You're correct--two wrongs do not make a right. But, in my opinion, a C compiler is more important than much of the other crap they currently distribute.
Yea, but templates without deterministic destruction would *not* let you do this. The OP only mentioned templates as if they were the *sole* mechanism supporting this. That demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding in my opinion.
Umm, don't you mean that you use C++'s deterministic (and automatic) destruction to 'free' memory for you? What do templates have to do with it? Templates only make your code generic enough to use with many types--they do *not* help you with freeing memory (destructors do).
Are you aware that fossilization of entire trees occurred almost instantaneously during the eruption of Mt. St Helens? If that doesn't challenge conventional thought on such matters, nothing does. All I am saying is that there is way too much conjecture being passed off as established truth.
And, about the potentiality of the earth being created to appear much older than it actually is:
I, in fact, believe that is exactly what happened. After all, Adam, Eve & everything else mentioned in the account in Genesis were created in a fully 'mature' state. When you consider the cosmos and the sheer magnitude, depth and richness of the creation and come to a conclusion that it must have taken billions or trillions of years to come about, you are only validating the greatness and magnificence of the Creator. The fact that he may have done it in 7 days (or 7,000 years) is really irrelevant as it's obvious that a Creator that could create such a system could also make it appear much older than it is (to natural methods). And, if you believe in the miracles described in the NT and the OT, there's absolutely no reason to believe that God would be constrained by natural law (especially during the creation of said laws and those creatures under their dominion).
However, I see holding this view as no reason to not also question the scientific status quo (especially when we see materialists expressing their metaphysical desperation in the form such gems as the 'multiple world hypothesis'). You only have to turn on the Discovery channel for a few minutes before you see such flimsy imaginations touted as absolute truth.
No one can prove that 1 + 1 will always equal 2, we can only try it many times and get the same result every time. A single differing result (when validated) would throw all of mathmatics into disarray, but most mathematicians don't lose much sleep worrying about this possibility.
Mathematicians do indeed not worry about such things. But, they are not interested in a holistic view either or they would not have so many 'theories'. Of course, Godel taught us that a holistic view is impossible in this universe (and I mean 'complete' + 'consistent'). This single discovery in my view dealt a death blow to modernity and gave rise to post-modernism. This isn't to say that rationalism is misguided or shouldn't be continued, but it does mean, to me at least, that it is a hopelessly limited philosophy with respect to complete universal truth--i.e., reality outruns knowledge.
The claim that all our methods of dating things older than a few thousand years should be so wrong as to be off by a factor of ~one million and no one in the trade has spotted this discrepancy (or that they're all part of a consipiricy, or anything else) requires justification. Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, and all that.
About radiometric dating: there seem to me to be quite a few assumptions underlying this technique (not the least of which is that equilibrium has been reached). See:
this. If you have any specific rebuttals to those points, I'd be interested in hearing them.
And actually MS windows is a good option too. Just use 'PostMessage' instead of 'SendMessage' and run all windows in separate processor-bound threads.:-)
And, yes, I'm joking. That would be a pain to manage.
'Should' and 'do' are not the same though. Even Haskell (which *should* do these things automatically) does not. You still essentially have to specify a little 'tag' to say 'parallelize this'. It's a lot less verbose than the equivalent parallel_for in C# or C++, but still not as automatic as I'd like.
I'm not sure if other FP languages/compilers do this, but it is certainly possible in theory (and the Haskell guys are working on it too I think).
Yea but if you did that, you'd be missing the point. That's like using C++ as if it were C. You're really missing the elegance of the language/paradigm when you do that.
I won't be drawn on inter-denominational rivalries, there's enough of that sort of bickering in the world, and I don't believe its relevant.
Promoting such rivalries wasn't my intent [I think you'll find that I'm one of the more ecumenical guys you'll find]. I was merely looking at the historical record about such things. It's quite clear from the writings/histories that Origen, Augustine et al were rather influenced by Greek hellenistic thought (as is much of the Western world to this day). This is a fact that many believers and non-believers alike miss.
