Useless Propaganda

Propaganda

Welcome to the Propaganda page. This is just a page of stuff that really makes me angry, and thus I write about it to blow off some steam. These are seriously annoying ways big business is trying to "pwn" our lives.

Propaganda: National Health Care, Abortion, Assisted Suicide

Though my past with my parents have been of frugality and the desire to penny pinch on the costs of health care, this is something that I've decided upon to be "sounds good" but doesn't really do good. A coworker of mine has a poster saying "Free health care? The cheese in the mouse trap is free too!" - Though I would have to say this isn't exactly the same reason why I think public health care should be more carefully thought through.

My take on this whole issue is that costs are rising. Underneath it all is definitely greed, no doubt about it. The other issue is fear of malpractice. Since we're dealing with life here, people are hesitant to put a value on life as if it were disposable at a cost. Life _is_ sacred however, but, if someone is terminally ill it may not be worth the effort to save them; it should be the decision of the financial provider for that person to save - not of the government. If that person is their own provider they should make their own choice whether to live or die.

The other side of the coin is when something does go wrong, accident or not - a huge lawsuit is typically made. The fear of being sued (another topic: lawyers) for this large amount is causing doctors to buy lots of insurance. This is then passed onto patients. Then the patients can't afford it, so they buy... guess what? More insurance.

Who's benefiting? Insurance companies. And drug companies (that realize that they may have the "panacea" which is just treating the symptoms). Of course they'll charge more than the expected payout to settlements, and this money they earned gets pocketed and just lets everything spiral out of control. Sometimes I wonder how to deal with negligence by doctors - though some are real mistakes, some are simply frivolous.

As a profession, I'm an engineer, but I'm also a scientist underneath - who questions things. One thing is that people in developed nations are bringing too many diseased children into the world. If the parents are rich, they could electively pay for children with defects... but for the most part, fetuses that have congenital defects should be aborted without question. If additional screening is possible, those should also be included for reasons to abort. This will save the system a lot of problems down the road. No, unfortunately the poor child will never get to choose but they couldn't choose to begin with - who chose to let the egg hatch to begin with? A child without defects would be an added blessing as the kid grows up, they won't have to deal with their issues adding to chronic issues stressing the medical system more, not to mention that kid likely would be unhappy in their life, questioning why they were ever born. As medical technology increases to treat disease, this is the only way that 'natural selection' can continue to improve the human race instead of letting it stagnate by adding technology bandages. Who's actually benefiting here? As I said I'm a scientist. Beliefs must have proof.

(Rhetorical question answer: Doctors, secondary care providers, drug companies, and "conscience" which is contrary to science.)

Though I am thinking I am playing one heck of a lot of money for health insurance I do think that those people who are advertising "Defund Obamacare" should be also be advertising as "Let the poor and sick die." Yes it's very stark and cold but ultimately that's what the right wing is saying. I can't make up my mind on which way to go on this, though, but looking at the income inequality of the US, I will have to sway towards the Left for this. But it's not only the only who suffer under "Obamacare"...

Propaganda: "Cloud" Computing

What are they thinking about this "new" computing paradigm? Honestly I can see some people actually not noticing a difference but seriously, are we instead of designing something new doing the exact same thing IBM did in the past, some 30 years ago with their mainframes, citing computers "too expensive" and just renting out services, where you connect to it via a dumb terminal? Granted now you get whizzy windows and colorful graphics instead of plain old text, is there really any new here? Not only your data is at the mercy of IBM, any phone (300bps modem?)/internet/network outage means you're removed from your data?
Plus if you decide you don't like their service, your data is effectively gone?
Hug your computer tonight, leaving your personal data where it should be - with you. Choose to keep your data the way you want it - able for you to access it any way, any time you want.

Propaganda: Cellular Text Messaging

"The newest thing: pad AT&T's wallets with text message money!"
Oh-my-GOD. I want to beat my non-existent kids' heads (so, I'm single... Also see a few sections down to get a reason why, which shouldn't be...) in with a large, blunt weapon if they succumb to the phone text messaging craze. As if cellular price per minute wasn't high enough (plus these silly 2-year agreement plans that should not exist) these text messages are way too expensive. Consider this:

Method	airtime consumed (time)	Bytes sent/recv³	disturbs others	data exchanges²	Your cost
one incoming, one outgoing message	2x2 sec = 4 sec Does not include typing!	2 x 120char 240 bytes	N	1	$0.30
one 59 second phone call	59 sec	59s x 2KB/sec¹ ~ 100KB	Y	around 6	$0.15(basic plan)

¹This is conservative. At 8KB/sec for nyquist rate, and assuming 4:1 compression which is probably not always possible
²How many times a person asks a question and responds within this session
³Overhead is not included in this but the same overhead applies to both.

