Well, that's what content companies like the *AA's want you to think. I think that people did quite well generating hundreds of thousands of books before copyrighting and content ownership ever came along.
Your statement rests on the assumption that people will write only to be paid, whereas I think most people (not all; most) start writing because they have something to say, and merely HOPE they get paid. I think that's as it should be.
"If you really think that your car is more complex then any piece of retail software out there..."
I just wanted to add to the car analogy:
The car analogy is very much like saying "The software will ONLY EVER RUN UNDER THESE CONDITIONS ON THIS HARDWARE." You don't switch out the carburator on a car for any random carburator and expect it to run fine. Vehicle motors have a fixed set of operating parts and conditions and if even ONE of those is incorrect, the engine will break. Simple as that. That's why sugar in the gas tank kills an engine.
In software, "sugar in the gas tank" is expected to fail gracefully without crashing a machine. With cars, there is no planning for "unexpected operation" - if you fuck up your car, you break it. In software, the same is usually true, except that people have this unrealistic expectation that software should never break. And lo, because of the flexibility that programming affords us, we usually CAN fail gracefully where a physical machine (or bridge, for example) WILL break.
Under the assumption you're asking this question honestly, here's why the idea is a bad one:
[The following will be recorded during three job interviews in ALTERNATE FUTURE 45A, APPLICATION OF HUMAN GENOME MAPPING to EMPLOYEE DATABASE MANAGEMENT]
1. Let's see, your DNA information says you have gene XZ345, meaning you're going to be prone to heart attacks.. well, that's ok, but will you accept a 12% pay cut to cover the increase in our health insurance premiums?
2. Hum. Well, this says you're 1/16th Arabic. Do you know any terrorists? I think we should schedule a lie detector test before we continue your job interview.
3. Well, I would love to hire you as a police officer, but unfortunately your genes show a 23% probability for violent tendencies, and we just can't have that on our force. Sorry.
[END RECORDING]
Three simple examples of how this information can be abused, and I'm just popping simple ideas off. I'm sure I can't even begin to imagine the true horror of how this information can be used to destroy lives.
Alternatively, you can watch the movie Gattaca, which shows very elegantly the dehumanization of a future where DNA plays any role in the hiring process.
And laws outlawing such abuses be damned; companies ALREADY do all kinds of semi-legal things during their hiring procedures, they're certainly not going to leave this information out of the hiring process if it's available, even if it is illegal.
"What would actually happen though is the government through the media will have branded these folks terrorists, leftist nuts intent on destroying your right to security."
While I do think our government would make a good attempt at doing that, if the revolution spread widely enough, it wouldn't work too well after awhile. If even a few stations go rouge, or even one big one gets hacked and a revolutionary's story gets aired, people will start to question.
Then, when they see their friends and neighbors being in the group being branded 'terrorist', they're going to start to wonder who the 'terrorists' really are, and eventually, they'll be forced to concede that our government is doing something wrong.
I realize it's not as clean or clear cut as that, but I tend to give people a little more credit at being able to identify an 'enemy' than merely swallowing what the government is hand feeding them. So long as the enemy is far off and without identity, they'll accept whatever the govm't says. Once the enemy becomes someone they know by name, it becomes alot harder to just accept it lock, stock and barrel.
"Unless we wish the US to be flooded with cheap illegal immigrant labor to the point where there is no benefit to being on our side of the border, methods of excluding illegal immigrants must be found and used."
You should be ashamed of yourself. Go ahead, be ashamed. I better see your head hanging. There you go.
Statements of such "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" (FUD) are idiotic and counter productive. By your reasoning, the country is ALREADY overrun with cheap illegal immigrant labor and the country is a ghetto hell hole.
Oh, wait, it isn't. That's because you assume that the lack of draconian, totalitarian measures constitutes free reign for illegal immigration. It's the under-educated, uninformed like yourself that have led this country to have so damn many right-wing fascists and I for one am so sick and tired of even being aware that people like you exist.
