Found - and Lost Again, Thank Heavens...

They know where you are.

Oooo… Scary, huh? But unfortunately, it could be true. If you are on the Internet (a bit of a no-brainer there, since you are – I mean, you are reading this on the Internet, right?) then you can be located with surprising accuracy.

Is this news to you? Want to check it out further? Then take a moment and examine this: Geode
I’ll wait here while you convince yourself. Granted, this particular tool is careful to request your permission to gather location information about you, but that is because it’s a nice application.

If Geode can find you from your connection information, so can anyone else out there – good or bad.

Sometimes, the location information is used in a general way to tailor advertisements to your local area, or merely pick your most-likely native language. Other times less friendly usage is intended – adding you to spam lists with derived personal information attached (called spear fishing).

I bet you wish you hadn’t explored those wacko fringe websites now, eh? Are you ready to hang up your web browser??

Never fear – there are ways to be safer, if you wish. One of these methods is to use something called an Onion Browser – so called because layer after layer of re-direction is involved. The king of onion browsers is TorPark – found here: Tor

Using TorPark, you appear to be in Italy one moment, California the next, and so on it goes…

There is a price, and that’s speed. All that re-direction causes a slow-down in loading web pages. Some places will not allow you to visit via TorPark, because they can’t verify who you are – and Google is one of those places.

Makes you wonder about Google, eh?

Invert your Gas Mileage

We are being misled in our yearnings for greater and greater gas mileage!
Yes, it came as a shock to me too… but the fact remains that bigger numbers for gas mileage aren’t an honest indication of fuel efficiency!

Consider the following thought experiment to see what I mean: say you had two cars, one that got 16 MPG and one that got 25 MPG. You can either upgrade your 16 MPG car to another 25 MPG car, or you can replace your 25 MPG car with a 40 MPG car (but not both, nor can you go from 15 MPG to 40 MPG, for some unexplained reason. Stick to the given rules.). Question: which is the better choice?

If you said “Well, I’d gain 15 MPG by going from 25 MPG to 40 MPG and I’d only gain 9 MPG by going from 16 MPG to 25 MPG…” that’s exactly the wrong answer.
Now, if you looked at car efficiency as “Gallons Per Mile” (not abbreviated GPM –that’s the official abbreviation for “Gallons Per Minute”… Let’s use “G/M”) you would clearly see the flaw in the logic… 16 MPG is 0.0625 G/M, 25 MPG is 0.04 G/M and 40 MPG is 0.025 G/M. Using those units, it’s clear that changing out the lower mileage car is the bigger gain (0.0225 G/M vs. 0.015 G/M gain).

Further, the financial gain is much more dramatic when you give up the gas-guzzler as compared to going for super-efficiency. Let’s say that you drive an average of 1,000 miles a month on each car. For this example, we will say gasoline is an average of $3.50 a gallon.

Note that G/M is a handy unit to do this calculation with – the gas guzzler uses 62.5 gallons and the better mileage car uses 40 gallons for a total of 102.5 gallons, which costs $358.75

If we swap the gas guzzler for a medium-efficiency 0.04 G/M car we save $78.75 a month. If we go for the gas-sipping car in place of the middle of the road car, we save only $52.50 a month.

It gets even more dramatic as MPG figures get even higher – you are lead to believe that a 100 MPG car is a far more fuel efficient vehicle than a 50 MPG car, but in truth the difference is slight – in our prior example, only 10 gallons of gas a month, or $35 dollars.

Where this really all comes into play is when you consider the high purchase prices commanded by super-mileage cars vs. medium-mileage ones. Going with the middle of the road model will almost always get you a better payback than paying a premium for a misleading high MPG figure!

Curing Hunger

I heard again recently the all-too-familiar proclamation that “…we have the power to end world hunger…”, the implication that we’re just to mean and self-serving to Do The Right Thing left hanging in it’s wake (for a very few, I suppose that’s true)...

