There are 300 million people in the US. How long do you think 20 million deer will feed them? Of course, short of an incredibly major disaster, all 300 million of them won't simultaneously be needing the deer, but by the same token not all 20 million deer are going to available to the subset who do. "Oh, but my area has a low population density!" Great, that just means that statistically you're even more likely to get competition. Most like a much larger percentage of your neighbors have guns and no how to hunt.
Interesting. I just scoped out the user manual for both the Android and iPhone versions of the Audible app, and they are significantly different. The Android version appears to download a standard (encrypted I think).aac file and will let you download it over the cell network, at least partially, becasue it buffers the download. So you start downloading and can listen pretty soon thereafter once the app buffers enough of the content to keep you streaming. The iPhone version can play those standard.aac files (if you downloaded them to a computer or something then synced to the phone), but if you download directly to the phone you get a different type of file. The iPhone version is aware that you're playing an audiobook and has tags for chapters, bookmarks, and sections. It also cannot be buffered apparently. Of course it also requires wifi to download files larger than 20MB. Both appear to have advantages, I'm not sure which model I like better.
They're trying to correct this, but they have a long history of grandfathering services that they're having a hard time getting away from. We upgraded my wife's 3G to a 4 a couple months ago, and even though the 4 is supposed to have a 4GB limit on downloads, they just grandfathered her old plan to keep us happy. I seriously doubt she uses 4 GB of data a month and I went in perfectly willing to change to the "new" plan, but I wasn't going to turn them down when they said I could keep the old one either. I'm also still on my old SGI sponsored voice plan that costs me about $15 a month less than any of the newer ones. Not only do I not work for SGI anymore, the company, as such, doesn't even exist.
A lot of apps helpfully make it easier for them too. It's not deliberate, they're trying to avoid consumer dissatisfaction with their service, but very few apps will download large files over the cellular network. Just bought a new audiobook from Audible, but I can't download it until I get to a wifi hotspot. The Audible app won't DL files larger than 20MB over the cell network. I'm fairly sure that Audible isn't in collusion with AT&T, they just don't want people to get crappy download speeds and/or data charges and blame their app. As a consequence though, people rarely download very large files over the cell network unless they're tethered.
Yes, but the legislator in question is a believer in Intelligent Design, he doesn't actually know any blacks or gays. Surely you can see the issue here?
To be fair, this whole thing is once again a tempest in a teapot. This is a law *proposed* by a member of a state's Legislature. It hasn't passed committee, let alone been through the full House, full Legislature, or passed into law. Some nutcase in North Carolina recently proposed that women who suffer miscarriages be investigated for "prenatal murder". I'm sure that law is on the fast track to passage, lemme tell ya. Now this is Texas we're talking about, so there's at least a small chance of this getting through (sorry to my Texas friends, but your state Republican Party makes Rush Limbaugh look a bit leftist), but let's wait till it actually does before we totally lose our collective minds.
That's like saying you have no respect for a cop that sacrifices himself to rescue people in a hostage situation, becasue the government should have prevented the crime in the first place. It may be true that the events should never have happened, but that doesn't take away from the courage and sacrifice of those on the pointy end of the stick when it does. It's not the workers fault that the plant wasn't up to spec (although even that is arguable, no one was really expecting an earthquake of this magnitude), but it's their choice to put their lives and future health on the line to contain the damage. It's the kind of courage most of us would like to think we have, though thankfully few of us will ever be so tested.
Now see, I actually like that about the iPhone (and I believe also the default Android) web browser. The way Opera and the default web browser on my Treo both did it was to try to wrap everything to the screen size. It made most sites look awful and poor attempts to wrap around (undersized to the point of near invisibility) graphics often made things hard to read besides. Render the site the way it's meant to be rendered and I'll zoom in and scroll. If I want to look at the graphics I can zoom them trivially too. Different strokes I guess. I've fount both the default Android and iPhone browsers both make me much happier. I do agree about the zoom on forms, it's one of my few annoyances with iOS Safari.
