Warrant issued to force teen to pose nude for cops

From TFA:

A Prince William County judge allowed the 17-year-old to leave the area without the warrant being served or the pictures being taken — yet.

Evidently, the submitter can't read...

"Complex" is not for laymen. There is only so much that you can do with any "appliance". Beyond that, you actually have to know what you are doing. This "problem" has nothing to do with programming.

This. Thinking about the web apps I've written, most of them required fairly deep knowledge in the area of the app -- auroras, photography, specialized group management, history, genealogy, measuring instruments, Chinese, retail procedure -- all areas an interested party could potentially bring to the table.

But the tools to instantiate, manipulate and present those ideas? Those simply don't exist in "amateur" form -- I had to create them. And in doing so, I used knowledge starting with HTML and CGI and CSS, but which extended well into Python, (replaced Perl), C, SQL, a fair bit about the underlying structure of the host OS(s), knowledge of how to structure an application in the first place, and to wrap it all together, a fairly deep knowledge of what's efficient and what isn't.

Now I will admit that I am particularly resistant to Other People's Code, partially because I am unwilling to be subject to other people's bug fix schedules (or lack thereof), and permissions (or lack thereof) and functinonal choices (or lack thereof); and partially because the more stuff I write, the more handy tools of my own I have to bring to bear on the next problem that depend on no one but myself and the host language(s) -- which frankly is quite enough dependency for me anyway. Plus it's been writing all this stuff that's made me a decent programmer in the first place. So even if there *were* a library out there to generate general purpose readout dials, I wouldn't have used it; the result would have been the same. All my own code. Not the least bit reluctant to reinvent the wheel.

Still, the idea of making all that stuff both available and trivially usable (and that's what we're talking about here, because a non-programmer will have to hit this at a trivial level) seems to me to have been tried multiple times in multiple venues, and to have failed every time. Personally, I think it's because as programmers, we underestimate the complexity because we've internalized so much; we can't see the actual level of difficulty very well, because it starts out relative to our own skills. This has resulted in quite a few attempts to "make it easy", and none of them have hit any serious stride. The best any of these can boast is a small following making very limited applications, if you really want to stretch what "application" means.

I don't think the idea is ready to fly. The only context I can visualize this actually working is where you have some *very* smart software that can take an abstract description and write code *for* you. That software would have to be (a) very damned smart and (b) conversant with an enormous range of general human knowledge. Right now, as far as I know, that's the precise description of a competent applications programmer. And nothing else.

Ideas don't arrive in convenient order. Interruptions occur. The world is not a smooth surface, it's full of bumps, pits and detours. Sometimes (as here) there are even reasons to top post. Such as, so someone will actually see it. So get over it. Notably, the AC comment you're objecting to contributed more to the conversation than yours (or mine) does. There's a lesson there.

you pretentious turd with a persecution complex

Thank you. Your racism will make me stronger.

Thoughts are irrelevant.

Racism, which you proposed to ban earlier is exactly that — a thought... To avoid such semantic problems in the future, do try to use more precise terms.

And in civilised countries racist actions are already banned.

And the Blacks only seem to be worse off over the decades. It is not anybody's "racist action", that causes residents of government housing projects (affectionately known as "ghettos") to pee in the stairwells...

Black racism consists of the assumption that they are criminal, violent and or stupid. Theses are not the assumptions about Asians or Jews.

I'm not exactly sure, what beef American Blacks have with the Asians, but, being myself a European Jew, I do know, what anti-semites claim: we are, supposedly, thieves and cheaters (whom nobody should be hiring, of course), constantly scheming to undermine the nations we happen to live in for the sake of Israel (thus should not be hired into government either). Oh, and we use the blood of Christian babies to make matzos...

Are you going to sincerely claim, such accusations don't affect "employment opportunities"?

Which means they don't suffer the same disadvantages in the employment market that blacks do.

Nonsense. Of course, the disadvantages are the same — or worse. In Russia, for example, there were official limits on how many Jews can enter universities, how many could live outside specially-set areas. Certain trades were closed off completely. Yet, somehow, that didn't prevent the Jews from doing well back then. USSR dispensed with the official racism of the Tsars, but the sentiment remained: my own father, for example, had to go to a different city's university — in the late 1960ies — because Kyiv State University was famous for anti-Semitic admission officers. Yet, that didn't prevent him from succeeding — even he remained sufficiently bitter to move his family to the US upon the first opportunity.

