jesus christ, who the fuck would make two identical symbols differentiated by only capitalisation? (Other than these guys obviously)
It's surprising that most languages will happily let you do this. Lots of C programs have 'FOO' and 'foo'; not so many will have 'Foo' as well but it's probably more common than you think.
IMO this is only a problem if they both are the same type, e.g. both are a function, both are a type, both are a variable, both are a special keyword, things like that, because then it's hard to mix them up.
If however you can substitute one for the other in code and still have it compile, that would be terrible.
In that case, why not just use current contract law with centuries of jurisprudence? Without, "code is the contract", Ethereum is a pointless, buggy, leaky abstraction of current contract law.
Perhaps in some cases a broad consensus mechanism (like hard fork) is preferable to putting it in the hands of 12 random people.
As long as you're a Wookie. In the meantime, Droids will get screwed over.
It's always been like this. Be smug and aggressive when it goes right and cry for help when something goes wrong. The housing crisis was the same. Claim you got the thing that makes everybody rich and when everything went inevitably downhill, ask the "enemy" aka the regulator/government/police to bail you out.
It's been long time since I read Too Big To Fail, so what I recall could be wrong, but i don't think your statement about the 2008 bailout is entirely true if that book wasn't a lie. Almost the majority of Wall Street refused the bailout money. Paulson almost force them. The bailout money eventually made a profit ($15B). One could argue that the return rate was low (0.6% annualized), but still, this is far different…
AIG anyone? Try again, you are truly ignorant or a shill.
I'm glad the hard fork happened, because it makes clear and public that there is no "coding around" the possibility of human oversight. Better for that to happen early than late IMO. And people sure still seem to be onboard.
It doesn't make that clear at all. It just makes clear that the Ethereum community is committed to profiteering rather than decentralization.
I call it decentralization when a huge number of people must agree so the unethical taking of the money is reversed.
This case feels so closely to the very interesting case of Aviva France[1], where a not "well-futureproofed" life insurance contract is making a person very rich by the day. Unfortunately for Aviva, their contracts are actually law in contrast to Ethereum where if the devs feel like it, they can do/revert anything. [1]: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/02/27/2120422/meet-the-man-...
Am I missing something? I thought the devs had to have everyone agree to do a hard fork. If the devs were in complete control, that wouldn't have been necessary.
As I understand it, the DAO website explicitly stated that the code of the contract superseded any written or stated intent. Basically: The code is the law.
The actual law is the law, and contract law (and criminal law i.e. regarding fraud) states that the intent does matter. The DAO website doesn't make legislation - the code may specify the rules about which transactions the Ethereum system will approve, but in the real world the actual laws matter and they will determine whether some people will have their stuff taken away, their movement restricted, or be forced to d…
Sure, the law cares about intent.
But the question that is to be debated is, was the intention of the DAO too follow the code of the contract EVEN IF it had a bug.
There is an argument to make that, given that "the code is law" was plastered all over the DAO, that being hacked and having all their money stolen, was explicitly allowed.
> The ethereum foundations reaction to the DAO hack proved that the "code is the contract" is not true. I disagree. The code must also refer to the implementation of the Ethereum clients, and the collective will of the network participants. Those are implicit provisions of the contract, specified in advance. The Ethereum Classic chain still exists, and the thief is welcome to use it. People have simply voted with the…
I thought the whole point was to do away with "implicit" or "everybody knows" or other human-interpretation/subjective factors? If the premise is "the code is the contract, period, except we reserve the right to change the contract at any time or even to cause the contract retroactively never to have existed, based on implicit or subjective factors decided by humans and not by code", then it's a very different beast.
Except no one reserved that right. The majority of the users agreed to basically create a new currency with the same history, minus the theft /unethical taking of money (if you insist on calling it legal).
> The ethereum foundations reaction to the DAO hack proved that the "code is the contract" is not true. I disagree. The code must also refer to the implementation of the Ethereum clients, and the collective will of the network participants. Those are implicit provisions of the contract, specified in advance. The Ethereum Classic chain still exists, and the thief is welcome to use it. People have simply voted with the…
I thought the whole point was to do away with "implicit" or "everybody knows" or other human-interpretation/subjective factors? If the premise is "the code is the contract, period, except we reserve the right to change the contract at any time or even to cause the contract retroactively never to have existed, based on implicit or subjective factors decided by humans and not by code", then it's a very different beast.
In Ethereum, its important to recognize that what's happening here is not breach of contract. The contract is still executing. However, anyone is free to alter the network in any way they choose. And everyone is free to ascribe whatever value they choose to each network fork. This is a known beforehand, explicitly specified feature of the network. However, it's also known that people really really don't want to do this unless its absolutely necessary. The tension between these two things is what creates the maxim "the code is law" in most situations. The code is law, and it always will be. However, the value may shift. Ethereum Classic is still going along just fine. The value, however, has moved. Ethereum promises only that your contract is immutable in the network in which it was originally embedded. That much is an absolute guarantee. It does not promise that people will continue to use that network.
If R2-D2 used Ethereum. C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move. Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders). C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wooki…
isn't it a bit disingenuous to say it was just the position of Ethereum founders? People wanted their money back. It's almost as if some recourse for actions done in bad faith is a useful tool to have as a society...
It is.
It's not useful to have in an electronic currency. In fact, it goes against the whole idea behind ethereum.
>Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.