A third is that we are humans and granted the rights to ourselves.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
What the shipper chooses to do is up to them and has nothing to do with the moral/ethical question of "Do I ship this thing they sent me by mistake back?" "I'll do the right thing if you do" is a bad way to decide what is ethical and moral. It is also not a way to justify not doing what you know is right. You have heard that "two wrongs don't make a right" and it is true.
My moral and ethical choices are not dependent on other people's choices. I must strive to do the right thing, even when other people don't or won't.
But what is the *right* thing to do? Legal issues aside, if somebody sends me something by mistake, then asks for it back, they are getting it back because that's what I would want them to do if I sent them something by mistake.
Provided they pay for shipping.
If not, they are free to pick up their item at one of the times of my choosing.
I'd assume that if they want the thing back, they'd prepay the packing and freight or send somebody by to pick it up. But if not, I'd consider shipping it back myself just to stay out of the grey area as much as possible, but that's just me. If they won't pay the return freight after being asked, then I'll leave it up to you.
Keep it, to motivate them to get their shit straight next time. They write it off as a loss and maybe make some kind of insurance claim. Maybe they fire the person responsible, do a little housecleaning.
if somebody sends me something by mistake, then asks for it back, they are getting it back because that's what I would want them to do if I sent them something by mistake.
Maybe you shouldn't be sending things to people by mistake. It's pretty hard for an individual to do.
So, if you send a package to the wrong address by mistake, you are OK with the receiver keeping it? After all, we need to punish you for being so stupid as to make such a mistake you know. What if you where the poor coder who made the mistake? You are OK with loosing your job for this? Say this faceless person was your best friend with a family who depended on this job to provide for their needs? You going to feel the same way about this when they hit the unemployment line?
One has to do the right thing, regardless. Ship the thing back..
It doesn't matter who or what made the mistake, it is up to me to do the right thing and ship back the things they sent me by mistake if they ask for it. I cannot make the argument that "Hey, they have so much more money than I do, they won't miss it!" to change my moral judgment on what the right thing is. If I'd choose to send it back to a poor guy who'd loose his business because of the mistake, I'm going to send it back to a multinational corporation making billions a year in profit who looses more in paperclip costs per day than the item is worth.
It also doesn't matter what the other entity would choose to do to me if the roles where reversed. I must do what is right, regardless of what anybody else chooses to do. For instance, I am not free to use immoral and unethical business practices, just because my competitor chooses to do so.
To me, such arguments are really attempts to justify doing something we know is wrong. They end up being a slippery slope both morally and ethically where you end up being able to justify anything. I suggest you stick to the high ground.
That's kind of fair. I agree that getting indignant over it is silly, you are taking advantage of a mistake. However, I find it hard to sympathize with a corporation that probably pulls in net profits of close to or over a billion each year over a mistake in my favor for a few hundred dollars. I think if it was me, I'd keep quiet unless they started bugging me about it to the point where it's not worth it, in which case I'd return it. Which is basically what this story is about; if I got legal threats over it, it'd probably precipitate my return of the product, since that's a pretty big "not worth it."
How much money the entity making the mistake has does not change the basic moral question of if it's right to keep something they shipped to you by mistake. Some may use this "they make a lot of money anyway so this won't matter" as justification to do something they wouldn't otherwise do. To me, it doesn't matter if the mistake was made by a corporation making millions in profit or the homeless guy on the street, I'm going to do the right thing. Full stop.
But what is the *right* thing to do? Legal issues aside, if somebody sends me something by mistake, then asks for it back, they are getting it back because that's what I would want them to do if I sent them something by mistake.
You didn't start where I pointed. The Mayflower Compact, which explains what the Constitution was trying to do generations later.
And you seem to miss the declaration where it says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." and following.
Finally, there is "common law" which we use here in the USA which was inherited from our European roots. If you look at "common law" you will find that much of it is derived from Christian religious belief from back in the age where Church, government and law where all intertwined. The US Constitution does not undo or declare invalid all this "common law" but to establish a government which allows for the free expression and practice of religion within a framework which was fleshed out by common law.
