On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, Marvin wrote: DON'T GET ME STARTED!! The 'safety' craze, which has it's dark roots in the vile muck of Victim Comciousness, is one of the big bricks in the wall around the dumb and dumber society we find so irresistable nowadays. And who can be blamed? Who can be held responsible? Why should any child extend himself into the unknown if he's just going to get sued for it?? (or yelled at, or jeered..) The is a wonderful (prophetic) sci-fi story, from 1947, by Jack Williamson, entitled 'With Folded Hands'... a rogue scientist, traumatized by war and death on Earth, travels to an inhospitable planet and builds a race of self-replicating super robots, all contolled from a central 'server' (if you will) with the motto "To Serve and Obey, and Guard Men From Harm". The robots come eventually back to earth, where they begin to *force* their Prime Directive upon mankind, by utterly passive and amorphous, unassailable strength. The story ends as you would expect... the robots do everything, better, safer, quicker, and us Humen are relegated to sedentary retirement, since the definition of 'harm' is carried to the most ridiculous interpretation possible. This is 19 *47* mind you; re-reading it is eerie, now. I hate 'new' computers for the same reason I hate my '92 Toyota truck... it has a diagnostic port, and when the 'Engine Check' lite goes on, I have to go somewhere so someone can charge me money to tell me what's complaining... and I can't, (short of a lawsuit) get together enough info about a device that I *own* to enable me to at least understand all of it. The same with 'Appliance' operating systems, like You-Know-What-Doze... Give me a dot prompt and a logic probe. General aviation (private planes) in this country was damn near driven out of collective business by uncontrolled strict-liability litigation.... "My client was killed because she flew your company's airplane into the side of a building in broad clear daylight, and we notice that nowhere in your Operating Handbook or within view of the pilot is any notice warning that such activities are dangerous..." I spend a lot of volunteer time trying to get kids interested in Technology and Science and Engineering... not because I'm some kind of saint - quite the contrary, it's really selfish. One day we'll wake up and the talent to design and maintain the future will be in the hands of some techno-priesthood... and you can extrapolate the rest. If you don't think this is happening, re-read (in the Archives) a stray comment by Jason W. (about being 'strange' for liking tech stuff) and see the comment thread it engendered... We might be allowing Science to be peer-pressured out of Society. Look how fast perfectly servicable computers get so obsolete you can't even *give* them away. Unless they're obsolete enough for e-bay. :} Okay sorry for the rant. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukka, Reflective Ramadhan, Kool Kwanzaa, Accurate Newtonsday... and omighod it's 1999 already.... Cheers John

I thought it would be fun to start a tool company called "Tools that Kill", the motto would be that every tool sold could kill you so it was up to you to follow the directions and avoid it. I'd probably stop short of offering a circular saw which consists of a blade chuck on a motor that you hold (the motor) when cutting but I agree, the level of warning is excessive. Further, there have been several studies that indicate excessive warning stickers cause problems because they become "noise" and no one pays attention to the ones that they need to. --Chuck

At 08:25 PM 12/20/98 +0000, Tony Duell wrote: I most certainly like to spend a _few_ hours relaxing in front of the boob-tube ... a week. TV as a form of occasional entertainment is nice - but as a electronic / digital babysitter is a waste. And yes, having an Atari 2600 when I was younger helped improve my hand-eye coordination and reflexes to the point when I learned to type, I can achieve 110wpm, and also helped my fascination with computers. I also watched my uncle build a computer - amazed the hell out of him when I learned to run it (at 8 years). All it did was convert decimal to binary and back, and blinked the display at differing rates. Built totally from TTL 7400 series. He gave me a copy of the schematics, tho I'm quite sure they've been lost forever (8 year olds don't have the best filing systems...). So yes, I've known binary - decimal conversion for 23 years) My kids are fascinated to watch me pulling apart / fixing / assembling / running all of my stuff around here and I plan to keep it that way. Hell, kids are going to do dangerous things; like it or not. Whether it's playing with mains, burning themselves with soldering irons, driving a little too fast, jumping out of airplanes, burning themselves with drugs, drinking and driving too fast *and* wrapping their car around a tree, etc. etc. Where in the list would you want *your* kids to be dangerous at??? Personally, the former is where I'll teach my kids to be. I *do* drive too fast - my dad showed me how. He also showed me how to drive an 18-wheeler, a backhoe, 2 farm tractors, a small bulldozer, and a motorcycle. Darned near lost a thumb in a table saw... I still use one. *And* I *still* burn myself with the soldering iron.... but not as often. The other thing kids don't learn to do nowadays is: If it hurts, walk it off. If you injure yourself, you're not supposed to do it that way. Let it heal, and do it again (smarter). and again. and again. Most of 'em just quit. Not my kids. 'Tis enough of my babbling... Happy Holidaze!!! I'm off to fix a dryer, before my wife gets irate with me. Roger "Merch" Merchberger