The T&C stipulate you must not provide false information. "So what?" you say. It means they can then in the future remove your online identity at a whim. Fine you can then create another, but what about all the info you have on/in the account? If there was nothing of value in the account there would be no point in having that account.
"Does using a nuclear engine to power the vehicle through the atmosphere increase the risk of a nuclear spill" Yes. Burnt Nuclear fuel is more dangerous than unburt, being assembled in a form of an engine means that in the case of a malfunction (which is almost certain to be in the engine) the nuclear material is going to be in a higher energy part of the craft than whatever is in the payload section.. Also assuming you were carrying this stuff up to orbit for assembly into the reactor there then you could pack it in a capsule that would survive de-orbit and therefore be recovered in the event of an accident (much as you would humans) it would be much harder to do the same for the engines. Now while getting to orbit on a nuclear rocket would be awesome and potentially safer than chemical rockets (you could build in more safety margin with the excess power you would have) that's not the question you asked.... On a less serious note let's face it they use depleted uranium for shielding on tanks and re-entry shrouds on nuclear weapons, so it should survive re-entry;-)
As long as the code review itself doesn't get bogged down with issues of How The World Should Indent and things like that - that's always a risk with developers looking at each others code.
That's why my favourite style to do code reviews was "Justify your warnings" from the various tools that read the code. Most people agree that some warnings are just the compiler being over-zealous, and those parts of the review went fast; but those around bits of code that others didn't understand took a lot longer (this also encouraged you to get rid of the easy warnings and sloppy code before review just out of laziness), those warnings that scared people but you were sure was just because you had no other choice again gave valuable feedback. It worked well for us anyway...
It is their job. If they don't do it, fire them. If you can't fire them for some reason, give them crap reviews and crap tasks.
I envy you that you work somewhere where there is an excess of perfect people that you can do this. In my experience there are some really clever people out there who have some personality flaws, and there are lots of people who stick to the rules and are quite average. Personally I'd rather try and work with flawed brilliant people and accept undocumented but efficient, quick, timely code than get a monkey who follows the rules and produces acceptable code. You may not choose that trade off and that's fine we will probably never agree there... Now if you're telling me you can get someone who does everything brilliantly then great, but lots of great engineers are divas so whilst you can try and lead them, to give someone a poor review (when they saved your behind at the last customer demo) because that code they cooked up lacks documentation then I'm once again wondering how on earth I ended up with such an awesome job. FWIW I used to have a manager whose approach to people who he thought produced unmanageable/undocumented code was to stick them into a code maintenance/system integration role. It was interesting how quickly you then started complaining about other people's code and documenting both theirs and yours;-)
Oh, and no function should be longer than about 20 lines.
Where's my funny mod points when I need them?
All non-trivial code is crap and could be improved in some way
I would say all code is crap and could be improved, the problem is where and for what purpose? Code with too much abstraction is crap, so is code with 1 line per function, so is code with too many things happening on one line, so is code that is too tied to the particular hardware, so is code that ignores what the toolkit libraries can do, so is code that is written in the wrong language for the problem you are solving, so is code that is a complete re-write, so is code that wasn't profiled properly. etc Any blanket rule you can make has exceptions and while I am all for coding standards and code reviews rules are there to make you think before you break them, nothing more.
True but like it or not people don't do it. You can bitch that people should do it, but when they don't what then? You could fire them, but IME some of the people who write the best code by other metrics (reliability, bugs fixed, or just taking on a task no-one wants) are poor at documenting it themselves. Do you fire people for not documenting code, discipline them? Is it worth fighting the battle if you just need to get the product out/fix the current problems/develop the next thing. IME code quality always comes back to bite you, if you write bad code/undocumented then soon enough it will come back and bite you yourself when you come back to maintain/modify. If I don't provide documentation to others then I end up with more support requests so it's worth me doing that balancing act, it's not management's judgement call to make. As for dealing with other people undocumented code, that's just a skill you need to have as an engineer, like being fluent in multiple languages many of which won't be your choice. You think I want this tool chain to be written in TCL? Should I then port it to my favourite language (e.g. perl) what if the next poerson to support it prefers python? It's just part of engineering that everyone else's code will look rubbish and undocumented to you. Even when it is documented you'll then think the documentation is overkill. Yes it's rubbish, yes TFA makes some suggestions, some might work, some might not, but you can't just say it's your job to document and walk off, in real life we have to actually deal with problems and the reality that it doesn't happen as it should.
