> What's repugnant is to coerce a man in difficult financial position to sell parts of his body that are essential to his well being and survival.
This makes no sense as an argument. An open market legitimizes the ability to choose. The choice is still there NOW, without the proposed market (i.e. the choice is the black market today).
> How about picking the best tool for the job, rather than holding a popularity contest? Too old-fashioned?
How do you judge best tool for the job? That isn't an objective question. How would I know if Ruby is the right tool for me?
The more useful question is "what does the tool offer" and Ruby doesn't have much going for it. If you are using a tool that uses Ruby (like Gherkin), you have a compelling reason to use Ruby. The cost tradeoffs, for integrating one of the many equivalent languages, usually results in the language of least resistance. This doesn't bode well for that language as the primary driver for adoption...excepting when the language has no real competition, as happened with ECMAScript->javascript in the browser.
You want Ruby/Python/Go to become the most common language and last beyond your lifetime? Get the major browsers to integrate runtimes for those languages. What happened to browser development? Instead of speeding up rendering by 12% I would gladly trade the ability to write and serve client side code in Ruby and have Mozilla automatically (with permission) download a runtime for it. Even if the performance sucked or the features were hobbled.
His name is on that list from 2008. You linked to the extension vote in 2012...of course his name isn't on it as a voting SENATOR. Obama's the PRESIDENT at that time.
> Yeah, you really understand and care about what's happening in China. Hell, you'd fit right into the Chengguan, which you probably don't even know anything about without looking it up. > GDP should contain movie production costs. > What point is there on zooming in on x or y industry? Sure there are growth sectors in any country, but we're talking about aggregates.
The majority of this post is not on the point we were discussing. As I understand it, the topic was the relative fiscal responsibility of the Chinese government, in relation to other world markets or nations. I do not think you have demonstrated the opposite or even shed some doubt on it.
Do you have any idea what the debt load is of the provincial governments? Do you even know that provinces and other lower levels of the Chinese government are taxing their constituents months, sometimes years in advance to try to maintain solvency?
So what?
Do you know that the statistics on things like the expansion of electrical power usage do not line up in any even remotely sane way with the CCP's claims of GDP growth and many economists believe that their rate of growth is now the same as the stagnant West?
The US has done quite a bit of magic (GDP now incorporates movie production costs? Do you understand what QE is?). While I can agree that numbers have been altered, I'm not sure it's relevant to compare 2 lies. that leads into...
many economists believe that their rate of growth is now the same as the stagnant West?
When you talk about "the stagnant west" I have to wonder what you even mean? The US is a different beast from the UK and Germany but similar to Greece in function, not location. A lot of people are wrong all the time about broad subjects so please be a bit more specific about differing opinions. I wonder what you mean by rate of growth? The steel industry (as well as most rare earths) has been dominated by China for over a decade, for example. I guess that's stagnant? The trade deficit in the US is obscene, mostly due to imports from China so I'm sure anyone you're talking about can at least throw out an industry sector where they are choked. Whichever economists you are referring to (just name some please?) I suspect they aren't saying what you are. I'm willing to read up on alternate theorycraft.
> You have 40-50 (possibly out-of-work) people who wasted maybe 10 minutes and a buck or two sending you a resume, or an hour composing a cover letter.
If you are applying to a Tech job and are spending any money, sending it by fax, or sending it by snail mail, you are wasting your own time (the vast majority of cases). That's not the employer's fault.
> All when you had a candidate you were happy with.
A candidate does not mean the person will take the position. That's myopic. A job interview is 2-way.
Even after a "successful" interview, things can come up that don't involve death. I have had a short listed candidate turn up on a google search (for his github) as having been arrested for child abuse the previous week.
This idea that an employer should put all their eggs in 1 basket for a given position, is irrational.
In programming, our challenges includes some tightly coupled issues. Identifying and removing errors to large programs and keeping code complexity to a minimum. Strict typing usually eliminates a number possible errors. Unexpected autoboxing is one of them, depending on the strength of the type system. You describe adding a 0 to a string, which is how people think for a simple domain. A type is a domain. An int will (in most languages) not contain.01 nor 1i nor A. Representative values notwithstanding. So I understand your point, but I disagree that people do not think in types.
Strict typing, for the most part, increases notation complexity in naming (z = ArrayList[T,H,G] vs y=ArrayMap[L,P], ad nauseam) and an added layer of boilerplate conversion code/functions for moving between types explicitly. I'm really surprised there aren't more PHDs getting proper staticians to correlate this from the glut of Java code flying about. This is a tradeoff any time you trade compiler checking for the conversion code that had to be written to support the types being used. You have to decide if that's worth the cost of a programmer's time (let's not talk about the programmer's sanity). I think it's a great tradeoff, in many languages. Type systems aren't trivial to maintain in a language and I don't envy maintainers.