So I thought about the complex issues associated with hunger again, and here’s the solution. Well, first, there’s the little problem with the simple solution…

The simple solution goes like this: give everyone the basic necessities of food – oh, and throw in shelter and… healthcare too. Do this by Robinhood-istic means; leveling off the personal and corporate economic peaks and using that monetary soil to fill in the valleys of poverty. Sounds lovely.

Here’s the key issue with the simple solution: motivations. You always must consider motivation when dealing with humans, it’s like making water flow the way you wish to direct it – a subtle tilt causes a pooling, or a rushing erosion where you might least expect.

So let us consider motivation’s impact on the simple solution. Let’s ask why someone would keep ‘excess’ wealth when there are hungry people. For that matter, let’s ask why some perfectly healthy people fall so far in poverty as to come to the point of wondering where their next meal might come from. (Granted that there are a number of folks who are not capable of providing for themselves – to which there is the counter point of many social mechanisms to provide for such folks existent today.)

People are motivated to accumulate wealth in excess of their basic needs because of a desire for social standing above their peers, for security for their future and their family’s future, and in some extraordinary cases, because it’s what they are good at and enjoy (Warren Buffet is a prime example).

People fall into poverty due to some handicap (physical, mental or social) which prevents them from fully participating in active economic production. I include even what most would call ‘lazy slobs’ and ‘social misfits’ as handicapped in this definition.

Those two dichotomous forces are the prime movers in an un-repaired view of society. But think on how things change should you don your hood and bow to take from the rich and give to the poor – via government and law.

First, the motivation for productivity evaporates… Why struggle to gain that which is taken from you? Sure, there’re degrees of shading to how much is taken/retained, but the root effect is still there – productivity slackens. Second, the motivation to escape poverty through increased productivity vanishes – by degrees, as with wealth accumulation.

The water flows down hill. More folks fill the ‘welfare roles’ and the production of worth grinds to a halt. That is, until the top-heavy system collapses.

Which means there’s not and easy fix, right? WRONG!! Read on, and keep the idea of motivation to the fore…

Is there a way to feed/house/care for everyone and yet have a healthy and competitive economy? Yes, I believe there is… First, let’s establish a set of motivations for both increasing productivity and escaping total social dependency – provide food, basic shelter, and healthcare to all – but exclude any form of entertainment from this dole.

That is, no TV, no music, no sports, no arts will be provided gratis – those things must be earned. That means no club visits, no parties unless you worked for it.

Great motivation, eh?

(Ah, if it were only so easy… like water, humans will get around any attempt to keep them on the straight and narrow path. In this case, consider the idea of unsanctioned forms of entertainment - which would rapidly become the ONLY forms).

I’ll keep working on it…

How to Talk to Your Kids

Um, you aren’t expecting me to give you some stunning psychological insights into the younger generation, are you? I am good for a bit of info on the nifty techno-tricks available and adopted by the younger, more flexible minds out there, however…

More and more convenient communications gadgets are coming out. iPhones, Blackberries, Kindle book reader with cell phone internet built in…

They are all excellent ways to coerce your children at a distance!!

Your kids have probably integrated themselves into the world of the cell phone, ‘texting’ classmates, carrying their cell phone where ever they wander…

The side effect of all this technology is that there’s currently a ‘secret’ realm of communication inhabited by the masters of ‘texting’ – old, slow parental types automatically excluded by lack of skill.

We can invade this semi-private domain by treachery, ambushing our kids at will. Here’s how:

Almost all cell phone text messaging systems offer an EMAIL link, even pay-as-you-go types like Tracfones. Each provider has an EMAIL address setup, usually ##########@providersnet (where ########## is the ten-digit cell phone number with area code, and providersnet varies – for example ‘@txt.att.net’ for AT&T (cingular) phones…)

Some handy tools to help establish your EMAIL-to-cell-phone-text link:

http://fonefinder.net/ - type in the area code, exchange and first digit of the last four digits and this handy site tells you who the cell phone provider is. From that, and this site - http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=details – you can figure out the EMAIL address needed to send text messages to a cell phone.

