I fear I shouldn't have posted again - I can already hear the rumblings of a hundred emails in my inbox - the very reason that I despise discussing the details on slashdot. Every man has his limit. It's like a DoS in an argument, 5 people shouting at one person.
I can understand your position, it's tough to hold an impopular opinion on/. If you want to discuss this somewhat more privately, you could post to my journal or write an entry in your own.
You're posting about some theory that claims to be scientific, but at the same time you state you're not interested in dicussing its weaknesses. This is the attitude that many creationists develop, and it explains why it's mostly creationists that refute (other) creationsts' theories.
Fundamentalism is irreconcilable with modern science; fundamentalism means inductive research, while empirical science means deductive research. Scientific methodology doesn't allow you to just try and prove the correctness of some arbitrary theory (like put forward in the Bible or the Koran), you'll have to look at nature itself and distill your theories from observations; not the other way around. This is the fundamental weakness of creationism.
Scientific methodology was devised as a tool to weed out superstition; you just can't support your personal faith by scientific methods; it's like using science to prove that science is wrong.
I could be wrong, but as I understand it indeterminancy in quantum mechanics is not about fundamental indeterminancy, but to be about limits of observation of subatomic particles. I am not well read on physics though.
Nope, the nondeterminism is a fundamental property. If you don't accept this, you'll have to introduce hidden variables to QM. The problem with hidden vars is that you can't measure their effects directly nor indirectly, which sort of violates the definition of what is physics.
Simply put, if you can't accept randomness as a fundamental property of the universe, you'll have to intoduce physical laws you'll not be able to prove nor disprove. You're not far off from introducing some kind of God (with a hidden masterplan) into physics.
...dates back to 1668. When there were the other kind of pirates as well.
"Real" piracy is not a thing of the past. It has been on the rise in the last years, actually (370 reported cases in 2002, 335 in 2001).
Back on topic, this makes for even better (worse?) propaganda and makes copyright enfringers who call themselves pirates because it sounds so romantic/cool even more childish.
I don't know where pride in a country fits, or pride in a sports team.
I don't it's fitting either, but very often it's just the way it is; I think it has to do with mass psychology and with tribal behavioural patterns anchored in the unconcious parts of our minds in particular. These behavioural patterns themselves are beyond morality (they're neither good nor bad), but rationalizing them can be dangerous because it can lead to racism and discrimination when the rationalizing is done from a moralistic standpoint.
That's why, in my opinion, it's far more useful to try and show people that their morals are not absolute, instead of trying to forbid their moralistic judgements. If people doubt their moral superiority, they'll stop making those judgements all by themselves.
I'll still hear a racist overtone, but I'll try to keep in mind that they don't mean it that way.
I don't deny you could interpret such statements as racism, that's the problem we're discussing. From personal experience I know people usually don't intend their statements to be racist; consequentially, if you call them a racist they'll get very upset with you, making real discussion very difficult. Having a discussion about racism that doesn't end in a flamewar and in accusations flying is far more productive. This discussion for instance is rather nice, our positions on the issue initially differed a lot but we both kept being polite and listened to eachother; we both learned some things and adjusted our positions accordingly.
I think there's a big difference with being happy with the hand that fate dealt you, your skin color, your eye color, etc, and being proud of them. To be proud implies that there's something special and that you had something to do with it.
You can be proud of the accomplishments of others that are somehow related to you also. As a parent, you can be proud of your children without at the same time being proud of your involvement in their upbinging, and as a child you can be proud of your parents and gandparents for what they accomplished before you were even born.
In this sense, I think it's wrong to be proud of your skin color. I don't think you can be proud of something, without thinking it's special, better than something else. If you think that your skin color is better than another skin color we're right back at mild racism.
I do think pride is related to accomplishments, but as I pointed out these don't have to be personal accomplishments, and they don't have to be of a competative nature. Most people take pride in their work even though they realize there are other people out there who are better at that particular job.
