Where are you drawing the line for good?

I can see that somebody could program without knowing anything at all about assembly language, but I find it difficult to believe that they would be any good at it. For many years CS curricula around the world contained the same sequence of courses: a "high" level language (be it C, C++ or Java depending on time and location), assembly language for a real architecture (SPARC, MIPS or x86) then a compiler course later in the degree that explicitly teachs the mapping from (parts of) the high level language into the low level language.

It has been understood for a long time that know both of these languages and having some explicit knowledge about what a compiler does to convert between them makes a programmer better. The vast majority of programmers my age (mid 30s) went through this sequence of courses as a mandatory part of their undergraduate education. I'm really curious what your definition of a "good programmer" is that doesn't know assembly language. How do they differ from just a programmer?

Nice summary, much clearer than the original.

There seems to be a basic mismatch between the "problem" and the "solution". Most of the lead-in talks about corporate financing, and companies free-loading without paying for development. Well, in that world the funding distribution is from Extremistan (i.e it is probably a power-law distribution). So most of the money is held in pledges that unmatched by ten peers. The matching model only makes sense in Mediocrastan (i.e the roughly a uniform distribution) where the majority of the pledges would be matched.

So let's say there is a big super important project and one million individuals put up their $1 pledges. There is also a company that wants/needs the results and is willing to put up $1 million to get it done. Sadly they are limited to $1 and the other $999,999 cannot be spent.

I don't think that a ransom-ware model for open-source is a good idea at all, but the author really needs to rethink exactly which model they use. Or to phrase that in the author's own language "carefully considerating the underlying game theory and doing a bit of mechanism design leads us to much better equilibria".

I guess that you are talking national averages, but about 1/3 of my wage covers all my basic living costs so about 13hr/week of labour. I think the national average here would be about 1/2, or about 20hr/week. Did hunter/gatherers really have it that easy?

I'm curious, do you type and argue as if you are twelve years old because:

a) you are in fact twelve years old with unsupervised access to the internet
b) YOU are SO mentally DEFICIENT that this IS the way THAT you THINK?

Yeah, because the "regulated" taxi industry *never* has these problems.

Is that the only kind of distinction that exists - the world is purely binary? Or could be that a regulated industry has fewer of these problems. Is that not better to a lesser extent?

The problem, as always, is that people like you think that "regulation"

So what is a person like me then? Is that something that you are capable of understanding based on a jokey response to a request for a sketch. Wow, your deductive power of reasoning must put the great Sherlock Holmes to shame. Either that or you over-generalise so freely that you are not even aware when you do it. You know, like an idiot.

Perhaps you should spend an hour or two reading about cognitive dissonance, and try to spot the analogy to the point that you were trying to make with Regulatory Capture. I'll warn you - your world view is about to get a dramatic overhaul.

Oh. So after all of these insults and attempts to deflect you finally mention what evidence.

Yeah, well done. I've already replied to that.

Hello and welcome to Uber.

We are going to pretend that we offer you a service like a taxi, you know - licensed and regulated so that we manage to keep whack jobs out of the driving seat and you can feel a measure of safety in your journey.

But instead, for half the price we are going to send you some completely random fucker that we have no real record of. He could be anyone, and probably is. So basically you are hitchhiking with all of the associated risks, but you are paying us for the privilege.

Yay for Uber. Please feel free to call* and ask questions if you survive your trip.

* actually not really, this would push up costs. But you know, it's the thought that counts.

Remarkable. Well that certainly narrows it down. Well done you.

One hundred years ago may have been the end of a long period of change in attitudes towards children. The drop in child mortality rates heralded a change in how parents treated their children. wiki

This is where modern etiquette seems to become so tricky. So when somebody uses that phrase I should correct them and say "Don't you mean Islam is a religion of slaves?".

Wow. So you disagreed with my claim that there was no evidence. But you also claim that there is evidence. But you won't say what it is.

Amazing what a flexible view of reality you have, are there any other mutually exclusive angles that you want to rave about?

You quoted a point. You argue that the context of that point was not what you meant. You are an idiot.

Classic passive aggressive troll games, ignoring points, shifting, insults. Later loser, you are just not good enough at this to make it interesting.

It is extraordinary that there is no hard evidence? Should be easy for you to provide a single counter-example then.

You did argue that point - by taking a quote from that discussion. Have you read the manual or are you just picking it up as you go along?

Hilarious. You should do this for a living.

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in what you just wrote?

No. But I do see I gaping logical error in your response.

Is a young girl constrained to playing with pink and fluffy toys?

No. But you seem to have assumed that my answer would be yes.

Explain your sexist attitude in what toys little girls are alloed to play with.

Your query seems to be invalid as it is based on an incorrect assumption.

In my world, if a girl wanted to play with Tonka toy tractors, that is what she would get to play with.

Glad to hear it. Tonka toy tractors are an excellent toy for anyone.

But if she wanted to play "Disney princesss", she could do that too.

Excellent, and indeed why not? I asked how we would see a bias if there is a systematic bias in the toys available for girls. If they are restricted to "market deemed acceptable female toys" then they are being excluded from certain choices. Saying that we should not do this does not exclude girls from choosing whatever kind of toy they want. It simply means that they should have a real choice, that somewhere among the 2000 rows of pinky fluffy little princess variations there would actually be a Tonka toy tractor, and not that she would have to head over into the "boys" section to get that real choice.

And sorry, but sexist attitudes like yours are pretty piggish, You don't have the right to tell me what toys my daughter can play with.

So how does that sound when you read it back?