I dunno, I'd rather have a witch hunt over illegal arms sales to authoritarian regimes, than over marital infidelity with a beret-wearing intern. And did I leave out the lying to Congress?
Actually, I meant a book entitled Reagan's War. Whatever your opinions of the president or his politics, the level of ass-kissing from known criminals listed as praise for the book was what put me off. I guess I'm lucky they didn't have something from Oliver North too:)
Oh no, some guy on a Wiki said that our development process is "largely discredited". Quelle horreur!
There's nothing to say that you can't do the whole thing as an iterative approach, running through the steps in miniature when requirements change. The issue is not the amount of recoding, it's just proper requirements management. There is a cost associated with changing requirements, no matter what development process you use. The important thing is properly estimating that cost and making that information available to the people who make the decisions.
I think this might be a bit of the divide between large systems programming and consumer software development; for the stuff I work on, if we didn't have almost entirely solid specs a year ahead of the release date, the entire system would never gel enough to ship. The planning game sounds like it would work OK for small standalone projects; I don't see large software systems being developed that way.
On the other hand, if the original author doesn't care about the work any more, there's likely no one left to sue you if you do violate the copyright. I'm not sure how likely that scenario is, though.
I normally avoid the National Review out of distaste for overly-conservative ranting, but on a chance I went to their front page after reading this article, and found:
It's an article about how Republicans could keep the Libertarian vote if they'd actually stay consistent in their messages about small government, personal liberty, and strict constructionism. He makes the good point that Republicans only seem to support these issues when it suits them - for example, states rights when it comes to rolling back environmental laws or abortion protections, but not when it comes to euthanasia or drug laws. This is exactly what I've been thinking for a while.
Of course, I was quickly re-disgusted by reading the praise for Reagan's War on the same site, with glowing quotes from Caspar Weinberger among others. And it turned out that the Libertarian article came from the Cato Institute rather than the National Review. But for a minute they had me:)
Bloom's not saying anything I wasn't saying, nor what Thomas C. Greene from The Register
said, nor what a bunch of other writers said about intellectual property years ago.
Unfortunately, until people get the message, and stop mistaking copyright for a divine right of authors, the message needs to be repeated. That goes double for Congress.
That isn't necessarily a contradiction; a reasonable process is:
requirements
write tests
architecture and design
coding
testing
Write tests before code, and also write design before code. The goal is to have very little to actually do at the coding stage, because you figured out all the tricky stuff previously.
It's true that diversification is important, and I don't think the government should bail people out just because they were stupid (or greedy, in the case of at least some Enron shareholders). But some companies do make it difficult to diversify your 401k; it's not all user stupidity at fault. My company stopped 401k account management for a couple months while switching to a new system; we're lucky the stock didn't tank during the period. (Note that this is a company whose customers would scream bloody murder after even a few minutes of systemic downtime; apparently employees aren't valued customers of HR services.)
And that's not even discussing the actual fraud which the companies and executives in question perpetrated. By ruining someone's retirement, they have effectively taken years of someone's life away under false pretenses. How many years have to be stolen from how many people before it becomes attempted murder? How about just plain murder? Heck, just throwing that many people out of work is likely to increase the crime rate - people that can't find a job might be likely to find less legal occupations. How many rapes and murders may end up being committed at least in part because of a bunch of high-flying con men who screwed over our economy right when it was trying to make a comeback?
The drug question is an interesting point. I tend to look at it as the user's choice to use drugs; I think that as long as drugs are clearly marked with any known possible adverse consequences (just like cigarettes and alcohol), drug dealers should be pretty much off the hook. The difference, of course, is that Enron, Arthur Andersen, etc. specifically hid information about the weakness of those companies, just like tobacco companies hiding information about the dangers of cigarette smoking. So, from my perspective:
Lie about tobacco contents, and people die? Prosecution for murder.
Cut your cocaine with drain cleaner, don't tell people (unsurprising), and they die? Prosecution for murder.
Lie about your financial statements in order to swindle people, and they lose substantial life savings? Prosecution with punishment equivalent to that of a murder conviction, depending on the damages suffered.
