He wanted to convey the idea of 'cutting edge', and to be honest it seems like both you and I understood what he meant even if his example is a bit cliche.
I understand what he meant, I just think it's kind of stupid. Call me crazy, but I'd rather focus on keeping a language relevant to the kinds of problems people are trying to solve, not trying to maintain some level of trendiness like the latest cool band.
All languages have a useful lifetime, and Java is no exception. Languages have come a long way since the abomination of something like COBOL, so the comparison is more than a little stupid. As an industry advances the tools become more advanced and long lived. I don't see anyone worrying that circular saws are going to "die" anytime soon in carpentry.
Well I thought, lets see how heavy this thing has become. I found the necessary magic words to install it on ubuntu from apt. And then: SPLAT! Upon trying to install it, I get this very unfriendly looking licensing message during the install!
You've identified a problem that was largely solved when Sun opened up the Java licensing scheme about 3 1/2 years ago. If you want to avoid all the silly licensing that Sun makes you go through, just use the openJDK http://openjdk.java.net/. You likely tried to install the Sun JVM.
I haven't used it myself, so I can't say how mature it is.
As for "letting it die", Java is the default language of enterprise everything.
He's just part of the Java backlash because it's popular. It's like the people 15 years ago saying "Let C die" because there's C++ or Java now. An essentially useless comment and nothing more than a troll.
Someone emulating the punk movement of 40 years ago is "cutting edge"? If that's his idea of "cutting edge, hot talent", he needs to stop thinking he's in the movie "hackers" and he's looking for Angelina Jolie. Associating dress or style with talent is stupid no matter if it's "you wear a suit, you're smart" or "you've got 3 piercings and drive a crotch rocket you're the next big thing"
Demanding innovation never works. Innovation just happens from a need, not a demand from some Oracle guy who desires it and thinks it'll be good for marketing. There are interesting things happening in Java. Scala is certainly interesting. I haven't used it myself, but I'd love to try it if I had a good project to use it in.
This is slashdot, not a material science and crash engineering forum. The stage of the argument we're at is "uneducated moron who's experience with materials and impacts amounts to his own ability to crush beer cans" vs "person who has a decent understanding of physics, momentum, and deceleration".
The point of the GP was merely to say that "sturdy hard frames != safer".
Where do you get such data? Less mass nearly always equals "more squish!"Are you actually suggesting, eg, that 1200 lb. mini car is safer in a 'pile-up' of cars on an interstate? Where do you get such data? Less mass nearly always equals "more squish!"
Exactly! He probably looked it up in a book, or some elitist "engineer" told him. He should have looked it up in his gut. People like you and me know what all that science stuff is just hippy double talk. It's obviously all just about mass and lots of steel. Did you know you have more nerve endings in your gut that you do in the whole rest of your body? Look it up.
For survivability you don't want "sturdyness", you want the car to be crumply.
All that liberal science claptrap is just a bunch of nonsense. I always judge things with my gut, and my gut says that sturdy stuff don't break. Them liberals believe in hippy crap like "inertia" and that hippy Newton and his "Laws of motion". I believe in the strength of American Steel.
They were trying to demonstrate the evils of drunk driving, but the impression it left on me was that we've been trading mpg for safety for quite some time in this country.
Yup. That's why when the Insurance institute crashed a 1959 Chevy Bel Aire into a 2009 Chevy Malibu the Bel Aire was the car that the driver survived in and Malibu driver died. Look for yourself. It's very dramatic:
I mean, those crumple zones don't do anything. It's all just hogwash since those old cars were built with STEEL, and the new ones are just plastic crap. Remember, just go with your gut and ignore all that "science". It's always wrong.
When 16 ships can emit as much pollution as every car on the planet
The story you're pointed to is about SULFUR.
permits the largest ships to pump as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur into the air yearly - compare this to the roughly 100 grams of sulfur pollution created by the average automobile.
Sulfur is is component of pollution, and talking about it in reference to gasoline makes about as much sense as talking about it in reference to urine. (Gasoline generally has very little sulfur in it).
Your statement about the 16 ships producing more "pollution" than all cars has to be about the most misleading statement I've ever seen modded up on slashdot.
