A Long View of Venezuela Action

Looked at in isolation, USA's actions in Venezuela may seem arbitrary, or a bully's response to being bullied, or a blatant grab for oil.  However, when considered as a piece in the puzzle of recent world events, it makes sense.

Consider also the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran, which took place in June, ¹ and then the military strikes in Syria that took place in December ².

This activity in Iran, Syria and Venezuela, in the context of Russia's attempted occupation of Ukraine, reveals effective US international policy against Russia.  The three countries are (or were) allies of Russia.

While Russia remains embroiled in Ukraine, the US can engage Russian interests, reducing Russia's footprint on the world stage.  In effect, we can wage war on Russia, albeit indirectly.

And recall that Russia invaded Ukraine soon after Pres. Biden won the 2020 election and took office in 2021.  Pres. Trump claimed the invasion wouldn't have happened if he had been elected.  At first I assumed that he was talking nonsense, something a sore loser or braggart would say.  But now I think Russia was convinced that a massive operation in Ukraine might encourage Trump to take action.  With Biden in charge, Putin seized the opportunity to take over Ukraine.

In light of this, it seems likely that US support of Ukraine would be just enough to maintain the war, to keep Ukraine from being taken over, but not enable them to completely repel Russia.

What's behind US's desire to annex Greenland?  Partly it's to gain more resources.  But considering that Greenland is well-positioned between USA and Russia, it may be the ideal location to establish defense against hypersonic missiles, which need to be situated as close to the enemy's launch sites as possible.  But why do we need to annex Greenland to do that?  While it's true that the US already has a base in Greenland, my guess is that the technology is Top Secret and needs to be kept careful guarded.

All of this is conjecture based on a thought exercise; don't think I have access to special information.

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¹ https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-war-nuclear-talks-geneva-news-06-21-2025-a7b0cdaba28b5817467ccf712d214579
² https://www.npr.org/2025/12/19/g-s1-103194/u-s-launches-strikes-syria

On the Benefits of Social Media

Today's Soup to Nutz comic strip by Rick Stromoski is definitely blog worthy...
http://www.gocomics.com/soup-to-nutz/2017/01/14

If you can't follow the link, it's simply that Babs remarks to her brother Roy-boy,

I'm so glad I live in a time when there's social media...  In the old days it took weeks, even months...  before finding out that someone was an idiot."

Naturally I posted it to Facebook.

Traffic Light Improvements For the Age of Mobile Communications

I have an issue with traffic lights.

When I'm stuck right behind an inattentive driver at a red light, I get annoyed when the driver doesn't go right after the light turns green.  I get infuriated when the driver waits so long to go that the light turns back to red again before I can get across the intersection.

That's pretty much the only time I use the horn.  And it occurred to me that the traffic light itself should be equipped with its own horn.  It would beep whenever it turns green, relieving other drivers of the effort of doing so.

Inattentive drivers annoy me even when I'm not behind them.  When they remain stopped at a green light while I'm at the red light for the crossing traffic, they cause the signal to take longer to cycle.  The light stays green longer for them and stays red longer for me.  I say aloud, “Go already, so I don't have to stay here forever!”

A few towns have installed traffic light cameras, which take a picture of the license plates of cars that go through red lights.  But I say that these cameras should be used to monitor the faces of drivers who wait at red lights.  Face recognition would be used to determine whether the driver is paying attention to the light, or whether they are reading e-mail or texting.  The light would stay red until the driver's gaze was focused on driving.

What do you think about this?

Tainted Chocolate For a Scary Halloween

The melamine that was found in tainted milk could be in the chocolate that's passed out this Halloween.

Please watch this "Candy Product Review 2008 of Potentially MELAMINE Tainted Treats, A SERIOUS Warning By Mike Mozart of JeepersMedia on You Tube" and warn others.

And consider giving out stickers, yourself.

Thank you.

More USA Election 2008 Resources

Watch the Biden-Palin debate online.

Then skip over to FactCheck.org to find out how accurate each candidate was.

The first Obama-McCain debate also is on Hulu.

Find the FactCheck.org response to it.

I wrote about Science debate two weeks ago.

Check out the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation's "Comparing the Candidates' Technology and Innovation Policies."

