The guy must be an optimist. After Citizens United, most of us concluded that democracy was already dead.
Citizens United is about speech not votes. You can ignore speech. For example there is no amount of TV ads that Newt Gingrich could have run to convince someone significantly left of center to vote for him. Another example, BP can run many millions of dollars worth of "green" TV commercials and very few will be convinced that they are an environmentally friendly company.
It is still one person one vote. The only threat to democracy is complacency.
Things are far more complicated than your post suggests.
... During the housing boom they built budgets on that income...
I don't know why you characterize that behavior as Republican. That is precisely what California Governor Gray Davis (D) and the Democratic majority of the California state legislature did. Its a large contributor to the current California budget crisis. It was a large contributor to Davis getting recalled, thrown out of office before his term ended by a special election.
Both parties are guilty of such short sightedness.
... No jobs just houses in the dessert...
That is not as silly as it seems. Some of the people in those houses commute. They made a conscious tradeoff of time on the road for a nice house at a far far lower price that something close to work. One night my girlfriend and I drove out there to have dinner with some of her friends. On the drive I thought they were nuts to live out there. When I saw their house I changed my mind. It was a rational decision. Not for everyone but rational none the less.
They may have overbuilt, but overbuilding happened all over southern California.
San Bernardino is quite familiar with the costs. They have been getting companies from high tax environments, ex Los Angeles, to relocate to San Bernardino for many years.
Plus not many people will be moving to San Bernardino. Between the unemployed and those with long commutes to Los Angeles and Orange counties Amazon can probably find most of the people locally.
Any way you slice it, this is unethical. Restricting usage of an API to developers who sell through your platform (and thus give you 30%), giving your own private cloud service filesystem level integration... Imagine if Microsoft made either of these moves.
Its about having apps screened and approved not about sales. Free apps (gratis) from the App Store can use iCloud for storage too.
... If electric cars were really widespread enough to cause a problem, there would also be enough of them to help do some load-levelling on the grid, if you have the infrastructure...
That's the key, sadly it is unrealistic to expect that infrastructure. Grid connections at each parking space will reduce parking capacity. Capacity was already a problem at the last couple of places that I worked. Plus these electrical devices will need ongoing inspection and maintenance (exposed to weather, bumped by cars, etc). Not to mention ripping apart parking lots and parking structures to retrofit. With the possible exception of a few of subsidized/greenwashing/vanity spots next to the building there will be no place to plug in your car.
Facebook IPO Crashes Nearly 10% After $42.05 Opening Price - and the Underwriters had to STEP IN, to prevent a free-fall in decline. That is - no matter what you'd spin it - a market manipulation.
Bubble, meet needle!
As far as market manipulations go this IPO may have been cleaner than others. There does not seem to have been an artificial shortage of stock designed to inflate the price. So far it looks like there was plenty of stock made available and that the opening price is matching the markets willingness to pay. Keep in mind that this has been a pretty bad week for the market and much of a stocks price reflects market risk and industry risk, it is not all about the company risk.
Whether an IPO is successful or not should not be judged by whether a day 1 speculator may a killing. Where the price goes in the coming months will define whether or not the IPO was successful.
I recently read this which seems to counter your claim (it is Rick Santorum claiming that Obama has made our power grid worse - got a "Pants on Fire" rating).
Not really. The stressed out grid and brown outs and black outs that I referred to were occurring *before* Obama became president. They are not something new.
Seems a bit redundant really, I mean everything is moving over the next two decades to electric anyway.
Until we see new power plants being built I am not so sure we will have a large scale transition to electrically powered vehicles. Various parts of our electrical grid are already pretty stressed out and seeing periodic brown outs and black outs. This could put a damper on large scale adoption of electric vehicles.
They could be useful in a few small circumstances, but for the vast majority of cases, I'd be interested in how a speed payoff is going to be beneficial given you don't know whether you got the correct answer.
You are not getting the "correct" answer from your current CPU. Floating point math is an approximation. You *may* get 15 or so digits of precision. For certain sequences of numbers and operations you may get far less. Plus there may be rounding errors as numbers are converted between binary (what the hardware floating point unit, FPU, uses) and decimal (what people normally use).
Here is an example. Try 0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1 in your favorite calculator app. You may not get zero, especially if the app naively uses the hardware FPU. This is why some calculator apps use decimal arithmetic internally. Doing so can also let the app be compatible with 64-bit math. The FPU in mobile devices usually is not.