Personally speaking for instance, I'm proud of what my dutch ancestors accomplished in fighting back the sea (competition against nature if you will), and I'm proud of the leading role the Netherlands presently often takes in promoting human rights (without feeling morally superior, honestly). I'm ashamed of the dutch colonial and slave trading past, but I still have an irrational feeling of pride when I consider I'm dutch (but then all feelings are irrational).
This pride has nothing to do with my race, but I would find it understandable if some ethnical minority that has liberated itself from opression takes pride in its accomplishments and uses some racially distinct feature as a symbol for these accomplishments. That's why "I'm black and I'm proud" sounds so different from "I'm white and I'm proud"; but again, if you decouple these phrases from their historical context, there is nothing racist in them, just indications of personal preference.
And to answer your point, I don't feel that my skin color is better. I'm used to it. It's neither good nor bad, and I actually forget all about the issue most of the time.
That's what I do too, but if someone tells me he's proud of his skin color, I start searching for historical context, because while I know this isn't a racist statement in itself, the speaker is probably refering to the historical context. That's why I don't cry racism when a mexican calls himself bronze, and why I think it's unethical to just start substituting "white" for "bronze" and "Aryan" for "mestizo".
Ideally, they'd choose the best platform and tools for the task at hand, and not bog the process down by ideology at the taxpayers expense - which is the concern, and the basis for the comparison to socialist russia.
In the same way you shouldn't expect your government to protect you as a citizen with stuff like health care (because that's socialist ideology), you shouldn't expect your government to protect free markets (because that's capitalist ideology) if governments are to be void of ideology. This knife cuts two ways, you know.
People always go off babbling about the evils of one ideology, while conveniently forgetting they're the exponent of another ideology. After all, capitalism is just another ideology, not some fundamental law of nature.
Like having blue eyes, or dark hair, or anything else physical. To imply that it's worth being proud of is implying that it makes a difference, and that implies that there's one way that's better than another.
Yes it makes a difference, and I think it is somewhat surreal to claim there is no difference because it's just physical. Subjectively speaking, your own culture, race and religion often do seem better; but objectively speaking you can't pass moral judgements like this, because the morals will always be those of your culture and your religion. This is the basis of racism (along with xenophobia): passing moral judgement on people who live by different moral standards.
Why does it sound racist to say "I'm proud of being blonde-haired and blue-eyed," and empowered to say "I'm proud of being black"?
Because of the historical context and the resulting semantic couplings? This is where all the political (over)correctness stems from; with its inherent dangers. Allthough it sounds racist to say "I'm proud of being white", it actually is not. It isn't illegal to be proud of what makes up your cultural and ethnical identity, it's a human right instead. It is illegal to conclude from this that people with other cultural and ethnical identities can't or shouldn't have their pride (because they have their human rights too).
My opinion on "protecting your culture", at least as everyone means it when they say that, is that it's all about making other people live the way you want them to.
Almost. Relating to immigration, it is giving people the choice of living in way that's acceptable to the community or to not live in that community. In a broader sense it means promoting your local culture and its products (like art and entertainment for instance) in favor of cutural exports from abroad. (People in the US generally aren't that aware of the effects of cultural exports, but the rest of the world sure is.)
If it's anything like every other time I hear about this, it's people being upset about children not adopting traditional ways.
I tend to look at culture as a collection of recepies or strategies for survival in a particular (human) environment and timeframe. Most of these strategies lose their value as the environment changes with the passing of time, but some others don't. There is a lot of knowledge embedded in culture, and if we as humans lose our cultural diversity, we're bound to lose valueable knowledge. Monoculture is dangerous.
So while I agree with you on most traditions becoming no more than useless ritual over time, I think some traditions stay valuable. After all, you don't have to know what you're doing to do the right thing.
In 2000, the dutch government auctioned UMTS frequencies for a grand total of 2.65 bn. euros to several telcos (while they estimated to get up to 10 bn. euros). Now, 3 years later, the dutch government finds out UMTS is a health risk.
