Only in the sense that the "religious wrong" constitutes the majority.
In any other industrialized country it would be unthinkable to let religious extremists dictate the content of science textbooks in public schools.
a very vocal one with higher turnout numbers than average
There's the problem. If you let that "minority" dictate their conditions, then you agree with them, you are letting them represent you.
Unfortunately, those of us who share [i]some[/i] views considered right wing (eg, my views on taxes, many social programs, and guns) get lumped together with those assholes, even though we also support plenty of those things that they don't
That's a problem with representative democracy overall. You have tho alternatives: participate more in the primary elections and wrestle the Republican party back from them, or start a third party.
Unless you are willing to take a stronger stance in politics, you cannot complain that some religious wackos represent you.
I think it's more accurate to say that deregulation and a lack of oversight are killing the internet
you wouldn't expect that if there was any competition
Funny, how you cite both deregulation and lack of competition in the same post.
Pick one, please, is it deregulation or is it lack of competition? As I understand it, deregulation means anyone can get in the market and offer their services.
What you call deregulation is actually overregulation that does not allow free access to the market, there would exist plenty of competition if the market were truly deregulated.
Re:Python is the Lisp of the 21st century
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Python does precisely that. It mixes presentation (what code looks like) with content (what code does).
To some extent, every language does that. What I meant is that the TAB character introduces an arbitrary visual configuration that's not part of the language itself, which can confuse things when tabs and spaces are mixed in the same source file.
However, this does not mean that the presentation of the code is unimportant. For instance, a reason why I once programmed in Pascal but switched to C was that I found braces easier to read than "begin... end" pairs. Curly braces are clean and small symbols, looking at the source code at a glance they are easier to identify than multi-character keywords.
When you are writing and reading code by the hundreds of thousands of lines, every detail becomes significant. That's something language theorists often fail to understand, but Dennis Ritchie and Guido van Rossum got perfectly right.
Python is the Lisp of the 21st century
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 1, Informative
What Lisp promised then is what Python promises now. With one difference, in that Python respects the visual limitations of humans.
Different from parentheses, it's very easy to undo a bunch of indentations, just put the left margin where you want it.
Well, if only the TAB character had never been invented... TAB is a kludge to make a typewriter behave sort of like a spreadsheet but, unfortunately, it fucks up the excellent "Don't mix content with presentation" principle.
I for one welcome a 4th operating system on the market
Wait, isn't ChromeOS basically an application running on top of Android? To call an application running on a Linux distro an OS is a kind of an overstatement. Wait till the Debian bunch start calling it a GNU/ChromeOS.
If a particular culture wishes to subject their offspring to this kind of learning experience, so be it
As opposed to a culture that subjects their offspring to insufficiently trained, badly paid, undermotivated human teachers? And after school they sit in front of the TV?
If I had gone door to door pretending to be with your bank and requested any of your credit cards, you'd either be considered an idiot and/or I could be charged with some form of fraud.
In some places if you leave the keys in your car and it gets stolen you may be considered an accessory to the crime. It should be the same thing if your computer is not adequately protected.
Ignorance should be no excuse. If you are too lazy to learn how to use it properly, then you should not use a computer. People who let their computers become part of a criminal organization should be prosecuted as accessories.
why, oh tell me why, when I write a simple - trivial - bit of Java code, do I need to write functions for getters and setters all over the place - dammit, just declare them as gettable and settable
Alas, I can't find anyone around here who sells wood in bags. Metric or otherwise. I can get it by the cord, by the board foot, or the stick. Can we try a car analogy?
OK, let's try:
Let's say a bag of cars weighs 8 pound 9 ounces, and you want to buy 3 bags. What is the total weight in pound and ounces?
Consider: what is more unlikely? That before time there was an infinitely dense concentration of something that burst, creating everything we observe? Or that before time, there was something else that said, "I'll make something today" and created everything we observe?
Considering that an infinitely dense concentration of anything is the simplest possible structure, I would say that it's, by very far, more probable to happen spontaneously than something complex enough to make a conscious decision to create everything.