Even us ancient relics of bygone eras usually can manage to fat-finger in a lengthy EMAIL message... It's much easier than texting via cell phone keypad!

Just imagine the expression on your dear child’s face when he or she realizes that mom can nag at them via text messages!! Priceless!!

When Lower Quality is Better – Medical??

What’s better than the very best medical imaging device? How about 100 smaller, cheaper, newer technology (maybe even hand held) imagers at the same price??

The issue at hand is that for many years a number of factors (chief amongst them lawsuits) have pushed medical equipment down a one-way street of reliability at any cost, and safety at any cost. This sounds like a good thing on the surface, but the unintended side effects are literally killing us.

Let me enumerate the downside for you:

1. Price – from my own personal experience working in engineering at a respected medical imaging device manufacturer, I came to see the problem that I summarize as “Your medical dollars at play”. Cost was so far down the priorities and expectations lists as to be no consideration in designs. Costs that you ultimately pay, which probably make you hesitate to get medically imaged.
2. Old reliable technology – the very newest technology is always less tried and true than last year’s hardware, so the priority for ultimate reliability effectively kills any consideration for brand-new (read: more powerful, smaller and less costly) electronics.
3. Premium performance requirements – most middle-of-the-road newer tech devices can beat older top-of-the-line ancestor devices at half or less of the cost. However, since cost is not really an object, the usual knee-jerk response to such design decisions is to go right to the top shelf.
4. Slow fielding – dramatically unlike retail devices of similar complexity, it can take years to get a medical device from initial engineering to the doctor’s office. For retail consumer devices, mere months.

Lest you get the image of a shoddy, squeaking CAT scanner dumping God-knows how much X-ray radiation into you in the place of that humming smooth model in the hospital, let me add some sanity checks.

Fail-safe, meaning “If you fail, it will do no harm” is a far easier design criteria than “Thou Shalt Not Fail”. Add to that the fact that having a cheap back-up unit is better than an expensive single unit and you begin to see where I am coming from.

Very much like computers of 1980 (remember the air-conditioned shrine of the VAX?), medical imaging devices have their own rooms with acolytes (I mean, medical technicians) and priests (doctors).

Now picture Dr. McCoy’s medical Tricorder from Star Trek, only everyone gets one, and it’s like the digital thermometer in the medicine cabinet at home…

That’s what quality at all costs has cost you.

More Amazing Gadgets

I freely admit it. Interesting devices catch my eye every time… new or old.

Here’s a bit of both: a Steam Punk Laptop – i.e. what a laptop might have looked like in the Victorian Era, if computers could be clockwork gears…

There are a number of novels about fictional worlds based upon the early advent of computing, and some folks with a lot of time on their hands took the subject way too seriously…

WARNING: be prepared to get a shiver up your spine! This 'Big Dog' robot is so lifelike in it’s motions and in how it recovers from kicks, slips and stumbles that it for all the world looks like a headless animal walking around. Download the video for full effect!!

Some Gadgets and the Like…

Plagued by teenagers? Or just want to torture them for being… well… young when you’re not? Try the Mosquito, an electronic young-person repeller (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352410,00.html) – a device that emits an annoying high-pitched screech that most mature individuals cannot hear. Watch out, though – teens have stricken back by adopting the noise as a secret ring-tone that more, uh, distinguished individuals can’t detect (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687).

Do you fear that someone will taser you and put a plastic bag over your head (ala the movie ‘Snatch’)? Here’s a trendy defense – an aluminum tee shirt! Yep, it’ll short circuit that taser for you – keeping you from getting zapped. http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/9080/ (Note – I haven’t actually tested this product against a electric stunner, but it seems reasonable…) You might even be protected against the effects of the Active Denial systems (you remember – that pain/heat ray radio beam?)… at least on your torso…

I see a great marketing future coming in metalized clothing for thugs and social discontents. Any investors listening?

