But, OTOH, if we abolish such laws, we should probably abolish any state financial safety nets for people who fall through the cracks. It's not fair that the voluntary and presumably informed choices of others to be charged directly to the taxpayers.
Was everything that happened in your life your decision?
It's not a disease, its a lack of an ability to control yourself.
In Hungary, gambling is considered a form of greed, just like how Attention Deficit Disorder is called "boring teacher", and the proposed solution is not to drug the kids.
Another classic example why victimless crimes should be abolished. We're told that people over 18 are mature enough to make their own decisions in life.
BTW, do the same agencies raid Las Vegas too, or is only internet gambling the work of the devil?
The true programmer understands the how and why of their computers, the libraries that you use prevents you from knowing this, and make you no better than a script kiddy.
True programmers don't break the abstractions the API provides without a damn good reason. They do, however, understand all the implications of using an API, including performance characteristics.
And optimizing for hardware is something the compiler should do. I don't even want to know what architecture or OS my code will run on.
Mere words cannot describe how wrong you are. How are you going to write good code without having a mental image of your data structures? How do you understand someone elses code in the first place?
You seem to think imagination is something artsy people use to decide the color of the carpet. I say it's a fundamental component of learning, understanding and creating everything you associate with science.
The crux is that you really can't teach programming. A good programmer has an intuitive feel for how to solve a problem. You can't get that from lectures and books.
That's because books and lectures miss the most important aspect of it all: imagination. Programming is basically daydreaming with rules.
It's hard to find a geekier programming topic than zombies. Maybe Star Trek. Or the Babylon 5 space fights (you know, the one where you obey Newton's laws).
To better answer your question - online games are "gamed" for in-game currency, which is converted into real life currency, by one means or another.
All I can say to that is: demand and supply. In a game where not every raptor drops a raptor head for a quest, what did you expect?
WoW is specifically designed to rob people of their time with all the farming required. The very existence of the term "farming" is telling, too. Now, if some people decide their time is worth more than $5, who are we to judge if they outsource the boring parts?
I think this should be a feature of the game, not a form of cheating. That way they could put a cap on it, while remaining the only ones who make money on their game, and also keeping some of the notion of every player being equal.
This is wonderful news. Now I can save $2.40 on my various sexual harassment lawsuits.
It's not the amount that matters here, it's the principle. Public records should be public, and by that I mean freely available and easily searchable. And "easily searchable" is actually an intrenational standard in the age of Google.
Really? If you could steal with absolutely no chance of ever being caught, and no-one being hurt by your actions, you wouldn't do it because of your moral stance?
I wouldn't. That's why it's called a "moral stance". Unbelievable, isn't it?
However, moral stance is not absolute. If the employee in question has a grudge against the company for example, the same principles preventing such actions might suddenly encourage it.
In late-socialist Hungary, everyone felt (and was) underpaid by state-owned factories and the like, and money alone couldn't buy you everything you could need in everyday life, so while people had the same morality as 10 years before, a whole shadow economy emerged from parts "taken home", expensive equipment used after work etc. We still wouldn't steal, but state property didn't count as theft from a moral standpoint.
So, Brittannica should get a prize for trying to prevent its competitors from doing business? It's like letting someone who cheated into the Hall of Fame.
Retard. USPTO fucked up by granting the patent, not Britannica by using it.
Completing your analogy, the heuristics of the DM were broken. That's not cheating by any standard I can think of.
I know, but it's an arbitrary number to illustrate my idea, and as such, up for debate before implementation:)
Besides, you don't want to destroy a truly innovative company because they slipped over a detail. You want to destroy the trolls who try to patent the wheel.
You can fix a broken situation by starting from scratch. You can't, however, fix a broken situation with lots and lots of money invested on all sides, by starting from scratch.
The publishers of Brittanica shouldn't be sued because they didn't grant the patent.
Exactly. For all intents and purposes, they did have that patent, so there's nothing wrong if they enforced it.
What we need is to prevent companies from getting questionable patents in the first place. Make a law saying a company holding a later invalidated patent will be fined 1% of their profits that year, and I promise you, this shit will stop. If you're worried about legitimate patents getting screwed, make this fine non-cumulative.
Alternatively, get the USPTO to hire some clerks that actually know what they're deciding about, and tell them to throw out anything with excessive legalese in it.
Slashdot Mirror
Like Morse code.
But, OTOH, if we abolish such laws, we should probably abolish any state financial safety nets for people who fall through the cracks. It's not fair that the voluntary and presumably informed choices of others to be charged directly to the taxpayers.
Was everything that happened in your life your decision?
It's not a disease, its a lack of an ability to control yourself.
In Hungary, gambling is considered a form of greed, just like how Attention Deficit Disorder is called "boring teacher", and the proposed solution is not to drug the kids.
Another classic example why victimless crimes should be abolished. We're told that people over 18 are mature enough to make their own decisions in life.
