Actually for once I agree with the PHP team here. My biggest complaint with PHP is that many functions give you an arbitrary result when you feed bad data to it rather than return something obvious to show you are trying to do something stupid. In this case the user should be checking to see if the result was NULL and handle the error appropriately rather than happily accepting 0 and not knowing if there was an error or if that was the correct result. Basically he is refusing to validate his input and wanting PHP to do it for him (in a bad way) which is the core of problems like SQL Injection attacks.
The formatting in DateTime is a perfect example of their absurdity where if you specify 'Y' (4 digit year) in your format but give it a less than 4 digit value (say 12 instead of 2012) it happily makes the assumption that you left out leading zeros (e.g. 12 = 0012). Even better is that if you give a month value greater than 12, it translates that into extra year(s) (int(val/12)) that gets added to the supplied year and then makes the month the remainder (e.g. 19/27/2012 against m/d/Y = 07/27/2013). If I screwed something up, I want to know about it so I can deal with it.
Then there is the inconsistent error handling functions. Most errors return NULL or false. Of that cross section most don't give you any kind of feedback as to what the error is (though the ones that give you no control and write to STDOUT/ERR really piss me off). The language has Exceptions built in. Use them!!!
And my personal pet peeve is how it handles the __FILE__ macro if there are symlinks in the path. Contrary to every other language it translates those links so that you can't see the ACTUAL path used to reference the file in question. Even though PHP has functions to translate links in paths the developers continue to claim this is as it should be and refuse to fix it.
That is assuming that free antivirus is as good as paid, which in my experience it is not.
I have had to clean up systems running so-called free antivirus and some of them had 30+ varieties of malware.
I use a paid software at home and it has already paid for itself several times over in blocked attacks.
At my last job we hosted various high profile public websites and because of organizational rules we had to use specific paid-for AV software on the servers. We also ran Clam as well and in 2 years at that job Clam was the only one that ever identified (and we verified) infected files that had been uploaded to the sites. So IIRC that was somewhere in the $10k range for those 2 years for zero protection. Not much money to a large scale operation, but galling all the same to me.
If someone knows of an actual virus for iOS (and for OS X too by the way) I'm very interested to know about it.
It only effected morons that didn't know changing the default password after jail breaking was a good idea, but there was the ikee worm. More a flaw in the fleshy bag of water holding the phone than it's OS, but still a self replicating piece of malware all the same.
If I open source a mortgage calculator that does an incorrect calculation, does anyone really have the grounds to sue me? After all, they have the source code, and are just as capable as me of finding a mistake in the code. And if they aren't capable of understanding the source, maybe they shouldn't be using it.
You mean like recalling and banning lawn darts because people are too stupid to figure out not to throw them at each other or stand under them when throwing them straight up? Or like all those people that (using your example) listened to their realtors/brokers and couldn't figure out that no they really couldn't afford that house? Or maybe like the guy that just won class action status against Apple because he was too busy to be a parent and use the tools Apple provided so his kid ran up a "large" bill with micro payments?
In the US people will sue over anything and really licenses and agreements mean less than which judge you get and what type of mood they are in that day. I understand and agree with the idea that you shouldn't be able to sign away your rights, but that should be balanced by common sense and responsibility (e.g. it's not the MFGs fault that a dart impaled you if you stood under it).
You seem to think because you see "PHP" that people barely capable of writing anything in the language will be writing code for something that requires rigorous quality control. Truth is, these "programmer" types as you put it are more likely to stick to what they know best and leave the technical stuff to people who know that best. Also, who's to say that these "programmer" types won't try to pretend like they know C, or Java, or SQL? A language is just a language, and anyone can learn any language, but it's how the language is used and the person using it that determines its usefulness to whatever it is applied to.
