Except for the part where people trying to escape World War 2 in Europe were turned away from the US, or had to stop in Cuba or South America, because the country quotas were supposedly full.
Illegal means there is a law against it, and it is "malum prohibitum" - bad because it is prohibited. Yes, there are laws prohibiting things that are not "wrong" ("malum in se" - bad in itself), and some of them are stupid, and that does not invalidate the idea that there are rules. It is against the law to sneak into a concert or play or amusement park without a ticket; so a law against sneaking into the country is not so unreasonable. And if you think our laws are slow, check some of the European laws, like Switzerland.
But on the other side, by that logic, those with little money could do whatever they want because they have little to lose. And it hardly seems fair if one person were charged more for going a little bit over the speed limit while another were charged less for going much faster, just because the one can afford more and the other can afford less. The intent sounds good, but the application is unfair, which does not seem like "justice".
Well said. A jury is the trier of fact; a judge is the trier of law. The judge's job is to figure out which law(s) have been broken (normally pointed out by the plaintiff and/or the criminal prosecutor), and assess from the penalties specified in the law what penalties should be applied in the case *if* the facts bear out. The public often says that it wants "justice", which the public may feel should be either more or less severe than the law specifies depending on the case, and people's state of mind, and intent (for example, an elderly couple involved in a mercy-killing / death-with-dignity situation might get sympathy that a murdering rapist would not). However, in the interest of enforcing a "rule of law" rather than the "whims of princes", our legal system requires the judge to follow the specification of penalties written into the law. In theory, by definition, there can be no such thing as an "unjust law"; if it was codified in law, then it is part of the system of justice. In reality, we know better.
... (or whatever the current user-friendly distro of choice is)...
This remains the biggest problem with Linux. If computers are your avocation, you follow the competitive news and switch distributions at the drop of a hat (color irrelevant). Just like sports car enthusiasts tuning up an already-well-tuned car. Problem is, most people - and that includes this embedded systems engineer - just want the damn thing to *work* without having to mess with it for some update or other every damn day.
... It's this kind of thing that we tend to shrug off that keeps people from switching...
This remains the biggest problem overall. You may recompile your kernel just for fun, but some people actually use their computer as a utilitarian device to *do* something that they need to continue getting done. "Might be able to make it work" has a converse of "Might kill your small business by destroying your primary tool".
And appreciate, if only on the technical level, the huge efforts Microsoft undertook to make it difficult to even run on one computer consistently, let alone change hardware underneath for legitimate upgrades, in the interest of avoiding copying - tons of complexity that Linux simply avoids because it doesn't care about avoiding copying. You'll never get it to work right because you'll never be sure that you got all of the registry entries and hidden dependencies.
So why doesn't someone make an XP replacement machine? Conform to the XP interface specs at the bottom end, with much faster hardware loafing along doing half-work, just to keep old XP applications alive? It should be trivial; other than the part about Microsoft's lawyers carpet-bombing you into the late Neolithic.
Who is using expensive up-to-date Microsoft products at home, and who is using the FOSS alternatives?
OTOH perhaps the economic boundary is more between those who have computers at home and those who don't, in which case perhaps this is a good thing - prospective employees should be training on the current business-level software (not that school is supposed to be vocational training, but something is better than nothing).
Parsing codes is always the killer on this subject. I agree completely with the general rule that shorter routines are easier to understand and validate. However, consider a Modbus or CANopen parser that's getting the data referenced by register number; it's one huge switch in which 98% of the cases are single-line "return structure.field;", but there are a *lot* of such single lines, and making each of those single lines a separate function (as the purists would have it) does nothing to help either complexity or comprehensibility.
Back in the dark ages, we learned data structures and data-driven design by coding it in FORTRAN. Yes, that's worse than assembler. Yes, reference mnemonic memory circuits with stone knives and bearskins. But if you can manage to do useful things with simple tools, you can do so much better with better tools. You can't understand multiprogramming until you understand single programming - and can then see the concurrency issues you ignored or didn't think of. You understand memory hierarchy better if you start out with simple register-ram-backingstore, then add layers. You don't teach a child by starting with college; you start simple and add complexity.
