I think it's nothing short of amazing how far tablet / phone cameras have come in terms of picture quality, given the crappy lens and tiny sensor. Zoom, low light performance and a halfway decent flash are the obvious things missing from those cameras, but pictures taken in good light conditions actually look very good. Good enough to enlarge and print, and good enough for most people to be unable to tell that the photo was taken with a phone rather than a proper camera.
Speaking of ringtones: every now and then you'll still hear that good old Nokia one. Instantly recognizable, though these days it'll only draw a few sympathetic and/or rueful looks.
Promoting "family values" (and subsequently bashing / prosecuting anything that falls outside the norm of those values) is a tried and true way for politicians to ingratiate themselves with their "conservative" (for lack of a better term) constituency. It costs nothing in terms of money and political capital, if they play it right. President Fattah el-Sisi recently did the same by sharply (an unexpectedly) ramping up prosecution of homosexuals in Egypt. Not a priority for him, but a cheap way to win some brownie points with conservative voters after a few unpopular measures. And do you really think conservative politicians in the West give that much about gay marriage, given that they often have a decidedly "live and let live" attitude towards other matters?
Short answer: no. If you leave your door unlocked, you are not responsible for your house being burgled. If you (as a woman) dress up nicely for a night out on the town, you are not responsible for being raped on the way back home. Even if you pull down your bra and jiggle your jugs in front of a particularly drunk and horny looking individual in a dark alley. It's not wise, but that's statistics, not morality.
Charlie Hebdo have been threatened before (their office was firebombed if I recall correctly). Should they have stopped making their funnies then? Should we stop making fun of anyone when they threaten physical bodily harm? There are folk out there who, as someone put it, are offended deeply if their ligher doesn't work; should we cater to their whims too? I'd prefer to live in a society of laws rather than whims, and I for one am rather sad to live in a world where a movie like "Life of Brian" probably couldn't be made anymore, especially if they picked Mohammed as a target this time.
Many of the youngsters from my own country who trot off to Syria to fight for IS, though not from the top rungs of society's ladder, are hardly ostracized, but have an education and some have good jobs as well. And while some discrimination happens (events like these don't help), muslims are hardly treated like crap. They are given every opportunity to make something of themselves. Note that there are many other minority groups who face some discrimination, a degree of economic dsadvantage, and the harsh realities of an economic crisis, but none of them have an inclination to start blowing people up in the name of whatever. Religion definitely plays a role here.
With that said, the last thing we should do is to lay responsibility for these events at the doorstep of every muslim in our country. That is what the terrorists want. For us to give regular muslims the impression that they don't have any better options.
The terrorists and the people behind them love cartoons like these. They are also happy with strong reactions to recent events, especially with a backlash against ordinary muslim folk in the West. All that just makes it easier to convince impressionable youngsters to take up arms or stupidly blow themselves up in crowded places.
But it's ok to put up a sign "Women only" in a bar, or for a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription because he's a muslim and the customer is not wearing her obligatory headscarf. We seem to be very selective in the kind of discrimination we condemn, and the kinds we tolerate. That seems hypocritical. Either no discrimination is ok and everyone ought to be forced to do business with anyone at all, or everyone should have the right to refuse to do business with someone on any grounds.
The old Philips EE kits were much better and provided a lot of theoretical background in understandable language along with each project. A lot of the projects were geared to demonstrate what things like transistors or capacitors actually do. Check out the book for this kit; it's in Dutch but you'll get the idea.
If you're learning electronics, it's a bit weird to start with a microcontroller anyway.
Anyone remember the old Philips EE kits? I saved up for the EE 2003 when I was 8 or so (and the rest is history). This was a nice range of kits that fit together to build bigger projects up to and including a TV and an oscilloscope as well as digital circuits. Along the way it gave a pretty solid grounding in the characteristics and even theory of semiconductors, explained on a level for people without degrees in mathematics or physics. Which was definitely the point: Philips was hoping to train and entice potential EEs into the field.
