The difference in your car analogy is that the Hummer doesn't belong to you. It's more like leaving the vehicle with a valet. When you go to pick up the vehicle, the valet refuses because he doesn't think you can handle driving it.
I think it's more like the valet refusing to hand the keys to his drunk idiot boss. At least, I think that's what it felt like to Terry Childs.
Rules aren't created for the sole purpose of being destroyed (like crash test dummies or firearms targets). Rules are meant to be followed. Breaking them sometimes makes sense if the rules are written poorly.
What I really meant is: rules aren't a goal in themselves. They exist to achieve some goal. And when enforcing them would harm that goal, you shouldn't enforce them, but change the rules instead. You should enforce the spirit of the law, instead of the letter.
In D&D terms, government should be Neutral Good instead of Lawful Neutral. (I admit that Chaotic Good would be a bit too much.)
Discretion? By the very nature of the law it should be applied all of the time indiscriminately, anything else is corruption.
So the choice is between corruption and mindless stupidity? When a law clearly has harmful consequences, you should revise the law, not cling to it against all common sense.
Enforcing laws does require discretion and common sense. I think your attitude is exactly what's wrong here.
In the end, rules are meant to be broken. As long as you do it openly and for well-specified reasons, there's nothing wrong with it. (Then again, I'm Dutch, and we're famous for structurally and intentionally not enforcing our own laws. Pot is technically illegal here. Governments just decided not to enforce those laws in the case of pot.)
It's certainly not harder. Ruby is about as easy as a procedural language can get (and it's somewhat functional too!). As long as you don't need multithreading, of course.
That would just make them try to get rid of it even sooner and preclude all possibilities of reading it.
You need to make the "close" button appear only after it's been flashing for a minute.
Also hook it up to a speech synthesis program that reads the error out loud to them during that minute. Loud enough so anyone they're talking to on the phone will hear it too. That should solve at least some percentage of clueless user problems.
What's stopping the EU Parliament from making continent-wide laws such as "3 strike"?
Factions in the EU Parliament that don't like to keep some sense of justice intact, I guess. Then again, the biggest faction in the EU parliament is the Berlusconi faction, so I don't know how well this will turn out.
I, however, work in a company where anyone who *can't* write 10k+ per year is at serious risk of getting fired.
Really? That's awful! I almost always prefer the concise solution over the verbose one. Judging programmers by how many lines of code they write, sounds like a recipe for really ugly code.
It's been ages since I've used it, and I wouldn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole now, but Visual Studio was the first time I was really impressed by a piece of software from Microsoft. It's pretty good. But if I'm going to pay for an IDE, I'll probably go for IntelliJ.
... but there's really now way all these countries are going to agree on everything these treaties propose.
Cynic? I'd call that optimistic.
Some portions may even be contrary to a country's current laws, let alone their culture's mindset or philosophy.
That isn't necessarily a problem. In many countries, international treaties trump the constitution. It's stupid and terribly undemocratic (which is also why a culture's mindset and philosophy may not stop international treaties), but it's the way some countries work.
Personally I'd like to see our constitution changed to say that unconstitutional treaties are automatically void, or something like that.
In any case, I'm glad that we're hearing some official EU objections to some of the scarier ACTA-rumours.
Similarly, using another person's computer resources without explicit permission to do so, even if those resources appear to be freely available, is still illegal.
However, when they advertise the SSID of their open wifi, and respond to your request by giving you an IP and handling your traffic, it's a completely different matter.
They offer to handle your traffic, and when actually requested to do so, they comply. They don't have to do any of that if they don't want to. It's easy to lock wifi. It's easy not to advertise your SSID. It's a bit harder but still quite doable to not give them an IP, or give them an IP and then fuck with their traffic.
It always takes some time for people with mod points to turn up. On top of that, it's traditional for the first mod to mod it in the wrong direction. But it'll all be fixed eventually.
The program is a tool. The person handling the tool is the one holding the copyright.