I don't recall being treated like a criminal upon entering New Zealand, nor does any country in Europe. I
I traveled to Europe a couple years ago, and was surprised when there was no border stop at all when going between the Netherlands and Germany.
Last year I traveled to Arizona (Tuscon). I traveled around the area quite a bit by car. If you went "too" far South however you'd more often than not wind up getting stopped by Homeland Gestapo while coming back North. They simply asked me if I was an citizen, and since I'm a nice white guy they sent me on my way with a smile. Friendly, but I still completely resent the fact that I was being stopped in MY OWN COUNTRY (quite a bit in fact 3-4 times in a week). They did this day or night, and at night had these huge lights along the side of the road. A bus was always parked along the side of the road to haul away whomever they somehow identified as illegals. (How they determine this I have no idea).
So I very much identify with your comments. Why do I have to live in a country where everyone is so afraid of "the foreigners" that we're willing to create this crazy fear culture around them? How many millions of dollars are being wasted on this stupid shit? We tried to build the idiotic "virtual fence" idea and wasted billions. Sheesh.
It does not contain within it the means of enforcing itself, and its interpretation is often left to the entity it is supposed to limit.
Yes and no. The founding fathers realized this weakness, and to address it they divided government into competing and opposing entities. Congress creates laws but doesn't interpret them. The court system interprets laws, but doesn't create them. The court system is at least partially made up of permanent appointments so politics has a smaller effect. The founding fathers were well aware of human nature and how politics works. They fought like dogs amongst even themselves.
The end result is pendulum swings between limiting freedoms and allowing freedoms. Those swings have been relatively extreme. If you think that we had an enormous amount of freedom starting out and it was some perfect world where the Bill of Rights was worshipped, look no further than the Alien sedition act of 1798 which among other things made it illegal to publish: false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials. So the road to freedom has hardly been a straight one.
The presidents of the nuclear age need no approval to launch a civilization ending nuclear attack, to engage in war in far away places that most Americans cannot find on a map.
I agree those are potentially unconstitutional (and at the very least crazy). Maybe someday we'll look back at that like (most) of us do now at the Alien sedition act.
Of course Microsoft doesn't have any more respect for your privacy.
Microsoft doesn't make it's money by selling or mining data, Google does. From a simple business standpoint Microsoft really had little to gain from giving users more privacy. Google of course does stand to lose more if they had stricter privacy policies and less data collection. This particular problem seems pretty much an inadvertent consequence of the (otherwise very nice) combining of the address and search boxes in chrome;
You really think it was inadvertent? I think it's quite obvious that a search company wants to position its search technology in the most obvious place. People that WORK in a search company think search is the most important thing, and think of their service as being integral to the software. This was not just an "inadvertent consequence", it was a very obvious design decision. Many of these kinds of decisions are so ingrained in a culture that it doesn't even seem like a decision. the fact that IE doesn't do the same thing is only due to its clunkier interface.
I doubt it, but we'll never know. Microsoft isn't that bad when it comes to privacy policies. The only notable thing I can recall about Microsoft and privacy was putting ethernet addresses in Word docs. The fact that MS is trumpeting it this way smacks more of a desperate swat at a competitor than anything else...
Obviously. Microsoft doesn't care about promoting privacy of course.
As somebody who personally knows people working on Chrome, I can assure you that data mining was not the goal of Chrome. Most engineers at Google are sincerely trying to make the Web a better place. That this actually helps Google is just a bonus for them.
What, and the engineers working at Microsoft all cackle evilly muttering about sharks and laser beams as they plot to take over the software industry? The people working on a product are essentially never the ones with ill intent.
The intent of the people working on the project is quite irrelevant. What matters is the company itself, and what they can do with what they've developed. Everyone wants to believe that Google is some benevolent savior, but the realities of large business suggest otherwise. Let's say they are at this moment. How long do you think that attitude can last?
They've already given you the option to disable it, good night.
So what? It should be disabled by default and you have to turn it on. If I hadn't read this article would I have even known they were doing this? Don't you do your searches with Google?