The evidence is overwhelming that the average PHP programmer has no business writing code that sees the light of day. At one point something that would process credit cards would require "rigorous quality control", but now many such applications see a minimum of testing (because many companies view QA as more of a cost sink than Dev). It's not a fault of PHP itself, I think it is more a side effect of things like LAMP have drastically reduced the barriers of entry. My issue with these types of programmers is that they pick up a book or two and jump into it with no background understanding and then start following the advise/examples of people that did the same thing which perpetuates the bad things that allow things like SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting attacks. You are correct, and I share the opinion, that languages are just languages and if you can learn one you can learn another. The difference with the more traditional languages, however, is that they don't have quite the immediate result of something like LAMP and don't have as many "build your e-commerce site in an hour" type tutorials (e.g. you don't see an abundance of sites/people trying to convince you that you can become a C programmer in hours/days with no experience). All languages have similar issues and the fault is on the programmer not knowing how to deal with them. My issue (and what I think you aren't understanding) is that this type of programmer doesn't understand what they don't know so they won't stop and ask themselves if they should leave it to someone else. PHP just seems to attract more than it's fair share of idiots (or maybe it just seems that way since PHP tends to be more public facing so the results of bad code are more obvious).
I think in this case, it's the company that hires the "programmer" type who's responsible for any dangerous mishaps rather than the "programmer" him/herself. That probably would be enough motivation for that company to hire only the best developers to write code for their robots.
Firstly, you obviously apparently needed me to add a/sarcasm tag. Secondly, history has again shown that companies are generally are in a race to the bottom for development costs. Bad/Inexperienced programmers (and it's not just PHP by any stretch) cost less than the rockstar programmer with decades of experience that really knows what they are doing. From a simple economics perspective a company will usually hire 2 $50k "Web programmers" than one $100k programmer because (until the damage has been done) it's hard to quantify the additional costs of extra time it takes to complete the project, time spent fixing "basic" defects, and the damage of security problems. And yes I am fully aware that salary has no bearing on quality, it's an example. I do, however, know that experienced programmers that can command high salaries can't compete Web/PHP space because they are competing with cheap labor and quality is not a factor (or a minimal one at best). Yes it is the companies fault for hiring inadequate talent, but that is little consolation to those with the talent that get passed over or the guy that had his arm ripped off because of a simple mistake that wasn't tested/validated very well.
Also, in the case of open source robotics using a LAMP stack, it's assumed to be "use at your
All I can think of is, do we really want the typical PHP "programmer" types writing code for robots? Really? It's bad enough what a SQL injection attack can do now, imagine what can happen when it effects something with arms to beat people over the head with (though if it could be directed at the programmer...).
On the other hand, the cynical side of me thinks this is just so Mark can monetize giving the information to employers as part of a "background check". They could provide "compatibility rankings" based on employeer criteria without ever letting the employeer see the private data itself and thus avoiding privacy issues. Yeap, I think I'll keep with my no Facebook policy and if someone doesn't want to hire me because I don't have one, I don't want to work for them anyway.
Come on. His antics are the best thing about living in this area (at least in the close area not impacted by said antics). After all "da bitch" set him up...
I miss the insecure days of trolling my co-workers with an app that made their mouse move one pixel in a random direction (was great on one guy who used hot edges to switch desktops and the mouse got stuck in the corner constantly switching desktops). Alternatively my office mate had a pop up window come up that would stay a few pixels away from their cursor. The scary part was the SA that was half through ordering replacement hardware before we came clean...
Except this isn't about the conversation, this is about people trying to drowned out the conversation.
Do you really think this technology won't be abused to silence disenting opinions in a conversation even if it is being delivered in a calm and well thought out manner? I don't buy into the "big brother" mass usage, but stuff like this is ALWAYS abused.
Hell, the RIAA will probably want to use it at concerts to prevent people from "violating their IP" by singing along...
I don't think this term means what you think it means.
A free market does not mean you have the right to buy/sell whatever you want from/to anyone. What it really means is that PayPal has every right to do things like this so long as they don't violate certain rules (e.g. discrimination of protected groups, etc..), but you and the publisher have the right to take your business elsewhere. If enough users go elsewhere, then they either shut down (and there will be much rejoicing!) or alter their policies.