When I use photoshop to create a cool picture, even one that couldn't possibly have been created without photoshop, I have to copyright on that picture, not Adobe.
FOSS is not compatible with Capitalism. Capitalism is not offering to perform a service that people could do for themselves. Capitalism is controlling the tools and making people pay a tribute that they might enjoy the privilege of serving themselves.
If capitalism is about control and making people pay, then I'd rather buy something that's not compatible with it. Rather than trying to control the market, FOSS creates a free and open market, without vendor lock-in, and free choice in who's products and services you want to buy. It's the best and most fine-grained level of competition you could hope for.
The kind of capitalism that's about controlling the market and stifling competition is not compatible with that, and I'd rather stay far away from those kind of practices.
And your statement also applies to anybody else that produces a product for consumers in the market. Look at video game consols that are sold as a loss-leader. They hope to modify the consumer's behavior for the company's future benefit.
I don't see how this is not capitalism. It is only a question of degrees of behavior modification. It is still capitalism because the consumer *chooses* what he wants based on the merits of the product (hopefully) and whatever works best for them.
I don't know about capitalism, but Open Source definitely creates a much more open market. With many closed products (including almost everything from Microsoft, Apple, and the loss-leading consoles), you enter into vendor lock-in. Suddenly you're not free to buy additional products from whoever you like. You have to buy them from the same vendor, or from people licensed by that vendor.
That's about as far away from a free, open market as you can get. Free/open source fits much better in the free/open market, and it encourages competition, rather than stifling it.
First, you're conflating two different things: authority, and relying on research. I can rely on someone's RESEARCH without relying on their AUTHORITY. So, say, if East Anglia does some research, I can demand to SEE the research (even if they say they want to illegally resist this request), and rely on that research, without trusting what they have to SAY about their research. That's how science works.
I have no idea what East Anglia has to do with this. Sticking to the subject at hand, Lomborg was believed on his AUTHORITY, because he made it appear as if he'd properly RESEARCHED his subject. Friel pointed out that this was not true.
Friel discovered that some of Lomborg's facts aren't supported at all by his cited sources, and sometimes even completely contradicted
He CLAIMED he discovered this, yes. And I asked for evidence that he's correct. That is how science works.
You can do that yourself by checking Lomborg's sources. Just like Begley did.
Of course it's possible that both Friel and Begley are lying...
Or it's possible they are both just WRONG. Why jump to "lying"? And further, of course, it's possible that Friel is lying, and Begley is merely wrong.
Begley checked Friel's work. How can she be wrong about that without lying?
You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions... right?
Do you realise that the IPCC report that contained those recently exposed mistakes was from a non-scientific "news" workgroup from the IPCC?
No, I am referring to the rampant dishonesty by East Anglia (which I referenced earlier in this comment).
Then I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't live in East Anglia, and I have no idea how their dishonesty can possibly prove anything about any dishonesty of climate scientists.
I hope you're not trying to blame the journalists, rather -- or more -- than the IPCC, for the Himalayan error.
I'm blaming the news workgroup of the IPCC.
I am not claiming dishonesty, as I just said, but clearly, and unequivocally, this is extremely sloppy science, much more than sloppy journalism.
What exactly is sloppy science? The Himalayan error? Where was ever any science involved in that?
Slashdot Mirror
The difference in your car analogy is that the Hummer doesn't belong to you. It's more like leaving the vehicle with a valet. When you go to pick up the vehicle, the valet refuses because he doesn't think you can handle driving it.
I think it's more like the valet refusing to hand the keys to his drunk idiot boss. At least, I think that's what it felt like to Terry Childs.
In the end, rules are meant to be broken.
Rules aren't created for the sole purpose of being destroyed (like crash test dummies or firearms targets). Rules are meant to be followed. Breaking them sometimes makes sense if the rules are written poorly.
