hxa7241

15 ms·

91.
by hxa7241 15y ago
There is something wrong about this. Code is a tree, code is about nesting. If you do not like nesting, you do not like code. Code is not 'text'. You do not read code top to bottom like text. Code has a structure, and you read that stru
92.
by hxa7241 15y ago
A difference is that the anti-copyright position is quite generally agreed (and also seems rationally well-supported). Disavowal is not merely a wild personal impulse. And a/the virtue of any law is that element of general agreement, not ju
93.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> code diet . . . (limit of 10K lines) Yes, sort-of, although . . . A simple example 'in the small' to consider: function/procedure size. Should we (syntactically) limit functions to, say, <30 lines? What we are really trying to do
94.
by hxa7241 15y ago
This seems like a somewhat rough diagnosis. The pilots were not making an 'absurd error'. They did not forget to fly the plane. It is that what they thought they were doing was not what they were actually doing . Their mental model broke a
95.
by hxa7241 15y ago
You imply the current way is more efficient, but how so? The basic structure of copyright-based business is this: the creator expends effort up front, then hopes buyers will pay later. The information flow, or rather lack of it, introduces
96.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> Do you guys believe in the concept of intellectual property Certainly not as an article of faith. It needs to be configured according to evidence, and that is about as far from the case as possible today. > It is vital for our who
97.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> So, net cost of 3 minutes of happiness went down. Yes, this is a key economic truth that seems almost completely missed. Every pirated copy that is used actually adds value into the economy . It is sort of hilarious how upside-down t
98.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> From a deontological perspective, perhaps That actually seems even less defensible than the normal pragmatic, consequentialist position. See Koepsell and Wilson, as summarised in this article: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/cop
99.
by hxa7241 15y ago
(By 'value' you mean 'price' -- copies certainly have value, but they just have a near zero market price, ideally.)
100.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Then what does justify behaviour? Ethics is grounded in physical reality, that is sort-of where the buck stops -- at least it seems a better place than anywhere else. Surely an ethical evalution of an act depends on what the act is . Wha
101.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> "art" is: something which is made/done for the purpose of being perceived That is actually quite Kantian. But maybe best left there: recommending a normal person look up the 'Critique of Judgement' would be like recommending a normal
102.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Because the item is a copy, and (digital) copies actually do cost nothing. That is just the physical fact, and people will always have some underlying sense of it -- as they should. The idea that you should not be allowed to make copies,
103.
by hxa7241 15y ago
You have presented something of exquisitely poised balance, both intriguing and repelling.
104.
by hxa7241 15y ago
What is abstraction? Here is an informal casual answer that works quite well. An abstraction unites something fixed with something varying . It specifies something fixed that ecompasses a set of variants. For example, an 8 bit number fit
105.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Sales figure from author's blog, publish-date from book-store pages.
106.
by hxa7241 15y ago
The book appears to have been on sale for about 2 weeks, during which time 6 copies were sold through Amazon. So that is about 3 sales per week (from Amazon). One would expect that this publicity will do a lot more for profits than the 'los
107.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> while their education did not ensure their economic success, it played a role. That half concedes the original opposing point. > think of the return to education as stochastic To say that the effect of education is stochastic mean
108.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Marvelous? It is an interesting idea, yes, but if even Landes & Posner express clear doubt over whether it does any good overall, one ought not overdo it. > It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while
109.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> Piracy represents the voice of the consumer in the market right now. That is a good simple way to put it. > But it's a voice that cries, "I will cut off my nose to spite my face." ... By pirating the material, we end up hurting th
110.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Yes, 'creators' are part of the public. But the 'IP owning' side are clearly getting an unjustly disproportionate power over government. The extra money IP supposedly allows creators to make does not come from nowhere: it is paid for by eve
111.
by hxa7241 15y ago
It is on the very cusp where liberation turns to supplication.
112.
by hxa7241 15y ago
Yes, quite right. Although it would be preferable as 4π steradians as that is the SI unit of solid angle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle
113.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> Forced redistribution of money to equalize incomes would be an unmitigated disaster Not really. A different balance of taxation would be a form of redistribution of income (and indeed would be interpreted as 'forced' by some). Would t
114.
by hxa7241 15y ago
That is pure myth. Do we not already have 'rampant piracy', as the music/tv/film/etc industry would say -- indeed, we have had it for 10 years. And what is the result? Well, it pretty much looks like we have more of everything than we ever
115.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> There is nothing different about the plumber and the artist. > Both would like to be paid for their work. No. A plumber wants to be paid for work, your musician wants to be paid a rent. A plumber wants to be paid once, your musici
116.
by hxa7241 15y ago
> The scarcity of good music is real, and it’s not found in its distribution model. If you can see this then why can you not see that absolute adherence to copyright is baseless? Production -- effort, resources -- is scarce. Copies are
117.
by hxa7241 15y ago
People really need to shake themselves out of the clutches of this IP myth -- for that is what it essentially is. It is not even well-founded for an old, material-oriented industry, let alone for informational. And you cannot invent somethi
118.
by hxa7241 15y ago
It is by no means well proven that having IP at all is overall beneficial. So rather than saying we definitely need it, it is quite possible we would be better off with none. What do Landes and Posner say? (in 'The economic structure of int
119.
by hxa7241 15y ago
for (i = ctr_size(container); i--; ) if (!predicate(container, i)) ctr_remove(container, i);
120.
by hxa7241 15y ago
You ought to question that belief with some careful thinking -- economic and moral. Copyright restricts access to goods -- that is bad. It only makes sense to do that in so far as it is counterbalanced by doing some good -- supporting produ

More ›