Scientists and Engineers for America helps you determine how each candidate voted on energy and technology-related bills while in Congress. (Its database covers all members of Congress):

http://sharp.sefora.org/

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2024-10-01 LG Update links to FactCheck.org. Change SEforA links because it is inactive.

Obama's and McCain's Answers to the Top 14 Science Questions Facing America

"Science Debate 2008 worked with ... leading organizations ... to craft the top 14 questions the [Presidential] candidates should answer.  These questions are broad enough to allow for wide variations in response, but they are specific enough to help guide the discussion toward many of the largest and most important unresolved challenges currently facing the United States."

Read the candidates' answers here:

http://www.sciencedebate.org












http://www.sciencedebate.org/news20080830.html

Autism Awareness

April is Autism Awareness Month here in USA. Would you be able to recognize the symptoms of autism if you saw them? Probably not.

The latest estimate of the prevalence of autism is that 1 in 150 people in the USA have been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which is also known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD).

If you're in the fields of engineering, computer science, physics or math, the chances are even higher that you, your children, your coworkers or their children could be diagnosed with this disorder. And you should check out http://firstsigns.org/, which is dedicated to the early identification and intervention of children with developmental delays and disorders, including Autism Spectrum Disorders.

The diagnostic criteria for ASD in children concern development and ability in the areas of social interaction, communication and play. Please see "Diagnosis and Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders," by Lee Tidmarsh, MD, Fred R Volkmar, MD.

Early detection of an ASD is crucial because when interventions are tried at an early age (say at 3 to 5 years of age), they seem to be more effective than when tried later on.

Those who have an ASD and who can communicate say that they don't want to be cured; they just want to be accepted. Thus, it's not they who have the problem, it is society. Nevertheless, interventions can make things easier for children and the autistic adults they grow in to.

What kinds of interventions can reduce the symptoms of an ASD? A change in diet -- avoiding wheat and dairy productions, for example -- can help those with Leaky Gut Syndrome, which can manifest as symptoms of ASD. Another effective, diet-related approach is supplementation with mega doses of vitamin B6, or its active co-enzyme, P5P. Play therapy or Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) has been proven to help. In some cases, mercury detoxification may help. There are many more interventions for a parent to choose from. Then there are interventions aimed at easing the secondary symptoms that accompany ASD such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Depression.

Scientists can spend entire careers looking for signs of intelligent life in the Universe. Meanwhile, medical researchers have overlooked signs of intelligence in people with autism. They assume that people who can't talk and who respond differently to stimuli must be lacking in intelligence.

If you don't believe me, consider the amazing website, Getting the Truth Out, which was originally written in response to an objectionable Autism Awareness fundraising campaign called "Getting the Word Out." Be sure to follow the presentation completely to the end.

If you suspect that you or a loved one is struggling with an ASD, visit the Online Asperger Syndrome Information & Support (OASIS). (Asperger Syndrome is an ASD, and is sometimes referred to as High-Functioning Autism.) As its name suggests, you can get a great deal of information from the site. You can find most of the support by clicking on the Message Boards menu choice and registering for the "OASIS: Asperger Syndrome Forum".

More on Traffic Lights

I was too tired to continue my previous post. So I'll add some comments here in a new post.

I wrote:

If the number of cars on the main road is so great that you need to interrupt the flow in order to let yet more cars on it, you're contributing to yet more traffic congestion.

Actually, about 16 years ago, traffic lights were introduced on entrance ramps to the Long Island Expressway. The idea was to prevent cars from entering the highway during rush hour. That demonstrates an appropriate use of traffic lights -- to improve the flow of traffic rather than to impede it.

I wrote:

It's inefficient to force several cars to stop for the sake of one or two cars that are already stopped. Forcing a car to stop and then accelerate back up to cruising speed is a significant waste of gas. In fact every time a driver applies the brake, he or she "throws away" the fuel that was used to accelerate the car. And acceleration is what uses the most fuel.

And...

Many of these intersections are so small that when cars turn onto them from the main road, the cars trigger the Hall effect sensor that causes the light to cycle. Thus, the light turns red for those who navigate the main road even when there's no car to yield to! More waste!

