Why in the world would you want to pre-load a bunch of music for later off-line use? Well, obviously, because you're going somewhere where you will be unable to access the Internet conveniently. You're taking a plane ride (and don't want to pay for Internet access). You're visiting a canyon or a tropical island where Internet access is not available.

If I have a sudden urge to listen to Illmatic, I think, "I want to listen to Illmatic." What I want is to do is press a couple of buttons on my phone and have it start playing. Wherever I am. That's what I want.

But the reality of the world is that I, unfortunately, have to think about these things.

That's no asteroid...

(Sorry. Had to be said...)

Not to mention the giant ones in space.

Oh, I'm sure there's a crime in there. "Obstruction of Justice" sounds like a good catch-all.

It's interesting, though, that these regulations usually come along when things go wrong. The ones who complain about "over regulation" are the ones who want to get away with something but they can't because there are regulations against it.

In other words, who defines what "Over regulation" is? Can you give me an example of an industry that is "over regulated"? Of what particular regulations would be "over"?

GABA GABA HEY!

(Sorry...couldn't resist)

Right. I could take some of the pills I buy and stick it in the DNA analyzer that I just happen to have in my backyard.

What? You don't have a DNA Analyzer in your backyard? I thought everybody had one...

Because it came with the phone.

Maybe if we built a really tall ladder...

That's nu-cu-lar radiashun.

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I'd point out that the reason "damn near everyone" has a telephone line running to their house is the Communications Act of 1934 and the Rural Electrification Act.

Actually, the one I hate is:

if ($variable == false) {
      doSomethingInteresting($variable);
}

and one of my co-workers does:

if ($variable == false)
      {
      doSomethingInteresting($variable);
      }

Of course, my code is beautiful and everyone else's is terse and ugly and everyone should write code the same way that I do. Try suggesting that to a group of programmers and see how far it gets you. Generally, it's not worth the argument--you will waste tons of everyone's time trying to come up with an agreement.

As the thread suggests, one advantage to different coding styles is that you can generally tell who wrote what and, if there seems to be a bug, you can track them down and tell them to fix it in that ugly mess. In our office, we have the rule that if you go around changing code style, you now own that code and are responsible for it. About the only issue we've run into is that people's styles evolve over time. So the guy right out of school may have a certain style that changes as he is exposed to more styles.

My favorite story was when someone was trying to push variable naming standards. If it was a C string, the variable name should begin with "sz" (for string, zero terminated). I suggested that instead of doing that, maybe we should just put a dollar-sign at the end. Laughter ensued and that ended that.

Hey, you can't keep a good astronomer down!

That's pretty ridiculous. The Big Mac is made with 100% pure beef.

McRibs and McNuggets, on the other hand...