Some languages are still developed saying they don't have a strict type system. While I don't have an example for Perl, PHP definitely has a demonstrable wishy-washy type system, it's just hidden from most developers. $z=1.5*2; $y=array(1,2,4,5); $t = array_key_exists($z,$y);// error! because $z is a float Since you can't have float keys, where's the autobox there? Another function, array_slice, doesn't care and converts it to int. At some point the compiler has to figure out if the value is representative or not. Every language has a strict type system at some level so, I have to disagree that it's brain dead to have one.
The question is, should it be a tool for the programmer to ensure code correctness or just a set of rules that usually ignore? One leads to, among other things, more robust and reliable large systems with an added benefit to prolonging the useful life of a programmer (old programmers usually end up in java because the compiler/IDE catches many problems) and the other path can lead to more rapid development, more intimate knowledge of the language to avoid behaviors like subtle bugs, and more flexibility in reusing code. Instead of a bunch of utility methods or conversion code for handling different possible types, you just use 1. I prefer languages without type systems because I primarily write and work on smaller systems, but I see the value in larger projects that use them. I'm not sure it's useful to call one side weaker than the other where there's no solid criteria for what's "best".
> A game that can be completed solo should not favor one type of class over another.
Er? Why not? The rogue is favored over the melee-only Hunter in WoW. It's almost impossible to balance every dynamic variable to be equal across classes. Why bother trying? It doesn't happen in a multiclass game very often that they are all equal.
> Not that the guy with the camera was being in any way professional
Just because he didn't know how to screen capture? This story has nothing to do with professionalism. It's shocking that a company built on virtual communities has a leader who is so backward.
I was around a group of people who all looked at their phone, recognized it, acknowledged it and went about their evening. Why people are even complaining, is beyond me. There's nothing wrong with what went out. It was a good test and I expected to see more in the future. The alert is a non-story (the kidnapping is a story).
> And what is this comment if not a troll for more replies?
I'm not sure you're illustrating the point. I was reframing the discussion in a useful manner, rather than the stereotypical back and forth that is not constructive.
Defenses of Linus' behavior and sometimes the poster's stated motives, allow anyone to quickly identify the/. trolls. Informative AND utilitarian. I approve of this story.
It seems it's done more than that. Nothing is a very low bar and they easily exceeded it. Not only news, not only a story passed along, not only discussed for most of the (US) independence day holiday, but we can see revisionists insisting that it's nothing. Ghandi talked about such actions that "do nothing".
> And Congress does have the authority to say, "That's all very nice, we'll give your department a $5 budget to make it all work".
But then they wouldn't get paid because allies/friends of the President are in office with overriding concerns, who would block that. In practice, the authority is hollow. It's one big elite party up there. Congress has no power that isn't levied to them, in the form of public announcement+donations+perks. The intent of the law is the least of a politician's worries.
> Later, when you have to maintain or enhance it, it is an undocumented mess with poor design, ragged interfaces, and often without even a clear understanding of what it is supposed to do.
The resulting mess has nothing to do with Agile. If your process doesn't require testing, that's often the result. Testing is the most effective way to document specifications and is a common requirement that product owners choose to throw away. That's a choice made to improve the process. The fact the PO can't understand the result, is not the fault of the process.
> I work with a developer who is 10 years my senior, but still doesn't understand how to write concurrent code and cannot be trusted to use a revision control system without causing a mess that somebody else will have to clean up. On top of that, he is really resistant to the idea of code reviews;
I'd get ready to leave the company for a better job since it's clear there's no accountability at your company. This situation cannot end well for one of you. Either you are pulled down/leg go or he is let go/quits. Without accountability you can't be promoted at an organization. This is because there's no criteria (I mean there are edge cases, but don't bet decades of your career on it). This is the business of software development and you don't get to make decisions about appropriate quality levels at your position, nor do you get to judge other people's value, nor can anyone without some progress gauge at a granular level.
You indicate you use a process where code is accepted without code reviews. You work at a shitty company. You have a process where engineers don't all use revision control. You work at a shitty company. You have peers who act out politically to avoid working/accountability. You work at a shitty company. See the pattern?
In my experience, there have been cases where we just ignore the lame duck till some accountability gets implemented and it becomes obvious, but that's not the norm. Usually some nasty argument where you're trying to rehash the issue causes a serious consequence over an irrelevant detail (made up reason) to push one of you out the door. Usually you. Start looking for a new job, bring up performance metrics in meetings, ignore him. That's all you can do. Don't try to help him, he can do that himself and has chosen not to try.