You can solve both problems simply by installing (or moving) the sensors farther back from the intersection and decreasing the sensitivity. That way the light won't cycle unless there are a few cars queued up. It might be a good idea to change the mode to blinking red-yellow during non-peak hours to allow cars to enter the main roadway whenever it's clear, but then have the light switch to give the right-of-way to the smaller roadway when enough cars are waiting.

I can imagine the day when every intersection will have a traffic light. Hopefully I'll be dead by then. Or perhaps traffic lights will be part of a Intelligent Vehicle System that's designed to route traffic for maximum efficiency. Lights will be used to tell motorists when it's safe to enter the intersection rather than stop other cars to allow them to enter.

The Problem With Traffic Lights

"'See, I can time them perfectly,' the [traffic] light said with satisfaction. 'I get hundreds of them each day. No one gets through my intersection without paying his tax in gas and rubber.'"

"'Go blow a bulb!' the car growled at the light.

"'Go soak your horn!' the light flashed back."

- from pages 187 to 188 of "Centaur Aisle," by Piers Anthony

I've had this quote in my "Quote du Jour" for several weeks, ready for the day I finally rant about traffic lights.

In my town, traffic lights are installed indiscriminately as a feeble response to town growth. The rich folks flock to buy McMansions in new developments. Then they complain that they can't get onto the main road without waiting a minute or two for a break in the traffic. So up goes yet another traffic light.

There are intersections where traffic lights are needed, such where two main highways intersect.

But why install one at a "T" intersection on a busy main road for a tiny side street? Here's why it's not a good idea:

• If the number of cars on the main road is so great that you need to interrupt the flow in order to let yet more cars on it, you're contributing to yet more traffic congestion.
• It's inefficient to force several cars to stop for the sake of one or two cars that are already stopped. Forcing a car to stop and then accelerate back up to cruising speed is a significant waste of gas. In fact every time a driver applies the brake, he or she "throws away" the fuel that was used to accelerate the car. And acceleration is what uses the most fuel.
• Many of these intersections are so small that when cars turn onto them from the main road, the cars trigger the Hall effect sensor that causes the light to cycle. Thus, the light turns red for those who navigate the main road even when there's no car to yield to! More waste!
• Finally, traffic lights waste electrical power all day and night. In fact, they remain powered up even in the wee hours of the morning when no one needs them. At night they're so bright you could read a large-print book under them. Why not reduce the light intensity after dark and save money? True, some lights are set to blink red-yellow, and thus they require half the electricity to light the lamps. But the controllers that run them also waste electricity. So just shut them down completely and get that power consumption down to zero. Drivers know anyway to stop before they enter a main road in the absence of traffic control.
  

Hey buddy, can you spare a few CPU cycles?

Do you leave your computer running and connected to the Internet? If so, why not donate its idle CPU cycles to scientific research? You could help figure out the cause of Alzheimer's disease, predict climate, or search for evidence of gravitational waves or extraterrestrial intelligence.

The Folding@Home distributed computing project is committed to exploring protein folding. Its goal is to gain an understanding of:

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Cancer
• Huntington's Disease
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta
• Parkinson's Disease
• Ribosome & antibiotics

All it takes to get started is to download and run a small program. Click here for more details. Other protein research projects include Rosetta@home and Predictor@home.

Other things your computer could work on:

• CPDN: climate prediction.
• SETI@home: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
• Einstein@Home: find spinning neutron stars.

Download an installer and join the research!

Net Neutrality

The US Senate is debating S 2917: Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would prevent ISPs from giving preferential treatment to content providers that pay. They are also debating S 2686: Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006, which would greatly reform telecommications laws and allow for a tiered Internet.

Apparently, telecom providers want to compete with cable television providers, and they want content providers to subsidize their effort. The first bill mentioned above would seek to prevent that. The second would facilitate it.

For a really well-fleshed out article on the subject, check out "Speed Bumps on the Information Highway," by Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer. This FreePress page provides more arguments in favor of Net Neutrality.

I recommend this sarcastic article, called "Net Neutrality Has Ruined the Web," for those who understand something about electronic communications.

Technology and Real Estate

Technology has played a big role in streamlining the process of buying a house. But that's not what this article is about. It's not a subject that interests me. And I don't know too much about it.

Rather more interesting is understanding how technology has changed the desirability or suitability of a house. Actually I don't know too much about this either, but it's fun to think about.

