The value of the code review depends on several factors, the most important being the coding standard against which the code is being reviewed. If the coding standard has a lot of hard and fast rules about what goes into the comment block, where variables should be declared, whether brackets go at the end of a line or on their own line, and how many returns a method can have, then the code review will be mostly about religious issues and petty formatting. On the other hand, a coding standard with many "should"s instead of "shall"s that allow the developer, combined with reviewers and especially review moderators who know what is important can what isn't, can make code reviews very useful, especially early in a project and especially with junior developers.
A code review is unlikely to uncover many errors. Most code is just too complex for another developer to spot errors. Unit testing is much better at that. What a code review can do is
1. Coach new developers by helping them learn and/or remember best practices: "Please use "literal".equals(variable) rather than variable.equals("literal"), just in case the variable is null."
2. Remind people to follow the important standards, or recognize that you're missing important standards and need to set one: If your DAO "find" method doesn't find the expected record, do you return null or do you throw an exception? Both have strengths, but everyone on the projct should be doing it the same way. Code reviews will help uncover discrepancies.
3. Uncover future maintenance issues. The code may be too complex for reviewers to find bugs during the review, but they should at least be able to follow what the code is doing. If they can't, the code either needs restructuring or better commenting.
Then I thought of Terrain-following radar and realized that things are not always that simple.
Under these conditions terrain-following radar is a necessity, since a human pilot cannot react quickly enough to changing terrain heights, and is much more likely to cause a crash than an automated system in the same circumstances.
But a trained human would know that under such conditions the computer would be better able to handle things, and allow the computer to run the show.
However, a human might also recognize the completely unexpected title wave/hurricane/500 meter building dead ahead and decide that it is time to stop following the terrain for a few minutes and go around the obstacle or abort the mission.
An old saying is that "To err is human, to completely foul things up requires a computer". There is still truth to that. Some situations require a computer to manage, others require a computer. The real question is who you trust to make the decision of which it is - the computer or the human pilot. I trust the pilot. Not only does he have better judgement of the big picture, but also because his life is on the line too.
Just making sure I understand your viewpoint here. Would you then claim its acceptable as most people seem to to enjoy killing thousands of people in a war simulator? And how is getting a thrill by playing out a virtual version of that type of horror any different from any other type of horror?
There are situations where our society considers killing, even killing of thousands, as acceptable. But we don't have any situations where we consider rape acceptable. And we don't have any situations where we consider sex with children acceptable.
Play is a form of training and has long been recognized as such by anthropologists. People who train to kill in their play are not moral outcasts because of the belief that those impulses have, or may someday have, benefits to society. People who enjoy playing at rape or sex with children are rightfully ostracized because we don't see any valid uses for that training or for those impulses.
The same applies to games that glorify the impulses.
I'm not a particularly savvy customer when it comes to technology. Yes, I work in software, but my work gets sold to large organizations, not to consumers. When it comes to consumer electronics I really don't know that much. It's not that I can't keep up, it's that I don't have time.
What I haven't been noticing, for quite a long time now, is that companies keep putting limits on what I'm supposed to be able to do with software, songs, and other media after I've paid for it. I'm frankly scared to buy some things because I don't know whether or for how long I'll be able to use them.
Example: I now have an ipod. I've had it more than 4 months. It has the ability to download songs at a great price. There are tons of old songs I would gladly pay for...if I knew that I would be able to play them. Will I be able to copy them to my hard drive? If I can, then can I copy it to a memory stick or email it so that I can then put it on my office hard drive and listen to the songs at work? Having done that, will I be able to copy them to CD (my office computer's CD burner works, my home CD burner is flaky) so that I can listen to the music in my car? The ipod playback is pretty bad, so having it on the Ipod is useless. How do I know for sure whether I'll be able to put it somewhere I can use it?
So the recording industry is losing real money because of their attitude about things like resales and copying. I just don't buy their stuff.
I still buy video games. Those are only useful on one platform and when I buy them I have no problem knowing what they're for. I know that if I buy a new computer I can just install on that new computer. If I don't want it anymore I can give it to a friend or maybe event sell it, that's just normal stuff. I'll almost certainly give it to a friend who wouldn't buy it for himself (or he would have already done so). But if they start down a path of "licensing" rather than "selling", I'll never buy it at all.
