All true, but paying actual money for a licence key at an unusually low price from an unlikely source is like paying five bucks for a 60" 4K TV off the back of a lorry. If you're the recipient of stolen goods, however unwitting, the law in most places will leave you empty-handed if the goods are identified and returned to their original owner, unless you can find and take legal action against whoever sold you the goods.

I'm not saying the situation doesn't suck for the innocent party, and I'm certainly not supporting Ubisoft's generally aggressive use of DRM, but in this case it does seem that the situation is exactly analogous on-line to how the law has worked in the real world for a long time.

I see Comcast/TW's ads repeatedly, not NetFlix's counter-merger ads. Although granted, it's not a scientific sample.

Democracy doesn't mean we get the government we want, just the government we voted for. The people in congress were elected in free and fair elections.

Technically, perhaps. Effectively, no. Contrast our typical ballot:

[__] Bribed Politician A.
[__] Bribed Politician B.
[__] No-name who has no chance of winning such that you are throwing away your vote.

with a typical dictatorship ballot for representatives:

[__] Dictator-selected Candidate A.
[__] Dictator-selected Candidate B.
[__] Dictator-selected Candidate C.

This difference is relatively minor. The plutocrats are pretty much fulfilling the same role as the dictator(s).

Why doesn't NetFlix or smaller competitors chime in for the opposition? I suspect it's because they hope to merge one day also. Merging into oligopolies is a Get-Out-Of-Competition-For-Free card.

It's why Detroit became fat, dumb, and happy in the 1970's.

I see their pro-merger ads on TV and the web. Why are there no anti-merger ads? The public is only hearing one side.

It would be nice to crowd-fund some ads that describe how we need more competition and more competitors rather than huge bribe-heavy oligopolies. I'd donate $10 or so to such.

Being short is not much use if it doesn't tell you much and/or is misleading. Might as well call it "Do". Better vague than misleading. Or, just use a Windows logo icon with a roll-over if space is your main concern. I still find the case for "Start" very weak when weighing space versus communication success.

It's indeed disgusting. We are largely a plutocracy and few citizens seem to give a fudge. We chastise China, Cuba, N. Korea etc. for not having democracies, but neither do we, making us hypocrites.

(I know, technically we were a "republic", not a "democracy", but they functioned as mostly the same thing for most of our history.)

What's a good example of a "useful" independent study cited in the book?

And some statements were outright false, such as claiming OOP sub-classing reduces code over switch/case statements (as I interpreted Meyer's claims). Although it's arguably language-dependent, my experiments suggest that switch/case statements are about the same amount of code. (C-style code has one of the most awkward switch/case statements out there.)

We've had some long and heated debates over switch/case statements versus sub-classing at the c2.com wiki. My own observation is that the net benefits depend on future change patterns of the code, which can vary widely per domain and project.

You are correct that one can use comments for such, but if it's part of the language, then first, It's always there rather than relying on the good-will of team coders; and second, the parser can use that info to make error messages a bit more useful (typically a message closer to the actual problem block).

Neither the US constitution, nor does any commentary I'm aware of, state that electors are pledged to represent the interests of their state.

U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors..."

The idea that a state legislature would choose electors that represent its interests should be common sense.

Of course, at every crucial point in history prior to the 1860s, somebody suggests reducing the power of states in favor of either democratic populism (Jackson) of federal power (Hamilton, Washington...), and the argument against goes something like, "You're just trying to abolish slavery!" American federalism was invented as a pretext to sustain slavery in the colonies where it was economically entrenched.

You could just as validly claim that slavery was a scapegoat excuse for the Federal government to usurp power from the states. Preserving states' rights is yet another reason why we would have been better off if slavery had never existed...

I live in Atlanta, and am well aware that the mountains exist. However, having mountains and beach 5 hours apart (making a 10-hour round trip) does not realistically count as "skiing and surfing on the same day."

The asteroid the dinosaurs spotted was certainly "once in a life-time".

You trying to Start something with me? :-)

Call it "Windows" or "System" or "Services" or "Computer" or "Action". And maybe a Windows icon would have been better than "Start". Make a pop-up roll-over to the icon that says "Windows and User System Services and Options" or the like.

I mean the justification portions. Only a portion of the book is devoted to (alleged) justifications. If you want to pick a specific claim of his, we can go over it in detail. (Some of the criticisms are language-specific.)

The 'why' is often far more important than the 'what'...

That's pretty much the meat of the GOF meltdown: they didn't scientifically justify when to use what pattern (or use none) such that newbies and fad pumpers shoved square patterns into round holes and then smiled like Nobel winners as they ran off to their next gig, leaving you to hold their spaghetti pattern bag.