It's quite obvious you're sending information to Google when you do a search. You also trust your ISP with everything you do on the net
I've never actually heard of an ISP that does the deep packet inspection necessary to do this kind of spying. Anyway, the point here is Google is actually sending and very likely recording your information. If you'd like to point our ISPs that do deep packet inspection and keep track of what website I visit, I'll gladly not use them either. Seriously, you people need to get a grip. There isn't one person in ten thousand who's address bar history is so important that they'd actually care to dig it up and link it to you directly. You just aren't that important.
Important to who? You seem to think people are only important as individuals. How much do you think an insurance company would pay to find out what foods you eat? How much do you think employers would pay for a list of what internet sites you frequent? You need to stop being so naive. Do you really learn nothing from history?
I don't care. I know the deal with Google. Everyone knows the deal with Google - they mine your data so they can target ads, you get useful software.
Greetings from 2030! Your post happened to fall through a wormhole in the space-time continuum, and we just can't stop laughing here about it. In 2030 Google is the new Microsoft, and Microsoft is the new IBM. Microsoft finally turned out to be a decent company, though it took some hard knocks to get there. Their stock price was in free-fall during much of the teens as they lost market share to just about everyone.
Google on the other hand mined everyone's data, and now if you type the "wrong" thing into the address bar you might wind up on a no fly+no drive list. This was a response to the terrorist attack of 2017 under President Palin (yes she's still an idiot) where ten Scientologists drove Mack trucks filled with gelignite into the psychology departments of 10 of the large Universities. Even if you manage to stay off the no fly+drive lists there's still the "targeted ads" that come up on your TV based on your Internet usage and buying patterns. It's pretty embarrassing having friends over and seeing targeted ads for "Nailin' Palin 25". or for the boomers "Depends". But hey, on the plus side since Microsoft turned off evil there's actual software compatibility and standards.
You can nitpick the phrasing all you want, but it's irrelevant. I'd never have guessed that typing something into the address bar would start sending everything I type to Google. That's the privacy issue here. A search bar it's quite obvious that you're sending something to some search company. But in all other browsers I've ever seen that isn't the case with the address bar.
If Microsoft had done the same thing, there's be howls of protest (with good reason). But for some reason people trust Google.
I've never tried Google Chrome, but now I never will unless they take this "feature" out. I won't use IE either of course. Microsoft may have more respect for my privacy, but they don't have any respect for my security.
What does this mean for someone like me, who lives life by my own idea of morality
Don't get the area of your brain above and behind your right ear near any strong oscillating magnetic fields?
I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're to believe the results of the experiment (which sound rather iffy) it would indicate that our brains are wired in some manner for morality. Your brain likely isn't any different on the macro-scale, though you may not have a typical rule set that others have.
The article says they only asked them moral judgment questions. How do you we know that reasoning skills in general weren't affected? If the person couldn't reason through the situation as well they'd be more likely make the "wrong" choice.
What your anecdote shows is that there should probably be a greater emphasis placed on STDs and the possibility of infection via oral sex in current sex ed.
This is not news. The _only_ reason we're even seriously talking about abstinence is because the conservative Christians in this country want to put their heads in the sand and believe it can actually be effective, or if it's not it's some kind of moral failing. They'll fight your proposal tooth and nail because they seriously believe that talking about condoms and oral sex would harm society.
But if you aim for anything less, you'll hit even lower.
That's just your personal observation about yourself. Other people are certainly fully capable of aiming for and achieving the goal they set out to achieve.
And experience... well, I admire your optimism, but it was some pretty experienced teams that produced some of the worst bugs and vulnerabilities in history.
You're over generalizing my comment. Experience will tell you which bugs are the ones to fix and which bugs are the ones best ignored. It's not going to tell you about the bugs you don't know about. It wasn't done by some newbie inexperienced company.
Companies don't write software. People do. How do you know this bug wasn't created by a newbie inexperienced developer? You don't. Again, you're taking what I said out of context. I'm talking about people, not companies. It doesn't take too many of those to negate any savings from not testing thoroughly and generally from not fretting too much about finding and fixing everything.
You'll never find and fix "everything". The thing you seem to miss is that time taken fixing some minor glitch in a texture somewhere is time you that could have been spent fixing some horrible bug like the one you're describing. Software has a lot of bugs, some of which you might never even identify as bugs because you just came to expect the wrong behavior as the right behavior.