Although I'll note that I don't recommend the death penalty for any of these charges, whether or not they resulted in death of a few or robbery of the many. Murder doesn't automatically have to be answered by killing.
It's true that the progressive tax system was originally pushed by, well, progressives, and they were generally social progressives. There is a significant difference between social progressives and Marxism, though.
For one thing, real Marxism would remove the profit motive entirely from the economy, thus reducing the most important driving factor. Nobody will work hard if they know that all of that work is going to others who may not be working as hard; very few people are sufficiently motivated by altruism in that way.
A progressive tax system retains the system of reward for working hard and making more money, it's just not quite as rewarding as a flat tax system that plutocrats favor. (In fact, some prefer a regressive tax regime that covers ordinary consumables rather than income; this would proportionally tax the poor even more than the rich.) In return, a progressive tax system ensures the stability of society by making sure that old people aren't living in poverty (compare stats on that from the end of the 19th century, for example), single mothers have some help to get on their feet, etc. Social stability is ultimately beneficial to the rich as well, you know - more customers with money is good for business. And of course starving people might be a little more likely to go to the polls...
I don't recall any referenda on the progressive tax system; is it your contention that the recent Congress was elected on a platform of doing away with it?
How many lives did that amount of fraud ruin? How many people's retirements are now indefinitely delayed, or will proceed at a much lower standard of living? When you consider the number of people harmed by this crime, I certainly think it's equal to one or more actual murders. Taking a chunk of life from many many people should be considered equivalent to taking all the life of a few people.
Actually, people have been arrested over simple traffic tickets, etc. - basically the same as jaywalking. It was appealed all the way up and ruled legal at every point. Essentially every crime is arrestable under the Constitution; it comes down to local law to put limits on the police power in this regard.
They're supposed to pay a higher percentage; that's what makes it a progressive tax system. The whole point is to support (at some very basic level) all of society, requiring more support from those who are more capable of providing it. Until I see rich folks giving away their money because it hurts too much to keep it, I don't imagine that it is too incredibly painful being rich. They're still doing better than everybody else, just not quite as much better as they would under the sort of plutocracy you dream of. The rich derive an incredible amount of benefit from the government compared to other countries (in the sense of having guaranteed stable banks, not having to hire your own personal army for bodyguards, and ease of access to political life); it makes sense that they should chip in more for the privilege.
Yeah, but how many millions were they accused of stealing? A guy like that is definitely a flight risk without a high bond. The bond should fit the crime.
Well, I guess there is something to be said for putting a traitor in charge of looking for bad guys. Presumably he'd know where to look - under rocks, in seedy dives, at the Pentagon.... I wonder if the database will include illegal arms sales and defense contractor kickbacks, or does it just cover run-of-the-mill privacy invasions like what I bought at the corner store?
Here's the problem: anyone with a clue doesn't shop on the day after Thanksgiving anyway. Essentially the only audience who cares is already carrying out a de facto boycott. It's unlikely that soccer moms everywhere are going to heed the call not to shop just to support some vague (to them) freedom infringed upon by a law they've never heard of.
I'm with you, but this is a tough message to get across to the people who really would make a difference.
By definition, the maximally free market will drive prices as low as possible while still allowing sellers to retain some profit margin. There's no entitlement to particularly large profits for sellers. Overcompetition doesn't really weaken the market as a whole, it just weakens individual market players until some of them drop out, leaving the rest to work out a little higher market price. Excess competition is easily resolved by market forces themselves, and the way that this occurs itself points to the strength of the market.
There's a lot of confusion in the U.S. over the last few years about who the market is for. By definition, a free market enables the buyer to drive the economy by making choices. In a free market, the buyer drives the seller, not the other way around. Considering this situation to be a weak economy is a business-driven outlook, not a consumer-driven one. Since the business viewpoint gets more press coverage, it's not surprising that people make this mistake, but it's not the correct understanding of how the free market works (or is supposed to).
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory distopian fantasy in (sorta) that vein: Electric Souls
Come on, this is a fantasy game, not horror. Nobody would ever find something like that believable in a game - it's just too laughable to be true.
Isn't it?
I dunno, I'd rather have a witch hunt over illegal arms sales to authoritarian regimes, than over marital infidelity with a beret-wearing intern. And did I leave out the lying to Congress?
