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VFAT patent avoidance and patent workaroundsVFAT patent avoidance and patent workaroundsPosted Jun 30, 2009 21:29 UTC (Tue) by jordanb (subscriber, #45668)In reply to: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds by nix Parent article: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds
> I'd say the law is *exactly* like what code would be like if it was
> written over many centuries, by people who never understood more than a > fraction of the codebase, and with a goal of consistency above all despite > that.
I think that's an excessively reductionist view of human society and the way it interacts with its laws.
Code is a set of instructions performed by a machine. This is true even of 'big ball of mud' type systems. Any attempt to reduce the operation of human society to that of a machine will get into the more extensional (and pointless) aspects of the philosophy of AI.
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VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds Posted Jun 30, 2009 21:54 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I was actually being cynical about code quality, rather than reductionist
about the law. I suspect that code *will* get as hopelessly inconsistent as legal systems do, if you let them accrete for as long: i.e., the driving factor here is time.
(That's why I mentioned old laws getting ignored: that's one major
VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds Posted Jul 1, 2009 5:22 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
> That's why I mentioned old laws getting ignored: that's one major difference, because old code doesn't get ignored
Heh, I just read it as part of the analogy, with the old laws like the old modules that end up sitting in a corner mumbling quietly to themselves without actually being hooked into anything that matters anymore.
VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds Posted Jul 1, 2009 22:05 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
That works, too.
Anyway, my apologies for introducing an analogy unrelated to cars, but as
VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds Posted Jul 1, 2009 22:47 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
As part of the rising interest in "green" computing, I propose that henceforth we make analogies involving biking, walking, and light rail whenever possible.
VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds Posted Jul 3, 2009 19:03 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Code is a set of instructions performed by a machine. That's a bad way of thinking about code. It's an accurate description of machine code, but since the work of Grace Hopper, good code is a description of the solution to a computational problem. It's written in a language simple enough that a computer can understand the solution and implement it. So calling code instructions to a computer is like calling a manuscript instructions to a publisher. So the way I would compare law to code is that law is what code would be like if we had much more advanced computer technology (and I do think we'll get there eventually). Imagine code that technically says to iterate forever, but the computer understands you didn't really want an infinite loop and stops after a reasonable number of iterations. Law can do that.
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