How do you know? Experience. Experience reading through the code, and experience in software debugging.
How do you know absolutely positively without a doubt? You don't, and you never will. All understanding and knowledge is a model of reality, and models are sometimes wrong. This idea people in this discussion seem to have that you can eventually, with just a little more effort make the system "perfect" is severely flawed. The disconnect the pragmatists in this discussion have with the perfectionists is deeply personal and philosophical, so I don't know that it can be explained or bridged, but I'll try. The level of quality a product needs is dependent on the product. Pursing anything beyond that is merely a personal quest. Pursing "zero defects" is essentially unattainable if you REALLY mean zero. If nothing else, the silly cosmic ray story about the Prius (possible, but still silly) should remove any possibility that zero defects is something that's actually attainable.
The economic angle is a dangerous meme, because it lets incompetent management off the hook by allowing them to triage incompetence, and in particular, to ignore process failures, and the failure of team culture, both of which point back to management itself. We all know how well that worked out for NASA. This wasn't fixed until lives were lost.
If you're writing code for NASA, or say the medical industry, I'd agree. But 99.9% of the developers out their are writing code that nobody is ever going to die because of a bug. If you tried to apply the same standards to business software that you do to Nasa or medical software, nothing would ever get done.
As far as a "culture of incompetence" is concerned, and triaging bugs, I don't see the two as terribly connected. There's always going to be bugs, and some of them are going to be minor. This will happen even if you have the best developers in the world. Accepting bugs doesn't mean you give up on quality, or don't look to improve your process. It can actually be PART of that process. You assume all bugs come from "incompetence" or "process failure", or something wrong with the system. That's just silly. People aren't perfect. Hell, machines aren't perfect. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as the saying goes.
Slashdot Mirror
He wanted to convey the idea of 'cutting edge', and to be honest it seems like both you and I understood what he meant even if his example is a bit cliche.
I understand what he meant, I just think it's kind of stupid. Call me crazy, but I'd rather focus on keeping a language relevant to the kinds of problems people are trying to solve, not trying to maintain some level of trendiness like the latest cool band.
All languages have a useful lifetime, and Java is no exception. Languages have come a long way since the abomination of something like COBOL, so the comparison is more than a little stupid. As an industry advances the tools become more advanced and long lived. I don't see anyone worrying that circular saws are going to "die" anytime soon in carpentry.
Well I thought, lets see how heavy this thing has become. I found the necessary magic words to install it on ubuntu from apt. And then: SPLAT! Upon trying to install it, I get this very unfriendly looking licensing message during the install!
You've identified a problem that was largely solved when Sun opened up the Java licensing scheme about 3 1/2 years ago. If you want to avoid all the silly licensing that Sun makes you go through, just use the openJDK http://openjdk.java.net/. You likely tried to install the Sun JVM.
I haven't used it myself, so I can't say how mature it is.
As for "letting it die", Java is the default language of enterprise everything.
He's just part of the Java backlash because it's popular. It's like the people 15 years ago saying "Let C die" because there's C++ or Java now. An essentially useless comment and nothing more than a troll.
Someone emulating the punk movement of 40 years ago is "cutting edge"? If that's his idea of "cutting edge, hot talent", he needs to stop thinking he's in the movie "hackers" and he's looking for Angelina Jolie. Associating dress or style with talent is stupid no matter if it's "you wear a suit, you're smart" or "you've got 3 piercings and drive a crotch rocket you're the next big thing"
Demanding innovation never works. Innovation just happens from a need, not a demand from some Oracle guy who desires it and thinks it'll be good for marketing. There are interesting things happening in Java. Scala is certainly interesting. I haven't used it myself, but I'd love to try it if I had a good project to use it in.
This is slashdot, not a material science and crash engineering forum. The stage of the argument we're at is "uneducated moron who's experience with materials and impacts amounts to his own ability to crush beer cans" vs "person who has a decent understanding of physics, momentum, and deceleration".
The point of the GP was merely to say that "sturdy hard frames != safer".
