Don't want to be held without knowing your charges and presumed innocent? Maybe next time try not picking up a gun and getting caught in combat.
Or for that matter don't ever travel to a country where there were any people doing that, like José Padilla, a U.S. Citizen arrested on U.S. soil, not holding a gun of any kind.
From the Wiki article: He was arrested in Chicago on 8 May 2002 and remains in detention in a military prison. For the first three years of his detention he was held without charge and without access to his lawyer or family. He is now charged that he "conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas".
Now, I'm sure you would argue that he's got a suspicious past, but it certainly doesn't rise to the level of "being caught on the field of combat with a weapon" or somesuch.
Sounds like a fairly intelligent animal to me, that has changed its behavior by observing and learning.
I'll let Mark Twain answer that one:
"Be always careful not to take too much from an experience. A cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will never again sit upon a hot stove lid. Nor upon a cold stove lid."
sooooo.... I'm looking through this thread trying to figure out where he (plunge, I assume?) is being a "prick"/"dick"/"asshole" and the only really offensive post seems to be where you start the name-calling. Am I missing something here?
Literally LOL! This is one of those threads where the parent is starts you laughing and is then followed by a bunch of posts which just build on that:-)
In the UK, a crackpot is more traditionally someone who would be regarded as just past "eccentric".
In the U.S. as well, though it is archaic enough that you will generally only find it in literature. This isn't one of those British English vs. U.S. English cases. Either the GP was ignoring that definition of the word or he just isn't aware of it himself. If it is the latter, I blame it on the poor literacy of the Internet generation;-) Now it looks like they can't even read a map:-O
Was reading of theses stupid lawsuit web sites and they had a lawsuit that the ACLU is helpping to file where they are sueing a local council member.
No link? Kind of hard to refute then, but...
This crime, he sent out, using his own money and time(his wife made them), Christmas cards that showed the Statue of Liberty and a cross on them to friends and acquantices. They are claim it was illegal since he has a seat of authority that it is an official endorsement of a particular religion.
Then I presume there was some reason for them to conclude that he was acting in his official capacity. According to you the website claims it was "friends and acquantices (sic)" but I'm pretty sure ACLU would only get upset if he were doing it in a way which implies a government endorsement of his religious beliefs. Furthermore I know ACLU has fought for expression of Religion, it's just that usually it's the 'other' religions which need the most protection given the dominance of Judaism and Christianity in this country.
Here are a couple cases of ACLU fighting *for* expression of religion:
ACLU of Rhode Island Files Appeal on Behalf of Christian Prisoner Barred from Preaching at Religious Services: here
ACLU of Michigan Defends Catholic Man Coerced to Convert to Pentecostal Faith in Drug Rehab Program (12/6/2005): here
and from that second article: "The ACLU frequently defends the rights of free religious expression for all people. In Michigan, high school officials agreed to stop censoring religious yearbook entries after the ACLU intervened on behalf of a Christian student. In other states, the ACLU has supported the rights of students to distribute Christian literature at school. Recently, the ACLU of Indiana defended the First Amendment rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets."
So, enough of this bullshit myth spread by the neo-cons and the religious right that the ACLU is anti-religion.
Great post, but my favorite part was:...for the digital equivalent of toilet papering a house?:-) Made me think of my own highschool days, and it's a perfect comparison.
Well... no, but of course Perl already has Acme::Bleach which covers that quite nicely;-)
So, just looked Whitespace up. Pretty funny:-) I already knew about Brainfuck though; you gotta love the kinds of things programmers do with their free time:-P
Apology accepted, and we'll just have to agree to disagree, since (fittingly) I am too busy working overtime auditing some bone-headed Perl (heh) to answer in depth; note: it's not something that would be helped by better formatting;-), just an abuse of hard-coded parameters which belong in a config file making the whole code-base too 'server specific': a problem which could exist in *any* language, alas.
If your conclusions about programming language are based primarily on how easily you can cut-n-paste code samples from rich-text email and HTML (outside of elements) then you need to step back and think about your career, IMHO.
Not so humble, and borderline offensive. I never claimed my conclusions about Python were based primarily on this. Reread my post, and you'll see where I state that I am in fact learning Python. I think you might be confusing me with the other poster above. I also said nothing about rich-text email (which I never use). I was giving *an* example ("For one...") of how this aspect of Python is annoying.
