Wow. So.. you guys don't write comments because you guys sucked at writing them and keeping them up to date. Is that a fair assessment? Comments are wonderful if used properly, but as you point out, too few use them effectively.
There is a separate circle of hell for those who write:
//increment foo
foo++;
Comments are best used to explain design principles, data models, constraints (if they aren't already coded in), and the purpose of long code blocks - high level concepts that aren't likely to change as the code gets debugged and added to, as well as any code that has to be written in an obscure way for performance. Procedural documentation is best done by the code itself with explicit variable, class, and function names and the like. Even a one-line function used only in one place can be worthwhile if the name explains what an otherwise impenetrable line is meant to do.
Anybody who thinks they are going to maintain detailed procedural comments along with the code either works for the government or hasn't been writing code in a competitive business environment very long.
Then don't offer their decisions as evidence for a right. Can't have it both ways. Either you have a right to privacy because SCOTUS says so, in which case they can just as easily take it, and others, away, or rights come from somewhere else, in which case a SCOTUS decision is completely irrelevant to the argument.
Decide, Falcon. This isn't an academic question, your life may someday depend on your answer.
Supreme Court gives you rights, eh? Fine. Then don't complain when they take them away.
As I said above, you have other rights that provide for your ability to remain private, and those don't come from the Supreme Court.
I wasn't talking about the Constitution, I was talking about natural rights. The Constitution does not grant rights, it recognizes them.
If you are publicly doing something, you don't have any right not to be observed. You don't even have a right to prevent someone observing you from trying to determine your identity. Even if you take steps to hide your identity, you still don't have a right to prevent anyone from using whatever information they can observe.
But don't underestimate my second point - that you have a right not to be forced to assist your own surveillance. I'll add to that that you have a right not to have your property used without your consent, i.e., no breaking and entering, etc. Those two combined provide powerful protections for privacy, but the responsibility is still on you to protect yourself, and you have a right to take any of those measures you deem necessary.
Think about it, almost all surveillance techniques now require your participation in order to be effective. Red light cameras only work because you are required to have an identifying plate attached in a specific visible location on your car. Banking surveillance only works because you, and your bank, are required to provide identifying documents and transaction records when you open and use an account. This law would be the same thing, you, and your ISP, would be required to use a communications protocol that does you no good, but provides a way to trace your activity.
The only reason there is a need for a made up right to privacy is that the requirements to participate in surveillance are so ubiquitous that we forget they're even there, until the results get used in a way we don't like. But that misuse is not the problem, the problem is that the information is forced to be provided in the first place. Privacy rights, as discussed today, are just a bandage, they don't address the core problem.
Yeah, it's possible, just barely, it could be used benignly, with due process, and only against those who are actually committing real crimes. For now. But just wait until Ted Stevens becomes President. Or, you know, someone who isn't going to play by the rules.
The question isn't only whether you want to put the tools in the hands of the current administration - bad enough - but whether you want to put it into the hands of every possible administration this country, and the world, will ever have.
When anonymous internet is a crime, only criminals will have anonymous internet.
As usual, this would be a law that will almost exclusively affect the law abiding, except for a few idiots who don't know what they're doing. When those are caught, Chertoff will describe them as technical geniuses, tell us what a great thing it is that we have the even better technical geniuses at DHS to track down these criminal masterminds, and then make an example of them at the show trial. Meanwhile, Chinese dissidents will be getting their organs harvested while they're still squirming on the table.
I thought attempting to get marked troll was part of the joke
New scientific research is emerging that trolls are actually descendents of the Neanderthals. They are highly intelligent. And polite. And a productive contributor to any conversation.
Who'd a thunk it?
In what could possibly be a major blow to a scientific consensus...
Sorry, but you must not have gotten the memo about the new scientific method. The consensus is the standard of accuracy, all new theories must be judged against it. Neanderthals remain stupid until enough people in the news media and blogosphere believe otherwise.
would talk to both the boss at the old job and the boss at the new job and see if you can't start the new job earlier.