So, do you get the relationship between the 10 commandments and today's law yet?
Most of my comments are Doxygen, at least from a line count perspective. I try to document every method's inputs, returns and what it reads and modifies and what it is attempting to do. In addition to that, I try to clearly document any identifiers declared, their content and purpose. Finally, I attempt to document every logical edge and loop control logic. Adding all this gets you pretty close to half your source code being comments.
I actually do most of the commenting BEFORE writing the code in question. We usually do not have highly detailed design documentation beyond the class public methods so this is my way of fleshing out the implementation details before I code. Your mileage and practice may vary, but any process that discourages the production and maintenance of comments is stupid in my book. Sure, you have to *maintain* comments along with the code, but the time you save when you have to pick up some code to maintain it later is going to make it worth it in most cases. Of course, if you don't intend to maintain your code (and the comments in it) then feel free to ignore good programming practice but be aware that you will pay the price for this, eventually.
So, I don't agree that "comments bad" they are not. In my experience, they are not used enough.
Oh there where a LOT more rules associated with the 10 commandments. No son of Adam can keep them all. The bulk of the first 5 books of the Old Testament deals with ceremonial and civil law of the historical Jewish nations of Israel and Judah with smatterings of law all over the rest of the books.
It can have a forcing effect on things other than direct belief when it becomes part of the civil or governing code
You are many centuries too late. The 10 commandments and other religious moral codes are already seen as a basis for a lot of common law. Trying to tell yourself otherwise is ignorance. (Now that you've read this it's willful ignorance or self deception.. )
What are they teaching in public schools these days.. Shesh..
I was commenting on MY comments and those of whom I work with. In general, our comments are related to the code they document, by design, by policy and by routinely checking them in code reviews. Do they always match 100%? No, but that is the exception and not the rule, at least where I work. I fully get that my current experience is *NOT* the norm. Out of the 9 places I've worked as a programmer, my current employer is certainly at the top of the list for producing quality code. Only a few have rivaled the place I work now. The rest where usually pretty bad.
Of course, if you work in a place that doesn't care, you get what you get. Stupid programmers, or programmers who are being driven too hard to care, will not review comments and code for readability and make sure the two match. But it's a short term gain and a long term loss when you don't put the effort into producing code that is maintainable. These programmers are the same types that choose misleading identifier names and produce methods with huge complexity. They don't understand the difference between the stack and the heap or exactly what their code actually does, as long as the compiler will plow though it and the program runs.
So your mileage may vary from mine... Especially if you work in one of the majority of places that really don't know what they are doing.
I find it incredible that we're getting all these results today,.
Why? Remember that congress is in the process of putting together the continued funding of the Federal Government as I type this. Time is running out on the temporary agreements currently in place and the horse trading is kicking up into high gear.
Such announcements are at least partially timed by the political reality of having to obtain funding. NASA and JPL are just getting started sooner than the rest I guess.
What would your programming language look like if the Pointy-Haired Boss had to be able to understand it?
Lots of comments, very little actual code.
When I was in school, we had to have over 50% comments or the TA wouldn't even try to grade your program. The habit was a good one, and although I don't always get to the 50% I still put a lot of comments in my code.
Come to think of it, making your code understandable by the PHB is not a bad goal. If the PHB can understand what you are doing, the next poor programmer (which might be you a few months after you have forgotten the project) will have an easier job fixing something.
Oh so they invented some *new* thing that I don't understand? Snake oil I say.
Look, in this part of my studies as a Electrical Engineer, I can assure you that they've not *invented* anything. Transferring power using magnetic fields requires you create an ever changing magnetic flux though the receiving coil of wire. Using a tuned circuit doesn't change how the physics of magnetic flux work only the circuits connected to the wire coils. It's still going to boil down to how much flux change can you get cutting though the receiving coil's wire to generate current. The physics don't change here, I don't care what circuits you use to generate the magnetic field or draw power from it.
