I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...
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@blakeyrat said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
to the meat of the issue,
Hamburger's or something really breakfast-y like bacon
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@Arantor said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
@Greybeard but my second generation ancestors don't need to be tested so I can make forum topics!
aside, the general level of stupid
on online forumsin the world is increasing :(FTFY
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
A processor executes lots of simple instructions to manipulate numbers in memory
So programs are math? Like, 2+2=4 math? How do you make math turn into iTunes? Is music math? Are buttons made of math? It sounds harder than Calculus. Programmers must be amazing mathematicians.
@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
To make them easier to work with, we split them into "chunks" we call functions.
Functions, that's another math word. I guess I'm right, this is all math.
@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
To make those "functions" easier to understand, we design functions to have a specific set of "input" and "output" data and does a specific operation (those are not hard rules, but design objectives). Etc.
blah blah this all sounds like my Calculus class. I hated that class.
Anyway, you're the math genius, can't we just make our magical math encryption function so that only the government can unlock it? I don't understand math very well, but surely there's a way, right? Math can make iTunes so clearly it can do anything.
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@Yamikuronue I wasn't giving an actual example of how those things would be explained, just an outline of what would be explained. As I said, the real "classes" would take days.
And come think of it, they don't need to understand processors and bytecode at all. Just the idea of sequentially executing instructions and you build up from there.
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Honest question here:
Are the basic concepts of computing really that hard for the general population to understand?
Yes. And No.
The basic concepts aren't that difficult to understand. If a moron like me can figure it out, then anybody can. The real problem is that there is a very large percentage of the population which has absolutely no intellectual curiosity and as a result, zero interest in learning anything.
This creates a belief that things like computers are "too technical and too complicated and there's no way I can ever understand any of that, so I'm not going to even try."
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
an actual example of how those things would be explained
How did these supergeniuses not come up with "programs are sort of like cooking recipes. You want to bake a cake, you have a list of instructions: get a couple eggs, crack 'em into a bowl. Now add the flour. Now add [repeat for other ingredients.] Next you stir, then put it in the oven and set the timer, blah blah blah."
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@FrostCat said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
an actual example of how those things would be explained
How did these supergeniuses not come up with "programs are sort of like cooking recipes. You want to bake a cake, you have a list of instructions: get a couple eggs, crack 'em into a bowl. Now add the flour. Now add [repeat for other ingredients.] Next you stir, then put it in the oven and set the timer, blah blah blah."
I expect a radical new cake recipe would be patentable though. And the write-down is probably subject to copyright.
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@El_Heffe said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
zero interest in learning anything.
That's not fair. There's a huge portion of the population with 0 interest in learning about computers, but, say, a great interest in celebrity gossip, or fashion, or sports statistics, or whatnot.
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@PleegWat said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
I expect a radical new cake recipe would be patentable though. And the write-down is probably subject to copyright.
Recipes have actually been litigated on in the US before. They're not usually patented (I don't know if they're patentable but it doesn't typically happen) and the core recipe itself is not subject to copyright AIUI. It's the descriptive text around it that is, the “I got this recipe from my grandmother who lived in Goatfuck, Iowa, and who created it in memory of the coconut catapults of her youth”.
Or at least that's how things have worked to date; I'm guessing that Oracle is effectively trying to overturn this.
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@antiquarian said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
You don't need special training to judge a murder case.
I'm not entirely sure that's true.
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@asdf said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
I'm not entirely sure that's true.
Cool story bro
Just kidding. Why aren't you sure that's true? I sat on a drug-related murder trial when I was 19. We didn't get any training at all other than the judge explaining what reasonable doubt meant. We were able to figure out that they had the wrong guy pretty quickly. The judge came to the same conclusion and threw out the case.
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...there is a very large percentage of the population which has absolutely no intellectual curiosity and as a result, zero interest in learning anything.
QFFT. A thousand times this.
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@antiquarian said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
I sat on a drug-related murder trial when I was 19.
Presumably not as a judge.
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@antiquarian said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
We were able to figure out that they had the wrong guy pretty quickly. The judge came to the same conclusion and threw out the case.
Well, you had an easy case then. In more complicated cases, you'd have to be able to judge the accuracy of the statements of the expert witnesses (how exact is the time of death, usually? etc.), the value of different pieces of evidence (in the US a lot of people were convicted based on footprints in the past decades, which are completely useless as evidence, but impress juries) and would ideally know a thing or two about statistics.