Thus it appears that you're paying for convenience. And I mean paying. We should be able to use our cellular bandwidth whatever way we want, including simply using our voice minutes to do silent communication. And talk about the unused minutes in your plans now, they should be usable for text messages instead of a separate entity? What's the big deal? Is SMS text data much more critical, harder to send than voice digital data?
No. SMS data can be sent over the voice channel just as easily. Actually not 'just as easy'... EASIER. SMS you don't have to worry about 1 second outages where the phone can't contact the cell tower. If the message doesn't make it, just send it again, you'll just get your text message a second later. Okay, fine, say it's really bad and you get your SMS 10 seconds late.
What would you think about a 1 second or heck, 10 second drop out when your significant other is talking to you via voice on the phone... "What did you say??!"

So... why is SMS more "expensive?"

Aha. Greed. Demand more from your paid airtime.

Propaganda: Software (and Business Process) Patents

Support the fight against software patents! Software patents will stifle free speech in writing software! If software patents must go through, then I can see the need for music and movie patents, and everything will go crashing down from there. (I guess we don't need any more movies or music with the same plot anyway so maybe it's a good thing.) A simple copyright is sufficient to protect works from duplication. People should be free to express a method to make their computer to do anything they want with their own software and share it with whoever they want! Software patents really don't make sense, it's like being restricted from painting a picture of a horse in a meadow because someone else patented the idea of painting a horse in a meadow. Totally Ridiculous!

Support changing the rules on patents! The laws should be changed such that the owner of the patent must make a reasonable effort on building a product that his her patent describes, else the patent will become invalid. We do not need silly suits of letting someone else "do the dirty work" and sue the work from right underneath them.

Propaganda: "Trusted Computing" Platform Alliance

What is TCPA? This is TCPA. Down with the so called "Trusted Computing Platform." There is no real trust in TCP - though it implies trust, there really is no trust the content of the software running on my computer is exactly what I want it do - stuff it sends over the network, for example. The TCP only helps big TCPA companies trust that people can't do anything they want with their hard earned, purchased and own computer. Kind of sad that it's the MEDIA/SOFTWARE companies forcing hardware companies to succumb. What a slap in the face, they want us to buy computers and now we can't run anything we want on them anymore? Are these computers truly ours anymore if we can't do anything we want with them? Resist the temptation for "Free Beer" computers that require monthly software rental payments... Remember that even 10-year old computer software still work, even if it's dated, many functions still work the way they should and you don't have to pay anymore to them. Forget the piracy argument, I want to make my computer do stuff with software unavailable on the market or unwilling to pay on the market, so I write my own. I want to log all packets that go in and out of my own computer. There's no reason why I can't modify these packets (e.g., I don't want my private info sent out, so I modify or delete them) if I so desire - checking should be done on the remote side if they're worried about packet modification. TCPA bars these actions.

Boo hoo, they have to do more work on their side to check for incorrect packets. Is it really a lot of extra work?
... Like I don't have to do that same work as it is, to help prevent people breaking into my machines. Bounds checking? Stack overflows? These are all corrupted packets which SHOULD BE CHECKED ANYWAY!

Only poorly written, unaudited software do not have these checks... absolutely no excuse for such from paid services!

DRM is evil too!

Client/Server Software rules (specifically for-pay services), in my eyes:

Client is only used to display data, but may not do computations to it. At most, client may encrypt data to ensure safe passage through insecure networks.

Client may do anything they want with the data, supposedly it's only client data and does not contain other people's data. Server must check if submitted client data is valid.

I also worry about the new issue: competition. Likely Chinese companies are not so caring about IP protection. If ~~When~~ As they catch up in speed and technology to the US, and consumers have a choice between unprotected and restricted technology...which will they choose? Let us spend less effort in DRM and more effort in technology!

Propaganda: Warrants and device initiated bricking

The San Bernadino incident in 2015 was an interesting case. One of the perpetrators had an iPhone that was secured. Nobody needs to divulge passwords to security systems, this should remain secret. However the auto-wipe auto bricking feature of the iPhone under the warrant I believe is contempt of court. Apple is defying the warrant by destroying or threatening to destroy evidence. Then again if a secure password was chosen, this self destructing data feature should not be necessary. Apple should be compelled to disable this feature on phones that are subject to warrant - then again, government is still not guaranteed to get any information from the phone, at least evidence is not being destroyed.