Check out the annoy-a-tron (http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8c52/ ) and the phantom keystroker ( http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/a11e/ ) while you are visiting ThinkGeek…

Here’s a great one: tired of the strain of taking your SD memory card out of your digital camera and putting it in the correct slot on your computer? How about a wireless WI-FI card that (with software on your PC) automatically gets your pictures for you without lifting a finger?? (http://www.eye.fi/)

So… what happens if you do put your eye-fi card in your PC?? I’d have to try it…

Backtracking a bit – how about a leopard-skin taser for your sweety? http://www.taser.com/products/consumers/Pages/C2.aspx - ‘Fashion with a Bite’ Every woman should have one – it would increase the sales of my metallic clothing line nicely.

More than a Feeling - It's a Decision!!

Going by Feel

Homo sapiens – literally ‘Rational Man’ – can’t make a decision without emotion to guide him (or her).

If you aren’t aware of the truth of that factoid, you may take yourself a few moments to browse a great number of articles on this subject on the internet – here’s a good starting point: http://discovermagazine.com/topics/mind-brain/memory-emotions-decisions

Are you now emotionally ready to accept the fact that you are a touchy-feely-driven, barely rational being?

One of the studies that really struck home was the case of a previously normal man who suffered a brain injury that damaged his center of emotions. Although still scoring very high on all IQ testing, he was utterly unable to make decisions – instead he’d enter a loop on endless analysis of pro and con merits on each side of a particular choice to be made, never coming to a fixed conclusion…

For me, after a life of Star Trek watching, this whole emotion-required-for-thought is a slap in the face for Mr. Spock – the icon of icy-cold, feelingless and decisive thought.

Flipside, too much emotion can be as bad as none at all – as anyone with anxiety attacks can relate. Instead of no decision, it can be nearly impossible to make the rational decision in face of strong emotion to the contrary.

Obviously, emotional levels are a factor in rational thought, or more precisely, what is taken by Homo sapiens to be rational thought.

So, why is our intellect chained to the fickle winds of emotion??

I think there are two prongs to the answer: one, we’re not that evolved, and two, it has survival advantages.

As for the first part, hey, it’s only been a few tens of thousand years that we’ve been, quote intelligent unquote! Our ancestors, prior to Homo sapiens, really weren’t that bright… Which neatly brings us to point number two – the survival advantage to being emotionally driven.

Consider for a moment, the opposite of emotion-based decision making. To decide a course of action, you carefully examine and understand all possible ramifications to the choices and act accordingly. Sounds good, right? Well, what if you were stupid? I mean real stupid – like stupid enough to take a bite out of a woolly mammoth on the hoof, because you are hungry… Not long for the world, eh?

On the other hand, if you were afraid to bite something big and angry looking, without benefit of reasoning you might still survive… and eventually evolve some intelligence.

You can see where that might have been real handy.

Are we beyond need for emotion in decision making?

Not yet, to be brief. It’s a tool that needs constant tuning, but still helps us where raw logic fails. Some of us need more help from emotion than others... I think it is recognition of the quality of emotionless reasoning vs. highly emotional flights that created the characterization of a ‘Mr. Spock’ as a desirable way to be.

Balance, is the key – not too much or too little emotion.

To turn the question right around, do robots need an emotional element to be truly functional?? One can picture a number of situations where a machine blindly does a very stupid thing – over and over again. Some sort of analog to emotion surely is required… like embarrassment?

My guess is that as we get smarter, less dependence upon emotion is needed (but not zero), and somehow we need to put a little feeling into our machines.

You Are Part Of A Greater Whole...

Dark Gaea

“Gaea is the goddess of earth and Mother Earth herself. She is the first goddess to be in Greek mythology. Gaea arises from Chaos and is said to be its daughter.”

