Remember, I did specify lakes as a place where a ship would need a pilot.

The pilot will have to take into account calm areas and avoid those as well, but satellite weather forecasting makes that possible now.

In nautical terms, a pilot is a specialist in navigating through a harbor, lake, river or other difficult passage, and is not a regular member of any ship's crew. You have the right idea, but the proper job title is "navigator."

That's going far past anything I would know; I'm software, not hardware and it was a long time ago. All I remember is that there were a pair of uprights that helped hold the chip up and it went from the motherboard almost to the top of the case.

This reminds me of something that was done back in the (I think) 90s for one of the Pentium chips. Instead of it lying flat on the motherboard it had all of its connectors along one edge and stood upright on that edge in a special mount that kept it upright so that all of it was exposed to the air and didn't need a heat sink or special fan. Yes, it had its drawbacks, mostly that it couldn't be used in a laptop and needed a tall case, but it worked and worked well. I know, because I used one for several years back then and only replaced it to upgrade.

One good example is ModemManager. It can't exit until either the modem is on-line or it times out, generally because you either don't have one or it's not connected to anything. Why it doesn't start out by checking to see if you have a modem and if not exit right away I don't know. Personally, one of the first things I do is disable and mask it so it doesn't even try to start because it's been well over a decade since I last needed it and nuking it that way makes a significant change for the better in the boot time. HTH, HAND.

I happen to be a member of a social club that's organized as a 501-C. I've sent a copy of TFA to the club's treasurer so that she can be on the lookout for any funny business and not be taken unawares. If any of you know about any non-profits that might be affected by this, please give them a head's up!

One particular home is a brand new, probably a $25 million dollar plus creation, very modern and sleek. The entire house, HVAC, lighting, cameras, gates, door locks, etc. is controlled by a central service on a network. Things go wrong all the time. When the system goes down, nothing works.

Let me guess: that home, as designed and built had no built in batteries or generator to pick up the load when the inevitable power failure occurred. How long did it take for that brain phart to be corrected and how long was the house dark when the omission was first discovered?

Personal responsibility is not the main cause of obesity.

You're right. Personal responsibility isn't a cause of obesity; the problem is lack of personal responsibility.

Maybe you should have started out by checking Wikipedia. The second sentence of the first paragraph says exactly what I wrote.

Or hit the Waywayback Machine for the Know-Nothing party (yeah, I know, I know, but the fact that they considered it a badge of distinction is my point here).

If you actually knew anything about that era's politics, you'd know better. The Know Nothing Party got that name because members were expected to deny any knowledge about that party or its activities, not because they knew nothing in general.

Somewhere in the 60s and up until the early 70s everything did standardize on DST, but people didn't like their kids walking to school in the dark.

It came nowhere close to that long, being imposed in January 1974 because of the oil crisis, and being retracted less than a year later when people had had time to see how stupid it was and how dangerous it was for school children in the winter.

Are you suggesting that Senator Cotton is a clock sucker?

Nobody has the wherewithal or the balls to go up against him so he can basically rule by Fiat.

Would you be happier if he ruled by Volvo?

Birds with toothless beaks diverged from that diet to a seeds and insects based one...

Oh, really? I'm sure that the eagles, hawks, owls and other birds of prey would have something to say about that.

A few months ago I had a poster complain that I'd removed the beginning and end of a sentence of his I quoted and replaced the missing parts with three dots. Apparently he didn't know what an ellipsis is.