But before you go to far, consider *who* I'm quoting and understand that there have been *many* people, from the well educated on down who have arrived at the same opinion though history. There is evidence of a creator, enough to keep this the prevailing theory of where everything came from though recorded history.
It won't scale up in power level. The usable flux density of air is going to throw a physics law wrench in their works. The distance between the car and the source is going to impose severe limits, unless there are some serious problems with our understanding of basic physics (which is highly unlikely at this point.)
Gee folks, the laws of physics pretty much govern how "wireless" transmission of energy works. Using magnetic fields to transfer power from here to there is not new, we've been doing it long before Edison and Westinghouse where fighting it out over AC verses DC over 100 years ago. Westinghouse used "transformers" way back then so transferring power from one coil of wire to another though a magnetic field is not new.
But they are using a different frequency! That's new right? Not so fast... Designers have been using higher frequencies in transformers for a long time now. Aircraft have routinely used 400 Cycle power systems so designers could use smaller (and lighter) transformers since before WWII. Further, we now routinely use frequencies in the Kilohertz in switching power supplies for the same reason. More efficiency, smaller size and weight by using higher frequencies.
But they really haven't solved anything or come up with anything new. They will suffer efficiency losses because their magnetic flux coupling is weak due to the distances involved, they will suffer from limited ability to transfer power because the maximum flux density of air is pretty low, and they will have to add significant weight to the cars being charged by adding large coils of wire with many turns to them.
Good question... What the *world* calls football or that Rugbyesk thing the yanks in the US call football... Only, there isn't that much difference in the field sizes.
Slashdot Mirror
A third is that we are humans and granted the rights to ourselves.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence.
What the shipper chooses to do is up to them and has nothing to do with the moral/ethical question of "Do I ship this thing they sent me by mistake back?" "I'll do the right thing if you do" is a bad way to decide what is ethical and moral. It is also not a way to justify not doing what you know is right. You have heard that "two wrongs don't make a right" and it is true.
My moral and ethical choices are not dependent on other people's choices. I must strive to do the right thing, even when other people don't or won't.
I'd keep it.
But what is the *right* thing to do? Legal issues aside, if somebody sends me something by mistake, then asks for it back, they are getting it back because that's what I would want them to do if I sent them something by mistake.
Provided they pay for shipping. If not, they are free to pick up their item at one of the times of my choosing.
I'd assume that if they want the thing back, they'd prepay the packing and freight or send somebody by to pick it up. But if not, I'd consider shipping it back myself just to stay out of the grey area as much as possible, but that's just me. If they won't pay the return freight after being asked, then I'll leave it up to you.
But what is the *right* thing to do?
Keep it, to motivate them to get their shit straight next time. They write it off as a loss and maybe make some kind of insurance claim. Maybe they fire the person responsible, do a little housecleaning.
if somebody sends me something by mistake, then asks for it back, they are getting it back because that's what I would want them to do if I sent them something by mistake.
Maybe you shouldn't be sending things to people by mistake. It's pretty hard for an individual to do.
So, if you send a package to the wrong address by mistake, you are OK with the receiver keeping it? After all, we need to punish you for being so stupid as to make such a mistake you know. What if you where the poor coder who made the mistake? You are OK with loosing your job for this? Say this faceless person was your best friend with a family who depended on this job to provide for their needs? You going to feel the same way about this when they hit the unemployment line?
One has to do the right thing, regardless. Ship the thing back..
It doesn't matter who or what made the mistake, it is up to me to do the right thing and ship back the things they sent me by mistake if they ask for it. I cannot make the argument that "Hey, they have so much more money than I do, they won't miss it!" to change my moral judgment on what the right thing is. If I'd choose to send it back to a poor guy who'd loose his business because of the mistake, I'm going to send it back to a multinational corporation making billions a year in profit who looses more in paperclip costs per day than the item is worth.
