O'Reilly, publisher of Open Source-related books...
I always thought of O'Reilly as a publisher of tech books. "Open source" seems to be the tech-news industry's favorite new phrase, whether it's appropriate or not.
The software-consuming public has been barraged with an obscene amount of low-quality software. Not only does Netscape deserve to be flamed for this, but so does every software company that skimps on QA or knowingly releases a buggy product.
Which, I suppose, is the majority of software companies.
I believe a solution to be fewer features and better testing. And fire all those marketing people.
So while the focus of the effort seems to be on improving the Perl guts and API, the project will also be used as an opportunity to clean out some of the cruft, including bad and seldom-used features.
I also think it's a mistake they decided to use their own widgets instead of Windows widgets. Users like consistency. People are going to look at this and go "What the hell is this? This isn't Netscape. The fonts are too small. This doesn't even look like Windows". Yes, most people are still Windows users, and for software to be succesful it needs to adopt the Principle-of-Least_Surprise.
A few months from now, we'll have more IE-users than ever.
Ballots can be useful, but often are driven by people's gut reaction. "Well, porn isn't for kids, so sure I support blocking it." Getting people to think intelligently about the issue is difficult. I don't think there's a good answer.
Okay, Python doesn't have function closures and other funky features
That's half true. And more-than-strongly hints at what I consider Python's biggest flaw to be: lack of block-structure and variable declarations. You can fake it by using default arguments to functions, but it's not all that pleasant.
Python has variable "undeclarations", namely the global statement (basically used to say "I'm not declaring this variable"). In my opinion, an unfortunate feature in an otherwise great language.
It is people who make decisions. I am hoping those people act without emotional bias. A "majority rules" policy is a breeding ground for selfishness. If a majority of people are granted their preference based solely on the fact they they are a majority, then those with different preferences may suffer. This is what is happening here, as the decision affects everyone in the community, not just those who support it.
The filtering is done on keywords, or the equivalent. Using your logic, if this technique is used on internet content, why not on all books?
And to address your addional point about libraries not carrying all books, many (most?) libraries will attempt to locate a book (either to buy or borrow from another library) if they do not carry it. Refusal to do so based on a books content is censorship. Which it seems you support.
A "library" is a building; it can't make decisions. People make decisions. Hopefully the people elected make informed decisions which aren't based on emotion.
Unless you're suggesting the content of a library should fluxuate with the majority's whims.
And even if you support the banning of books, those decisions are made after careful consideration of books' content. Imagine all books being subject to SurfWatch's filter!
So for the 150th time, if the majority of people want it that way, what's the big deal?
The majority of people are often uninformed, as this article shows. It is also human nature to try to force one's ethics on others. Majorities should not be blindly trusted.
About your third point. Garbage collection need not be less efficient than manual memory management. GCs have two (at least) advantages:
They can avoid costly system calls. Asking the OS for memory and telling the OS you're done with that memory has some overhead. If memory management can be done without making system calls, time is saved.
Manual free()ing of memory involves touching every piece of memory one last time just to relinquish it. Some garbage collection schemes like stop-and-copy (and it's more complex sibling, generational collection) avoid this last touch by only manipulating memory that is still in use.
You'll still get occasional pauses due to GC, but the amortized performance of your program can be better than manually collected code.
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I always thought of O'Reilly as a publisher of tech books. "Open source" seems to be the tech-news industry's favorite new phrase, whether it's appropriate or not.
vs.
[I think] that it is immoral to claim to have knowledge that you could not possibly have
And just how have you come to know there is no god?
Going out of bounds on an array can be good code. It's reasonable to use exceptions as part of your logic.
Another interesting thing about this is it will make it seems as if more people are running Windows 2000 than actually are.
Which, I suppose, is the majority of software companies.
I believe a solution to be fewer features and better testing. And fire all those marketing people.
Use a bigger key.
I welcome it.
So find a compiler.
That depends on what you're used to -- it's possible to write bad code in any language.
Interpreted scheme/ML/etc is slow, but that's true of any interpreted language. There are compilers available.
The worthwhile ones (in my opinion) auto-indent and balance parens. There's little trouble keeping track of where you are.
A few months from now, we'll have more IE-users than ever.
The thing crashed on setup. My expectations weren't even this low...
And breaks hundreds of other things.
Give it a rest. Patents are not "inherently evil", just often misused. This case does not seem like a misuse.
Ballots can be useful, but often are driven by people's gut reaction. "Well, porn isn't for kids, so sure I support blocking it." Getting people to think intelligently about the issue is difficult. I don't think there's a good answer.
That's half true. And more-than-strongly hints at what I consider Python's biggest flaw to be: lack of block-structure and variable declarations. You can fake it by using default arguments to functions, but it's not all that pleasant.
Python has variable "undeclarations", namely the global statement (basically used to say "I'm not declaring this variable"). In my opinion, an unfortunate feature in an otherwise great language.
- It is people who make decisions. I am hoping those people act without emotional bias. A "majority rules" policy is a breeding ground for selfishness. If a majority of people are granted their preference based solely on the fact they they are a majority, then those with different preferences may suffer. This is what is happening here, as the decision affects everyone in the community, not just those who support it.
- The filtering is done on keywords, or the equivalent. Using your logic, if this technique is used on internet content, why not on all books?
And to address your addional point about libraries not carrying all books, many (most?) libraries will attempt to locate a book (either to buy or borrow from another library) if they do not carry it. Refusal to do so based on a books content is censorship. Which it seems you support.Unless you're suggesting the content of a library should fluxuate with the majority's whims.
And even if you support the banning of books, those decisions are made after careful consideration of books' content. Imagine all books being subject to SurfWatch's filter!
So for the 150th time, if the majority of people want it that way, what's the big deal?
The majority of people are often uninformed, as this article shows. It is also human nature to try to force one's ethics on others. Majorities should not be blindly trusted.
- They can avoid costly system calls. Asking the OS for memory and telling the OS you're done with that memory has some overhead. If memory management can be done without making system calls, time is saved.
- Manual free()ing of memory involves touching every piece of memory one last time just to relinquish it. Some garbage collection schemes like stop-and-copy (and it's more complex sibling, generational collection) avoid this last touch by only manipulating memory that is still in use.
You'll still get occasional pauses due to GC, but the amortized performance of your program can be better than manually collected code.