Of course this also begs the question of who determines "adult content" which should make one suspicious of motives as this law comes from a state that had a state appointed "porn czar" who was a self avowed virgin.
I think that there could be some very smart politicians in Utah. Personally, I don't think that this law is a big deal. People can choose to have sites blocked or not. But this brings us back to who in the state will be determining "utah's official list of sites harmful to children". This is one job that I sure as hell wouldn't want.
No matter how many sites he puts on the list, His office will be getting phone calls and letters. There will be letters to the editor of the local papers second guessing every decision he makes.
If he starts to block less dangerout sites he's sure to catch flack from a different group of people. His name will be vilified on both sides.
So I guess the question this brings up. Who stands to gain from Utah's Attorney General's pain?
one reason to buy a book on something when the information is available (on w3c.org or elsewhere) would be that it's possible to present the same information in different formats. some formats may be easier to understand than others. sometimes different people even have different reactions to different writers. so while i'm sure the specs out on the w3c.org website are great. they may not be presented in the way that everyone can most easily learn from...
this is in addition to other reasons like... lighter and more portable than a computer doesn't need to be attached to a computer. easier on some people's eyes.
see, in order for this confusion to occur, a slashdotter would actually have to interact with another person in real life. However, on the internet, where we slashdotter's reside, everying is pronounced with spelled-out. so you see, there isn't any problem after all.
I couldn't agree more with you. I also opted-out of the lawsuit. These types of lawsuits greatly benefit the lawyers, at the expense of every consumer in the country. Which is OK when there has been real harm done. but a "coming soon" page??? i mean c'mon!
You have a good point, a company could try and pursue a royalty payment for using their technology, but i would guess resources that company would have to use to discover and then prove you have violated their IP seem like it wouldn't be worth the rewards for them. this is dependent on whether or not your new program is going to be used in a area likely to draw attention. and on how similar the problem and solution is to the original.
I can't tell you much about whether you'd win if actually challenged in court... but i can give you one thing to consider: is the product you are developing going to be competition for the product you had the "neat solution" to? if not, i would guess your you'd be pretty safe from lawsuits. if your new project is going to only be used internally by your new company, or if it's in a different industry, then i doubt your old company would ever even notice it's existence. on the other hand, if you just joined a startup that is competing against your former employer, then i would start checking with a lawyer.
not sure if you understand the difference between what the original poster was saying and the guy in the cartoon was saying, so let me explain. the original poster claimed physical things can be property, but ideas can't be owned the character in your cartoon was saying ideas are property but that you shouldn't charge for physical things... such as renting an apt. i didn't pay too much attention in my classes so i don't know the technical term for this type of invalid arguement,, i think it may be "straw man"
But right now you could say voting is easier for those without jobs or who work less hours. I make a point to vote every election and waiting in line to vote certainly has more opportunity cost for the wealthy than those who have no jobs.
as a developer who recently left a "award winning" CRM company, i have to say that i think the poster's inexperience in developing shows up in some of the things he says here.
he talks about how typos happen but logical bugs are unexcusable. then says that all developers should go over there code "line by line" to make sure it doesn't have any bugs.
as anyone who has developed business software can tell you, you won't find bugs looking one line at a time. bugs happen not because i accidently put > instead of , but because of factors that are MUCH more subtle. things like the following.
some other part of the application, sometimes that you don't even know about, modifies a database value without you expecting it.
pressure for high performance. you'd like to make your application check for everything and have nice modular layers (data/presentation/etc) to be reused. but it has to work fast as well.
time to market. the sales guys always promise features as soon as they hear we are considering building it into the system, they don't have to support it later so why not?
changing requirements. who has ever thougth something like this "i wish i could have designed this the right way, but it's really just a hack. i could have factored this possibility into the original design, but my manager said don't bother."
anyway, there are many more than this, but i'll let other's add their personal favorite stories. what were the reasons in the past there have been bugs in YOUR code?
He did apologize for the miscommunication and offered to give the challenger his $100 back. he never "threatened legal action" as many people on here have mentioned. he only said perhaps the rules of the contest should be written in "legalese".
