I think you may have missed the part about the whole being online bit, and including all permittable code and all logic modules being precoded in different ways for different optimizations, and the bit about it being stored in and accessable in a database by a Minecraft-like front end that ...

wait a second. Who do I know you can even read?

Of that I have no doubt. And I know it couldn't be your fault. (And the set up goes like:) Its more likely due to cosmic ray's, man, and eddy's in the space-time continuum!

No, I sort of meant what I said and not really as a joke. And I am kin to BOFH, in that I'll come down hard on users, but only when they fuckup, and I guess that's where we diverge, also, my skill set is much more narrow, unfortunately.

To illustrate the point about programmers, we need to take a little walk, because I like programmers... they are my compadres.

I really love that Superuser forum site and the others like it ("how do you do x under these circumstances on some platform?") where someone posts a question and they get a bunch of rated answers, and all the flamers and trolls gets rated to oblivion and you never see it unless you want to, so its 3 things that work right at the top of the page sometimes, and not just for solutions in the form of previously unknown commands, or known commands used in unexpected ways, but various ways to do the same complex routines or entire scripts. It makes thinking about programming as what it should really be, as simple as creating a todo list or putting together a flow chart using modules that are constantly duplicated, improved slightly, and optimized over time.

Which suggests four things to me. Regular folk, you know, "the norms," and really I just mean anyone at all could very likely do some high-level programming or create software for themselves or for profit if they had the right interface with different common logic modules and standard operators available in graphic form with popup documentation (if activated) that they can link together visually and simulate execution or output before compiling or printing the constructed code text to the screen and into the clipboard or publishing the code to the second thing it suggests to me.

Which is that there should be a front end interface driving a fast database that makes available the most common logic phrases redundant in various methods, for whatever reasons (such as to minimize code verbosity, or maximize speed, or minimize hits on resources) for the most common programming languages (and excluding any that couldn't work with this paradigm), such that each module could be improved independently of the rest by the most accepted advancement method for open source development, grouped in the most common ways by the people that mostly use them tend to group them (by what they're used for, or who they're mostly used by, or what they are written in, or whether interpreted or compiled, and so on, whatever the user chooses and whatever anyone suggests that's a good enough idea to get voted into downstream availability in the interface or database). This should exist already!? Where is this site!?

Thirdly, such a site is certain to attract and promote talent, like flies to honey, as well as attract and allow the mediocre hacks (like me, if you will allow me this very generous characterization) to have better code in whatever language works best, and grow within a few short years to some new popular accepted web phenomenon, and ultimately improve the efficiency and resiliency of code running everywhere on everything.

And finally, that the interface should be fun and easy to understand, surprisingly fast and fluid and pretty much look like Minecraft or even Tetris, or whatever, as the interface itself is just another idea promoted and/or examined for inclusion and developed based on whatever its popularity or merits are by the roundtable of those that decide to work on the project.

So... that's a new idea that's going to sit there until someone, anyone tells me, please, how to find out how to start a for profit open source web project that gives away functionality for free to attract users with milestones defined such that it can't change beyond its established mandate (it would fork if necessary) and somehow generate perhaps at first modest revenue with it (for site expenses, and contributors, why not?) that will slowly but surely build until its effectively printing money and making us all (that are involved with the project) obnoxiously rich, and someday bring the project as a gloriously successfyl enterprise to the highest levels that can possibly be attained by any company that isn't Apple, the second richest and second largest company in the world..

Gentlemen... I give you The Internet Modular Programing Languages Sandbox and Database, (but at some point we'll just scoop up codebook.com from whomever is squatting on that... and... pan back in your head and if you'll queue the Kinks song Picture Book for me...)

So as I was saying, eliminating the programmers would also make code safer.

Speaking as an sysadmin, sounds like Heaven.

The other way to make code safer, of course, is to eliminate the programmers.

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“Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.”

Timmy (Timmy) Timmy? Timmy Timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy.

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Timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy... timmy timmy timmy timmy timmy (Timmy, timmy timmy., timmy.)

True. Honda generators are heavy. No one wants to lug those things across the parking lot.

Holy expensive, Batman!. You weren't kidding.

Perhaps our modern internal parsers have trouble with it, and perhaps as laymen we have debated it, and perhaps it has been debated in the courts, but our academic Constitutional experts and historians, who are surprisingly homogenous regarding this historical fact, have no trouble at all devining the exact intentions of the Founders regardless of the wording. Justice Steven's rewording is, in fact, unnecessary, because his changes simply modernize and make clear what the original intention was. And debate is unncessary and intellectually dishonest, because we know what the Founders intention was from the minutes of the Constitutional Congresses... its all in there, so idky there's all this business of "it means this," and "no, it means this other thing," when, in fact, there is no two ways about it... what the Founders intentions actually were are available to us from the extra documentation they meticulously provided for history and posterity.