Propaganda: Diamonds and most Jewelry

Gosh, this is sad. I won't ever understand anyone who wants to wear these worthless rocks that some not-to-be-named-here company wants people to think that they're valuable. Precious metals due to rarity and nobility (i.e., will not chemically react) are a different story - which actually requires effort to make large pure chunks. Digging a rock out of the ground simply doesn't cut it.

Propaganda: Taxes and the Government

It's April 15 as I write this, and I sent out my 1040 with a check. It's not a problem that I owed more money this year, it just irks me that there are people out there who didn't pay a dime. There are families that didn't pay a dime. I don't have a family and I'm paying for their families. Well I'd like a family and pay for my own and not someone else's. Why must I pay when they can't pay? If you can't pay for your children, you do not deserve to have them. There should not be a tax credit for having children for any income level. However a credit for taking care of adopted children - this however, I will support.

Then where should taxes go? It makes me puke when someone says space exploration is waste and say education is important... can't they realize it's one and the same thing?

National security/military... yes. Security is an integral part of a country. (Note: when military money is spent, remember it tends to be spent on US employees, US defense contractors, etc. which then spend on buying things. The money isn't totally going to the country we're attacking.)
Paying off debt. Yes this needs to happen, already overspent in past, unfortunately it does not help society in the immediate future. It does in the long run.
Social programs: infrastructure: Yes, helps multiple people
Social programs: Education, energy research, AND Space exploration: Yes, this helps society. Education is a given. Energy research is needed, but why Space exploration? This is a long term goal, what could be better than something education and energy research be used for (and the discoveries in space research goes back into energy and education?)
Social programs: Welfare: This should be temporary only, then NO. Responsibility for your own life.
Social programs: health care: NO. Health care helps one person, not society - people should be in charge of their own health (and I especially do not approve of "free" contraception. Close your legs if you don't want to get pregnant!); but building hospitals and research - YES
Social programs: open area/parks/cleanup: Yes. It's everyone's planet, take care of it.
Foreign aid: NO. It's not us. Special reservations if this conflicts with the above like environmental issues.

Also kind of funny when the "unwashed masses" want to cancel NASA and space exploration for so-called "jobs"... not realizing money going towards NASA is indeed going towards jobs for the educated and people who do care about the future of humanity. What's best for the future? Planning for it, instead of handouts. Teach a man to fish|farm and feed him for a lifetime... Oh... sorry about those who don't know or care about science and math. Too bad.

Taxes are supposed to be a burden on economic activity. Not a burden on people. So if you do economic activity, you should pay taxes, that includes the poor. And sorry, those who do a TON of economic activity (i.e., the rich) they get to pay a TON of taxes too. Flat tax seems fair enough, no deductions for anything.
Kind of funny, the poor are not stupid. In fact they are very smart - they figured out how to game the system to do little work and still survive and even flourish.

Propaganda: Governing the Social Impacts of Corporate America

You know, we don't have Kings and Tyrants anymore in the US, we live in a democracy right? Or are we really? We work our "fields" every day and pay our "taxes" to Apple, RIAA, MPAA, to watch their propaganda. Or stare at Facebook, giving up privacy and time to read their ads to eat their free social networking. And all these banks and financial institutions holding onto all the money, and basically those companies that don't do what they want them to do, don't get funded. Well, a bit of wavering here but are we under the financial control of Corporate America?
With all the money tied up in their hands... which is inevitable when there's ~~100:1~~ 10000:1 ratio in income... who's to blame that some people give up and not want to work when there's handouts from the ~~government~~ middle class that's paying the bulk of the entitlements. Then the poor end up buying iPhones, iPads, buying music, going to movies, even buying food from McDonald's... all the money going back to the hands of corporate... Of course corporate won't pay the middle class the same as all the money received from purchases, they funnel of a significant portion to their own pockets...
This is unsustainable. Because everyone "Must" have their iCrap and Windoze (though MS is having trouble now!) and "Must" be up to date with the latest movies and sports events. Then all the money goes over to the rich providing these "services"... paying taxes to keep up...
Sometimes I wonder, is our government really our government, or is Corporate America/The Rich are really our new government, and the feds are just becoming irrelevant (not to mention with their lobbying, becoming their puppets?) I also wonder, typically in the past, who were the "ruling class"? Did they tend to be paupers? No? Then who is really the rulers in the US, when the government is broke?