BTW, do the same agencies raid Las Vegas too, or is only internet gambling the work of the devil?
To add to that, I've seen books about sex for sale, and sex is occasionally free.
But none of those authors seem to know anything about the topic.
The true programmer understands the how and why of their computers, the libraries that you use prevents you from knowing this, and make you no better than a script kiddy.
True programmers don't break the abstractions the API provides without a damn good reason. They do, however, understand all the implications of using an API, including performance characteristics.
And optimizing for hardware is something the compiler should do. I don't even want to know what architecture or OS my code will run on.
Mere words cannot describe how wrong you are. How are you going to write good code without having a mental image of your data structures? How do you understand someone elses code in the first place?
You seem to think imagination is something artsy people use to decide the color of the carpet. I say it's a fundamental component of learning, understanding and creating everything you associate with science.
The crux is that you really can't teach programming. A good programmer has an intuitive feel for how to solve a problem. You can't get that from lectures and books.
That's because books and lectures miss the most important aspect of it all: imagination. Programming is basically daydreaming with rules.
After all, why sell a customer a working product when you can repeatedly sell them replacements for a defective product?
Ah, the joys of capitalism. My 35 year old Soviet radio in the kitchen still works perfectly.
It's hard to find a geekier programming topic than zombies. Maybe Star Trek. Or the Babylon 5 space fights (you know, the one where you obey Newton's laws).
No, then they can basically make the game more difficult/boring to progress in without giving them more money....
You can make WoW more boring? How? Remove all violence?
To better answer your question - online games are "gamed" for in-game currency, which is converted into real life currency, by one means or another.
All I can say to that is: demand and supply. In a game where not every raptor drops a raptor head for a quest, what did you expect?
WoW is specifically designed to rob people of their time with all the farming required. The very existence of the term "farming" is telling, too. Now, if some people decide their time is worth more than $5, who are we to judge if they outsource the boring parts?
I think this should be a feature of the game, not a form of cheating. That way they could put a cap on it, while remaining the only ones who make money on their game, and also keeping some of the notion of every player being equal.
This is wonderful news. Now I can save $2.40 on my various sexual harassment lawsuits.
It's not the amount that matters here, it's the principle. Public records should be public, and by that I mean freely available and easily searchable. And "easily searchable" is actually an intrenational standard in the age of Google.
Really? If you could steal with absolutely no chance of ever being caught, and no-one being hurt by your actions, you wouldn't do it because of your moral stance?
I wouldn't. That's why it's called a "moral stance". Unbelievable, isn't it?
However, moral stance is not absolute. If the employee in question has a grudge against the company for example, the same principles preventing such actions might suddenly encourage it.
In late-socialist Hungary, everyone felt (and was) underpaid by state-owned factories and the like, and money alone couldn't buy you everything you could need in everyday life, so while people had the same morality as 10 years before, a whole shadow economy emerged from parts "taken home", expensive equipment used after work etc. We still wouldn't steal, but state property didn't count as theft from a moral standpoint.
Summary for the tl;dr crowd: x xx x xx xx x xx x x x x xxx
If you don't work towards change, you may as well accelerate the speed with which you go into a nasty future
They already do.
There is nothing wrong with you not using my code if you do not like my conditions, either...
Use GPL for Free Software. If you want to give us Code With Conditions, I recommend the MS-PL.
While Google can't afford more "companions" like that, a lot of us would trash Mr. Ballmer's office for free.
So, Brittannica should get a prize for trying to prevent its competitors from doing business? It's like letting someone who cheated into the Hall of Fame.
Retard. USPTO fucked up by granting the patent, not Britannica by using it.
Completing your analogy, the heuristics of the DM were broken. That's not cheating by any standard I can think of.
I know, but it's an arbitrary number to illustrate my idea, and as such, up for debate before implementation :)
Besides, you don't want to destroy a truly innovative company because they slipped over a detail. You want to destroy the trolls who try to patent the wheel.
You can fix a broken situation by starting from scratch. You can't, however, fix a broken situation with lots and lots of money invested on all sides, by starting from scratch.
The publishers of Brittanica shouldn't be sued because they didn't grant the patent.
Exactly. For all intents and purposes, they did have that patent, so there's nothing wrong if they enforced it.
What we need is to prevent companies from getting questionable patents in the first place. Make a law saying a company holding a later invalidated patent will be fined 1% of their profits that year, and I promise you, this shit will stop. If you're worried about legitimate patents getting screwed, make this fine non-cumulative.
Alternatively, get the USPTO to hire some clerks that actually know what they're deciding about, and tell them to throw out anything with excessive legalese in it.
how they use linux without any drivers that work? I can't print a damn thing!
Notice the semantical difference between "I can not" and "it does not"?
Manbearfox.
No, the story has a metastory about a story that was missing.