- taken from http://library.thinkquest.org/26264/inhabitants/gods/first/site002.htm

There have been countless attempts to justify the idea of planet Earth-as-an-entity, written from centuries ago right up to the present day. What I’d like to point out is some analogies between a living being (or beings) and our techno-social structures. No conclusions, just some musings.

Nervous System

Yeah, the Internet. And the various radio connections, and any other active form of communications – TV for gosh sakes…

A nervous system? Well, sure – connecting human to human, so they play part of the role of nerve cells in the body-Gaea…

Society as a whole reacts to the stimulus of large events, such as a big storm that destroys areas of a population center. The information about such events flows along news media channels and there is a net reaction, be it flight from the storm or aid flowing into a damaged area.

Healing and Immune Response

We humans struggle very hard to rebuild our cities after destruction, and to restore power, communications and other services. Much like a body’s healing process.

Likewise, we attempt to maintain order on many levels – from local police actions to wars between countries. Again, much like the body’s immune system.

How Grown Up is Gaea?

Taking it as established that there is one or more physical/social structure analogous to a living creature, just how far along the evolutionary scale is this meta-beast??

Not very, is my conclusion. Definitely not self-aware yet, maybe more like an infant – or even an embryo – than a ‘Mother Earth’ figure. Basic reactions are there, but no organized intent or purpose beyond mere growth seems to be apparent.

Maybe such lofty levels of thought and behavior are in the future, or maybe Gaea is too inscrutable for mere cells of her body to comprehend. Probably both.

Things to Watch Out For…

“Apoptosis: A form of cell death in which a programmed sequence of events leads to the elimination of cells without releasing harmful substances into the surrounding area.”

- taken from http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11287

The analogous form of apoptosis would be a rigid social structure that uses things like the principle of eminent domain to extremes:

“Eminent Domain: the power of a government to take private property for public use; the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution and articles in many state constitutions allow this practice provided that just compensation is made.”

- taken from http://www.emdo.blogspot.com/

Imagine such proceedings taken to the point where even the people in the buildings matter not a whit to the cycle of destruction for reuse of sections of a city.

Huh. We’re almost at that point, aren’t we?

I don’t want to get that phone call – “Mr. Barnet? Or is it Bennett? Yes, whatever – could you kindly commit suicide today? We want your space and resources for loftier purposes now… Your neighbors have all already done themselves in…”

Well, the analogy to apoptosis breaks down long before this point would be reached – I hope J

One can think of all sorts of social manipulations that could take place, ones that favor the whole ‘meta organism’ over the individuals that make it up.

Will She Speak With Us?

Hey – have you conversed with your cells today? No? So why would a putative intelligent Gaea-type entity bother to try to speak with us? And what makes you think we’d understand a single think such a being would have to say?

The Compleat Gas Mileager

They don’t want you to know these facts about getting better gas mileage.

It’s true.

Probably because they let other considerations get in the way of The Truth, like, for example, safety…

You judge for yourself, as we go along.

I’ll try to present each topic in order of most gas savings down to least, but it’s a hard-to-quantify best guess in many cases… I am focusing on what you can do with your current automobile (and without major car surgery) to get the very best possible gas mileage from it.

Don’t Stop. Ever…

Momentum is your friend, it’s how your car stores most of its energy from those expensive gallons of gas. When you are in motion you are at the lowest friction state that you car experiences (and friction is the eater-of-gasoline). Your brakes work by applying friction, and hence eat gasoline.

By way of test, my car gets 0.0 MPG when stopped, around 7 MPG accelerating and over 100 MPG when coasting through a stop sign or red light. It’s a no-brainer (pun intended).

For those of a more conservative (meaning safety) bent, this can translate into taking the route with the fewest stops (and shortest duration stops too). Slowing down by coasting is far better than flying up to a stop and hitting the brakes.

