Hi Charles,

Charles wrote:
Consumers are becoming more clueless as software takes over their lives.

The problem is that consumers don't *want* to know how things
work or *should* work.

Well, if you meant that they are not willing to expend any effort to
learn about their possessions, then you are correct.

Yes. And, most of those things aren't designed to *encourage*
comprehension. How many things have *no* power switch -- leaving
you pushing buttons wondering which will "turn it on"?

And, they don't "vote with their wallet".
They get a crappy product and they either live with it (possibly
not even knowing how crappy it is!) or toss it out and buy another
(probably EQUALLY as crappy)

I shudder at the amount of functional items that are returned, or
re-sold, or sent to landfills and recycling centers. The waste is a pox
on our future. The planet Earth is a finite resource!

shrug I do volunteer work at a place that recycles "stuff".
I think we processed 1000 tons last year. Depressing to see
the things people just "abandon" (effectively) that still work.

Somewhere (and I'll be damned if I can recall where!), I saw an
article discussing natural resources. The point of the article was
"whatever is here is *all* there will ever *be* of these things"
(unless the alchemists succeed!). I.e., all of the Copper on
(in) the planet was formed when the planet was formed; we don't
"grow" copper to replace what we use.

For each of these resources (copper sticks in my mind), the article
described where it "was", currently.

IIRC, for copper, 1/4 of it is "in use"; 1/4 of it is "in landfills";
1/4 of it is "waiting to be mined/harvested"; 1/4 is unharvestable.
I.e., one way of looking at this is: we have used 2/3 of the copper
available to us, already (in the past ~100? years) and that half
of that is "in the trash".

There are other interpretations that are more pessimistic or less;
but, the bottom line is "there is only so much"...

shrug

This is a problem that is becoming more serious. If the doctors and
nurses and technicians in a modern operating room get confused or
misled by software glitches, it could be really, really serious. Has
already happened.

Google "Therac".

[really... do it!]

Unfortunately, the folks designing these things have less and less
time, less and less *motivation* and less and less *capability*
for making "robust" products.

Nor are they concerned about tomorrow, unless it's about their stock
options.

Correct. OTOH, there is no motivation *to* be concerned about
those things. "It's someone else's problem"...

My DTV tuner shows *two* "9-1" channels.

The -1 channels here are not always available (high-def) and there is no
discernible rule of thumb to guide one as to why.

But why *two* of them (in addition to 9-2, etc.)...

- call tech support (in some third-world country, no doubt)
- google for similar symptoms
- discard it in frustration

Toss it out. That's what too many folks are doing. Horrible!

shrug Again playing devil's advocate: what is the alternative?
Anything I fix "for myself" is "affordable" (for me). But, if I
have to fix something for someone *else*, it quickly becomes
prohibitively expensive to do so (I don't work for free). The
"system" assigns no cost to discarding items. So:

discarding + replacing = keeping + repairing