This leaves me wondering just how much this fiasco is going to cost me as a dutch citizen, because surely the telcos will demand compensation.
By the way, the Netherlands isn't the only country that auctioned UMTS freqs. for billions by far. If this study is repeated and proves to be correct, this could mean financial repercussions for a lot of governments.
If it was simply limited the number of immigrants that'd be one thing, but it's to protect their culture. That's a code word for "people who do things like us". Not "speak the language", not "won't go on welfare".
So what exactly is wrong with protecting your culture? Why is it wrong to say you're proud of your cultural heritage, like the language you speak (language is an important part of a culture), and that it is valueable enough to you to protect it? In your opinion, can a US citizen claim he's proud of the american way of life without being a racist?
But sure, you go with your idea. It works for you.
Really, all I'm trying to say in this thread is simply put that "I'm black and I'm proud (of it)" is not a racist remark, but "I'm black and (therefore) I'm better" is a racist remark.
I'm a dutch citizen, so I don't have any direct involvement in californian politics; but as a dutch I'm very aware of what constitutes racism and discrimination, because dutch law is very careful about discrimination. So (over)careful there were cases of "positive discrimination", where immigrants that consisted a racial minority in the Netherlands would recieve privileged treatment over dutch citizens. This of course did not went well with those citizens, and racist tendencies grew.
Being too politically correct can have adverse effects and promote "political incorrectness".
In the Netherlands the controversial exponent of this "political incorrectness" was the populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who got enormously popular by saying things like "Islam is a retarded culture" (mind you not religion but culture). He was causing a political landslide and was very open about his ambitions towards becoming prime minister. (He was also very open about his homosexuality.) Ultimately he got shot by some psyched-out animal activist, and left all of us dutch to wonder what would have become of the Netherlands if he had ruled it. (He would have personally ruled because his party didn't even have a published plan, just his manifestos.)
There's not much of a line between saying "furiners out" and "dark skinned people out". If, by definition, nobody of your race is a foreigner, you're kicking out everyone of another race.
Again, this is not the case. One party says "no new foreigners in", the other says "all blacks out, even if they've got citizenship". Can't you see the difference?
This seems to me to be a case where "reverse" racism is good. In other words, if it's done by a rich white man, it's bad. If it's done by one of the victims of rich white men, (ie. anyone else) it's good.
Get it into your head that not allowing forgeigners in is not racism; almost every country in the world has policies to limit the number of immigrants; most certainly every 1st world country does. (Green card lottery, anyone?)
Any policy, other than perhaps sunscreen purchasing, based on skin color is racist; discriminating based on the basis of race.
Yes, but does the quote state there will be discrimination based on skin color, or does it state there should be less immigration to protect the indiginous culture. The latter is common political practice, and this is what I meant by that fine line in my original post.
If Mexicans can have a racially pure culture, so can the KKK. You can't have it both ways.
Yes I can, because the KKK clearly talks about race, while MEChA doesn't. MEChA doesn't want foreigners to immigrate to Mexico, the KKK wants all non-whites to emigrate out of the US (or worse).
(Please note I don't share Bustamante's nor MEChA's polictical views, but I think politics shouldn't degrade into mudslinging.)
Nope, read the wikipedia link. Hejlsberg created it as Blue Label Pascal for the Nascom-2 mini, ported it to CP/M and DOS and sold it as Compass Pascal and later as Poly Pascal. Kahn bought the rights for Borland and they finally sold it as Turbo Pascal.
This is a very misleading quote, and extremly bad journalism. There is a thin line between racism and a peoples struggle for (cultural) independence.
By subtituting "Aryan" for "mestizo" you prove nothing, you only label the "bronze people" as Nazis. What about switching context to 1948 and subtituting "Zionist" for "mestizo" and "jewish" for "bronze"? Makes this Jews Nazis or Indians?
If you rebuild an executable for system X from a binary dump for system Y, you don't just disassemble it, but you put in macro's for all of the opcodes for system Y. These macro's are the glue that emulate parts of Y's hardware on system X.
