Should People Learn To Code? Yes – If They Are Judges Ruling On Cases Involving Software

Recently Techdirt wrote about the heated debate on the subject of whether people should learn to code. We pointed out that some knowledge of that subject could be particularly useful in helping people understand why copyrighting APIs or patenting software is just crazy -- whatever the abstract legal arguments, in practice both make programming much, much harder. 

On Techdirt.

Spot the Porkie Pies

I don't get all this:

On Wednesday, two British judges claimed that the US had threatened to stop sharing intelligence with the UK if it made public details of Mr Mohamed's treatment.

...


The foreign secretary said the UK would "never condone" torture.

And he denied the US threatened to "break off" security cooperation if its secret papers had been made public.

So that nice young Mr Miliband is essentially saying the judges lied? Or he is lying? Or what?

Convincing, not.

Opening Up the Commons

Well, it's a start:

The Commons' members' estimates committee agreed last night it would not appeal against a ruling by the high court ordering publication of the detailed expenses of 14 prominent MPs.

I particularly liked this:

The three high court judges left little room for an appeal: "We have no doubt that the public interest is at stake. We are not here dealing with idle gossip, or public curiosity about what in truth are trivialities. The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs' salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers."

Indeed, and not only...