"Paleface"?? A racist comment coupled with an assumption?
While I don't read or write Cherokee, my ancestry goes right through that tribe, and through the Trail of Tears, and most of my relatives still live within a few hours of Talequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation.
Why not try it with Amazon? I think they'd notice if the geeks were to put their money where their outrage was.
This guy would also defend "No jews allowed" or "Whites only" on private businesses. The dream he chases? I want none of it.
Perhaps you're right - I don't know the "guy". But from reading his post (to which you replied) I didn't get that he racist or bigoted, only that he was mistaken about what censorship is, and that he was claiming that a company can constrain what it sells in America.
Perhaps you're right that he's a Right Winger, but then I don't get that from his post. Perhaps he is an Independent?
I'm still interested in the legal ramifications of Amazon removing purchases titles from Kindles....
I'd be interested in possible criminal charges for removing purchased titles from a Kindle, but refraining to continue to sell a published work doesn't fit your definition of censorship either.
They're a for-profit company, everyone - remember? Their bottom line is most certainly profit. They don't follow the same Prime Directive that geeks do - they just sell us books cheaper.
Most other large book sellers also sell books online. Vote with your dollars.
This is hilarious. I've found elevators where the buttons seems to work and the door seems to shut quickly after I press the button. In other elevators, I've concluded that the button was broken - because I'm not cynical enough to expect that the button would be a placebo.
Or, the "don't smash the elevator panel, just press the button" psychology.
And instead of just taking the "attributed" reason they bothered to do some work and report on what they suspect is the actual physical/chemical cause rather than just a catch-all "disorder". Since that helps with trying to reduce the problem.
Why didn't you do that sometime in the last 20 years if it was so damn obvious?
Instead of taking the "attributed" value of G in physics, we can keep re-testing it every few years just to ensure that we keep science alive - but I won't call it "News" when that's done.
I stopped doing Chemistry 20 years ago, when I started doing Computer Science.
They'll wind up increasing entropy in the process of trying to avoid it [but you may have had to take CHM 102 for that...]
It's cheaper both in terms of money and entropy to recycle the battery instead of trying to slow down the molecular rearrangement into a permanent lower energy state.
Thanks for ths easy questions. Next time try some of Dr. Tantrum's "Elixer for Polite Discourse" before you post.
But if they wanted to get research grants instead of doing "real work", then they did a great job.
This is news? Chemists have known of this issue with all chemical batteries for as far back as chemists have been involved with batteries. It gets attributed to Entropy. And this was taught in Chemistry 10120 years ago.
Chemistry 101 - the one-semester everyone who is not a science major wants to take. The easy class that got shrugged at by non-chemistry majors.
20 years go - it's probably being taught in High School these days.
Not just outdated, ridiculously outdated "news".
"This just in - scientists use vacuum tunnel and state of the art electronics to detect that gravity accelerates two different masses - at the same rate!!" [NB - sarcasm]
I think that Stroustrup's point was that those skills are the baseline, not an advanced level.
As a nit-pick (for precision, not to really nit-pick), "Software engineering" is more about process than about writing good code. The practical use of SE seems to be "If we use process then the result has to be good! After all, it works in other engineering disciplines!" It's a naive point of view, since "other engineering disciplines" which are "hard sciences" all share a single concept - that their "engineering" discipline (their science) can be modeled with math, and that all of their engineers learn that math.
How many programmers understand what an invariant is? Or how to program to a contract? [Yes, I repeat myself.]
And when it comes to C++ [My personal LOC - please no flame wars], how many know that a class should represent a (mathematical) group?
Or for any programmer, that their types should be an algebra?
So yeah, education is important, but seeing the math of our discipline is a bare minimum for helping CS be treated and understood as an engineering discipline.
And for code which comes from people who don't understand that... well how can we trust it to be flawless?
Yes, flawless is possible. It does require a level of discipline that is... hard [VERY hard] to achieve without the math.
"Do you think education is the answer to developing better software and that somehow we get out from the 'we must do it first no matter how buggy it is' way of thinking?"
BS:
"Education is part the answer, an essential part, but 'education' itself is not a solution. We need an education for software developers that combine principles from science and engineering with practical skills. Most likely, we will need several specializations, hopefully with a common base. Unfortunately, I am not at all sure that the fields of computer science, software engineering, IT, whatever, are mature enough to agree on such a principled common base and specialisations. I also suspect that such a degree would be a master's rather than a bachelor's.
