"my logical framework states that if someone puts themselves in a dangerous situation from which they are not prepared to escape should it go all pear-shaped, they deserve to die."
You don't take an elevator, go into a car or go near a car, do you?
"Also many nice and reasonably priced products wouldn't exist if the makers didn't have protection for their trademark."
Unsupported opinion. In fact, quite the opposite may be truer: the strongest the brand, the higher the margins applied to its products, that's why it makes sense to develop a strong trade mark, after all.
"Nobody, not even modern IP law, prevents you from telling stories for free."
We'll, you'd be surprised.
An example: an artist (music composer and perfomer) gets invited to a charity event. He tries to perform for free his own songs... and he can't do it: copyright collecting rights agency still bills its share.
That happens in Spain which have (or better said, used to have before USA bussiness got in the middle) quite progressive laws with regard to IP protection.
"exceptionally good people don't come easy or cheap"
They truly don't come easy but they certainly are really cheap.
The nut of the problem is that programming is still a trade, not an engineering, and that means that craftmanship counts.
" there's really little room to make grand improvements unless you want to try to create the n'th inner platform designer/rule/reporting tool"
Yes... if all you have is mediocrity. And that's part of the point of great people: they not only give awesome results at an obviosly hard problem, they can surprise you making great things out of apparently boring and well-known problems -and you won't know how that's possible but after the fact.
And now, for the car analogy: if you wanted to win a world championship, who would you hire? One Sebastian Vettel or ten van der Gardes?
Now consider that each business is always racing its own world championship.
"But why 'sync' stuff at all? Why not work directly on the file server (Z: in this case)? Why mess with 'local' files that will even need synchronization?"
Because that way each developer would step on each other's toe. I bet that when working on an idea they still go renaming their files like foo.1, foo.2, etc. and that more or less fortnightly if not more frequently there are discussions on why you didn't ask me about file bar, now you have overwritten it with your own incompatible version.
This people is discovering source code managing principles at their own pace.
I'd say they are more or less at the level of RCS days.
"you haven't explained why they shouldn't also apply to the defendant as well."
Simply stated, because that would be too much.
It is too much to expect a man to self-incriminate himself in the face of a harsh punishment and the legal system has been always about "justice for human beings", not just "justice". If we could just expect for a defendant to do the right thing, we basically wouldn't need the legal system: a person would just go to the center of the agora without the need of prosecution to state "that's my crime, and that's the punishment I deserve" and that would be all.
In fact, Ortega was of the opinion that the defendant shouldn't be questioned at all, since his testimony is of no value, one way or the other: he can feel a moral guiltiness that it's not there or want to save himself from the punishment. At most he could testify for the defense because of the 'in dubio pro reo' argument.
"There will be 20 wrong answers, 10 answers to the wrong question, 2 suboptimal solutions, and if you are in luck there will be 1 good solution. Now, tell me which is which."
The one that makes sense, of course.
If you can't see what the proper solution is at a glance, then Stack Overflow may seem that it's for you but, believe me, it's not.
"I would rather have unreliable information than absolutely nothing at all."
Quite extrange. I certainly would prefer absolutly nothing at all than unreliable information. Incomplete, vague? That's better than nothing but, unreliable? No thanks.
With no documentation at least I know where I stand but what's good about learning, say, that an API call will return 0 on sucess... well, or maybe it's 1 despite what the documentation says, who knows?
"Is there any reason to believe that a comparison between the border controls needed for a country roughly the size of Maryland to the entire United States should be in any way appropriate?"
Is there any reason not to? When it's about sovereignity, size doesn't matter. By your account, Israel borders' security checks would be a joke, wouldn't they?
On one hand, I was answering about a claim about putting a stair upside down.
On the other hand, if you put your claim in proper context, as in "I left my son playing without supervision with a tiny object clearly labelled as dangerous, not only once but at least twice" (you know it takes two magnets to put you in trouble), I would say, yes, it looks a lot like a bogus claim.
And finally, I clearly stated that for whatever non-bogus claims he should answer no less than at the level he would profit if successful.
Slashdot Mirror
"my logical framework states that if someone puts themselves in a dangerous situation from which they are not prepared to escape should it go all pear-shaped, they deserve to die."
You don't take an elevator, go into a car or go near a car, do you?
Or, well, you already know you deserve to die.
"Folks who fly ICBM's need very accurate masscon (mass concentration) maps for guidance."
Or what? The 10 Mt ICBM will boom 10 m out of its target on the other side of the world?
"All of the woes that you mention such as pollution are caused by excessive population."
That explains why India pollutes more than USA.
Oh, wait!
No, I was joking: It's progress not population.
That explains why Denmark pollutes per capita as much as USA.
Oh, wait!
"The default setting, I believe, is opt-out."
So it seems. The problem is that while waiting for his answer, I prayed for the benefit of his soul.
And I'm still waiting for the 100$ I charge for this service!
Damn indecent an immoral DarkTempes.
"Your fart analogy falls short. That isn't work in line with the context that I used work and your smelling it is not consumption"
Is it?
What about a beggar cleaning windshields on a traffic lights stop?
There's an obvious work and an obvious benefit. Do you think it's immoral if I don't give him a tip for his unasked for work?