It is pretty clear to me, however, from the text alone how important it was to the Founders that gun owners be a part of a militia, and be well regulated, and it should be clear to you too... because its in the first three or four words of the Amendment, and the Founders put it there at the beginning because they wanted to underscore its importance.

The interpretation has been bastardized by the NRA, and all the gun owners (not ALL gunowners, but just the silly ones) that want to do as they please without any sort of regulation or oversight, and they want this because they want it and do not try to offer any sort of legal precidence for it, because there is none. Or I should say, there was none whatsoever prior to 2008, which is a very strange and late date for an interpretation that has stood for 219 years to change. You see, sadly, the meaning of the Second has been completely changed by the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision, and the Justices know what the Founders intended, but the majority of the Court believed that it was ok, because they felt that's what the American people want. In a sense, there is merit to this idea: the American People are in charge. However, the original mandate for the Supreme Court of the United States (and the creation of the US Senate) includes the right of the court to stand in the way of what the People want... Justices are not elected, and it was never their mandate to do as the People wanted them to but to do what is right, and they are appointed and not elected and their positions are protected as lifetime appointments, and in the same regard as to why a Prosecutor has legal immunity, its so they have the right and duty to and can afford to do what is right without fear of retribution of the People. I strongly feel it was not only unnecessary to do as they did, they really went against the Founders intentions, and basically made themselves and the institution of the Supreme Court weaker .

The way the meaning/interpretation of the 2nd was changed by the 2008 decision is pretty startling. Originally, the meaning of the 2nd is saying that a well regulated militia IS the right of the People to keep and carry arms. Thus, your right to carry arms is only there if you are in a well regulated militia, and the militia in which you belong has the right to regulate you, as far as your right to carry is concerned. It is a volunteer militia, so there is a deep self-less nobility to it: you have a right to own and carry arms in order to protect your defenseless neighbors, and that can mean either from foreign enemies, domestic enemies, and even the government.

Now, the official meaning of the 2nd, since the 2008 decision, is completely whack (if I can use a technical term). Basically, SCOTUS gave every gun nut what they always wanted, what they always read into the 2nd that was never ever there, and where it was never intended by the Founders, and from the minutes of the Congresses we know they debated it, and decided to leave out "for self-defense" as they believed it a natural right, and there are many important documents prior to the Constitution that have also enumerated this right of self-defense.

So now, to dumb it up completely, the 2nd changed from: "you have the right, if well regulated, to bear arms in order to nobally and selflessly defend your unarmed neighbors;" to the much more sinister: "you have the selfish right to bear arms to defend yourself, and its every man for himself." Again, in 2008, SCOTUS gutted the heart of the 2nd Amendment, and changed the meaning that stood since it was penned and ratified by the States 219 years ago, from a selfless right to put their own life on the line for a defenseless neighbor, to a selfish right to defend themselves, their defenseless neighbors be damned. So I hope now you can see how truely, depressingly sad that truely is, and gun owners seem to ignore it, but they should be the ones most upset about it, because it turned them from heros into schmucks.

IMO, we should leave the text alone, and overturn that portion of the 2008 DoC v. Heller decision, which was superfluous to and beyond the perview of the actual case, and return the meaning of the 2nd to what the Founders intended: if you're a gun owner, your right to bear arms cannot be infringed, but you are also, by being a gun owner, volunteering to be a part of a militia to protect your unarmed neighbor citizens (and lets not mince words, you are selfless heros, like firefighters are, for doing so). And further, we should just declare the NRA a militia, officially, in its own right, as well as any other gun ownership organization, and hold it to them to regulate their ranks, and let them decide internally who can own a gun, and if something bad happens, like Columbine, VA Tech and Sandy Hook, and so many others, that the NRA will also be held responsible as a unit.

fyi, scratch resistence is also a measure of shatter resistence, so if a substance is more scratch resistant than another, it is also more shatter resistant, at least that's what I just read in an articled about sapphire linked from somewhere else in this thread.

That (external) speculation sounds kind if silly... considering there are lots of other teeny tiny parts in iOS devices that the cost of which probably is more volitile and fluctuates more than the price of synthetic sapphire. So for a billion dollars, it seems like an investment that would take decades to pay for itself.

That is interesting, and would absolutely justify a billion dollar investment if that is their intention, because they would need a metric shitton of sapphire to pull that off. My guess is its just for the iPhone/iTouch screens, because the idea is already out there and being used for mobile device screens, and Apple sells a lot of iPhones, which I think would amount to enough sapphire needed to make it worth it to the Apple bean counters.