Don't bother replying, as this is the only exchange I intend to have with you.
If I wanted to stick it to the American people, I would certainly want my bases covered - a basic 'Go Ahead' from those in power that they would make sure the Justice Department would look the other direction.
So, there you go. Not that I think such a meeting and the rise in prices is NECESSARILY linked, I'm just saying that your "Why" question isn't a good counterargument.
Definitely there ARE times when a warrant isn't issue; for example (one cited on the link provided) when a police officer is undertaking an arrest. Hardly the time to be getting a warrant.
"Uh, hi Judge Joe, I need a warrant on this guy. Oh crap, he's getting away!!"
It does reiterate though that the standards for this warrantless search are the SAME as if the officer were requesting a warrant - if so found that it was unreasonable or without sufficient cause, the suspect must be released.
The link goes into alot more detail, but suffice it to say if I had mod points I'd mod you 'informative.' It's a useful link to read.
"Publishing information about how we learn about attacks does not make us safer - because "bad guys" will now know more about how to circumvent the NSA's monitoring. Personally, I believe that this does compromise our ability to wage the war we are in right now."
I do sympathize with this position, because I understand where it comes from - the mindset that says we want to be safe, and we want to give our government the tools it needs to do so.
It's just that I cannot in good conscience agree with that position. I simply will never acknowledge that it is acceptable to trample personal freedoms in order to establish a surveillance program that may or may not be helpful (and to clarify, even if it were guaranteed to root out terrorism, I still would not accept it. The values of freedom and personal liberty and limited government power are more important to me than knowing I am safe from a terrorist. I realize I may be in the minority when I say that, but that's my position on it).
This program MAY BE helpful; but I cannot find it acceptable. There has to be another way, and the government should be forced to FIND another way, one that does not so egregiously trample our civil liberties - or even introduce the possibility of doing so. That makes fighting terrorism alot harder to do, and a much slower process, but to let ourselves be ruled by fear of terrorism is not a superior alternative.
"I believe the pendulum must move back towards freedom - but giving journalists a blank check to expose classified material is just a bad idea."
I agree, and I would never consider giving them a blank check to expose classified material. But I do think there ARE times when it is necessary, even when it risks national security, because freedom is a higher value than safety. It becomes, then, the responsibility of the leaker to make sure that they're damn sure they're doing the right thing. It takes courage to reveal this kind of information, and should only be done for the right reasons.
BAM! Nice post. Wish I had mod points.. I have never had mod points.:(
I just want to add one more to the list..
The NSA is expressly forbidden from conducting surveillance on American citizens. It doesn't matter how they get the data; they're forbidden from even having it, without a warrant from the FISA court, even if they get it through completely legal means. There's no way they can get around that one.
You simply stated exactly what Mr. Hayden said in an interview with reporters a couple of weeks back - that the government only needs warrants for unreasonable searches. Sad that someone who is supposed to head up one of the most powerful and important intelligence organizations in the world doesn't even know the 4th amendment.
When corrected on the issue, that it also requires PROBABLE CAUSE, Hayden actually argued back that it the only standard for obtaining warrants was for unreasonable searches.
That's awesome. I've already seen several blogging sites mirroring the documents, and I've downloaded all of them and may or may not put them up on my site, if I get the time.
I will definitely MAKE the time though, if Wired gets a take-down order.
"We ALL need to stop using the term "otherwise the terrorists win.""
Actually I agree; no offense taken. It seemed trite when I wrote it, but I'm a little busy and couldn't quickly think of a better phrase. I like your alternative though and will keep it in mind.
Besides, I do think there has to be SOME small element of truth in it, given how much Hancock had at stake by participating in the revolution (being one of the richest men in the colonies at the time). And he had to have signed it knowing King George would see it.
"Not some guy sitting in a room reporting to no one."
But that's exactly what we're getting. Who does the NSA report to? How much do you think some random guy sitting in a backroom is going to be reporting to oversight committees?