It's comparable to the difference between an interpreted language and a compiled language. An emulator is a virtual machine that interprets opcodes for machine Y and translates them to instructions for machine X on the fly; this solution compiles the tanslations into an executable for machine X once.
If they decide to restrict it to the US, it's probably because they know the legal situation better there and can start there first. Over time, if they see that they can make a profit from it, they probably will roll it out to other territories.
If there is one nation in the world where the likeliness of being sued for promoting pedophilia/spam/whatever as an owner of a chat server is high, it would be the US. The states could prove a very expensive testbed for payed chat services.
It is an interesting question, and I for one am glad I don't have to answer it. The 11 September issue is probably the more interesting area that isn't addressed in the MSN propaganda, for obvious reasons. I do recall in the aftermath seeing various UK-based Saudis (opponents of the current regime, but not part of Al-Qaeda, for instance) communicating via the Internet using the various Messenger / Chat programs.
Yeah, but still they try to force their customers in 28 countries out of the more anonymous IRC style chatting and into the more easily identifyable forms like IM. So either they are building market share in IM, or there really is something spooky going on; the anti-spam/pedophilia argument is crap, you just can't generalize this way without offending the customers you keep out.
I don't think I buy into it, but have you an alternative?
If, you're going to shut down services because they allow a certain amount of anonimity, the internet is going to be a very dull place soon. If you care about your corporate image, put in some more operators, listen to your users, ban the abusers. It's not like MS hasn't got the money to afford it, and if they put a little media pixiedust over it, they could regain some goodwill ("Our chat service is FREE of costs, spam, pedophiles,...").
If Microsoft discovers its services are being abused and finds that it can at least control or stop that abuse from continuing, don't you think they'd want to try it? And yes, I fully realise that this argument can easily be transmuted against Linux users or anyone else MS doesn't like. But in this case, again, I have to ask: what would you do?
Does it really make sense to make a public service a payed service in the US, and to take it down completely in other parts of the world? What about the people using this service in those 28 countries, are they all spammers and porn-mongers?
The article hints at something interesting:
"It's a signal that some of the joyful early days of the Internet have moved on a bit. Chat was one of those things that was a bit hippyish. It was free and open. But a small minority have changed that for everyone. It's very sad," Sutton said.
It is really an interesting question on how far you're willing to go taking away freedoms/openness from your customers because a small minority does something illegal/unwanted with it. Sutton is playing the 9/11 card very cheaply, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. Are you really buying into this?
What I mean by high abstraction level is writing stuff like: Vector<double, 2> a(0.0, 2.0), b(2.1, -3.2), c(-1.0, 1.0), result;
result= a + b - c;
Instead of writing out the equivalent: struct vectord2 { double elem[2]; } a= {{0.0, 2.0}}, b= {{2.1, -3.2}}, c= {{-1.0, 1.0}}, result;
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) result.elem[i]= a.elem[i] + b.elem[i] - c.elem[i];
If you use an more object oriented approach, you still write result= a + b - c; but the code produced would look like: struct vectord2 { double elem[2]; } a= {{0.0, 2.0}}, b= {{2.1, -3.2}}, c= {{-1.0, 1.0}}, result, temp1, temp2;
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) temp1.elem[i]= a.elem[i] + b.elem[i];
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) temp2.elem[i]= temp1.elem[i] - c.elem[i];
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) result.elem[i]= temp2.elem[i];
It means that the efficiency of a program is usually not bound by the programming language but by the algorithms you use.
That this code doesn't work efficiently if you don't hard-code compile time constants.
Yes, and this is a fundamental problem, not just one of C++ or the templating engines. If you can't delegate complexity to the compiler and solve it at compile time, you'll have solve the complexity at runtime (over and over), and this is inherently not as efficient.
You and the other guy both claim that in the vast majority of cases you know all of the dimensions so you should hard-code these parameters. I seriously doubt this assumption based on personal experience working in an engineering world.