The Python interpreter can't do this for you: indentation implies semantics, and you do not want the interpreter doing this.
My point exactly. I said, that if braces *were* used, the semantics would be independent of the formatting, thus the interpreter *could* reformat. And *that* was based on the premise: *if* it's so important to Guido that the language enforce it (by which I meant the design goal stated when defending the advantage of indent-based blocks)...
HTML ignores whitespace because HTML was designed for exchanging textual information, not source code.
Ummmm... you'll have to explain to me how "source code" is not included in the definition of "textual information";-)
[snipped a bunch of 'rebuttals' to my examples]
I was listing those examples to support my statement that there is a paradigm of treating white-space as its own semantic category. It was not meant as an exhaustive list. The point was that it is a wide-spread paradigm, and going outside that paradigm has some disadvantages (sure they can be overcome, but the necessity of overcoming them is itself a disadvantage), and the stated advantage (forcing proper indenting) is by your own argument (modern editors, etc.) minimal. As has been stated in other replies, any slightly decent programmer is already following good indenting practices and/or is using an editor which will automatically indent where appropriate; however, there are cases where alternative indentation *can* make code more readable -- and I'll admit I've only just started with Python, so I'm not sure if the following is the case -- and as I understand it, Python would not allow a programmer to make that decision to indent one part of program slightly differently (to improve readability) without changing the semantics.
Writing off a language for such a silly reason as its use of indentation for block structure is ignorant.
As I already stated, I haven't written off anything. I just think that's a bone-headed aspect of Python. There isn't a language out there that doesn't have bone-headed aspects. Are you so offended by criticism of Python that you have to be offensive to me?...to wit:
Arguments that this screws up copying from your favorite website are specious.
<sarcasm>Oh yeah dude, I couldn't copy that cool Python script from my nude celebrities website, I'm soooo bummed.</sarcasm>
That was the implication here right? Come on, don't be such a jerk. I was trying to explain that there is a non-emotional component to the aversion to the indent-based blocks in Python, and instead of looking at my arguments you try to play the "experienced programmer" to my "dilettante web-designer dude off the beach".
Copying from a website was an *example* not the argument; nice strawman, though.
ummmm... I think you are attacking a post you would agree with. Read it again more slowly, he's not comparing ID to Relativity, he's pondering why ID'ers don't compare Relativity to Biology - so to speak.
Well, for one: it makes communicating about the language difficult, e.g copying and pasting examples from html, web forums, e-mails, etc.
Because: One of the paradigms of computing (particularly in the Internet era) is that white-space is semantically/syntactically insignificant. Many programs and protocols ignore the amount of white-space in text, or at least just treat it as a delimiter. That fact alone means Python code doesn't play nice with that stuff. Sure you can have forum software which allows for formatted code and such, but that's not the point. Why did Python have to break such a well-established paradigm? White space is to delimit syntactic/semantic elements... it shouldn't *be* one.
That said, I am in fact learning Python now (partly because of Civ IV;-), partly because I think it's a good a idea to expand my programming language repertoire) but that doesn't change the fact that it was a bone-headed decision to make indenting syntactically significant. If Guido considered that so important, he could have just made it a syntax-error... but then still use braces for the delimiting. Heck, for all I care, the python interpreter could then re-indent it *for* you. But, to put such important information into the one class of characters which: - html *ignores* - diff has an option to *ignore* - most editors have an option to *convert* (tab to spaces, etc.) - etc, ad nauseam.
As soon as the kid's there, there'll be no gaming time left...
(/me runs after his 9 month old)
Heh, just wait until he (she?) gets old enough to operate the keyboard properly:-) My 6 year old is getting pretty good at driving games and we've been doing some fun head to head racing on my home network. Trackmania is perfect for his age, and he's been building some wicked tracks. I'm just waiting for him to be old enough to play Civ and other more complicated games *grin*. Just a few more years...
Watch out ladies, 'cuz I'm training up another dedicated gamer as we speak, ha ha ha <evil laughter>
In short: something I have learned in our relationship is to just SAY SOMETHING.