Also, allowing your vehicle to speed up while coasting down into a dip or valley and using that extra stored energy to get back up the other side means dollars in the wallet (maybe used to pay the speeding ticket). Pop it into neutral to get the least engine braking effect on the way down the hill (about shutting off the engine: – it makes steering hard, braking hard and may eat as much gas re-starting as you saved. Hybrid cars are rigged to use this method constantly and hence avoid the pitfalls).

Take those turns at a somewhat higher speed instead of hitting the brake pedals – you’ll come out of the turn with more of your precious momentum intact. If you make it around the curve.

Interestingly, hard acceleration (the infamous ‘Jack-Rabbit Start’) does NOT seem to have a significant negative impact on overall fuel economy. There are a lot of factors involved here, but if you aren’t squealing your tires on take-off, a fairly brisk acceleration may well save you gas. Why? Well, it gets you to the coasting/high-momentum/low-friction state in fewer miles than a leisurely putt-putt take-off, and the fluid clutch in most automatic transmissions are slipping away quite a bit of that engine power at low torque…

Wind Resistance!

Air resistance is exponential with vehicle speed, so a moderate pace can result in much better gas mileage. Or tailgating at higher speeds, which might get you the same benefit plus shorter trip times. With large trucks on the freeway, this technique is known as ‘Drafting’.

Obviously, choose the largest available SUV to tailgate to get the best effect, such as a Hummer or Ford Expedition. Semi trucks were the drafter’s target of choice in the past, but most states require that they travel at a slower speed limit than cars nowadays, so if you want to zip along, stick with SUVs. Like a bumper sticker.

Removing sources of added air resistance, such as roof-stored ski pods in the summer, can help to some extent. Tail winds are a great help too, and the stronger the better – surfing on a storm’s gust front ought to be a great mileage booster.

Leave those windows up at higher speeds – above 35 MPH (50 KPH). If you must be cooled, use the fan. If that’s not quite enough, AC is better than the windows down at freeway speeds. Um, unless you are drafting.

Water on the road adds a lot of resistance to rolling, so avoid rainy weather for best mileage. Curiously, water adds a bit to your ‘octane’ of your fuel which can help with fuel economy… this effect may offset wet-road losses to some extent.

Accessories

The power you use to light the road ahead and behind you is generated by the alternator. The drive belt on the alternator steals power from the engine. Hence, having those daylight running lamps lit costs you mileage!! Night driving will be lower mileage than daytime, for the same reason. Unless you keep the lights off. Wattage translates to MPG lost, so dimmer is better for best mileage. Driving with running lights when you can see at all is better than headlights on for your wallet. Hmmm… no lights and a night vision system? Maybe in the future it’ll be the norm!!

Air conditioning is not free either – robbing power from the engine to chill the poorly insulated passenger compartment (heat is alright, though – it’s waste energy from the engine, dumped into the car interior)

More and more power is consumed by accessories like entertainment systems and computers in modern cars. Shut ‘em off to save gasoline!

Weight in the car (if you can’t avoid stop/start driving) nibbles away at you mileage too, so dump the extra cargo as soon as you can. In fact, keeping the weight of gasoline down by running your tank below ½ can help your mileage.

Removable seats? Need I say what to do with them?? Extra passengers? How needs the noise as you fly around the curves anyhow?

Car Care

Soft tires eat mileage, so over inflate to save gas! The harder the better, as far as mileage goes.

Thin oil offers the engine less resistance to motion than thick, so stick with the lowest viscosity oil that you can get away with (note: this is a bit confusing with most modern multi-viscosity oils, since there’s more overlap than difference between them…) . Synthetic oils are just a smidge slipperier than nature intended, so they can help mileage a tad too.

Poorly running cars tend to eat more gasoline, and poorly working transmissions can squander gas mileage too. Modern thinking says spark plugs will last 100,000 miles – but maybe not. Check a plug, if it’s bad – change all of them.

Remember, parts are weight. Do you really need to put that fender back on? Bumpers today are nearly pure decoration, so if it’s dented and ugly – off with it!!