I compare this to the cable company: "You ordered basic cable and have been paying for it; we mistakenly enabled the super-deluxe package, so you owe us back charges." No. If the service was set up wrong, that's the service's error, not the customer's fault. If the state had a tax rule, and taxpayers were complying with the rules as specified, and then the rules turned out to be invalid, that is not the taxpayers' fault.
My bigger problem with this kind of thing is that when government makes an error, they present it as if the people were cheating. Also when people set up legitimate plans based on the current rules, and the rules change, should the plans be grandfathered or not? Card or board games where the rules change in the middle can be amusing, but changing rules would be annoying in sports, and ruinous where money and law are concerned.
If you actually read the tiny little quote that I quoted, it has nothing to do with anything you said, and simply points out that Manhattan is a populated area. Disagreement with the latter statement suggests brain-damage. I would insult your own reading comprehension in return, except I assume you're just trolling to piss people off. Congratulations, you got me.
You know, it would make a good movie for the security company to have staged the original stickup in order to convince everyone just how much they need a security company . . .
An oft-repeated discussion. In the '50s and '60s, everyone expected that by the turn of the century we'd all be working 3-day weeks for the same pay because we'd be producing three times as much. Buckminster Fuller said, in the 1960s, "There *is* enough to go around" and "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. "
One of the legitimate reasons is that to get from our current system to that system, someone has to put up the money (and do the work) to build robots and automation and other clever things that do the work instead of people. Those someone(s) expect to get some benefit out of having made that investment (and effort); in fact, since we live in a capitalist system, they expect to get ALL of the benefit, rather than leaving enough on the table to let everyone else cut their work hours in half. Besides, that's where they get the next round of money (and effort) to fund the next round of innovation. It's not "capital against labor" in the abstract; it's "I did more of the work, so I want more of the reward", which starts out sounding reasonable, until it becomes "I put up the money for this, so I get all of the money it makes, even more than the artist / designer / engineers / creators who actually had the clever ideas."
We have had some great benefits widely distributed. Entertainment, computers and technology, communications, games, food - all at levels hard to conceive 50 years ago, available to everyone at very reasonable prices (by comparison). Yet because we maintained the same economic system, we have more separation between haves and have-nots.
By sending a copy to the Library of Congress.
Where it is publicly archived and available.
Your intimate sex picture.
That you're suing over because you don't want it publicly available.
Dang.
Isn't there something relating to this kind of problem dealing with blackmail cases? about the incompatibility of testifying about the subject with which someone is being blackmailed?
I used to think this was similarly obvious, until someone at work found out that the person they were dating had a hidden camera. Oh, of course it was for home security, or checking on the dog during the day, or some such perfectly reasonable reason - except the reason for finding it involved curiosity about a sudden interest in doing things on the couch instead of the bed.
The problem is more generic: Being an a$$hole isn't a specifiable illegal activity.
"Normal" people can be swayed by a technical-term-sounding difference, because they don't understand the difference. You know them, the sort of people who say "That's just semantics" without understanding that they are saying "That's just the REAL MEANING of the words".
I was going to title the same thought "Children: This is what your parents did." The Science Fiction Club at RPI - a techie school if ever there was one - mimeographed our bi-monthly newsletter and exchanged copies by mail with other school clubs. That was the only way to do it.
My preference would have been if two folks try to patent the same thing it is considered obvious enough to not get patent protection.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. Everyone knows there's a market niche, but nobody could make it work, and then suddenly
-- two people happen to come up with two different ways of doing it - or they THOUGHT they were different, until the examiner compared both patents.
-- a group was working on it and had a falling-out about credit or something.
My point is there could be a legitimate race involved.
Of course this assumes that a patent is only granted for demonstrating a working solution, not just a concept.
"The Marching Morons", Cyril Kornbluth - all of the speedometers were false, so that people THOUGHT they were driving at (sexy high speed) when they were really driving at (normal safe speed).
Slashdot Mirror
Except for the part where people trying to escape World War 2 in Europe were turned away from the US, or had to stop in Cuba or South America, because the country quotas were supposedly full.
Illegal means there is a law against it, and it is "malum prohibitum" - bad because it is prohibited. Yes, there are laws prohibiting things that are not "wrong" ("malum in se" - bad in itself), and some of them are stupid, and that does not invalidate the idea that there are rules. It is against the law to sneak into a concert or play or amusement park without a ticket; so a law against sneaking into the country is not so unreasonable. And if you think our laws are slow, check some of the European laws, like Switzerland.