I've done some analysis of Google vs Facebook ads with respect to an iPhone iPad app. I rotate between no ads, only google ads, only facebook ads, both google and facebook ads. I look at hits on the web page and at actual downloads. Google ads are somewhat effective. Facebook ads are ineffective and they cost 3 to 4 times as much.
Facebook can be useful for establishing a social presence and communicating with communicating with people, but I have serious doubt about its advertising. It has nice targeting by demographics but it just does not seem to perform.
From my experience with an iPhone iPad app Google performs far better than Facebook. Google ads are also 1/3 to 1/4 the cost.
Facebook has value in creating a social presence and in having a "conversation" with potential customers, but its ads have little value.
Not failure to support, failure to port to new OS
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
Unfortunately as I learned last week when I bought a copy of Diablo II from the Blizzard store, that's not always the case; D2 isn't supported under OSX 10.7 and above. That's not Blizzard's fault, as it was Apple who removed support for PowerPC applications, but it's an exception to your argument.
As a Mac user I understand your point but I don't quite consider that an exception. Its not that Blizzard failed to support an existing product, its that Blizzard failed to port Diablo II from Mac OS / PowerPC to Mac OS X / Intel. The product did list PowerPC and Mac OS as requirements. The complication is not PowerPC to Intel, it is Mac OS to Mac OS X. Specifically moving from Mac OS's Carbon API to Mac OS X's Cocoa API. It really is porting to a new operating system despite both having "Mac OS" in their names.
Long term support, removal of security, etc
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
Blizzard is one of the few companies to patch their older games years later to no longer require the CD's to play.
It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection.
Just to elaborate on this for those unfamiliar with Blizzard's older games. It is *not* that they simply put out a patch to remove the CD requirement.
The older starcraft and diablo games have been actively supported for over 10 years. Periodic updates for bug fixes, exploit fixes, new features, new support for communities and tournament organizations (thinking about some starcraft 1 updates), etc.
Blizzard has a team dedicated to actively maintaining and enhancing their "old" games. It is *not* an afterthought for the original dev team if and when they have time like at other companies.
I have never met a good software engineer that was not learning a new language, a new API, a new tool, etc on their own time out of their own curiosity. I have met poor engineers who only learned such new things if they were on the company clock.
Learning things on the company's dime doesn't mean they're a "poor engineer" you phb.
That is not what I said. Re-read the quote above. The poor software engineers are those who **only** learn on the company dime, that have no innate curiosity, no innate drive to learn. They are the one's who don't write any code unless its a school assignment, a work assignment, etc. They probably entered the field because someone told them that software engineering was a good career path, and not because they had any inherent interest in programming. The good software engineers are the ones who sit down and write a bit of code for no other reason than their own curiosity, a personal challenge, to help out someone, because its more fun than watching TV, etc.
Now for a project that has no plausible articulated benefit for a company, well that sounds like something to pursue on your own time. Perhaps an example would be useful:
Project A: Write a program in programming language "foo". We don't use "foo" but it may be a viable option for some company projects in the future.
Project B: Write a program in programming language "bar". "Bar" is totally unsuitable for any projects were are thinking about but I am curious about the language and would like to learn more about it.
Project A sounds like a 20%-time project. Project B sounds like a personal time project.
I would hire programmer B. The guy who wants to learn a new language even though it has no conceivable use is the one who is going to come up with other out of left field idea that could make the company a billion dollars.
But the idiot MBAs believe thinking out of the box should be killed as "personal time."
I have never met a good software engineer that was not learning a new language, a new API, a new tool, etc on their own time out of their own curiosity. I have met poor engineers who only learned such new things if they were on the company clock. You are welcome to hire the later.
Plus my only suggested requirement was that the person be able to articulate a plausible hypothetical benefit to the company, that "idea out of left field". If they truly are thinking out of the box that is a very low hurdle.
Progress and tracking? Yep, you certainly sound like a recent MBA grad...
"Progress and tracking" in that everyone describes their projects and how they are coming along to their fellow engineers. No TPS reports, just a group meeting where everyone talks for a few minutes, maybe some ideas get bounced around, etc.
Work for a few more years in hardcore tech, and come back and read what you just wrote.
I had over 20 years of hardcore software development experience (embedded, scientific, video games,...) before going to business school. Much of that time was in startups or other very "progressive" work environments. I have not worked in the ultra-conservative sort of environment you mention.
