It wasn't his work to defend. It belonged to his employer. Work for hire, and the guy that hired him told him what to do. That same person could have entirely destroyed the work, told him to rebuild it, then destroyed it again, over and over. As long as Childs is being paid his agreed and legal rate, it is entirely the employer's option to do so. Pride in his work, or more likely self-righteous pride in himself, does not properly enter into this at all.
His only defense at all is "preventing public waste" which is subjective as hell and probably not his call anyway, certainly not after the judge ruled against him.
1. ACA is Federal law. The fine / tax/ whatever is Federal, imposed on the residents of the states.
2. You might look a bit further up, to Amendment 16, where it says
The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.
Good luck to Zients. He's a good guy and I don't doubt the code can be repaired with enough effort. A lot of effort, maybe, but it can be done.
But it might not matter. The Los Angeles Times had a story about how the real code running the show (the legalese in the ACA law) may have a fatal flaw in it. The federal government may not be able to grant subsidies to low income people in the states that did not set up their own exchanges. The law specifically says the states must do it in order for the money to flow. So 36 of the 50 may not be able to get the money. But they are still subject to the penalty for not signing up. This means the people least able to afford insurance get hammered. And since they are treated differently than people in the other 14 states that do have exchanges, you can bet an Equal Protection lawsuit will be quick in coming.
Federal judge is due to issue the initial ruling soon.
Its a great thing to decentralize from the US. BUT, it could just as easily mean more fragmentation. Just like China has the Great Firewall, Brazil could as easily make you swim the Great River Amazon. No I don't expect them to, but nothing says they can't. And worse, if more countries follow, more fragmentation of the same could make navigating the internet as bad as in the days of dial-up. Or, you could get the UN and ITU thinking they know how to govern and make it all one big happy bureaucratic world. Leaving US control is good, but there is a lot of bad out there too.
Absolutely. There is no reason to know who I am, just see what I post and elevate it to the clouds or sink it to the bottom with the whale shit. Eventually Trolls only see other trolls. They either have fun together, or they get the message.
Slashdot implemented Karma. Other sites have up votes and down votes. Make those persistent and you have the core of effective Troll Control, and conversely, the basis for a decent reputation online. It can be portable across all the sites operated by a particular owner, but of course it is difficult to be portable across the Net in general without a lot of cooperation between Owners. You don't need to know who I am IRL. You need to know I'm the same person you dealt with yesterday, will deal with tomorrow, who pays his debts with valid plastic, etc. That would be true for both a shining Sir Lancelot and the lowest asshole Troll
What is karma?
Your karma is a reference that primarily represents how your comments have been moderated. Karma is used to determine who moderates and who doesn't. You can improve your karma by posting intelligent, funny, informative or comments generally impressive to your fellow readers.
Karma is structured on the following scale "Terrible, Bad, Neutral, Positive, Good, and Excellent." If a comment you post is moderated up, your karma will rise. Conversely, bad karma usually indicates a user account used to spam or otherwise hurt the discussion.
Factors besides moderation also affect karma. Having a story submission accepted raises your karma. Also, metamoderation can cause your karma to change. This encourages good moderators, and ideally removes moderator access from bad ones. Don't worry too much about it; it's just an integer in a database. Are there anti-troll filters?
A handful of filters have been put into place to try to make sure that people don't abuse the system. For instance, the same person can't post more than once every 120 seconds. Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short span, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user... a cooling off period, if you will.
But I can see all around the blind spot without one, so if something diappears into it, I'll assume it might be there until I see it re-emerge. solved problem for the last 100 years of driving.
I already know how to back up? Look for people and objects that are behind me and know how to avoid them? Do *I* still havbe to pay extra fora car with a feature I'll never need?
And what about heatproof, waterproof, sun/age embrittlement of the screen and button? Guess what, some of us live in climates with actual temperature extremes and cracked dashboards are a way of life in older cars. Do those cameras and display screen hold up, or do I just replace them regularly (at a nice tidy profit for the dealer and manufacturer) as the environmental wear kicks in?