A lot of us comsumers are stupid. We just want to buy things and own them. We don't want a lot of complicated rules about what we can do with the stuff we buy. Keep it simple and stupid or you can kiss away our business.
No kidding. Once the universal health care fees start to be levied and businesses start passing on C02 taxes to their customers, there will be a lot of people thinking "WTF did I buy into?".
No, if they were willing to think that deeply they would have done so before the election. Instead they'll be thinking "oh no! Prices are going up! Why doesn't the government do something to stop those greedy corporations from raising prices on us poor working and unemployed people?"
If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them. UN was suggested...they are the strongest international organization I know of that is supposed to be impartial.
The UN is supposed to be impartial? I thought the UN was supposed to represent the rich and powerful of most nations. In most nations it is the government (formed by the most successful gangsters of the country) that appoint the UN representatives. Only the representatives from democratic countries actually represent the people of the countries.
And don't forget the people from democratic countries like Taiwan who have no representation because the UN won't let them join. The UN is an exclusive club. If you aren't already in, you'll have a very hard time joining.
Make sure his parents know. It sounds corny, but no one in the world loves that boy more than his parents. No one cares about him more than his parents. If you can contact them anonymously, that would be best. But if you can't do anonymously, do it anyway.
The addiction you describe is serious.
Once you've made sure his parents know, then start thinking about the other techniques.
Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are bad: Because most of them would take most competent software engineers about 5 minutes to think up themselves if presented with the problem that the patent claims to be a solution to.
Agreed. It seems that the patents are being granted to people for thinking of problems rather than for thinking of solutions.
The U.S. government was heavily involved in the early development of the internet. I've often wondered how much different (better) it would be if the thing had been private, with various vendors having different nets competing for market share, from the beginning. For one thing, I bet viruses would be practically non-existent as the vendors would have worked very hard to prevent them from spreading on their internet. I think a lot of other things would have been and would be better too.
The difference between a game where the avatar commits rape and a game where the avatar commits murder is simple. Society recognizes, whether consciously or not, that play is a way of preparing for the future. Boys are naturally drawn to war games because making war effectively has for untold generations been a key element of male survival. So the question then is, which is potentially more acceptable in the future: rape or non-sexual violence?
Every large society has approved violence. There are cops. There are soldiers. There are situations called "justifiable homicide" or "self-defense". And there is the belief that sometimes even the authorities need to be fought, such as in the American Revolution. A game like GTA may, in the precise details, represent a morally decrepit situation. But the skills that it appears to teaches have the potential for good. Avoiding getting caught by those who pursue you could be a good thing. Defending yourself with a gun when people try to kill you could be a good thing.
On the other hand, rape is never considered a good thing? Ever here of a situation where a women was violently raped and society today says "regrettable, but necessary"? That is what society says about many of the killings in war, insurrection, and police work. But it never says that about rape.
And so, while society can understand and perhaps even approve of someone enjoying practicing honing and perfecting their fight or flight reflexes, society does not understand or approve of someone enjoying the practicing of rape.
It has long been known that the frequency of primes decrease as values increase. That is, there are likely to be more primes between 1 and 101 than between 1000001 and 1000101. It simply makes sense then that for any number of digits, the number of primes between 1x10^n and 2x10^n would be greater than the number of primes between 9x10^n and 10x10^n.
Given that we have formulas for predicting this decrease in frequency, finding the actual distribution should be simple. Was there something unexpected about the actual results that were found?
Don Rosa did a life and times series about Scrooge that was pretty good. It brought tears to my eyes. I haven't finished the second volume because I'll hate for it to be over.
I read some that were reprinted in the 1970s, and I read some of 10 cent dell comics that were printed in the 1950s. They were all good.
I believe Gemstone is the one I bought a $100 subscription from. Some of the Barks stories had been reworked and uglified. Most of the non-Barks stories were just trash that sullied a good duck's name. I bought the subscription in part to teach some values to my kids, but the European stories were about a different duck - a 2d caricature with no morals, and no sense of duty - a crass figure to be hated rather than respected.
Until I can get affordable reprints of Carl Barks's Scrooge McDuck in the United States (or anywhere else), or until they start making something that rises to that level of quality, who cares about American comics?
Is there any reasonable and objective way to determine a teacher's performance that is independent of the students in her classroom?