Fluid levels at just above minimums yield the lowest overall vehicle weight, so topping off might be detrimental to your mileage, be it gas or windshield washer fluid…

Old cars with looser joints experience lower friction than a brand new car, so keep the old one going for best mileage!

Conclusion

Yep, there’s a bunch you can do to get better mileage – as long as you ignore common sense…

How to Repair Your Modern Car

Step1: Finding What’s Wrong

If it weren’t for the entrenched car repair services, you’d be calling tech support’s hotline right about now. Yes, I am serious – if it isn’t a mechanically obvious thing, such as, the front wheel fell off, or a totally obvious electrical problem like a blown fuse, then you might have as much insight into the problem as a classic car mechanic.

Especially if you have an OBD-II reader.

OBD-II is a magic porthole into the mystery-shrouded world of your car’s brain. “ODB-II” stands for “On-Board Diagnostics version two”, a mandated way of asking cars of any make and model what’s wrong with them.

It’s a wonder there isn’t a cell-phone car OBD-II support attachment to plug into your car for roadside assistance.

So, why does that make you a better diagnostician than your mechanic? Did you ever watch your mechanic try to fat-finger in your bill into his computer? Need I say more?

Step2: Finding the Replacement Parts

“Luke! Use the Internet!” Hey, that’s what Obiwan would have told Luke Skywalker, had the movie been made today instead of the 1970’s. Search your local variety of auto parts stores, and then physically go to the store to check to see if they really have the part you found, and the found part number is not actually a rear bumper to a Desoto. The hardest bit here is figuring out what the broken part is actually called. Public library-hosted Web-accessed repair manuals can help here, and are somewhat useful for the next step. The auto parts stores often offer tools for lend as a bonus (even those OBD-II scanners!).

Here’s a tip: if it didn’t kill you when the part broke, those super-cheap Chinese replacement parts will be good enough. Besides, the expensive name-brand part is most likely made in China anyhow.

Step3: Replace the Broken Thingy

First, hardcopy printout the sections of the repair manuals you found on the Web that deal with your particular breakdown. Then, print out the forum messages between folks that have attempted the same or similar repairs.

Unless you run into the key warning phrases, like ‘…should not attempt to repair…’ or, off a forum message ‘…#$#%@@… still can’t get the friggin….’, follow along with the general gist of what the smarter of these sources indicates that you do.

Oh – watch out for the classic ‘Step 1, remove the engine as in section A1-12.224’ trap in those maintenance manuals. You won’t have printed section A1-12.224, it won’t actually be the right section, and you don’t want to remove your engine!’

A little common sense goes a long way here; it you are trying to fix a stalling engine and they have you removing the driver’s side window, there might be a bit of a mix-up in chapter numbering… It’s either that, or a car manufacturer’s engineer was having a very bad day with that particular model’s design work. Really. I mean, to simply remove spark plugs on many cars now requires such steps as ‘Place the car in Neutral and block the wheels to prevent rolling’ and ‘Release the engine mounts to allow the motor to be rocked forward’. I am totally serious, sad to say.

Step4: See if you Really Fixed It

What I mean here is ‘see if it’s fixed without getting stranded by your now thoroughly messed up car’.

There are two distinct checks to be made; 1) did the problem go away and 2) I haven’t made new/future problems by forgetting to replace some of the screws or misconnecting other odd bits removed.

One other step involved here: get back on your OBD-II connection and clean out the fault code messages. That way, you won’t be scratching your head wondering if what you see next time is old news or a brand new set of troubles. You can actually test your fix in many cases by checking the fault codes after running a test drive, if you erase the old error codes first.

SUMMARY: Why’d you cut out the Mechanic?

I bet that your total cost was less than half of what a garage would charge, and less than a third of what a dealer would charge. And no unneeded service items were added! How many times has the mechanic told you that your car ‘also needs the [enter part here] replaced…’ when you had it in for service? Finally, there’s little doubt in your mind that the repair was actually done (unless you skipped some steps above…)

There now – wasn’t that easy?