How can oversight committees function when ONLY the chairmen of these committees is informed of the program, so that they're not even discussed in open committee by the very people designated to be the "safety valves" you speak of? How can they do their job if they don't even know about the program?
"We have to at some point trust in the system, until the system shows a failure mode that it itself cannot overcome."
If you don't think this program certainly crosses that line, what in the world could possibly make you think so? What we're looking at is EXACTLY that case: when the system shows a failure mode that the system was not designed to fix. When you have a secret program only being reported to certain select members of Congress who are banned from talking about it, how in the world is there ANY guarantee of oversight, much less protection of civil liberties?
"And yet our founding father executed several people as spies - for publishing military information to our enemies. The situation is not as black and white as you make it out to be."
An entirely different situation. That was about people compromising our ability to fight a war - plans that had nothing to do with suppressing or destroying the freedoms of the people.
THIS instance is an example of the government FAR overstepping its bounds and trying to keep it covered up on the grounds that "well, we'd all be safer if you didn't know how we're violating your rights."
While they're trying to use a program to help us fight a war (I don't think it's a war, but for the sake of argument..), it is an unacceptable method. The ends don't justify the means. They have to work within the framework of the law and our rights as protected in the Constitution, EVEN IF it means a terrorist attack might succeed again. Otherwise, the terrorists win, without ever firing a shot, by destroying our way of life.
"When did commiting crimes become ok in the name of patriotism?"
You clearly learned nothing from the American Revolution. Had that revolution failed, every person who signed the Declaration of Independence would have been drawn and quartered as a traitor.
Ever wonder why your signature is referred to as your "John Hancock"? Take a look at a picture of the Declaration of Independence some day. You'll see that by far the largest, most prominent signature is that of John Hancock. This was not him being arrogant - this was him making sure they knew his name. This was an act of courage on his part.
You're replying under the assumption of "The ends never justify the means." Which in almost all cases is true.
The one case where it is NOT true is the attempt to fight for freedom and save our liberties from disappearing. That is what our Founding Fathers did. They were criminals until they successfully won the Revolution.
And so it is now, for people who stand up to our government and say "You cannot trample our rights and liberties. We will stop you." The government considers them criminals (and those who have swallowed the "party" line).
People who care about freedom consider them heroes.
1. That's not true, because it was a solution to a problem they were already using in live systems. They knew the right answer. Braces and semicolons aside, they knew what actual algorithm itself should do. Few programmers get the entirety of a program right on the first try without a single bug.
2. Whether it could compile and run is irrelevant to the interview; what matters to the interviewer is the approach and whether an applicant can even begin to approach the problem in the first place. If I grew up thoroughly dependent on an IDE to suggest code to me, I really would not be able to even start answering a question like that one.
There are the obvious exceptions to that claim, but learning computer science is a very involved process. It doesn't happen automatically, and the people who learn to program using an IDE and could STILL answer this question, are the good programmers; the ones who wouldn't need an IDE to write a good program.
The unfortunate part of my answering you is that since you decided to post as AC, you'll never see my answer. I always wonder about posts like that. Kinda like enforcing getting the last word, even if you know you might be wrong.
" Any learning programmer who makes mistakes that IDEs will catch will also make other mistakes that IDEs won't catch."
The problem is, compiling a program and being forced to fix the error on your own will help you remember not to make that mistake next time.
When the IDE auto-fills something for you, you never really get that lesson. You might go "oh yeah" every time, but it's far less likely that the lesson will really stick.
At least, that's my experience.
Also, being able to put something together using an IDE that is doing drag-drop and autocomplete for you will never really teach you the basics of things like FIFO queues or binary search algorithms.
While these are often already implemented in higher level languages, it's good to know the basics; for me, even using C# where I don't have to worry about things like that, it still prevents me from doing things like searching a list twice when I really only need to do it once, because I might write the code to do that and then go "Oh duh, that's not necessary," whereas the compiler would happily compile that for me.
And there is alot of work where intimate knowledge of those algorithms is STILL necessary. In the end, programming isn't about being able to use a particular language or an IDE, but about understanding what the software is doing, what your algorithms are doing, and how everything fits together.
