If you have 'skills' using Office version X, it will probably not be as valuable in two years when a new and improved product, Office X+1 comes out.
That makes the big assumption that few of your Office X skills translate well to Office X+1. When it comes to the upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010, you might have a point (stupid ribbon...), but in general that's not the case. Someone who could operate Office 95 can get around Office 2007 just fine. Someone who learned pre-ANSI C, C++98, or Java 1.1 can deal with 99% of code written in C1x, C++11, and Java 7, with a short learning curve for anything significant that has changed. It's the same pattern for most all software skills.
On the other hand, it's that last 1% that makes the difference for people that market themselves as experts and specialists. Knowing the exact quirks of a specific version of software becomes less and less important as time goes on. That's the part that has a half life of 2 years.
Be good at everything, be excellent at one thing, and make sure that one thing is up to date with current technology.
Government regulations are a funny thing. We somehow end up with exactly the wrong number of them. More regulations will make us safer than we are now, but fewer regulations will also make us safer.
Everybody agrees that this needs to change, but we can never agree on which direction is the right one. We end up just staying where we are, which is a dangerous place to be.
I'm not referring to all industries, of course, but this certainly seems to apply to some, especially nuclear power.
January was named for the god Janus. February was named for a roman festival of purification. March was named for the god Mars. April might have was named for the god Aphrodite. May was named for the god Maia. June was named for the god Juno.
July and onward are exceptions, being named after two people and the numbers 7-10.
The first objection is religious, of course, and that's to be expected since the notation comes from religion. You've also completely flipped what the Southern Baptist Convention said. Reread that entire paragraph. Let's leave religious arguments of of this for a moment, however.
Most of the other objections are very similar. They don't say that we'll "eventually change the whole calendar." More accurately, the point is that changing to CE/BCE is a matter of removing religious references from our calendar system, so we shouldn't just change the one instance of it. Almost everything about our calendar is religious. Regardless of the what symbol you put after it, the year is still based around Christian beliefs. The number of days comes from jewish and babylonian beliefs and traditions. The names of the days come from a variety of religious deities, as do names of months. At least the concept of a month comes from a scientific principle, but that's about it. Note the difference between "we're going to eventually change the whole calendar" and "why just change the one thing?"
The last objection is interesting, although as an engineer I think it's absurd: will people really be that confused between BCE and CE? To me, that's like saying a negative sign is confusing to people learning math.
However, I think the best argument here is:
Anthropologist Carol Delaney argues that the substitution of BC/AD to BCE/CE is merely a euphemism that conceals the political implications without modifying the actual source of contention.
BCE/CE is just a euphemism. It doesn't change anything, it doesn't have any real purpose. Christians see it as a direct attack against them (and honestly, they're right in many ways), which will mean it never really gets full acceptance. And in the end, the calendar is still rooted in the same religious beliefs.
For a (bad) analogy, it's kind of like changing the official designation from "postman" to "postal worker" and then still only hiring men for the position, just to avoid offending a (possibly large) group of people.
On the other hand, the calendar contains an interesting history of religions, which has become part of our culture. What's so wrong with that?
Wrong. It doesn't defeat the purpose because that's not the purpose of these devices. The problem is that their niche doesn't work for you.
When iPad owners look at the Nook Color and the Fire and the Vox, all they see is a cheep, featureless tablet. "Why would anybody want that tiny screen?" When Kindle owners look at them, all they see is an ebook reader with an LCD screen. "But e-ink won't give you eye strain!" When smartphone owners look at them, all they see is an enormous screen size. "That big, and it can't even make phone calls!"
In reality, this is a hybrid device, perfect for someone like me. Access to tons of media, not just books. The same size as some of my paperback books.
The purpose is not to just read books. You're exactly right - we have e-ink for that. Instead, the purpose is to access all sorts of media, including books. The purpose is not to be fully mobile like a cell phone. It's too big. But, it's still a smaller form factor so it'll fit into a suit pocket or purse. The purpose is not to be a full, powerful tablet computer. It's too small, and doesn't have the connectivity and other features. Then again, that cuts down on the price to a very reasonable $200.
In comparison, an iPad is a bulky, expensive alternative. A smartphone is too small to work with. And an e-ink display is too limiting. I'd say these devices fulfill their purpose quite well.
From the perspective of a software developer, you're 100% correct.