If you want to sell a modern kit to learn electronics with a microcontroller, do include these basics as well. They are relevant: if you're interfacing stuff to your Arduino, you'll need to know something about basic circuitry like motor drivers and amplifiers, and concepts like PWM, or knowing how a transistor works and what it can do. They did include the necessary components for all this in the Duinokit, but I am hoping that they are also supplying good quality learning materials to go with it.
That's my gf's experience as well. Unfortunately her symptoms are somewhat generic and fit a wide range of conditions (MS, Parkinsons, epilepsy, spinal issues, stroke, the list goes on) so self-diagnosis is pretty useless, and since these cover several medical specialisms, each physician so far has said "It's probably [something that's not his specialism]". The last one said it's probably psychological. Great. "Luckily" the other day she had an attack right there in the neurologist's office, who was so shocked that at least they agreed to run a series of tests to start excluding some possibilities.
And that is why we need to defend our right to question, challenge and where necessary mock and ridicule religion. Let people believe and preach what they want, but don't ask us to respect or defend it, tolerance is sufficient. Yet more and more people feel they need to, or are forced to tiptoe around issues sensitive to religion. Especially here in Europe where there's a much weaker tradition of free speech and an unholy alliance between muslims noisily demanding respect and christians silently nodding their approval.
I have probably already recovered the outlay of the bits actually involved in the money saving part (not all of them are). And if I started from scratch today, I could probably put together the same setup for 2/3rds of the cost.
Recover my time spent times a reasonable hourly rate? No way. But as I said, it'll probably take a lot less effort in the near future.
The article is poorly written but there are some valid (and amusing / scary) points of view made. The author doesn't know what an OS is, clearly. But Hawkinson (the SmartThings guy) is right that there isn't going to be a one-size-fits all solution to home automation, there will have to be something to integrate disjoint subsystems. According to him, your system needs to be open to be fully useful, and I agree. However I am not sure that SmartThings is going in the right direction.
There's a few things to keep in mind in home automation:
- No vendor is ever going to manufacture and sell all the kinds of "connected" devices you will want. You're going to be mixing brands.
- The standard you pick will not be available on all your devices. When you choose an A/C unit, you don't want your choice to be limited by the HA standard it happens to support. Be prepared to deal with multiple HA protocols.
- No home automation vendor is going to write a driver or plugin for every conceivable device. And no equipment manufacturer is going to supply drivers for their products on every conceivable HA hub. Choose open systems with an active community
Open systems allow you to deal with these issues. One such is Vera (based on the proprietary Z-wave protocol), and its success is partly due to the fact that anyone can write and publish plugins for non Z-wave devices. Nest, Philips Hue lights, homebrew Arduino-based sensors, even your Ethernet capable Japanese massaging toilet are supported by Vera as native devices once a plugin for them is written. It's also a popular system because it isn't cloud based (there's a remote access capability through their servers, but it's optional). In TFA, that tool Dahlberg (of Arrayent) sees the cloud as the great solution to the integration and interoperability problem. Sure, I can see something like IFTTT acting as an integrator for different technologies, but I seriously don't want that stuff in the cloud, and I don't see a compelling reason for it to be there. Most serious HA enthusiasts are very wary of such developments.
I like the idea behind OpenHAB; they don't want to build yet another home automation hub, but be a "hub of hubs". In a reality where you are likely to have multiple HA systems and standards in your home, OpenHAB centralizes the intelligence and provides a unified interface, and uses the existing hubs as dumb communication channels. This is kind of what TFA was on about with their "OS for the home".
Kind of sad how every topic on home automation here degenerates into posts around:
1) Hackers taking over your home and setting your dishwasher to Eco mode!
2) "The man" knowing about when you shit / shower / shave!!
3) But I don't even know why I would want a smart home!!!
Not that these aren't valid points, but they don't have to be raised over and over again; why not stick to the topic? In this discussion I see perhaps 5 on-topic posts, the rest just regurgitate the above 3 points. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.