No matter how deep you dive into the UK's rail industry it just gets worse. Another example (from my brother in law who works for the railways) is the local operators lease the rolling stock, they are not allowed to own it. For round numbers it's about £1 million a year for a carriage that costs about £10 million new. However the carriages were already paid for. Some of them are 25+ years old, and the companies that own the stock have little incentive to invest in new stock, because, well why would you? Occasionally the electoare complain enough and then you get demand handouts to pay for the new stock. I just wish I'd bought shares in them when they were being set up...
What firm in the US can afford to stay in business while doing custom manufacturing jobs for around $1,000?
That depends, if all it required you to do was have the latest machine and punch numbers into a database and let the scripts sort out the rest then I see no reason why by being clever you couldn't do the job cheaper.
All I'm saying is even if labor unions disappeared overnight, modern government regulations would prevent a return to the poor working conditions of the past.
Don't think that with the correct lobbying you could get some of those laws to be relaxed?
But does that matter? Take a situation i know a little about, farming in the UK. Once of a day over 90% of the population farmed, now less than 2% farm; yet more food is produced now. a huge amount of food is imported but is that a bad thing if we can (through better education system and critical mass in certain fields of design and finance) per person do a better job in some fields than other cultres might manage. Are you better off growing your food in better climates and using the land in worse climates for the things that work better when you invest in people to a higher standard. (I ask theoretically here because i know the education system in the UK is comparatively poor) As another example more steel is currently made in Sheffield than at the height of the industrial revolution yet it is no longer the steel centre of the world. Why? In both cases machines do the work of man better and cheaper. You can fight that or you can embrace it. In the case of farming there is nothing you would want to do in the UK to get 90% of the population farming, so what do/did you do with the people that technology improvements freed up - simple you move them to manufacturing. What about when you have too many people in manufacturing? Move them into services. What happens then when most of your population isn't suited for that type of work - I'll have to get back to you on that one. I find it interesting that it used to be thought (early industrial revolution) that true wealth came from the land, farming and mining were where wealth came from, new things like manufacturing it was said didn't add value to an economy. Now we see many saying it is only through building things of value that you add wealth to an economy, things like banking and other services are just moving wealth around. That may be true but... I honestly don't know where the economy goes from here, with rising energy costs does local manufacturing become more attractive or do we get a population shift and mass movement of population centres. I just don't know but it'll be interesting to watch.
The reality of the economy is that when the unions win the standard of living rises and everyone across the board does better in the long run.
Even if the unions expect a 5% pay raise each year in a world with 4% inflation? Even if they stop you bringing in the latest technology because it would make someone redundant? Even if they are lead by sexist politicians?
I'm not saying unions don't have a place, but they're made up of real people and that will always cause problems. They also have a history that cannot be ignored.
If my boss reduced my wages to $0.50 per hour tomorrow I'd quit.
This only works if everyone in the industry drops the wage at once. So Let's assume the evil 1% meet up in their club and decide that the new hourly rate for widget makers is now $0.50. So you decide to no be a widget maker anymore but become a doohickey maker, how are you going to re-train? How are you going to survive until you get trained in that field, I know: whilst you are retraining you find someone else who is hiring in a job that requires no training or provides training in that job.
And he would NOT be able to find anyone capable of replacing me at those rates.
Depends, if he provides training for that job then he just waits for someone who has quit/been fired from his previous job to become desperate enough.
He will not do without because "there's plenty of people who need a job in these tough times" He has no need to do it himself because he makes it a requirement of the job to train others less skilled than you. He will raise or lower the wage to the breaking point where people go "stuff this". In a job with minimal training required or where there has been a country wide downsize this can be very low.
I should point out that my position is not a commodity. I cannot be easily replaced because I have specialize skills
Well that's not what this discussion is about, manufacturing often can be done with relatively little training. However don't be mistaken in any talent pool there is exactly the same tradeoff: for example if there was a new government initiative to train up (at the cost of the state) millions to your skill level or at least to a state perceived to be equivalent or at the most junior level then you can bet your wage would feel the impact. That said I am not arguing against this type of government training, because often a critical mass is needed to get and keep a particular job feasible, but you get my point...
then let workers organize and compete with the companies that put them to work for fair working conditions and wages, and the free market will take care of the rest.