Perhaps not, but it may be a matter of matching teachers to students.
Scenario one: place a teacher with a logical methodical style in a group of students who show up to play games.
Scenario two: place that same teacher in group of motivated kids who show up to learn the subject.
In scenario one, the teacher gets fired.
In scenario two, the teacher does quite well leading the kids from step to step and introducing exciting concepts into the classroom while making it fun.
There were other factors as well, but the above is basically what happened to me when I taught English overseas. There were teachers who were great entertainers who did very well in the first circumstance. That wasn't me. I did very well in a school with a different style, where the focus was on the language and we we're expected to play games (though I did sneak in one or two).
My getting fired was good for my career and good for the students at both schools.
I need a window that overlooks a natural environment with a combination of close up and far away.
An office is good as it allows me to play music. Cubes can be ok as they can facilitate communication, but they need to oriented so I look out over the approaches (don't feel comfortable and can't focus well if people can sneak up behind me).
I need two monitors so one can show the previous phase and one can show the current phase. If I'm working on design, I have design on one screen and requirements on the other. If I'm working on code, I can have the code on one screen and requirements on the other (don't tell the boss that I just read over the design once and write code to the requirements - after all the defects will be written based on requirements, not design).
And the temperature needs to be right. If it is too hot or two cold I can't sit and concentrate.
The Obama administration is arguing that the Feds have sovereign immunity from any Federal Laws -- in other words, the Federal Government is not required to follow statutes or the constitution. We are apparently continuing fast down the Bush road to a completely independent, unaccountable, all-powerful presidency.
If the Supreme Court doesn't need to follow statutes or the constitution, why should the President?
You've never been outside the US then have you? England after watershed. The rest of Europe all the time. Nudity is kind of a fact of life everywhere but the censor happy US....
I would love to see a study on it, but it seems from looking around that there is a correlation between a willingness to censor sexual behavior and low birthrates. Places like the middle east that have lots of censorship also have very high birth rates, while places like Europe and Japan that put few limits on what is shown in movies or TV have very low birthrates. the U.S., which is in between but closer to Europe and Japan is also in between in fertility with a birthrate closer to Europe and Japan.
Anyone ever considered that watching sex may not be conducive having sex?
That, IMHO, is the root of more miscommunication between management and developers. Far too many managers don't quite understand that programmers *hate* interpersonal conflict, and will casually agree to just about *anything* if they think it will get the person to quit bothering them. The constructive way to deal with it is to begin by asking the programmer for a range (best case vs likely worst case), then ask him to identify the riskiest factors influencing the range, then nudge him to tackle those factors first so a better estimate can be refined quickly. Just don't make him feel like you're twisting his arm or browbeating him, because estimates are like information from interrogation -- torture will get you the answer you want quickly, but the answer itself will likely prove to be worthless.
It is an injustice that the parent post can only be given a +5 insightful rather than much higher number that would be more fitting.
I couldn't care less if the battle of Waterloo was whenever
You must have gone to one of those fancy schools. I think the only time Napoleon was ever mentioned in my American public school was a passing reference to him selling the Louisiana territory to the USA.
At my school, sex education was required, but you had to learn history in the gutter.
Having learned much of what I know about history on my own, I can tell you why memorizing some dates are important. They help you fit in everything else. Most people have no concept of history. Did George Washington ever have a chance to meet Columbus? Who knows?
Well, if you learn a few dates cold, then other things can fit. For example, start with memorizing 5 dates, 1776 (Declaraion of Independence), 1492 (Columbus discovers America), 1066 (Norman invasion of England), 0 (approximate birth of Christ), 1000 BC (approximate time of King David's reign) and you have a context for otherthings. You hear that Shakespeare was born in 1564 and instead of just hearing 4 numbers, you can think "70 years after Columbus, so he probably knew about America". You may not remember the exact date, you'll probably remember that it was shortly after Columbus's time. When you later here Queen Elizabeth's reign started in 1558 you can realize that that was around the same time as Shakespeare and it was about 70 years after Columbus.
Suddenly instead of random disjoint numbers, you have a web of information that can fit together, reinforce other information, and allow you to draw conclusions. This applies to other fields as well. You understand and remember information a lot better if you have other related facts in your memory.
Perhaps as part of the login you could ask a question that only a local would know, and maybe give them a couple of multiple-choice questions to choose from.