Barring imaginary physics, the only point to go to another planet/star is to colonize it.
We have sent probes to all the planets in our system, have landed in two of them. Once we have some way to send a probe to another star system you can bet we will.
We are quickly reaching a turning point in economics when manufacturing is so cheap that we will not be restrained by the cost of things. Looking at the world today, the richest countries do not bother to manufacture things anymore, that can be outsourced. With enough robotics, even China will want to concentrate on intellectual creation instead.
My prediction is that in less than a hundred years we will have manufacturing plants in orbit or on asteroids capable of building ships able to reach the nearest stars. The first ships will not be manned, but they will carry self-reproducing machines that will build additional starships once they reach their destination.
Cue forward 50 million years, which is 0.3% of the current age of the universe, and the whole galaxy will have been reached by our starships.
Fermi's paradox has only one explanation for me, we are the first. Someone has to be, of course.
Vast disparities in wealth are incompatible with democracy and civil society. You can't have either when one small group of people gets to play by a completely different set of rules than everyone else.
You mean that *corruption* is incompatible with democracy and civil society. There's no reason, other than corrupt and greedy public servants, why the wealthy would play by a completely different set of rules than everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
The "religious right" is a fairly small minority
Only in the sense that the "religious wrong" constitutes the majority.
In any other industrialized country it would be unthinkable to let religious extremists dictate the content of science textbooks in public schools.
a very vocal one with higher turnout numbers than average
There's the problem. If you let that "minority" dictate their conditions, then you agree with them, you are letting them represent you.
Unfortunately, those of us who share [i]some[/i] views considered right wing (eg, my views on taxes, many social programs, and guns) get lumped together with those assholes, even though we also support plenty of those things that they don't
That's a problem with representative democracy overall. You have tho alternatives: participate more in the primary elections and wrestle the Republican party back from them, or start a third party.
Unless you are willing to take a stronger stance in politics, you cannot complain that some religious wackos represent you.
this thread will be characterized by civil discussion and insightful exchange of ideas
Sure, let's debate whether it's the religious ceremonies that cause evolution or vice versa
Easter is the spring ceremony in many Northern hemisphere pagan religions.
FTFS: "the town remains in perpetual darkness for four months each winter"
Four months? That's much shorter than the old definition of "perpetual"
I think it's more accurate to say that deregulation and a lack of oversight are killing the internet
you wouldn't expect that if there was any competition
Funny, how you cite both deregulation and lack of competition in the same post.
Pick one, please, is it deregulation or is it lack of competition? As I understand it, deregulation means anyone can get in the market and offer their services.
What you call deregulation is actually overregulation that does not allow free access to the market, there would exist plenty of competition if the market were truly deregulated.
I enjoy my vastly lower probability of being shot to death.
Yet, that probability still exists.
Python does precisely that. It mixes presentation (what code looks like) with content (what code does).
To some extent, every language does that. What I meant is that the TAB character introduces an arbitrary visual configuration that's not part of the language itself, which can confuse things when tabs and spaces are mixed in the same source file.
However, this does not mean that the presentation of the code is unimportant. For instance, a reason why I once programmed in Pascal but switched to C was that I found braces easier to read than "begin ... end" pairs. Curly braces are clean and small symbols, looking at the source code at a glance they are easier to identify than multi-character keywords.
When you are writing and reading code by the hundreds of thousands of lines, every detail becomes significant. That's something language theorists often fail to understand, but Dennis Ritchie and Guido van Rossum got perfectly right.
What Lisp promised then is what Python promises now. With one difference, in that Python respects the visual limitations of humans.
Different from parentheses, it's very easy to undo a bunch of indentations, just put the left margin where you want it.
Well, if only the TAB character had never been invented... TAB is a kludge to make a typewriter behave sort of like a spreadsheet but, unfortunately, it fucks up the excellent "Don't mix content with presentation" principle.
Actually, there are some nice places to visit in Denver.