It also doesn't matter what the other entity would choose to do to me if the roles where reversed. I must do what is right, regardless of what anybody else chooses to do. For instance, I am not free to use immoral and unethical business practices, just because my competitor chooses to do so.
To me, such arguments are really attempts to justify doing something we know is wrong. They end up being a slippery slope both morally and ethically where you end up being able to justify anything. I suggest you stick to the high ground.
That's kind of fair. I agree that getting indignant over it is silly, you are taking advantage of a mistake. However, I find it hard to sympathize with a corporation that probably pulls in net profits of close to or over a billion each year over a mistake in my favor for a few hundred dollars. I think if it was me, I'd keep quiet unless they started bugging me about it to the point where it's not worth it, in which case I'd return it. Which is basically what this story is about; if I got legal threats over it, it'd probably precipitate my return of the product, since that's a pretty big "not worth it."
How much money the entity making the mistake has does not change the basic moral question of if it's right to keep something they shipped to you by mistake. Some may use this "they make a lot of money anyway so this won't matter" as justification to do something they wouldn't otherwise do. To me, it doesn't matter if the mistake was made by a corporation making millions in profit or the homeless guy on the street, I'm going to do the right thing. Full stop.
I'd keep it.
But what is the *right* thing to do? Legal issues aside, if somebody sends me something by mistake, then asks for it back, they are getting it back because that's what I would want them to do if I sent them something by mistake.
Once merchandise is returned of course..
You didn't start where I pointed. The Mayflower Compact, which explains what the Constitution was trying to do generations later.
And you seem to miss the declaration where it says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." and following.
Finally, there is "common law" which we use here in the USA which was inherited from our European roots. If you look at "common law" you will find that much of it is derived from Christian religious belief from back in the age where Church, government and law where all intertwined. The US Constitution does not undo or declare invalid all this "common law" but to establish a government which allows for the free expression and practice of religion within a framework which was fleshed out by common law.
So, do you get the relationship between the 10 commandments and today's law yet?
Most of my comments are Doxygen, at least from a line count perspective. I try to document every method's inputs, returns and what it reads and modifies and what it is attempting to do. In addition to that, I try to clearly document any identifiers declared, their content and purpose. Finally, I attempt to document every logical edge and loop control logic. Adding all this gets you pretty close to half your source code being comments.
I actually do most of the commenting BEFORE writing the code in question. We usually do not have highly detailed design documentation beyond the class public methods so this is my way of fleshing out the implementation details before I code. Your mileage and practice may vary, but any process that discourages the production and maintenance of comments is stupid in my book. Sure, you have to *maintain* comments along with the code, but the time you save when you have to pick up some code to maintain it later is going to make it worth it in most cases. Of course, if you don't intend to maintain your code (and the comments in it) then feel free to ignore good programming practice but be aware that you will pay the price for this, eventually.
So, I don't agree that "comments bad" they are not. In my experience, they are not used enough.
As a rules to live by they seem a bit lacking.
Oh there where a LOT more rules associated with the 10 commandments. No son of Adam can keep them all. The bulk of the first 5 books of the Old Testament deals with ceremonial and civil law of the historical Jewish nations of Israel and Judah with smatterings of law all over the rest of the books.
The 10 commandments are just a summary statement.
It can have a forcing effect on things other than direct belief when it becomes part of the civil or governing code
You are many centuries too late. The 10 commandments and other religious moral codes are already seen as a basis for a lot of common law. Trying to tell yourself otherwise is ignorance. (Now that you've read this it's willful ignorance or self deception.. )
What are they teaching in public schools these days.. Shesh..
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact
Read this: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
And if you don't mind, the preamble to the constitution of the united states.
I thought the post was trying to be sarcastic myself.
I was commenting on MY comments and those of whom I work with. In general, our comments are related to the code they document, by design, by policy and by routinely checking them in code reviews. Do they always match 100%? No, but that is the exception and not the rule, at least where I work. I fully get that my current experience is *NOT* the norm. Out of the 9 places I've worked as a programmer, my current employer is certainly at the top of the list for producing quality code. Only a few have rivaled the place I work now. The rest where usually pretty bad.