For the record, I'm a home automation (which is NOT the same as IoT, by the way) enthusiast. It's a hobby (and a tiny side business of mine), and I consider the field of home automation to be firmly in the hobby / exploration stage as well: it is still too complex, potentially insecure, it requires a fair amount of knowledge and dedication to make it work and to maintain it, so it is not ready for the general public yet. Standards, and perhaps a home automation OS, could help in that regard. Developing and maturing these can also help address points 1 and 2. Security is a fairly hot topic in the HA community and some standards like Z-Wave are being made more secure.
As for point 3: automating my home has resulted in a lot of convenience, and it saves money. However, your average man in the street would probably not consider the effort involved in setting it up worth his while. Yet. In a few years, that will change.
Apple seems to think so, but I disagree. As the name implies, a Smart Home has a "smart" agent sitting somewhere, handling things. An intelligent hub. Your mobile phone is not that hub, for 2 simple reasons: you're not always at home, and not all automation centers around you. In home automation terms, your phone is merely a remote control with some geofencing added, and that barely qualifies as HA.
What I can see is an Apple TV with HomeKit acting as some sort of hub.
English has one thing going for it: despite its odd irregularities, it is pretty easy to learn. Chinese on the other hand is notoriously hard to read, write and speak well. I don't think many people will bother to learn Chinese as a second language. Remember when Japan was the up and coming economic powerhouse of the world? We'd all have to learn Japanese... Except that hasn't hapoened either.
The TGV is only the best if it is powered by nukes (which in France it probably is). On distances over 1000km or so, the airplane is actually greener than a TGV not powered by nukes. Planes use a crapload of fuel taking off, but once they are up, it doesn't take all that much to keep them aloft.
Anyway, even if we eliminate all air traffic, we'd still cut emissions by 2.5% only. It makes a lot more sense to focus on the other 97.5%
MOSS is available in all EU countries as far as I can tell. But make no mistake, even registering for MOSS and proving compliance is no insignificant administrative burden for small (tiny) business compared to simply paying VAT in one's own country, and those business still have to figure out the location of their customers (and retain that data!).
This is typical of European tax regulations (both EU and national): administrative burden and impact are gauged by looking at how things will work out for large organisations: Amazon, Zalando, app developers selling through iTunes, etc, with no consideration given to small business owners.
The summary had it right: this is simply a rant. Linus has spoken out on various other subjects before; subjects in which he can hardly be considered an expert or thought leader. I wouldn't put too much stock in his opinion.
I think the productivity increase of private offices is vastly more than 1%. There's a direct increase: all of my co-workers claim that they get way more work done at home, and looking at what actually leaves their hands when working from home, I can believe it. I have the same experience myself. There is also an indirect increase: it's well known that a noisy and distractive environment kills concentration and creativity; doing a job that requires your full attention in such an environment results in a higher error rate, requiring rework or costly fixes.
Neither of these factors are taken into consideration when management decides to opt for open-plan, or they think that the benefits outweigh this loss in productivity. They think collaboration is key, and that open-plan serves collaboration best. Now it is true that open offices do encourage and speed up knowledge sharing, but some research shows [no citation given, do your own homework] that the value of collaboration vs. solo working is overestimated... and open-plan offices aren't even all that great for collaboration: you need a lot of quiet booths and breakout rooms as well. A lot of my co-workers complain about noise and distractions in our office even when they are on teleconferences, wearing a headset. And when they get distracted, they are more tempted to open a browser and get distracted even more. I notice the same thing: in teleconferences at work I tend to goof off; at home I am actually paying attention.
Doing small coding jobs or reading email in an open office is not as bad as doing focused coding where you need "flow" , but I still prefer a quiet workplace for those tasks. Email is important (or I'd leave my out of office reply on permanently) and it requires my full attention. The social interaction at the office is nice and helps with the job, and I limit my working from home to 2 days a week, but in the end I go to work to work. For productivity, I wager that most knowledge workers would greatly benefit from private offices, with meeting rooms, bullpens and coffee corners to socialize.
If you publish a creative work, do you have the right to have that work protected against copying?