Let's start with the well-known real estate joke. You know the one: What are the three most important things to know in buying real estate? Location, location, location.

But it's no joke. Location is important. And historically, technology has had a tremendous impact on this. Consider how a boon in shipbuilding encouraged sea-faring communities to flourish and allowed colonization of foreign shores. Advances in rail transportation enabled settlers to spread west across the USA. The invention of the gasoline engine and discovery of oil reserves led to whole communities founded near oil wells and refineries.

Our needs for water, food and a temperate climate can be met with technology. The better it is, the more adverse conditions we can overcome.

Today we see major cities such as San Francisco developing wireless Internet infrastructures. This is done as part of a revitalization effort. An Internet user might save about $1000 each year in such a place. A smart home buyer will assess the quality of his cell phone reception when shopping for a new home.

Think about the place you live in. What do you like about the dwelling or area? Perhaps it's near a major highway, railway or busline? Maybe you can listen to several cool radio stations that come in clearly. Or maybe you're like me, you just appreciate reliable electricity and telecommunications services. If so, you can thank technology.

Technology or its after effects can make a location less desirable, too. Pollution can shut down entire communities, as in the case of Love Canal. Pollution also takes the form of excess light and noise, which detract from quality of life. The fear of cancer from electromagnetic radiation discourages people from buying homes near high voltage power lines, which, along with cell phone towers, are an eyesore.

Are there things you don't like about the place you live in? Is it so hazy that you can't see the stars at night? Are your neighbors making lots of noise on Saturday mornings with their lawn mowers and leaf blowers? Are the roads too congested and do they have too many red traffic lights? You can blame all this on technology.

Bankruptcy Law Fails to Keep Creditors in Line

NPR's report on the new bankruptcy legislation, which goes into effect in less than two hours, piqued my interest.

First, is the timing of the bill. Why now? People have been going bankrupt for years. But now that consumer debt is at an all-time high, and both inflation and interest rates are poised to increase, lenders are worried about losing their shorts unless bankruptcy laws are revised.

Second is how the report mentioned that consumer advocate groups opposed the legislation because it lets lenders off the hook. I agree. You'd think if a company were going to lend money to someone, it'd make sure the person seems responsible enough to pay back the loan. But that's not happening. Just sift through a week's worth of junk mail and count how many offers you get for home equity loans and credit cards. Lenders are saving money by failing to properly screen applicants, and now they've gotten the government to enforce payment.

What the bill/law should do is penalize the "worst" lenders in some way. Here's how. Whichever lender has the "most money" in default should be forced to forgive those debts. By "most money," I mean the highest ratio of money in default to total loan money in any given month. This makes it fair for large lenders.

So in November, when Capital One complains that it extended $1M to customers and $100K cannot be paid back, the government can respond, "Sorry, but no other company has anything as large as 10% of its loans in bankruptcy court. You're an irresponsible lender, and you're not entitled to get it back."

This might lead to a stalled economy. After all, our economy is fueled by irrational credit spending. But it might also lead to lenders that take an interest in its customers.

Avon Mountain Road Design

Forgive me for obsessing over this, but I'm writing again about the Avon Mountain crash. This time I have an open response to Toni Gold's op-ed piece, titled "Designed to Kill," which was published in The Hartford Courant on Sunday.

Ms. Gold begin strong. A title like "Designed to Kill" certainly is eye-catching. And it actually starts out the way I started a rough draft of my first Avon Crash blog article. "It was only a matter of time before a horrible crash would occur at the intersection of routes 44 and 10 in Avon...." Here's someone whose profession it is to teach "context-sensitive design to highway engineers" who agrees with me.

But as I read on, I realized that she doesn't get it. Her grand "solution" is to replace the intersection with a roundabout.

Yes, that's just what I want to see at the bottom of a steep grade while I careen wildly out of control -- a roundabout. (That's sarcasm you're reading, in case you can't recognize it.)

Of course a roundabout causes motorists to slow down, but only if they have control of their vehicles in the first place. But if a roundabout had been in place at the time of the crash, the truck would have collided with the roundabout's barriers, plus any vehicles that might have been negotiating the circle. If the truck were to have collided with the bus in the circle, it would've broad-sided the bus, and several of the bus passengers would've been killed.