What I really meant is: rules aren't a goal in themselves. They exist to achieve some goal. And when enforcing them would harm that goal, you shouldn't enforce them, but change the rules instead. You should enforce the spirit of the law, instead of the letter.
In D&D terms, government should be Neutral Good instead of Lawful Neutral. (I admit that Chaotic Good would be a bit too much.)
I agree with Sitting Bull on this. Nobody owns land. It belongs to everybody. When you use it, you rent it from the community.
Discretion? By the very nature of the law it should be applied all of the time indiscriminately, anything else is corruption.
So the choice is between corruption and mindless stupidity? When a law clearly has harmful consequences, you should revise the law, not cling to it against all common sense.
Enforcing laws does require discretion and common sense. I think your attitude is exactly what's wrong here.
In the end, rules are meant to be broken. As long as you do it openly and for well-specified reasons, there's nothing wrong with it. (Then again, I'm Dutch, and we're famous for structurally and intentionally not enforcing our own laws. Pot is technically illegal here. Governments just decided not to enforce those laws in the case of pot.)
It's not pure, untainted functional, sure, but it also has immutable objects, doesn't it?
Functionalish constructs are available
Functionalish constructs? I thought it was a fully functional language with dynamic-ish constructs available despite its static typing system.
But I'm no Scala programmer. (It's high on my to-learn list, though.)
Ruby is considered easier than Python?
It's certainly not harder. Ruby is about as easy as a procedural language can get (and it's somewhat functional too!). As long as you don't need multithreading, of course.
That would just make them try to get rid of it even sooner and preclude all possibilities of reading it.
You need to make the "close" button appear only after it's been flashing for a minute.
Also hook it up to a speech synthesis program that reads the error out loud to them during that minute. Loud enough so anyone they're talking to on the phone will hear it too. That should solve at least some percentage of clueless user problems.
What's stopping the EU Parliament from making continent-wide laws such as "3 strike"?
Factions in the EU Parliament that don't like to keep some sense of justice intact, I guess. Then again, the biggest faction in the EU parliament is the Berlusconi faction, so I don't know how well this will turn out.
I, however, work in a company where anyone who *can't* write 10k+ per year is at serious risk of getting fired.
Really? That's awful! I almost always prefer the concise solution over the verbose one. Judging programmers by how many lines of code they write, sounds like a recipe for really ugly code.
It's been ages since I've used it, and I wouldn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole now, but Visual Studio was the first time I was really impressed by a piece of software from Microsoft. It's pretty good. But if I'm going to pay for an IDE, I'll probably go for IntelliJ.
... but there's really now way all these countries are going to agree on everything these treaties propose.
Cynic? I'd call that optimistic.
Some portions may even be contrary to a country's current laws, let alone their culture's mindset or philosophy.
That isn't necessarily a problem. In many countries, international treaties trump the constitution. It's stupid and terribly undemocratic (which is also why a culture's mindset and philosophy may not stop international treaties), but it's the way some countries work.
Personally I'd like to see our constitution changed to say that unconstitutional treaties are automatically void, or something like that.
In any case, I'm glad that we're hearing some official EU objections to some of the scarier ACTA-rumours.
Similarly, using another person's computer resources without explicit permission to do so, even if those resources appear to be freely available, is still illegal.
However, when they advertise the SSID of their open wifi, and respond to your request by giving you an IP and handling your traffic, it's a completely different matter.
They offer to handle your traffic, and when actually requested to do so, they comply. They don't have to do any of that if they don't want to. It's easy to lock wifi. It's easy not to advertise your SSID. It's a bit harder but still quite doable to not give them an IP, or give them an IP and then fuck with their traffic.
It always takes some time for people with mod points to turn up. On top of that, it's traditional for the first mod to mod it in the wrong direction. But it'll all be fixed eventually.
I think he and his room mate listen to R&B a lot.
Disgusting, isn't it? Humans trying to take credit for work that's really been done by machines!
The program is a tool. The person handling the tool is the one holding the copyright.