The answer really isn't as clear-cut as with physical property. Society / lawmakers recognized that copying someone's creative work or invention doesn't deprive them of anything, and benefits society as a whole. However they also recognized that creators and inventors wouldn't have much incentive to publish if they had no means by which to profit from their work. That's why patents, copyright and the notion of IP exist. Not because it is some natural right, but because there was a need to balance the creators' rights against those of the general public.
Arguably, that balance has gone off. Piracy isn't just people availing themselves of entertainment for free, it is also people consuming entertainment that has not been made available to them in an acceptable manner, for a reasonable price, and in some cases the content wasn't available to them at all at any price, often for arbitrary reasons. Piracy at least sends a strong message to media companies about what people want, and that's not entertainment without having to pay.
I don't know anyone who still bothers to pirate music; there are enough legal alternatives available that are much more convenient. Because of piracy. Similarly e-books: I try to buy these but when a publisher won't sell outside the USA and won't take PayPal so I can fake the address, the it's FU and off to TPB. And it's getting better: buying books right on the e-reader is so much more convenient than pirating them, so who bothers anymore? Series? Still crap. I pirated a bunch of Netflix stuff because it simply wasn't available anymore (remember the "Netflix please take my money campaign?), but I did get a subscription when it became available here. Movies are still bad: poorly available and highly priced, and not available in digital downloads. So I pirate them. And our government backed us up in this, stating that they would not prosecute individual pirates as long as there were no viable legal alternatives available. Sadly they got overruled by the EU (more double secret treaties I wager).
So it's not idiots who feel entitled to other people's creative works for free, it's idiots who feel entitled to lawful protection of an artificial scarcity.
It depends on the situation. As an example: I am the world's crappiest coder and designer... when it comes to maintainability, legibility, reusability. Undisciplined at (re-)factoring, test harnesses and version control. However, I work fast, faster than most, and my code generally has very few bugs. That sort of thing is worth a lot in places where you need agility rather than maintainability, like in innovation, rapid prototyping, or production software of temporary value.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's nothing short of amazing how far tablet / phone cameras have come in terms of picture quality, given the crappy lens and tiny sensor. Zoom, low light performance and a halfway decent flash are the obvious things missing from those cameras, but pictures taken in good light conditions actually look very good. Good enough to enlarge and print, and good enough for most people to be unable to tell that the photo was taken with a phone rather than a proper camera.
And nothing beats the camera you have on you.
There was a Dutch publishing house called BZZTôH. Founded in 1970 but they still used the sound of a guillotine for their company name.
Not to mention the "plink, plink, plink" sound they make when trying to start.
Speaking of ringtones: every now and then you'll still hear that good old Nokia one. Instantly recognizable, though these days it'll only draw a few sympathetic and/or rueful looks.
Promoting "family values" (and subsequently bashing / prosecuting anything that falls outside the norm of those values) is a tried and true way for politicians to ingratiate themselves with their "conservative" (for lack of a better term) constituency. It costs nothing in terms of money and political capital, if they play it right. President Fattah el-Sisi recently did the same by sharply (an unexpectedly) ramping up prosecution of homosexuals in Egypt. Not a priority for him, but a cheap way to win some brownie points with conservative voters after a few unpopular measures. And do you really think conservative politicians in the West give that much about gay marriage, given that they often have a decidedly "live and let live" attitude towards other matters?
Short answer: no. If you leave your door unlocked, you are not responsible for your house being burgled. If you (as a woman) dress up nicely for a night out on the town, you are not responsible for being raped on the way back home. Even if you pull down your bra and jiggle your jugs in front of a particularly drunk and horny looking individual in a dark alley. It's not wise, but that's statistics, not morality.
Charlie Hebdo have been threatened before (their office was firebombed if I recall correctly). Should they have stopped making their funnies then? Should we stop making fun of anyone when they threaten physical bodily harm? There are folk out there who, as someone put it, are offended deeply if their ligher doesn't work; should we cater to their whims too? I'd prefer to live in a society of laws rather than whims, and I for one am rather sad to live in a world where a movie like "Life of Brian" probably couldn't be made anymore, especially if they picked Mohammed as a target this time.