> Nobody cares about my health more than me. Nobody will investigate my ailments more than me.
That cuts both ways.
> I've lived in three different states (in the U.S.) and in two different countries (U.S. and Germany) in 12 years. That's why.
That's not compelling. Medical records are not secured documents (meaning they are not useful as factual evidence). Saying I went to such and such is much safer and is the only way you will see foreign (foreign meaning not a medical entity) records used is via direct communication. You bring in physical records, they will simply ask for copies from the remote source. When you presume to think that doctors trust patients, you've made a serious medical error and a basic error in why the medical profession works in any capacity.
> I've had doctors give diagnosis and "remedies" to me that other doctors said was blatantly wrong and in one case unethical. I can't correct my record so subsequent doctors may be incorrectly influenced. That's why.
I'm sorry you think you've bene wronged. However, you're expanding on the reason I mentioned, that is not compelling.
> Because no one knows who owns my medical record. The doctor? The hospital? The office? Insurance company? Government? Someone needs to own my record to make good decisions. It's my life and my health. It should be me. That's why.
> [x] It's a dumb idea > [x] Email doesn't work like that
Neither of those are true. Email to some people is a combination of network and client and protocol and practice and whatever else you want to tack on. That's not the only interpretation of email. Email is conceptually, a set of distinct problem and solution pairs.
How to structure a service to deliver messages over the internet that can be taxed : this requires *drum roll* Identity management along with transaction tracking and more... How to implement : government contractors....good luck How to get the public to use the service : this requires money for advertising
One of these problems is hard to solve and any problem solving, at all, is difficult for the government.
Slashdot Mirror
This is NOT tech news.
> What's repugnant is to coerce a man in difficult financial position to sell parts of his body that are essential to his well being and survival.
This makes no sense as an argument. An open market legitimizes the ability to choose. The choice is still there NOW, without the proposed market (i.e. the choice is the black market today).
> How about picking the best tool for the job, rather than holding a popularity contest? Too old-fashioned?
How do you judge best tool for the job? That isn't an objective question. How would I know if Ruby is the right tool for me?
The more useful question is "what does the tool offer" and Ruby doesn't have much going for it. If you are using a tool that uses Ruby (like Gherkin), you have a compelling reason to use Ruby. The cost tradeoffs, for integrating one of the many equivalent languages, usually results in the language of least resistance. This doesn't bode well for that language as the primary driver for adoption...excepting when the language has no real competition, as happened with ECMAScript->javascript in the browser.
You want Ruby/Python/Go to become the most common language and last beyond your lifetime? Get the major browsers to integrate runtimes for those languages. What happened to browser development? Instead of speeding up rendering by 12% I would gladly trade the ability to write and serve client side code in Ruby and have Mozilla automatically (with permission) download a runtime for it. Even if the performance sucked or the features were hobbled.
> And? Check the official vote rolls [senate.gov]. He didn't vote for it. His name isn't even in the list. Want to try again?
Please try to get the facts correct.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (also called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, H.R. 6304
The roll call is here:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168 (vote 168 not 236 which you linked to)
His name is on that list from 2008. You linked to the extension vote in 2012...of course his name isn't on it as a voting SENATOR.
Obama's the PRESIDENT at that time.
> Yeah, you really understand and care about what's happening in China. Hell, you'd fit right into the Chengguan, which you probably don't even know anything about without looking it up.
> GDP should contain movie production costs.
> What point is there on zooming in on x or y industry? Sure there are growth sectors in any country, but we're talking about aggregates.
The majority of this post is not on the point we were discussing. As I understand it, the topic was the relative fiscal responsibility of the Chinese government, in relation to other world markets or nations. I do not think you have demonstrated the opposite or even shed some doubt on it.
So what?
The US has done quite a bit of magic (GDP now incorporates movie production costs? Do you understand what QE is?). While I can agree that numbers have been altered, I'm not sure it's relevant to compare 2 lies. that leads into...
When you talk about "the stagnant west" I have to wonder what you even mean? The US is a different beast from the UK and Germany but similar to Greece in function, not location. A lot of people are wrong all the time about broad subjects so please be a bit more specific about differing opinions. I wonder what you mean by rate of growth? The steel industry (as well as most rare earths) has been dominated by China for over a decade, for example. I guess that's stagnant? The trade deficit in the US is obscene, mostly due to imports from China so I'm sure anyone you're talking about can at least throw out an industry sector where they are choked. Whichever economists you are referring to (just name some please?) I suspect they aren't saying what you are. I'm willing to read up on alternate theorycraft.