Or, just talk to the new boss, tell him you can start right away, but have to work from... ahem... home - yeah, that's the ticket - from home for the first four weeks. Set up a tunnel into the new job's system from, err, "home", and get to work and start collecting that extra paycheck.
...to be in the (hopefully chairless) room when Ballmer heard this news. The look on his face must have been priceless. Google is playing Chess, while Ballmer can barely handle checkers.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it's for nothing more than the cash.
Do you think Nixon went to China because he had a sudden epiphany and became a Marxist? It doesn't matter why Metallica does this, only that they do. So they're doing it for money? Even better, they're telling the world that the way to make money is to stop being assholes. Isn't that the message you want the world to get?
The biggest political breakthroughs come when the most vocal opponents of something signal to their compatriots and followers that it's OK now. Only Nixon can go to China. Rejecting Metallica on the grounds of their past attitude could only serve to shut that breakthrough down and solidify the opposition. Punishing Metallica just when they've implicitly issued a mea-culpa could only be counter productive. Signaling reconciliation, generosity, and forgiveness at this point will do more to further the cause - if that's what it is - than anything else could at this point.
And besides, it's another way to kick the RIAA when they're down. They deserve it, Metallica does not.
With all due respect, we do have some fucking clues.
We know that they will probably have to be advanced beyond stone tools and wooden spears - to manufactured materials of some kind - because the properties of those make it extremely difficult if not impossible to implement space travel with. We know they probably have some kind of automation and information processing - analagous in some degree to our electronics - because we're pretty sure that without those in some form, it's extremely difficult if not impossible to implement space travel.
Systems of social organization are a lot like technology in that they can be analyzed and their properties can be (in theory at least) shown to be suitable or unsuitable for the infrastructure required by advanced technology. That analysis is less certain, because we can only look at the systems we already have experience with, but we've seen how tribalism, feudalism, socialism, etc., have reached their scaling limit such that they are unsuitable for a certain level of technology. I believe, though you may disagree, that we are nearing the scaling limit for democracy and centralized government as well, and will have to move beyond them to go much further.
If that is true, it is also reasonable, though far from certain, that a civilization advanced enough to do what we cannot yet do will have advanced their systems for social organization to a form suitable to those needs.
look at pretty much any incident on Earth where a more 'advanced' culture comes across a less 'advanced' culture. Exploitation is not the same thing as sharing information. A prime directive that says "Don't force primitive cultures to grow bananas for you under threat of the 'thunder stick' eviscerating their shaman", I'd have no problem with. One that says "Don't tell them how to keep their drinking water from being infected with cholera", that I'd have a problem with. As I would with one that says "Don't tell them how to get off their planet if they want to".
such a civilization has lasted long enough to become so much more advanced than us [...] implies that they have long abandoned centralized power, [...] until a civilization abandons the primitive practice of centralized power, it can never be trusted with such technology, or even the simple knowledge that more advanced civilizations exist. I'm intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
And this would imply that the Federation should invoke it's PD against itself.
Seriously, I think you're exactly right. We're also nearing the point where technology will require a level of cooperation and division of labor that is hindered by, rather than helped by, centralized control. I'm willing to bet that any advanced civilization we may meet will not be a democracy, nor a corporation, and will not be aggressive. And that we won't become much more advanced while we are still any of those.
It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive
"Hello Mr. Alien. Welcome to our planet. Boy, you sure are more advanced than us!"
"Why, yes, we are, thank you. By the way, I couldn't help noticing that many of you still die from cancer."
"'Still die'? You mean you don't?"
"Oh, no, we cured that a long time ago. Same for that crooked politician thing you've got going. And war. Oh, and that thing you call 'Alzheimers', too. And global warming. We don't have any of that. They all turned out to be really simple to fix, in fact."
"Really? that's wonderful. Will you teach us how to solve these things."
"What? No, no, child, your culture isn't ready for all that. Besides, you're so cute the way you are. No, we'll just stay up in our ships and watch you figure it out. It will probably take several more generations, but that's OK, with our advanced medical technology, we will live long enough to see it... unless you wipe yourselves out in the process, that is. He he. You amuse us."