Your approach could work for ultra-conservative companies. You should look at 20% projects more as something that keeps the really smart and enthusiastic engineering folks from leaving your company.
Morale was only one of various justifications that I offered. My focus was actually on the 20%-projects being incubators for new ideas for projects and internal processes.
The biggest end result of side projects are motivated people, not new technology.
20%-projects are merely one way of keeping morale up. Also having the 20%-project offer some remotely plausible hypothetical benefit to the company/employees and having a person talk about their 20%-project with coworkers every so often does not take the fun and curiosity out of the idea. I have rarely met an engineer who did not think their company could use some particular new tool, or that customers might like a new product that served some unanswered need or want, etc.
The business owners I've worked with don't have a lot of patience for people who aren't being productive on their dime. In today's business climate, in most professions goofing off means overstaffed. Our current MBAs don't realize the future benefits of personnel enrichment.
"Our current MBAs"? "Our" as in at this point in history or your particular company?
I'm a recent MBA grad and I would say that MBAs are taught the value of, and possibly necessity of, research and development. However there is a world of difference between allowing someone to spend 20% of their time on any project and 20% of their time on a project they think will benefit the company. "Benefit" could take different forms: revenue, public image, training staff, staff morale, etc...
There probably should be some sort of "approval" and "progress" tracking of these 20%-time projects. By "approval" I am not suggesting some sort of business plan. All I am suggesting is that the person proposing the idea be able to articulate some kind of reason this project may benefit the company. Again, benefit should be interpreted in a loose manner in this context. By "progress" I am not suggesting schedules. All I am suggesting is that the person proposing the idea be able to articulate some sort of plan, and that they be demonstrating progress. Again, not progress as in dates. Things are bound to take longer than expected, especially when the plan is informal. Progress should be interpreted in a loose manner too. Progress may be learning that the idea is a bad idea. This progress tracking may be everyone getting together and describing where they are at and what they think the next step should be. Such a get-together might be a good place to get feedback, bounce ideas, share problem and ask for suggestions, etc.
Now for a project that has no plausible articulated benefit for a company, well that sounds like something to pursue on your own time. Perhaps an example would be useful:
Project A: Write a program in programming language "foo". We don't use "foo" but it may be a viable option for some company projects in the future.
Project B: Write a program in programming language "bar". "Bar" is totally unsuitable for any projects were are thinking about but I am curious about the language and would like to learn more about it.
Project A sounds like a 20%-time project. Project B sounds like a personal time project.
... Which is hilarious because it is the BSD fundamentalists who are re-implementing huge projects just to avoid a license they don't like for no reason other than political correctness...
Untrue. Gcc is handicapped by political decisions in it technical design. It intentionally does not allow "others" to plug into some "internals". "Internals" that would facilitate other tool builders, especially those creating a graphical integrated development environment.
LLVM/Clang doesn't come with such technical baggage. Its modular rather than monolithic. It is a newer code base that is far easier to work with, even gcc devs moan about the bloat/complexity of their code base. Nearly all long lived project reach a point where it is better to toss the legacy code out and start from scratch, gcc may have very well surpassed that point.
And on some platforms LLVM/Clang simply generates better code.
Some people argue that LLVM/Clang offers better code generation, compile time warnings, and code analysis. Some compiler developers think the gcc code has become too bloated and complicated. Even gcc devs have described the gcc code as "cumbersome".
There are various efforts to get Linux building under LLVM/Clang. Especially for embedded environments.
From a *legal* point of view how is this different than helicopters with observers and video cameras?
I get the creepiness angle, you are far more likely to be "seen" when an expensive helicopter/crew is replaced with some number of drones. I just don't get the *new* legal issue. The police have been using that birds eye view for quite some time.
(1) To accurately preserve "history". To prevent you from hiding a statement you later regret.
(2) To encourage people to get their post right the first time since their errors will be preserved.
(3) It can destroy the context of followup posts. The followup may be referring to something deleted or corrected. This would encourage more data usage as followups are incentivized to includes quotes in case of future edits.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's still a democratic republic ...
Actually I think it is a constitutional republic. Representative not democratic in nature.
The guy must be an optimist. After Citizens United, most of us concluded that democracy was already dead.