So if you have a couple of unions, dozens of companies (the UK in the 70s that you mentioned is a great example of this) how do you stop the unions reversing the situation and meaning that the business can't sustain itself against the union?
I'm not sure what side you are arguing.. So just in case I would argue no one side can get too powerful If the businesses have all the power (let's say coal mining as an example) then you decrease/don't increase the wage you pay. As long as that is the going rate for the industry you are free to screw over people one at a time and fire your high paid ones for any infraction (and you can make up infractions) thus bringing the average pay ever down. You can ignore health issues, you can employ anyone who is desperate for a job particularly if you can start them young without much education/training. As long as there are enough people available who can do the job then you can drive the pay towards zero and make sure they never leave the industry. If the unions have all the power (lets say the single coal mining union covers the whole country) then you can strike over anything at all. People working who aren't union, pay, company unions subsidies insufficient etc. This can drive the industry into unprofitably and kill it off (look at coal mining in the uk for a great example of this). The problem is how do you balance the industry having too much power with unions having too much power? The free market doesn't help you here, only regulation, i.e. politics, i.e. favouritism and influence, i.e. corruption and emotion.
Put it another way, seriously imagine you were a middle age king, what do you do? Even if you're the nicest guy in the world, what do you do?
Any move to disband your armies would get you invaded so you have to maintain a military presence. If you had inherited an overly strong army you could gain personal wealth by invading a weak neighbour. But let's assume you're committed to pacifism and maintain only a token army. Let's also assume you're a humanitarian and try and encourage good farming practice and even implement education and public health reforms (you don't have access to or knowledge of modern technology, but you do the best you can). Without contraception your population will explode and without modern farming technology you're back to a population on the brink of starvation. What do you do then? If your country looks rich with a weak army then get ready to be invaded, if anticipating this you build up your army then what? You examine the situation and realise that the lowest loss of life solution is to invade those brutal neighbours who have been testing your defences for the last few years in a pre-emptive strike?
No matter what I change in this scenario you always come back to something like the middle ages status-quo, so what else do you think they should have done? You imply it was personal boredom, but I would argue that it is more than that, even if every ruler were peaceful and logical, what do you do with the inevitable population explosion?
Have you never come across the game of life: http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/ or the mandelbrot set: from very simple rules you can get some remarkably complex behaviour.
I stand corrected; I had never come across this before, my apologies.
To what extent does this copyright in the method of storing them survive automated conversion to another method?
One would hope it is not the automated part that is of interest (after all it could be a very clever shell script) but of what is added by the conversion and if there is significant value added by said conversion. (I believe that was the crux of the JKR Lexicon case that I was alluding to in my post) The important thing is the author/shell script has to add something of substantial original value to make it a new work protected by copyright (or safe from copyright infringement).) Anyway back to the original story, the complaint WURFL have against the fork is that it maintains the same database which they are saying is protected as an original work, if it is a database of facts then it sounds like they have no protection, if it is a database of fiction would they not still have a case?
What could a creationist do with this? Would not an intelligent designer re-use the most efficient design in all the lifeforms? Unless someone can demonstrate that the 3 ringed design is better for fungi but only for fungi; but even in that case that just shows limited random mutation combined with selection of the fittest works. I just don't get how this can be used for ignorance. Although arguing against creationism is kind of like arguments against flat Earth...
you can't copyright a database (at least in the US).
Citation needed. While I grant you the ability to copyright facts is limited - e.g. the geographical topology of the earth cannot be copyrighted, an individual map (and the intentional flaws introduced by the cartographer) can be - the ability to copyright your interpretation of the facts, your method of storing them, your dataset, is fairly unlimited. Likewise just because you create something yourself does not mean it is wholly yours, if it refers to things that are the property of someone else or covered by their IP rights then you are going to at best struggle. Daft example I could create a database of harry potter characters, their links to each other, their histories and activities and they would all be facts but my database would be wholly in infringement of copyright.
Speaking as an ignorant hardware engineer, where's the problem with the original (as a method for driving LEDs for a test program)? Pick your battles and all that...
Welcome to the real world, the property you own isn't yours. You're not buying a product any more you're buying a service. You can't lend others your books (look in the copyright notice at the front if you doubt me) You can't
It is not your music, it is licensed from those who own it. Oh you're a band and think you own your music? Nope, it belongs to your record label. Oh you're not signed to a record label? Since 7 notes is enough to copyright a riff then that gives you just over 5000 original works of music so there is no original works anymore. You cannot produce your own works of art anymore.