I'll be charitable and assume he was worried about Tsunamis? I mean, it'd be night impossible for an Earthquake in Japan to generate a Tsunami capable of getting to India (becasue of land masses in the way, not distance), but if you weren't really thinking you might just think about the 2005 Tsunami and get worried.
In Europe? I know people in California (who are idiots) are buying up Potassium-iodine pills, but at least they have some sort of vaguely reasonable fears. The trade winds out of Japan do more or less blow to California. It would take more nuclear material than is in any ten power plants have to create a radiation threat thousands of miles away, but at least they mostly have the wind patterns right. How could there possibly be a threat in Europe?
Yes, it is. We never signed any international treaty which forbade us from invading Iraq. No treaty or convention was nullified, no international agreement breached. Was it wrong to do it? Maybe. Saddam was an asshole who murdered a ton of his own people to maintain a stranglehold on power. On the other hand, if that's our criteria for invasion we need a much bigger Army. Should we have waited for a UN mandate? I think so, sadly no one asked me. Was it illegal? Not by any national law or International agreement I am aware of.
Most of these sites are a pretty big MWR resource for deployed troops, they'll likely restore access after the crisis. They've blocked and unblocked sites on a bandwidth and use basis for years. I couldn't get to LiveJournal for two weeks on three occasions when I was in Iraq in 2005 becasue they had some bandwidth constraint or other. It always came back after the constraint lifted.
That's his point. If you go to a site with an embedded video, *you* may not realize that you're watching youtube, but the network does and helpfully blocks it prevent you from inadvertently breaking the rules. If there were just rule in place that says "Don't watch youtube videos," Private Joe might spend all day breaking the rules without even realizing it. Hence blocking is more effective than merely asking, even if everyone involved legitimately wants to comply.
Failure to obey a lawful order is a crime and a violation of oath. The order to deploy is a lawful order. "Go kill that civilian" is not a lawful order and you'd have a case if any significant numbers of troops were being given or obeying such an order. It's also worth pointing out that most (for a very high value of most) of the 100K civilian casualties have not been caused by US troops. Accidents do happen in combat and they are both tragic and rigorously investigated when they do, but something like 90% of the civilians casualties have been caused by someone else.
MWR (Morale, Welfare, ad Recreation). Since most military network decisions are service wide, the military has been fairly lenient in allowing access to "fun" sites as an MWR resource for soldiers deployed in places where they don't have a lot of civilian Internet access (Mostly Middle Eastern areas, but there's other smaller deployment location with limited access). I was in Iraq 5 years ago before Facebook and the like exploded, but LiveJournal was one of the big ways I kept in touch with people.
You consider it important. I consider it mildly convenient. The vast majority of people don't care. Perhaps I was a bit overenthusiastic in trying to make a point. I *like* open source software. I use quite a bit of it. I was pretty extensively involved in the development of the Samba fork about ten years ago (TNG I think they called it). I'm not knocking the concept, but for most people it doesn't matter. What they're sold in binary form is mostly good, and when it isn't there's nearly always another binary out there that is.
In any event you're approaching this from an "Open Source" perspective. Practically you're advocating the same thing as Stallman, philosophically you're not. Overall I think the arguments for Open Source are much more practical and realistic. I wouldn't go as far as to say I see eye to eye with ESR, but I'm much more inclined to buy what he's selling than RMS.
Meh, It's not a bad stout. There are better, in Ireland, England, or the States (probably other places too, but those are the ones I've had stout in ), but it's got the advantage of being both fairly decent and readily available in a lot of places. In the US particularly it's a very common "nod" to better quality beer in places that otherwise have only crap. It and Sam Adams Lager are two beers that one can often find in places that otherwise only serve Budweiser and Miller Macro brew stuff. If I'm in a place that has lots of good beer, Guinness falls pretty low on my list (though its low alcohol content can make it a better choice later in the evening), but if I'm with friends at a less choosy sports bar or something It's often a nice choice.