Citizens United is about speech not votes. You can ignore speech. For example there is no amount of TV ads that Newt Gingrich could have run to convince someone significantly left of center to vote for him. Another example, BP can run many millions of dollars worth of "green" TV commercials and very few will be convinced that they are an environmentally friendly company.
It is still one person one vote. The only threat to democracy is complacency.
... During the housing boom they built budgets on that income ...
I don't know why you characterize that behavior as Republican. That is precisely what California Governor Gray Davis (D) and the Democratic majority of the California state legislature did. Its a large contributor to the current California budget crisis. It was a large contributor to Davis getting recalled, thrown out of office before his term ended by a special election.
Both parties are guilty of such short sightedness.
... No jobs just houses in the dessert ...
That is not as silly as it seems. Some of the people in those houses commute. They made a conscious tradeoff of time on the road for a nice house at a far far lower price that something close to work. One night my girlfriend and I drove out there to have dinner with some of her friends. On the drive I thought they were nuts to live out there. When I saw their house I changed my mind. It was a rational decision. Not for everyone but rational none the less.
They may have overbuilt, but overbuilding happened all over southern California.
San Bernardino is quite familiar with the costs. They have been getting companies from high tax environments, ex Los Angeles, to relocate to San Bernardino for many years.
Plus not many people will be moving to San Bernardino. Between the unemployed and those with long commutes to Los Angeles and Orange counties Amazon can probably find most of the people locally.
Any way you slice it, this is unethical. Restricting usage of an API to developers who sell through your platform (and thus give you 30%), giving your own private cloud service filesystem level integration... Imagine if Microsoft made either of these moves.
Its about having apps screened and approved not about sales. Free apps (gratis) from the App Store can use iCloud for storage too.
... If electric cars were really widespread enough to cause a problem, there would also be enough of them to help do some load-levelling on the grid, if you have the infrastructure ...
That's the key, sadly it is unrealistic to expect that infrastructure. Grid connections at each parking space will reduce parking capacity. Capacity was already a problem at the last couple of places that I worked. Plus these electrical devices will need ongoing inspection and maintenance (exposed to weather, bumped by cars, etc). Not to mention ripping apart parking lots and parking structures to retrofit. With the possible exception of a few of subsidized/greenwashing/vanity spots next to the building there will be no place to plug in your car.
Facebook IPO Crashes Nearly 10% After $42.05 Opening Price - and the Underwriters had to STEP IN, to prevent a free-fall in decline. That is - no matter what you'd spin it - a market manipulation.
Bubble, meet needle!
As far as market manipulations go this IPO may have been cleaner than others. There does not seem to have been an artificial shortage of stock designed to inflate the price. So far it looks like there was plenty of stock made available and that the opening price is matching the markets willingness to pay. Keep in mind that this has been a pretty bad week for the market and much of a stocks price reflects market risk and industry risk, it is not all about the company risk.
Whether an IPO is successful or not should not be judged by whether a day 1 speculator may a killing. Where the price goes in the coming months will define whether or not the IPO was successful.
I recently read this which seems to counter your claim (it is Rick Santorum claiming that Obama has made our power grid worse - got a "Pants on Fire" rating).
Not really. The stressed out grid and brown outs and black outs that I referred to were occurring *before* Obama became president. They are not something new.
Seems a bit redundant really, I mean everything is moving over the next two decades to electric anyway.
Until we see new power plants being built I am not so sure we will have a large scale transition to electrically powered vehicles. Various parts of our electrical grid are already pretty stressed out and seeing periodic brown outs and black outs. This could put a damper on large scale adoption of electric vehicles.
They could be useful in a few small circumstances, but for the vast majority of cases, I'd be interested in how a speed payoff is going to be beneficial given you don't know whether you got the correct answer.
You are not getting the "correct" answer from your current CPU. Floating point math is an approximation. You *may* get 15 or so digits of precision. For certain sequences of numbers and operations you may get far less. Plus there may be rounding errors as numbers are converted between binary (what the hardware floating point unit, FPU, uses) and decimal (what people normally use).
Here is an example. Try 0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1 in your favorite calculator app. You may not get zero, especially if the app naively uses the hardware FPU. This is why some calculator apps use decimal arithmetic internally. Doing so can also let the app be compatible with 64-bit math. The FPU in mobile devices usually is not.
I've done some analysis of Google vs Facebook ads with respect to an iPhone iPad app. I rotate between no ads, only google ads, only facebook ads, both google and facebook ads. I look at hits on the web page and at actual downloads. Google ads are somewhat effective. Facebook ads are ineffective and they cost 3 to 4 times as much.