GoDaddy and their SOPA stance was a perfect example of the free market in action. They had every right to side with SOPA if that's what they think is right, but their customers had the right to tell them where to stick SOPA and move to a competing service.
All that said, PayPal can go pound sand for this and many other violations of common sense and decency. If PayPal is the only accepted payment method, I don't need it that badly...
but i thought anything they find that is illegal but isn't what they were looking for is now wrongfully obtained and can no longer be used against you.
IANAL either, but my understanding (in the physical world) is that if they have a warrant to search your garage for the dead body and stumble onto your cocaine stash that you keep under the workbench, you're boned on that too. I believe they have to get the warrant amended at that point, but so long as the new illegal item was found during the reasonable execution of the original warrant I think they are good. Now if the warrant is for the garage and you (because you are an idiot) let them use your bathroom and they rifle through your dresser when you are not paying attention, then anything they find is inadmissible (at least without a battle).
How that would/should translate in the digital world of access to a harddrive I don't know. My gut says that warrants should be limited to "directory X", but if they already knew that much would they really even need the contents anymore? Allowing the them to search the entire harddrive seems more akin to "we know he's done *something* bad so we want to search him, his car, his office, and anywhere else he has been in the last 10 years".
This is pretty much standard procedure for towing AWD vehicles as well so it's not like the capability/knowledge doesnt widely exist.
Please make sure I never buy a used AWD vehicle that you have owned and for the love of all AWD systems please learn how they work and how to take care of them.
Unless you can put the transfer case in neutral (only possible in some true 4WD systems to the best of my knowledge) or you pull the drive shafts (not something you are likely to do on the side of the road), an AWD vehicle must be towed flat. While a rare few will let you flat tow them with all 4 wheels on the ground, that vast majority require a flat bed.
Improperly towing an AWD vehicle will damage the system (almost always the transfer case) and I've seen them crap themselves in as little as 5 miles of being towed improperly (but properly for a standard 2WD car). It's usually a multi-thousand dollar repair at that point.
Just the minor little inconvenience of those squishy things we call bodies not really caring for the G force generated by such acceleration...
I do agree with you though as I too think there will be practical applications for sending non-compressible items into orbit (or beyond) until we can address the limitations with our squishiness. I'd be interested to see a comparison of the energy requirements of such a launch compared to the current means, from the basics I understand these things take a crap ton of energy to drive them.
Python doesn't care whether you're using tabs or spaces, so long as you use a consistent amount of it to denote blocks.
The issue isn't if Python cares or not. The issue is what it does when multiple programmers have differing standards and work on the same file. The issue is more noticeable when you are taking over someone else's code, especially when the prior maintainer isn't available for initial guidance.
You still seem to fail to understand my point that you should not need a special editor to help you correctly understand what the code is doing. The code should read the same regardless of if I'm using the "super-duper IDE of choice", I've just cat'd the file at the command line, or looking at it in vi in a co-worker's shell that uses different tab stops.
And your semi-colon comparison with C doesn't work since the equivalent would be forgetting to hit return in Python code (which I would argue is equally as obvious (if not more so) as the compiler error for a missing semi-colon). A better comparison would be forgetting your closing } against an extra or missing "tab", but again the code fails to compile where Python will go ahead and execute it and the line that is shifted the wrong way gets executed when you don't expect it to.
White space is useful and it is important to help indicate what the writer was thinking, but it shouldn't be integral to the point that if the whitespace gets clobbered functionality changes.
Yes there are ways* to deal with cleaning them up, the point is that you shouldn't have to spend time dorking around with it. In any structured (not whitespace dependent) language I can vent my spleen if I disagree with someone's formatting and then move on (cleaning as I go or adhering to their standard) without damaging any logic or misunderstanding it due to different tab stops.