Currently, we have another problem: students often leave educational establishments with a set of skills that are seriously misaligned to what the industry needs. We can argue that maybe industry should ask for something different, but there is a lot of hasty re-training and un-learning going on at the handover from education to industry. I think this is really bad for both sides. It discourages industry from relying on more than basic skills and puts an emphasis on tools and techniques that can be used by relatively unskilled labour. Students know that and therefore pay less attention to higher-level skills and some of the best students chose what they perceive as more challenging fields, such as physics and biology.
Perhaps his decades of experience in not only teaching, but writing software will get your ear in a way that my decades of experience in both writing, evaluating, and teaching software hasn't.
I only said, "software shouldn't be puked out by just anyone". I didn't say anything about certifying code, or implanting a chip in your goat, or anything else.
But for one, I'm tired of the crap code pumped out by the masses, which then leads to an easy exploit and - unlike this joke - can lead to real problems.
As funny as this could be, I certainly wouldn't want people to see these things coming from me.
Of course, I don't USE twitter.
Any un-protected protocol is a viable route for hacking, and a single vulnerability can allow someone to do whatever they want with your computer. Is it so ridiculous to suggest that software shouldn't just be puked out by anyone that can type?
Those ought to explain why he could easily send money from the government to anywhere without caring about the plight of the people he's sending money to: He wants to weaken America. The fastest way to do that is to weaken our economy further by spending massive amounts of what we don't have to spend and by getting massive amounts of people to believe they are Entitled to "free money".
Remember - as intelligent and nice as President Obama is, he drew his dreams and values from his father. While that's commendable, his father regarded America as a country whose wealth was drawn from the rest of the world' poor. President Obama's father also felt it was appropriate to drain America's wealth so it could be redistributed entirely to the poor - not just a "little equalization".
And those dreams and thoughts are what drive our President.
Full Disclosure - I didn't vote for him, and I'm an Independent.
First, I'm no fan of software patents or patenting "ideas". Patents on device implementations have a purpose, but not code.
Second, I think the USPTO does issue many patents on things which should never receive them.
Third, I hate witch-hunts, which seems to be the prevailing attitude towards the USPTO.
Does anyone besides me know how hard it is to do a patent search on a technology you don't understand, with only a limited time to do it (because they have a LOT of applications that need answering) with a small staff?
These are people you're demonizing - instead of doing that (which is intellectually dishonest and beneath you), you might try to actually think about how hard it is to get the job done for every ridiculous patent on a "free energy" machine, or how hard it can be to apply your expert knowledge of one area to a very detailed patent on an area you've never even heard of. [Am I the only one who realizes that there are thousands of areas of knowledge and certainly less than one USPTO patent researcher per fifty areas?
Perhaps I'm just getting old, but I think there's too many opinions - without reasoning - being voiced against the people at the USPTO, when we should be ticked off that there are so many useless applications with too few people to understand them. [I doubt there are too many software engineers there, or we'd never have had this stupid software patent issue to contend with.]
Ok - for better or worse, the U.S. government has to allow you to sue them.
Also - the job of the USPTO is to issue (or not) patents. This means that the USPTO and onlyauthority to issue patents. So - you can't sue them just because they did their job [regardless of whether or not you agree with the execution of their duties].
No, not unless there was a clause in the contract. Even crazy-sounding clauses, like "we'll give you a free soda every Friday for 3 years" can be put into a contract - as long as a law doesn't exist to invalidate it. And since they had a patent, the license could have been a legal contract - but was moot once the patent was overturned.
So if you invest in a company and the directors (or employees) get the company sued, then you are held responsible for their actions?
Not only will it never happen, but it's an entirely invalid line of reasoning. Just because I give Coca-Cola [or other company] money in good faith and they break the law... I should not be punished for it.
However - if a CEO or board member or employee knows about and approves of criminal behavior, then they are [in the U.S.] held responsible [at least in part] for the evil done.
I think that such a suit would lose badly - since it would require that C2 did something illegal to get each company to sign on as a "licensee", or that C2 did not at that time have a patent [they did].
Of course, now that it is invalidated, if C2 continues to push people to license their patent... then they could run afoul of a lawsuit.
That would be true - but in this case the predatory company was using the threat of a patent lawsuit to get companies to "license" their patent. The courts didn't have to be involved in a way that could be overturned.
IANAL, but I would think that if company A coerces company B into leasing rights to use a patented idea... then the contract would probably have a "too bad sucker" clause in it for just this possibility.
In other words: the contract would either specify the answer and preclude a lawsuit, or it would (foolishly) leave the issue unanswered which might encourage the suit.
Of course, even if companies sued and won the money back, they'd probably never see a penny - the company likely paid out all of its money to employees and/or stockholders. And you can't really sue them.
