This kind of topic touches a lot of nerves.
If it ain't broke don't fix it is the backbone statement no doubt.
The sheer ability to read this forum down to the last message is more then most can do in the printed magazine article, where the mind will drift onto something else whilst trying to keep with the content. That's not the case here. Each block of text is like having someone talking to you in your shop. It's a raw dialog and not edited into a packaged article.
When an industry is small and at infancy, there's a lot of diy and personal attachment. In this world of prices in orbit, Money is the fuel that is wrapped around all the corporate and industrial functions. Everything is now targeted to the supposed audience that will provide a return and growth.
The time and effort in thousands of hours per year to provide media is not evident from the final product.
There is a different consciousness between those here and the 'idiot light' people of the world. The people of the world pride themselves on being technically stupid and brag about it. Take computers for example, I used to do customer service for an ISP (Internet Service Provider), and all the people over 50 would proudly say "I don't know a darn thing about computers" and be so proud of that fact. The people here on this forum that design and build and document function are the one in ten million in the world now. Look what's happened!! => You are even outcasts to the home power dudes !!
Change and innovation for the sheer sake of it is the root of the downfall of mankind. Everyone has to reinvent the wheel for the heck of it in the big industries to try to come up with something that's different and "better" that they can push and attempt to get people to buy their product as a result. We had Steam Trains that were designed to run for hundreds of years before the cylinders and the hundreds of tons of iron would ever get tired and wear out. 99.9999% of them became scrap metal. Time, engineering and innovation down the drain. Horrific wastes of resources. The current disposable world of planned obsolescence has people throwing out machinery with engines and motors only after a year of use. There's nothing wrong with the engines. The tin can decks on the mowers made now will crack and fall apart. People in high dollar homes throw out new mowers when the rubber tires wear out.
You talk about wanting regulations and standards on the controllers and designs. That puts big government right in the midst of what is being done. There's an old man who is a retired congressman who said that people complain that there's too many laws, and every time they see something that's not controlled that's out of line, they say "There ought to be a law..", and that's why there are so many. ALL of what's controlled by government is in the hands of politicians, who are technically ignorant. They control and doll out billions of dollars. There fuel is paid for by the gov and taxpayers. They have no clue about how a solar system works. They see a single solar panel on a roof of a factory or home and think it's running the entire building.
Now Look at codes - building codes, electrical codes, etc. Codes say you can put a leach line on a septic tank 18 to 24 inches down, and out in the prairies, in the winter the ground is frozen 4 to 6 foot down as it gets to 20 below, and people by the hundreds with recently installed and backed up septics in the middle of winter are calling up plumping contractors who say "your leach lines are frozen, and we will have to come and dig them up and replace them", and they charge $1,000.00 and up for this. It should be FOUR foot down, not 2 foot. The old grandfathered systems had them five feet down, but since they were from a generation or two ago, codes now condemns them and people have to put in new septic tanks the top of which is only 2 feet below the ground.. When it freezes a year or two later, they call the contractor and pay all over again. "But that's the code!!" The contractors tell me when I tell them the lines are not down where they are supposed to be. ALL codes does is create business for contractors, and force people to have to use contractors, especially the 99% who are not diy's.
The quality of what is produced by industry is simply garbage. Not just china, everything. Companies want to cut expenses in a down economy, so they cut this and that on designs and there's no quality, which makes it more disposable and obsolete all the sooner.
Prime Example - There's a Brand NEW Moen shower valve on the renovated house we moved into. It mixes the hot water with the cold water automatically and you can't adjust it. I cut open the sheet rock behind it and it's just a brass body. Lukewarm is all you get from the shower head. It takes 165 degree solar heated water and mixes it with the 65 degree cold line and comes out at about 100 degrees at best, lukewarm. Even with the handle turned all the way to the hot side; There's no adjustment. I'm so tired of hearing my wife shriek and yell that the waters to darn cold that I'm ripping it out and putting in a delta individual hot and cold valve where I can adjust it with the brain in my head, not with the brainless brain that's in the valve. This is the world we live in today. The valve automatically keeps the water from getting too hot in case there's a 2 year old that goes into the bathroom and turns it all the way open and gets burned, and they then sue the valve company. There's no kids in the house here, and if there was, WE would teach them to use their brain and turn it open slowly and adjust it..
This goes full circle back to this board here. There's no reason to re invent it. It's not crashed and crashing every hour. When that happens, we can fix the program. The lack of diy simple function innovation - which is what gave us the radio, the car, and all of modern industry, is the root cause why there is garbage in the markets. People are bred to be sheep and cattle who just follow what's fed to them in their environment. AND all the corporate magazines do surveys to find out what these sheep and cattle are doing, and what their demographics are, and produce a generic publication to fit the picture, not the niche.
GW
