Re: Amazing that this still happens
"to do things well, from both the financial and customer service points of view"
I suspect one of those things is not a consideration.
408 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2015
"There are reasons why corporal punishment has been abandoned in much of the world, and why we decry flogging in Saudi Arabia and other countries"
There's a difference between flogging someone for having a beer and doing it to someone who tried to blind the pilot of an aircraft or ferry.
"most criminal have some sort of heavy metal poisoning"
The Romans did pretty well despite drinking water from lead pipes and containers. I suspect there are still houses in the UK with lead water pipes, which were common until fairly recently, yet relatively few people indulge in this moronic activity. (Note that I'm not playing down the seriousness of contaminated water supplies; I'm just sceptical about it being a significant factor here).
"programmers and engineers design consumer technology which is perfectly simple for programmers and engineers to operate"
As an engineer (and a semi-competent programmer) myself, I'm not sure I'd agree. I find the controls provided for operating many modern appliances totally mystifying.
"powered OFF means NO CURRENT APPLIED"
Not so long ago the politicians here in UK were getting concerned about the standby power consumption of appliances, that it was destroying the environment, and legislation was clearly necessary. The obvious cheap solution for a manufacturer is to change the label on the 'Standby' switch to 'Off', thus sidestepping legal limits on standby power. (I considered using the joke icon here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true in some cases).
"tried selling anything 'digital' in Europe lately?"
Have an upvote. Whoever pushed the idea of abolishing the minimum VAT threshold for cross-border VAT is either an imbecile or was unduly influenced by those with a vested interest in killing off competition from upcoming small businesses. I wonder which is more likely?
I think the derision is aimed at the technical ignorance shown, not at the thought that there could be a serious issue. Claiming there is a technical solution which doesn't exist in any practically usable form, and then basing kneejerk legislation on such claims, is not a sensible thing to do.
I'm slightly bemused by the comments describing Linus' posts on LKML as "public". Sure, anyone can read them if they go out of their way to subscribe or read the archives, but what proportion of the general public makes the effort? I suspect that many of the critical comments come from those who would never have noticed if it wasn't for stories like this (and therefore have little idea of the historical context leading to the remarks).
"Don't forget the EMP. I would doubt very much that the bombers of the day would have had hardened systems to cope with it."
Do valves/tubes need to be hardened to resist EMP? No doubt a strong enough EMP would damage them, but I'm pretty sure they're more resistant than those new-fangled transistor thingies.
systemd
-free Debian fork
"The correct method is to rub each cat's fur vigorously with an ebonite rod and stick it directly to the balloon envelope with the generated static electricity."
And given the law of feline physics which states that a cat will always land on its feet, all they would have to do is make sure all of their feet were pointing towards the centre of the balloon to ensure it would never crash to the ground.
"Because you think that, when President Truman ordered the bombs to be dropped, he did so while shouting on the phone and cussing the Japs ?"
To do something "in anger" is a common British figure of speech meaning to do something for serious effect, ie. not messing around. It originated with the military:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fire_in_anger