Where do you get such data? Less mass nearly always equals "more squish!"Are you actually suggesting, eg, that 1200 lb. mini car is safer in a 'pile-up' of cars on an interstate? Where do you get such data? Less mass nearly always equals "more squish!"
Exactly! He probably looked it up in a book, or some elitist "engineer" told him. He should have looked it up in his gut. People like you and me know what all that science stuff is just hippy double talk. It's obviously all just about mass and lots of steel. Did you know you have more nerve endings in your gut that you do in the whole rest of your body? Look it up.
For survivability you don't want "sturdyness", you want the car to be crumply.
All that liberal science claptrap is just a bunch of nonsense. I always judge things with my gut, and my gut says that sturdy stuff don't break. Them liberals believe in hippy crap like "inertia" and that hippy Newton and his "Laws of motion". I believe in the strength of American Steel.
They were trying to demonstrate the evils of drunk driving, but the impression it left on me was that we've been trading mpg for safety for quite some time in this country.
Yup. That's why when the Insurance institute crashed a 1959 Chevy Bel Aire into a 2009 Chevy Malibu the Bel Aire was the car that the driver survived in and Malibu driver died. Look for yourself. It's very dramatic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJrXViFfMGk
I mean, those crumple zones don't do anything. It's all just hogwash since those old cars were built with STEEL, and the new ones are just plastic crap. Remember, just go with your gut and ignore all that "science". It's always wrong.
(hint, you couldn't be more wrong).
When 16 ships can emit as much pollution as every car on the planet
The story you're pointed to is about SULFUR.
Sulfur is is component of pollution, and talking about it in reference to gasoline makes about as much sense as talking about it in reference to urine. (Gasoline generally has very little sulfur in it).
Your statement about the 16 ships producing more "pollution" than all cars has to be about the most misleading statement I've ever seen modded up on slashdot.
I don't recall being treated like a criminal upon entering New Zealand, nor does any country in Europe. I
I traveled to Europe a couple years ago, and was surprised when there was no border stop at all when going between the Netherlands and Germany.
Last year I traveled to Arizona (Tuscon). I traveled around the area quite a bit by car. If you went "too" far South however you'd more often than not wind up getting stopped by Homeland Gestapo while coming back North. They simply asked me if I was an citizen, and since I'm a nice white guy they sent me on my way with a smile. Friendly, but I still completely resent the fact that I was being stopped in MY OWN COUNTRY (quite a bit in fact 3-4 times in a week). They did this day or night, and at night had these huge lights along the side of the road. A bus was always parked along the side of the road to haul away whomever they somehow identified as illegals. (How they determine this I have no idea).
So I very much identify with your comments. Why do I have to live in a country where everyone is so afraid of "the foreigners" that we're willing to create this crazy fear culture around them? How many millions of dollars are being wasted on this stupid shit? We tried to build the idiotic "virtual fence" idea and wasted billions. Sheesh.
It does not contain within it the means of enforcing itself, and its interpretation is often left to the entity it is supposed to limit.
Yes and no. The founding fathers realized this weakness, and to address it they divided government into competing and opposing entities. Congress creates laws but doesn't interpret them. The court system interprets laws, but doesn't create them. The court system is at least partially made up of permanent appointments so politics has a smaller effect. The founding fathers were well aware of human nature and how politics works. They fought like dogs amongst even themselves.
The end result is pendulum swings between limiting freedoms and allowing freedoms. Those swings have been relatively extreme. If you think that we had an enormous amount of freedom starting out and it was some perfect world where the Bill of Rights was worshipped, look no further than the Alien sedition act of 1798 which among other things made it illegal to publish: false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials . So the road to freedom has hardly been a straight one.
The presidents of the nuclear age need no approval to launch a civilization ending nuclear attack, to engage in war in far away places that most Americans cannot find on a map.
I agree those are potentially unconstitutional (and at the very least crazy). Maybe someday we'll look back at that like (most) of us do now at the Alien sedition act.
Of course Microsoft doesn't have any more respect for your privacy.
Microsoft doesn't make it's money by selling or mining data, Google does. From a simple business standpoint Microsoft really had little to gain from giving users more privacy. Google of course does stand to lose more if they had stricter privacy policies and less data collection.