Okay maybe you have an idea for a cool new machine, nope that's almost certainly covered by someone else's vague patent. Your ideas aren't yours.
Okay what about your house, I bet it's mortgaged so the bank owns it. Oh, you own your house outright, fine but who enforces it? When someone tries to take it from you it's a government giving you a licence to live there as long as you pay property taxes.
Actually you know what I started writing this as a parody post and now I'm not sure anymore, exactly what do we own anyway? What has anyone ever owned? Did those 200 years ago have more property rights than we currently have? Moving forwards should we have more property rights? Should I be allowed to sell you a device that is designed to break, or at least rely on updates to keep doing the same job? Machinery has always worn out, selling with a contract that requires a service contract has always been legal (AFAIK) so why are we annoyed about this now?
Really? A clock is ticking, there is a switch in front of you that is set to kill 100 people. You could flick the switch to kill a different 10 people. Do you choose to kill 10 people in order to save 100 people? Make your decision quickly because the clock is ticking and you don't have long. I think most people would choose to flick the switch and to actively kill 10 people rather than allow 100 people to be killed. Would you condemn someone who made that decision? Now scenario B, you have to possibly kill a thousand people in order to probably save a billion. What do you do then? The ends can justify the means; this is a world of grey that we live in.
Can you help clear up my ignorance then: My understanding was that all vaccines had a none zero chance of infecting you with the disease they are made from. Okay Cow Pox won't give you small pox, but heat treating rabies (for example) would kill the virus, but it theoretically only takes one to escape for you to be infected. Run the probability numbers and it may be worth the risk that I am vaccinated against mumps but there is still a finite chance that I am infected by the disease in the process of vaccination. A quick bit of research seems to say that it depends on the vaccine in question, but MMR seems to be a good example of one in the class of a vaccine that can genuinely harm you because it is an attenuated vaccine. This is not a reason to not have the immunisation but i believe it is reaching to say that it is technically impossible to contract HIV through this experiment. So I ask why is it completely impossible to contract HIV from this experiment? What have I misunderstood?
Depends, IME 90% feels about right. But then that is experience of Symbian, VxWorks and Android so on. Several layers of user abstraction per program on top of architecture abstraction on top of tool kit on top of adaption layer on top of libraries on top of upper layer of OS on top of OS on top of HAL on top of drivers on top of language overhead. Many of those having several layers per stage I missed out. Yes at times the user level drills down to the metal, but IME (as a hardware engineer) it seems to be the exception. Seriously, why else would you need a multi core multi GHz processor to run a quite simple UI? Especially when the hardware is doing most of the heavy lifting?
"As for AIDS, well, I think it was because of those overpaid actors that gave it a high profile." Also because it is scary as hell. A silent killer that could be lurking that you pick up during a leisure activity we all love and try to do as much of as possible. I think it's the silent thing that scares people the most. At least with other deadly diseases it is kind of obvious that someone has it. Yes there are plenty of things you could do to protect yourself, but it does have that scary what if.
I also think part of the fear comes from the fact that you could argue it targets what some people would call immoral life style choices, i.e. promiscuity, homosexuality, drug usage etc. Conservatives fear it for the immorality it represents to them and liberals fear it because it is a risk for the life style choices they want to allow people to make.* I do wonder if it had a different discovery history and had never been known as a "Gay Plague" then would it have the same status now? As I understand it if it had not appeared as the Gay movement was just gaining mainstream acceptance would things have been different? What if it had been discovered in different circumstances and those infected had been quarantined? What if it had been slightly less widespread, what if we already had basic anti-viral treatments at that time? What other high profile viral disease would you rather champion anti-viral research?
*Okay I'm using American polarised political views here to make a point which I utterly despise, but you get what I'm trying to say.
"Sand is that dangerous?" Nope but the arsenic and Phosphorus used in doping of silicon is. As are the solvents used to clean things during manufacture. As are the trace dopants used in the glass to give it strength. You get the idea Silicon manufacturing is a hard and nasty chemical prone business; please don't think it's all beaches and trees.
Slashdot Mirror
The T&C stipulate you must not provide false information.
"So what?" you say.