Facebook can be useful for establishing a social presence and communicating with communicating with people, but I have serious doubt about its advertising. It has nice targeting by demographics but it just does not seem to perform.
From my experience with an iPhone iPad app Google performs far better than Facebook. Google ads are also 1/3 to 1/4 the cost.
Facebook has value in creating a social presence and in having a "conversation" with potential customers, but its ads have little value.
Unfortunately as I learned last week when I bought a copy of Diablo II from the Blizzard store, that's not always the case; D2 isn't supported under OSX 10.7 and above. That's not Blizzard's fault, as it was Apple who removed support for PowerPC applications, but it's an exception to your argument.
As a Mac user I understand your point but I don't quite consider that an exception. Its not that Blizzard failed to support an existing product, its that Blizzard failed to port Diablo II from Mac OS / PowerPC to Mac OS X / Intel. The product did list PowerPC and Mac OS as requirements. The complication is not PowerPC to Intel, it is Mac OS to Mac OS X. Specifically moving from Mac OS's Carbon API to Mac OS X's Cocoa API. It really is porting to a new operating system despite both having "Mac OS" in their names.
Blizzard is one of the few companies to patch their older games years later to no longer require the CD's to play. It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection.
Just to elaborate on this for those unfamiliar with Blizzard's older games. It is *not* that they simply put out a patch to remove the CD requirement.
The older starcraft and diablo games have been actively supported for over 10 years. Periodic updates for bug fixes, exploit fixes, new features, new support for communities and tournament organizations (thinking about some starcraft 1 updates), etc.
Blizzard has a team dedicated to actively maintaining and enhancing their "old" games. It is *not* an afterthought for the original dev team if and when they have time like at other companies.
I have never met a good software engineer that was not learning a new language, a new API, a new tool, etc on their own time out of their own curiosity. I have met poor engineers who only learned such new things if they were on the company clock.
Learning things on the company's dime doesn't mean they're a "poor engineer" you phb.
That is not what I said. Re-read the quote above. The poor software engineers are those who **only** learn on the company dime, that have no innate curiosity, no innate drive to learn. They are the one's who don't write any code unless its a school assignment, a work assignment, etc. They probably entered the field because someone told them that software engineering was a good career path, and not because they had any inherent interest in programming. The good software engineers are the ones who sit down and write a bit of code for no other reason than their own curiosity, a personal challenge, to help out someone, because its more fun than watching TV, etc.
Now for a project that has no plausible articulated benefit for a company, well that sounds like something to pursue on your own time. Perhaps an example would be useful:
Project A: Write a program in programming language "foo". We don't use "foo" but it may be a viable option for some company projects in the future.
Project B: Write a program in programming language "bar". "Bar" is totally unsuitable for any projects were are thinking about but I am curious about the language and would like to learn more about it.
Project A sounds like a 20%-time project. Project B sounds like a personal time project.
I would hire programmer B. The guy who wants to learn a new language even though it has no conceivable use is the one who is going to come up with other out of left field idea that could make the company a billion dollars.
But the idiot MBAs believe thinking out of the box should be killed as "personal time."
I have never met a good software engineer that was not learning a new language, a new API, a new tool, etc on their own time out of their own curiosity. I have met poor engineers who only learned such new things if they were on the company clock. You are welcome to hire the later.
Plus my only suggested requirement was that the person be able to articulate a plausible hypothetical benefit to the company, that "idea out of left field". If they truly are thinking out of the box that is a very low hurdle.
Progress and tracking? Yep, you certainly sound like a recent MBA grad...
"Progress and tracking" in that everyone describes their projects and how they are coming along to their fellow engineers. No TPS reports, just a group meeting where everyone talks for a few minutes, maybe some ideas get bounced around, etc.
I'm a recent MBA grad
Work for a few more years in hardcore tech, and come back and read what you just wrote.
I had over 20 years of hardcore software development experience (embedded, scientific, video games, ...) before going to business school. Much of that time was in startups or other very "progressive" work environments. I have not worked in the ultra-conservative sort of environment you mention.
Your approach could work for ultra-conservative companies. You should look at 20% projects more as something that keeps the really smart and enthusiastic engineering folks from leaving your company.