And then there are the insurance liabilities. If I have a camera and it doesn't work, am I now automatically at fault, even when it was the otherguy that ran behind the car?
Spoken like a guy that doesn't mind repeating history. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.
If we assume all new changes are good ones, and all new versions are backwards compatible with whatever came before, then we wouldn't care what version we are on now. Except they aren't, so we do. If a site, or an app is know to work with one version, then every change means regression testing to see if the new one works too. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. If you are of the Programmer Full Employment mindset that says everyone should always rework their code constantly to be compatible with every other change and interface that is out there, then I get your point of view. Lots of work for everyone. If you are like everyone else that only wants change when it takes them somewhere useful, this is a ridiculous waste of time and resources.
And oh by the way, does every change work out to be a good one, even for the appiclation that made it? No, it doesn't. Sometimes it is a smart thing to back out of a change. And keeping close track of that, so the users will know what the hell to expect, is a good thing for the users. Assuming you care about the users. Which I know is an old school thing falling out of fashion. But since I'm one of them, I like it.
Computer Science is not Word Processing. Office skill are important, but they aren't Comp Sci. Back in the old days, Computer Science was part of the Business department curriculum (at least it was in my High School), but it quickly spawned off to its own program in Science and went from there.
You need a two pronged approach. The first is word processing, spreadsheets, and some graphics. Good basic computer user skills. Gets the kids over their fear factor and gets them using the tool. From there you can branch to bookeeping or desktop publishing or Photoshop graphics or whatever.
Then you back that up with the underpinnings of good procedural and algorithmic skills and knowledge. It could be as simple as How to write a recipe for hot dogs or How to change a light bulb. No computer necessary in the early stages, you just want them in the frame of mind to get good at putting steps together and phrasing them well to get to a good result. Think of it as programming for the H.Sap2 processor (seriously, try it. Writing good directions isn't easy). After that, you are ready to introduce formalized language and coding concepts, then real languages like java, C, HTML, SQL, javascript, etc. How to make the computer do what YOU want it to do.
If you are basing this on MS Office, there is VBScript and Visual Basic. Useful tools, and it is all built in. But of course you have to be careful
Those kids will grow up to be out of touch with reality, thinking they're the center of their tiny universe while being hopeless at everything other than their field of speciality.
... much like un-informed, self-righteous, snarky, cranio-rectal Slashdot writers. Get out of the basement much do ya?
Because of course you know, it is possible for a home-schooled child to become socialized with OTHER home schooled children. Or with other people in the community around them as they go about their daily lives in their neighborhood, or at the market, or gas station, or workplace, or parks, or beaches, or if they are religious, at Church. Because you know, people who go to all of those places actually speak to each other, and thus learn social skills. Unlike public school children who learn their social skills... in much the same way, actually. With the added pleasure of school imposed artificial hierarchical dominance games into the mix.
I found out the hard way. Was at a con party in Canada. Late night, I was feeling a little drowsy, so I found a MD and downed it. Still felt drowsy, went for a second. As I finished it my Canadian host let me in on the news. By then I was on sugar high but headed to bed for the crash. Thanks for nothing Health Canada or whoever neutered Mountain Dew!
Better yet, why don't they just stream the information continuously to a satellite... yeah it costs money - now how much does an Airbus at the bottom of the ocean cost again?
It isn't just the cost. It is:
Cost(of crash) x Probability(of crash) + Value(of crash data) x Probability(of crash) + Cost(of normal Ops) x (1-Probability(of crash)) + Value(of normal data) x (1-Probability(of crash))
That is almost certainly a negative number most of the time. Airlines hate to lose money therefore it isn't done
I realize this is petty, but why the rush to bump up the numbers? I mean is the only way to give your product some eye appeal is to give it a bigger flashier new number? Of course I'm assuming there is some kind of defined (and designed) spec being worked on here. Every time you implement a feature in the spec, you tick up the MinorFeature number. You write a new spec with more Stuff in it, you tick up the MajorFeature number.