But, let's look at this from the perspective of a user. I think that if you change most all references to "you" in your comment to refer to and end user, things change slightly.
The core concept of the GPL is that the user must have the right to modify the software, which means they must have the right to the source code. If a developer releases their software under a BSD license, a user has the ability to modify the source for their own purposes. So far, so good.
Where it gets sticky is when a third party is introduced. They decide that the software fits their needs, so they modify it and redistribute their version without providing the source code of their changes. This means that the user no longer has the ability to modify the new version of the software. To a developer who releases code under the GPL, this means that the rights of the user have been restricted. "How dare this third party restrict the software rights of a user with my software," they think to themselves.
Note that I don't necessarily agree with this, but I do see where they're coming from.
The GPL tries to protect the freedom of end users, at the cost of the freedom of third party developers. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a fair tradeoff -- what rights did the end user have to the third party's changes to begin with?
Now, where the GPL really gets viral is with linking. Forcing an application to be GPL'd just because it links against a GPL library is ludicrous. The only way around it is to write a bunch of ugly wrappers. Thank goodness for the LGPL and other licenses.
You're so, so close to getting it, but not quite there.
GPL lets you remove the freedom of developers. GPL enables the freedom of users. BSD lets you remove the freedom of users. BSD enables the freedom of developers.
Pro-GPL people try to argue that it's the freedom of the end user that needs to be protected. After all, making sure the users have the source enables them to fix any problems that software may have. Unfortunately, this means that the freedoms of whoever wants to write software that uses GPL'd code is limited, as they don't have the choice to keep their software proprietary.
Pro-BSD people try to argue that it's the freedom of the developers that needs to be protected. After all, making sure the developers can maintain their own copyright enables them to use your software freely. Unfortunately, this means that the freedoms of whoever wants to use a derivative work are limited, as they are not guaranteed to have the source code of the changes available.
So, now which restriction is least restrictive?
Freedom is a balancing act -- there are very few cases where enforcing the freedom of one group of people won't harm the freedom of another group. Just be careful that you don't assume the freedoms you value are more important than the freedoms that other people value.
Let's go to the actual article for more information on what this statement means, shall we?
Research has found that certain high-quality programs have educational benefits for children older than 2 years. Children who watch these programs have improved social skills, language skills, and even school readiness. However, the educational merit of media for children younger than 2 years remains unproven despite the fact that three-quarters of the top-selling infant videos make explicit or implicit educational claims. To be beneficial, children need to understand the content of programs and pay attention to it. Children older than 2 years and those younger than 2 years are at different levels of cognitive development and process information differently. In fact, 2 studies have found that watching a program such as “Sesame Street” has a negative effect on language for children younger than 2 years, and 2 studies have found no evidence of benefit. There is a paucity of research on this topic, but the existing literature suggests that media use does not promote language skills in this age group.
Young children have difficulty discriminating between events on a video and the same information presented by a live person, which is referred to as “video deficit.” Children 12 to 18 months of age are more likely to learn from a live presentation than from a televised one and are also more likely to remember the information from a live presentation afterward. These studies have only been performed on noncommercial videos. Some studies have found that children 1 to 2 years of age can remember an event on video if the screen demonstration repeats several times. Two studies have shown that infants as young as 12 months learn emotional responses after media viewing. One longitudinal study performed has thus far found that children younger than 2 years who watch television have no statistical improvement in their cognitive development compared with their non-viewing peers by 3 years of age.
So, yeah. Saying that they "just have no idea what's going on" is a hyperbole. But the core message is there: "educational" shows for under 2 are no better, and often worse, than actually interacting with your children. If you read on, you'll see that the reason is that sometime around 2 years old, kids develop longer attention spans, a stronger ability to piece together what's on the screen, and more. I should also point out that the article is clear that there's a continuum for development, so what's appropriate for one kid may not be appropriate for another of the same age.
All in all, be sure you're judging the AAP by what they actually publish, not from selected quotes.
No, the problem is that kids come in all kinds of personalities, so no two parents' experience is the same. Even kids within the same family can be wildly different. Note to parents: don't judge other parents because their kids act differently than yours, and don't judge how other parents raise your kids.
Some kids are wildly rowdy. Others are more content to sit and play on their own. Some are OK for a while, but have to be tended to periodically.