> But each of those bitcoins can be subdivided into ten million pieces
100 million. Not that it makes a big difference right now.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths
> You have 40-50 (possibly out-of-work) people who wasted maybe 10 minutes and a buck or two sending you a resume, or an hour composing a cover letter.
If you are applying to a Tech job and are spending any money, sending it by fax, or sending it by snail mail, you are wasting your own time (the vast majority of cases). That's not the employer's fault.
> All when you had a candidate you were happy with.
A candidate does not mean the person will take the position. That's myopic. A job interview is 2-way.
Even after a "successful" interview, things can come up that don't involve death. I have had a short listed candidate turn up on a google search (for his github) as having been arrested for child abuse the previous week.
This idea that an employer should put all their eggs in 1 basket for a given position, is irrational.
Did you look at the released code?
http://www.glitchthegame.com/public-domain-game-art/
Serverside code:
https://github.com/tinyspeck/glitch-GameServerJS
Is it complete? I don't know of anyone who has tried to find out.
In programming, our challenges includes some tightly coupled issues. Identifying and removing errors to large programs and keeping code complexity to a minimum. Strict typing usually eliminates a number possible errors. Unexpected autoboxing is one of them, depending on the strength of the type system. You describe adding a 0 to a string, which is how people think for a simple domain. A type is a domain. An int will (in most languages) not contain .01 nor 1i nor A. Representative values notwithstanding. So I understand your point, but I disagree that people do not think in types.
Strict typing, for the most part, increases notation complexity in naming (z = ArrayList[T,H,G] vs y=ArrayMap[L,P], ad nauseam) and an added layer of boilerplate conversion code/functions for moving between types explicitly. I'm really surprised there aren't more PHDs getting proper staticians to correlate this from the glut of Java code flying about. This is a tradeoff any time you trade compiler checking for the conversion code that had to be written to support the types being used. You have to decide if that's worth the cost of a programmer's time (let's not talk about the programmer's sanity). I think it's a great tradeoff, in many languages. Type systems aren't trivial to maintain in a language and I don't envy maintainers.
Some languages are still developed saying they don't have a strict type system. While I don't have an example for Perl, PHP definitely has a demonstrable wishy-washy type system, it's just hidden from most developers. // error! because $z is a float
$z=1.5*2;
$y=array(1,2,4,5);
$t = array_key_exists($z,$y);
Since you can't have float keys, where's the autobox there? Another function, array_slice, doesn't care and converts it to int.
At some point the compiler has to figure out if the value is representative or not. Every language has a strict type system at some level so, I have to disagree that it's brain dead to have one.
The question is, should it be a tool for the programmer to ensure code correctness or just a set of rules that usually ignore? One leads to, among other things, more robust and reliable large systems with an added benefit to prolonging the useful life of a programmer (old programmers usually end up in java because the compiler/IDE catches many problems) and the other path can lead to more rapid development, more intimate knowledge of the language to avoid behaviors like subtle bugs, and more flexibility in reusing code. Instead of a bunch of utility methods or conversion code for handling different possible types, you just use 1. I prefer languages without type systems because I primarily write and work on smaller systems, but I see the value in larger projects that use them. I'm not sure it's useful to call one side weaker than the other where there's no solid criteria for what's "best".
> Opening a US bank account generally requires a permanent address and proof of [traditional] employment
Why do you say you need proof of employment to open a bank account? Credit Unions don't. None of the major US banks do.
> A game that can be completed solo should not favor one type of class over another.
Er? Why not? The rogue is favored over the melee-only Hunter in WoW. It's almost impossible to balance every dynamic variable to be equal across classes. Why bother trying? It doesn't happen in a multiclass game very often that they are all equal.
Please add the most important project: The Great Uprooting (massive Urbanization of the Rural population).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250-million-into-cities.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Mark Sumner mentioned that there are already prebuilt massive silent cities that he has seen, awaiting the future industrial workers of China.
> Not that the guy with the camera was being in any way professional
Just because he didn't know how to screen capture? This story has nothing to do with professionalism. It's shocking that a company built on virtual communities has a leader who is so backward.
I was around a group of people who all looked at their phone, recognized it, acknowledged it and went about their evening. Why people are even complaining, is beyond me. There's nothing wrong with what went out. It was a good test and I expected to see more in the future. The alert is a non-story (the kidnapping is a story).
> And what is this comment if not a troll for more replies?