Except Red Hat probably isn't even the primary (theoretical) infringer here. Red Hat mostly aggregates other projects into their "OS" package. They were sued becasue they have money, not because were the author of the infringing code. Most likely Red Hat not only saved themselves some bucks, they also kept some patent troll from destroying a piece of the FOSS ecosystem.
This is actually an interesting and valid point. I may have rethink my view of Stallman to some extent. None the less one must continue to argue against the hardliners on either side to keep the debate mostly in the middle.
Settlement != loss in court. Let's pretend we're companies. I'm an Open Source company and I'm using some tech you claim to have patented. You sue me. I have two possible responses. Fight you and risk losing, or settle with you. You offer me the following terms: Pay me some relatively trivial amount of money, and I will make a legally binding promise that I will never sue you or anyone involved in using this tech again. So basically, for less money that it would cost me to fight you I not only get you to go away, but promise to stay away. From a legal and financial point of view this is as good or better than winning the case. Why wouldn't I do it? Especially if your claim has any merit at all and I feel I might have any chance of losing?
Yes, the best compromise is one in which neither side is happy. 99.99% of the population is unable or unwilling to use a computer the way Stallman uses a computer. The Freedom provided to them by the availability of source is largely immaterial to them. They can't read it, and don't really want to be able to. They don't mind giving up that Freedom in exchange for usable, useful software. Even those of us who can read and understand the source code can find value in giving up the right to do so in exchange for better, more useful, or more fun software. Even as someone who can write, understand, and modify source code, and someone who often uses OSS software; I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually modified someone else's code before using the their software. On each of those occasions I'd have been just as happy if I'd just been given a binary blob that hadn't required it.
That said, if Stallman (or you for that matter) wants to use exclusively Free software I have no problem with it. I've made my choice to use a combination of OSS and commercial software depending on what works better. He's made his choice to use exclusively Free software regardless of what works better. Both are valid choices for an individual to make. My problem with Stallman is that he actually wants to remove that choice. He wants to free me by process of removing my choice to be non-free. I'd be just unhappy with a proprietary software company trying to take away my right an ability to use Free software.
Stallman's answer to that would be "It's doesn't matter". He has regularly and without the least sense of irony said that he would always rather use "worse" Free Software than "better" closed software. This is fine in my opinion, it's his computer and he can put whatever he likes on it. The telling bit is here: "The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem." As soon as one side of the debate has labeled the other side "evil", the entire concept of "debate" is becoming worthless. This is the problem with Stallman as an advocate. He's got no shades of gray. Fanatics make terrible representatives for a cause, because in a world with billions of people, the chance to get even part of what you want, without some sorts of compromise, is non-existent.
Some would argue "Well that's silly, obviously he's gotten some of what he wants look how popular certain free software projects are." I'd argue that this has happened largely in spite of Stallman, not becasue of him. It's only since guys like Eric Raymond started the more compromise oriented "Open Source" philosophy (strange to think of ESR as a compromiser, but by comparison he is), and guys like Torvalds have written popular FOSS software in a non-political way; that FOSS has started getting traction.
As as side note, Stallman could care less about the lack of a VS equivalent; or whether or not Eclipse is worse, comparable, or better than VS. If you ever read him describe how he uses a computer, it more or less froze in the 1970s. He uses almost exclusively text and terminal based tools. Last I heard he doesn't even use the internet beyond FTP (for posting the stuff he writes), mail, and USENET; and he get the mail and USENET from a periodic UUCP connection.
8 ounces of broccoli is always exactly the same amount of broccoli no matter how finely or roughly it's chopped. A cup of broccoli is a significantly different amount depending on on how finely or roughly it's chopped. It's rarely a problem in recipes if your "finely chopped" is slightly coarser than the recipe author's "finely chopped"; but it's a pretty significant problem if you're using half as much broccoli as the author intended. Hence if you use weights rather than volume you are less likely to screw up the recipe.
