Re: Making money from Java


"Judson McClendon" <judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pm_mf.1532$w7.312@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> I once arrived at a busy junction and, knowing that traffic coming from
>> the right was unsighted and that people near me were similarly
>> unsighted, I looked right to see if there was a car coming. There was.
>> There was also a woman about to step into the road (she hadn't checked
>> for traffic and had not slowed). I did nothing to stop her from having
>> what could have been a fatal accident. Fortunately, the car driver was
>> able to stop in time. Now, if she had been hit and died, would I have
>> been free of blame knowing that I could have stopped her from stepping
>> into the road? That one has dogged me for years and although I was not
>> at fault by action, I was at fault by inaction.
>
> But if you had warned her (as God has warned us) and she ignored you and
> went anyway, then it was her decision, her fault.

The problem with this analogy is that God could have given us much
better warnings than poorly translated documents that are several thousands
of years old.

If Alistair somehow knew 40 years ahead that the woman was going to get
into an accident, and he decided to write a warning, and then pass it to a
German friend to translate it to German, and then pass that german text to a
Chinese friend to translate the German version, then pass it to a French
friend who is learning English to translate the Chinese version back to
English, and then to mail that final English translation to the parents of
the woman before her birth...

... People might ask Alistair "Why didn't you just tell her directly,
right before crossing the intersection, instead of going through all these
convolutions? The way you did it now, it just seems like a sick joke."

- Oliver


.

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