A little depressing, but it's getting hard to tell.

Ok, you gotta help me with this... They're sending people to jail for selling weapons to Mexican cartels "so EVERYONE doesn't [do it], since the situation could be worse. Maybe because you have to cull down the supply". And yet, when the police add to the supply, since there's so much supply "it's a non-impact".

When people do it, it's illegal because they're making the situation worse.
When the cops do it, it's not illegal because it's not making the situation worse. ... I'm sorry dude, you have to pick one. Your last post is completely at odds with your rest of your justification for why the police's actions aren't illegal.

. . . Really? "It's not illegal when we do it?" You're actually trying to use that argument legitly?
Now, you're partly right. You ARE onto something. There IS a difference between arms trafficking and espionage. The two are completely different things. BUT, in this case the espionage includes illegal arms trafficking.

Arms trafficking is being compared to arms trafficking that involves government-sanctioned espionage. And that's a perfectly legitimate comparison. It's DOES NOT MATTER what the fuck their justification is. The rule of law means that an illegal action is illegal no matter who you are. Now, a lot of such laws have exceptions and waivers and such for EXACTLY this sort of thing. You can pretty much measure how corrupt and abused the legal system is by how many such exceptions there are and how often they are used. But there are no waivers here. They straight up performed an illegal activity and let the guns walk in an effort to fight a hopeless war.

What do you think about the CIA dealing drugs in foreign countries?
Do you think it's not illegal? Why do you think such actions are "clandestine" in the first place. Why do you think we're not openly admitting that the CIA deals drugs abroad? Because it is balls to the walls illegal.

Then why are they sending people to prison for selling weapons to Mexican cartels?

And when I say "they" I mean the exact same literal people who sold weapons to Mexican cartels are sending people to prison for selling weapons to Mexican cartels.

Higher temperatures in the historical record took decades to centuries to get there. And when those high temperatures peaked, they took decades to centuries to come back down.

Although there might have been a period when there were more sudden temperature swings. But hey, that's the sort of implied doomsday fear-mongering that makes for a lot of problems in this topic. I'm just suggesting the rate of change means there won't be an overall increase in biomass.

I'd like to think that's because the majority of programmers (not once? Does that mean all of us?) aren't the sort to bullshit you with CEO-level bullshit about vision and buzzwords that fit into powerpoint slides.
It's probably not true, but it's a nice dream.

The problem with defining programming as "solving problems" is that it's too vague. Too high level. You can't even see the code when you're that high up. Hitting nails with hammers could be problem solving. Shooting people could be problem solving. Thinking about existential crisis could be problem solving.

The three buckets:
Programming is unobservable - you don't know what something is really going to do.
Programming is indirect - code deals with abstractions.
Programming is incidentally complex - the tools are a bitch

Something something, he doesn't like piecemeal libraries abstracting things. "Excel is programming". Culture something.

We're there dude. We've got more computational power than we know what to do with.
Cue "that's not what I meant by 'power'".

Yep, he's drifting away into a zen-like state where the metaphor is taking over. Huston to Chris, please attempt a re-entry.

AAAAAAAAnd, it's a salespitch:

You don't know about "helping to arm the Mexican cartels"?

THEY SOLD ARMS TO THE MEXICAN CARTELS.

DIRECTLY.

No, that's simply not true. You could say that would not have an significant impact. That it's a drop in the ocean. But it's simply false to say that it doesn't put more weed on the streets.

Plus, you know, helping arm the Mexican cartels. Kinda the opposite of their stated goal.
This is a "means" vs. "end" issue. Does beating up the lich justify slaughtering a bunch of orphans on the way there.

If you think it all boils down to money, then sure, it's just some "basic economic expense". But if you take that reasoning, the cost of all those dead vietnam war draftees was just "basic economic expense". Because at the end of the day, it's all comes down to money.

That given the opportunity, the people fighting the war on drugs will blatantly break federal law in a vain attempt in an impossible struggle?

He's pointing out an appeal to probability fallacy.

Possibly Restrospective Determinism as well.

His reasoning behind his complaint is valid, and the claim that "the mexicans would have gotten guns some other way" is an invalid counterpoint.

Just because you've heard of this "logical fallacy" thing doesn't mean you should beat people over the head with it.

You know, I usually detest any sort of PR speak. That sort of bullshit where they desperately try to spin negative news to their advantage. It's just something I've come to expect from corporations and politicians.

But this?

That is some mighty fine PR smackdown.
Sure, there were other fires, but this one they got covered.

Can we please move to the post-bullshit era where authenticity is expected?

That's really no excuse. You just missed the 7DRL challenge, but there's no reason you can't have a late entry. Or find an itch and scratch it. Or find someone with a problem and help them out.

GO CODE SOME MORE.

It doesn't matter if it's small, or a demo, or outside your current employment's domain. Make it. Release it. Hell, release it under the GPL. Slap it up on sourceforge, Github, wherever.

This sort of bullshit where you can't prove your worth because of proprietary licenses, and NDAs, and non-competes is practically class warfare chaining you down like a serf. And if you really want to be like Tim Sweeney, you'll have to start your own company and go be EPIC.

Fuck yeah, ZZT!