Please give seminars for other women. They need it. You sound like someone with her head put on right; I'm happily married but I've experienced/witnessed a lot of what you're talking about, and I've rarely heard it said so well. Lucky guy you have there;-)
Shotgun doesn't want the children to starve -- he/she just wants local problems to be solved on a local level. It is all about limiting the power to `fix` a problem to those closest to the situation.
And this is one of the big holes in these typical "local government first" mantras, those (local governments) closest to the problem (say, in the case of starving/poorly-educated children) are the poorest ones for the very same reason those kids are starving or getting poor schools in the first place: people who are poor don't generate much tax-revenue, meaning the local government for those people is also poor, which is why public schools in poor neighborhoods are... you guessed it: poorer!
I'm sorry, but when I hear or read that whole local government mantra it sounds to me like: "I'd prefer to only take care of me and my own (class) and those 'other' people can just fend for themselves." I see belonging to a country as kind of a marriage: for better or for worse, namely if one locality is having problems (not just headline-generating problems like Katrina), the more-central (state, federal) governments chip in with the combined resources of the whole state/country, and if a particular locality is doing really well it is almost certainly due to factors originating outside of that locality and it's only just that the residents there contribute to the whole entity.
Maybe it would help the dialog with Libertarian/Small-Government advocates if the political left referred to poor communities and their schools as "loss-leaders" or "cost centers" or some such catchy business-sounding phrase.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't want to be held without knowing your charges and presumed innocent? Maybe next time try not picking up a gun and getting caught in combat.
Or for that matter don't ever travel to a country where there were any people doing that, like José Padilla, a U.S. Citizen arrested on U.S. soil, not holding a gun of any kind.
From the Wiki article:
He was arrested in Chicago on 8 May 2002 and remains in detention in a military prison. For the first three years of his detention he was held without charge and without access to his lawyer or family. He is now charged that he "conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas".
Now, I'm sure you would argue that he's got a suspicious past, but it certainly doesn't rise to the level of "being caught on the field of combat with a weapon" or somesuch.
-chris
Sounds like a fairly intelligent animal to me, that has changed its behavior by observing and learning.
I'll let Mark Twain answer that one:
"Be always careful not to take too much from an experience. A cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will never again sit upon a hot stove lid. Nor upon a cold stove lid."
-chris
sooooo.... I'm looking through this thread trying to figure out where he (plunge, I assume?) is being a "prick"/"dick"/"asshole" and the only really offensive post seems to be where you start the name-calling. Am I missing something here?
-chris
ups. typo ;-)
-chris
Literally LOL! This is one of those threads where the parent is starts you laughing and is then followed by a bunch of posts which just build on that :-)
-chris
The words within the blocks "[...]" are mine alone. Thanks for catching the typo.
;-)
ROFL. That's the first time I've ever seen three entire words referred to as a type
-chris
In the UK, a crackpot is more traditionally someone who would be regarded as just past "eccentric".
;-) Now it looks like they can't even read a map :-O
In the U.S. as well, though it is archaic enough that you will generally only find it in literature. This isn't one of those British English vs. U.S. English cases. Either the GP was ignoring that definition of the word or he just isn't aware of it himself. If it is the latter, I blame it on the poor literacy of the Internet generation
-chris
Get off it dude. You're wrong.
Or, how do you translate the following
"überflüssig"?
a) overfluous
b) superfluous
"übernatürlich"?
a) overnatural
b) supernatural
and many more...
-chris
Nietzsche coined the term "Übermensch", which translates to "Overman" not "Superman"
Ummmm... what does 'super' mean again?
I guess "überflüssig" is "overfluous" and not "superflous"?
-chris
Best. Post. Ever.
;-)
Thanks for a bright spot in my dreary work day
-chris
Was reading of theses stupid lawsuit web sites and they had a lawsuit that the ACLU is helpping to file where they are sueing a local council member.
No link? Kind of hard to refute then, but...
This crime, he sent out, using his own money and time(his wife made them), Christmas cards that showed the Statue of Liberty and a cross on them to friends and acquantices. They are claim it was illegal since he has a seat of authority that it is an official endorsement of a particular religion.
Then I presume there was some reason for them to conclude that he was acting in his official capacity. According to you the website claims it was "friends and acquantices (sic)" but I'm pretty sure ACLU would only get upset if he were doing it in a way which implies a government endorsement of his religious beliefs. Furthermore I know ACLU has fought for expression of Religion, it's just that usually it's the 'other' religions which need the most protection given the dominance of Judaism and Christianity in this country.