I don't know that much about engineering, but a lot of the scientific stuff done with computers is simulations and mathematical transformations (along with the inevitable statistics), and the dimensionality of these problems is prety much known before you start designing algorithms.
I'm not comparing anything. Let me ask you this, suppose you have a version with hard coded constants, and you at some point have to fix it to handle parameters given at run time. How much of a speed hit do you take?
Not much compared to your language of choice. If some smart traversal- or summing/factoring-method doesn't work because it needs compile time constants, you can't use this method in any language.
Template engines like these are a way to get a higher abstraction level in the code while still producing fairly efficient code. There are different engines for different problem domains, and in some problem domains you simply can't produce efficient code and keep a high abstaction level at the same time. If this is the case you'll have to resort to either micromanaging your code, or you can take the less efficient (more object oriented) approach and keep a high abstaction level.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I should rephrase that to "using scientific methods to prove that scientific methodology is wrong."
I can understand your position, it's tough to hold an impopular opinion on /. If you want to discuss this somewhat more privately, you could post to my journal or write an entry in your own.
You're posting about some theory that claims to be scientific, but at the same time you state you're not interested in dicussing its weaknesses. This is the attitude that many creationists develop, and it explains why it's mostly creationists that refute (other) creationsts' theories.
Fundamentalism is irreconcilable with modern science; fundamentalism means inductive research, while empirical science means deductive research. Scientific methodology doesn't allow you to just try and prove the correctness of some arbitrary theory (like put forward in the Bible or the Koran), you'll have to look at nature itself and distill your theories from observations; not the other way around. This is the fundamental weakness of creationism.
Scientific methodology was devised as a tool to weed out superstition; you just can't support your personal faith by scientific methods; it's like using science to prove that science is wrong.
Nope, the nondeterminism is a fundamental property. If you don't accept this, you'll have to introduce hidden variables to QM. The problem with hidden vars is that you can't measure their effects directly nor indirectly, which sort of violates the definition of what is physics.
Simply put, if you can't accept randomness as a fundamental property of the universe, you'll have to intoduce physical laws you'll not be able to prove nor disprove. You're not far off from introducing some kind of God (with a hidden masterplan) into physics.
Yes, the email could have been transported to the machines over a sneakernet, but how do you suppose the code got out?
Aye, ye americans were advanced people in the year of our lord 1668.
"Real" piracy is not a thing of the past. It has been on the rise in the last years, actually (370 reported cases in 2002, 335 in 2001).
Back on topic, this makes for even better (worse?) propaganda and makes copyright enfringers who call themselves pirates because it sounds so romantic/cool even more childish.
I don't it's fitting either, but very often it's just the way it is; I think it has to do with mass psychology and with tribal behavioural patterns anchored in the unconcious parts of our minds in particular. These behavioural patterns themselves are beyond morality (they're neither good nor bad), but rationalizing them can be dangerous because it can lead to racism and discrimination when the rationalizing is done from a moralistic standpoint.
That's why, in my opinion, it's far more useful to try and show people that their morals are not absolute, instead of trying to forbid their moralistic judgements. If people doubt their moral superiority, they'll stop making those judgements all by themselves.
I'll still hear a racist overtone, but I'll try to keep in mind that they don't mean it that way.
I don't deny you could interpret such statements as racism, that's the problem we're discussing. From personal experience I know people usually don't intend their statements to be racist; consequentially, if you call them a racist they'll get very upset with you, making real discussion very difficult. Having a discussion about racism that doesn't end in a flamewar and in accusations flying is far more productive. This discussion for instance is rather nice, our positions on the issue initially differed a lot but we both kept being polite and listened to eachother; we both learned some things and adjusted our positions accordingly.
You can be proud of the accomplishments of others that are somehow related to you also. As a parent, you can be proud of your children without at the same time being proud of your involvement in their upbinging, and as a child you can be proud of your parents and gandparents for what they accomplished before you were even born.