FTFY.

I guess you forgot where you were.

I to am on the Gorilla Glass bandwagon as well, and a big big fan of Corning. But Gorilla Glass is under patent. Synthetic Sapphire has been around since 1902, and it was cheap back then. Sapphire is hard... 9 on the Mohs scale, and the only substance harder is natural and synthetic diamond. I find it difficult to believe... so...do you have any references that says Gorilla Glass is cheaper and harder than Sapphire?

Yes, that is what I meant. Nice catch. I wrote the exact wrong thing, and yet you still were able to understand what I meant. I should really slow down when I respond to posts. Thanks.

Don't be so hard on yourself. I'm sure your answer has value. heh, just kidding. My answer to that is "prove it." Show me this novel and orginal idea, that is new and not based on what came before, and is not standing on the shoulders of giants.

I don't see how you can legitamately draw that conclusion, certainly not by what you wrote subsequently. Why don't you dumb up your reasoning for me a little bit, if you're so inclined, I would appreciate it (if you're serious).

...says someone obviously biased agianst the existence of patents. Certainly there are unncessary patents hurting innovation. But those are the exception. The purpose of patents is not to prevent innovation, but to protect the IP of the patent holder for an extremely reasonable period, in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention. An invention is a solution to a specific technological problem and is a product or a process. Without the patent system, an inventor has no incentive to share their invention with anyone, possibly to the extreme detriment of society.

Copyright is not a good way to describe patents... copyright is out of control (Disney, et al., yada yada yada), and the public domain is suffering for it. Not every patent is unncessary, certainly not to the inventor or patent holder who, very often, has a lot invested in their innovation. I don't think you would be perfectly happy slaving over a marketable innovation for the better part of your life only to have me copy the idea, and effectively steal profit from you, the very wind from your sails, the moment you share the innovation or a day after you finally achieve that wonderful goal of tagging it and bringing it to market.

I am not aware of this. Obviously, you must have some specific examples. Please share them so I know what you're talking about, as I'd like to examine these innovation "surges" myself. Because, as it stands, it appears that you just made this up out of thin air because you don't like patents for some reason, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why.

I'm nearly certain the US Patent Office is using a broader definition of "novel" and "non-obvious" than you are. And merely creating something new doesn't cut it... one must also understand and document in the patent application what it is exactly and the correct and undeniable mechanisms that permit to function.

Again, using copyright as an example is not the way to go... because the state of copyright as it stands today is exactly as you describe it as not being, i.e. effectively an "expression of some sacred right to exclusivity" (I like how you phrased that) that apparently goes on and on, long after the author has died and his children have grown old, and the author cannot possibly benefit or suffer any longer for their copyright expiring within a reasonable period, to the detriment of society. And as the rich copyright holder approaches the end of this ridiculously long period, they just pay enough to change the laws, and extend their exclusive rights, and this has happened over and over with copyright. Nothing even remotely like that has happend with patents, nor have patent holders been able to extend the quite reasonable time of granted exclusivity. I'm not certain it is fact, but I think that time period has been reduced on occasion, from 20 years, to 14 years, or whatever that period is now.

And yet again you have drawn a specious conclusion without sharing any of your reasoning to support such a conclusion.

Look, if you want to argue about software patents (which we haven't even breached the subject of in this thread) being unncessary and innovation-killing monsters, then do so, and I will eagerly and gratefully consider your argument for the effort you put into it. But if you're trying to convince me or anyone that all patents are bad, and that, if I may invoke a poster child of the patent system, the destitute but brilliant Nikola Tesla did not deserve the patent unltimately awarded him for the invention of none other than radio and everything necessary for it, you're going about it the wrong way. Certainly there are wonderful examples of amazing generocity and philanthropy that have occured by individuals sharing ideas and inventions, to societies incalculable benefit, and not seeking exclusivity nor to be compensated in any way whatsoever for their significant work (Archimedes, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Jonas Salk, plenty more I'm sure). But these anacdotal examples do not invalidate all patents nor the patent system (which often necessarily includes disputes settled by an adversarial court system).