Please answer only one of:
Which local talk radio station carries Rush Limbaugh?
What restaurant is at the corner of 4th and main?
What's the name of our high school?
Of course answers like this could be found on the web, but most non-local people won't bother. And having a decent sized collection of questions so that they don't get repeated will help prevent a slashdotter from posting the answer to the question so all his readers can get in.
Slashdot Mirror
A code review is unlikely to uncover many errors. Most code is just too complex for another developer to spot errors. Unit testing is much better at that. What a code review can do is
Then I thought of Terrain-following radar and realized that things are not always that simple.
Under these conditions terrain-following radar is a necessity, since a human pilot cannot react quickly enough to changing terrain heights, and is much more likely to cause a crash than an automated system in the same circumstances.
But a trained human would know that under such conditions the computer would be better able to handle things, and allow the computer to run the show.
However, a human might also recognize the completely unexpected title wave/hurricane/500 meter building dead ahead and decide that it is time to stop following the terrain for a few minutes and go around the obstacle or abort the mission.
An old saying is that "To err is human, to completely foul things up requires a computer". There is still truth to that. Some situations require a computer to manage, others require a computer. The real question is who you trust to make the decision of which it is - the computer or the human pilot. I trust the pilot. Not only does he have better judgement of the big picture, but also because his life is on the line too.
Just making sure I understand your viewpoint here. Would you then claim its acceptable as most people seem to to enjoy killing thousands of people in a war simulator? And how is getting a thrill by playing out a virtual version of that type of horror any different from any other type of horror?
There are situations where our society considers killing, even killing of thousands, as acceptable. But we don't have any situations where we consider rape acceptable. And we don't have any situations where we consider sex with children acceptable.
Play is a form of training and has long been recognized as such by anthropologists. People who train to kill in their play are not moral outcasts because of the belief that those impulses have, or may someday have, benefits to society. People who enjoy playing at rape or sex with children are rightfully ostracized because we don't see any valid uses for that training or for those impulses.
The same applies to games that glorify the impulses.
I'm not a particularly savvy customer when it comes to technology. Yes, I work in software, but my work gets sold to large organizations, not to consumers. When it comes to consumer electronics I really don't know that much. It's not that I can't keep up, it's that I don't have time.
What I haven't been noticing, for quite a long time now, is that companies keep putting limits on what I'm supposed to be able to do with software, songs, and other media after I've paid for it. I'm frankly scared to buy some things because I don't know whether or for how long I'll be able to use them.
Example: I now have an ipod. I've had it more than 4 months. It has the ability to download songs at a great price. There are tons of old songs I would gladly pay for...if I knew that I would be able to play them. Will I be able to copy them to my hard drive? If I can, then can I copy it to a memory stick or email it so that I can then put it on my office hard drive and listen to the songs at work? Having done that, will I be able to copy them to CD (my office computer's CD burner works, my home CD burner is flaky) so that I can listen to the music in my car? The ipod playback is pretty bad, so having it on the Ipod is useless. How do I know for sure whether I'll be able to put it somewhere I can use it?
So the recording industry is losing real money because of their attitude about things like resales and copying. I just don't buy their stuff.
I still buy video games. Those are only useful on one platform and when I buy them I have no problem knowing what they're for. I know that if I buy a new computer I can just install on that new computer. If I don't want it anymore I can give it to a friend or maybe event sell it, that's just normal stuff. I'll almost certainly give it to a friend who wouldn't buy it for himself (or he would have already done so). But if they start down a path of "licensing" rather than "selling", I'll never buy it at all.
A lot of us comsumers are stupid. We just want to buy things and own them. We don't want a lot of complicated rules about what we can do with the stuff we buy. Keep it simple and stupid or you can kiss away our business.
No kidding. Once the universal health care fees start to be levied and businesses start passing on C02 taxes to their customers, there will be a lot of people thinking "WTF did I buy into?".
No, if they were willing to think that deeply they would have done so before the election. Instead they'll be thinking "oh no! Prices are going up! Why doesn't the government do something to stop those greedy corporations from raising prices on us poor working and unemployed people?"
If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them. UN was suggested...they are the strongest international organization I know of that is supposed to be impartial.