Actually, I meant a book entitled Reagan's War. Whatever your opinions of the president or his politics, the level of ass-kissing from known criminals listed as praise for the book was what put me off. I guess I'm lucky they didn't have something from Oliver North too :)
Oh no, some guy on a Wiki said that our development process is "largely discredited". Quelle horreur!
There's nothing to say that you can't do the whole thing as an iterative approach, running through the steps in miniature when requirements change. The issue is not the amount of recoding, it's just proper requirements management. There is a cost associated with changing requirements, no matter what development process you use. The important thing is properly estimating that cost and making that information available to the people who make the decisions.
I think this might be a bit of the divide between large systems programming and consumer software development; for the stuff I work on, if we didn't have almost entirely solid specs a year ahead of the release date, the entire system would never gel enough to ship. The planning game sounds like it would work OK for small standalone projects; I don't see large software systems being developed that way.
On the other hand, if the original author doesn't care about the work any more, there's likely no one left to sue you if you do violate the copyright. I'm not sure how likely that scenario is, though.
Knock it off, you unificator.
I normally avoid the National Review out of distaste for overly-conservative ranting, but on a chance I went to their front page after reading this article, and found:
Keeping Libertarians Inside the Tent
It's an article about how Republicans could keep the Libertarian vote if they'd actually stay consistent in their messages about small government, personal liberty, and strict constructionism. He makes the good point that Republicans only seem to support these issues when it suits them - for example, states rights when it comes to rolling back environmental laws or abortion protections, but not when it comes to euthanasia or drug laws. This is exactly what I've been thinking for a while.
Of course, I was quickly re-disgusted by reading the praise for Reagan's War on the same site, with glowing quotes from Caspar Weinberger among others. And it turned out that the Libertarian article came from the Cato Institute rather than the National Review. But for a minute they had me :)
Unfortunately, until people get the message, and stop mistaking copyright for a divine right of authors, the message needs to be repeated. That goes double for Congress.
Unfortunately, that seems to have been one of the few computing tasks Windows was optimized for :(
Huh. The only way to win, is not to play.
That isn't necessarily a contradiction; a reasonable process is:
Write tests before code, and also write design before code. The goal is to have very little to actually do at the coding stage, because you figured out all the tricky stuff previously.
It's true that diversification is important, and I don't think the government should bail people out just because they were stupid (or greedy, in the case of at least some Enron shareholders). But some companies do make it difficult to diversify your 401k; it's not all user stupidity at fault. My company stopped 401k account management for a couple months while switching to a new system; we're lucky the stock didn't tank during the period. (Note that this is a company whose customers would scream bloody murder after even a few minutes of systemic downtime; apparently employees aren't valued customers of HR services.)
And that's not even discussing the actual fraud which the companies and executives in question perpetrated. By ruining someone's retirement, they have effectively taken years of someone's life away under false pretenses. How many years have to be stolen from how many people before it becomes attempted murder? How about just plain murder? Heck, just throwing that many people out of work is likely to increase the crime rate - people that can't find a job might be likely to find less legal occupations. How many rapes and murders may end up being committed at least in part because of a bunch of high-flying con men who screwed over our economy right when it was trying to make a comeback?
The drug question is an interesting point. I tend to look at it as the user's choice to use drugs; I think that as long as drugs are clearly marked with any known possible adverse consequences (just like cigarettes and alcohol), drug dealers should be pretty much off the hook. The difference, of course, is that Enron, Arthur Andersen, etc. specifically hid information about the weakness of those companies, just like tobacco companies hiding information about the dangers of cigarette smoking. So, from my perspective:
Lie about tobacco contents, and people die? Prosecution for murder.
Cut your cocaine with drain cleaner, don't tell people (unsurprising), and they die? Prosecution for murder.
Lie about your financial statements in order to swindle people, and they lose substantial life savings? Prosecution with punishment equivalent to that of a murder conviction, depending on the damages suffered.
Although I'll note that I don't recommend the death penalty for any of these charges, whether or not they resulted in death of a few or robbery of the many. Murder doesn't automatically have to be answered by killing.