I had hoped that someone who teaches highway engineers how to design roads would have more sense than to propose putting a roundabout at the bottom of a mountain. But this is a case of someone with a hammer who views everything else as a nail. Her "expertise [is] in transportation for livable communities," according to her bio. Unfortunately, the bottom of a steep hill is no place for a livable community, let alone an intersection.

Poor Road Design

Well, I lost my bet. But I'm glad.

I'm referring to a comment I made in my previous post. I predicted that no one would blame the Avon Mountain crash on poor road design.

Yesterday, callers to a Hartford-based radio talk show echoed certain points I made earlier. One caller said that the only way to prevent a re-occurrence is to move the road. Another caller pointed out that our quaint, winding, New England roads are merely 400-year-old Indian trails that have been widened a bit and paved. They're unsuitable for our modern cars and trucks to cruise on safely. These remarks imply poor road design.

This is encouraging. But the voices that really matter are those that represent the DOT. Yet I doubt we'll get an honest assessment from them, as that would lead to a backlash of litigation. Instead, they'll quietly study their options and make some small changes.

Wanna bet?

What Caused This Devastating Crash?

The investigation into this morning's fatal crash in a Hartford suburb (alternate link) has only just started. But emergency personnel speculate that a truck that was traveling down Avon Mountain had a brake failure. It lost control and crossed into oncoming traffic.

I can predict what the investigation's outcome will be. The blame will rest on some combination of excessive speed, mechanical failure or operator error.

I bet you no one will blame the road.

The road (and intersection) is designed to produce just this kind of accident. No rational-minded person would decide to place a large intersection at the bottom of a steep hill, just where vehicles would be at their highest speed, and then angle the road in such a way that those cars are aimed at opposing traffic.

In fact the road over Avon Mountain, like many roads in the Northeast, was established back in colonial days. Early settlers used it to get over the mountain. As more powerful vehicles came onto the scene, the road was widened and paved, but not substantially redesigned to accommodate the faster traffic flow.

The governor's response was laughable -- reduce and enforce the speed limit. I'm sorry Ms. Rell, but a truck that's lost its brakes isn't able to do swat about its speed. Someone needs to either move the intersection or flatten the road before the next killer truck descends the mountain.

Deadly Body Odor

Yet another example of misuse of technology -- the Genetically Altered Scent project.

Researchers discovered a way to modify the DNA of a common bacterium so that the waste it produces has a pleasing scent. The idea was to introduce this strain of bacterium into the armpit regions of test subjects, who would be required to forgo deodorants, antiperspirants and anti-bacterial soap for a ten day period. At the end of the study, the subjects would don a cotton pad under each armpit and perform some light exercise. The pads (along with pads from a control group) would be sniffed by another group of participants who would designate each pad as either "pleasing" or "disagreeable."

If the study was successful, Genetically Altered Scent, or GAS, would usher in a new line of designer fragrances.

Unfortunately, the study had to be halted due to a complication. About thirty percent of the participants who hosted the modified bacteria developed a severe rash. A few of these actually had to be hospitalized and undergo intravenous antibiotic therapy. Apparently one of the modified genes turned the bacterium into an aggressive organism, similar to deadly flesh-eating varieties. Luckily no one died or suffered permanent damage.

How to Prevent School Shootings?

In the aftermath of every tragedy, it's natural to ask, "How could we have prevented this?" Many schools installed metal detectors after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed fellow students at Columbine High School nearly five years ago. But the metal detector at Red Lake High School didn't prevent Jeff Weise from killing seven classmates last week.

Is the answer more technology? There are those who will advocate for more.

I hear that Jeff Weise fit a profile. He was a quiet loner. That will lead scientists to wonder whether there's a genetic marker that predisposes someone to such violent acts as mass murder. If we can identify at-risk youths, we can prevent the next tragedy.

This is preemptive thinking. We were preemptive in getting rid of Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and its non-links with terrorists. What's to stop Patriot Act proponents from preemptively detaining a bunch of Goth school kids?

Of course this cessation of rights won't start with school kids. It'll start with the lowest of criminals, a class of criminal even the ACLU won't want to defend -- the sexual predator.

John Couey, who confessed to molesting and killing 9 year old Jessica Lunsford, is the ideal poster boy for genetic testing. "Hey before we put you in prison you need an exam. Just wonder what a bit of your DNA might look like in my handy Genome test kit?"