This particular problem seems pretty much an inadvertent consequence of the (otherwise very nice) combining of the address and search boxes in chrome;
You really think it was inadvertent? I think it's quite obvious that a search company wants to position its search technology in the most obvious place. People that WORK in a search company think search is the most important thing, and think of their service as being integral to the software. This was not just an "inadvertent consequence", it was a very obvious design decision. Many of these kinds of decisions are so ingrained in a culture that it doesn't even seem like a decision.
the fact that IE doesn't do the same thing is only due to its clunkier interface.
I doubt it, but we'll never know. Microsoft isn't that bad when it comes to privacy policies. The only notable thing I can recall about Microsoft and privacy was putting ethernet addresses in Word docs.
The fact that MS is trumpeting it this way smacks more of a desperate swat at a competitor than anything else...
Obviously. Microsoft doesn't care about promoting privacy of course.
As somebody who personally knows people working on Chrome, I can assure you that data mining was not the goal of Chrome. Most engineers at Google are sincerely trying to make the Web a better place. That this actually helps Google is just a bonus for them.
What, and the engineers working at Microsoft all cackle evilly muttering about sharks and laser beams as they plot to take over the software industry? The people working on a product are essentially never the ones with ill intent.
The intent of the people working on the project is quite irrelevant. What matters is the company itself, and what they can do with what they've developed. Everyone wants to believe that Google is some benevolent savior, but the realities of large business suggest otherwise. Let's say they are at this moment. How long do you think that attitude can last?
You've seen Firefox, haven't you?
Firefox sends every character I type in the address bar to firefox? News to me. Reference?
They've already given you the option to disable it, good night.
So what? It should be disabled by default and you have to turn it on. If I hadn't read this article would I have even known they were doing this?
Don't you do your searches with Google?
It's quite obvious you're sending information to Google when you do a search.
You also trust your ISP with everything you do on the net
I've never actually heard of an ISP that does the deep packet inspection necessary to do this kind of spying. Anyway, the point here is Google is actually sending and very likely recording your information. If you'd like to point our ISPs that do deep packet inspection and keep track of what website I visit, I'll gladly not use them either.
Seriously, you people need to get a grip. There isn't one person in ten thousand who's address bar history is so important that they'd actually care to dig it up and link it to you directly. You just aren't that important.
Important to who? You seem to think people are only important as individuals. How much do you think an insurance company would pay to find out what foods you eat? How much do you think employers would pay for a list of what internet sites you frequent? You need to stop being so naive. Do you really learn nothing from history?
I don't care. I know the deal with Google. Everyone knows the deal with Google - they mine your data so they can target ads, you get useful software.
Greetings from 2030! Your post happened to fall through a wormhole in the space-time continuum, and we just can't stop laughing here about it. In 2030 Google is the new Microsoft, and Microsoft is the new IBM. Microsoft finally turned out to be a decent company, though it took some hard knocks to get there. Their stock price was in free-fall during much of the teens as they lost market share to just about everyone.
Google on the other hand mined everyone's data, and now if you type the "wrong" thing into the address bar you might wind up on a no fly+no drive list. This was a response to the terrorist attack of 2017 under President Palin (yes she's still an idiot) where ten Scientologists drove Mack trucks filled with gelignite into the psychology departments of 10 of the large Universities. Even if you manage to stay off the no fly+drive lists there's still the "targeted ads" that come up on your TV based on your Internet usage and buying patterns. It's pretty embarrassing having friends over and seeing targeted ads for "Nailin' Palin 25". or for the boomers "Depends". But hey, on the plus side since Microsoft turned off evil there's actual software compatibility and standards.
You can nitpick the phrasing all you want, but it's irrelevant. I'd never have guessed that typing something into the address bar would start sending everything I type to Google. That's the privacy issue here. A search bar it's quite obvious that you're sending something to some search company. But in all other browsers I've ever seen that isn't the case with the address bar.
If Microsoft had done the same thing, there's be howls of protest (with good reason). But for some reason people trust Google.
Microsoft is starting to make sense.