Take my 2-year-old, for example. He won't stay still for very long at all, especially around dinner time. Not rowdy, mind you, but he wants to be involved in what we're doing, which is a problem when we're making hot meals. The two things I've found that help: 1) start him on the vegetables while we're still cooking (he's hungry so he eats them right away, and sits still at the table); 2) Clifford the Big Red Dog for when veggies don't work or dinner's going to be late. He won't sit still for anything else, but pop in a Clifford video and he hardly blinks... which is why we only use it on rare occasions.
Another issue is that researchers could be confused when the same piece of scientific gear is referred to by more than one name. It would be easy to miss the fact that the Very Large Array and "insert new name here" are actually the same piece of equipment.
On the other hand, this name change follows a significant upgrade to the VLA's equipment. Having a different name provides an easy way to tell the difference.
Something like how we change the name of software when there's significant changes. "XP, Vista, 7"... I don't hear anybody getting confused about those. By that respect, a name change for the VLA might even be welcome.
Others are mocking you, but I think there's an interesting difference between talking into your phone and talking to your phone.
When I've seen people try to use speech recognition on their phones, it's obvious which one they're doing. And they really do look like dorks. The real advance will be when telling your phone what you want to do is as smooth and as fluid as talking to an assistant on the other end of the phone line.
And this is where people start wishing the code were GPL instead of MIT.
If the original driver were published with a copyleft license, those power management improvements would have to be shared when the drivers are released. With MIT, you can only hope that AMD will see the benefit of sharing their improvements.
You can argue about what freedom means all you want, but it's hard to argue that having almost guaranteed access to improvements wouldn't be good for the users of the Linux driver.
The declaration syntax is only horrid when you need to declare something complex. "int i;" is about as simple as you could ever expect a declaration to be, and 99% of all variables fall along those lines. It's the rare cases of declaring arrays of function pointers returning pointers to arrays of function pointer-pointers (throwing in const in a few places for good measure) that get to be horrid.
Another important thing to remember is that C only tries to lightly abstract away from assembly language. The abstraction is just enough that you don't generally care about the machine itself. That's why arrays and pointers work they way they do. That's why there's so much "implementation-defined behavior" and other undefined cases. Writing a functional C compiler is so simple, as most constructs can be translated directly into equivalent assembly.
Well, at least, that's the way C was when it first came out. Then it spread and grew, was modified, extended, and eventually standardized. A lot of that simplicity has gone away in the decades since, as a natural by-product of the growth of the language. Now, in comparison to some other languages, C is arcane, awkward, and complicated. C used to be dead simple, which is why it's deceptively simple now.
But if you step back, there's a certain simplistic beauty that exists, even to this day.
Even better, he invented a language that could be explained that easily while still being what it became.
One possible reason for the brevity of the book: the K&R brace style was invented to make the code snippets shorter. Little did they know the religious war they would start with that.
You're not an idiot, of course. In most situations, you'd be right -- extra inventory is a sign that something's wrong, just as much as missing inventory is. The extra items are a sign that people aren't doing what you expect, not following procedures, not recording things properly. If I have more money in the bank then I expect when I reconcile my accounts, I need to know why and fix it. Maybe my electricity bill didn't get paid properly and will be shut off tomorrow. Extra money isn't always a good thing.
But for an Apollo mission... how big of a deal is an extra item? The astronauts followed pretty strict procedures, but a camera stowed in the wrong place isn't that big of a deal. Would an inventory even bother to look for, and report, extra cameras? If they did inventories of the capsule on return (still an assumption, but let's go with it), my bet is that a missing item that was supposed to be present raised all sorts of red flags, but an extra item that was supposed to be left behind got a shoulder shrug.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure this has been posted many times, but it's a rather intuitive way to type with only one hand.
The real silver lining: this volcano is a Stratovolcano, like Mt. St. Helens, and not a supervolcano.
On the other hand, the surrounding region might be forming a supervolcano. Maybe. Our knowledge here is pretty limited.
If you have 'skills' using Office version X, it will probably not be as valuable in two years when a new and improved product, Office X+1 comes out.
