hsitz

Not really. I'm a lawyer so I have a decent grasp of this stuff. Mens rea is closely tied to intent, not really to whether it had anything to do with intending to break a law (ignorance of the law is generally not a defense). Think of the difference between someone who commits premeditated murder, someone who commits manslaughter through gross negligence (e.g., a drunk driver), and someone who by complete accident is responsible for another's death (someone runs out in front of your car). In each case a person's actions directly cause another person's death, however we attach different levels of culpability to each. We're getting a little bit far afield from original issue, here, though. Anyway . . .

Well, I would say that if you want to accuse them of misconduct then the main thing would be to ascertain intentions. Certainly, if there is no bad intention on the part of the actor, then it makes no sense to accuse them of misconduct. So if you want to accuse them of misconduct, definitely, yes, you need to ask questions about their intent.

On the other hand, regardless of intent, it does still make sense to say that the system is maladjusted, that the system is designed in such a way that even actors with good intentions are incentivized to do harmful things. And the question regarding the system really is clear: Does a recipient accepting money from an advertiser tend to create in them a more positive opinion regarding the advertiser than if the recipient received no money at all? To that, the answer is yes. It doesn't mean the recipient has committed "misconduct"; more likely it's just that the recipient is a well-intentioned actor in a maladjusted system.

Yes, of course, I agree. And it doesn't invalidate my point at all. I would say that you're pointing out the problem that people don't understand how important it is to avoid conflicts of interest, and that we need systems in place to minimize it.

The case of Donald Trump is a perfect example. He had conflicts of interest galore, didn't even deny them, in fact he flouted them, and many people seemed to think everything was fine.

We need to be aware not only of the existence of conflicts of interest, but also of (1) how corrosive these conflicts are, and (2) the crucial importance of designing systems to minimize the bad incentives and effects that arise from conflicts of interest. Systems, in other words, that minimize the harm that -- because of human nature -- inevitably flows even from well-intentioned people when conflicts of interest are tolerated.

> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening?

My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; there's little doubt that it's happening to some extent. Virtually impossible that it's not happening at all.

The problem to me seems quite similar to campaign contributions in politics. Yes, it's indirect, and all parties can say it's innocent, no strings attached, the elected representative is not "required" to do anything. Those are words that help people ignore the reality of human nature. Money is influence.

Yep, Vim is the first thing to come to mind. I'm not sure there's any program with better undo-ability.

I also am not quite sure what the post above means by "GUIs support undo". Yes, most apps,e g., on Windows, support CTRL-Z for undo. But this functionality depends on each app implementing its own undo, nothing OS-wide, and results will vary. I'm not sure what there is in GUIs that supports "undo" other than an app/user convention like CTRL-Z, which hardly seems to rise to the level of "supports undo".

Or, since he says "pre-teen", it could just be that his parents sent him to a programming class at a local community college when he was twelve years old. That's the sense I get, actually. The number of people who start actual college as a pre-teen is vanishingly small.

"I've been programming for a long, long time. Went to college for it when I was a pre-teen."

Yet you don't tell us how old you are, so it's hard to get a grasp for how long you've been programming. As someone who first started programming in 1979, I notice that there are plenty of people who say they've "been programming a long time" who weren't even born when I started programming. This isn't a criticism, just a comment that we don't really have any idea how long you've been programming. I can picture a 29-year old saying the same thing you did. Time is relative, something that becomes more and more clear, I think, the older a person gets.

Yes. And that "only second to VB" must be in reference to sales. Delphi was way more advanced and usable than VB, from a technical point of view.

Yes, you are correct. The people who say the "piano" comment was meant just as an observation, not as criticism are wrong. They're ignoring that this was made as an "observation" specifically about free software, with the obvious implication that this is a key difference between "free" software and commercial software. That means: this was not _merely_ an "observation"; it was an observation intended to be a criticism of free software. This is just basic reading and interpretation skills. (Could this interpretation of the comment as a "criticism" be wrong? Of course, but I think that's highly unlikely.)

Yes. Also, for a person with the requisite piano tuning/repair skills, a free piano can be a great thing. And this person can identify which free pianos are great things and which are likely to be unsalvageable. For someone who has no clue about pianos, or on how to work on pianos, not so much.

A lot of open source software is intended to be used by developers, or, in other words, by someone who knows what they're doing. Not all, of course. There's plenty of open source stuff out there targeted at end users, or at admin-types, non-developers. Much of it is excellent. (In fact, much of it "runs the internet".) Much is not, or is really in a semi-developed state where it needs to be improved by actual developers.

None of this is anything new. You need to be aware of how "ready for use" the open source project you choose is. By the very nature of how open source works, projects are available "in the wild" when they aren't really ready for general use.

The 9/11 attacks killed less than 3,000 people. Or if you want percentages, resulted in the deaths of about 0.0009% of the U.S. populace. Yet it sent our country to war and has had an impact on millions of people. It is in the very nature of terrorist acts that they "terrorize" the wide populace, while only a tiny fraction are ever victims of terrorism. It is similar with hate crimes.

Human psychology deals with numbers strangely. There are many who seem to think 500,000+ deaths (many preventable) from Covid are not something to be overly concerned about. Some of these same people are deeply worried about "Extremist Muslim terrorism" that has had very few victims.

So, yeah, from what I understand about growing anti-Asian crime, I do think it makes sense to be concerned. In particular, because this increase seems to be a (predictable) response to actions by many over the past year to demonize China, which any sane person knew would create a generalized animosity toward Asian-Americans. It's not like things like this have never happened before. They have, and they're quite predictable.

??? In what economy do most people not have to pay just to live somewhere?

Yes, exactly. I would add, though, that the "Wuhan lab leak theory", in many people's minds, seems to be combined with a suspected intentional act by the Chinese government, to unleash a dangerous virus on the rest of the world. I think we should dismiss that part of the theory (it's of course not impossible, just not likely, mostly fun fodder for conspiracy nuts). But as far as infectious disease labs all across the world being dangerous places that need strict safety and security measures, duh, yes.

Not following. The inspector is generally out of the picture after the inspection, however it goes. If they identify problems, specialized contractors (e.g., plumber, electrician, carpenter) will be contacted to get more detail on the problem. Besides which, inspectors rely on word-of-mouth referrals from real estate agents even if they're always employed directly by buyers. If an inspector frequently blows up deals with overly critical inspections, their referrals will dry up.