I have simply found that using an IDE to learn to PROGRAM gets in the way of learning those concepts. IDE's are great for learning LANGUAGES; they are horrible for learning computer science, because they can't teach you how to write algorithms or understand what the compiler is doing.
When I was interviewing for my current position, they asked me two questions:
1. What is the integral of x^2? You'd be surprised how many MATH MAJORS they interview that get this question wrong (my degree is in Mechanical Engineering, but I learned programming along the way and it is now most of what I do, with some Engineering sprinkled in there). (btw, the answer is ((x^3)/3) + C)
2. You have a real time system collecting data into a temporary buffer and processing this data. It takes.25 seconds to collect the sample, and.8 seconds to process it. Write a program to make sure you don't drop any data.
They asked me to solve this problem on the whiteboard using C, right there in front of them. It had been awhile since I programmed without an IDE, but because I learned to program without ever using an IDE, it wasn't a problem.
On the other hand, there's another guy at my office who started working there doing something else and somehow got dragged onto a programming project.
After a year, he still can't grasp what the devil a pointer is. I'm not saying someone needs to understand pointers to be a good programmer (although it helps you understand what higher level languages are doing under the surface), but the project we were working on required it. He's so used to using drag and drop stuff like Visual Studio and LabView that really comprehending the inner workings of a language for writing efficient code is just too hard.
I agree when you call this a handicap that just doesn't go away - it has alot to do with how the brain first learns to conceptualize programming, and that's a very, very hard thing to un-learn.
This was the first problem I had to solve when I took my Java programming course (without the strcpy part, of course).
It took me two weeks to make sense of the damn problem, because my brain didn't want to wrap itself around the idea of a linked list.
Once I got it though, and saw how beautifully elegant the solution was, I never looked back - it hooked me on programming forever.
These days, I'm glad I learned programming the hard way, because I understand so infinitely much more than people who learned just enough to 'get by,' like the drag-and-droppers in the GP's post, or who learned by using an IDE (I never used anything but emacs and notepad). These days I DO use an IDE, but I carry with me the good programming practices I have learned along the way, and only use the IDE to streamline stuff I already understand how to do.
Having done everything the hard way, I think I've earned that.
"People in developed nations do not need to supplement their diet with wild meat, and if they do they should be assisted through a more rational way."
Not that I want to start an argument on why it is wrong to eat animals, but I have yet to see a good reason why this is true (i.e., a reason that doesn't already assume that it is wrong to eat animals, which basically throws out every morality argument I have ever seen).
I'm really not trying to troll or flamebait. I wouldn't have posted this question if I weren't asking for a genuine answer, and I asked you because you didn't present the issue in an already-standoff-ish manner.
"As for self defense, guns cause far more danger than they avert."
I don't know about the voracity of this statement, but for my part, the purpose of owning a gun really has nothing to do with hunting and more to do with making sure my government knows that if they step over the line, there's going to be a price [for the record, I do not own a gun]. That was the purpose of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution in the first place; it was to ensure the existence of a populace that could keep government power in check. The Founding Fathers couldn't have cared less about people hunting for food.
"Which part of that could not be performed just as competently -- in almost exactly the same manner, in fact -- by a private community co-op, or a for- or non-profit organization? Just something to think about"
I totally agree it could be. I simply like the level of oversight you'd have over the process if the local government were somehow involved. The problem with corporations is that they can pretty much do whatever they want and not have to tell you because of "trade secrets."
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong body part. I prefer to think of it as the broomstick before the telephone pole.
Well, that's what content companies like the *AA's want you to think. I think that people did quite well generating hundreds of thousands of books before copyrighting and content ownership ever came along.
Your statement rests on the assumption that people will write only to be paid, whereas I think most people (not all; most) start writing because they have something to say, and merely HOPE they get paid. I think that's as it should be.
"If you really think that your car is more complex then any piece of retail software out there..."
