(This is mostly ruminations on car hacks and adds little to the original thread about physically linking responsibility to effects.)
First let me ack my sincere respect for folks like Eric C who work on (rather than tinker/hack/meddle, since he's still alive) their car's brakes or other life-critical systems. Second I should apologize for misspelling SS's name. Now then: > From: Bill Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Back when the term "hackers" started to be misused by the press, > as in "scary teenage vandals breaking into computers", > my usual comment was that teenage computer hackers were really > no different from the teenage car hackers of our parents' generations. Another analogy might be HAMs --antennae hacks--, though they're more liscenced and don't get the babez either. During emergencies, they're useful, like the car-hack who fixes a stranded grandmother's car; at other times, they jam your radio or TV, like a car-hack running top speed, mufflerless, at 3 AM. > At 08:27 PM 02/19/2003 -0500, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > >Hackers don't work on their own brakes for a reason: evolution. > If I were planning to contribute directly to the future's gene pool, > I've got better criteria to do natural selection on than > skill at mechanical repair, and there are much more efficient ways to > transmit those skills than killing off people who don't have them. Physics has selected those who fear screwing up personal-life-critical systems, and also those who have that rational fear that but are also skilled enough such that they don't have to worry (such as EC and your younger self). > It's also evolution of cars and financial states. > Back when cars had actual user-serviceable parts, I'd work on carburetors Carburetor? Didn't that connect to the phonograph through a cat's whisker? And "evolution" should be in scare-quotes. The trade off has been cleanliness vs. reliability/maintainability/cost/weight/power/etc, and so on some scales modern cars are regressions. > and distributors and spark plugs and pollution-control widgets, Somehow you escaped the AQMD[1], EPA, DMV, DOT police? Step away from that oxygen sensor, and no one gets hurt. > but except for my first auto mechanics class, I didn't mess with brakes - > if I mess up an engine, my car might not go anywhere, but that's > usually fail-safe, while making mistakes on brakes is fail-dangerous. Bingo. And hacking on production machines is a no-no. > (Also, my next car had disk brakes, and I only knew how to do drum brakes.) D'oh! In some states, cars can't be registered without passing a safety inspection that tests for braking distance, etc. Not so in Calif. Selection is a little stronger here :-) > I changed a couple of sets of valve cover gaskets myself, > but when I was in grad school and the car I had then needed it, > the local garage would do the job for $15, which was worth paying for, > in part because there was a lot more pollution control equipment than > on the earlier car, and a lot more hoses and vacuum lines to move around > to get to the engine which would all need reconnecting later. Doncha wish there was a traceroute for hoses under the hood? Cars look like the hoses pipes and tubes in _Brazil_ nowadays. > After several years of newer cars with electronic ignitions, > I acquired my first van, which was old enough to have a distributor, > but it was a Chevy so you adjusted it with dwell stuff instead of > feeler gauges, which was too much bother. [Aside] I recently learned that back before you needed a license to drive (ca 1930) you would manually adjust the spark timing (!!) according to your engine speed. After handcranking the engine to start. Kinda like toggling opcodes into a Altair, eh? And these days you're supposed > to recycle your oil instead of using it to patch the cracks in driveways, > so that's another job to pay somebody else to do. Well you can drop off your oil and various places will take it, free. You're getting soft, Bill. :-) What's next, preinstalled Linux on a preassembled machine? Besides, you could collect your Kyoto tax credit for sequestering the carbon in your lawn. [1] Air Quality Management District, the pollution police in SoCal at least. They make 2-cycle engines and useful BBQ lighter fluid illegal here. Also won't let you register a car if you've modified the pollution controls in any way, since mods are officially bad and you can't register a car without a periodic smog check.