Honestly though I am not exactly "poor" but compared to the richest of rich I might well be. But really it seems with the 100:1 income ratio (and savings ratio) and strive to make higher and higher profits with no possibility of loss, the only non-revolution way to sustain such economy is... INFLATION. Why? Because there's no way to make the rich spend the mountains of cash they have - they hide it in their "corporations" (which they try to claim do not need to pay taxes), hide it in offshore accounts. They try their hardest not to be taxed on just the income they get, say nothing about the income they saved...

It's not like the problem is unfounded. They don't want to be taxed on their income because they now have new competitors they made themselves: people in other countries! They decided to offshore their secrets in making products. Now they're making products with the knowledge they acquired and now competing against them, with their governments not taxing them as much as the US.

They shouldn't have off shored core secrets to begin with.

And yes, a revolution (like the revolutionary war) that invalidates all the money out there would "fix" the problem. However as the world becomes more and more unified, it becomes harder and harder to escape the evil of others...

Propaganda: Mortgages and the economy

I'm sorry. Despite being not rich enough to be a banker, I have to side with the banker on this: Nobody with upside down mortgages deserve to be able to walk out of their mortgage, plain and simple. Why? It was not their choice to make the loan. The banks may have egged you on to take a loan you can't afford, but is that not any different than Viagra ads or other form of advertising? Is it any different than some really *good* ad forcing you to buy something? Oh... now you say you can resist it... how about those loans? Okay, now that's out of the way, the borrowers should have hurt the banks by simply *not* using their service - the loan of the money. But if one does borrow money, ultimately the user needs to pay that money back, plain and simple. No "walk away from loan" because you're underwater. The banks had a choice to loan people money, yes, but they didn't have to - they do so because they had faith borrowers could pay back. They could have just put the money straight into the stock market and leave all the poor SOB's who can't afford their dream house today in the cold. But those few sleazy bastards who lost their investment on a loan... and then decide to just not pay off the rest of it when they can... well, smart move on the investor side (hey, what could be better, put all the risk on the bank and not yourself if the investment goes bad? Woohoo free money!) but that hurts the rest of us who do make smart investment moves as now the banks have less reserve to work with. Granted those who make investments and can't pay for them due to illness or other tragic incident, I'm sorry, but those who willingly do this need to be dragged out into the street and shot for being so greedy. Maybe the right answer is to simply force everyone to make a larger down payment (say, maybe up to 50%) and lock out those aspirants who are sound and can make the payments to make something great...

Propaganda: Living beyond your means

Yesteryear, credit was really easily available. Anyone could get a credit card or loan, easy. And what could be better, you borrow money, you're actually living off of someone else's money for the time being. I can't say this is wrong, but this is exactly the thing people want: being able to get something NOW and have fun with it.
Well, eventually the time to pay the piper will come. It's not like it's an "if" but rather a "when". Unfortunately with credit cards, the "when" is the question. People put minimum payments on their CC's and it puts off paying the piper another month.
Then the crash occurs - they lose their income source. Now they can't even pay minimum payments. They default on their loan. Maybe some repossession occurs (oh god, those people who grow attached to the items they bought with someone else's money and still cling to them... makes me sick.)
Well, they actually lived their life with things they couldn't afford up until then. And cry when it gets taken away. They should be glad that they had the opportunity to use someone else's hard earned money to play with. But then they cry about when the collectors try to get the money owed...
Even worse, default on them... Now the lenders are the one hurt - lent their hard earned cash and not get a cent back. Maybe they shouldn't have lent the money in the first place? Perhaps it was greed, but is it fair they lost all their principle as well as interest? Maybe they should have put the money under a bed and nobody but them gets to spend it?
I was brought up in a family whose values were to live with what you got. While it does not preclude loans (~~yes I have a loan on my house~~ no more loan, I paid it off) it was carefully chosen not to break anything should something go wrong. I saved and bought my cars outright, nobody can repossess my cars. I see people buying flashier cars than me though I can definitely afford them, I don't want - it brings risk if I have to borrow or if in the future I need to borrow if something goes amiss. Then again I have no taste for flashier cars... No need for excess unwanted envy.

Perhaps it's why other things are true too...

Keeping up with the Joneses

Section 3 of the finance propaganda.
Well, just want to say, it's not me. I have to say that I fell into this trap buying my 43" DLP TV. Well, I don't even use it much and regret the purchase - but at the time felt that it would be fun to have a huge screen on my computer. Honestly I don't need it, it doesn't really help me any. Need to focus on things I truly want and not to keep up with the Joneses.