I'm not sure you're illustrating the point. I was reframing the discussion in a useful manner, rather than the stereotypical back and forth that is not constructive.
Defenses of Linus' behavior and sometimes the poster's stated motives, allow anyone to quickly identify the /. trolls. Informative AND utilitarian. I approve of this story.
> in the end does absolutely nothing
It seems it's done more than that. Nothing is a very low bar and they easily exceeded it. Not only news, not only a story passed along, not only discussed for most of the (US) independence day holiday, but we can see revisionists insisting that it's nothing. Ghandi talked about such actions that "do nothing".
> And Congress does have the authority to say, "That's all very nice, we'll give your department a $5 budget to make it all work".
But then they wouldn't get paid because allies/friends of the President are in office with overriding concerns, who would block that. In practice, the authority is hollow. It's one big elite party up there. Congress has no power that isn't levied to them, in the form of public announcement+donations+perks. The intent of the law is the least of a politician's worries.
> Later, when you have to maintain or enhance it, it is an undocumented mess with poor design, ragged interfaces, and often without even a clear understanding of what it is supposed to do.
The resulting mess has nothing to do with Agile. If your process doesn't require testing, that's often the result. Testing is the most effective way to document specifications and is a common requirement that product owners choose to throw away. That's a choice made to improve the process. The fact the PO can't understand the result, is not the fault of the process.
> Posting as AC just amplifies that fact
Not posting as AC doesn't change the fact that you're trolling. I award you no points.
> I work with a developer who is 10 years my senior, but still doesn't understand how to write concurrent code and cannot be trusted to use a revision control system without causing a mess that somebody else will have to clean up. On top of that, he is really resistant to the idea of code reviews;
I'd get ready to leave the company for a better job since it's clear there's no accountability at your company. This situation cannot end well for one of you. Either you are pulled down/leg go or he is let go/quits. Without accountability you can't be promoted at an organization. This is because there's no criteria (I mean there are edge cases, but don't bet decades of your career on it). This is the business of software development and you don't get to make decisions about appropriate quality levels at your position, nor do you get to judge other people's value, nor can anyone without some progress gauge at a granular level.
You indicate you use a process where code is accepted without code reviews. You work at a shitty company. You have a process where engineers don't all use revision control. You work at a shitty company. You have peers who act out politically to avoid working/accountability. You work at a shitty company. See the pattern?
In my experience, there have been cases where we just ignore the lame duck till some accountability gets implemented and it becomes obvious, but that's not the norm. Usually some nasty argument where you're trying to rehash the issue causes a serious consequence over an irrelevant detail (made up reason) to push one of you out the door. Usually you. Start looking for a new job, bring up performance metrics in meetings, ignore him. That's all you can do. Don't try to help him, he can do that himself and has chosen not to try.
> Nobody cares about my health more than me. Nobody will investigate my ailments more than me.
That cuts both ways.
> I've lived in three different states (in the U.S.) and in two different countries (U.S. and Germany) in 12 years. That's why.
That's not compelling. Medical records are not secured documents (meaning they are not useful as factual evidence). Saying I went to such and such is much safer and is the only way you will see foreign (foreign meaning not a medical entity) records used is via direct communication. You bring in physical records, they will simply ask for copies from the remote source. When you presume to think that doctors trust patients, you've made a serious medical error and a basic error in why the medical profession works in any capacity.
> I've had doctors give diagnosis and "remedies" to me that other doctors said was blatantly wrong and in one case unethical. I can't correct my record so subsequent doctors may be incorrectly influenced. That's why.
I'm sorry you think you've bene wronged. However, you're expanding on the reason I mentioned, that is not compelling.
> Because no one knows who owns my medical record. The doctor? The hospital? The office? Insurance company? Government? Someone needs to own my record to make good decisions. It's my life and my health. It should be me. That's why.
Ownership is completely orthogonal to the topic.
This was an excellent comment. Thank you for a dose of sensibility.
There is the elephant in the room that remains unanswered.
> Most Doctors Don't Think Patients Need Full Access To Med Records
Why do patients NEED full access to medical records? To level criticism at providers is not a compelling answer.
> [x] It's a dumb idea
> [x] Email doesn't work like that
Neither of those are true. Email to some people is a combination of network and client and protocol and practice and whatever else you want to tack on. That's not the only interpretation of email. Email is conceptually, a set of distinct problem and solution pairs.
How to structure a service to deliver messages over the internet that can be taxed : this requires *drum roll* Identity management along with transaction tracking and more...
How to implement : government contractors....good luck
How to get the public to use the service : this requires money for advertising
One of these problems is hard to solve and any problem solving, at all, is difficult for the government.