Many of the youngsters from my own country who trot off to Syria to fight for IS, though not from the top rungs of society's ladder, are hardly ostracized, but have an education and some have good jobs as well. And while some discrimination happens (events like these don't help), muslims are hardly treated like crap. They are given every opportunity to make something of themselves. Note that there are many other minority groups who face some discrimination, a degree of economic dsadvantage, and the harsh realities of an economic crisis, but none of them have an inclination to start blowing people up in the name of whatever. Religion definitely plays a role here.
With that said, the last thing we should do is to lay responsibility for these events at the doorstep of every muslim in our country. That is what the terrorists want. For us to give regular muslims the impression that they don't have any better options.
The terrorists and the people behind them love cartoons like these. They are also happy with strong reactions to recent events, especially with a backlash against ordinary muslim folk in the West. All that just makes it easier to convince impressionable youngsters to take up arms or stupidly blow themselves up in crowded places.
But it's ok to put up a sign "Women only" in a bar, or for a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription because he's a muslim and the customer is not wearing her obligatory headscarf. We seem to be very selective in the kind of discrimination we condemn, and the kinds we tolerate. That seems hypocritical. Either no discrimination is ok and everyone ought to be forced to do business with anyone at all, or everyone should have the right to refuse to do business with someone on any grounds.
The old Philips EE kits were much better and provided a lot of theoretical background in understandable language along with each project. A lot of the projects were geared to demonstrate what things like transistors or capacitors actually do. Check out the book for this kit; it's in Dutch but you'll get the idea.
If you're learning electronics, it's a bit weird to start with a microcontroller anyway.
Anyone remember the old Philips EE kits? I saved up for the EE 2003 when I was 8 or so (and the rest is history). This was a nice range of kits that fit together to build bigger projects up to and including a TV and an oscilloscope as well as digital circuits. Along the way it gave a pretty solid grounding in the characteristics and even theory of semiconductors, explained on a level for people without degrees in mathematics or physics. Which was definitely the point: Philips was hoping to train and entice potential EEs into the field.
If you want to sell a modern kit to learn electronics with a microcontroller, do include these basics as well. They are relevant: if you're interfacing stuff to your Arduino, you'll need to know something about basic circuitry like motor drivers and amplifiers, and concepts like PWM, or knowing how a transistor works and what it can do. They did include the necessary components for all this in the Duinokit, but I am hoping that they are also supplying good quality learning materials to go with it.
That's my gf's experience as well. Unfortunately her symptoms are somewhat generic and fit a wide range of conditions (MS, Parkinsons, epilepsy, spinal issues, stroke, the list goes on) so self-diagnosis is pretty useless, and since these cover several medical specialisms, each physician so far has said "It's probably [something that's not his specialism]". The last one said it's probably psychological. Great. "Luckily" the other day she had an attack right there in the neurologist's office, who was so shocked that at least they agreed to run a series of tests to start excluding some possibilities.
And that is why we need to defend our right to question, challenge and where necessary mock and ridicule religion. Let people believe and preach what they want, but don't ask us to respect or defend it, tolerance is sufficient. Yet more and more people feel they need to, or are forced to tiptoe around issues sensitive to religion. Especially here in Europe where there's a much weaker tradition of free speech and an unholy alliance between muslims noisily demanding respect and christians silently nodding their approval.
I have probably already recovered the outlay of the bits actually involved in the money saving part (not all of them are). And if I started from scratch today, I could probably put together the same setup for 2/3rds of the cost.
Recover my time spent times a reasonable hourly rate? No way. But as I said, it'll probably take a lot less effort in the near future.
The article is poorly written but there are some valid (and amusing / scary) points of view made. The author doesn't know what an OS is, clearly. But Hawkinson (the SmartThings guy) is right that there isn't going to be a one-size-fits all solution to home automation, there will have to be something to integrate disjoint subsystems. According to him, your system needs to be open to be fully useful, and I agree. However I am not sure that SmartThings is going in the right direction.
There's a few things to keep in mind in home automation:
- No vendor is ever going to manufacture and sell all the kinds of "connected" devices you will want. You're going to be mixing brands.