Vegetables are the worst offenders in my opinion. Terms like "chop finely" or "chop roughly" are somewhat subjective, and changing the grain of your chop can have a *huge* impact on the volume of vegetables in a recipe. Especially stuff like broccoli or cauliflower, where florets occupy a large volume, but have a low density. I much, much prefer recipes that use weight rather than volume for measurement. I'm not too chuffed whether the weight is metric or imperial, my digital scale switches between them trivially.
Assuming that there's any accuracy at all to the stories in the Bible (a big assumption I'll grant you) he was likely literate. He's often called "Rabbi" in the text and has a much greater understanding of the Torah and supporting literature than an illiterate man would be likely to have. Joseph is typically portrayed as a very prosperous carpenter, and a leader in his community. The whole bit with the manger wasn't becasue they couldn't afford a better room, there just weren't any available. Part of the reason it's considered so odd that he makes friends with fisherman, thieves, and laborers is becasue he wasn't one himself.
And you find these people via brain scans? You look at people and telepathically determine that this guy over here has no degrees or certifications becasue he's been too busy being awesome to get them, while this other bunch is just lazy and didn't bother? Degrees, certifications, experience, none of them are guarantees of a knowledgeable or capable employee, but they are indications of training and examination at some level by some outside authority.
Of course we all value the brilliant self starter that figures out everything and gets results with little or no outside help, but finding that person without either knowing them ahead of time or spending an inordinate amount of time evaluating each candidate is impossible. You pick the person with the best paper identity and hope they're also a brilliant self starter. Every time the topic of education comes up on Slashdot you get the "Education is useless, becasue the best people are self taught geniuses" contingent. No one is denying that there aren't smart and capable people out there who lack a formal education; but there's no way for me, as a hiring manager or HR drone, to differentiate that guy from the dozens of other people who also lack formal education and would be utterly inappropriate for the job.
If you're a brilliant self starter it shouldn't be that difficult for you to see the value of a piece of paper certifying your base level of skill and knowledge, nor for you to acquire such a thing.
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There are 300 million people in the US. How long do you think 20 million deer will feed them? Of course, short of an incredibly major disaster, all 300 million of them won't simultaneously be needing the deer, but by the same token not all 20 million deer are going to available to the subset who do. "Oh, but my area has a low population density!" Great, that just means that statistically you're even more likely to get competition. Most like a much larger percentage of your neighbors have guns and no how to hunt.
Interesting. I just scoped out the user manual for both the Android and iPhone versions of the Audible app, and they are significantly different. The Android version appears to download a standard (encrypted I think) .aac file and will let you download it over the cell network, at least partially, becasue it buffers the download. So you start downloading and can listen pretty soon thereafter once the app buffers enough of the content to keep you streaming. The iPhone version can play those standard .aac files (if you downloaded them to a computer or something then synced to the phone), but if you download directly to the phone you get a different type of file. The iPhone version is aware that you're playing an audiobook and has tags for chapters, bookmarks, and sections. It also cannot be buffered apparently. Of course it also requires wifi to download files larger than 20MB. Both appear to have advantages, I'm not sure which model I like better.
They're trying to correct this, but they have a long history of grandfathering services that they're having a hard time getting away from. We upgraded my wife's 3G to a 4 a couple months ago, and even though the 4 is supposed to have a 4GB limit on downloads, they just grandfathered her old plan to keep us happy. I seriously doubt she uses 4 GB of data a month and I went in perfectly willing to change to the "new" plan, but I wasn't going to turn them down when they said I could keep the old one either. I'm also still on my old SGI sponsored voice plan that costs me about $15 a month less than any of the newer ones. Not only do I not work for SGI anymore, the company, as such, doesn't even exist.
A lot of apps helpfully make it easier for them too. It's not deliberate, they're trying to avoid consumer dissatisfaction with their service, but very few apps will download large files over the cellular network. Just bought a new audiobook from Audible, but I can't download it until I get to a wifi hotspot. The Audible app won't DL files larger than 20MB over the cell network. I'm fairly sure that Audible isn't in collusion with AT&T, they just don't want people to get crappy download speeds and/or data charges and blame their app. As a consequence though, people rarely download very large files over the cell network unless they're tethered.