* - The main issue with any solution that I'm aware of is that until you get into complex regexes that are more than "a few key strokes", is that none of them work in all cases (Gripp's example for instance would clobber tabs found in strings).
Honestly, if it wasn't for the whitespace dependence I would probably like Python. In fact I did enjoy (at some level) working with the multi-level abomination that is Jython. I want my compiler to smack me in the head when I do something blatantly stupid, but Python won't do that if I hit tab twice instead of once like I meant to end a block.
Works great until you inherit code from some moron that used tabs in some places and 8 spaces in others (including alternating between lines right next to each other), then it makes your life hell sorting it all out. Matters get further complicated when your editor has a different setting of tabs than someone else on the same project.
Using tabs for whitespace in code is the work of an angry little daemon, but writing a language that is dependent on whitespace (and accepts tabs) when "proper" white spacing has been a religious war for decades prior to the birth of said language is the work of pure evil that makes Satan himself cringe.
I think it's less about the distribution channel than it is about perception. Most people hold the belief that "straight to video" is a crap product. While this is typically true (I think) for STV movies released by the big studios*, it's certainly not true of a lot of the Indie/Foreign films out there.
Until/Unless the general population (which I think is also of the "I didn't go to the theater to 'read'" mentality) can get past needing a movie to be in a theater to validate that it's "good", using the Internet as your sole distribution channel won't work.
* Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if that's not at least part of the reason they release crap straight to video. Get some suckers (parents that can't tell their kids no) and reenforce the quality/value stereotype.
I don't believe Apple has ever released a revision to the previous OS after the new OS is available. Especially after the current OS has been shipping for over a year.
Security patches are a different story, but they don't add/improve functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually for once I agree with the PHP team here. My biggest complaint with PHP is that many functions give you an arbitrary result when you feed bad data to it rather than return something obvious to show you are trying to do something stupid. In this case the user should be checking to see if the result was NULL and handle the error appropriately rather than happily accepting 0 and not knowing if there was an error or if that was the correct result. Basically he is refusing to validate his input and wanting PHP to do it for him (in a bad way) which is the core of problems like SQL Injection attacks.
The formatting in DateTime is a perfect example of their absurdity where if you specify 'Y' (4 digit year) in your format but give it a less than 4 digit value (say 12 instead of 2012) it happily makes the assumption that you left out leading zeros (e.g. 12 = 0012). Even better is that if you give a month value greater than 12, it translates that into extra year(s) (int(val/12)) that gets added to the supplied year and then makes the month the remainder (e.g. 19/27/2012 against m/d/Y = 07/27/2013). If I screwed something up, I want to know about it so I can deal with it.
Then there is the inconsistent error handling functions. Most errors return NULL or false. Of that cross section most don't give you any kind of feedback as to what the error is (though the ones that give you no control and write to STDOUT/ERR really piss me off). The language has Exceptions built in. Use them!!!
And my personal pet peeve is how it handles the __FILE__ macro if there are symlinks in the path. Contrary to every other language it translates those links so that you can't see the ACTUAL path used to reference the file in question. Even though PHP has functions to translate links in paths the developers continue to claim this is as it should be and refuse to fix it.
I dunno, sounds like they are going to try the Oracle model of business and it sure seems to work well enough for them.
That is assuming that free antivirus is as good as paid, which in my experience it is not. I have had to clean up systems running so-called free antivirus and some of them had 30+ varieties of malware. I use a paid software at home and it has already paid for itself several times over in blocked attacks.
At my last job we hosted various high profile public websites and because of organizational rules we had to use specific paid-for AV software on the servers. We also ran Clam as well and in 2 years at that job Clam was the only one that ever identified (and we verified) infected files that had been uploaded to the sites. So IIRC that was somewhere in the $10k range for those 2 years for zero protection. Not much money to a large scale operation, but galling all the same to me.
Dropping people off tall buildings?
If someone knows of an actual virus for iOS (and for OS X too by the way) I'm very interested to know about it.