- The standard you pick will not be available on all your devices. When you choose an A/C unit, you don't want your choice to be limited by the HA standard it happens to support. Be prepared to deal with multiple HA protocols.
- No home automation vendor is going to write a driver or plugin for every conceivable device. And no equipment manufacturer is going to supply drivers for their products on every conceivable HA hub. Choose open systems with an active community
Open systems allow you to deal with these issues. One such is Vera (based on the proprietary Z-wave protocol), and its success is partly due to the fact that anyone can write and publish plugins for non Z-wave devices. Nest, Philips Hue lights, homebrew Arduino-based sensors, even your Ethernet capable Japanese massaging toilet are supported by Vera as native devices once a plugin for them is written. It's also a popular system because it isn't cloud based (there's a remote access capability through their servers, but it's optional). In TFA, that tool Dahlberg (of Arrayent) sees the cloud as the great solution to the integration and interoperability problem. Sure, I can see something like IFTTT acting as an integrator for different technologies, but I seriously don't want that stuff in the cloud, and I don't see a compelling reason for it to be there. Most serious HA enthusiasts are very wary of such developments.
I like the idea behind OpenHAB; they don't want to build yet another home automation hub, but be a "hub of hubs". In a reality where you are likely to have multiple HA systems and standards in your home, OpenHAB centralizes the intelligence and provides a unified interface, and uses the existing hubs as dumb communication channels. This is kind of what TFA was on about with their "OS for the home".
Kind of sad how every topic on home automation here degenerates into posts around:
1) Hackers taking over your home and setting your dishwasher to Eco mode!
2) "The man" knowing about when you shit / shower / shave!!
3) But I don't even know why I would want a smart home!!!
Not that these aren't valid points, but they don't have to be raised over and over again; why not stick to the topic? In this discussion I see perhaps 5 on-topic posts, the rest just regurgitate the above 3 points. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.
For the record, I'm a home automation (which is NOT the same as IoT, by the way) enthusiast. It's a hobby (and a tiny side business of mine), and I consider the field of home automation to be firmly in the hobby / exploration stage as well: it is still too complex, potentially insecure, it requires a fair amount of knowledge and dedication to make it work and to maintain it, so it is not ready for the general public yet. Standards, and perhaps a home automation OS, could help in that regard. Developing and maturing these can also help address points 1 and 2. Security is a fairly hot topic in the HA community and some standards like Z-Wave are being made more secure.
As for point 3: automating my home has resulted in a lot of convenience, and it saves money. However, your average man in the street would probably not consider the effort involved in setting it up worth his while. Yet. In a few years, that will change.
Apple seems to think so, but I disagree. As the name implies, a Smart Home has a "smart" agent sitting somewhere, handling things. An intelligent hub. Your mobile phone is not that hub, for 2 simple reasons: you're not always at home, and not all automation centers around you. In home automation terms, your phone is merely a remote control with some geofencing added, and that barely qualifies as HA.
What I can see is an Apple TV with HomeKit acting as some sort of hub.
English has one thing going for it: despite its odd irregularities, it is pretty easy to learn. Chinese on the other hand is notoriously hard to read, write and speak well. I don't think many people will bother to learn Chinese as a second language. Remember when Japan was the up and coming economic powerhouse of the world? We'd all have to learn Japanese... Except that hasn't hapoened either.
P.S. In my day, we called them indulgences [wikipedia.org], not offsets
Brilliant!
The TGV is only the best if it is powered by nukes (which in France it probably is). On distances over 1000km or so, the airplane is actually greener than a TGV not powered by nukes. Planes use a crapload of fuel taking off, but once they are up, it doesn't take all that much to keep them aloft.
Anyway, even if we eliminate all air traffic, we'd still cut emissions by 2.5% only. It makes a lot more sense to focus on the other 97.5%
MOSS is available in all EU countries as far as I can tell. But make no mistake, even registering for MOSS and proving compliance is no insignificant administrative burden for small (tiny) business compared to simply paying VAT in one's own country, and those business still have to figure out the location of their customers (and retain that data!).