That makes the big assumption that few of your Office X skills translate well to Office X+1. When it comes to the upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010, you might have a point (stupid ribbon...), but in general that's not the case. Someone who could operate Office 95 can get around Office 2007 just fine. Someone who learned pre-ANSI C, C++98, or Java 1.1 can deal with 99% of code written in C1x, C++11, and Java 7, with a short learning curve for anything significant that has changed. It's the same pattern for most all software skills.
On the other hand, it's that last 1% that makes the difference for people that market themselves as experts and specialists. Knowing the exact quirks of a specific version of software becomes less and less important as time goes on. That's the part that has a half life of 2 years.
Be good at everything, be excellent at one thing, and make sure that one thing is up to date with current technology.
And for the curious, they prefer Aluminium over Aluminum.
Government regulations are a funny thing. We somehow end up with exactly the wrong number of them. More regulations will make us safer than we are now, but fewer regulations will also make us safer.
Everybody agrees that this needs to change, but we can never agree on which direction is the right one. We end up just staying where we are, which is a dangerous place to be.
I'm not referring to all industries, of course, but this certainly seems to apply to some, especially nuclear power.
I'm trying to reconcile this statement with your signature. Care to elaborate?
Add a background image and you're set. Kids get lollipops to lick, adults get their favorite, uh ... body part, as appropriate.
Windows iX!
The next version after Windows 8, of course.
And the words for the months of the year.
January was named for the god Janus.
February was named for a roman festival of purification.
March was named for the god Mars.
April might have was named for the god Aphrodite.
May was named for the god Maia.
June was named for the god Juno.
July and onward are exceptions, being named after two people and the numbers 7-10.
Reading comprehension fail. Multiple times.
The first objection is religious, of course, and that's to be expected since the notation comes from religion. You've also completely flipped what the Southern Baptist Convention said. Reread that entire paragraph. Let's leave religious arguments of of this for a moment, however.
Most of the other objections are very similar. They don't say that we'll "eventually change the whole calendar." More accurately, the point is that changing to CE/BCE is a matter of removing religious references from our calendar system, so we shouldn't just change the one instance of it. Almost everything about our calendar is religious. Regardless of the what symbol you put after it, the year is still based around Christian beliefs. The number of days comes from jewish and babylonian beliefs and traditions. The names of the days come from a variety of religious deities, as do names of months. At least the concept of a month comes from a scientific principle, but that's about it. Note the difference between "we're going to eventually change the whole calendar" and "why just change the one thing?"
The last objection is interesting, although as an engineer I think it's absurd: will people really be that confused between BCE and CE? To me, that's like saying a negative sign is confusing to people learning math.
However, I think the best argument here is:
Anthropologist Carol Delaney argues that the substitution of BC/AD to BCE/CE is merely a euphemism that conceals the political implications without modifying the actual source of contention.
BCE/CE is just a euphemism. It doesn't change anything, it doesn't have any real purpose. Christians see it as a direct attack against them (and honestly, they're right in many ways), which will mean it never really gets full acceptance. And in the end, the calendar is still rooted in the same religious beliefs.
For a (bad) analogy, it's kind of like changing the official designation from "postman" to "postal worker" and then still only hiring men for the position, just to avoid offending a (possibly large) group of people.
On the other hand, the calendar contains an interesting history of religions, which has become part of our culture. What's so wrong with that?
Wrong. It doesn't defeat the purpose because that's not the purpose of these devices. The problem is that their niche doesn't work for you.
When iPad owners look at the Nook Color and the Fire and the Vox, all they see is a cheep, featureless tablet. "Why would anybody want that tiny screen?" When Kindle owners look at them, all they see is an ebook reader with an LCD screen. "But e-ink won't give you eye strain!" When smartphone owners look at them, all they see is an enormous screen size. "That big, and it can't even make phone calls!"
In reality, this is a hybrid device, perfect for someone like me. Access to tons of media, not just books. The same size as some of my paperback books.
The purpose is not to just read books. You're exactly right - we have e-ink for that. Instead, the purpose is to access all sorts of media, including books.
The purpose is not to be fully mobile like a cell phone. It's too big. But, it's still a smaller form factor so it'll fit into a suit pocket or purse.
The purpose is not to be a full, powerful tablet computer. It's too small, and doesn't have the connectivity and other features. Then again, that cuts down on the price to a very reasonable $200.
In comparison, an iPad is a bulky, expensive alternative. A smartphone is too small to work with. And an e-ink display is too limiting. I'd say these devices fulfill their purpose quite well.