But on the other side, by that logic, those with little money could do whatever they want because they have little to lose. And it hardly seems fair if one person were charged more for going a little bit over the speed limit while another were charged less for going much faster, just because the one can afford more and the other can afford less. The intent sounds good, but the application is unfair, which does not seem like "justice".
Well said. A jury is the trier of fact; a judge is the trier of law. The judge's job is to figure out which law(s) have been broken (normally pointed out by the plaintiff and/or the criminal prosecutor), and assess from the penalties specified in the law what penalties should be applied in the case *if* the facts bear out. The public often says that it wants "justice", which the public may feel should be either more or less severe than the law specifies depending on the case, and people's state of mind, and intent (for example, an elderly couple involved in a mercy-killing / death-with-dignity situation might get sympathy that a murdering rapist would not). However, in the interest of enforcing a "rule of law" rather than the "whims of princes", our legal system requires the judge to follow the specification of penalties written into the law. In theory, by definition, there can be no such thing as an "unjust law"; if it was codified in law, then it is part of the system of justice. In reality, we know better.
... (or whatever the current user-friendly distro of choice is) ...
This remains the biggest problem with Linux. If computers are your avocation, you follow the competitive news and switch distributions at the drop of a hat (color irrelevant). Just like sports car enthusiasts tuning up an already-well-tuned car. Problem is, most people - and that includes this embedded systems engineer - just want the damn thing to *work* without having to mess with it for some update or other every damn day.
... It's this kind of thing that we tend to shrug off that keeps people from switching ...
This remains the biggest problem overall. You may recompile your kernel just for fun, but some people actually use their computer as a utilitarian device to *do* something that they need to continue getting done. "Might be able to make it work" has a converse of "Might kill your small business by destroying your primary tool".
And appreciate, if only on the technical level, the huge efforts Microsoft undertook to make it difficult to even run on one computer consistently, let alone change hardware underneath for legitimate upgrades, in the interest of avoiding copying - tons of complexity that Linux simply avoids because it doesn't care about avoiding copying. You'll never get it to work right because you'll never be sure that you got all of the registry entries and hidden dependencies.
So why doesn't someone make an XP replacement machine? Conform to the XP interface specs at the bottom end, with much faster hardware loafing along doing half-work, just to keep old XP applications alive? It should be trivial; other than the part about Microsoft's lawyers carpet-bombing you into the late Neolithic.
15% shutdown of the government.
May I ask where you got that percentage? It seems much higher to me.
Who is using expensive up-to-date Microsoft products at home, and who is using the FOSS alternatives? OTOH perhaps the economic boundary is more between those who have computers at home and those who don't, in which case perhaps this is a good thing - prospective employees should be training on the current business-level software (not that school is supposed to be vocational training, but something is better than nothing).
I'm shocked, shocked and dismayed, that I had to scroll down this far to find that someone had beaten me to it.
Parsing codes is always the killer on this subject. I agree completely with the general rule that shorter routines are easier to understand and validate. However, consider a Modbus or CANopen parser that's getting the data referenced by register number; it's one huge switch in which 98% of the cases are single-line "return structure.field;", but there are a *lot* of such single lines, and making each of those single lines a separate function (as the purists would have it) does nothing to help either complexity or comprehensibility.
Back in the dark ages, we learned data structures and data-driven design by coding it in FORTRAN. Yes, that's worse than assembler. Yes, reference mnemonic memory circuits with stone knives and bearskins. But if you can manage to do useful things with simple tools, you can do so much better with better tools. You can't understand multiprogramming until you understand single programming - and can then see the concurrency issues you ignored or didn't think of. You understand memory hierarchy better if you start out with simple register-ram-backingstore, then add layers. You don't teach a child by starting with college; you start simple and add complexity.
I compare this to the cable company: "You ordered basic cable and have been paying for it; we mistakenly enabled the super-deluxe package, so you owe us back charges." No. If the service was set up wrong, that's the service's error, not the customer's fault. If the state had a tax rule, and taxpayers were complying with the rules as specified, and then the rules turned out to be invalid, that is not the taxpayers' fault.