It's true that the progressive tax system was originally pushed by, well, progressives, and they were generally social progressives. There is a significant difference between social progressives and Marxism, though.
For one thing, real Marxism would remove the profit motive entirely from the economy, thus reducing the most important driving factor. Nobody will work hard if they know that all of that work is going to others who may not be working as hard; very few people are sufficiently motivated by altruism in that way.
A progressive tax system retains the system of reward for working hard and making more money, it's just not quite as rewarding as a flat tax system that plutocrats favor. (In fact, some prefer a regressive tax regime that covers ordinary consumables rather than income; this would proportionally tax the poor even more than the rich.) In return, a progressive tax system ensures the stability of society by making sure that old people aren't living in poverty (compare stats on that from the end of the 19th century, for example), single mothers have some help to get on their feet, etc. Social stability is ultimately beneficial to the rich as well, you know - more customers with money is good for business. And of course starving people might be a little more likely to go to the polls...
I don't recall any referenda on the progressive tax system; is it your contention that the recent Congress was elected on a platform of doing away with it?
How many lives did that amount of fraud ruin? How many people's retirements are now indefinitely delayed, or will proceed at a much lower standard of living? When you consider the number of people harmed by this crime, I certainly think it's equal to one or more actual murders. Taking a chunk of life from many many people should be considered equivalent to taking all the life of a few people.
Fair enough. I seem to have confused metaphor and reality again. Mea culpa.
Actually, people have been arrested over simple traffic tickets, etc. - basically the same as jaywalking. It was appealed all the way up and ruled legal at every point. Essentially every crime is arrestable under the Constitution; it comes down to local law to put limits on the police power in this regard.
They're supposed to pay a higher percentage; that's what makes it a progressive tax system. The whole point is to support (at some very basic level) all of society, requiring more support from those who are more capable of providing it. Until I see rich folks giving away their money because it hurts too much to keep it, I don't imagine that it is too incredibly painful being rich. They're still doing better than everybody else, just not quite as much better as they would under the sort of plutocracy you dream of. The rich derive an incredible amount of benefit from the government compared to other countries (in the sense of having guaranteed stable banks, not having to hire your own personal army for bodyguards, and ease of access to political life); it makes sense that they should chip in more for the privilege.
Yeah, but how many millions were they accused of stealing? A guy like that is definitely a flight risk without a high bond. The bond should fit the crime.
Read the article - the FBI did in fact show up.
If the FBI has too many people, maybe they can start training more of 'em in Arabic. Apparently that's where they're hurting.
Wait, you're all huffy, not because you're innocent, but because they got one or more of you thieves mixed up? Weird sense of honor, I guess.
OK, point taken. I stand corrected - I should've thought of "broken pipe" scenarios.
Well, I guess there is something to be said for putting a traitor in charge of looking for bad guys. Presumably he'd know where to look - under rocks, in seedy dives, at the Pentagon.... I wonder if the database will include illegal arms sales and defense contractor kickbacks, or does it just cover run-of-the-mill privacy invasions like what I bought at the corner store?
Here's the problem: anyone with a clue doesn't shop on the day after Thanksgiving anyway. Essentially the only audience who cares is already carrying out a de facto boycott. It's unlikely that soccer moms everywhere are going to heed the call not to shop just to support some vague (to them) freedom infringed upon by a law they've never heard of.
I'm with you, but this is a tough message to get across to the people who really would make a difference.
By definition, the maximally free market will drive prices as low as possible while still allowing sellers to retain some profit margin. There's no entitlement to particularly large profits for sellers. Overcompetition doesn't really weaken the market as a whole, it just weakens individual market players until some of them drop out, leaving the rest to work out a little higher market price. Excess competition is easily resolved by market forces themselves, and the way that this occurs itself points to the strength of the market.
There's a lot of confusion in the U.S. over the last few years about who the market is for. By definition, a free market enables the buyer to drive the economy by making choices. In a free market, the buyer drives the seller, not the other way around. Considering this situation to be a weak economy is a business-driven outlook, not a consumer-driven one. Since the business viewpoint gets more press coverage, it's not surprising that people make this mistake, but it's not the correct understanding of how the free market works (or is supposed to).