Mike would do this to avoid situations like what happened, where someone could argue that they DID win the challenge, even though the challenger did not really do what the spirit of the challenge intended.
I'm not trying to say the the challenger lost, but i'm getting frustrated now that i've read several posts implying the mike was ready to unleash a team of lawyers or something.
the author states
"Analogy is not a useful way of deciding what to buy or at what price."
and then proceeds to use an analogy about building highways as his argument that an analogy is not an effective way of looking at the issue. i thought it was kinda funny
Apparently analogies are only bad when used by people you disagree with.
other than that i liked the article, and his ideas.
I have an honest question about your arguement, who is it exactly that is bullying and threatening these women and children into working at these jobs. if Nike itself is threatening physical harm to those who refuse to work then by all mean show evendence of this and i'll become an avid Nike hater. however if other people are doing the threatening then we need to approach the problem a different way. it is those who are forcing people to work that are to blame, and those are the people who deserve our hatred/actions. I would be suprised if this is nike, but i'll listen to whatever evidence you may have.
i can't say i really disagree directly with much you wrote in this last post. i'll admit that my last post was not a realistic argument, just a theoritical arguement. what i'm trying to say is:
If there is not sufficient economic opportunity in an area for a person to be able to afford the necessities of life then perhaps they should move. because at that point they have a negative contribution to society.
We could debate which services are essencial to survival all day i guess. i'll just lay one arguement down here. considering that none of the services you mentioned has been around for more than a small fraction of humans existence, i think i can safely say that humans can survive and even live a good life without them.
as far as my complaining about having to pay for others it is true on some level, but most of my annoyance comes from people who feel they are entitiled to anything they want, many people had never heard of the internet a few years ago and now it's crucial to have it. so much so that it seems it is the duty of a civilized society to provide it to all it's citizens.
ironically i really thought you were on the mark in some post this afternoon where i replied, you'll see the one, at least we seem to agree on some things eh?
so what you are saying is that that these people out in the middle of iowa REQUIRE phone service to surive, and that if it wasn't for the gov't, the phone company wouldn't provide that service? because the cost of providing it is much more expensive out there. say 4 times as much.
is that right?
so if the service is actually essential to their lives, i'd think they would be willing to pay $100/month for something they couldn't live without.
but with regulation we only shift the burden of that expence to the people who live in urban areas and to the shareholders of the companies. it's not their fault the iowans decided to live out in the boonies.
so if the people out there had to pay $100/month for service, city living would become more attractive, some of the farmers would move to the city to become programmers like me or something. now there are less farmer in iowa to produce the bacon i love for breakfast, there is a shortage, the pig farmers that are left start raking in the dough and i move to the middle of iowa to become a farmer cause $100/month for phone service doesn't seem so bad when i can bacon at $100/pound.
everyone gets what they want, noboby has been denied a service that is ACTUALLY essential to living.
Because most of them were/are complete idiots.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that most people in my country are complete idiots too. maybe it's just something with the human race in general.
But at least we kicked some Nazi ass instead of taking it in the rear and then trying to ban free speech later in hope people would forget the Nazis existed or something.
and in case you are wondering, yes this rant was brought to you by monday.
and thats the reason that oracle may not be such a great solution, it's so hard to learn compared to other DB systems. i've been working on a project for over a year now that needs to use both SQL server and ORACLE as a backend. luckily my company decided to dump the oracle version last week, i couldn't be happier, such a pain to configure the clients. I do understand how powerful ORACLE can be when used properly, but for most projects SQL server is sufficent. And WAY cheaper. which was a factor that the original author mentioned.
if you are already skilled with ORACLE, then great, it's a powerful system. but it could be overkill for most projects.
Of course if you are in the *nix world then SQL server isn't for you. but there are still other options than oracle.
(does anyone else feel completely drained from this election?)
Slashdot Mirror
As a nerd who write chess software for computers, I find this comment hilarious.
Of course this also begs the question of who determines "adult content" which should make one suspicious of motives as this law comes from a state that had a state appointed "porn czar" who was a self avowed virgin.