This is typical of European tax regulations (both EU and national): administrative burden and impact are gauged by looking at how things will work out for large organisations: Amazon, Zalando, app developers selling through iTunes, etc, with no consideration given to small business owners.
The summary had it right: this is simply a rant. Linus has spoken out on various other subjects before; subjects in which he can hardly be considered an expert or thought leader. I wouldn't put too much stock in his opinion.
I think the productivity increase of private offices is vastly more than 1%. There's a direct increase: all of my co-workers claim that they get way more work done at home, and looking at what actually leaves their hands when working from home, I can believe it. I have the same experience myself. There is also an indirect increase: it's well known that a noisy and distractive environment kills concentration and creativity; doing a job that requires your full attention in such an environment results in a higher error rate, requiring rework or costly fixes.
Neither of these factors are taken into consideration when management decides to opt for open-plan, or they think that the benefits outweigh this loss in productivity. They think collaboration is key, and that open-plan serves collaboration best. Now it is true that open offices do encourage and speed up knowledge sharing, but some research shows [no citation given, do your own homework] that the value of collaboration vs. solo working is overestimated... and open-plan offices aren't even all that great for collaboration: you need a lot of quiet booths and breakout rooms as well. A lot of my co-workers complain about noise and distractions in our office even when they are on teleconferences, wearing a headset. And when they get distracted, they are more tempted to open a browser and get distracted even more. I notice the same thing: in teleconferences at work I tend to goof off; at home I am actually paying attention.
Doing small coding jobs or reading email in an open office is not as bad as doing focused coding where you need "flow" , but I still prefer a quiet workplace for those tasks. Email is important (or I'd leave my out of office reply on permanently) and it requires my full attention. The social interaction at the office is nice and helps with the job, and I limit my working from home to 2 days a week, but in the end I go to work to work. For productivity, I wager that most knowledge workers would greatly benefit from private offices, with meeting rooms, bullpens and coffee corners to socialize.
If you publish a creative work, do you have the right to have that work protected against copying?
The answer really isn't as clear-cut as with physical property. Society / lawmakers recognized that copying someone's creative work or invention doesn't deprive them of anything, and benefits society as a whole. However they also recognized that creators and inventors wouldn't have much incentive to publish if they had no means by which to profit from their work. That's why patents, copyright and the notion of IP exist. Not because it is some natural right, but because there was a need to balance the creators' rights against those of the general public.
Arguably, that balance has gone off. Piracy isn't just people availing themselves of entertainment for free, it is also people consuming entertainment that has not been made available to them in an acceptable manner, for a reasonable price, and in some cases the content wasn't available to them at all at any price, often for arbitrary reasons. Piracy at least sends a strong message to media companies about what people want, and that's not entertainment without having to pay.
I don't know anyone who still bothers to pirate music; there are enough legal alternatives available that are much more convenient. Because of piracy. Similarly e-books: I try to buy these but when a publisher won't sell outside the USA and won't take PayPal so I can fake the address, the it's FU and off to TPB. And it's getting better: buying books right on the e-reader is so much more convenient than pirating them, so who bothers anymore? Series? Still crap. I pirated a bunch of Netflix stuff because it simply wasn't available anymore (remember the "Netflix please take my money campaign?), but I did get a subscription when it became available here. Movies are still bad: poorly available and highly priced, and not available in digital downloads. So I pirate them. And our government backed us up in this, stating that they would not prosecute individual pirates as long as there were no viable legal alternatives available. Sadly they got overruled by the EU (more double secret treaties I wager).
So it's not idiots who feel entitled to other people's creative works for free, it's idiots who feel entitled to lawful protection of an artificial scarcity.
It depends on the situation. As an example: I am the world's crappiest coder and designer... when it comes to maintainability, legibility, reusability. Undisciplined at (re-)factoring, test harnesses and version control. However, I work fast, faster than most, and my code generally has very few bugs. That sort of thing is worth a lot in places where you need agility rather than maintainability, like in innovation, rapid prototyping, or production software of temporary value.