Yes, it's possible to write secure code in PHP. Just more difficult than in other languages because you are fighting against the design of the language.
I agree though I would add that much of this is because android "won" linux on embedded. Today it (unfortunately IMO) seems far more likely that a hobby ecosystem is going to trickle down from android than the other way around.
While I don't agree with all their decisions I think it safe to say that the only reason stack exchange has really good answers to overly moderate in the first place is because they don't allow subjective discussions. If they did, the knowledgeable people would quickly leave since their answers couldn't and wouldn't be correctly valued by those with less knowledge.
I strongly believe that there is a niche for a q/a site with less focus on bureaucratic management of counter-productive rules.
I mean, whoever does this might have to hire their own dang-like supermod but I refuse to accept that what we see today is the only option.
Some ideas:
* don't make bureaucratic powers a reward
* when the map and the terrain doesn't match the terrain is usually correct. When the time after time you find that the most useful questions are closed as not constructive then maybe the rules for "not constructive" needs to change.
* from other forums: encourage newcomers to use nicks that don't identify them at least until they get a feel for it
"Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor."
No it's not. If anything, that is a ridiculous opinion. It has no basis is society, law or discourse. There's little relation between labor and copyright. A more apt analogy is something like land rights. But that is still not talking about the real issue. Chefs puts significant amount of labor into their creations, they are not covered by copyright.
Yes, and chefs are compensated for their time/labor. You can't just walk into a restaurant, eat a meal, and take off without paying what the owner of the restaurant has determined is the price of the food you just consumed. How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale ? There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work.
Chefs are compensated for their time (unless maybe you're the head chef), but they are also not compensated for their intellectual property, which is the point. Maybe a better example is copying a dress (if you imagine outsourced manufacturing).
"How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale?"
There are plenty of creative people who sell their time, just like chefs. Of course plenty of companies today don't even sell software, but essentially services.
"There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work"
Yes, but this is to some extent a different issue than copyright itself. I'm not even arguing for the removal of copyright (I'm personally for stronger authors rights with drastic reduction in terms), just that copyright is mainly rights to artistic, rather than utilitarian or scientific, things i.e. doesn't have a whole lot to do with labor.
This should be even more apparent today with cloud distribution, where software can't be resold.
Yes, but chefs have absolute control over the ingredients in any "special recipes" and can restrict access in ways that those that produce works like literature and software cannot. Unlike digital goods, the resultant dishes cannot be copied indefinitely at zero cost.
I also do not really care for the super-long copyright terms, and my posts here should not be confused as a defense of the likes of Disney, etc. Most software is obsolete within a year. The unauthorized copying of newly-released software is my primary issue, having been directly affected by it for so long.
"Right now only the united states is allowed to copy dollar bills"
Usually anyone can copy currency as long as you clearly indicate that it is a copy.
"The united states government needs to get with the times. Digital distribution is the wave of the future. Why should the united states be the sole entity allowed to print dollar bills?"
Not a unreasonable question if you equate "print dollar bills" with issuing currency, which is what they actually do.
"If the world was more like North Korea, the world would be a better place"
Is it really that much fun to make these sarcastic ignorant comparisons rather than discuss the real issues and maybe learn something?
The "nonsense" I was referring to was the inability to dictate the terms of the sale. If a chef takes 2 months to develop a special dish for a very wealthy customer, you can be pretty sure that the price is going to be very high, and only the person paying the price will be enjoying the dish. Likewise, if the chef spends the same amount of time developing a special dish for general consumption, you can also be pretty sure that he/she plans on recouping those costs by distributing them across many customers' meals, the price of which is determined by the chef based upon how much the original cost was, and how fast he/she wishes to recoup the costs.
A fashion designer can't design a collection and enjoy exclusivity. A couple of months (if not weeks) later the fast-fashion store are going to have copies. They can't dictate the terms of a sale anymore than a musician that gets copied can.
So the fashion industry have worked out their own added value in forms of heritage, luxury and exclusivity. Just like people who sell open source add value with trust, support and consulting. And people who sell games add value with multiplayer, statistics and achievements.
Less copyright means more labor not less. More performances, more innovation, more consulting. If that's a good thing and when it's not is of course a discussion in itself.
Not really relevant since bills are protected as a result of laws regarding forgery and fraud, not copyright. It's a lazy rebuttal without foundation in discourse or law.
Gozo, why discuss written laws? Written laws are fabrications made to infuse artificial restrictions on things that exist in reality. Let's talk about intrinsic laws. Like the law of gravity or the Law Of Supply And Demand:
When you increase demand you increase the value of a product, when you increase supply you decrease the value of a product. Basic economics. Let's take this concept and apply it to money. If you print money you increase the money supply. When you increase the money supply you decrease the value of money.