My bigger problem with this kind of thing is that when government makes an error, they present it as if the people were cheating. Also when people set up legitimate plans based on the current rules, and the rules change, should the plans be grandfathered or not? Card or board games where the rules change in the middle can be amusing, but changing rules would be annoying in sports, and ruinous where money and law are concerned.
If you actually read the tiny little quote that I quoted, it has nothing to do with anything you said, and simply points out that Manhattan is a populated area. Disagreement with the latter statement suggests brain-damage. I would insult your own reading comprehension in return, except I assume you're just trolling to piss people off. Congratulations, you got me.
You know, it would make a good movie for the security company to have staged the original stickup in order to convince everyone just how much they need a security company . . .
... should be flown a sufficient distance from populated areas . . .
I doubt you'll find a place fitting that description anywhere in Manhattan. Including Central Park.
"This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put." (Yes, I know it's a misquote. But it sounds good.)
An oft-repeated discussion. In the '50s and '60s, everyone expected that by the turn of the century we'd all be working 3-day weeks for the same pay because we'd be producing three times as much. Buckminster Fuller said, in the 1960s, "There *is* enough to go around" and "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. "
One of the legitimate reasons is that to get from our current system to that system, someone has to put up the money (and do the work) to build robots and automation and other clever things that do the work instead of people. Those someone(s) expect to get some benefit out of having made that investment (and effort); in fact, since we live in a capitalist system, they expect to get ALL of the benefit, rather than leaving enough on the table to let everyone else cut their work hours in half. Besides, that's where they get the next round of money (and effort) to fund the next round of innovation. It's not "capital against labor" in the abstract; it's "I did more of the work, so I want more of the reward", which starts out sounding reasonable, until it becomes "I put up the money for this, so I get all of the money it makes, even more than the artist / designer / engineers / creators who actually had the clever ideas."
We have had some great benefits widely distributed. Entertainment, computers and technology, communications, games, food - all at levels hard to conceive 50 years ago, available to everyone at very reasonable prices (by comparison). Yet because we maintained the same economic system, we have more separation between haves and have-nots.
By sending a copy to the Library of Congress. Where it is publicly archived and available. Your intimate sex picture. That you're suing over because you don't want it publicly available. Dang.
Isn't there something relating to this kind of problem dealing with blackmail cases? about the incompatibility of testifying about the subject with which someone is being blackmailed?
I used to think this was similarly obvious, until someone at work found out that the person they were dating had a hidden camera. Oh, of course it was for home security, or checking on the dog during the day, or some such perfectly reasonable reason - except the reason for finding it involved curiosity about a sudden interest in doing things on the couch instead of the bed.
The problem is more generic: Being an a$$hole isn't a specifiable illegal activity.
Oh, wait, no internal computing, just a remote control plane. You can buy those from kiosks at the mall. Never mind.
"Normal" people can be swayed by a technical-term-sounding difference, because they don't understand the difference. You know them, the sort of people who say "That's just semantics" without understanding that they are saying "That's just the REAL MEANING of the words".
You obviously haven't read the rants of people debunking snopes.
I was going to title the same thought "Children: This is what your parents did." The Science Fiction Club at RPI - a techie school if ever there was one - mimeographed our bi-monthly newsletter and exchanged copies by mail with other school clubs. That was the only way to do it.
It would be more akin to having to access a higher level password in an application to access certain functions.
sudo make me a sandwich http://xkcd.com/149/
Umm . . . isn't this comparable to having different passwords for different things? Like email or /. accounts?
My preference would have been if two folks try to patent the same thing it is considered obvious enough to not get patent protection.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. Everyone knows there's a market niche, but nobody could make it work, and then suddenly
-- two people happen to come up with two different ways of doing it - or they THOUGHT they were different, until the examiner compared both patents.
-- a group was working on it and had a falling-out about credit or something.
My point is there could be a legitimate race involved.
Of course this assumes that a patent is only granted for demonstrating a working solution, not just a concept.
"The Marching Morons", Cyril Kornbluth - all of the speedometers were false, so that people THOUGHT they were driving at (sexy high speed) when they were really driving at (normal safe speed).