Opportunity Costs vs Real Costs

This sort of irks me. When the poor is worried about money, they worry about real costs. When the rich worry about money, they worry about opportunity costs. Though these two are both costs, we're talking about virtual vs physical money. And one of them is more painful than the other... It's no wonder why we see so many complaints here and there...

Also it's disgusting sometimes when you think about it: investors want greatest increase over time, that is, they want exponential growth. They only want this over flat growth or unstable growth. It's not a surprise decreasing or negative growth is bad, of course. However exponential growth isn't stable, it's unsustainable. But they flock to it as it's an opportunity cost not to.

The Letter Versus the Spirit of the Law

After listening to some radio shows and seeing some recent web pages about weird laws, this sort of bugs me. There are laws and rules out there that aren't clear, and people take advantage of them. One thing that really bugs me are HOV lanes. The law indicates if you're high occupancy you're eligible to use it. However that's the letter. The spirit of the law is to reduce traffic, not to force more than one person per car. So I have to say "sorry soccer mom who needs to carry their own kids" -- you're not qualified to use HOV lanes in spirit of the law. People carrying drivers licenses should be the only people who count towards HOV.
That being said, if the HOV lane is underutilized, this is totally stupid. While carpooling is encouraged, it's not practical for many reasons. My personal take is, as long as you're not slowing down the HOV lane(s) anyone should be allowed to use it. But there's the straw that breaks the camel's back and anyone could be that straw, and it's impossible to regulate it... So, HOV lanes just need to be abolished.

This also applies to the gay marriage laws. While I don't disapprove of this, I do require one thing: they need to raise a kid together. And for gays this isn't possible, so this child needs to be... adopted. Then the tax breaks would make sense to keep marriages from breaking up and leaving children around with one parent. Or just do away with these tax breaks...

Global Warming and Incandescent lamps

In 2011, there's a fuss about lifting the ban on incandescent bulbs. Go for it! I definitely do not approve of government forcing people to stop using the 120-year old incandescent light bulb. Black body radiators like the incandescent can't really be matched by anything out there other than the Sun. Let me tell you that despite that viewpoint, I have been slowly replacing all my incandescent bulbs with some sort of fluorescent or solid state lighting system, and have been pleased with the changes - less heat generated and they typically last quite bit longer than burning hot filaments. But government really should not be forcing people to make the decision to use low efficiency incandescent bulbs or not. Sometimes people just like the black body, full spectrum radiation of a hot piece of tungsten. I'd rather propose a tax on incandescent bulbs if really needed to sway decisions, and all proceeds to subsidize the cost of LED/CF bulbs.
Oh yeah, I mentioned global warming, didn't I? Well, the sun is getting bigger as it burns up hydrogen and it will become a red giant, engulfing Earth and boiling life away... We're all doomed anyway if we don't research trying to get off this planet and onto another...

One thing about CFLs (and many LEDs) is that they will burn out if they get too hot. Putting them in places where heat doesn't escape from the base will accelerate the failure of the bulb. I've had a lot of CFLs that actually lasted for a very long time. I had a couple CFLs that last 6 years with 4 hours a day. The good thing is that it's glass up (versus base up). The other interesting thing is that some of them were actually totally enclosed and it still lasted.

I actually had one LED "60W replacement" bulb burn out. It was still working but it was intermittent.

The New Black

Apple is the new Microsoft. Enough said. Naysayers are fanbois.

And Samsung is the new HP.

Smart Electric Meters

Recently I got a "smart" electric meter installed involuntarily. They say it lets consumers know how much power they're using... Well... isn't that what the old mechanical meters are supposed to do?
I got these brand spanking new energy reports in how much power I used compared to my neighbors and how it was a "new" feature available now that I had a smart meter installed... Yeah right, this data was always available to them. I hope some people realize this when they listed the data that they had previous to installing smart meters that they could have provided this energy report before the meters were installed.

Really, what are the meters good for?

It saves them employee costs to go around to read and work on the meters.

The advantage is that they can now read my meter without going to my house, they can tell how much power I'm using at any instant, and they can shut off my power remotely too if I don't pay them for the electricity.
So basically, more jobs lost to technology as well as big brothering my power consumption. While I'm not 100% sure they report power factor back upstream they can guesstimate how many loads of laundry I do (dryer puts heaviest load), when I cook food (second highest power consumer), and when the AC turns on (high load, bad power factor). The graphs show more information than they claim to think they know. Privacy is gone! Perhaps it's time to invest in a battery pack to smooth out the load (charge at night, use battery power to clean clothes, etc.) ... hmm...