In this sense, I think it's wrong to be proud of your skin color. I don't think you can be proud of something, without thinking it's special, better than something else. If you think that your skin color is better than another skin color we're right back at mild racism.
I do think pride is related to accomplishments, but as I pointed out these don't have to be personal accomplishments, and they don't have to be of a competative nature. Most people take pride in their work even though they realize there are other people out there who are better at that particular job.
Personally speaking for instance, I'm proud of what my dutch ancestors accomplished in fighting back the sea (competition against nature if you will), and I'm proud of the leading role the Netherlands presently often takes in promoting human rights (without feeling morally superior, honestly). I'm ashamed of the dutch colonial and slave trading past, but I still have an irrational feeling of pride when I consider I'm dutch (but then all feelings are irrational).
This pride has nothing to do with my race, but I would find it understandable if some ethnical minority that has liberated itself from opression takes pride in its accomplishments and uses some racially distinct feature as a symbol for these accomplishments. That's why "I'm black and I'm proud" sounds so different from "I'm white and I'm proud"; but again, if you decouple these phrases from their historical context, there is nothing racist in them, just indications of personal preference.
And to answer your point, I don't feel that my skin color is better. I'm used to it. It's neither good nor bad, and I actually forget all about the issue most of the time.
That's what I do too, but if someone tells me he's proud of his skin color, I start searching for historical context, because while I know this isn't a racist statement in itself, the speaker is probably refering to the historical context. That's why I don't cry racism when a mexican calls himself bronze, and why I think it's unethical to just start substituting "white" for "bronze" and "Aryan" for "mestizo".
In the same way you shouldn't expect your government to protect you as a citizen with stuff like health care (because that's socialist ideology), you shouldn't expect your government to protect free markets (because that's capitalist ideology) if governments are to be void of ideology. This knife cuts two ways, you know.
People always go off babbling about the evils of one ideology, while conveniently forgetting they're the exponent of another ideology. After all, capitalism is just another ideology, not some fundamental law of nature.
Yes it makes a difference, and I think it is somewhat surreal to claim there is no difference because it's just physical. Subjectively speaking, your own culture, race and religion often do seem better; but objectively speaking you can't pass moral judgements like this, because the morals will always be those of your culture and your religion. This is the basis of racism (along with xenophobia): passing moral judgement on people who live by different moral standards.
Why does it sound racist to say "I'm proud of being blonde-haired and blue-eyed," and empowered to say "I'm proud of being black"?
Because of the historical context and the resulting semantic couplings? This is where all the political (over)correctness stems from; with its inherent dangers. Allthough it sounds racist to say "I'm proud of being white", it actually is not. It isn't illegal to be proud of what makes up your cultural and ethnical identity, it's a human right instead. It is illegal to conclude from this that people with other cultural and ethnical identities can't or shouldn't have their pride (because they have their human rights too).
My opinion on "protecting your culture", at least as everyone means it when they say that, is that it's all about making other people live the way you want them to.
Almost. Relating to immigration, it is giving people the choice of living in way that's acceptable to the community or to not live in that community. In a broader sense it means promoting your local culture and its products (like art and entertainment for instance) in favor of cutural exports from abroad. (People in the US generally aren't that aware of the effects of cultural exports, but the rest of the world sure is.)
If it's anything like every other time I hear about this, it's people being upset about children not adopting traditional ways.
I tend to look at culture as a collection of recepies or strategies for survival in a particular (human) environment and timeframe. Most of these strategies lose their value as the environment changes with the passing of time, but some others don't. There is a lot of knowledge embedded in culture, and if we as humans lose our cultural diversity, we're bound to lose valueable knowledge. Monoculture is dangerous.
So while I agree with you on most traditions becoming no more than useless ritual over time, I think some traditions stay valuable. After all, you don't have to know what you're doing to do the right thing.
This leaves me wondering just how much this fiasco is going to cost me as a dutch citizen, because surely the telcos will demand compensation.