But maybe not. Maybe there is no spec and no design. People just keep gluing stuff on whenever they feel like it and push it out the door when it doesn't crash (too much). OK, that model is R-ReleaseNumber.Bugfix. Not as pretty, but at least it warns people you are just driving without actually navigating to a goal.
So, getting cancer, getting in a car accident where you're not responsible, or getting alzheimer is being careless? I mean, Why do we support prisonners? Why shouldn't we just kill them? After all, they are sucking up ressources, right?
And yet socialised health care works for many countries...
We *should* just kill them. They *do* suck up resources out of proportion to their productivity. And they aren't likely to get any more productive as time goes on, recidivism being what it is. Convict them, then dump them on the waste heap ASAP is the most economic solution.
But most people have this thing about reciprocity, and seeing things from the other guy's point of view, and walking in his shoes, etc. Keeps them from killing people that are not immediately threatening their life, or going to threaten them later, and whose death would not serve some other higher purpose.
But of course those same people are probably also opposed to stealing the resources of others who never agreed to it. Sneaking over borders, taking what they need, then leaving the mess to be cleaned and the bills to be paid by others. That pesky "Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" thing again. Humanistic morality is a mess. Better to leave it on an economic level. Easier to know what to do and what to expect.
I'd bet that part of it is the Us FY2011 budget debacle. Congress never passed a new budget for 2011. They just repassed a part of the old 2010. The 2010 budget had money to finish Orion. So basically they dropped another wad of money on LockMart marked "do it again". OK, not quite that easy really, but the extra cash probably came in handy on some of the finishing touches.
They didn't dump him, he moved on to get some kind of paying gig. He wanted to get to work and the studio was still drowning in red ink. They couldn't pay for pre-production, so nothing was happening.
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't his work to defend. It belonged to his employer. Work for hire, and the guy that hired him told him what to do. That same person could have entirely destroyed the work, told him to rebuild it, then destroyed it again, over and over. As long as Childs is being paid his agreed and legal rate, it is entirely the employer's option to do so. Pride in his work, or more likely self-righteous pride in himself, does not properly enter into this at all.
His only defense at all is "preventing public waste" which is subjective as hell and probably not his call anyway, certainly not after the judge ruled against him.
Honestly they were barely known and had ZERO rep in the community.
So, perhaps you'd care to share who does have the best rep? ::recorder ON::
1. ACA is Federal law. The fine / tax/ whatever is Federal, imposed on the residents of the states.
2. You might look a bit further up, to Amendment 16, where it says
The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.
Good luck to Zients. He's a good guy and I don't doubt the code can be repaired with enough effort. A lot of effort, maybe, but it can be done.
But it might not matter. The Los Angeles Times had a story about how the real code running the show (the legalese in the ACA law) may have a fatal flaw in it. The federal government may not be able to grant subsidies to low income people in the states that did not set up their own exchanges. The law specifically says the states must do it in order for the money to flow. So 36 of the 50 may not be able to get the money. But they are still subject to the penalty for not signing up. This means the people least able to afford insurance get hammered. And since they are treated differently than people in the other 14 states that do have exchanges, you can bet an Equal Protection lawsuit will be quick in coming.
Federal judge is due to issue the initial ruling soon.
Let's not get too hasty! Wandering in the wilderness is not to everyone's taste
But how do we know you aren't preparing for a quick bug out when its only a month away? I've seen 2012, I know how this stuff works!!
I think you totally missed the point. The damages done have no relation to the worth of the person that did them.
Cool, you got the reference too !
Its a great thing to decentralize from the US. BUT, it could just as easily mean more fragmentation. Just like China has the Great Firewall, Brazil could as easily make you swim the Great River Amazon. No I don't expect them to, but nothing says they can't. And worse, if more countries follow, more fragmentation of the same could make navigating the internet as bad as in the days of dial-up.
Or, you could get the UN and ITU thinking they know how to govern and make it all one big happy bureaucratic world. Leaving US control is good, but there is a lot of bad out there too.
Absolutely. There is no reason to know who I am, just see what I post and elevate it to the clouds or sink it to the bottom with the whale shit. Eventually Trolls only see other trolls. They either have fun together, or they get the message.