I think that there could be some very smart politicians in Utah. Personally, I don't think that this law is a big deal. People can choose to have sites blocked or not. But this brings us back to who in the state will be determining "utah's official list of sites harmful to children". This is one job that I sure as hell wouldn't want.
No matter how many sites he puts on the list, His office will be getting phone calls and letters. There will be letters to the editor of the local papers second guessing every decision he makes.
If he starts to block less dangerout sites he's sure to catch flack from a different group of people. His name will be vilified on both sides.
So I guess the question this brings up. Who stands to gain from Utah's Attorney General's pain?
one reason to buy a book on something when the information is available (on w3c.org or elsewhere) would be that it's possible to present the same information in different formats. some formats may be easier to understand than others. sometimes different people even have different reactions to different writers. so while i'm sure the specs out on the w3c.org website are great. they may not be presented in the way that everyone can most easily learn from...
this is in addition to other reasons like...
lighter and more portable than a computer
doesn't need to be attached to a computer.
easier on some people's eyes.
additionally, none of us take the time to ever proof-read ANYTHING!
see, in order for this confusion to occur, a slashdotter would actually have to interact with another person in real life. However, on the internet, where we slashdotter's reside, everying is pronounced with spelled-out. so you see, there isn't any problem after all.
I couldn't agree more with you. I also opted-out of the lawsuit. These types of lawsuits greatly benefit the lawyers, at the expense of every consumer in the country. Which is OK when there has been real harm done. but a "coming soon" page??? i mean c'mon!
he gets it!!! someone here FINALLY gets it!
I really wonder if a few pounds of cardboard will really make much of a difference?
You have a good point, a company could try and pursue a royalty payment for using their technology,
but i would guess resources that company would have to use to discover and then prove you have violated their IP seem like it wouldn't be worth the rewards for them.
this is dependent on whether or not your new program is going to be used in a area likely to draw attention. and on how similar the problem and solution is to the original.
I can't tell you much about whether you'd win if actually challenged in court... but i can give you one thing to consider:
is the product you are developing going to be competition for the product you had the "neat solution" to? if not, i would guess your you'd be pretty safe from lawsuits.
if your new project is going to only be used internally by your new company, or if it's in a different industry, then i doubt your old company would ever even notice it's existence.
on the other hand, if you just joined a startup that is competing against your former employer, then i would start checking with a lawyer.
not sure if you understand the difference between what the original poster was saying and the guy in the cartoon was saying, so let me explain.
the original poster claimed physical things can be property, but ideas can't be owned
the character in your cartoon was saying ideas are property but that you shouldn't charge for physical things... such as renting an apt.
i didn't pay too much attention in my classes so i don't know the technical term for this type of invalid arguement,, i think it may be "straw man"
well that does it...
no more lottery tickets for me, just not worth the risk anymore.
But right now you could say voting is easier for those without jobs or who work less hours. I make a point to vote every election and waiting in line to vote certainly has more opportunity cost for the wealthy than those who have no jobs.
as a developer who recently left a "award winning" CRM company, i have to say that i think the poster's inexperience in developing shows up in some of the things he says here.
he talks about how typos happen but logical bugs are unexcusable. then says that all developers should go over there code "line by line" to make sure it doesn't have any bugs.
as anyone who has developed business software can tell you, you won't find bugs looking one line at a time. bugs happen not because i accidently put > instead of , but because of factors that are MUCH more subtle. things like the following.
some other part of the application, sometimes that you don't even know about, modifies a database value without you expecting it.
pressure for high performance. you'd like to make your application check for everything and have nice modular layers (data/presentation/etc) to be reused. but it has to work fast as well.
time to market. the sales guys always promise features as soon as they hear we are considering building it into the system, they don't have to support it later so why not?
changing requirements. who has ever thougth something like this "i wish i could have designed this the right way, but it's really just a hack. i could have factored this possibility into the original design, but my manager said don't bother."
anyway, there are many more than this, but i'll let other's add their personal favorite stories. what were the reasons in the past there have been bugs in YOUR code?
He did apologize for the miscommunication and offered to give the challenger his $100 back. he never "threatened legal action" as many people on here have mentioned. he only said perhaps the rules of the contest should be written in "legalese".