By the way, the Netherlands isn't the only country that auctioned UMTS freqs. for billions by far. If this study is repeated and proves to be correct, this could mean financial repercussions for a lot of governments.
So what exactly is wrong with protecting your culture? Why is it wrong to say you're proud of your cultural heritage, like the language you speak (language is an important part of a culture), and that it is valueable enough to you to protect it? In your opinion, can a US citizen claim he's proud of the american way of life without being a racist?
But sure, you go with your idea. It works for you.
Really, all I'm trying to say in this thread is simply put that "I'm black and I'm proud (of it)" is not a racist remark, but "I'm black and (therefore) I'm better" is a racist remark.
I'm a dutch citizen, so I don't have any direct involvement in californian politics; but as a dutch I'm very aware of what constitutes racism and discrimination, because dutch law is very careful about discrimination. So (over)careful there were cases of "positive discrimination", where immigrants that consisted a racial minority in the Netherlands would recieve privileged treatment over dutch citizens. This of course did not went well with those citizens, and racist tendencies grew.
Being too politically correct can have adverse effects and promote "political incorrectness".
In the Netherlands the controversial exponent of this "political incorrectness" was the populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who got enormously popular by saying things like "Islam is a retarded culture" (mind you not religion but culture). He was causing a political landslide and was very open about his ambitions towards becoming prime minister. (He was also very open about his homosexuality.) Ultimately he got shot by some psyched-out animal activist, and left all of us dutch to wonder what would have become of the Netherlands if he had ruled it. (He would have personally ruled because his party didn't even have a published plan, just his manifestos.)
Again, this is not the case. One party says "no new foreigners in", the other says "all blacks out, even if they've got citizenship". Can't you see the difference?
This seems to me to be a case where "reverse" racism is good. In other words, if it's done by a rich white man, it's bad. If it's done by one of the victims of rich white men, (ie. anyone else) it's good.
Get it into your head that not allowing forgeigners in is not racism; almost every country in the world has policies to limit the number of immigrants; most certainly every 1st world country does. (Green card lottery, anyone?)
Yes, but does the quote state there will be discrimination based on skin color, or does it state there should be less immigration to protect the indiginous culture. The latter is common political practice, and this is what I meant by that fine line in my original post.
If Mexicans can have a racially pure culture, so can the KKK. You can't have it both ways.
Yes I can, because the KKK clearly talks about race, while MEChA doesn't. MEChA doesn't want foreigners to immigrate to Mexico, the KKK wants all non-whites to emigrate out of the US (or worse).
(Please note I don't share Bustamante's nor MEChA's polictical views, but I think politics shouldn't degrade into mudslinging.)
Nope, read the wikipedia link. Hejlsberg created it as Blue Label Pascal for the Nascom-2 mini, ported it to CP/M and DOS and sold it as Compass Pascal and later as Poly Pascal. Kahn bought the rights for Borland and they finally sold it as Turbo Pascal.
By subtituting "Aryan" for "mestizo" you prove nothing, you only label the "bronze people" as Nazis. What about switching context to 1948 and subtituting "Zionist" for "mestizo" and "jewish" for "bronze"? Makes this Jews Nazis or Indians?
You probably mean Anders Hejlsberg, who created Turbo Pascal, then created Delphi, and finally went to Microsoft to create C# for them.
If you rebuild an executable for system X from a binary dump for system Y, you don't just disassemble it, but you put in macro's for all of the opcodes for system Y. These macro's are the glue that emulate parts of Y's hardware on system X.
It's comparable to the difference between an interpreted language and a compiled language. An emulator is a virtual machine that interprets opcodes for machine Y and translates them to instructions for machine X on the fly; this solution compiles the tanslations into an executable for machine X once.
The freedom Sutton is talking about; the freedom to use a more anonymous chatting system.
It's a service they're paying for. They can stop offering it for WHATEVER REASON THEY WANT.
Correct. But if you stop offering it completely to some, make some pay for it and continue to offer it for free to others, you look like a jerk.
