That is not certain.

I don't have first hand experience, but if I were to call someone to let them know that something bad happened to their kid, I'd be hesitent to leave too many details in a voice message. You generally want to downplay the injury until you know the person receiving the news can handle it.

As such, I'd probably leave a message saying "hi, my name is X and I'm calling about your kid, please call me back". If your attitude is scammers and spammers oriented, you are likely to not do so.

Shachar

Funny, I'm moving in the opposite direction, but reach the same conclusion. Working with (most) modern IDEs just seem like masochism after you've used VIM.

The learning curve for vim is horrible. I can understand anyone who gives up before reaching reasonable productivity levels. Once you've gone through it, however, the IDEs are just no competition.

Shachar

You have to remember that the protection code has is reduced compared to the protection that other works of art has. The law and precedence (IANAL) acknowledge that there is significant amount of function (i.e. - non-copyrightable) parts to a program.

The question here, as I see it (and, again, IANAL) is whether the function's arrangement and names, which might have some expressive (i.e. - copyrightable) value to begin with, can turn to purely functional by the simple fact that implementing it is essential in order to make things work.

As far as I remember, other laws (including the hated DMCA) has language that suggests it does (allowing reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability).

Shachar

What you don't get (possibly because you are not a programmer) is that Ruby-on-Rails-with-XHTML-and-JQuery-NoSQL-Hadoop technology is simplifying programming. Simplify it any more, and you'll likely end up with worse (with both likely over the near future).

Back at the day where the programming language was hard, only people with the knack could do it. Programs still had bugs (and always shall), because programming is a complex task and we did not have the tools to simplify the complexity back then.

And then the demand for programmers sky-rocketed, and people who believed you were right started creating RADs (rapid application development environments). Pretty much all the buzzwords you dumped are in the category. The idea was to create an environment that will simplify the programming process, so that constructing a program be more like plumbing.

Guess what. It still isn't. The only difference is that now there are people doing programming that are not programmers. They are plumbers. The result is what you see. The problem is that, unlike plumbing, people still expect the end result to be anything they like. It is the lack of limitations on the end result that causes the need for understanding what you're doing, not the technology with which you develop.

Shachar

Sure it does

On reflection, I need to cut down a dimension from my calculation as well.

The minimal and maximal heights can be replaced by the speed (scalar) of the satellite when crossing the equator.

So 5D at most.

Shachar

GP assumes that the Earth's mass is the Earth's mass (i.e. - an orbital around Earth). I am not aware of any affect the mass of the satellite has on its trajectory, so I'm not sure why you included it.

Which leaves us, in your analysis, three parameters. Vector of position, vector of velocity, and a time scalar. Let's call it a trajectory triplet. This results in 7D trajectory space. Those three are not, however, orthogonal (or even linearly independent).

Just as an isolated example, take a certain satellite triplet. Then take that same satellite's triplet a few seconds later. None of the values of the triplet are the same, and yet it obviously describes the same trajectory.

I am not an astrophysics, so I will not claim absolute knowledge in this field. My limited understanding suggests that all trajectories pass around the equator. Furthermore, for a satellite doing a perfect circle, the speed (scalar) is a direct function of its height. We can, therefor, narrow down the trajectory parameters to:
Height when over the equator
degree of elevation above said height
degree of descent below said height
angle crossing the equator
two phase scalars (one of accounting where above the equator we are talking about, and the other for accounting the possibility of two satellites following each other in the same trajectory).

That's 6 scalars (as opposed to your 2 vectors and two scalars). As far as I can tell (but see disclaimer above), those six are orthogonal. I am not 100% sure the two phases are, indeed, orthogonal, but I am fairly sure you can arbitrarily change any one (or more) of the others and still get a valid and different trajectory.

Still not one dimensional (not sure where that came from), but at least one dimension less than you claimed it was.

Shachar

Please do read George Orwell's 1984. You just described its main features.

Shachar

Assuming the click-wrap isn't binding, then I don't see how this can be legal even in one party consent jurisdictions.

Even if the click-wrap is binding, it is only binding to the person who "Agreed" to it. If I'm not allowed to implant a recording device in the room that will listen to your conversations with someone else when I'm not there, I don't see how I have the authority to let someone else do the same.

Of course, IANAL.

Shachar

As far as I know (IANAL), anyone can bring a civil suit against the police department. A specific cop has pretty much complete immunity from civil suits. The only thing that can touch a specific cop is internal affairs and the DA, as mentioned by GP.

It is true that should a specific cop start causing too much money lost through civil suits, it is likely that he/she will be fired. Again, however, it is up to the department to decide, not an independent jury.

Shachar

No, that's not a correct statement. The indirect costs may not be specifically for a specific Surface unit, but the Surface division does have indirect costs that are specifically its own costs. This means that there are, indeed, indirect costs that are specifically Surface's.

The Surface factory pays rent, taxes, electricity and utility. These are all indirect costs, and they are all specifically for Surface.

What's more, the number of units sold is crucial. If you only sold a million units and the gross profit per unit is $5 (and it is, likely, less), then it doesn't take the indirect expenses to be particularly high for the division to be running at a net loss.

Shachar

Your comment is definitely part of the 82% rule.

It says that 75.3% of statistics people quote are made up on the spot.

Shachar

I didn't say that was okay. I said that was Ireland's rationale.

If memory serves me well, Cayman Islands have a similar shtick. No income tax for either corporations or residents, but lots of taxes on product consumption (customs etc.)

It is the trade offs that countries do to attract the "right" type of economy.

Shachar

As far as Ireland is concerned, that is exactly it.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft (to name three, I'm fairly sure there are more) hold huge development and support centers in Ireland. While corporate tax in Ireland is low, income tax is fairly high. The Ireland government isn't losing from this deal.

Shachar

FTFY