Computer Hardware and Software

As things advance, we live in a world with exceeding complicated computer hardware and software. We know what complexity in software has gotten - massive bloat, weird bugs, slow operations...
Now, how about the hardware side?
Normally hardware nowadays aren't put together as gates, there's a hardware description language that puts gates into text files. And basically it looks like, guess what: software. And it too starting to bloat like mad. There is even object oriented description of hardware! Granted, having macro blocks like an IC in the past is pretty much like an object, this is starting to get ridiculous with the complexity of how things are written.
Though there are programs out there that do logic optimization, it's an NP-complete problem, and can't optimize outside its boundaries.

Living with Change

Change is good. Or being able to adapt to change is good. The latter is always good no matter what, but actually the former is false. All those people who claim change is good? WRONG. Change is ALWAYS BAD. However if you can adapt to that change, then that's good. This becomes a problem when someone makes a change and thinks it's good and forces someone else to think the same way when it's not really good... In fact this probably causes a lot of conflicts. Change is BAD.

Gun Violence and so-called Gun Control

After horrible things like people gunning down an elementary school and movie theaters. People think guns are the problem but really they are not. Guns don't kill people on their own - it's the person behind the trigger that is committing the heinous crime. People are just adding bandages to the problem, laws just slow down getting these weapons - laws against guns just means criminals will have guns - it doesn't solve the underlying problem.
I suspect the problem is that society is starting to get unstable due to the huge disparity between the haves and have-nots. People are getting things their way and others are not. It doesn't matter the fact that everyone has their way of getting what they want - the reality is no. Not everyone is rich. Not everyone is beautiful. Not everyone is smart. Not everyone is an athlete. The over glorifying of these traits simply increases the desire of those who can't attain these things. A bit of envy, maybe too much. Obviously those who can enjoy being superior to those who can't... What do the people who can't do to "beat" the ones who can? Why, kill them of course. It does make some sense. Actually it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. It almost seems there should be more gun duels, the poor have NOTHING TO LOSE and everything to gain if they kill the wealthy!
So what do we do about it? The underlying problem is envy by those who can't. So either society needs to help those who can't more, STOP TOUTING HORNS, or "remove" these people. Of these three options, the second is the cheapest, the first is expensive but the most kind to everyone, and the third just costs money and is more like the "ethnic cleansing" of the have-nots. What do the people who "have" would like to do? Obviously what they're doing now is just trying to stir the envy of the have-nots. They want them there to make themselves feel superior... until they crack and point a gun towards them. Then they cry foul and try to have these "so called gun control laws..."

It's not the gun's fault. Or the knife. Or the drone. Or the fertilizer bomb.

A lot of unhappy people out there, and it's only going to get worse if the haves get too much over the have-nots. Jealousy and greed are part of being human, you also can not change these with so called "behavioral treatment." Perhaps a "second revolution" is coming...

Hypocracy of Posting

Website owners claim you "own" your posts. But who really "owns" the posts when you cannot delete your own posts. That's right... anything posted to another site is no longer yours. If we truly "own" posts people should be able to delete them regardless of what the site owner says, even if the posting would make the original poster seem ridiculous...

This is why I own my own website, if you copy any text to another website, that's copyright infringement. I delete my webpages at will. Problem solved. Too bad if you want to abuse my text.

Über is über employee mistreatment

While the idea is great, they are working as a company and trying to pawn off individual drivers as independents. No. The whole thing is working as a company and they know it. Once again the employees have a race to the bottom while the fat cats up top reap profits. I refuse to take an Über ride, and opt for mass transit until the individual drivers actually become a co-op or treated like real employees instead of this King Über mistreating its vassals.

Fast Food Cheapening

What's going on with our (fast) food?