"The sizzle here is that this is a sane application of IP law."
No, it isn't. It would be a sane application of fraud law, since they were selling counterfeit goods.
"Also many nice and reasonably priced products wouldn't exist if the makers didn't have protection for their trademark."
Unsupported opinion. In fact, quite the opposite may be truer: the strongest the brand, the higher the margins applied to its products, that's why it makes sense to develop a strong trade mark, after all.
"Nobody, not even modern IP law, prevents you from telling stories for free."
We'll, you'd be surprised.
An example: an artist (music composer and perfomer) gets invited to a charity event. He tries to perform for free his own songs... and he can't do it: copyright collecting rights agency still bills its share.
That happens in Spain which have (or better said, used to have before USA bussiness got in the middle) quite progressive laws with regard to IP protection.
"It certainly seems obviously immoral to consume someone else's work at no return."
No, it isn't.
It is immoral to consume someone else's work at no return AFTER PROMISING him some return (we call this type or situation "a contract").
When you fart I smell it at no return. Do you think that's somehow immoral?
"In other words, scientific reasoning will never tell you anything about God or spiritual matters."
Which is estrictly true and proves you no less a troll than the person I answered to.
"a millisecond off one way or the other means the difference between landing on target, and landing several inches or feet off target."
Do you really think they aim for a target when they jump?
Funny.
"I find that a lot of things in life make a lot more sense with that approach."
That might make for a good philosopher but has little to do with science.
Are your conjetures testable?
"I can see those same findings and interpret them in a way that meshes science with the activity of God"
What do you think about Mr Occam?
"exceptionally good people don't come easy or cheap"
They truly don't come easy but they certainly are really cheap.
The nut of the problem is that programming is still a trade, not an engineering, and that means that craftmanship counts.
" there's really little room to make grand improvements unless you want to try to create the n'th inner platform designer/rule/reporting tool"
Yes... if all you have is mediocrity. And that's part of the point of great people: they not only give awesome results at an obviosly hard problem, they can surprise you making great things out of apparently boring and well-known problems -and you won't know how that's possible but after the fact.
And now, for the car analogy: if you wanted to win a world championship, who would you hire? One Sebastian Vettel or ten van der Gardes?
Now consider that each business is always racing its own world championship.
Well, I'd surely welcome your pity if it really came with the 2 millions.
Yes.
"But why 'sync' stuff at all? Why not work directly on the file server (Z: in this case)? Why mess with 'local' files that will even need synchronization?"
Because that way each developer would step on each other's toe. I bet that when working on an idea they still go renaming their files like foo.1, foo.2, etc. and that more or less fortnightly if not more frequently there are discussions on why you didn't ask me about file bar, now you have overwritten it with your own incompatible version.
This people is discovering source code managing principles at their own pace.
I'd say they are more or less at the level of RCS days.
" There really is no situation where I'd rather use SVN or anything like it that I can think of, when I have a choice."
So can git already manage binary blobs in any sensible manner?
"have you heard of Nebuchadnezzar's dream?"
Yes. It was about a hovercraft, and something about machines being the new overlords eating humans controlled under a matrix, wasn't it?
"you haven't explained why they shouldn't also apply to the defendant as well."
Simply stated, because that would be too much.
It is too much to expect a man to self-incriminate himself in the face of a harsh punishment and the legal system has been always about "justice for human beings", not just "justice". If we could just expect for a defendant to do the right thing, we basically wouldn't need the legal system: a person would just go to the center of the agora without the need of prosecution to state "that's my crime, and that's the punishment I deserve" and that would be all.
In fact, Ortega was of the opinion that the defendant shouldn't be questioned at all, since his testimony is of no value, one way or the other: he can feel a moral guiltiness that it's not there or want to save himself from the punishment. At most he could testify for the defense because of the 'in dubio pro reo' argument.
"There will be 20 wrong answers, 10 answers to the wrong question, 2 suboptimal solutions, and if you are in luck there will be 1 good solution. Now, tell me which is which."
The one that makes sense, of course.
If you can't see what the proper solution is at a glance, then Stack Overflow may seem that it's for you but, believe me, it's not.
"I would rather have unreliable information than absolutely nothing at all."
Quite extrange. I certainly would prefer absolutly nothing at all than unreliable information. Incomplete, vague? That's better than nothing but, unreliable? No thanks.
With no documentation at least I know where I stand but what's good about learning, say, that an API call will return 0 on sucess... well, or maybe it's 1 despite what the documentation says, who knows?
"Is there any reason to believe that a comparison between the border controls needed for a country roughly the size of Maryland to the entire United States should be in any way appropriate?"
Is there any reason not to? When it's about sovereignity, size doesn't matter. By your account, Israel borders' security checks would be a joke, wouldn't they?
"actual imprisonment without charges seems like it would be a huge constitutional issue."
Guantanamo.
On one hand, I was answering about a claim about putting a stair upside down.
On the other hand, if you put your claim in proper context, as in "I left my son playing without supervision with a tiny object clearly labelled as dangerous, not only once but at least twice" (you know it takes two magnets to put you in trouble), I would say, yes, it looks a lot like a bogus claim.
And finally, I clearly stated that for whatever non-bogus claims he should answer no less than at the level he would profit if successful.