It only effected morons that didn't know changing the default password after jail breaking was a good idea, but there was the ikee worm. More a flaw in the fleshy bag of water holding the phone than it's OS, but still a self replicating piece of malware all the same.
If I open source a mortgage calculator that does an incorrect calculation, does anyone really have the grounds to sue me? After all, they have the source code, and are just as capable as me of finding a mistake in the code. And if they aren't capable of understanding the source, maybe they shouldn't be using it.
You mean like recalling and banning lawn darts because people are too stupid to figure out not to throw them at each other or stand under them when throwing them straight up? Or like all those people that (using your example) listened to their realtors/brokers and couldn't figure out that no they really couldn't afford that house? Or maybe like the guy that just won class action status against Apple because he was too busy to be a parent and use the tools Apple provided so his kid ran up a "large" bill with micro payments?
In the US people will sue over anything and really licenses and agreements mean less than which judge you get and what type of mood they are in that day. I understand and agree with the idea that you shouldn't be able to sign away your rights, but that should be balanced by common sense and responsibility (e.g. it's not the MFGs fault that a dart impaled you if you stood under it).
Return his equipment OR ELSE.....!
We'll put you in the COMFY CHAIR!
You seem to think because you see "PHP" that people barely capable of writing anything in the language will be writing code for something that requires rigorous quality control. Truth is, these "programmer" types as you put it are more likely to stick to what they know best and leave the technical stuff to people who know that best. Also, who's to say that these "programmer" types won't try to pretend like they know C, or Java, or SQL? A language is just a language, and anyone can learn any language, but it's how the language is used and the person using it that determines its usefulness to whatever it is applied to.
The evidence is overwhelming that the average PHP programmer has no business writing code that sees the light of day. At one point something that would process credit cards would require "rigorous quality control", but now many such applications see a minimum of testing (because many companies view QA as more of a cost sink than Dev). It's not a fault of PHP itself, I think it is more a side effect of things like LAMP have drastically reduced the barriers of entry. My issue with these types of programmers is that they pick up a book or two and jump into it with no background understanding and then start following the advise/examples of people that did the same thing which perpetuates the bad things that allow things like SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting attacks. You are correct, and I share the opinion, that languages are just languages and if you can learn one you can learn another. The difference with the more traditional languages, however, is that they don't have quite the immediate result of something like LAMP and don't have as many "build your e-commerce site in an hour" type tutorials (e.g. you don't see an abundance of sites/people trying to convince you that you can become a C programmer in hours/days with no experience). All languages have similar issues and the fault is on the programmer not knowing how to deal with them. My issue (and what I think you aren't understanding) is that this type of programmer doesn't understand what they don't know so they won't stop and ask themselves if they should leave it to someone else. PHP just seems to attract more than it's fair share of idiots (or maybe it just seems that way since PHP tends to be more public facing so the results of bad code are more obvious).
I think in this case, it's the company that hires the "programmer" type who's responsible for any dangerous mishaps rather than the "programmer" him/herself. That probably would be enough motivation for that company to hire only the best developers to write code for their robots.
Firstly, you obviously apparently needed me to add a /sarcasm tag. Secondly, history has again shown that companies are generally are in a race to the bottom for development costs. Bad/Inexperienced programmers (and it's not just PHP by any stretch) cost less than the rockstar programmer with decades of experience that really knows what they are doing. From a simple economics perspective a company will usually hire 2 $50k "Web programmers" than one $100k programmer because (until the damage has been done) it's hard to quantify the additional costs of extra time it takes to complete the project, time spent fixing "basic" defects, and the damage of security problems. And yes I am fully aware that salary has no bearing on quality, it's an example. I do, however, know that experienced programmers that can command high salaries can't compete Web/PHP space because they are competing with cheap labor and quality is not a factor (or a minimal one at best). Yes it is the companies fault for hiring inadequate talent, but that is little consolation to those with the talent that get passed over or the guy that had his arm ripped off because of a simple mistake that wasn't tested/validated very well.