There will be a set of formal rules, some of which are never followed and others the violation of which will get you fired instanter. You may or may not be told which are which - and certainly not told all of the distinctions. There will be an informal set of rules that you won't ever be told about but will have to discover on your own or face the consequences. These will include everything from standards of break-room refrigerator etiquette to which buttons you don't dare ever push (both literal and figurative buttons).
There will be several types of people there. There will be the ass kisser who is always sucking up to the bosses - and who may in fact be your boss. There will be the stickler for rules, and there will be those who don't pay any attention to the rules but still get a lot of work done. 20% of the people there will be highly competent and professional (for certain values of "professional"), and about 80% who are bumbling morons that make you wonder how they keep their jobs. There will be one guy who everybody looks to for guidance, decisions, and ideas, and who will almost definitely not have any formal authority. There will be some who you become fast friends with almost immediately, and some who will hate you on sight. There will be a guy who loves any opportunity to help you out, another who will help you out, but only as an excuse to rub your face in what you don't know, and one who you'd better not approach with any question that he thinks is beneath him (i.e. one he can't answer). One or more of these qualities may be present in the same individual.
There will be cliques and power structures that you will not be told about, yet you will be expected to find your place in them, possibly including taking sides. Choosing wrong could affect your entire career, but will at least substantially affect your success at that particular workplace. You will be expected to exercise more authority than you actually have, but no more than the unwritten rules allow you. You will have to discover that upper limit without crossing it by enough to have serious consequences.
You will be expected to put in extra effort, and perhaps extra time above what is supposedly expected, but will be looked down upon, and possibly resented, if you give too much. You will be expected to do what the boss actually wants, regardless of what he says he wants. You will be expected to do what the rest of your team wants, and expected to figure out what that is. The expectations of your boss and those of your co-workers will not always be compatible, but you are expected to meet both. You will be responsible for following policies which are counter to the purpose of the job, and which may even contradict each other. That will not be an allowable excuse for not getting the job done.
Your continued employment will be subject to seemingly arbitrary decisions of the boss and/or your co-workers. These decisions will not be based solely on your performance or compliance to policies and rules, but those will be the stated reason for your termination should that ever occur. Your promotions and salary will be subject to the same constraints.
The good news is that (most) everybody else already knows all this, accommodations will be made (within limits), and it's possible to successfully negotiate this and actually get real work done.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. So.. you guys don't write comments because you guys sucked at writing them and keeping them up to date. Is that a fair assessment? Comments are wonderful if used properly, but as you point out, too few use them effectively.
There is a separate circle of hell for those who write:
foo++;
Comments are best used to explain design principles, data models, constraints (if they aren't already coded in), and the purpose of long code blocks - high level concepts that aren't likely to change as the code gets debugged and added to, as well as any code that has to be written in an obscure way for performance. Procedural documentation is best done by the code itself with explicit variable, class, and function names and the like. Even a one-line function used only in one place can be worthwhile if the name explains what an otherwise impenetrable line is meant to do.
Anybody who thinks they are going to maintain detailed procedural comments along with the code either works for the government or hasn't been writing code in a competitive business environment very long.
No, the Supreme Court does not give rights.
Then don't offer their decisions as evidence for a right. Can't have it both ways. Either you have a right to privacy because SCOTUS says so, in which case they can just as easily take it, and others, away, or rights come from somewhere else, in which case a SCOTUS decision is completely irrelevant to the argument.
Decide, Falcon. This isn't an academic question, your life may someday depend on your answer.
Supreme Court gives you rights, eh? Fine. Then don't complain when they take them away. As I said above, you have other rights that provide for your ability to remain private, and those don't come from the Supreme Court.
If you are publicly doing something, you don't have any right not to be observed. You don't even have a right to prevent someone observing you from trying to determine your identity. Even if you take steps to hide your identity, you still don't have a right to prevent anyone from using whatever information they can observe.
But don't underestimate my second point - that you have a right not to be forced to assist your own surveillance. I'll add to that that you have a right not to have your property used without your consent, i.e., no breaking and entering, etc. Those two combined provide powerful protections for privacy, but the responsibility is still on you to protect yourself, and you have a right to take any of those measures you deem necessary.