Just because Bill Gates gives hundreds of millions of dollars away, and it is a good thing that he does so for a lot of individuals that it must benefit, and further, owe their very lives to, doesn't mean that you or I must also do so. (I can't afford that!) Nor does the innovation-stifling train wreck that resulted from the Wright Brother's patent on flight control, directly setting US aviation back years, invalidate the whole system and all patents. To say so is a fallacious argument. The litigation steming from the Wright Brother's flight control patent ultimately lead to the birth of patent pools, which are a good thing, and help prevent a patent's exclusivity from stifling further development while still compensating the patent holder. And the Wright's patent expired in 1917, less than 14 years after it was granted to them. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, even if the US really needed that innovation for WWI, because that, relatively speaking of course (I don't want to offend any veterans), is merely an accidental circumstance of history. Patents, if nothing else, are very limited, almost limited to the point that an inventor might not think it even worth it to invent if s/he could only benefit exclusively from it for such a short period... it's right on the border there.

Again, patents are not like copyright, which are a complete disgrace and an insult to rationality, when technically you owe fees for singing "Happy Birthday" to your child once a year. That song was awarded its copyright in 1935, and it doesn't expire until 2030!! There is nothing in the patent system even remotely as absurd as this.

And if I may be so bold, I need the patent system intact, because I am not rich, but at times I think I am clever, and I intent to personally scoop everyone on the patent on these new VR devices and HMDs, because every single developer is rushing into to the endzone without the football. And I won't actually need to physically develop anything because I have an understanding of these devices, that I have never, btw, used nor even seen in person, that these foolish manufactures do not have (and no, I'm not going to share it with you just because you're curious or just because you believe patents are evil). In the same way that a hypothetical patent holder for an invention to make "fire" could have their patent invalidated, because they failed to explain sufficently, or explain correctly or comprehensively, how it works (magic!) would be scooped and lose their patent to a chemist who came along years after the fact by explaing what it actually is and how it actually works. Years after the first patent was awarded for such a device, I will file my patent application, and be awarded my patent, and retroactively invalidate all previous patents because my patent will be comprehensive, complete, and correct, and none of the current manufactuers patents can be... because, as I insinuated and have stated in posts elsewhere, it is obvious they have no idea what they have nor any idea what it really is and what it is going to do for humankind... namely, cause us to literally evolve, likely within our lifetimes. It's not my fault they are fools, (albeit brilliant fools) nor is it my obligation to help make some rich company richer just so some tweener can get their game on.

Here we go yet again. We have an OP that can't seem to grasp what computer science is and what it isn't, yet it doesn't stop them from waving the term around like a flag. And we have post after post after post of obviously extremely intelligent and likely capable programmers that, perhaps even once studied computer science, and still insist on ignorantly equating "programming" or software development with "computer science."

What the Hell is wrong with you people? And don't think my animosity towards you ridiculous usurpers of an entire field that predates "programming" and software by thousands of years, that you (all of you) apparently and obviously know absolutely nothing about (including what it is and isn't), is misplaced, no more than yours would be towards me if I continually insisted I worked in medicine because I work behind the front counter cash register and sell bandaids and aspirin at your local drug store. (And I don't mean to insinuate that programmers are beneath computer scientists the way a counter clerk is beneath a medical doctor... I'm just giving an example in metaphor, and using hyperbole so that what is in your thick skulls will finally comprehend that you need to stop using the term "computer science" when it is completely irrelevant to the subject... which very often happens to be programming and software development, very noble professions that do not need to be propped up as something that they are not, which is, namely, computer science.)

By now, I have a lot of posts such as this complaining that the term "computer science" is being abused and really watered down as to mean more than it is which ultimately has the effect of changing it to mean almost nothing at all. Usually, I focus on the first word in the phrase... "computer" (which isn't you damn alienware linux and supergaming laptop any more than a ringworm is jewelry). But I'm going to try a different approach so you can see how ignorant you're being and why I'm so fucking pissed off about it.

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic process that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the Universe. Science is the process of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method , as well as to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such observation, experimentation and research. If you're not doing this, as defined quite necessarily and ordinarily, then you cannot possibly be doing "computer science," because the second word in that phrase is not a trick, is not a homonym for another word I am unaware of, nor is it incidental, but quite very specific. If you're not doing science, i.e. observation, hypothesis, methodical, procedural and repeatable experimentation, and drawing conclusions from the results of that experimentation, then, again to be clear, you're not doing computer science .

Now that we have that cleared up, allow me finish this post before returning to my garage for a bit of mechanical engineering, as I think by now my oil pan has drained all the oil, and I can thus complete the oil and filter change (see what I did there, you stubborn morons??? I'm mocking you, because you damn well deserve it.).

To address the fragment from the OP that I quoted above: its completely false. Perhaps programming courses do not always include any treatment of ethics... idk. I'm not a programmer, I never studied programming, and I wouldn't presume to talk about programming as though I were some kind of expert. But every single legitimate Computer Science curriculum I am aware of, including the one that nearly killed me some 20 years ago, has a course in ethical responsibility that is manditory for graduation.