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On the door of the all courtrooms must be engraved "Let no one ignorant of Git
Geometryenter" .
That alone will deter the vilest of the rabid rats from corrupting the judiciary system.
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@dkf said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
@PleegWat said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
I expect a radical new cake recipe would be patentable though. And the write-down is probably subject to copyright.
Recipes have actually been litigated on in the US before. They're not usually patented (I don't know if they're patentable but it doesn't typically happen) and the core recipe itself is not subject to copyright AIUI. It's the descriptive text around it that is, the “I got this recipe from my grandmother who lived in Goatfuck, Iowa, and who created it in memory of the coconut catapults of her youth”.
Or at least that's how things have worked to date; I'm guessing that Oracle is effectively trying to overturn this.
Right, but a program would be like a recipe which includes detailed instructions to precisely reproduce the piping on the cake itself, and that would be copyrightable as the end result is a reproduction of a creative work of art. The basic ingredients might not be copyrightable but the exact way they're put together and presented potentially can be.
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Just the idea of sequentially executing instructions and you build up from there.
For modern users of computers, you'd be better-off explaining how any piece of data can be represented by binary first. You're not teaching ENIAC, you're teaching people who use Windows 10 on a regular basis.
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@FrostCat "... then the cake goes on this breakfast menu next to the hamburgers..."
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@antiquarian said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Just kidding. Why aren't you sure that's true? I sat on a drug-related murder trial when I was 19.
As a Judge? You were a 19-year-old judge on a MURDER case?
You must be some kind of savant!
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@anotherusername said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
but a program would be like a recipe which includes detailed instructions to precisely reproduce the piping on the cake itself
Not usually. Most programs pull that sort of thing in from some sort of asset file (an image or something like that) and those assets are copyrightable. Also, this isn't about the copyrightability of the implementation of the program (a generally accepted thing) but rather of the API to that program, which is not something that's been tested properly in court before. Oracle's claim is that nobody can make anything that works like Java (without giving them a lot of money for a license).
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@dkf said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Also, this isn't about the copyrightability of the implementation of the program (a generally accepted thing) but rather of the API to that program
Yeah, and that's total bull. I guess the recipe thing was kind of a red herring since it really doesn't work as an analogy for it.
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The high-profile trial that begins Monday will again include celebrity CEOs on the stand, dense expert testimony, and an utterly unpredictable outcome decided by a jury.
@boomzilla said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Your idea of letting engineers deal with the law sounds like it would probably be even worse though.
Better left to dense experts.
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
No more Wine, no more console emulators, heck, no more VMs without Intel's permission.
And the w3c could sue Oracle for operating a web server.
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Are the basic concepts of computing really that hard for the general population to understand?
I fix a lot of computers for a lot of people. I vote YES.
Trying to explain computing to people who actively want not to understand it is a waste of time. You might as well try to explain gender to @Polygeekery.
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@anonymous234 said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
heck, no more VMs without Intel's permission.
@dkf said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
The real key is to work out where Oracle can be sued to hell and back over this, assuming their legal theory holds up in practice.
Doesn't Oracle make VirtualBox?
...Yep.
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@blakeyrat Or, you know, the waffles go next to the scrambled eggs.
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@Bort Even better would be if their damn DB was found to be infringing some API copyright. That would be truly sweet.
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@anotherusername said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
I guess the recipe thing was kind of a red herring
I've been thinking that a good example might be the operation of the courts themselves. There's a very complex API revolving around lawyers, judges, motions, etc. that has very good reasons (generally) for being the way it is and which can still vary somewhat between courts.
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@dkf said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
Also, this isn't about the copyrightability of the implementation of the program (a generally accepted thing) but rather of the API to that program
To extend the cooking analogy, this would be like copyrighting your oven so nobody else can make shelves that fit in it
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@Jaloopa I'm not sure if the analogy is right, but it made me laugh anyway. :)
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@Jaloopa said in I am at the point now, where I think Judges should have to pass a test...:
To extend the cooking analogy, this would be like copyrighting your oven so nobody else can make shelves that fit in it
More like so nobody else can make dishes and trays that fit in it. And the shape of the knobs so if anyone tries to interface with them to adjust the heat, they infringe. So basically nobody can use the oven at all without paying you royalties.