Yes, but the legislator in question is a believer in Intelligent Design, he doesn't actually know any blacks or gays. Surely you can see the issue here?
To be fair, this whole thing is once again a tempest in a teapot. This is a law *proposed* by a member of a state's Legislature. It hasn't passed committee, let alone been through the full House, full Legislature, or passed into law. Some nutcase in North Carolina recently proposed that women who suffer miscarriages be investigated for "prenatal murder". I'm sure that law is on the fast track to passage, lemme tell ya. Now this is Texas we're talking about, so there's at least a small chance of this getting through (sorry to my Texas friends, but your state Republican Party makes Rush Limbaugh look a bit leftist), but let's wait till it actually does before we totally lose our collective minds.
That's like saying you have no respect for a cop that sacrifices himself to rescue people in a hostage situation, becasue the government should have prevented the crime in the first place. It may be true that the events should never have happened, but that doesn't take away from the courage and sacrifice of those on the pointy end of the stick when it does. It's not the workers fault that the plant wasn't up to spec (although even that is arguable, no one was really expecting an earthquake of this magnitude), but it's their choice to put their lives and future health on the line to contain the damage. It's the kind of courage most of us would like to think we have, though thankfully few of us will ever be so tested.
Now see, I actually like that about the iPhone (and I believe also the default Android) web browser. The way Opera and the default web browser on my Treo both did it was to try to wrap everything to the screen size. It made most sites look awful and poor attempts to wrap around (undersized to the point of near invisibility) graphics often made things hard to read besides. Render the site the way it's meant to be rendered and I'll zoom in and scroll. If I want to look at the graphics I can zoom them trivially too. Different strokes I guess. I've fount both the default Android and iPhone browsers both make me much happier. I do agree about the zoom on forms, it's one of my few annoyances with iOS Safari.
I'll be charitable and assume he was worried about Tsunamis? I mean, it'd be night impossible for an Earthquake in Japan to generate a Tsunami capable of getting to India (becasue of land masses in the way, not distance), but if you weren't really thinking you might just think about the 2005 Tsunami and get worried.
In Europe? I know people in California (who are idiots) are buying up Potassium-iodine pills, but at least they have some sort of vaguely reasonable fears. The trade winds out of Japan do more or less blow to California. It would take more nuclear material than is in any ten power plants have to create a radiation threat thousands of miles away, but at least they mostly have the wind patterns right. How could there possibly be a threat in Europe?
Yes, it is. We never signed any international treaty which forbade us from invading Iraq. No treaty or convention was nullified, no international agreement breached. Was it wrong to do it? Maybe. Saddam was an asshole who murdered a ton of his own people to maintain a stranglehold on power. On the other hand, if that's our criteria for invasion we need a much bigger Army. Should we have waited for a UN mandate? I think so, sadly no one asked me. Was it illegal? Not by any national law or International agreement I am aware of.
Most of these sites are a pretty big MWR resource for deployed troops, they'll likely restore access after the crisis. They've blocked and unblocked sites on a bandwidth and use basis for years. I couldn't get to LiveJournal for two weeks on three occasions when I was in Iraq in 2005 becasue they had some bandwidth constraint or other. It always came back after the constraint lifted.
That's his point. If you go to a site with an embedded video, *you* may not realize that you're watching youtube, but the network does and helpfully blocks it prevent you from inadvertently breaking the rules. If there were just rule in place that says "Don't watch youtube videos," Private Joe might spend all day breaking the rules without even realizing it. Hence blocking is more effective than merely asking, even if everyone involved legitimately wants to comply.