Of course, if you work in a place that doesn't care, you get what you get. Stupid programmers, or programmers who are being driven too hard to care, will not review comments and code for readability and make sure the two match. But it's a short term gain and a long term loss when you don't put the effort into producing code that is maintainable. These programmers are the same types that choose misleading identifier names and produce methods with huge complexity. They don't understand the difference between the stack and the heap or exactly what their code actually does, as long as the compiler will plow though it and the program runs.
So your mileage may vary from mine... Especially if you work in one of the majority of places that really don't know what they are doing.
True, but I would assume that's a given in most cases.. Not all, just most..
I find it incredible that we're getting all these results today,.
Why? Remember that congress is in the process of putting together the continued funding of the Federal Government as I type this. Time is running out on the temporary agreements currently in place and the horse trading is kicking up into high gear.
Such announcements are at least partially timed by the political reality of having to obtain funding. NASA and JPL are just getting started sooner than the rest I guess.
What would your programming language look like if the Pointy-Haired Boss had to be able to understand it?
Lots of comments, very little actual code.
When I was in school, we had to have over 50% comments or the TA wouldn't even try to grade your program. The habit was a good one, and although I don't always get to the 50% I still put a lot of comments in my code.
Come to think of it, making your code understandable by the PHB is not a bad goal. If the PHB can understand what you are doing, the next poor programmer (which might be you a few months after you have forgotten the project) will have an easier job fixing something.
Oh so they invented some *new* thing that I don't understand? Snake oil I say.
Look, in this part of my studies as a Electrical Engineer, I can assure you that they've not *invented* anything. Transferring power using magnetic fields requires you create an ever changing magnetic flux though the receiving coil of wire. Using a tuned circuit doesn't change how the physics of magnetic flux work only the circuits connected to the wire coils. It's still going to boil down to how much flux change can you get cutting though the receiving coil's wire to generate current. The physics don't change here, I don't care what circuits you use to generate the magnetic field or draw power from it.
Yep..
But before you go to far, consider *who* I'm quoting and understand that there have been *many* people, from the well educated on down who have arrived at the same opinion though history. There is evidence of a creator, enough to keep this the prevailing theory of where everything came from though recorded history.
OR.. Brace yourself.... Write a program that pops a dialog box... You can do it for free, no hardware, soldering irons or USB port required.
How about going for simple and cheap... Write a program that pops a dialog box on your screen when you need to be notified about something..
Heck, just popup a dialog box from a program and skip all this USB to LED flashy stuff. Shesh..
It won't scale up in power level. The usable flux density of air is going to throw a physics law wrench in their works. The distance between the car and the source is going to impose severe limits, unless there are some serious problems with our understanding of basic physics (which is highly unlikely at this point.)
Gee folks, the laws of physics pretty much govern how "wireless" transmission of energy works. Using magnetic fields to transfer power from here to there is not new, we've been doing it long before Edison and Westinghouse where fighting it out over AC verses DC over 100 years ago. Westinghouse used "transformers" way back then so transferring power from one coil of wire to another though a magnetic field is not new.
But they are using a different frequency! That's new right? Not so fast... Designers have been using higher frequencies in transformers for a long time now. Aircraft have routinely used 400 Cycle power systems so designers could use smaller (and lighter) transformers since before WWII. Further, we now routinely use frequencies in the Kilohertz in switching power supplies for the same reason. More efficiency, smaller size and weight by using higher frequencies.
But they really haven't solved anything or come up with anything new. They will suffer efficiency losses because their magnetic flux coupling is weak due to the distances involved, they will suffer from limited ability to transfer power because the maximum flux density of air is pretty low, and they will have to add significant weight to the cars being charged by adding large coils of wire with many turns to them.
Nothing new to see here..
Good question... What the *world* calls football or that Rugbyesk thing the yanks in the US call football... Only, there isn't that much difference in the field sizes.