I just wanted to add to the car analogy:
The car analogy is very much like saying "The software will ONLY EVER RUN UNDER THESE CONDITIONS ON THIS HARDWARE." You don't switch out the carburator on a car for any random carburator and expect it to run fine. Vehicle motors have a fixed set of operating parts and conditions and if even ONE of those is incorrect, the engine will break. Simple as that. That's why sugar in the gas tank kills an engine.
In software, "sugar in the gas tank" is expected to fail gracefully without crashing a machine. With cars, there is no planning for "unexpected operation" - if you fuck up your car, you break it. In software, the same is usually true, except that people have this unrealistic expectation that software should never break. And lo, because of the flexibility that programming affords us, we usually CAN fail gracefully where a physical machine (or bridge, for example) WILL break.
Under the assumption you're asking this question honestly, here's why the idea is a bad one:
[The following will be recorded during three job interviews in ALTERNATE FUTURE 45A, APPLICATION OF HUMAN GENOME MAPPING to EMPLOYEE DATABASE MANAGEMENT]
1. Let's see, your DNA information says you have gene XZ345, meaning you're going to be prone to heart attacks.. well, that's ok, but will you accept a 12% pay cut to cover the increase in our health insurance premiums?
2. Hum. Well, this says you're 1/16th Arabic. Do you know any terrorists? I think we should schedule a lie detector test before we continue your job interview.
3. Well, I would love to hire you as a police officer, but unfortunately your genes show a 23% probability for violent tendencies, and we just can't have that on our force. Sorry.
[END RECORDING]
Three simple examples of how this information can be abused, and I'm just popping simple ideas off. I'm sure I can't even begin to imagine the true horror of how this information can be used to destroy lives.
Alternatively, you can watch the movie Gattaca, which shows very elegantly the dehumanization of a future where DNA plays any role in the hiring process.
And laws outlawing such abuses be damned; companies ALREADY do all kinds of semi-legal things during their hiring procedures, they're certainly not going to leave this information out of the hiring process if it's available, even if it is illegal.
"What would actually happen though is the government through the media will have branded these folks terrorists, leftist nuts intent on destroying your right to security."
While I do think our government would make a good attempt at doing that, if the revolution spread widely enough, it wouldn't work too well after awhile. If even a few stations go rouge, or even one big one gets hacked and a revolutionary's story gets aired, people will start to question.
Then, when they see their friends and neighbors being in the group being branded 'terrorist', they're going to start to wonder who the 'terrorists' really are, and eventually, they'll be forced to concede that our government is doing something wrong.
I realize it's not as clean or clear cut as that, but I tend to give people a little more credit at being able to identify an 'enemy' than merely swallowing what the government is hand feeding them. So long as the enemy is far off and without identity, they'll accept whatever the govm't says. Once the enemy becomes someone they know by name, it becomes alot harder to just accept it lock, stock and barrel.
"Unless we wish the US to be flooded with cheap illegal immigrant labor to the point where there is no benefit to being on our side of the border, methods of excluding illegal immigrants must be found and used."
You should be ashamed of yourself. Go ahead, be ashamed. I better see your head hanging. There you go.
Statements of such "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" (FUD) are idiotic and counter productive. By your reasoning, the country is ALREADY overrun with cheap illegal immigrant labor and the country is a ghetto hell hole.
Oh, wait, it isn't. That's because you assume that the lack of draconian, totalitarian measures constitutes free reign for illegal immigration. It's the under-educated, uninformed like yourself that have led this country to have so damn many right-wing fascists and I for one am so sick and tired of even being aware that people like you exist.
Don't bother replying, as this is the only exchange I intend to have with you.
If I wanted to stick it to the American people, I would certainly want my bases covered - a basic 'Go Ahead' from those in power that they would make sure the Justice Department would look the other direction.
So, there you go. Not that I think such a meeting and the rise in prices is NECESSARILY linked, I'm just saying that your "Why" question isn't a good counterargument.