Also, in the case of open source robotics using a LAMP stack, it's assumed to be "use at your
All I can think of is, do we really want the typical PHP "programmer" types writing code for robots? Really? It's bad enough what a SQL injection attack can do now, imagine what can happen when it effects something with arms to beat people over the head with (though if it could be directed at the programmer...).
It makes me feel dirty, but "Go Facebook!"
On the other hand, the cynical side of me thinks this is just so Mark can monetize giving the information to employers as part of a "background check". They could provide "compatibility rankings" based on employeer criteria without ever letting the employeer see the private data itself and thus avoiding privacy issues. Yeap, I think I'll keep with my no Facebook policy and if someone doesn't want to hire me because I don't have one, I don't want to work for them anyway.
We used to have such rights too. But wether it's enforceable or not in another country doesn't matter to the majority of their subscriber base.
Look up the SCOTUS ruling from 2011 about AT&T and their contracts requiring binding arbitration. It's already been done, tested, and upheld.
Really? I must have missed the repeal of the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Not a repeal, but a sound gutting:
Come on. His antics are the best thing about living in this area (at least in the close area not impacted by said antics). After all "da bitch" set him up...
I miss the insecure days of trolling my co-workers with an app that made their mouse move one pixel in a random direction (was great on one guy who used hot edges to switch desktops and the mouse got stuck in the corner constantly switching desktops). Alternatively my office mate had a pop up window come up that would stay a few pixels away from their cursor. The scary part was the SA that was half through ordering replacement hardware before we came clean...
Except this isn't about the conversation, this is about people trying to drowned out the conversation.
Do you really think this technology won't be abused to silence disenting opinions in a conversation even if it is being delivered in a calm and well thought out manner? I don't buy into the "big brother" mass usage, but stuff like this is ALWAYS abused.
Hell, the RIAA will probably want to use it at concerts to prevent people from "violating their IP" by singing along...
"Free Market"
I don't think this term means what you think it means.
A free market does not mean you have the right to buy/sell whatever you want from/to anyone. What it really means is that PayPal has every right to do things like this so long as they don't violate certain rules (e.g. discrimination of protected groups, etc..), but you and the publisher have the right to take your business elsewhere. If enough users go elsewhere, then they either shut down (and there will be much rejoicing!) or alter their policies.
GoDaddy and their SOPA stance was a perfect example of the free market in action. They had every right to side with SOPA if that's what they think is right, but their customers had the right to tell them where to stick SOPA and move to a competing service.
All that said, PayPal can go pound sand for this and many other violations of common sense and decency. If PayPal is the only accepted payment method, I don't need it that badly...
but i thought anything they find that is illegal but isn't what they were looking for is now wrongfully obtained and can no longer be used against you.
IANAL either, but my understanding (in the physical world) is that if they have a warrant to search your garage for the dead body and stumble onto your cocaine stash that you keep under the workbench, you're boned on that too. I believe they have to get the warrant amended at that point, but so long as the new illegal item was found during the reasonable execution of the original warrant I think they are good. Now if the warrant is for the garage and you (because you are an idiot) let them use your bathroom and they rifle through your dresser when you are not paying attention, then anything they find is inadmissible (at least without a battle).
How that would/should translate in the digital world of access to a harddrive I don't know. My gut says that warrants should be limited to "directory X", but if they already knew that much would they really even need the contents anymore? Allowing the them to search the entire harddrive seems more akin to "we know he's done *something* bad so we want to search him, his car, his office, and anywhere else he has been in the last 10 years".
This is pretty much standard procedure for towing AWD vehicles as well so it's not like the capability/knowledge doesnt widely exist.
Please make sure I never buy a used AWD vehicle that you have owned and for the love of all AWD systems please learn how they work and how to take care of them.