Cement

Okay no jokes about Windows, but I don't get the problem with cement. Cement is like the most commonly used high durability construction material humanity has ever created. Using calcium carbonate, CaCO3, through roasting, generates calcium oxide, CaO, which is the major constituent of cement. Environmentalists make a lot of fuss about the side product of roasting... Carbon Dioxide, CO2. Yes, that greenhouse gas. There's also the heat generation needed to roast calcium carbonate to calcium oxide.
Yes, one heck of a lot of CO2 is generated from calcinating calcium carbonate. 50% of all of the CO2 is from the roasting. 40% is from the burning of fuel to heat the calcite, which can be generated from other methods. However, the cement, after mixing with water and put into place to get concrete, actually absorbs carbon dioxide from the air in order to set and gain its toughness! Without the carbon dioxide, concrete will not generate its hard, calcium carbonate setting, and will remain as powdery dust.
Thus, other than the heat needed to initially convert limestone to lime, after concrete sets to its hardened structure it becomes carbon neutral! The other issue perhaps is the concrete inside the structure that doesn't convert back to calcium carbonate - well, there are two things. As the concrete gets wet, eventually over time all of the lime will set to limestone, absorbing CO2 over the years. If time is a problem, then it would make sense to recycle all concrete, as the innards would still have some lime that never converted to calcium carbonate and thus produce less CO2 during recycling!
So, other than solving the heat energy problem needed to convert limestone to lime, concrete is not a horrible material to work with in terms of global warming. At the end, the material is technically carbon neutral, just that the processing of which needs to be cleaned up. Would be quite interesting if hot magma could be used to provide heating for the calicnation of limestone, alas transportation of heavy concrete would make it infeasible.

Living off of..

How different professions make a living:
Farmers: Living off the land
Teachers: Living off the needs for education
Insurance agents, Bankers: Living off the fear of others
Doctors: Living off the misfortunes of others
Lawyers: Living off the mistakes of others
Politicians: Living off the ignorance of others

3D Printing

While it's great 3D printing can now create crazy parts in one shot, one thing that came to mind is "print in place" - This once again goes back to yet more "WUFR" or "Whole Unit Field Replacement" - if the device fails, you have to replace the whole thing.
Well... what is the alternative? Wouldn't it be nice to reduce waste and replace just the broken part? Heck, or even just repair the broken part? With advanced 3D printing it becomes possible to entirely embed moving parts within a structure making it impossible to repair or replace should it fail.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Thought question: Why do metric sockets for a ratchet set use imperial (¼, ⅜, ½ inch) drive ratchets?

Honorable Professions in my books:
Tier 1 - most honorable
Teachers, Doctors, Engineers, Laborers, Farmers/fishermen
Tier 2 - needed to get things to go smoothly
Entertainers, Politicians, law enforcement, military, cooks
Scum of the Earth
Lawyers, Bankers, Insurance Agents, Salesmen

Crazy ideas in Economics that are too true:
Giffen goods - consumption rises (per person) as price rises. "food during famine"
Veblen goods - demand rises (per person) as price rises. "brand name premium"

Silly Text

Meanwhile in a Japanese home ... (Score:2)
by rlp (11898) on Tuesday May 25, @06:47PM (#9253740)
(AD 2004)

Viewer: "Main screen turn on"
Screen: "All Your Bits Are Belong to Us!"
                "You have no chance to record, make your time!"
Viewer: "What you say?"

One day, Einstein, Newton, and Pascal meet up and decide to play a game of hide and seek. Einstein volunteered to be "It." As Einstein counted to 100 with his eyes closed, Pascal ran away and hid. Newton, however, stood right in front of Einstein and drew a one meter by one meter square on the floor around himself. When Einstein opened his eyes, he immediately saw Newton and said, "You're terrible, I found you, Newton." Newton replied, "No, you found one Newton per square meter. You found Pascal!"

The $50 Lesson

Read-Only

The Sparrow

If the music/software/movie industry controlled the car industry

Cars couldn't be driven over the speed limit no matter what the situation.

You can't drive off-road for recreation, or make your own private road. Your friends are certainly banned from coming to your private road.

Cars would automatically stop at all blinking yellow lights because you *might* not have right of way.

There would be no aftermarket parts, they would be incompatible; you must buy from manufacturer or it won't work.

If your car 1.0 ever broke down, you'd have to buy a new one since the dealer will only offer you car 2.0 or possibly another 1.0, which does you no good because it's also broken in the same way.

Your car will disable itself if you tried to fix it when it breaks or tried to add your own accessories.

You can't carpool. They have to get their own car. Else you'd need a special license and pay additional money each time to the manufacturer to drive other people around and it's strictly enforced - not even your significant other or kids can ride with you.

You wouldn't be able to sell your old car since there's a law against it - they worry it will reduce sales of new cars so you must junk it.