Definitely there ARE times when a warrant isn't issue; for example (one cited on the link provided) when a police officer is undertaking an arrest. Hardly the time to be getting a warrant.
"Uh, hi Judge Joe, I need a warrant on this guy. Oh crap, he's getting away!!"
It does reiterate though that the standards for this warrantless search are the SAME as if the officer were requesting a warrant - if so found that it was unreasonable or without sufficient cause, the suspect must be released.
The link goes into alot more detail, but suffice it to say if I had mod points I'd mod you 'informative.' It's a useful link to read.
"Publishing information about how we learn about attacks does not make us safer - because "bad guys" will now know more about how to circumvent the NSA's monitoring. Personally, I believe that this does compromise our ability to wage the war we are in right now."
I do sympathize with this position, because I understand where it comes from - the mindset that says we want to be safe, and we want to give our government the tools it needs to do so.
It's just that I cannot in good conscience agree with that position. I simply will never acknowledge that it is acceptable to trample personal freedoms in order to establish a surveillance program that may or may not be helpful (and to clarify, even if it were guaranteed to root out terrorism, I still would not accept it. The values of freedom and personal liberty and limited government power are more important to me than knowing I am safe from a terrorist. I realize I may be in the minority when I say that, but that's my position on it).
This program MAY BE helpful; but I cannot find it acceptable. There has to be another way, and the government should be forced to FIND another way, one that does not so egregiously trample our civil liberties - or even introduce the possibility of doing so. That makes fighting terrorism alot harder to do, and a much slower process, but to let ourselves be ruled by fear of terrorism is not a superior alternative.
"I believe the pendulum must move back towards freedom - but giving journalists a blank check to expose classified material is just a bad idea."
I agree, and I would never consider giving them a blank check to expose classified material. But I do think there ARE times when it is necessary, even when it risks national security, because freedom is a higher value than safety. It becomes, then, the responsibility of the leaker to make sure that they're damn sure they're doing the right thing. It takes courage to reveal this kind of information, and should only be done for the right reasons.
BAM! Nice post. Wish I had mod points.. I have never had mod points. :(
I just want to add one more to the list..
The NSA is expressly forbidden from conducting surveillance on American citizens. It doesn't matter how they get the data; they're forbidden from even having it, without a warrant from the FISA court, even if they get it through completely legal means. There's no way they can get around that one.
"In other words, the government only needs warrants for unreasonable
a y.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002463957
searches and seizures."
Still wrong. I am not a lawyer, but I do know that that whole pesky "and without probable cause" part comes into play, oh, somewhere..
These are interesting..
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/1727886.php
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_displ
You simply stated exactly what Mr. Hayden said in an interview with reporters a couple of weeks back - that the government only needs warrants for unreasonable searches. Sad that someone who is supposed to head up one of the most powerful and important intelligence organizations in the world doesn't even know the 4th amendment.
When corrected on the issue, that it also requires PROBABLE CAUSE, Hayden actually argued back that it the only standard for obtaining warrants was for unreasonable searches.
You've made the same mistake.
That's awesome. I've already seen several blogging sites mirroring the documents, and I've downloaded all of them and may or may not put them up on my site, if I get the time.
I will definitely MAKE the time though, if Wired gets a take-down order.
"We ALL need to stop using the term "otherwise the terrorists win.""
Actually I agree; no offense taken. It seemed trite when I wrote it, but I'm a little busy and couldn't quickly think of a better phrase. I like your alternative though and will keep it in mind.
>> http://www.snopes.com/history/american/hancock.htm
Lol. Meh, it makes for a nice story anyway.
Besides, I do think there has to be SOME small element of truth in it, given how much Hancock had at stake by participating in the revolution (being one of the richest men in the colonies at the time). And he had to have signed it knowing King George would see it.
"CIA SAIC ET AL"
SAIC is a government defense contractor that my company sometimes does business with, and they are a (former) business partner of ours.
Ironically, nobody in my office that worked with them has anything good to say about them; the impression I get is one of massive incompetence.