Why No New Laptop?

The end is nearing for Microsoft. Vista is the most visible outward sign of the rot within.

Allow me to clarify: my issue with Windows Vista – no, everyone’s issue with Windows Vista – is its focus. Not only does it fail to provide significant improvements over prior operating system offerings from Microsoft, but the key drive behind Vista’s design is to restrict what the user can do in an attempt to control the user.

The throbbing heart of the beast lurking within Vista is Digital Rights Management (DRM) – software that uses up your processing power on your computer attempting to check and determine if you are viewing, listening to, or transferring ‘media’ (movies, songs) which don’t belong to you.

The flaw is that even the lawyers go cross-eyed and take plenty of medications when trying to enforce the claims of the music and movie production cronies, who have steadfastly refused to come into the 21^st century (any new technology is merely another attempt to pirate their gold, according to their view). The most jaw-dropping example of this luddite-cum-lawyers approach is the recent RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) legal opinion that keeping your legally purchased CD music in MP3 form, even only for your own use, is a criminal act (see this news story).

Sorry for the digression, but it’s all one big ball of thorns with Vista.

So, what’s the net effect of Digital Rights Management for Vista users? Things that use to work just fine, like that old movie on CD or music files you’ve accumulated don’t work anymore. Even hardware devices that used to work just fine (but don’t enforce Digital Rights Management) suddenly fail to operate under Vista’s rules. Even ‘old’ printers are rejected, for crying out loud!! The default DRM software rule is: if it isn’t SPECIFICALLY allowed, it is forbidden.

And the benefit to the user is… um… the assurance that if you actually get something to play, it is a legal copy.

NOT!! – Even the RIAA lawyers say that DRM compliance is no assurance of legality. So, why did you buy all this DRM stuff again? Oh yeah – so you, the nasty pirate user, have a harder time doing evil (and you paid money for this…).

I’m sure you are sick of DRM and RIAA at this point, and if that was the only flaw with Vista, you might blame it on ‘Events Beyond Microsoft’s Control’ (they were forced to include DRM in Vista… right…). Sadly, it’s only the chorus line for this dirge.

Most of the other real changes in Vista evolve around keeping you from doing things. Hey, they did a good job of it – many common trouble-shooting and installation tasks require fee-paid services from Microsoft tech support now, and the things you can do for yourself have been deeply hidden from you.

But, aren’t their performance improvements in Vista? Not so as you’d notice. The most common compliant with Vista is its speed – or lack there of.

It’s more secure than prior Microsoft products (it could hardly be less secure!), but unfortunately, the gun that the security holds is pointed again at the user! I’m sure you will enjoy all the new ‘Are You Sure You wish to metaflabulate the tarsel durilator? It might be a security issue…’ messages you’ll get, during normal daily operations, like putting files on a CD. And you are just going to love being told by your machine that you ‘Are Not Authorized to Do This Thing’ over and over again.

At the same time, no vast improvement has been made against virus incursions from spoof web sites, etc. Some, to be sure, but the nasty minds that come up with viruses are rapidly finding the loopholes Microsoft missed.

More effort in Vista was spent on sleuthing out pirate Microsoft software and enforcing licensing than intrusion prevention.

Well, you say, if you hate Vista so much, you can stick with ol’ XP on your new computer – nope, not if you want to use the newest hardware. As a cattle-prod to get users moving to Vista, Microsoft has pushed the policy that XP support for new hardware be minimal, if existent at all.

Vista has kept me from buying a new laptop. (What a statement!) Vista has done more for Linux and Apple’s growth than any efforts on either the Linux community or Apple Computer’s part.

Microsoft won’t die tomorrow, or even a few years from now – but they lost their magic touch, and in this arrogance called ‘Vista’ comes the fall.