Thus the action of counterfeiting is actually theft. By printing money you lower the value of other peoples' money and thus you are stealing value from other people. That's why counterfeiting is bad. Written laws on forgery and fraud don't cause this phenomenon they are a consequence of it.
The same academic principle works for piracy. Get it? You copy a product you devalue the product by increasing supply. These are principles of Basic economics and Intrinsic law that permeates the fabric of reality. In essence: When you pirate a product you are stealing it, there is no way around it.
Why is it not ok to pirate money but it's totally ok to pirate music? I'll tell you why. The issue touches the roots of humanity's morally ambiguous nature: When you pirate money, you harm everyone who owns money and face the ire of the entire population.
When you pirate music you harm only the creator of the music and you probably got a lot of friends who do the same thing. Significantly easier to do from an ethical standpoint. But how do you face yourself? What does a typical weak, cowardly human tell himself when he commits a crime? A typical human will create an overly-complicated and sophisticated logical delusion in order to justify the action to himself. Stupid logic like "downloading an mp3 makes me more likely to buy the track" are typical examples. In fact, you can likely witness a version of this overly-complicated logic in your response to this post.
Is that enough discourse for you? Yours is the lazy rebuttable without foundation in reality.
You clearly don't have much experience with debating copyright instead your trying to shoehorn in your argument where they don't make sense.
"You copy a product you devalue the product by increasing supply"
A digital product already has infinite supply. The question isn't if copying affects supply, but if it affects demand. If someone copy something they would never have bought the economic damage to the author is theoretically zero. Copyright doesn't even deal with "increasing supply" as a intrinsic thing. If you spend year creating recipes for a restaurant that become successful and someone opens a restaurant next door serving the same things (and thereby increasing supply) the original restaurant has little to no copyright claim. The same is true in other fields. Even universal human rights doesn't deal with intellectual property in this way. There's simply little basis for this view.
"When you pirate music you harm only the creator of the music"
That you "only harm the creator" is objectively false, since even if you prescribe to great harm being done by piracy it's not only the creator, but the rightsholder that gets hurt.
"What does a typical weak, cowardly human tell himself when he commits a crime?"
It's when you don't have good arguments nor is well read you have to resort to this type of name calling.
"Yours is the lazy rebuttable without foundation in reality"
My arguments are absolutely based in the current discourse.
>It's when you don't have good arguments nor is well read you have to resort to this type of name calling.
You called me ignorant directly and you started it. "Ignorant" is a highly charged word that will ignite hostility. Do you start debates with that word in real life? Perhaps if you had experience with "copyright debate" you'd know that things won't end well when you start something with that word. Maybe you're just too ignorant to realize that. I never directly called you anything. Besides, there's a difference between fact-calling and name-calling in which case what I'm doing is more closer to the former.
>You clearly don't have much experience with debating copyright
I'm not talking about copyright. I started the topic and that topic dictates the terms of this debate. The topic was a sarcastic example about piracy and theft in terms of supply, demand and value. It was not at all about copyright law. When you talk about human law you deal with controversial topics like whether a pattern of sound needs to be copyrighted or whether a recipe needs to be copyrighted. I'm not dealing with any of those ambiguities. I am dealing with what happens in economics when you pirate something. What happens when you pirate money and what happens when you pirate software. I am not talking about written law.
>My arguments are absolutely based in the current discourse.
Possibly based on discourse but not based on reality and therefore off topic.
>If someone copy something they would never have bought the economic damage to the author is theoretically zero.
What dream world do you live in where you think this is all that happens with piracy? Many people also copy things that they would have bought in the first place.
>A digital product already has infinite supply.
And as such, the product is usually worthless unless distribution/supply is artificially restricted (Netflix, DRM, etc.)
> Copyright doesn't even deal with "increasing supply" as a intrinsic thing.
Who cares? Increasing supply is a part of reality, and that is what I'm talking about.
>If you spend year creating recipes for a restaurant that become successful and someone opens a restaurant next door serving the same things (and thereby increasing supply) the original restaurant has little to no copyright claim
Why are their secret recipes? Why do people hide these things? Because restricting supply increases VALUE. Copyright law is an issue that is separate from this phenomenon.
"You called me ignorant directly and you started it"
I didn't call you ignorant, so much as your argument that involved currency and north korea. But I realize it's a fine line and should have used a different word. Not that you are taking the high road here either.