The UN is supposed to be impartial? I thought the UN was supposed to represent the rich and powerful of most nations. In most nations it is the government (formed by the most successful gangsters of the country) that appoint the UN representatives. Only the representatives from democratic countries actually represent the people of the countries.
And don't forget the people from democratic countries like Taiwan who have no representation because the UN won't let them join. The UN is an exclusive club. If you aren't already in, you'll have a very hard time joining.
Make sure his parents know. It sounds corny, but no one in the world loves that boy more than his parents. No one cares about him more than his parents. If you can contact them anonymously, that would be best. But if you can't do anonymously, do it anyway. The addiction you describe is serious. Once you've made sure his parents know, then start thinking about the other techniques.
You can patent blackmail and protection rackets??
Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are bad: Because most of them would take most competent software engineers about 5 minutes to think up themselves if presented with the problem that the patent claims to be a solution to.
Agreed. It seems that the patents are being granted to people for thinking of problems rather than for thinking of solutions.
The U.S. government was heavily involved in the early development of the internet. I've often wondered how much different (better) it would be if the thing had been private, with various vendors having different nets competing for market share, from the beginning. For one thing, I bet viruses would be practically non-existent as the vendors would have worked very hard to prevent them from spreading on their internet. I think a lot of other things would have been and would be better too.
The difference between a game where the avatar commits rape and a game where the avatar commits murder is simple. Society recognizes, whether consciously or not, that play is a way of preparing for the future. Boys are naturally drawn to war games because making war effectively has for untold generations been a key element of male survival. So the question then is, which is potentially more acceptable in the future: rape or non-sexual violence?
Every large society has approved violence. There are cops. There are soldiers. There are situations called "justifiable homicide" or "self-defense". And there is the belief that sometimes even the authorities need to be fought, such as in the American Revolution. A game like GTA may, in the precise details, represent a morally decrepit situation. But the skills that it appears to teaches have the potential for good. Avoiding getting caught by those who pursue you could be a good thing. Defending yourself with a gun when people try to kill you could be a good thing.
On the other hand, rape is never considered a good thing? Ever here of a situation where a women was violently raped and society today says "regrettable, but necessary"? That is what society says about many of the killings in war, insurrection, and police work. But it never says that about rape.
And so, while society can understand and perhaps even approve of someone enjoying practicing honing and perfecting their fight or flight reflexes, society does not understand or approve of someone enjoying the practicing of rape.
It has long been known that the frequency of primes decrease as values increase. That is, there are likely to be more primes between 1 and 101 than between 1000001 and 1000101. It simply makes sense then that for any number of digits, the number of primes between 1x10^n and 2x10^n would be greater than the number of primes between 9x10^n and 10x10^n. Given that we have formulas for predicting this decrease in frequency, finding the actual distribution should be simple. Was there something unexpected about the actual results that were found?
Don Rosa did a life and times series about Scrooge that was pretty good. It brought tears to my eyes. I haven't finished the second volume because I'll hate for it to be over.
I read some that were reprinted in the 1970s, and I read some of 10 cent dell comics that were printed in the 1950s. They were all good.
I believe Gemstone is the one I bought a $100 subscription from. Some of the Barks stories had been reworked and uglified. Most of the non-Barks stories were just trash that sullied a good duck's name. I bought the subscription in part to teach some values to my kids, but the European stories were about a different duck - a 2d caricature with no morals, and no sense of duty - a crass figure to be hated rather than respected.
I always thought Scrooge McDuck was in comic books. Now I learn he was in graphic novels. Wow!
Until I can get affordable reprints of Carl Barks's Scrooge McDuck in the United States (or anywhere else), or until they start making something that rises to that level of quality, who cares about American comics?
and we we're expected to play games ahem, "...and we weren't expected to play games..."
And yes, I did teach English better than I write it on slashdot.
Is there any reasonable and objective way to determine a teacher's performance that is independent of the students in her classroom?
Perhaps not, but it may be a matter of matching teachers to students.
Scenario one: place a teacher with a logical methodical style in a group of students who show up to play games. Scenario two: place that same teacher in group of motivated kids who show up to learn the subject.
In scenario one, the teacher gets fired. In scenario two, the teacher does quite well leading the kids from step to step and introducing exciting concepts into the classroom while making it fun.