Here are a couple cases of ACLU fighting *for* expression of religion:
ACLU of Rhode Island Files Appeal on Behalf of Christian Prisoner Barred from Preaching at Religious Services: here
ACLU of Michigan Defends Catholic Man Coerced to Convert to Pentecostal Faith in Drug Rehab Program (12/6/2005): here
and from that second article:
"The ACLU frequently defends the rights of free religious expression for all people. In Michigan, high school officials agreed to stop censoring religious yearbook entries after the ACLU intervened on behalf of a Christian student. In other states, the ACLU has supported the rights of students to distribute Christian literature at school. Recently, the ACLU of Indiana defended the First Amendment rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets."
So, enough of this bullshit myth spread by the neo-cons and the religious right that the ACLU is anti-religion.
-chris
Great post, but my favorite part was: ...for the digital equivalent of toilet papering a house? :-) Made me think of my own highschool days, and it's a perfect comparison.
-chris
Hmmm... okay I hit the 120 character limit, I guess I'll have to be satisfied with just paraphrasing his post :-/
Hell, I'll even go all out and steal your sig and his post to combine into one sig! And I'll throw both of you on my friends list in the bargain :-P
-chris
Well... no, but of course Perl already has Acme::Bleach which covers that quite nicely ;-)
:-) I already knew about Brainfuck though; you gotta love the kinds of things programmers do with their free time :-P
So, just looked Whitespace up. Pretty funny
-chris
Apology accepted, and we'll just have to agree to disagree, since (fittingly) I am too busy working overtime auditing some bone-headed Perl (heh) to answer in depth; note: it's not something that would be helped by better formatting ;-), just an abuse of hard-coded parameters which belong in a config file making the whole code-base too 'server specific': a problem which could exist in *any* language, alas.
-chris
If your conclusions about programming language are based primarily on how easily you can cut-n-paste code samples from rich-text email and HTML (outside of elements) then you need to step back and think about your career, IMHO.
;-)
...to wit:
Not so humble, and borderline offensive. I never claimed my conclusions about Python were based primarily on this. Reread my post, and you'll see where I state that I am in fact learning Python. I think you might be confusing me with the other poster above. I also said nothing about rich-text email (which I never use). I was giving *an* example ("For one...") of how this aspect of Python is annoying.
The Python interpreter can't do this for you: indentation implies semantics, and you do not want the interpreter doing this.
My point exactly. I said, that if braces *were* used, the semantics would be independent of the formatting, thus the interpreter *could* reformat. And *that* was based on the premise: *if* it's so important to Guido that the language enforce it (by which I meant the design goal stated when defending the advantage of indent-based blocks)...
HTML ignores whitespace because HTML was designed for exchanging textual information, not source code.
Ummmm... you'll have to explain to me how "source code" is not included in the definition of "textual information"
[snipped a bunch of 'rebuttals' to my examples]
I was listing those examples to support my statement that there is a paradigm of treating white-space as its own semantic category. It was not meant as an exhaustive list. The point was that it is a wide-spread paradigm, and going outside that paradigm has some disadvantages (sure they can be overcome, but the necessity of overcoming them is itself a disadvantage), and the stated advantage (forcing proper indenting) is by your own argument (modern editors, etc.) minimal. As has been stated in other replies, any slightly decent programmer is already following good indenting practices and/or is using an editor which will automatically indent where appropriate; however, there are cases where alternative indentation *can* make code more readable -- and I'll admit I've only just started with Python, so I'm not sure if the following is the case -- and as I understand it, Python would not allow a programmer to make that decision to indent one part of program slightly differently (to improve readability) without changing the semantics.
Writing off a language for such a silly reason as its use of indentation for block structure is ignorant.
As I already stated, I haven't written off anything. I just think that's a bone-headed aspect of Python. There isn't a language out there that doesn't have bone-headed aspects. Are you so offended by criticism of Python that you have to be offensive to me?
Arguments that this screws up copying from your favorite website are specious.