Unless you can put the transfer case in neutral (only possible in some true 4WD systems to the best of my knowledge) or you pull the drive shafts (not something you are likely to do on the side of the road), an AWD vehicle must be towed flat. While a rare few will let you flat tow them with all 4 wheels on the ground, that vast majority require a flat bed.
Improperly towing an AWD vehicle will damage the system (almost always the transfer case) and I've seen them crap themselves in as little as 5 miles of being towed improperly (but properly for a standard 2WD car). It's usually a multi-thousand dollar repair at that point.
Just the minor little inconvenience of those squishy things we call bodies not really caring for the G force generated by such acceleration...
I do agree with you though as I too think there will be practical applications for sending non-compressible items into orbit (or beyond) until we can address the limitations with our squishiness. I'd be interested to see a comparison of the energy requirements of such a launch compared to the current means, from the basics I understand these things take a crap ton of energy to drive them.
Python doesn't care whether you're using tabs or spaces, so long as you use a consistent amount of it to denote blocks.
The issue isn't if Python cares or not. The issue is what it does when multiple programmers have differing standards and work on the same file. The issue is more noticeable when you are taking over someone else's code, especially when the prior maintainer isn't available for initial guidance.
You still seem to fail to understand my point that you should not need a special editor to help you correctly understand what the code is doing. The code should read the same regardless of if I'm using the "super-duper IDE of choice", I've just cat'd the file at the command line, or looking at it in vi in a co-worker's shell that uses different tab stops.
And your semi-colon comparison with C doesn't work since the equivalent would be forgetting to hit return in Python code (which I would argue is equally as obvious (if not more so) as the compiler error for a missing semi-colon). A better comparison would be forgetting your closing } against an extra or missing "tab", but again the code fails to compile where Python will go ahead and execute it and the line that is shifted the wrong way gets executed when you don't expect it to.
White space is useful and it is important to help indicate what the writer was thinking, but it shouldn't be integral to the point that if the whitespace gets clobbered functionality changes.
Yes there are ways* to deal with cleaning them up, the point is that you shouldn't have to spend time dorking around with it. In any structured (not whitespace dependent) language I can vent my spleen if I disagree with someone's formatting and then move on (cleaning as I go or adhering to their standard) without damaging any logic or misunderstanding it due to different tab stops.
* - The main issue with any solution that I'm aware of is that until you get into complex regexes that are more than "a few key strokes", is that none of them work in all cases (Gripp's example for instance would clobber tabs found in strings).
Honestly, if it wasn't for the whitespace dependence I would probably like Python. In fact I did enjoy (at some level) working with the multi-level abomination that is Jython. I want my compiler to smack me in the head when I do something blatantly stupid, but Python won't do that if I hit tab twice instead of once like I meant to end a block.
eh. find replace "\t" with " " ? just a thought.
Works great until you inherit code from some moron that used tabs in some places and 8 spaces in others (including alternating between lines right next to each other), then it makes your life hell sorting it all out. Matters get further complicated when your editor has a different setting of tabs than someone else on the same project.
Using tabs for whitespace in code is the work of an angry little daemon, but writing a language that is dependent on whitespace (and accepts tabs) when "proper" white spacing has been a religious war for decades prior to the birth of said language is the work of pure evil that makes Satan himself cringe.
I think it's less about the distribution channel than it is about perception. Most people hold the belief that "straight to video" is a crap product. While this is typically true (I think) for STV movies released by the big studios*, it's certainly not true of a lot of the Indie/Foreign films out there.
Until/Unless the general population (which I think is also of the "I didn't go to the theater to 'read'" mentality) can get past needing a movie to be in a theater to validate that it's "good", using the Internet as your sole distribution channel won't work.
* Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if that's not at least part of the reason they release crap straight to video. Get some suckers (parents that can't tell their kids no) and reenforce the quality/value stereotype.
I don't believe Apple has ever released a revision to the previous OS after the new OS is available. Especially after the current OS has been shipping for over a year.
Security patches are a different story, but they don't add/improve functionality.