Creationism is clearly not a materialistic argument, but I hold that ID is. Furthermore, if used as a grounds for theology, that theology is based on a God-of-the-Gaps argument (we don't know how that works, so it must be God) which is always liable to crumble.
ID does not say 'we don't know how X works' it says rather 'X is too complex to have possibly been arrived at by a series of slight modifications, therefore, it must have been designed'.
(For instance, claims that the bacterial phlagellum could not have evolved as its components could serve no useful purpose were significantly undermined when one of those components was found to play a role in one of the offensive mechanisms of Salmonella - reference here [newscientist.com] if you can stand the annoying tone)
It takes not only one of the components of a system to have potential alternative beneficial uses, but for all of them. Not only does it take that, but it takes an already working 'system' (and the system must remain working at every stage carrying along all these 'extra' parts [which may very and most likely would be hinderances] until the day that they can magically come together).
Lastly, yes, I agree, evolution only makes sense if you take 6-day creationism off the table, as the timescales required for anything but the most basic speciation require significantly more than several thousand years. But what takes that off the table, I believe, is the evidence of our own eyes and minds.
Scientists today do way too much extrapolation. All of this dating and so on assumes that much has remained constant. We do this, of course, because it is our only option. If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to say anything about the far past (let alone the 'moment' of the big bang). But, we continue to build and build and no one really goes back to question which foundation are we building on--what are our real base assumptions? To question that, I think requires more thought, not less (and yes, you may enter into the realm of philosophy, but so be it). Philosophy is also a thinking man's game--it is still a pursuit for truth (which is what science purports to seek).
Slashdot Mirror
What advice do you have for one of those 'good developers' who wishes to work with an equally talented team?
stuff nobody needs
Haskell too!
How Bosnia and Mogadishu?
You're correct--two wrongs do not make a right. But, in my opinion, a C compiler is more important than much of the other crap they currently distribute.
Right, and MS never bloats installations with bundled stuff that the vast majority of users won't ever need?
What about gems?
Yea, but templates without deterministic destruction would *not* let you do this. The OP only mentioned templates as if they were the *sole* mechanism supporting this. That demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding in my opinion.
I think that mixing tabs and spaces is bad. In fact, I think that using tabs at all is bad.
Umm, don't you mean that you use C++'s deterministic (and automatic) destruction to 'free' memory for you? What do templates have to do with it? Templates only make your code generic enough to use with many types--they do *not* help you with freeing memory (destructors do).
Are you aware that fossilization of entire trees occurred almost instantaneously during the eruption of Mt. St Helens? If that doesn't challenge conventional thought on such matters, nothing does. All I am saying is that there is way too much conjecture being passed off as established truth.
And, about the potentiality of the earth being created to appear much older than it actually is:
I, in fact, believe that is exactly what happened. After all, Adam, Eve & everything else mentioned in the account in Genesis were created in a fully 'mature' state. When you consider the cosmos and the sheer magnitude, depth and richness of the creation and come to a conclusion that it must have taken billions or trillions of years to come about, you are only validating the greatness and magnificence of the Creator. The fact that he may have done it in 7 days (or 7,000 years) is really irrelevant as it's obvious that a Creator that could create such a system could also make it appear much older than it is (to natural methods). And, if you believe in the miracles described in the NT and the OT, there's absolutely no reason to believe that God would be constrained by natural law (especially during the creation of said laws and those creatures under their dominion).
However, I see holding this view as no reason to not also question the scientific status quo (especially when we see materialists expressing their metaphysical desperation in the form such gems as the 'multiple world hypothesis'). You only have to turn on the Discovery channel for a few minutes before you see such flimsy imaginations touted as absolute truth.
Ahh, I see. :-)
No one can prove that 1 + 1 will always equal 2, we can only try it many times and get the same result every time. A single differing result (when validated) would throw all of mathmatics into disarray, but most mathematicians don't lose much sleep worrying about this possibility.