Illegal aliens, if caught, are subjected to a cavity search.
These aliens, OTOH, if they catch you they'll perform an anal probing on you.
I for one welcome a 4th operating system on the market
Wait, isn't ChromeOS basically an application running on top of Android? To call an application running on a Linux distro an OS is a kind of an overstatement. Wait till the Debian bunch start calling it a GNU/ChromeOS.
If a particular culture wishes to subject their offspring to this kind of learning experience, so be it
As opposed to a culture that subjects their offspring to insufficiently trained, badly paid, undermotivated human teachers? And after school they sit in front of the TV?
I would not hesitate to put her through the meat grinder if she ever damaged my $4500 desktop computer or any of the surrounding computer equipment.
Your computer alone costs $4500? Without counting the peripherals?
The 1980s called and they want their $4500 desktops back.
If I had gone door to door pretending to be with your bank and requested any of your credit cards, you'd either be considered an idiot and/or I could be charged with some form of fraud.
In some places if you leave the keys in your car and it gets stolen you may be considered an accessory to the crime. It should be the same thing if your computer is not adequately protected.
Ignorance should be no excuse. If you are too lazy to learn how to use it properly, then you should not use a computer. People who let their computers become part of a criminal organization should be prosecuted as accessories.
How many WOOOSHes do we have?
Now if someone would just rear-mount that in a cute little chassis, maybe one that looked kind of like a bug or something...
What do you mean? Like those cute little minesweepers or cute little locomotives that have been powered by opposing piston engines?
Priceless! In both searches I found mention of a PETA project to rename fish as "sea kittens" so people would feel guilty about fishing...
Hey, that gives me an idea! How about using a line and hook to catch kittens? One could use live mice as bait.
why, oh tell me why, when I write a simple - trivial - bit of Java code, do I need to write functions for getters and setters all over the place - dammit, just declare them as gettable and settable
Python is exactly like that.
Alas, I can't find anyone around here who sells wood in bags. Metric or otherwise.
I can get it by the cord, by the board foot, or the stick.
Can we try a car analogy?
OK, let's try:
Let's say a bag of cars weighs 8 pound 9 ounces, and you want to buy 3 bags. What is the total weight in pound and ounces?
Hmmm, no. Doesn't work much better.
maybe other civilizations are smart enough to know not to unleash an aggressive hegemonizing swarm on the galaxy
All of them? It only takes one to start it.
Consider: what is more unlikely? That before time there was an infinitely dense concentration of something that burst, creating everything we observe? Or that before time, there was something else that said, "I'll make something today" and created everything we observe?
Considering that an infinitely dense concentration of anything is the simplest possible structure, I would say that it's, by very far, more probable to happen spontaneously than something complex enough to make a conscious decision to create everything.
We have sent probes to all the planets in our system, have landed in two of them. Once we have some way to send a probe to another star system you can bet we will.
We are quickly reaching a turning point in economics when manufacturing is so cheap that we will not be restrained by the cost of things. Looking at the world today, the richest countries do not bother to manufacture things anymore, that can be outsourced. With enough robotics, even China will want to concentrate on intellectual creation instead.
My prediction is that in less than a hundred years we will have manufacturing plants in orbit or on asteroids capable of building ships able to reach the nearest stars. The first ships will not be manned, but they will carry self-reproducing machines that will build additional starships once they reach their destination.
Cue forward 50 million years, which is 0.3% of the current age of the universe, and the whole galaxy will have been reached by our starships.
Fermi's paradox has only one explanation for me, we are the first. Someone has to be, of course.
I don't think any major country has supplied DC power since about 1903
For distribution, maybe, but DC is widely used for power transmission
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, FAIL
Vast disparities in wealth are incompatible with democracy and civil society. You can't have either when one small group of people gets to play by a completely different set of rules than everyone else.
You mean that *corruption* is incompatible with democracy and civil society. There's no reason, other than corrupt and greedy public servants, why the wealthy would play by a completely different set of rules than everyone else.