Think about it, almost all surveillance techniques now require your participation in order to be effective. Red light cameras only work because you are required to have an identifying plate attached in a specific visible location on your car. Banking surveillance only works because you, and your bank, are required to provide identifying documents and transaction records when you open and use an account. This law would be the same thing, you, and your ISP, would be required to use a communications protocol that does you no good, but provides a way to trace your activity.
The only reason there is a need for a made up right to privacy is that the requirements to participate in surveillance are so ubiquitous that we forget they're even there, until the results get used in a way we don't like. But that misuse is not the problem, the problem is that the information is forced to be provided in the first place. Privacy rights, as discussed today, are just a bandage, they don't address the core problem.
The question isn't only whether you want to put the tools in the hands of the current administration - bad enough - but whether you want to put it into the hands of every possible administration this country, and the world, will ever have.
You don't have a right to privacy, or to anonymity. You do have a right not to be forced to assist in your own surveillance.
When anonymous internet is a crime, only criminals will have anonymous internet. As usual, this would be a law that will almost exclusively affect the law abiding, except for a few idiots who don't know what they're doing. When those are caught, Chertoff will describe them as technical geniuses, tell us what a great thing it is that we have the even better technical geniuses at DHS to track down these criminal masterminds, and then make an example of them at the show trial. Meanwhile, Chinese dissidents will be getting their organs harvested while they're still squirming on the table.
First they came for the protestors....
First they came for Jane Hamsher, and I didn't..... Ahh, what the hell, she deserves it... Woot! Go Pigs!!!! Sueieeeeeeeeee!
I thought attempting to get marked troll was part of the joke
New scientific research is emerging that trolls are actually descendents of the Neanderthals. They are highly intelligent. And polite. And a productive contributor to any conversation. Who'd a thunk it?
In what could possibly be a major blow to a scientific consensus...
Sorry, but you must not have gotten the memo about the new scientific method. The consensus is the standard of accuracy, all new theories must be judged against it. Neanderthals remain stupid until enough people in the news media and blogosphere believe otherwise.
It should have taken 23 seconds for WTC7 to freefall. It took less.
Wait... you're saying it fell faster than free fall? This would be the first time in history a controlled demolition managed that.
Now there's a conspiracy theory: George Bush knows how to change gravity!!!
The planes weren't flown into the buildings, they were sucked in by the black hole in the basement!!!
This is probably the first time in the history of advertising that a slogan of such over the top hyperbole turned out to be understated.
Or, just talk to the new boss, tell him you can start right away, but have to work from... ahem... home - yeah, that's the ticket - from home for the first four weeks. Set up a tunnel into the new job's system from, err, "home", and get to work and start collecting that extra paycheck.
Congratulations.
...to be in the (hopefully chairless) room when Ballmer heard this news. The look on his face must have been priceless. Google is playing Chess, while Ballmer can barely handle checkers.
Do you think Nixon went to China because he had a sudden epiphany and became a Marxist? It doesn't matter why Metallica does this, only that they do. So they're doing it for money? Even better, they're telling the world that the way to make money is to stop being assholes. Isn't that the message you want the world to get?
And besides, it's another way to kick the RIAA when they're down. They deserve it, Metallica does not.
You're welcome. And somebody rate dreamchaser up on my behalf for that, will ya? Thanks.
I'm sorry that intelligence is a threat to you. Every day must be a living hell for you.
Try hanging out here instead of /.
These Two? They appear to be out of print.
We know that they will probably have to be advanced beyond stone tools and wooden spears - to manufactured materials of some kind - because the properties of those make it extremely difficult if not impossible to implement space travel with. We know they probably have some kind of automation and information processing - analagous in some degree to our electronics - because we're pretty sure that without those in some form, it's extremely difficult if not impossible to implement space travel.