Mathematicians do indeed not worry about such things. But, they are not interested in a holistic view either or they would not have so many 'theories'. Of course, Godel taught us that a holistic view is impossible in this universe (and I mean 'complete' + 'consistent'). This single discovery in my view dealt a death blow to modernity and gave rise to post-modernism. This isn't to say that rationalism is misguided or shouldn't be continued, but it does mean, to me at least, that it is a hopelessly limited philosophy with respect to complete universal truth--i.e., reality outruns knowledge.
The claim that all our methods of dating things older than a few thousand years should be so wrong as to be off by a factor of ~one million and no one in the trade has spotted this discrepancy (or that they're all part of a consipiricy, or anything else) requires justification. Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, and all that.
About radiometric dating: there seem to me to be quite a few assumptions underlying this technique (not the least of which is that equilibrium has been reached). See: this. If you have any specific rebuttals to those points, I'd be interested in hearing them.
P.S. It doesn't have to be a recursive function call either--any old function can be executed on any old core with pure (side-effect free) FP.
And actually MS windows is a good option too. Just use 'PostMessage' instead of 'SendMessage' and run all windows in separate processor-bound threads. :-)
And, yes, I'm joking. That would be a pain to manage.
Depends on the language and compiler. It is certainly possible in theory, but I don't yet know of any language/compiler which does it.
And, it wouldn't so much be the compiler exclusively that does this, but rather some co-operation between it and the runtime.
'Should' and 'do' are not the same though. Even Haskell (which *should* do these things automatically) does not. You still essentially have to specify a little 'tag' to say 'parallelize this'. It's a lot less verbose than the equivalent parallel_for in C# or C++, but still not as automatic as I'd like.
I'm not sure if other FP languages/compilers do this, but it is certainly possible in theory (and the Haskell guys are working on it too I think).
Haskell
Yea but if you did that, you'd be missing the point. That's like using C++ as if it were C. You're really missing the elegance of the language/paradigm when you do that.
Or, maybe it was that NGAGE thingy that left a bad taste in their mouths??
Hey listen, that came from sexconker. I'd say he has a pretty good grasp of what is sexy or not.
Don't forget everlasting life.
Yes. This way pure ASCII (or possibly UTF-8) lovers will not be disappointed.
Excellent post sir.
I won't be drawn on inter-denominational rivalries, there's enough of that sort of bickering in the world, and I don't believe its relevant.
Promoting such rivalries wasn't my intent [I think you'll find that I'm one of the more ecumenical guys you'll find]. I was merely looking at the historical record about such things. It's quite clear from the writings/histories that Origen, Augustine et al were rather influenced by Greek hellenistic thought (as is much of the Western world to this day). This is a fact that many believers and non-believers alike miss.
Creationism is clearly not a materialistic argument, but I hold that ID is. Furthermore, if used as a grounds for theology, that theology is based on a God-of-the-Gaps argument (we don't know how that works, so it must be God) which is always liable to crumble.
ID does not say 'we don't know how X works' it says rather 'X is too complex to have possibly been arrived at by a series of slight modifications, therefore, it must have been designed'.
(For instance, claims that the bacterial phlagellum could not have evolved as its components could serve no useful purpose were significantly undermined when one of those components was found to play a role in one of the offensive mechanisms of Salmonella - reference here [newscientist.com] if you can stand the annoying tone)
It takes not only one of the components of a system to have potential alternative beneficial uses, but for all of them. Not only does it take that, but it takes an already working 'system' (and the system must remain working at every stage carrying along all these 'extra' parts [which may very and most likely would be hinderances] until the day that they can magically come together).
Lastly, yes, I agree, evolution only makes sense if you take 6-day creationism off the table, as the timescales required for anything but the most basic speciation require significantly more than several thousand years. But what takes that off the table, I believe, is the evidence of our own eyes and minds.
Scientists today do way too much extrapolation. All of this dating and so on assumes that much has remained constant. We do this, of course, because it is our only option. If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to say anything about the far past (let alone the 'moment' of the big bang). But, we continue to build and build and no one really goes back to question which foundation are we building on--what are our real base assumptions? To question that, I think requires more thought, not less (and yes, you may enter into the realm of philosophy, but so be it). Philosophy is also a thinking man's game--it is still a pursuit for truth (which is what science purports to seek).