It means they can then in the future remove your online identity at a whim.
Fine you can then create another, but what about all the info you have on/in the account? If there was nothing of value in the account there would be no point in having that account.
"Does using a nuclear engine to power the vehicle through the atmosphere increase the risk of a nuclear spill" ;-)
Yes.
Burnt Nuclear fuel is more dangerous than unburt, being assembled in a form of an engine means that in the case of a malfunction (which is almost certain to be in the engine) the nuclear material is going to be in a higher energy part of the craft than whatever is in the payload section..
Also assuming you were carrying this stuff up to orbit for assembly into the reactor there then you could pack it in a capsule that would survive de-orbit and therefore be recovered in the event of an accident (much as you would humans) it would be much harder to do the same for the engines.
Now while getting to orbit on a nuclear rocket would be awesome and potentially safer than chemical rockets (you could build in more safety margin with the excess power you would have) that's not the question you asked....
On a less serious note let's face it they use depleted uranium for shielding on tanks and re-entry shrouds on nuclear weapons, so it should survive re-entry
As long as the code review itself doesn't get bogged down with issues of How The World Should Indent and things like that - that's always a risk with developers looking at each others code.
That's why my favourite style to do code reviews was "Justify your warnings" from the various tools that read the code.
Most people agree that some warnings are just the compiler being over-zealous, and those parts of the review went fast; but those around bits of code that others didn't understand took a lot longer (this also encouraged you to get rid of the easy warnings and sloppy code before review just out of laziness), those warnings that scared people but you were sure was just because you had no other choice again gave valuable feedback.
It worked well for us anyway...
It is their job. If they don't do it, fire them. If you can't fire them for some reason, give them crap reviews and crap tasks.
I envy you that you work somewhere where there is an excess of perfect people that you can do this. In my experience there are some really clever people out there who have some personality flaws, and there are lots of people who stick to the rules and are quite average. Personally I'd rather try and work with flawed brilliant people and accept undocumented but efficient, quick, timely code than get a monkey who follows the rules and produces acceptable code. You may not choose that trade off and that's fine we will probably never agree there... ;-)
Now if you're telling me you can get someone who does everything brilliantly then great, but lots of great engineers are divas so whilst you can try and lead them, to give someone a poor review (when they saved your behind at the last customer demo) because that code they cooked up lacks documentation then I'm once again wondering how on earth I ended up with such an awesome job.
FWIW I used to have a manager whose approach to people who he thought produced unmanageable/undocumented code was to stick them into a code maintenance/system integration role. It was interesting how quickly you then started complaining about other people's code and documenting both theirs and yours
Oh, and no function should be longer than about 20 lines.
Where's my funny mod points when I need them?
All non-trivial code is crap and could be improved in some way
I would say all code is crap and could be improved, the problem is where and for what purpose? Code with too much abstraction is crap, so is code with 1 line per function, so is code with too many things happening on one line, so is code that is too tied to the particular hardware, so is code that ignores what the toolkit libraries can do, so is code that is written in the wrong language for the problem you are solving, so is code that is a complete re-write, so is code that wasn't profiled properly. etc
Any blanket rule you can make has exceptions and while I am all for coding standards and code reviews rules are there to make you think before you break them, nothing more.
True but like it or not people don't do it. You can bitch that people should do it, but when they don't what then? You could fire them, but IME some of the people who write the best code by other metrics (reliability, bugs fixed, or just taking on a task no-one wants) are poor at documenting it themselves.
Do you fire people for not documenting code, discipline them? Is it worth fighting the battle if you just need to get the product out/fix the current problems/develop the next thing.
IME code quality always comes back to bite you, if you write bad code/undocumented then soon enough it will come back and bite you yourself when you come back to maintain/modify. If I don't provide documentation to others then I end up with more support requests so it's worth me doing that balancing act, it's not management's judgement call to make.
As for dealing with other people undocumented code, that's just a skill you need to have as an engineer, like being fluent in multiple languages many of which won't be your choice. You think I want this tool chain to be written in TCL? Should I then port it to my favourite language (e.g. perl) what if the next poerson to support it prefers python? It's just part of engineering that everyone else's code will look rubbish and undocumented to you. Even when it is documented you'll then think the documentation is overkill.
Yes it's rubbish, yes TFA makes some suggestions, some might work, some might not, but you can't just say it's your job to document and walk off, in real life we have to actually deal with problems and the reality that it doesn't happen as it should.