Morale was only one of various justifications that I offered. My focus was actually on the 20%-projects being incubators for new ideas for projects and internal processes.
The biggest end result of side projects are motivated people, not new technology.
20%-projects are merely one way of keeping morale up. Also having the 20%-project offer some remotely plausible hypothetical benefit to the company/employees and having a person talk about their 20%-project with coworkers every so often does not take the fun and curiosity out of the idea. I have rarely met an engineer who did not think their company could use some particular new tool, or that customers might like a new product that served some unanswered need or want, etc.
The business owners I've worked with don't have a lot of patience for people who aren't being productive on their dime. In today's business climate, in most professions goofing off means overstaffed. Our current MBAs don't realize the future benefits of personnel enrichment.
"Our current MBAs"? "Our" as in at this point in history or your particular company?
...
I'm a recent MBA grad and I would say that MBAs are taught the value of, and possibly necessity of, research and development. However there is a world of difference between allowing someone to spend 20% of their time on any project and 20% of their time on a project they think will benefit the company. "Benefit" could take different forms: revenue, public image, training staff, staff morale, etc
There probably should be some sort of "approval" and "progress" tracking of these 20%-time projects. By "approval" I am not suggesting some sort of business plan. All I am suggesting is that the person proposing the idea be able to articulate some kind of reason this project may benefit the company. Again, benefit should be interpreted in a loose manner in this context. By "progress" I am not suggesting schedules. All I am suggesting is that the person proposing the idea be able to articulate some sort of plan, and that they be demonstrating progress. Again, not progress as in dates. Things are bound to take longer than expected, especially when the plan is informal. Progress should be interpreted in a loose manner too. Progress may be learning that the idea is a bad idea. This progress tracking may be everyone getting together and describing where they are at and what they think the next step should be. Such a get-together might be a good place to get feedback, bounce ideas, share problem and ask for suggestions, etc.
Now for a project that has no plausible articulated benefit for a company, well that sounds like something to pursue on your own time. Perhaps an example would be useful:
Project A: Write a program in programming language "foo". We don't use "foo" but it may be a viable option for some company projects in the future.
Project B: Write a program in programming language "bar". "Bar" is totally unsuitable for any projects were are thinking about but I am curious about the language and would like to learn more about it.
Project A sounds like a 20%-time project. Project B sounds like a personal time project.
The quality of the generated code, however, is significantly worse, at least at this time.
That may not be accurate. My understanding is that on some platforms LLVM/Clang has the advantage.
... Which is hilarious because it is the BSD fundamentalists who are re-implementing huge projects just to avoid a license they don't like for no reason other than political correctness ...
Untrue. Gcc is handicapped by political decisions in it technical design. It intentionally does not allow "others" to plug into some "internals". "Internals" that would facilitate other tool builders, especially those creating a graphical integrated development environment.
LLVM/Clang doesn't come with such technical baggage. Its modular rather than monolithic. It is a newer code base that is far easier to work with, even gcc devs moan about the bloat/complexity of their code base. Nearly all long lived project reach a point where it is better to toss the legacy code out and start from scratch, gcc may have very well surpassed that point.
And on some platforms LLVM/Clang simply generates better code.
What's wrong with GCC?
Some people argue that LLVM/Clang offers better code generation, compile time warnings, and code analysis. Some compiler developers think the gcc code has become too bloated and complicated. Even gcc devs have described the gcc code as "cumbersome".
There are various efforts to get Linux building under LLVM/Clang. Especially for embedded environments.
Then only let people with super high karma edit their own posts.
Sounds like a privilege designed to keep the top 1% in the top 1%. What could go wrong? ;-)
Or make it so that they can only "Add" to their posts.
A clearly labeled add/followup in the original would be good. It allows for clarifications and such. A far simpler chain of followups could result.
From a *legal* point of view how is this different than helicopters with observers and video cameras?
I get the creepiness angle, you are far more likely to be "seen" when an expensive helicopter/crew is replaced with some number of drones. I just don't get the *new* legal issue. The police have been using that birds eye view for quite some time.
Why the fuck can't I edit my own posts?
The motivations might be:
(1) To accurately preserve "history". To prevent you from hiding a statement you later regret.
(2) To encourage people to get their post right the first time since their errors will be preserved.
(3) It can destroy the context of followup posts. The followup may be referring to something deleted or corrected. This would encourage more data usage as followups are incentivized to includes quotes in case of future edits.