Slashdot Mirror
And if all people did that, then it'd be a far better poll of what people believe in than any agenda-driven poll.
Unfortunately, geeks are a small sample set of the world's population.
And worse, the world's bulk of people don't really know what they believe in.
"Paleface"?? A racist comment coupled with an assumption?
While I don't read or write Cherokee, my ancestry goes right through that tribe, and through the Trail of Tears, and most of my relatives still live within a few hours of Talequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation.
Hypocrisy is often ironic.
No such assumption - I used the term "where their outrage was".
If there is no outrage, then that is an empty set, and there's no call to action.
I much rather have state censorship. The state can be voted out. Amazon can not.
I know it's not much, but I vote with my money. If company X enters into a behavior I find horrible, I stop doing business with them.
In fact, Conservative Christians have done with for the past few years, and it seems to work for them. (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/15/usa.mcdonalds and http://www.afa.net/Detail.aspx?id=2147483663)
Why not try it with Amazon? I think they'd notice if the geeks were to put their money where their outrage was.
This guy would also defend "No jews allowed" or "Whites only" on private businesses. The dream he chases? I want none of it.
Perhaps you're right - I don't know the "guy". But from reading his post (to which you replied) I didn't get that he racist or bigoted, only that he was mistaken about what censorship is, and that he was claiming that a company can constrain what it sells in America.
Perhaps you're right that he's a Right Winger, but then I don't get that from his post. Perhaps he is an Independent?
I'm still interested in the legal ramifications of Amazon removing purchases titles from Kindles....
Is Amazon a publisher now?
I'd be interested in possible criminal charges for removing purchased titles from a Kindle, but refraining to continue to sell a published work doesn't fit your definition of censorship either.
They're a for-profit company, everyone - remember? Their bottom line is most certainly profit. They don't follow the same Prime Directive that geeks do - they just sell us books cheaper.
Most other large book sellers also sell books online. Vote with your dollars.
Or, the "don't smash the elevator panel, just press the button" psychology.
Communication is a muddled action.
I never said it wasn't "science". I said it wasn't "news".
Have you actually read TFA?
Have you known the exact same information in TFA for 20+ years?
I can say "yes" to both. So I have the background and knowledge to opine: It ain't "News".
If in work I come across a "proof" as weak as the empty rhetoric found in these comments, I normally just let the person embarrass themselves.
But in slashdot, no one can admit their ignorance.... [in space, no one can ...]
But there are those for whom it was absolutely needed.
And instead of just taking the "attributed" reason they bothered to do some work and report on what they suspect is the actual physical/chemical cause rather than just a catch-all "disorder". Since that helps with trying to reduce the problem.
Why didn't you do that sometime in the last 20 years if it was so damn obvious?
Thanks for ths easy questions. Next time try some of Dr. Tantrum's "Elixer for Polite Discourse" before you post.
But if they wanted to get research grants instead of doing "real work", then they did a great job.
This is news? Chemists have known of this issue with all chemical batteries for as far back as chemists have been involved with batteries. It gets attributed to Entropy. And this was taught in Chemistry 101 20 years ago.
Not just outdated, ridiculously outdated "news".
"This just in - scientists use vacuum tunnel and state of the art electronics to detect that gravity accelerates two different masses - at the same rate!!" [NB - sarcasm]
As a nit-pick (for precision, not to really nit-pick), "Software engineering" is more about process than about writing good code. The practical use of SE seems to be "If we use process then the result has to be good! After all, it works in other engineering disciplines!" It's a naive point of view, since "other engineering disciplines" which are "hard sciences" all share a single concept - that their "engineering" discipline (their science) can be modeled with math, and that all of their engineers learn that math.
How many programmers understand what an invariant is? Or how to program to a contract? [Yes, I repeat myself.]
And when it comes to C++ [My personal LOC - please no flame wars], how many know that a class should represent a (mathematical) group?
Or for any programmer, that their types should be an algebra?
So yeah, education is important, but seeing the math of our discipline is a bare minimum for helping CS be treated and understood as an engineering discipline.
And for code which comes from people who don't understand that... well how can we trust it to be flawless?
Yes, flawless is possible. It does require a level of discipline that is ... hard [VERY hard] to achieve without the math.
Perhaps his decades of experience in not only teaching, but writing software will get your ear in a way that my decades of experience in both writing, evaluating, and teaching software hasn't.
Rather than show you my resume, I'll merely point out that Proof-by-ad-hominem is not a valid method of proof.
Ah - proof by insinuation.
Note that in my post I didn't ask for anything.