Perhaps this is already being done on numerous sexual predators nationwide. Once the data is collected, a correlation is made. And then you start being preemptive.

The Human Genome project wasn't initiated with the idea of segregating people based on their DNA. But that's the way it goes with technology. Once you put it out there, you can't control how it gets used.

So now I hope you'll excuse me while I rid my wardrobe of every article of black clothing I own....

Technology as Management

I work for a company that proudly bills itself as a lean manufacturing company. That's a euphemism for "a company with too few managers because we're too cheap to hire more." So at every opportunity, they manage with technology.

One example is how they decided to limit Internet access and game playing among the hardworking, hourly workers who assemble and test our products, and upon whom our livelihood depends. The big boss doesn't want them to fritter away valuable time. Time is money, and all that. He also prefers to sit in his office rather than walk among them.

At the time, I was a "sort of" member of the IT team. The first thing we did was install Microsoft's System Management Server (SMS). We did this not to address the time frittering issue, but because SMS was really cool. We loved playing with SMS.

My favorite aspect of SMS was the way it would run programs at certain times on remote computers. I used it to deploy virus updates, before we switched to an enterprise virus tool.

SMS could also restrict certain users from running certain programs at certain times of the day. So we used it to restrict Internet Explorer, Solitaire, Freecell, Minesweeper, and so forth.

Of course, it was easy to circumvent SMS restrictions simply by renaming the restricted file names. One could rename IEXPLORE.EXE to MSACCESS.EXE, for example. I knew this at the very beginning. I'm not sure whether the other IT guys did. I didn't bother to mention it. I felt that anyone smart enough to figure this out should be rewarded. I knew that the big boss didn't know this. He seemed satisfied that we had an answer to his issue, a technological answer in fact.

So we went on like this for a good while. And I'm proud to say that we had only one case of virus infection (Melissa), and I shut the email server's service before it spread to other computers.

But SMS was a resource hog. If the network was busy or the server was slow, we'd experience a frown-inducing delay before running any application because the computer needed to wait for SMS to say, "Yes, you can run the program this time (but don't make a habit of it.)" So when we hired the full time IT guy, he brought in an enterprise virus tool and eradicated SMS.


The new guy approached this issue differently than we did. He took the request seriously. He was determined to make his solution work. What he did was this. He renamed IEXPLORE.EXE to something else, and set its folder's local permissions to deny access. He omitted the standard games from the installation. And he set peoples' local accounts as user accounts as opposed to administrator accounts. That's to prevent them from installing games or other web browsers.

By then, programs had evolved to offer HTML-based help, which required IE. Restrict IE, and you restrict access to help. Although I mentioned this to him, it wasn't until I told him I needed everybody to use IE that he came up with a new idea. He set the IP address of the default gateway on certain computers to a bogus value. The default gateway is the address of the computer or router that traffic needs to go to in order to get on the Internet. If that address is not known, a computer cannot access the Internet.

This is the current method of limiting Internet access. IE is free to open local files or network-based files. Yet no programs can access the Internet. So it has the added benefit of preventing "malware" from "phoning home."

As nice as this seems, there's still a problem. Suppose someone who's allowed to access the Internet needs to use one of the restricted computer? No dice.


Anyway, this "locking the cookie jar" technique of barring Internet access really does ensure people won't waste time on the Internet. That's because they'll be wasting time figuring out how to gain access! As well, it sends the message, "We don't trust you to do your job. We'd rather micromanage your job rather than support your growth." It's how you treat children.

Why not be smart about this? If people are so bored (or addicted or lazy) that they'd rather fool around on the computer and risk losing their jobs, treat the boredom (or addiction or laziness.) Have a merit-based reward system in place. Make sure they always have work to do (but not too much).

Technology as Marketing Follow Up

Frivolous technology that's used as a marketing tool results in an Arm's Race of Technology as manufacturers try to out-do their competitors. We consumers encounter expensive, feature-bloated products instead of the basic, trusty, inexpensive things we've grown up with. It may be that eBay will turn out to be a Luddite's best friend. Some of those quaint, clever gadgets we're so familar with are no longer made. Expect to see eBay affiliates opening brick-and-mortar shops soon.