From the perspective of a software developer, you're 100% correct.
But, let's look at this from the perspective of a user. I think that if you change most all references to "you" in your comment to refer to and end user, things change slightly.
The core concept of the GPL is that the user must have the right to modify the software, which means they must have the right to the source code. If a developer releases their software under a BSD license, a user has the ability to modify the source for their own purposes. So far, so good.
Where it gets sticky is when a third party is introduced. They decide that the software fits their needs, so they modify it and redistribute their version without providing the source code of their changes. This means that the user no longer has the ability to modify the new version of the software. To a developer who releases code under the GPL, this means that the rights of the user have been restricted. "How dare this third party restrict the software rights of a user with my software," they think to themselves.
Note that I don't necessarily agree with this, but I do see where they're coming from.
The GPL tries to protect the freedom of end users, at the cost of the freedom of third party developers. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a fair tradeoff -- what rights did the end user have to the third party's changes to begin with?
Now, where the GPL really gets viral is with linking. Forcing an application to be GPL'd just because it links against a GPL library is ludicrous. The only way around it is to write a bunch of ugly wrappers. Thank goodness for the LGPL and other licenses.
You're so, so close to getting it, but not quite there.
GPL lets you remove the freedom of developers. GPL enables the freedom of users.
BSD lets you remove the freedom of users. BSD enables the freedom of developers.
Pro-GPL people try to argue that it's the freedom of the end user that needs to be protected. After all, making sure the users have the source enables them to fix any problems that software may have. Unfortunately, this means that the freedoms of whoever wants to write software that uses GPL'd code is limited, as they don't have the choice to keep their software proprietary.
Pro-BSD people try to argue that it's the freedom of the developers that needs to be protected. After all, making sure the developers can maintain their own copyright enables them to use your software freely. Unfortunately, this means that the freedoms of whoever wants to use a derivative work are limited, as they are not guaranteed to have the source code of the changes available.
So, now which restriction is least restrictive?
Freedom is a balancing act -- there are very few cases where enforcing the freedom of one group of people won't harm the freedom of another group. Just be careful that you don't assume the freedoms you value are more important than the freedoms that other people value.
Let's go to the actual article for more information on what this statement means, shall we?
Research has found that certain high-quality programs have educational benefits for children older than 2 years. Children who watch these programs
have improved social skills, language skills, and even school readiness. However, the educational merit of media for children younger than 2 years remains unproven despite the fact that three-quarters of the top-selling infant videos make explicit or implicit educational claims. To be beneficial, children need to understand the content of programs and pay attention to it. Children older than 2 years and those younger than 2 years are at different levels of cognitive development and process information differently. In fact, 2 studies have found that watching a program such as “Sesame Street” has a negative effect on
language for children younger than 2 years, and 2 studies have found no evidence of benefit. There is a paucity of research on this topic, but the existing literature suggests that media use does not promote language skills in this age group.
Young children have difficulty discriminating between events on a video and the same information presented by a live person, which is referred to as “video deficit.” Children 12 to 18 months of age are more likely to learn from a live presentation than from a televised one and are also more likely to remember the information from a live presentation afterward. These studies have only been performed on noncommercial videos. Some studies have found that children 1 to 2 years of age can remember an event on video if the screen demonstration repeats several times. Two studies have shown that infants as young as 12 months learn emotional responses after media viewing. One longitudinal study performed has thus far found that children younger than 2 years who watch television have no statistical improvement in their cognitive development compared with their non-viewing peers by 3 years of age.
So, yeah. Saying that they "just have no idea what's going on" is a hyperbole. But the core message is there: "educational" shows for under 2 are no better, and often worse, than actually interacting with your children. If you read on, you'll see that the reason is that sometime around 2 years old, kids develop longer attention spans, a stronger ability to piece together what's on the screen, and more. I should also point out that the article is clear that there's a continuum for development, so what's appropriate for one kid may not be appropriate for another of the same age.
All in all, be sure you're judging the AAP by what they actually publish, not from selected quotes.
No, the problem is that kids come in all kinds of personalities, so no two parents' experience is the same. Even kids within the same family can be wildly different. Note to parents: don't judge other parents because their kids act differently than yours, and don't judge how other parents raise your kids.
Some kids are wildly rowdy. Others are more content to sit and play on their own. Some are OK for a while, but have to be tended to periodically.