There were other factors as well, but the above is basically what happened to me when I taught English overseas. There were teachers who were great entertainers who did very well in the first circumstance. That wasn't me. I did very well in a school with a different style, where the focus was on the language and we we're expected to play games (though I did sneak in one or two).
My getting fired was good for my career and good for the students at both schools.
I need a window that overlooks a natural environment with a combination of close up and far away.
An office is good as it allows me to play music. Cubes can be ok as they can facilitate communication, but they need to oriented so I look out over the approaches (don't feel comfortable and can't focus well if people can sneak up behind me).
I need two monitors so one can show the previous phase and one can show the current phase. If I'm working on design, I have design on one screen and requirements on the other. If I'm working on code, I can have the code on one screen and requirements on the other (don't tell the boss that I just read over the design once and write code to the requirements - after all the defects will be written based on requirements, not design).
And the temperature needs to be right. If it is too hot or two cold I can't sit and concentrate.
The Obama administration is arguing that the Feds have sovereign immunity from any Federal Laws -- in other words, the Federal Government is not required to follow statutes or the constitution. We are apparently continuing fast down the Bush road to a completely independent, unaccountable, all-powerful presidency.
If the Supreme Court doesn't need to follow statutes or the constitution, why should the President?
Thank the Warren Court.
Will working Saturdays save me, or should I take the rest of the day off and enjoy the weather?
You've never been outside the US then have you? England after watershed. The rest of Europe all the time. Nudity is kind of a fact of life everywhere but the censor happy US....
I would love to see a study on it, but it seems from looking around that there is a correlation between a willingness to censor sexual behavior and low birthrates. Places like the middle east that have lots of censorship also have very high birth rates, while places like Europe and Japan that put few limits on what is shown in movies or TV have very low birthrates. the U.S., which is in between but closer to Europe and Japan is also in between in fertility with a birthrate closer to Europe and Japan. Anyone ever considered that watching sex may not be conducive having sex?
That, IMHO, is the root of more miscommunication between management and developers. Far too many managers don't quite understand that programmers *hate* interpersonal conflict, and will casually agree to just about *anything* if they think it will get the person to quit bothering them. The constructive way to deal with it is to begin by asking the programmer for a range (best case vs likely worst case), then ask him to identify the riskiest factors influencing the range, then nudge him to tackle those factors first so a better estimate can be refined quickly. Just don't make him feel like you're twisting his arm or browbeating him, because estimates are like information from interrogation -- torture will get you the answer you want quickly, but the answer itself will likely prove to be worthless. It is an injustice that the parent post can only be given a +5 insightful rather than much higher number that would be more fitting.
I couldn't care less if the battle of Waterloo was whenever You must have gone to one of those fancy schools. I think the only time Napoleon was ever mentioned in my American public school was a passing reference to him selling the Louisiana territory to the USA. At my school, sex education was required, but you had to learn history in the gutter. Having learned much of what I know about history on my own, I can tell you why memorizing some dates are important. They help you fit in everything else. Most people have no concept of history. Did George Washington ever have a chance to meet Columbus? Who knows? Well, if you learn a few dates cold, then other things can fit. For example, start with memorizing 5 dates, 1776 (Declaraion of Independence), 1492 (Columbus discovers America), 1066 (Norman invasion of England), 0 (approximate birth of Christ), 1000 BC (approximate time of King David's reign) and you have a context for otherthings. You hear that Shakespeare was born in 1564 and instead of just hearing 4 numbers, you can think "70 years after Columbus, so he probably knew about America". You may not remember the exact date, you'll probably remember that it was shortly after Columbus's time. When you later here Queen Elizabeth's reign started in 1558 you can realize that that was around the same time as Shakespeare and it was about 70 years after Columbus. Suddenly instead of random disjoint numbers, you have a web of information that can fit together, reinforce other information, and allow you to draw conclusions. This applies to other fields as well. You understand and remember information a lot better if you have other related facts in your memory.
Perhaps as part of the login you could ask a question that only a local would know, and maybe give them a couple of multiple-choice questions to choose from.
Please answer only one of:
Which local talk radio station carries Rush Limbaugh?
What restaurant is at the corner of 4th and main?
What's the name of our high school?
Of course answers like this could be found on the web, but most non-local people won't bother. And having a decent sized collection of questions so that they don't get repeated will help prevent a slashdotter from posting the answer to the question so all his readers can get in.