I only said, "software shouldn't be puked out by just anyone". I didn't say anything about certifying code, or implanting a chip in your goat, or anything else.
But for one, I'm tired of the crap code pumped out by the masses, which then leads to an easy exploit and - unlike this joke - can lead to real problems.
As funny as this could be, I certainly wouldn't want people to see these things coming from me.
Of course, I don't USE twitter.
Any un-protected protocol is a viable route for hacking, and a single vulnerability can allow someone to do whatever they want with your computer. Is it so ridiculous to suggest that software shouldn't just be puked out by anyone that can type?
The Forbes article that first (AFAIK) broke the story at a national level. Not a happy-day sort of read.
President Obama's Father's Socialism
An article on Cloward-Piven Strategy
Another Cloward-Piven article
Those ought to explain why he could easily send money from the government to anywhere without caring about the plight of the people he's sending money to: He wants to weaken America. The fastest way to do that is to weaken our economy further by spending massive amounts of what we don't have to spend and by getting massive amounts of people to believe they are Entitled to "free money".
Remember - as intelligent and nice as President Obama is, he drew his dreams and values from his father. While that's commendable, his father regarded America as a country whose wealth was drawn from the rest of the world' poor. President Obama's father also felt it was appropriate to drain America's wealth so it could be redistributed entirely to the poor - not just a "little equalization".
And those dreams and thoughts are what drive our President.
Full Disclosure - I didn't vote for him, and I'm an Independent.
Ok, let's get three things straight:
First, I'm no fan of software patents or patenting "ideas". Patents on device implementations have a purpose, but not code.
Second, I think the USPTO does issue many patents on things which should never receive them.
Third, I hate witch-hunts, which seems to be the prevailing attitude towards the USPTO.
Does anyone besides me know how hard it is to do a patent search on a technology you don't understand, with only a limited time to do it (because they have a LOT of applications that need answering) with a small staff?
These are people you're demonizing - instead of doing that (which is intellectually dishonest and beneath you), you might try to actually think about how hard it is to get the job done for every ridiculous patent on a "free energy" machine, or how hard it can be to apply your expert knowledge of one area to a very detailed patent on an area you've never even heard of. [Am I the only one who realizes that there are thousands of areas of knowledge and certainly less than one USPTO patent researcher per fifty areas?
Perhaps I'm just getting old, but I think there's too many opinions - without reasoning - being voiced against the people at the USPTO, when we should be ticked off that there are so many useless applications with too few people to understand them. [I doubt there are too many software engineers there, or we'd never have had this stupid software patent issue to contend with.]
And that's the last I have to say in this topic.
Ok - for better or worse, the U.S. government has to allow you to sue them.
Also - the job of the USPTO is to issue (or not) patents. This means that the USPTO and onlyauthority to issue patents. So - you can't sue them just because they did their job [regardless of whether or not you agree with the execution of their duties].
Oh, the sue-happy masses.
No, not unless there was a clause in the contract. Even crazy-sounding clauses, like "we'll give you a free soda every Friday for 3 years" can be put into a contract - as long as a law doesn't exist to invalidate it. And since they had a patent, the license could have been a legal contract - but was moot once the patent was overturned.
IA(still)NAL...
So if you invest in a company and the directors (or employees) get the company sued, then you are held responsible for their actions?
Not only will it never happen, but it's an entirely invalid line of reasoning. Just because I give Coca-Cola [or other company] money in good faith and they break the law... I should not be punished for it.
However - if a CEO or board member or employee knows about and approves of criminal behavior, then they are [in the U.S.] held responsible [at least in part] for the evil done.
IANAL....
I think that such a suit would lose badly - since it would require that C2 did something illegal to get each company to sign on as a "licensee", or that C2 did not at that time have a patent [they did].
Of course, now that it is invalidated, if C2 continues to push people to license their patent... then they could run afoul of a lawsuit.
That would be true - but in this case the predatory company was using the threat of a patent lawsuit to get companies to "license" their patent. The courts didn't have to be involved in a way that could be overturned.
IANAL, but I would think that if company A coerces company B into leasing rights to use a patented idea... then the contract would probably have a "too bad sucker" clause in it for just this possibility.
In other words: the contract would either specify the answer and preclude a lawsuit, or it would (foolishly) leave the issue unanswered which might encourage the suit.
Of course, even if companies sued and won the money back, they'd probably never see a penny - the company likely paid out all of its money to employees and/or stockholders. And you can't really sue them.
Perhaps this will allow the Free VoIP providers to expand without having to worry about Death By Lawyer. Now where's my FIOS?