Take my 2-year-old, for example. He won't stay still for very long at all, especially around dinner time. Not rowdy, mind you, but he wants to be involved in what we're doing, which is a problem when we're making hot meals. The two things I've found that help: 1) start him on the vegetables while we're still cooking (he's hungry so he eats them right away, and sits still at the table); 2) Clifford the Big Red Dog for when veggies don't work or dinner's going to be late. He won't sit still for anything else, but pop in a Clifford video and he hardly blinks ... which is why we only use it on rare occasions.
I'm afraid you were the victim of a practical joke. Did a thin guy wearing a black hat tell you this?
Another issue is that researchers could be confused when the same piece of scientific gear is referred to by more than one name. It would be easy to miss the fact that the Very Large Array and "insert new name here" are actually the same piece of equipment.
On the other hand, this name change follows a significant upgrade to the VLA's equipment. Having a different name provides an easy way to tell the difference.
Something like how we change the name of software when there's significant changes. "XP, Vista, 7" ... I don't hear anybody getting confused about those. By that respect, a name change for the VLA might even be welcome.
Others are mocking you, but I think there's an interesting difference between talking into your phone and talking to your phone.
When I've seen people try to use speech recognition on their phones, it's obvious which one they're doing. And they really do look like dorks. The real advance will be when telling your phone what you want to do is as smooth and as fluid as talking to an assistant on the other end of the phone line.
Maybe Siri has done that?
Now I stand corrected.
"Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001"
And this is where people start wishing the code were GPL instead of MIT.
If the original driver were published with a copyleft license, those power management improvements would have to be shared when the drivers are released. With MIT, you can only hope that AMD will see the benefit of sharing their improvements.
You can argue about what freedom means all you want, but it's hard to argue that having almost guaranteed access to improvements wouldn't be good for the users of the Linux driver.
Try again. The full name is "Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001."
Of course, the title was chosen to create a nice propaganda vehicle to sell it to the public, so the meaning of PATRIOT has largely been lost.
I mostly agree, but a quick rebuttal:
The declaration syntax is only horrid when you need to declare something complex. "int i;" is about as simple as you could ever expect a declaration to be, and 99% of all variables fall along those lines. It's the rare cases of declaring arrays of function pointers returning pointers to arrays of function pointer-pointers (throwing in const in a few places for good measure) that get to be horrid.
Another important thing to remember is that C only tries to lightly abstract away from assembly language. The abstraction is just enough that you don't generally care about the machine itself. That's why arrays and pointers work they way they do. That's why there's so much "implementation-defined behavior" and other undefined cases. Writing a functional C compiler is so simple, as most constructs can be translated directly into equivalent assembly.
Well, at least, that's the way C was when it first came out. Then it spread and grew, was modified, extended, and eventually standardized. A lot of that simplicity has gone away in the decades since, as a natural by-product of the growth of the language. Now, in comparison to some other languages, C is arcane, awkward, and complicated. C used to be dead simple, which is why it's deceptively simple now.
But if you step back, there's a certain simplistic beauty that exists, even to this day.
Even better, he invented a language that could be explained that easily while still being what it became.
One possible reason for the brevity of the book: the K&R brace style was invented to make the code snippets shorter. Little did they know the religious war they would start with that.
(Possibly apocryphal, but still fun to repeat).
You're not an idiot, of course. In most situations, you'd be right -- extra inventory is a sign that something's wrong, just as much as missing inventory is. The extra items are a sign that people aren't doing what you expect, not following procedures, not recording things properly. If I have more money in the bank then I expect when I reconcile my accounts, I need to know why and fix it. Maybe my electricity bill didn't get paid properly and will be shut off tomorrow. Extra money isn't always a good thing.
But for an Apollo mission ... how big of a deal is an extra item? The astronauts followed pretty strict procedures, but a camera stowed in the wrong place isn't that big of a deal. Would an inventory even bother to look for, and report, extra cameras? If they did inventories of the capsule on return (still an assumption, but let's go with it), my bet is that a missing item that was supposed to be present raised all sorts of red flags, but an extra item that was supposed to be left behind got a shoulder shrug.
Image if you saw that homeless guy selling that hamburger on ebay for $10,000. All the sudden, the temptation to sue jumps up a notch or two.