Slashdot implemented Karma. Other sites have up votes and down votes. Make those persistent and you have the core of effective Troll Control, and conversely, the basis for a decent reputation online. It can be portable across all the sites operated by a particular owner, but of course it is difficult to be portable across the Net in general without a lot of cooperation between Owners. You don't need to know who I am IRL. You need to know I'm the same person you dealt with yesterday, will deal with tomorrow, who pays his debts with valid plastic, etc. That would be true for both a shining Sir Lancelot and the lowest asshole Troll
What is karma?
Your karma is a reference that primarily represents how your comments have been moderated. Karma is used to determine who moderates and who doesn't. You can improve your karma by posting intelligent, funny, informative or comments generally impressive to your fellow readers.
Karma is structured on the following scale "Terrible, Bad, Neutral, Positive, Good, and Excellent." If a comment you post is moderated up, your karma will rise. Conversely, bad karma usually indicates a user account used to spam or otherwise hurt the discussion.
Factors besides moderation also affect karma. Having a story submission accepted raises your karma. Also, metamoderation can cause your karma to change. This encourages good moderators, and ideally removes moderator access from bad ones. Don't worry too much about it; it's just an integer in a database.
Are there anti-troll filters?
A handful of filters have been put into place to try to make sure that people don't abuse the system. For instance, the same person can't post more than once every 120 seconds. Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short span, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user ... a cooling off period, if you will.
But I can see all around the blind spot without one, so if something diappears into it, I'll assume it might be there until I see it re-emerge. solved problem for the last 100 years of driving.
I already know how to back up? Look for people and objects that are behind me and know how to avoid them? Do *I* still havbe to pay extra fora car with a feature I'll never need?
And what about heatproof, waterproof, sun/age embrittlement of the screen and button? Guess what, some of us live in climates with actual temperature extremes and cracked dashboards are a way of life in older cars. Do those cameras and display screen hold up, or do I just replace them regularly (at a nice tidy profit for the dealer and manufacturer) as the environmental wear kicks in?
And then there are the insurance liabilities. If I have a camera and it doesn't work, am I now automatically at fault, even when it was the otherguy that ran behind the car?
Just not loving this as a requirement.
Great reply, but I have two questions:
1. Do you set up the machines with the users as admin, or with two accounts, Admin (full rights) and (reduced privileges) User?
2. I have to know: Scorta futuere amo! = Future like whores!
???
Spoken like a guy that doesn't mind repeating history. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.
If we assume all new changes are good ones, and all new versions are backwards compatible with whatever came before, then we wouldn't care what version we are on now. Except they aren't, so we do. If a site, or an app is know to work with one version, then every change means regression testing to see if the new one works too. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. If you are of the Programmer Full Employment mindset that says everyone should always rework their code constantly to be compatible with every other change and interface that is out there, then I get your point of view. Lots of work for everyone. If you are like everyone else that only wants change when it takes them somewhere useful, this is a ridiculous waste of time and resources.
And oh by the way, does every change work out to be a good one, even for the appiclation that made it? No, it doesn't. Sometimes it is a smart thing to back out of a change. And keeping close track of that, so the users will know what the hell to expect, is a good thing for the users. Assuming you care about the users. Which I know is an old school thing falling out of fashion. But since I'm one of them, I like it.
Computer Science is not Word Processing. Office skill are important, but they aren't Comp Sci. Back in the old days, Computer Science was part of the Business department curriculum (at least it was in my High School), but it quickly spawned off to its own program in Science and went from there.
You need a two pronged approach. The first is word processing, spreadsheets, and some graphics. Good basic computer user skills. Gets the kids over their fear factor and gets them using the tool. From there you can branch to bookeeping or desktop publishing or Photoshop graphics or whatever.
Then you back that up with the underpinnings of good procedural and algorithmic skills and knowledge. It could be as simple as How to write a recipe for hot dogs or How to change a light bulb. No computer necessary in the early stages, you just want them in the frame of mind to get good at putting steps together and phrasing them well to get to a good result. Think of it as programming for the H.Sap2 processor (seriously, try it. Writing good directions isn't easy). After that, you are ready to introduce formalized language and coding concepts, then real languages like java, C, HTML, SQL, javascript, etc. How to make the computer do what YOU want it to do.