Failure to obey a lawful order is a crime and a violation of oath. The order to deploy is a lawful order. "Go kill that civilian" is not a lawful order and you'd have a case if any significant numbers of troops were being given or obeying such an order. It's also worth pointing out that most (for a very high value of most) of the 100K civilian casualties have not been caused by US troops. Accidents do happen in combat and they are both tragic and rigorously investigated when they do, but something like 90% of the civilians casualties have been caused by someone else.
MWR (Morale, Welfare, ad Recreation). Since most military network decisions are service wide, the military has been fairly lenient in allowing access to "fun" sites as an MWR resource for soldiers deployed in places where they don't have a lot of civilian Internet access (Mostly Middle Eastern areas, but there's other smaller deployment location with limited access). I was in Iraq 5 years ago before Facebook and the like exploded, but LiveJournal was one of the big ways I kept in touch with people.
You consider it important. I consider it mildly convenient. The vast majority of people don't care. Perhaps I was a bit overenthusiastic in trying to make a point. I *like* open source software. I use quite a bit of it. I was pretty extensively involved in the development of the Samba fork about ten years ago (TNG I think they called it). I'm not knocking the concept, but for most people it doesn't matter. What they're sold in binary form is mostly good, and when it isn't there's nearly always another binary out there that is.
In any event you're approaching this from an "Open Source" perspective. Practically you're advocating the same thing as Stallman, philosophically you're not. Overall I think the arguments for Open Source are much more practical and realistic. I wouldn't go as far as to say I see eye to eye with ESR, but I'm much more inclined to buy what he's selling than RMS.
Meh, It's not a bad stout. There are better, in Ireland, England, or the States (probably other places too, but those are the ones I've had stout in ), but it's got the advantage of being both fairly decent and readily available in a lot of places. In the US particularly it's a very common "nod" to better quality beer in places that otherwise have only crap. It and Sam Adams Lager are two beers that one can often find in places that otherwise only serve Budweiser and Miller Macro brew stuff. If I'm in a place that has lots of good beer, Guinness falls pretty low on my list (though its low alcohol content can make it a better choice later in the evening), but if I'm with friends at a less choosy sports bar or something It's often a nice choice.
Except Red Hat probably isn't even the primary (theoretical) infringer here. Red Hat mostly aggregates other projects into their "OS" package. They were sued becasue they have money, not because were the author of the infringing code. Most likely Red Hat not only saved themselves some bucks, they also kept some patent troll from destroying a piece of the FOSS ecosystem.
This is actually an interesting and valid point. I may have rethink my view of Stallman to some extent. None the less one must continue to argue against the hardliners on either side to keep the debate mostly in the middle.
Settlement != loss in court. Let's pretend we're companies. I'm an Open Source company and I'm using some tech you claim to have patented. You sue me. I have two possible responses. Fight you and risk losing, or settle with you. You offer me the following terms: Pay me some relatively trivial amount of money, and I will make a legally binding promise that I will never sue you or anyone involved in using this tech again. So basically, for less money that it would cost me to fight you I not only get you to go away, but promise to stay away. From a legal and financial point of view this is as good or better than winning the case. Why wouldn't I do it? Especially if your claim has any merit at all and I feel I might have any chance of losing?
Yes, the best compromise is one in which neither side is happy. 99.99% of the population is unable or unwilling to use a computer the way Stallman uses a computer. The Freedom provided to them by the availability of source is largely immaterial to them. They can't read it, and don't really want to be able to. They don't mind giving up that Freedom in exchange for usable, useful software. Even those of us who can read and understand the source code can find value in giving up the right to do so in exchange for better, more useful, or more fun software. Even as someone who can write, understand, and modify source code, and someone who often uses OSS software; I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually modified someone else's code before using the their software. On each of those occasions I'd have been just as happy if I'd just been given a binary blob that hadn't required it.
That said, if Stallman (or you for that matter) wants to use exclusively Free software I have no problem with it. I've made my choice to use a combination of OSS and commercial software depending on what works better. He's made his choice to use exclusively Free software regardless of what works better. Both are valid choices for an individual to make. My problem with Stallman is that he actually wants to remove that choice. He wants to free me by process of removing my choice to be non-free. I'd be just unhappy with a proprietary software company trying to take away my right an ability to use Free software.
