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One basic travesty not covered in these comments is that a jury of people who have zero clue what software is or how they work are being asked to judge an entir
by coldcode 10y ago
One basic travesty not covered in these comments is that a jury of people who have zero clue what software is or how they work are being asked to judge an entire industry on a topic they can't possibly understand. Sadly in civil cases the concept of a jury of your peers is not a right. In reality a jury of software engineers and the like would make more sense since they at least understand how software is put together. But that won't ever happen in our system because of the complexity of defining a peer in what might be an arcane specialty (not software but other things).
- alecbaldwinlol 10y agoYes, I completely agree with the above. Litigation is handled poorly, taxation handled poorly (federal and state), identity handled poorly (Social Security Admin), legislation, elections, law enforcement, and these are just the things I can think of... At every step of the way, something or someone outside of your business can topple your personal life and your company's life just for trying to do business in the USA. So you either try and deal with it, or go abroad and be labeled as something else entirely
- ccvannorman 10y agoLOL, kind of like the 18th century witch hunts where the witches cry, "If you must burn me at the stake, at least put me to trial by jury of OTHER WITCHES!" Imagine how that would have gone over :P
- seunosewa 10y agoBad analogy. Nobody is being punished for being software engineers.
- alecbaldwinlol 10y agoBut isn't this an ironic example, because the witches weren't actually witches, it's just that the normal observer could be convinced they were?
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- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 10y ago> One basic travesty not covered in these comments is that a jury of people who have zero clue what software is or how they work are being asked to judge an entire industry on a topic they can't possibly understand. No, they aren't being asked to "judge an entire industry on a topic they can't possibly understand". They are being asked to answer fairly narrow questions of fact about specific actions of specific firms. > Sadly in civil cases the concept of a jury of your peers is not a right. In reality a jury of software engineers and the like would make more sense since they at least understand how software is put together. To the extent that a "jury of your peers" is a right anywhere in the US (the phrase isn't directly used in the Constitution at all, though the right to trial by jury is held to extend to it), it is, in fact, a right in most federal civil lawsuits with more than a trivial amount at stake. But the concept of a "jury of your peers" never meant people of like specific profession, it originally (in the Magna Carta) meant specifically rather than arbitrary justice of the king, nobles had the right to be tried by fellow nobles, and came to extend to the idea that other defendants have the right to be tried by a jury of the general citizenry. Which is the case with modern jury trials in the US today. > But that won't ever happen in our system because of the complexity of defining a peer in what might be an arcane specialty (not software but other things). No, it'll never happen today because that's never what a jury of peers meant in the first place, not because the concept is difficult to extend to arcane specialties.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago>They are being asked to answer fairly narrow questions of fact about specific actions of specific firms. They are incapable of having the knowledge needed to know when something is bullshit, however, meaning jury nullification is no longer a realistic option.