Rules I learned in English class:
by Petercha0001 posted on CNN.com

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague.
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies endlessly over and over again.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't always necessary and shouldn't be used to excess so don't.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not always apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous and can be excessive.
14. All generalizations are bad.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Avoid excessive use of ampersands & abbrevs., etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake (Unless they are as good as gold).
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words, however, should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when substituting a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Don't overuse exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed and use it correctly with words' that show possession.
27. Don't use too many quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations.. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a billion times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly. Besides, hyperbole is always overdone, anyway.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions? However, what if there were no rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
34. Avoid "buzz-words"; such integrated transitional scenarios complicate simplistic matters.
35. People don't spell "a lot" correctly alot of the time.
36. Each person should use their possessive pronouns correctly.
37. All grammar and spelling rules have exceptions (with a few exceptions)....Morgan's Law.
38. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
39. The dash - a sometimes useful punctuation mark - can often be overused - even though it's a helpful tool some of the time.
40. Proofread carefully to make sure you don't repeat repeat any words.
41. In writing, it's important to remember that dangling sentences.

A physicist, engineer and a statistician are out hunting. Suddenly, a deer appears 50 yards away.
The physicist does some basic ballistic calculations, assuming a vacuum, lifts his rifle to a specific angle, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards short.
The engineer adds a fudge factor for air resistance, lifts his rifle slightly higher, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards long.
The statistician yells "We got him!"

An engineer is working at his desk in his office. His cigarette falls off the desk into the wastebasket, causing the papers within to burst into flames. The engineer looks around, sees a fire extinguisher, grabs it, puts out the flames, and goes back to work.
A physicist is working at his desk in another office and the same thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and thinks "Fire requires fuel plus oxygen plus heat. The fire extinguisher will remove both the oxygen and the heat in the wastebasket. Ergo, no fire." He grabs the extinguisher, puts out the flames, and goes back to work.
A mathematician is working at his desk in another office and the same thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and thinks for a minute, says "Ah! A solution exists!" and goes back to work.

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician sit in a sidewalk cafe, looking at the building across the road. Two people go into the building, then three people come out.
Physicist: "This must be a measuring error!"
Biologist: "This is proof of procreation!"
Mathematician: "If one more person goes into the building, it will be empty!"

What's right is not always popular. What's popular is not always right. - unknown

Never argue against logic with emotion, or against emotion using logic. - unknown

Some people use language to express thought, some to conceal thought, and others instead of thought. - unknown

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. -Elanor Roosevelt

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security. -Ben Franklin

We want to be open-minded enough to accept radial new ideas when they occasionally come along, but we don't want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out. -Michael Shermer

He who controls the spice, controls the universe! Baron Vladmir Harkonnen, Dune -- this is most depressing, replace "spice" with "internet"... and look how much trouble we're in as a lot of people are addicted to FB...

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. - Mahatma Gandhi

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top. - Edward Abbey

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light. - Edward Abbey

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. - Edward Abbey

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. - Edward Abbey

There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over. - Jack Bergman

If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy. - David Frum

Though I hate rote memorization in history classes, history is interesting as it points out how people thought and acted in the past. These general issues have not gone away and will never go away as people born every day to deal with issues their parents have dealt with. To me the actual year things happened may or may not have particular importance, the fact they have happened and the events leading and resulting from each action can be very interesting:

Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. - Winston Churchhill

We're upping our standards... so up yours! - unknown

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. - Slashdot
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you.
This is the principle difference between a dog and man. - Mark Twain

The three laws of Thermodynamics
1. You can't win.
2. You can't tie.
3. You can't quit the game.
Now go back, don't worry, be happy.

Epoch Fail

Scientific theories in my opinion:
1. Time travel (going back in time significantly) - Impossible
2. Large Fractional Warp - Maybe
3. Visiting other stars/planets - Yes
4. Teleportation - Maybe

And as of 2015... could we really get warp someday? I sure hope EM drive is real, though I don't like that it seems to defy laws of motion.
1. A body at rest stays at rest. This is fine, it doesn't move when unpowered.
2. A force acting upon a body will set it in motion. Well, we provide energy which depending on mass, generates a force... but... force?
3. There is an equal and opposite reaction to every action upon a body. EM drive seems to break this law, now why... or is EM drive fake, improperly tested physics? Seems like the latter *sigh*

So much for spelling in English:
"I before E, except after C, or when sounded like A, as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'... unless you have sufficient cause to seize a scientist's heist of weird foreign species to study ancient proteins."

Miss Farad was pretty and sensual
and charged to a reckless potential.
But a rascal named Ohm
conducted her home.
Her decline was, alas, exponential.

There once was a girl named Irene
who lived on distilled kerosene.
But she started absorbin'
a new hydrocarbon
and since then has never benzene.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Unexpected '}'
On line 32
-- unknown, seems somewhere in 2018

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Gosh my spelling is hideous. Thank you aspell.