Why the hell does everything here turn into an argument about freedom.
Probably because the internet was built as an open system without restrictions, and people like it to stay that way?
If there is one nation in the world where the likeliness of being sued for promoting pedophilia/spam/whatever as an owner of a chat server is high, it would be the US. The states could prove a very expensive testbed for payed chat services.
It is an interesting question, and I for one am glad I don't have to answer it. The 11 September issue is probably the more interesting area that isn't addressed in the MSN propaganda, for obvious reasons. I do recall in the aftermath seeing various UK-based Saudis (opponents of the current regime, but not part of Al-Qaeda, for instance) communicating via the Internet using the various Messenger / Chat programs.
Yeah, but still they try to force their customers in 28 countries out of the more anonymous IRC style chatting and into the more easily identifyable forms like IM. So either they are building market share in IM, or there really is something spooky going on; the anti-spam/pedophilia argument is crap, you just can't generalize this way without offending the customers you keep out.
I don't think I buy into it, but have you an alternative?
If, you're going to shut down services because they allow a certain amount of anonimity, the internet is going to be a very dull place soon. If you care about your corporate image, put in some more operators, listen to your users, ban the abusers. It's not like MS hasn't got the money to afford it, and if they put a little media pixiedust over it, they could regain some goodwill ("Our chat service is FREE of costs, spam, pedophiles, ...").
Does it really make sense to make a public service a payed service in the US, and to take it down completely in other parts of the world? What about the people using this service in those 28 countries, are they all spammers and porn-mongers?
The article hints at something interesting:
It is really an interesting question on how far you're willing to go taking away freedoms/openness from your customers because a small minority does something illegal/unwanted with it. Sutton is playing the 9/11 card very cheaply, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. Are you really buying into this?
What I mean by high abstraction level is writing stuff like:
Vector<double, 2> a(0.0, 2.0), b(2.1, -3.2), c(-1.0, 1.0), result;
result= a + b - c;
Instead of writing out the equivalent:
struct vectord2 { double elem[2]; } a= {{0.0, 2.0}}, b= {{2.1, -3.2}}, c= {{-1.0, 1.0}}, result;
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) result.elem[i]= a.elem[i] + b.elem[i] - c.elem[i];
If you use an more object oriented approach, you still write result= a + b - c; but the code produced would look like:
struct vectord2 { double elem[2]; } a= {{0.0, 2.0}}, b= {{2.1, -3.2}}, c= {{-1.0, 1.0}}, result, temp1, temp2;
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) temp1.elem[i]= a.elem[i] + b.elem[i];
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) temp2.elem[i]= temp1.elem[i] - c.elem[i];
for(int i= 0; i != 2; ++i) result.elem[i]= temp2.elem[i];
It means that the efficiency of a program is usually not bound by the programming language but by the algorithms you use.
That this code doesn't work efficiently if you don't hard-code compile time constants.
Yes, and this is a fundamental problem, not just one of C++ or the templating engines. If you can't delegate complexity to the compiler and solve it at compile time, you'll have solve the complexity at runtime (over and over), and this is inherently not as efficient.
I don't know that much about engineering, but a lot of the scientific stuff done with computers is simulations and mathematical transformations (along with the inevitable statistics), and the dimensionality of these problems is prety much known before you start designing algorithms.
I'm not comparing anything. Let me ask you this, suppose you have a version with hard coded constants, and you at some point have to fix it to handle parameters given at run time. How much of a speed hit do you take?
Not much compared to your language of choice. If some smart traversal- or summing/factoring-method doesn't work because it needs compile time constants, you can't use this method in any language.
Template engines like these are a way to get a higher abstraction level in the code while still producing fairly efficient code. There are different engines for different problem domains, and in some problem domains you simply can't produce efficient code and keep a high abstaction level at the same time. If this is the case you'll have to resort to either micromanaging your code, or you can take the less efficient (more object oriented) approach and keep a high abstaction level.