No matter how deep you dive into the UK's rail industry it just gets worse.
Another example (from my brother in law who works for the railways) is the local operators lease the rolling stock, they are not allowed to own it. For round numbers it's about £1 million a year for a carriage that costs about £10 million new.
However the carriages were already paid for. Some of them are 25+ years old, and the companies that own the stock have little incentive to invest in new stock, because, well why would you? Occasionally the electoare complain enough and then you get demand handouts to pay for the new stock.
I just wish I'd bought shares in them when they were being set up...
What firm in the US can afford to stay in business while doing custom manufacturing jobs for around $1,000?
That depends, if all it required you to do was have the latest machine and punch numbers into a database and let the scripts sort out the rest then I see no reason why by being clever you couldn't do the job cheaper.
All I'm saying is even if labor unions disappeared overnight, modern government regulations would prevent a return to the poor working conditions of the past.
Don't think that with the correct lobbying you could get some of those laws to be relaxed?
But does that matter? Take a situation i know a little about, farming in the UK.
Once of a day over 90% of the population farmed, now less than 2% farm; yet more food is produced now. a huge amount of food is imported but is that a bad thing if we can (through better education system and critical mass in certain fields of design and finance) per person do a better job in some fields than other cultres might manage. Are you better off growing your food in better climates and using the land in worse climates for the things that work better when you invest in people to a higher standard. (I ask theoretically here because i know the education system in the UK is comparatively poor)
As another example more steel is currently made in Sheffield than at the height of the industrial revolution yet it is no longer the steel centre of the world. Why? In both cases machines do the work of man better and cheaper. You can fight that or you can embrace it. In the case of farming there is nothing you would want to do in the UK to get 90% of the population farming, so what do/did you do with the people that technology improvements freed up - simple you move them to manufacturing. What about when you have too many people in manufacturing? Move them into services. What happens then when most of your population isn't suited for that type of work - I'll have to get back to you on that one.
I find it interesting that it used to be thought (early industrial revolution) that true wealth came from the land, farming and mining were where wealth came from, new things like manufacturing it was said didn't add value to an economy. Now we see many saying it is only through building things of value that you add wealth to an economy, things like banking and other services are just moving wealth around. That may be true but...
I honestly don't know where the economy goes from here, with rising energy costs does local manufacturing become more attractive or do we get a population shift and mass movement of population centres. I just don't know but it'll be interesting to watch.
The reality of the economy is that when the unions win the standard of living rises and everyone across the board does better in the long run.
Even if the unions expect a 5% pay raise each year in a world with 4% inflation?
Even if they stop you bringing in the latest technology because it would make someone redundant?
Even if they are lead by sexist politicians?
I'm not saying unions don't have a place, but they're made up of real people and that will always cause problems. They also have a history that cannot be ignored.
If my boss reduced my wages to $0.50 per hour tomorrow I'd quit.
This only works if everyone in the industry drops the wage at once. So Let's assume the evil 1% meet up in their club and decide that the new hourly rate for widget makers is now $0.50. So you decide to no be a widget maker anymore but become a doohickey maker, how are you going to re-train? How are you going to survive until you get trained in that field, I know: whilst you are retraining you find someone else who is hiring in a job that requires no training or provides training in that job.
And he would NOT be able to find anyone capable of replacing me at those rates.
Depends, if he provides training for that job then he just waits for someone who has quit/been fired from his previous job to become desperate enough.
He will not do without because "there's plenty of people who need a job in these tough times"
He has no need to do it himself because he makes it a requirement of the job to train others less skilled than you.
He will raise or lower the wage to the breaking point where people go "stuff this". In a job with minimal training required or where there has been a country wide downsize this can be very low.
I should point out that my position is not a commodity. I cannot be easily replaced because I have specialize skills
Well that's not what this discussion is about, manufacturing often can be done with relatively little training. However don't be mistaken in any talent pool there is exactly the same tradeoff: for example if there was a new government initiative to train up (at the cost of the state) millions to your skill level or at least to a state perceived to be equivalent or at the most junior level then you can bet your wage would feel the impact.
That said I am not arguing against this type of government training, because often a critical mass is needed to get and keep a particular job feasible, but you get my point...
then let workers organize and compete with the companies that put them to work for fair working conditions and wages, and the free market will take care of the rest.