Mike would do this to avoid situations like what happened, where someone could argue that they DID win the challenge, even though the challenger did not really do what the spirit of the challenge intended.
I'm not trying to say the the challenger lost, but i'm getting frustrated now that i've read several posts implying the mike was ready to unleash a team of lawyers or something.
Eric
the author states
"Analogy is not a useful way of deciding what to buy or at what price."
and then proceeds to use an analogy about building highways as his argument that an analogy is not an effective way of looking at the issue. i thought it was kinda funny
Apparently analogies are only bad when used by people you disagree with.
other than that i liked the article, and his ideas.
I have an honest question about your arguement, who is it exactly that is bullying and threatening these women and children into working at these jobs. if Nike itself is threatening physical harm to those who refuse to work then by all mean show evendence of this and i'll become an avid Nike hater. however if other people are doing the threatening then we need to approach the problem a different way. it is those who are forcing people to work that are to blame, and those are the people who deserve our hatred/actions. I would be suprised if this is nike, but i'll listen to whatever evidence you may have.
i can't say i really disagree directly with much you wrote in this last post. i'll admit that my last post was not a realistic argument, just a theoritical arguement. what i'm trying to say is:
If there is not sufficient economic opportunity in an area for a person to be able to afford the necessities of life then perhaps they should move. because at that point they have a negative contribution to society.
We could debate which services are essencial to survival all day i guess. i'll just lay one arguement down here. considering that none of the services you mentioned has been around for more than a small fraction of humans existence, i think i can safely say that humans can survive and even live a good life without them.
as far as my complaining about having to pay for others it is true on some level, but most of my annoyance comes from people who feel they are entitiled to anything they want, many people had never heard of the internet a few years ago and now it's crucial to have it. so much so that it seems it is the duty of a civilized society to provide it to all it's citizens.
ironically i really thought you were on the mark in some post this afternoon where i replied, you'll see the one, at least we seem to agree on some things eh?
You have it just right, if i had mod points you'd get all of em.
so what you are saying is that that these people out in the middle of iowa REQUIRE phone service to surive, and that if it wasn't for the gov't, the phone company wouldn't provide that service? because the cost of providing it is much more expensive out there. say 4 times as much.
is that right?
so if the service is actually essential to their lives, i'd think they would be willing to pay $100/month for something they couldn't live without.
but with regulation we only shift the burden of that expence to the people who live in urban areas and to the shareholders of the companies. it's not their fault the iowans decided to live out in the boonies.
so if the people out there had to pay $100/month for service, city living would become more attractive, some of the farmers would move to the city to become programmers like me or something. now there are less farmer in iowa to produce the bacon i love for breakfast, there is a shortage, the pig farmers that are left start raking in the dough and i move to the middle of iowa to become a farmer cause $100/month for phone service doesn't seem so bad when i can bacon at $100/pound.
everyone gets what they want, noboby has been denied a service that is ACTUALLY essential to living.
and i also realize I'M one of the idiots in my country considering i can't spell "french" correctly.
Because most of them were/are complete idiots.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that most people in my country are complete idiots too. maybe it's just something with the human race in general.
But at least we kicked some Nazi ass instead of taking it in the rear and then trying to ban free speech later in hope people would forget the Nazis existed or something.
and in case you are wondering, yes this rant was brought to you by monday.
and thats the reason that oracle may not be such a great solution, it's so hard to learn compared to other DB systems. i've been working on a project for over a year now that needs to use both SQL server and ORACLE as a backend. luckily my company decided to dump the oracle version last week, i couldn't be happier, such a pain to configure the clients. I do understand how powerful ORACLE can be when used properly, but for most projects SQL server is sufficent. And WAY cheaper. which was a factor that the original author mentioned.
if you are already skilled with ORACLE, then great, it's a powerful system. but it could be overkill for most projects.
Of course if you are in the *nix world then SQL server isn't for you. but there are still other options than oracle.
(does anyone else feel completely drained from this election?)
i apologize for the flame, i'm not normally like that, was just having a bad day.
you are right, i did the math wrong, i wrote 5m on top and then only used 1m in the math.