I've never tried Google Chrome, but now I never will unless they take this "feature" out. I won't use IE either of course. Microsoft may have more respect for my privacy, but they don't have any respect for my security.
What does this mean for someone like me, who lives life by my own idea of morality
Don't get the area of your brain above and behind your right ear near any strong oscillating magnetic fields?
I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're to believe the results of the experiment (which sound rather iffy) it would indicate that our brains are wired in some manner for morality. Your brain likely isn't any different on the macro-scale, though you may not have a typical rule set that others have.
The article says they only asked them moral judgment questions. How do you we know that reasoning skills in general weren't affected? If the person couldn't reason through the situation as well they'd be more likely make the "wrong" choice.
What your anecdote shows is that there should probably be a greater emphasis placed on STDs and the possibility of infection via oral sex in current sex ed.
This is not news. The _only_ reason we're even seriously talking about abstinence is because the conservative Christians in this country want to put their heads in the sand and believe it can actually be effective, or if it's not it's some kind of moral failing. They'll fight your proposal tooth and nail because they seriously believe that talking about condoms and oral sex would harm society.
Remember that guy who got a bad paint job on his BMW and sued and won a 2 million dollar judgment?
No. What I remember is he eventually lost when the supreme court ruled that a 2 million dollar judgment was ruled excessive for what actually happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_of_North_America,_Inc._v._Gore#Opinion_of_the_Court
(I see you point, but idiots will cite this case for why we need "tort reform")
But if you aim for anything less, you'll hit even lower.
That's just your personal observation about yourself. Other people are certainly fully capable of aiming for and achieving the goal they set out to achieve.
And experience... well, I admire your optimism, but it was some pretty experienced teams that produced some of the worst bugs and vulnerabilities in history.
You're over generalizing my comment. Experience will tell you which bugs are the ones to fix and which bugs are the ones best ignored. It's not going to tell you about the bugs you don't know about.
It wasn't done by some newbie inexperienced company.
Companies don't write software. People do. How do you know this bug wasn't created by a newbie inexperienced developer? You don't. Again, you're taking what I said out of context. I'm talking about people, not companies.
It doesn't take too many of those to negate any savings from not testing thoroughly and generally from not fretting too much about finding and fixing everything.
You'll never find and fix "everything". The thing you seem to miss is that time taken fixing some minor glitch in a texture somewhere is time you that could have been spent fixing some horrible bug like the one you're describing. Software has a lot of bugs, some of which you might never even identify as bugs because you just came to expect the wrong behavior as the right behavior.
How do you know? Experience. Experience reading through the code, and experience in software debugging.
How do you know absolutely positively without a doubt? You don't, and you never will. All understanding and knowledge is a model of reality, and models are sometimes wrong. This idea people in this discussion seem to have that you can eventually, with just a little more effort make the system "perfect" is severely flawed. The disconnect the pragmatists in this discussion have with the perfectionists is deeply personal and philosophical, so I don't know that it can be explained or bridged, but I'll try. The level of quality a product needs is dependent on the product. Pursing anything beyond that is merely a personal quest. Pursing "zero defects" is essentially unattainable if you REALLY mean zero. If nothing else, the silly cosmic ray story about the Prius (possible, but still silly) should remove any possibility that zero defects is something that's actually attainable.
The economic angle is a dangerous meme, because it lets incompetent management off the hook by allowing them to triage incompetence, and in particular, to ignore process failures, and the failure of team culture, both of which point back to management itself. We all know how well that worked out for NASA. This wasn't fixed until lives were lost.
If you're writing code for NASA, or say the medical industry, I'd agree. But 99.9% of the developers out their are writing code that nobody is ever going to die because of a bug. If you tried to apply the same standards to business software that you do to Nasa or medical software, nothing would ever get done.
As far as a "culture of incompetence" is concerned, and triaging bugs, I don't see the two as terribly connected. There's always going to be bugs, and some of them are going to be minor. This will happen even if you have the best developers in the world. Accepting bugs doesn't mean you give up on quality, or don't look to improve your process. It can actually be PART of that process. You assume all bugs come from "incompetence" or "process failure", or something wrong with the system. That's just silly. People aren't perfect. Hell, machines aren't perfect. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as the saying goes.