But really, this guy is in the limelight, standing on stage, talking to people because he's famous.
He's famous because he was REALLY early on the scene that literally didn't exist before that and he leveraged that new technology, founded a successful company that succeeded on merit and had some really good ideas. The primary one being that giving the users access to the tools you used to make the game content will mean you have an unlimited amount of free content being made for your game.
New industries are great for the free market where you don't have to grease palms and the nerdy types have a shot at simply doing a better job than the next guy, and actually having that matter.

There are honest, nerdy, and deeply technical guys in the... say... accounting, or trains, or bottling plants. It's simply a personality trait that a percentage of the populace have. Perhaps that changes over time. Perhaps humanity can be trained into certain roles. Perhaps we can make more of these kind of guys. But I guarantee you that they won't normally be famous and up on stage giving presentations.

Also, his speech lacks a certain something since the Rift was announced.

If Valve bought Oculus, we'd be anxiously awaiting the release of DevKit3. Just keep waiting... Any time now....

Yeah, time is valuable. So why the hell do you want to wait in line for a lane to open up just to stand there staring at a human doing what you could be doing just as fast?

Do you think the scanner and bagging is really that complicated? Are you not able to bag groceries? And hey man, that's understandable. These stores should definitely keep some staff to help those who really can't do it themselves. Old folk, or midgets, or armless dudes, or whatever.

Really, I think this is a social thing. Some people just demand to be pampered in certain ways.
"A restaurant is one where you sit at a table and someone brings you your food."
"Hotels must have a concierge so I can complain to someone and have them call a cab".
"Of course only a barman can serve drinks at a bar"
"A real concert has humans playing instruments"
"It's not a real party unless you have a DJ"

These are all services that people expect. Some people at least. But it's honestly just ritual at this point. These services exist because the customers expect it. And the customers are not rational actors. By far.

THIS is how you start? Your sympathy derives from the fact that ISPs sold more than they could deliver? Holy shit dude, I don't think you're thinking straight.

That's just the way it DOESN'T WORK. Ok, look, once upon a time, people paid per minute because it was literally a phone line connection. Then the new kids came in, bypassed all that, and sold you a flat rate per month/2yearcontractwithateaserrate because the amount of data people could actually pull down was limited by technology. Bandwidth was a selling point, and people wanted their webpages to load faster, but by and far they didn't actually use all the connection they purchased. And so the ISPs oversold their lines. They marketed fat bandwidths still sold on a flat rate, and just hoped people didn't use it.
At the start, only a few geeks had the audacity to actually use the connection they paid for. And boy oh boy did the ISPs fight those dispicable few. As time goes on though, geek is becoming the new normal. Streaming videos is old-hat. Everybody does it. And it's called Netflix.

"It's just the way it works" is the cry of the old-busted business model. The gods of the free market shed no tears. Times change.

Some dudes at the ISPs contract division. They wheel and deel about these issues constantly. It's a contract. If there's an imbalance, pay up.

Meanwhile, it's Netflix's ISP's responsibility to make sure that other people on the internet (all of them) can connect to and get content from Netflix. That's what they're paid for.

It is consummer's ISP's responsibility to make sure that the consummers can connect to and get content from Netflix (and the rest of the Internet). That's what they're paid for.

YES. If you use more of the Internet than you supply, then you pay.
Imagine a world without peering. Everyone pays for everything they move. Comcast has no peering and must pay for EVERYTHING their user's request that isn't on their network. Likewise, Mediacom must pay to Comcast for everything that mediacom users request from sources in Comcasts's network.

Same damn thing happens even without a "peering relationship in such a way". But with more taxes.

YES.

I think if an ISP sells a service and it turns out that the service sucks ass because the ISP doesn't actually have the capability, then the ISP is at fault.
Oh, are you facing more usage? BUILD MORE PIPE.

I do. That's what I pay for.

No shit. If more people use the Internet moreso than they do now, then the Internet will cost more money to maintain.
And if Comcast is ludicrously expensive, then that'll make a business opportunity for google fiber or another competitor to come in and eat their lunch. Comcast is trying to find a way to lock in their users and push out competitors by setting up deals so that the cost of doing business is more convoluted and more tangled. They're abusing their dominance of the market.

This is a classic switch to late-stage capitalism. It's great when it's all new and everyone is competing with each other. But now that the game has been won by a small handful of players, they're trying to entrench themselves so that they can be old fat leeches that nobody can remove.

Network neutrality is vital. Network neutrality legislation might be needed.
But yeah, it doesn't take much to say that ISPs are now common carriers. I don't think you even need legislation. The FCC could just do it. They should have done it a while ago.

But having an incompetent coder shit all over your projects at 80 hours a week doesn't magically make it all work. Gutting the team, and replacing them allowing a whole new layers of shit be spread over the project doesn't help either. If you get a time estimate for a project from your competent staff, it's not like you can just hand that to an incompetent coder and hope it gets done in twice the timeframe.

No, I'm infinitely more productive because I have the capability to release code.
Hey, there are simple jobs out there that even a sub-par programmer can tackle. A lot of suits need yet another SQL report made from data extracted from X. And there is a lot of work writing *shudder* VBA scripts so their excel file populates fields quickly. And outsourcing that to idiots who can't code probably makes sense, business-wise. But for serious problems? That take any amount of skill? Bad coders have a NEGATIVE impact on those project. Do you understand that? Not only do they not produce the thing you need, the portions of code they do commit, their input at meetings, the documentation they write all actively degrade the output of those around them.

Not that everyone across the drink is an incompetent coder. But the competent ones don't work that cheap. And you can't hire the ones which are actually good at what they do.