So if you have a couple of unions, dozens of companies (the UK in the 70s that you mentioned is a great example of this) how do you stop the unions reversing the situation and meaning that the business can't sustain itself against the union?
I'm not sure what side you are arguing.. So just in case I would argue no one side can get too powerful
If the businesses have all the power (let's say coal mining as an example) then you decrease/don't increase the wage you pay. As long as that is the going rate for the industry you are free to screw over people one at a time and fire your high paid ones for any infraction (and you can make up infractions) thus bringing the average pay ever down. You can ignore health issues, you can employ anyone who is desperate for a job particularly if you can start them young without much education/training. As long as there are enough people available who can do the job then you can drive the pay towards zero and make sure they never leave the industry.
If the unions have all the power (lets say the single coal mining union covers the whole country) then you can strike over anything at all. People working who aren't union, pay, company unions subsidies insufficient etc. This can drive the industry into unprofitably and kill it off (look at coal mining in the uk for a great example of this).
The problem is how do you balance the industry having too much power with unions having too much power? The free market doesn't help you here, only regulation, i.e. politics, i.e. favouritism and influence, i.e. corruption and emotion.
Put it another way, seriously imagine you were a middle age king, what do you do? Even if you're the nicest guy in the world, what do you do?
Any move to disband your armies would get you invaded so you have to maintain a military presence.
If you had inherited an overly strong army you could gain personal wealth by invading a weak neighbour.
But let's assume you're committed to pacifism and maintain only a token army. Let's also assume you're a humanitarian and try and encourage good farming practice and even implement education and public health reforms (you don't have access to or knowledge of modern technology, but you do the best you can).
Without contraception your population will explode and without modern farming technology you're back to a population on the brink of starvation. What do you do then? If your country looks rich with a weak army then get ready to be invaded, if anticipating this you build up your army then what? You examine the situation and realise that the lowest loss of life solution is to invade those brutal neighbours who have been testing your defences for the last few years in a pre-emptive strike?
No matter what I change in this scenario you always come back to something like the middle ages status-quo, so what else do you think they should have done? You imply it was personal boredom, but I would argue that it is more than that, even if every ruler were peaceful and logical, what do you do with the inevitable population explosion?
Have you never come across the game of life:
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/
or the mandelbrot set: from very simple rules you can get some remarkably complex behaviour.
I stand corrected; I had never come across this before, my apologies.
To what extent does this copyright in the method of storing them survive automated conversion to another method?
One would hope it is not the automated part that is of interest (after all it could be a very clever shell script) but of what is added by the conversion and if there is significant value added by said conversion. (I believe that was the crux of the JKR Lexicon case that I was alluding to in my post) The important thing is the author/shell script has to add something of substantial original value to make it a new work protected by copyright (or safe from copyright infringement).)
Anyway back to the original story, the complaint WURFL have against the fork is that it maintains the same database which they are saying is protected as an original work, if it is a database of facts then it sounds like they have no protection, if it is a database of fiction would they not still have a case?
What could a creationist do with this?
Would not an intelligent designer re-use the most efficient design in all the lifeforms? Unless someone can demonstrate that the 3 ringed design is better for fungi but only for fungi; but even in that case that just shows limited random mutation combined with selection of the fittest works. I just don't get how this can be used for ignorance.
Although arguing against creationism is kind of like arguments against flat Earth...
you can't copyright a database (at least in the US).
Citation needed.
While I grant you the ability to copyright facts is limited - e.g. the geographical topology of the earth cannot be copyrighted, an individual map (and the intentional flaws introduced by the cartographer) can be - the ability to copyright your interpretation of the facts, your method of storing them, your dataset, is fairly unlimited. Likewise just because you create something yourself does not mean it is wholly yours, if it refers to things that are the property of someone else or covered by their IP rights then you are going to at best struggle.
Daft example I could create a database of harry potter characters, their links to each other, their histories and activities and they would all be facts but my database would be wholly in infringement of copyright.
Speaking as an ignorant hardware engineer, where's the problem with the original (as a method for driving LEDs for a test program)?
Pick your battles and all that...
Welcome to the real world, the property you own isn't yours.
You're not buying a product any more you're buying a service. You can't lend others your books (look in the copyright notice at the front if you doubt me) You can't
It is not your music, it is licensed from those who own it.