When I use photoshop to create a cool picture, even one that couldn't possibly have been created without photoshop, I have to copyright on that picture, not Adobe.
Google suggests you might be in The Quill Cabin Boys.
Never heard of them. Sorry.
Machines can beat Kasparov in chess, but they can't invent a game as enjoyable as chess by themselves.
Note, however, that most people can't.
Noone got the bill joke? Thats depressing. =P
I think everybody got it. Or did you mean something else with it?
FOSS is not compatible with Capitalism. Capitalism is not offering to perform a service that people could do for themselves. Capitalism is controlling the tools and making people pay a tribute that they might enjoy the privilege of serving themselves.
If capitalism is about control and making people pay, then I'd rather buy something that's not compatible with it. Rather than trying to control the market, FOSS creates a free and open market, without vendor lock-in, and free choice in who's products and services you want to buy. It's the best and most fine-grained level of competition you could hope for.
The kind of capitalism that's about controlling the market and stifling competition is not compatible with that, and I'd rather stay far away from those kind of practices.
And your statement also applies to anybody else that produces a product for consumers in the market. Look at video game consols that are sold as a loss-leader. They hope to modify the consumer's behavior for the company's future benefit.
I don't see how this is not capitalism. It is only a question of degrees of behavior modification. It is still capitalism because the consumer *chooses* what he wants based on the merits of the product (hopefully) and whatever works best for them.
I don't know about capitalism, but Open Source definitely creates a much more open market. With many closed products (including almost everything from Microsoft, Apple, and the loss-leading consoles), you enter into vendor lock-in. Suddenly you're not free to buy additional products from whoever you like. You have to buy them from the same vendor, or from people licensed by that vendor.
That's about as far away from a free, open market as you can get. Free/open source fits much better in the free/open market, and it encourages competition, rather than stifling it.
Actually, since the boss was the one causing the delay, it was his time he was wasting.
It was company time he was wasting. Not every boss is automatically owner of the company.
First, you're conflating two different things: authority, and relying on research. I can rely on someone's RESEARCH without relying on their AUTHORITY. So, say, if East Anglia does some research, I can demand to SEE the research (even if they say they want to illegally resist this request), and rely on that research, without trusting what they have to SAY about their research. That's how science works.
I have no idea what East Anglia has to do with this. Sticking to the subject at hand, Lomborg was believed on his AUTHORITY, because he made it appear as if he'd properly RESEARCHED his subject. Friel pointed out that this was not true.
Friel discovered that some of Lomborg's facts aren't supported at all by his cited sources, and sometimes even completely contradicted
He CLAIMED he discovered this, yes. And I asked for evidence that he's correct. That is how science works.
You can do that yourself by checking Lomborg's sources. Just like Begley did.
Of course it's possible that both Friel and Begley are lying ...
Or it's possible they are both just WRONG. Why jump to "lying"? And further, of course, it's possible that Friel is lying, and Begley is merely wrong.
Begley checked Friel's work. How can she be wrong about that without lying?
You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions ... right?
Do you realise that the IPCC report that contained those recently exposed mistakes was from a non-scientific "news" workgroup from the IPCC?
No, I am referring to the rampant dishonesty by East Anglia (which I referenced earlier in this comment).
Then I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't live in East Anglia, and I have no idea how their dishonesty can possibly prove anything about any dishonesty of climate scientists.
I hope you're not trying to blame the journalists, rather -- or more -- than the IPCC, for the Himalayan error.
I'm blaming the news workgroup of the IPCC.
I am not claiming dishonesty, as I just said, but clearly, and unequivocally, this is extremely sloppy science, much more than sloppy journalism.
What exactly is sloppy science? The Himalayan error? Where was ever any science involved in that?
Pour several billion dollars into a hundred different fusion projects done by independent groups of researchers.
Hasn't that already been tried for several decades? Perhaps it's time to pour that money into solar and tidal projects instead.