Adversarial Compatibility: hidden escape hatch rescues us from imprisonment through our stuff

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Cory, it’s really annoying when you do this:
“No engineering firm would ever be allowed to use secretive, proprietary
systems to calculate the load-stresses on your home and prohibit you
from knocking out a wall without using their special RSJs.”

So, what’s an RSJ?!
Yes I Google; how far am I supposed to go to learn your code?

It’s for a British audience; the term is a common one in the UK.

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It’s still annoying. Otherwise this was really thought-provoking.

Once upon a time, I spent some time selling credit card processing services. Almost all of the people I talked to were contracted for 3-5 years, with a hefty penalty if they broke their contract. It never occurred to me this “switching cost” was the exact difference between a good service and a crappy one. What a smart marketing move, to be able to say, “there’s no cost to cancel, because we’re sure you won’t want to.”

I think RSJ is Really Special Joints. Or maybe joists. What is a joist, anyway?

The pictured lens adapters usually perform poorly (image quality and operationally). Just sayin’. http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/09/there-is-no-free-lunch-episode-763-lens-adapters

A very common term; spelling it out for a Brit audience would look weird.

In the 1960s there was an anti-trust case in the U.S. where IBM was forced to share its interface specifications for disk drives to allow Control Data Corporation to compete with it. That’s all I remember. I was very young at the time.

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When you knock through a load-bearing wall to make one big room out of two smaller ones, you need a “joist” – a structural steel support – to take up the load. Lots of British housing stock is Victorian and the rooms are very small, it’s a common practice to knock out all or most of the walls on the ground floor to make a large eating/living/cooking area out of three or more separate, tiny, dark rooms.

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Lots of legitimate choices for the acronym here:

http://www.acronymfinder.com/RSJ.html

Like a stud, but horizontal.

???

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