That is the title of an IEEE Spectrum “Opinion” article that I found via Metafilter. In addition to reading the article, I suggest you read the comments on both sites.
Category Archives: Editor’s Desk
File or Path Name Too Long? Find out before you do your backup
Those of us who back up our devices sometimes get a message that some file couldn’t be backed up because its name — more likely its file path name — is too long. Lim Electronics‘ website offers a free, small, easy-to-use program called, appropriately enough, FindLongNames, that lets you check your Windows machine for files whose name or pathname is longer than some number of characters you specify, so you can do some adjustment beforehand and hopefully not have to deal with the long-name problem after your backing up procedure has run. Their page of free software includes other programs you may want to check out.
Learn and see some Internet history
“The million dollar homepage is still online, a snapshot of the internet circa 2005, but many of its links are dead, or point to different websites, their owners reaping the rewards of prior investments. Archive.org captured some iterations of the website, and the linked sites from there, and Web Archive.org.uk has been capturing UK sites since 2004, but not all sites are so lucky, either predating Internet Archive’s start in 1996 (the first webpage exists only as a copy, reposted a year after the first one went up in 1991), or missed by web crawlers (Wikipedia). These are some of the reasons why there’s so little left of the early internet (BBC). “
Read the article and comments at metafilter.com.
It’s Your iPhone. Why Can’t You Fix It Yourself?
Excerpted from www.nytimes.com. Go there to read the whole article, and comments.
“A giant John Deere tractor and a pocket-size Apple iPhone have something important in common: The cost of repairing either one is too high.
The two companies, and many of their peers, use a variety of aggressive tactics, including electronic locks and restrictive warranties, to push customers with broken equipment to seek help from their authorized repair facilities — or to give up and buy a replacement.
This is unfair to consumers who might be able to obtain, or perform, lower-priced repairs. It’s unfair to independent businesses that might do the work. And it’s bad for the environment, because the high cost of repairs leads people to toss devices that might have been fixed.
Late [in March 2019], Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, proposed a national right-to-repair law for farm equipment. The idea is based on a 2012 Massachusetts law that requires carmakers to provide the information necessary to perform repairs and to sell any special tools needed to do the work. The law also phased in a requirement that new cars be compatible with generic diagnostic tools.
Ms. Warren has the right idea, but she did not go far enough. The owners of consumer electronic products deserve the same protection as farmers.”
Zooming In on Petra
How digital archaeologists are using drones and cutting-edge cameras to recreate the spectacular 2,000-year-old ruins in Jordan.
Read the article from the October 2018 Smithsonian Magazine here: www.smithsonianmag.com.