Oh you're a band and think you own your music? Nope, it belongs to your record label.
Oh you're not signed to a record label? Since 7 notes is enough to copyright a riff then that gives you just over 5000 original works of music so there is no original works anymore. You cannot produce your own works of art anymore.
Okay maybe you have an idea for a cool new machine, nope that's almost certainly covered by someone else's vague patent. Your ideas aren't yours.
Okay what about your house, I bet it's mortgaged so the bank owns it.
Oh, you own your house outright, fine but who enforces it? When someone tries to take it from you it's a government giving you a licence to live there as long as you pay property taxes.
Actually you know what I started writing this as a parody post and now I'm not sure anymore, exactly what do we own anyway? What has anyone ever owned? Did those 200 years ago have more property rights than we currently have?
Moving forwards should we have more property rights? Should I be allowed to sell you a device that is designed to break, or at least rely on updates to keep doing the same job? Machinery has always worn out, selling with a contract that requires a service contract has always been legal (AFAIK) so why are we annoyed about this now?
Really?
A clock is ticking, there is a switch in front of you that is set to kill 100 people. You could flick the switch to kill a different 10 people.
Do you choose to kill 10 people in order to save 100 people? Make your decision quickly because the clock is ticking and you don't have long. I think most people would choose to flick the switch and to actively kill 10 people rather than allow 100 people to be killed. Would you condemn someone who made that decision?
Now scenario B, you have to possibly kill a thousand people in order to probably save a billion. What do you do then?
The ends can justify the means; this is a world of grey that we live in.
Can you help clear up my ignorance then:
My understanding was that all vaccines had a none zero chance of infecting you with the disease they are made from. Okay Cow Pox won't give you small pox, but heat treating rabies (for example) would kill the virus, but it theoretically only takes one to escape for you to be infected. Run the probability numbers and it may be worth the risk that I am vaccinated against mumps but there is still a finite chance that I am infected by the disease in the process of vaccination.
A quick bit of research seems to say that it depends on the vaccine in question, but MMR seems to be a good example of one in the class of a vaccine that can genuinely harm you because it is an attenuated vaccine. This is not a reason to not have the immunisation but i believe it is reaching to say that it is technically impossible to contract HIV through this experiment.
So I ask why is it completely impossible to contract HIV from this experiment? What have I misunderstood?
Depends, IME 90% feels about right.
But then that is experience of Symbian, VxWorks and Android so on.
Several layers of user abstraction per program on top of architecture abstraction on top of tool kit on top of adaption layer on top of libraries on top of upper layer of OS on top of OS on top of HAL on top of drivers on top of language overhead. Many of those having several layers per stage I missed out. Yes at times the user level drills down to the metal, but IME (as a hardware engineer) it seems to be the exception.
Seriously, why else would you need a multi core multi GHz processor to run a quite simple UI? Especially when the hardware is doing most of the heavy lifting?
"As for AIDS, well, I think it was because of those overpaid actors that gave it a high profile."
Also because it is scary as hell. A silent killer that could be lurking that you pick up during a leisure activity we all love and try to do as much of as possible.
I think it's the silent thing that scares people the most. At least with other deadly diseases it is kind of obvious that someone has it.
Yes there are plenty of things you could do to protect yourself, but it does have that scary what if.
I also think part of the fear comes from the fact that you could argue it targets what some people would call immoral life style choices, i.e. promiscuity, homosexuality, drug usage etc. Conservatives fear it for the immorality it represents to them and liberals fear it because it is a risk for the life style choices they want to allow people to make.* I do wonder if it had a different discovery history and had never been known as a "Gay Plague" then would it have the same status now? As I understand it if it had not appeared as the Gay movement was just gaining mainstream acceptance would things have been different? What if it had been discovered in different circumstances and those infected had been quarantined? What if it had been slightly less widespread, what if we already had basic anti-viral treatments at that time?
What other high profile viral disease would you rather champion anti-viral research?
*Okay I'm using American polarised political views here to make a point which I utterly despise, but you get what I'm trying to say.
"Sand is that dangerous?"
Nope but the arsenic and Phosphorus used in doping of silicon is. As are the solvents used to clean things during manufacture. As are the trace dopants used in the glass to give it strength. You get the idea
Silicon manufacturing is a hard and nasty chemical prone business; please don't think it's all beaches and trees.