If you are basing this on MS Office, there is VBScript and Visual Basic. Useful tools, and it is all built in. But of course you have to be careful
Those kids will grow up to be out of touch with reality, thinking they're the center of their tiny universe while being hopeless at everything other than their field of speciality.
... much like un-informed, self-righteous, snarky, cranio-rectal Slashdot writers. Get out of the basement much do ya?
Because of course you know, it is possible for a home-schooled child to become socialized with OTHER home schooled children. Or with other people in the community around them as they go about their daily lives in their neighborhood, or at the market, or gas station, or workplace, or parks, or beaches, or if they are religious, at Church. Because you know, people who go to all of those places actually speak to each other, and thus learn social skills. Unlike public school children who learn their social skills... in much the same way, actually. With the added pleasure of school imposed artificial hierarchical dominance games into the mix.
Why did the driller drill the tunnel?
To get to the other side!
I found out the hard way. Was at a con party in Canada. Late night, I was feeling a little drowsy, so I found a MD and downed it. Still felt drowsy, went for a second. As I finished it my Canadian host let me in on the news. By then I was on sugar high but headed to bed for the crash. Thanks for nothing Health Canada or whoever neutered Mountain Dew!
EC2 ?
Better yet, why don't they just stream the information continuously to a satellite... yeah it costs money - now how much does an Airbus at the bottom of the ocean cost again?
It isn't just the cost. It is:
Cost(of crash) x Probability(of crash) + Value(of crash data) x Probability(of crash)
+ Cost(of normal Ops) x (1-Probability(of crash)) + Value(of normal data) x (1-Probability(of crash))
That is almost certainly a negative number most of the time. Airlines hate to lose money therefore it isn't done
I realize this is petty, but why the rush to bump up the numbers? I mean is the only way to give your product some eye appeal is to give it a bigger flashier new number? Of course I'm assuming there is some kind of defined (and designed) spec being worked on here. Every time you implement a feature in the spec, you tick up the MinorFeature number. You write a new spec with more Stuff in it, you tick up the MajorFeature number.
But maybe not. Maybe there is no spec and no design. People just keep gluing stuff on whenever they feel like it and push it out the door when it doesn't crash (too much). OK, that model is R-ReleaseNumber.Bugfix. Not as pretty, but at least it warns people you are just driving without actually navigating to a goal.
So, getting cancer, getting in a car accident where you're not responsible, or getting alzheimer is being careless?
I mean, Why do we support prisonners? Why shouldn't we just kill them? After all, they are sucking up ressources, right?
And yet socialised health care works for many countries...
We *should* just kill them. They *do* suck up resources out of proportion to their productivity. And they aren't likely to get any more productive as time goes on, recidivism being what it is. Convict them, then dump them on the waste heap ASAP is the most economic solution.
But most people have this thing about reciprocity, and seeing things from the other guy's point of view, and walking in his shoes, etc. Keeps them from killing people that are not immediately threatening their life, or going to threaten them later, and whose death would not serve some other higher purpose.
But of course those same people are probably also opposed to stealing the resources of others who never agreed to it. Sneaking over borders, taking what they need, then leaving the mess to be cleaned and the bills to be paid by others. That pesky "Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" thing again. Humanistic morality is a mess. Better to leave it on an economic level. Easier to know what to do and what to expect.
I'd bet that part of it is the Us FY2011 budget debacle. Congress never passed a new budget for 2011. They just repassed a part of the old 2010. The 2010 budget had money to finish Orion. So basically they dropped another wad of money on LockMart marked "do it again". OK, not quite that easy really, but the extra cash probably came in handy on some of the finishing touches.
They didn't dump him, he moved on to get some kind of paying gig. He wanted to get to work and the studio was still drowning in red ink. They couldn't pay for pre-production, so nothing was happening.