I was late in learning to drive a stick shift and now that I am getting much much older I tend to go with my automatic especially when in heavy traffic. However, there have been a number of instances reported in the media of another really nice advantage of having a stick shift.

Most car jacking attempts are by males that are in their teens or early twenties and I really get a good laugh when I see or read of then attempting to car jack a stick shift. Most can not drive them !

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." As a 77 year old retired engineer I had too many times where I not only sympathized with Dilbert but empathized with him. Politicians and Lawyers argue. Mother Nature strictly enforces.

Engineer: "If it's not broken don't try to fix it."

Marketing: "Change everything so we can sell more to people that already have what we sell now."

The "Carl and Jerry" column from the March 1961 issue of Popular Electronics was all about this topic.

I have been wondering if there was any news since then.

At the engineering college I attended from 1965 until 1970 the first high level programming language I learned was ALGOL 60.

Many years and other languages latter, including PDP-8 assembler and Fortran. I jumped at the chance to buy a copy of Turbo Pascal for my AT&T 6300 DOS computer.

To my surprise I met an old friend. To me Turbo Pascal was for most things ALGOL 60 with a new name and a few differences, but basically it was ALGOL. Your mileage may vary.

Follow the Money. Georgia Power got rate increases approved by the Georgia Public Service Commission BEFORE they began construction, and have passed along each cost increase through additional rate increases. So, in reality, their customers were paying for this LONG before it began operation and now they just got another large rate increase to cover the cost of Fossil Fuels for their other plants.

The statement in the article that "In 'WarGames,' the computer doesn't understand the difference between a game and real life," Seems to apply to an increasing number of people too.

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Hubris will eventually lead to Nemesis.

Thanks, you said it well. I remember GOPHER, ARCHIE, AND VERONICA on a green text only screen. Seems like all good things have to end someday.

Maybe UEFI now means Unlimited Ease For Infection?

When the Simple, useful, intuitive Firefox interface got redone last year or so I moved to Brave and or Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi and whatever I could find to get away from the disaster that Firefox had become. I don't think I was alone. The same fate now seems to be on the horizon for Thunderbird. Change for changes sake or to just follow the trend is the path to oblivion for software that people actually use.

Thanks! I had forgotten about WAR TIME since it was a bit before my time. However, I was serving in the USAF in 1973 - 1974 in Dayton, Ohio and remember how much almost everyone complained about DST that winter.
The further North you go and the further West you are in a time zone the worse it got.

The US did actually stay on DST for one winter in late 1973 and most of 1974. It was after the 1973 oil embargo and the spike in energy prices.

When first adopted there was wide spread approval and support for it. Before the next winter there was wide spread disapproval and it was repealed.

Also DST began as a SUMMER time thing, but now begins in late winter and continues until late fall. That is almost eight months of the year. The last time the dates were changed was in 2007 and I am not sure anyone remembers or ever knew why.

Talking to "strangers", who can be virtually anyone, but are often people with different backgrounds, beliefs, outlooks and customs, but almost always have the same hopes, desires, frustrations and fears that I have makes one far more than just "smarter".

It makes us more caring, more empathetic, and more understanding, perhaps most importantly less fearful. Which I believe is a way to less hate in this world.

I am now a 75 year old retired engineer, but in in 1971 -1972 I lived near a small village in North Eastern Thailand for a full year, I talked to everyone I could, where I knew enough Thai and, more often, they knew a lot more English. What I learned during that year was probably the most important thing ever, and was far more useful than most of the technical education I got as an engineer.

We are all one species. We all have the same or similar hopes, fears, dreams, and aspirations.