<sarcasm>Oh yeah dude, I couldn't copy that cool Python script from my nude celebrities website, I'm soooo bummed.</sarcasm>
That was the implication here right? Come on, don't be such a jerk. I was trying to explain that there is a non-emotional component to the aversion to the indent-based blocks in Python, and instead of looking at my arguments you try to play the "experienced programmer" to my "dilettante web-designer dude off the beach".
Copying from a website was an *example* not the argument; nice strawman, though.
-chris
ummmm... I think you are attacking a post you would agree with. Read it again more slowly, he's not comparing ID to Relativity, he's pondering why ID'ers don't compare Relativity to Biology - so to speak.
-chris
Maybe not, but grades shouldn't suffer because I choose to answer the assignment how I believe.
And if you believe 2+2=5? Should you get straight A's in math and go on to become an engineer?
-chris
Well, for one: it makes communicating about the language difficult, e.g copying and pasting examples from html, web forums, e-mails, etc.
;-), partly because I think it's a good a idea to expand my programming language repertoire) but that doesn't change the fact that it was a bone-headed decision to make indenting syntactically significant. If Guido considered that so important, he could have just made it a syntax-error... but then still use braces for the delimiting. Heck, for all I care, the python interpreter could then re-indent it *for* you. But, to put such important information into the one class of characters which:
Because: One of the paradigms of computing (particularly in the Internet era) is that white-space is semantically/syntactically insignificant. Many programs and protocols ignore the amount of white-space in text, or at least just treat it as a delimiter. That fact alone means Python code doesn't play nice with that stuff. Sure you can have forum software which allows for formatted code and such, but that's not the point. Why did Python have to break such a well-established paradigm? White space is to delimit syntactic/semantic elements... it shouldn't *be* one.
That said, I am in fact learning Python now (partly because of Civ IV
- html *ignores*
- diff has an option to *ignore*
- most editors have an option to *convert* (tab to spaces, etc.)
- etc, ad nauseam.
well... you get the point. Right?
-chris
graphically: ...
2 usually graphic a : marked by clear lifelike or vividly realistic description b : vividly or plainly shown or described
Funny thing about language... some words obtain non-literal meanings (also known as metaphors) over time. Go figure...
Where do I sign up?
Many parts of Africa, Asia, and South America will offer you this opportunity. I suggest the jungles of Columbia for you. Don't forget to write.
As soon as the kid's there, there'll be no gaming time left...
:-) My 6 year old is getting pretty good at driving games and we've been doing some fun head to head racing on my home network. Trackmania is perfect for his age, and he's been building some wicked tracks. I'm just waiting for him to be old enough to play Civ and other more complicated games *grin*. Just a few more years...
(/me runs after his 9 month old)
Heh, just wait until he (she?) gets old enough to operate the keyboard properly
Watch out ladies, 'cuz I'm training up another dedicated gamer as we speak, ha ha ha <evil laughter>
-chris
In short: something I have learned in our relationship is to just SAY SOMETHING.
;-)
Please give seminars for other women. They need it. You sound like someone with her head put on right; I'm happily married but I've experienced/witnessed a lot of what you're talking about, and I've rarely heard it said so well. Lucky guy you have there
-chris
Shotgun doesn't want the children to starve -- he/she just wants local problems to be solved on a local level. It is all about limiting the power to `fix` a problem to those closest to the situation.
And this is one of the big holes in these typical "local government first" mantras, those (local governments) closest to the problem (say, in the case of starving/poorly-educated children) are the poorest ones for the very same reason those kids are starving or getting poor schools in the first place: people who are poor don't generate much tax-revenue, meaning the local government for those people is also poor, which is why public schools in poor neighborhoods are... you guessed it: poorer!
I'm sorry, but when I hear or read that whole local government mantra it sounds to me like: "I'd prefer to only take care of me and my own (class) and those 'other' people can just fend for themselves." I see belonging to a country as kind of a marriage: for better or for worse, namely if one locality is having problems (not just headline-generating problems like Katrina), the more-central (state, federal) governments chip in with the combined resources of the whole state/country, and if a particular locality is doing really well it is almost certainly due to factors originating outside of that locality and it's only just that the residents there contribute to the whole entity.
Maybe it would help the dialog with Libertarian/Small-Government advocates if the political left referred to poor communities and their schools as "loss-leaders" or "cost centers" or some such catchy business-sounding phrase.
-chris