pmccool

15 ms·

91.
by pmccool 16y ago
Sure, but that analysis only matters if they'd been found to owe fiduciary duties. As I understand it, there are two distinct conclusions. One, they did not owe fiduciary duties, as discussed above. Two, even if they did owe these duties, t
92.
by pmccool 16y ago
Given the title, I expected satire. I can't see it. Am I missing something?
93.
by pmccool 16y ago
I used to do this by exec()ing a shell with no environment. 'Twasn't perfect, but it caught a lot of irritating little errors.
94.
by pmccool 16y ago
The training wheels analogy was the weakest part of the article to me. TDD isn't a teaching tool, and the fact that they useless to people in a very specialized niche doesn't really say anything about their general value. I also notice refe
95.
by pmccool 16y ago
It's worth pointing out that, being a civil case, he only need show something to be true on the preponderance of the evidence.
96.
by pmccool 16y ago
> My recollection from the design of Java is that such "finality" is necessary to allow the type system to reject code that attempts to override security-sensitive methods: is that not still true of C#? That's still true. The "feature"
97.
by pmccool 16y ago
True, but I bet the servicing costs are terrifying. I once saw an ad for a used Ferrari that featured the words "engine-out service". That can't be cheap.
98.
by pmccool 16y ago
My current least favourite patronising language feature: in C#, you can only override a method if the base class lets you. In answer to your second question, I think it depends. Including gotos in a language is problematic for reasons other
99.
by pmccool 16y ago
I don't think so. For one thing, he wasn't just driving at "easier to understand", he was also after "easier to formally prove correct", which isn't at all patronising. I also don't find a goal of "easier to reason about" particularly patro
100.
by pmccool 16y ago
> Hence it is very much like a precedent in the common-law sense - except one that isn't open to interpretation by other courts. I'm sorry, I don't follow this at all. I though it would be like a common-law precedent, but persuasive rat
101.
by pmccool 16y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't understand this to be as big a deal as a court decision in, say, the UK. This is because there is no doctrine of precedent in Germany. Previous decisions don't bind courts the way they do in common-law j
102.
by pmccool 16y ago
It's striking how mature mobile phone technology is. You can buy a phone that works really well as a phone for quite reasonable sums of money. I have bought prepaid mobile packages just for the phone.
103.
by pmccool 16y ago
I understood Dijkstra to be arguing for simple languages, being more susceptible to formal proof, easier to understand, etc. Langauges like, say, C# are complicated _and_ patronising. That's the sort of language I thought the article was co
104.
by pmccool 16y ago
A set of rules for the government to act on in exercising powers peculiar to government, no? Hence the historical importance of tenure for judges, for example. I assume his university position is likewise protected by academic tenure? So I
105.
by pmccool 16y ago
Freedom of speech doesn't typically imply no fear of reprisals from employers; why should it in this case?
106.
by pmccool 16y ago
It's never been easier to form contracts across national boundaries. The same goes for publishing. Legal systems just aren't built to deal with such quantities of international trade. The data protection side of it is important, but what ab
107.
by pmccool 16y ago
I disagree. perl made a point of adopting a lot of idioms from well-known languages. Some of it's more inscrutably named internal variables came from awk, for example. Whatever perl's vices, indifference to least astonishment isn't among th
108.
by pmccool 16y ago
Yes. Oops.
109.
by pmccool 16y ago
Batsmen contribute to partnerships with, e.g. good running between wickets. Things like that aren't reflected in batting averages, or their effect is downplayed.
110.
by pmccool 16y ago
Trouble is, "good design" is pretty hard to quantify. It's much much harder to quantify than things like LOC, or whether this milestone or that was reached. Another difference is that a basketball game has a definite, qualitative outcome. T
111.
by pmccool 16y ago
> Cricket is a lot like that, actually. Including the often very dicey performance metrics. My favourite example is batting average(total runs/total dismissals), which is skewed in favour of lower-order batsmen, who are more likely to r
112.
by pmccool 16y ago
It seems that the two approaches would work well together.
113.
by pmccool 16y ago
I definitely think there are parallels in programming. The lines of code metric comes to mind.
114.
by pmccool 16y ago
The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places.
115.
by pmccool 16y ago
I've been known to read law textbooks to my kids. No, really. It works better when they're really really little and don't much care what you're reading. Time will tell what harm or good it's done. The lesson I take from this is that it's no
116.
by pmccool 16y ago
Assuming this legal action succeeds, what's to stop it becoming business as usual? If it does become business as usual, it's highly unlikely that the makers of low-volume films - who seem to be the ones starting it all off - will be the maj
117.
by pmccool 16y ago
Whether their business decisions to date have been good, bad or indifferent has no bearing on whether it's right or wrong to now sue illicit downloaders. Would it really be any different if they had made a fortune? I think not.
118.
by pmccool 16y ago
I expect there's enough case law relating to Facebook's privacy policy to keep things interesting. That's the common ground as far as I can see: neither can be read in isolation.
119.
by pmccool 16y ago
Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios%2C_Inc._v._Grokster... . for a summary of the relevant case.
120.
by pmccool 16y ago
By the same reasoning, it's my fault if I leave the door unlocked and my house gets burgled. Maybe so, but it doesn't make burglary OK, not in that case, nor in general. Maybe they should distribute differently, maybe not. That doesn't excu

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