Stallman's answer to that would be "It's doesn't matter". He has regularly and without the least sense of irony said that he would always rather use "worse" Free Software than "better" closed software. This is fine in my opinion, it's his computer and he can put whatever he likes on it. The telling bit is here: "The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem." As soon as one side of the debate has labeled the other side "evil", the entire concept of "debate" is becoming worthless. This is the problem with Stallman as an advocate. He's got no shades of gray. Fanatics make terrible representatives for a cause, because in a world with billions of people, the chance to get even part of what you want, without some sorts of compromise, is non-existent.
Some would argue "Well that's silly, obviously he's gotten some of what he wants look how popular certain free software projects are." I'd argue that this has happened largely in spite of Stallman, not becasue of him. It's only since guys like Eric Raymond started the more compromise oriented "Open Source" philosophy (strange to think of ESR as a compromiser, but by comparison he is), and guys like Torvalds have written popular FOSS software in a non-political way; that FOSS has started getting traction.
As as side note, Stallman could care less about the lack of a VS equivalent; or whether or not Eclipse is worse, comparable, or better than VS. If you ever read him describe how he uses a computer, it more or less froze in the 1970s. He uses almost exclusively text and terminal based tools. Last I heard he doesn't even use the internet beyond FTP (for posting the stuff he writes), mail, and USENET; and he get the mail and USENET from a periodic UUCP connection.
8 ounces of broccoli is always exactly the same amount of broccoli no matter how finely or roughly it's chopped. A cup of broccoli is a significantly different amount depending on on how finely or roughly it's chopped. It's rarely a problem in recipes if your "finely chopped" is slightly coarser than the recipe author's "finely chopped"; but it's a pretty significant problem if you're using half as much broccoli as the author intended. Hence if you use weights rather than volume you are less likely to screw up the recipe.
Vegetables are the worst offenders in my opinion. Terms like "chop finely" or "chop roughly" are somewhat subjective, and changing the grain of your chop can have a *huge* impact on the volume of vegetables in a recipe. Especially stuff like broccoli or cauliflower, where florets occupy a large volume, but have a low density. I much, much prefer recipes that use weight rather than volume for measurement. I'm not too chuffed whether the weight is metric or imperial, my digital scale switches between them trivially.
Assuming that there's any accuracy at all to the stories in the Bible (a big assumption I'll grant you) he was likely literate. He's often called "Rabbi" in the text and has a much greater understanding of the Torah and supporting literature than an illiterate man would be likely to have. Joseph is typically portrayed as a very prosperous carpenter, and a leader in his community. The whole bit with the manger wasn't becasue they couldn't afford a better room, there just weren't any available. Part of the reason it's considered so odd that he makes friends with fisherman, thieves, and laborers is becasue he wasn't one himself.
And you find these people via brain scans? You look at people and telepathically determine that this guy over here has no degrees or certifications becasue he's been too busy being awesome to get them, while this other bunch is just lazy and didn't bother? Degrees, certifications, experience, none of them are guarantees of a knowledgeable or capable employee, but they are indications of training and examination at some level by some outside authority.
Of course we all value the brilliant self starter that figures out everything and gets results with little or no outside help, but finding that person without either knowing them ahead of time or spending an inordinate amount of time evaluating each candidate is impossible. You pick the person with the best paper identity and hope they're also a brilliant self starter. Every time the topic of education comes up on Slashdot you get the "Education is useless, becasue the best people are self taught geniuses" contingent. No one is denying that there aren't smart and capable people out there who lack a formal education; but there's no way for me, as a hiring manager or HR drone, to differentiate that guy from the dozens of other people who also lack formal education and would be utterly inappropriate for the job.
If you're a brilliant self starter it shouldn't be that difficult for you to see the value of a piece of paper certifying your base level of skill and knowledge, nor for you to acquire such a thing.