"The topic was a sarcastic example about piracy and theft in terms of supply, demand and value. It was not at all about copyright law."
How is piracy and "theft" not about copyright law? If you're not breaking copyright law it's not piracy.
"Possibly based on discourse but not based on reality and therefore off topic"
I obviously don't think so. My kind of arguments are the ones being discussed at conferences, in books, documentaries and papers.
"What dream world do you live in where you think this is all that happens with piracy? Many people also copy things that they would have bought in the first place."
There's a reason I used the word "theoretically". Still a 14 year old is seldom going to buy a $4000 program and companies sometimes recognizes these scenarios. Microsoft did in China for instance.
"Who cares? Increasing supply is a part of reality, and that is what I'm talking about."
I don't see how increasing supply in general is relevant. If I seed some flowers I'm increasing the supply of flowers, but few people would see that as a negative thing. If there were no copyright, like in (to some extent) fashion or cooking, copying would be part of reality and there would be little point to compare it to copying currency.
>Not that you are taking the high road here either.
You punch someone in the face you think there's going to be any high road? Guess what, you start shit, people react, you make enemies.
>How is piracy and "theft" not about copyright law? If you're not breaking copyright law it's not piracy.
It's because humans are born with the ability to moralize and differentiate from right and wrong without the need for written law. Everybody knows what theft is without referencing copyright law. What I am talking about in my argument is how the theft of value occurs according to the intrinsic law of supply and demand; and the theft of value is morally wrong according to common sense, no need to refer to copyright law.
Let's put it this way... If you rip off someone's secret recipe copyright law may say that you're not wrong, but your conscious will tell you that you're an ass.
>I obviously don't think so. My kind of arguments are the ones being discussed at conferences, in books, documentaries and papers.
Good for you, but guess what, those things discussed in conferences? If it's about copyright law, it's off topic.
>There's a reason I used the word "theoretically". Still a 14 year old is seldom going to buy a $4000 program and companies sometimes recognizes these scenarios. Microsoft did in China for instance.
Theories are used to speculate about the unknown or things not directly observed. When evidence and common sense flies in the face of theory, the theory becomes shit and a new theory is needed. Why even present a flawed theory? Either way it doesn't even matter if a 14 y/o pirates a $4000 program he would never buy, the problem is when someone pirates something they would otherwise buy which I assure you happens a lot.
>I don't see how increasing supply in general is relevant. If I seed some flowers I'm increasing the supply of flowers, but few people would see that as a negative thing. If there were no copyright, like in (to some extent) fashion or cooking, copying would be part of reality and there would be little point to compare it to copying currency.
You can't form a business around products with unlimited supply because those products are worthless. Cooking and fashion are supply limited products. Companies use brand names, trade secrecy and manufacturing techniques that require enormous capital to protect and restrict supply. Physical limits like finite materials time, and effort also serve to restrict supply. Such is the nature of physical products, and it is because of this limit in supply that a business can be formed around it. If there was a physical product with virtually unlimited supply it would be fundamentally impossible to form a business around it.
Is there a physical product in this world that has almost unlimited supply? Yes. Air. How many business are formed around selling air? Almost none. Although, I know of one such business in canada that sells bottled clean air to people living in polluted cities in china. The only reason why this business can exist is because china has a "restricted" supply of clean air.
Information unlike physical products is not supply limited. We can copy information at a drop of a dime. Without laws, DRM or artificial supply restrictions programmed into the product itself; music, software and movies would be as worthless as the air you breath. And I said before you can't form a business around something with unlimited supply.
I made no threat. I'm just saying when you use hostile language people will react emotionally and hate you for it. This is common human behavior if you're familiar with it.
If you believe I made a threat, quote me on it. I clearly did no such thing.
That is a huge problem, and it doesn't have any nice solutions. Dumping it in a lake should be banned of course, but keeping it in gigantic on-ground piles of dirty snow is only slightly better as it will quickly ruin a huge part of parkland somewhere in the central city (can't drive it very far). Making a few large dumping grounds with groundwater protection would be great, but nimby+cost likely makes it difficult.
judging by this years' winter weather, global warming might solve this.
It is an El Nino year if I'm not mistaken, so the unusually warm Winter is expected in many areas.
Not to say I think climate change isn't a problem, but I don't think it's responsible for the current weather to the degree others seem to think. Although it would be nice to point to the current weather and say "living proof!", I think it's probably not correct.
If you are flying in through HK get a china unicom hk cross border SIM. Somewhat expensive data but a life saver in those situations since there is no firewall.
Prepared statements has been available with PDO since 2005. It might very well have had bugs, but that isn't uncommon.