Post-Soviet Russia today remains anti-Semitic (though the other ex-Soviet republics no so much), but Jews manage to strive anyway: there are industrialists (of Russian kind) and politicians in addition to the customary lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Perhaps, that's because nobody tried to be condescending to them — the way American Illiberals are towards Blacks...

That statement was asserted (by you) out of context.

This was a good opportunity for you to provide the surrounding context, but you missed it for some reason...

Which is an altogether different matter.

Is it different? When the same person believes, "the unfit" should be either encouraged to not procreate or simply prohibited from procreating, goes on and establishes a network of abortion clinics, can it really be denied, that the belief and the act are rather connected to each other? Of course, they are...

They were not at all a small operation. That makes your counterpoints a red herring.

Ok, who were the milkmen?

You skipped the whole HMO thing even though it is the most on-target example.

The health insurance in this country is so screwed-up, it does not make a good example for anything other than itself.

Then you could get a discount if you drove a sedan with a smaller engine. Now that 'discount' has turned into a hefty surcharge on cars with a smaller engine than what we used to consider a regular car had.

I don't really see a difference here. The prices for everything are going up — because of the inflation, costs of regulations, and rising taxes — it sucks, but it is not a conspiracy to defraud us (not on the part of the insurers).

I smell frog soup.

Oh, yes, of course. But we aren't being boiled by the "corporations". It is the politicians — who've assumed so much control over us, that Congress can't even deal with it all, which forces them to offload their responsibilities to the giant (and unelected) government bureaucracies. It is bad and is getting worse — but private auto-insurers aren't the problem...

Remember the milkman?

I do not, actually, but there may be better explanations for his disappearance — and that of other conveniences, than the evil elite's plot to remove the services we like without lowering the prices on what's left. The milkman, for example, was killed by a combination of increased mobility of the customers (who can all go to a supermarket, when they please), and government regulations concerning both keeping of the cows and processing the milk. You just can't do it any more — not on a small scale. Even when people try to do it as a co-op (such as to have milk to processed a certain way), the government fights them tooth-and-nail.

Yes, some rather expensive cars include rather expensive insurance.

The car being overall expensive, will increase its insurance cost, yes. But I was talking about another aspect — an otherwise inexpensive machine with "overly" powerful engine will cost more to insure. People are buying them anyway... Point is, different models do cost slightly different to insure — which cars, that are easier to fix costing less, for example.

Auto insurance compete a lot on branding and somewhat on extras, but a lot less on price/service than they would have you believe.

That depends on the state. Collectivist places like Massachusetts dictate, what insurance is to cost — leaving the companies to compete on the service-quality only. In other places you may be able to get a different quote from a different company. There is still competition and, as I said, as long as the buyers are the actual users themselves (rather than employers), we are Ok.

Guess who lobbied for the seat belt laws!

Whoever it was, they are not lobbying for the "spies" being mandatory.

I was around when they passed the seat belt laws.

The law made them compulsory. Not the insurance companies.

The premiums *never* went down.

Maybe, they did not rise as fast as inflation during those few years? Or, maybe, the belts aren't really reducing the costs for the insurers — could even be the opposite, in fact. If you die on the spot, that's a tragedy, but it is relatively cheap for the insurers. On the other hand, if the belt saved your life, but now you need expensive treatment...

But requiring us to buy health insurance is fine.

No, it is not. There was even a lawsuit filed against this requirement. It survived only because the government contented, the requirement was, actually, a tax... Thus giving new life to the argument, that "taxation is slavery".

Tomorrow, rate hikes will consume the entire discount and without the discount will be barely affordable at all

Do you have examples from history to back up this prediction?

The day after, the rate penalty for not using the device will be unaffordable to most motorists

There are already insurance penalties for certain kinds of cars — such as those with very powerful engines. People are still buying them — willing to pay extra. Others buy the cars designed to fit just under the limit.

Your predictions are too gloomy.. As long as auto-insurance companies compete with each other and sell directly to car-owners (rather than through employers), we are fine...

It would result in a miserable micromanaged society.

Why? You aren't told not to eat ice-cream... You are just discouraged from it. So, why are you cursing?