Systems of social organization are a lot like technology in that they can be analyzed and their properties can be (in theory at least) shown to be suitable or unsuitable for the infrastructure required by advanced technology. That analysis is less certain, because we can only look at the systems we already have experience with, but we've seen how tribalism, feudalism, socialism, etc., have reached their scaling limit such that they are unsuitable for a certain level of technology. I believe, though you may disagree, that we are nearing the scaling limit for democracy and centralized government as well, and will have to move beyond them to go much further.
If that is true, it is also reasonable, though far from certain, that a civilization advanced enough to do what we cannot yet do will have advanced their systems for social organization to a form suitable to those needs.
And this would imply that the Federation should invoke it's PD against itself.
Seriously, I think you're exactly right. We're also nearing the point where technology will require a level of cooperation and division of labor that is hindered by, rather than helped by, centralized control. I'm willing to bet that any advanced civilization we may meet will not be a democracy, nor a corporation, and will not be aggressive. And that we won't become much more advanced while we are still any of those.
"Hello Mr. Alien. Welcome to our planet. Boy, you sure are more advanced than us!"
"Why, yes, we are, thank you. By the way, I couldn't help noticing that many of you still die from cancer."
"'Still die'? You mean you don't?"
"Oh, no, we cured that a long time ago. Same for that crooked politician thing you've got going. And war. Oh, and that thing you call 'Alzheimers', too. And global warming. We don't have any of that. They all turned out to be really simple to fix, in fact."
"Really? that's wonderful. Will you teach us how to solve these things."
"What? No, no, child, your culture isn't ready for all that. Besides, you're so cute the way you are. No, we'll just stay up in our ships and watch you figure it out. It will probably take several more generations, but that's OK, with our advanced medical technology, we will live long enough to see it... unless you wipe yourselves out in the process, that is. He he. You amuse us."
"Asshole"
There will be a set of formal rules, some of which are never followed and others the violation of which will get you fired instanter. You may or may not be told which are which - and certainly not told all of the distinctions. There will be an informal set of rules that you won't ever be told about but will have to discover on your own or face the consequences. These will include everything from standards of break-room refrigerator etiquette to which buttons you don't dare ever push (both literal and figurative buttons).
There will be several types of people there. There will be the ass kisser who is always sucking up to the bosses - and who may in fact be your boss. There will be the stickler for rules, and there will be those who don't pay any attention to the rules but still get a lot of work done. 20% of the people there will be highly competent and professional (for certain values of "professional"), and about 80% who are bumbling morons that make you wonder how they keep their jobs. There will be one guy who everybody looks to for guidance, decisions, and ideas, and who will almost definitely not have any formal authority. There will be some who you become fast friends with almost immediately, and some who will hate you on sight. There will be a guy who loves any opportunity to help you out, another who will help you out, but only as an excuse to rub your face in what you don't know, and one who you'd better not approach with any question that he thinks is beneath him (i.e. one he can't answer). One or more of these qualities may be present in the same individual.
There will be cliques and power structures that you will not be told about, yet you will be expected to find your place in them, possibly including taking sides. Choosing wrong could affect your entire career, but will at least substantially affect your success at that particular workplace. You will be expected to exercise more authority than you actually have, but no more than the unwritten rules allow you. You will have to discover that upper limit without crossing it by enough to have serious consequences.
You will be expected to put in extra effort, and perhaps extra time above what is supposedly expected, but will be looked down upon, and possibly resented, if you give too much. You will be expected to do what the boss actually wants, regardless of what he says he wants. You will be expected to do what the rest of your team wants, and expected to figure out what that is. The expectations of your boss and those of your co-workers will not always be compatible, but you are expected to meet both. You will be responsible for following policies which are counter to the purpose of the job, and which may even contradict each other. That will not be an allowable excuse for not getting the job done.
Your continued employment will be subject to seemingly arbitrary decisions of the boss and/or your co-workers. These decisions will not be based solely on your performance or compliance to policies and rules, but those will be the stated reason for your termination should that ever occur. Your promotions and salary will be subject to the same constraints.
The good news is that (most) everybody else already knows all this, accommodations will be made (within limits), and it's possible to successfully negotiate this and actually get real work done.
And, no, I've never worked in a lab.