Now, the "SAIC" in that list may not actually mean this company, but it would make sense, given the business they are in.
"Not some guy sitting in a room reporting to no one."
But that's exactly what we're getting. Who does the NSA report to? How much do you think some random guy sitting in a backroom is going to be reporting to oversight committees?
How can oversight committees function when ONLY the chairmen of these committees is informed of the program, so that they're not even discussed in open committee by the very people designated to be the "safety valves" you speak of? How can they do their job if they don't even know about the program?
"We have to at some point trust in the system, until the system shows a failure mode that it itself cannot overcome."
If you don't think this program certainly crosses that line, what in the world could possibly make you think so? What we're looking at is EXACTLY that case: when the system shows a failure mode that the system was not designed to fix. When you have a secret program only being reported to certain select members of Congress who are banned from talking about it, how in the world is there ANY guarantee of oversight, much less protection of civil liberties?
"And yet our founding father executed several people as spies - for publishing military information to our enemies. The situation is not as black and white as you make it out to be."
An entirely different situation. That was about people compromising our ability to fight a war - plans that had nothing to do with suppressing or destroying the freedoms of the people.
THIS instance is an example of the government FAR overstepping its bounds and trying to keep it covered up on the grounds that "well, we'd all be safer if you didn't know how we're violating your rights."
While they're trying to use a program to help us fight a war (I don't think it's a war, but for the sake of argument..), it is an unacceptable method. The ends don't justify the means. They have to work within the framework of the law and our rights as protected in the Constitution, EVEN IF it means a terrorist attack might succeed again. Otherwise, the terrorists win, without ever firing a shot, by destroying our way of life.
"When did commiting crimes become ok in the name of patriotism?"
You clearly learned nothing from the American Revolution. Had that revolution failed, every person who signed the Declaration of Independence would have been drawn and quartered as a traitor.
Ever wonder why your signature is referred to as your "John Hancock"? Take a look at a picture of the Declaration of Independence some day. You'll see that by far the largest, most prominent signature is that of John Hancock. This was not him being arrogant - this was him making sure they knew his name. This was an act of courage on his part.
You're replying under the assumption of "The ends never justify the means." Which in almost all cases is true.
The one case where it is NOT true is the attempt to fight for freedom and save our liberties from disappearing. That is what our Founding Fathers did. They were criminals until they successfully won the Revolution.
And so it is now, for people who stand up to our government and say "You cannot trample our rights and liberties. We will stop you." The government considers them criminals (and those who have swallowed the "party" line).
People who care about freedom consider them heroes.
I am in the latter group.
1. That's not true, because it was a solution to a problem they were already using in live systems. They knew the right answer. Braces and semicolons aside, they knew what actual algorithm itself should do. Few programmers get the entirety of a program right on the first try without a single bug.
2. Whether it could compile and run is irrelevant to the interview; what matters to the interviewer is the approach and whether an applicant can even begin to approach the problem in the first place. If I grew up thoroughly dependent on an IDE to suggest code to me, I really would not be able to even start answering a question like that one.
There are the obvious exceptions to that claim, but learning computer science is a very involved process. It doesn't happen automatically, and the people who learn to program using an IDE and could STILL answer this question, are the good programmers; the ones who wouldn't need an IDE to write a good program.
The unfortunate part of my answering you is that since you decided to post as AC, you'll never see my answer. I always wonder about posts like that. Kinda like enforcing getting the last word, even if you know you might be wrong.
" Any learning programmer who makes mistakes that IDEs will catch will also make other mistakes that IDEs won't catch."
The problem is, compiling a program and being forced to fix the error on your own will help you remember not to make that mistake next time.
When the IDE auto-fills something for you, you never really get that lesson. You might go "oh yeah" every time, but it's far less likely that the lesson will really stick.
At least, that's my experience.
Also, being able to put something together using an IDE that is doing drag-drop and autocomplete for you will never really teach you the basics of things like FIFO queues or binary search algorithms.
While these are often already implemented in higher level languages, it's good to know the basics; for me, even using C# where I don't have to worry about things like that, it still prevents me from doing things like searching a list twice when I really only need to do it once, because I might write the code to do that and then go "Oh duh, that's not necessary," whereas the compiler would happily compile that for me.
And there is alot of work where intimate knowledge of those algorithms is STILL necessary. In the end, programming isn't about being able to use a particular language or an IDE, but about understanding what the software is doing, what your algorithms are doing, and how everything fits together.
I have simply found that using an IDE to learn to PROGRAM gets in the way of learning those concepts. IDE's are great for learning LANGUAGES; they are horrible for learning computer science, because they can't teach you how to write algorithms or understand what the compiler is doing.
When I was interviewing for my current position, they asked me two questions:
.25 seconds to collect the sample, and .8 seconds to process it. Write a program to make sure you don't drop any data.
1. What is the integral of x^2? You'd be surprised how many MATH MAJORS they interview that get this question wrong (my degree is in Mechanical Engineering, but I learned programming along the way and it is now most of what I do, with some Engineering sprinkled in there). (btw, the answer is ((x^3)/3) + C)
2. You have a real time system collecting data into a temporary buffer and processing this data. It takes
They asked me to solve this problem on the whiteboard using C, right there in front of them. It had been awhile since I programmed without an IDE, but because I learned to program without ever using an IDE, it wasn't a problem.
On the other hand, there's another guy at my office who started working there doing something else and somehow got dragged onto a programming project.
After a year, he still can't grasp what the devil a pointer is. I'm not saying someone needs to understand pointers to be a good programmer (although it helps you understand what higher level languages are doing under the surface), but the project we were working on required it. He's so used to using drag and drop stuff like Visual Studio and LabView that really comprehending the inner workings of a language for writing efficient code is just too hard.
I agree when you call this a handicap that just doesn't go away - it has alot to do with how the brain first learns to conceptualize programming, and that's a very, very hard thing to un-learn.
This was the first problem I had to solve when I took my Java programming course (without the strcpy part, of course).
It took me two weeks to make sense of the damn problem, because my brain didn't want to wrap itself around the idea of a linked list.
Once I got it though, and saw how beautifully elegant the solution was, I never looked back - it hooked me on programming forever.
These days, I'm glad I learned programming the hard way, because I understand so infinitely much more than people who learned just enough to 'get by,' like the drag-and-droppers in the GP's post, or who learned by using an IDE (I never used anything but emacs and notepad). These days I DO use an IDE, but I carry with me the good programming practices I have learned along the way, and only use the IDE to streamline stuff I already understand how to do.
Having done everything the hard way, I think I've earned that.
"People in developed nations do not need to supplement their diet with wild meat, and if they do they should be assisted through a more rational way."
Not that I want to start an argument on why it is wrong to eat animals, but I have yet to see a good reason why this is true (i.e., a reason that doesn't already assume that it is wrong to eat animals, which basically throws out every morality argument I have ever seen).
I'm really not trying to troll or flamebait. I wouldn't have posted this question if I weren't asking for a genuine answer, and I asked you because you didn't present the issue in an already-standoff-ish manner.
"As for self defense, guns cause far more danger than they avert."
I don't know about the voracity of this statement, but for my part, the purpose of owning a gun really has nothing to do with hunting and more to do with making sure my government knows that if they step over the line, there's going to be a price [for the record, I do not own a gun]. That was the purpose of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution in the first place; it was to ensure the existence of a populace that could keep government power in check. The Founding Fathers couldn't have cared less about people hunting for food.
Sorry, gas can be used to commit a crime and has been outlawed.
"Which part of that could not be performed just as competently -- in almost exactly the same manner, in fact -- by a private community co-op, or a for- or non-profit organization? Just something to think about"
I totally agree it could be. I simply like the level of oversight you'd have over the process if the local government were somehow involved. The problem with corporations is that they can pretty much do whatever they want and not have to tell you because of "trade secrets."