Stupid users don't doggedly stick at something for three and a half years, trying distribution after distribution in the hope of finding the holy grail of Linux desktops.
That is what databases are for. Roll-your-own databases have the problem of hard-wiring the implementation into the calling code. If you change the representation, then you have to change all your calls.
I think (hope) we're talking about different things. I'm not talking about rolling up a Perl data structure for persistance purposes, I'm talking about internal data structures that can be passed between functions.
Unless you think that instead of passing back a hash reference of data from my subroutine, I should have a temporary table in a database, store the data in the database, read it back in the calling subroutine, and then delete the temporary data! If this is what you're talking about, please check yourself into the nearest mental health facility.:)
I have been a Perl guru since version 2.0, and I can honestly say that the features added since that time have not made my life any easier.
You never use references?? If you have no necessity for hash references or list references for complex data structures, then your Perl needs must be pretty low.
We've also found that cell phones are displacing the sales of watches, as most modern cell phones have a server-synchronized clock built in.
I stopped wearing a wristwatch a long time ago for just this reason. What's also interesting that I never though of before is that we went from pocket watches -> wrist watches -> and now back to pocket watches!
Word up, brother. In fact, I just ranted about this myself. If I may quote myself, "Where does this bullshit come from that 'they're just going to do what they're going to do anyway, and there's no way to stop them, so you might as well let them do whatever they want'?".
Or one last thing, when we get cheap space travel in 100 years, we'll just build massive farms in space and drop the food the earth.
We are not going to run out of food. The earth can support 10 or 100 times as many people as we have now. Fortunately, we'll never get that many, since the population is expected to stabilize at (I believe) about 10-15 billion by 2100 due to dropping birth rates in developed countries.
the amount of land required to feed one person with meat is something like 10 times the amount of land required to feed one person with vegetables or grains. Meat is simply a much less efficient use of land in terms of food supply.
That may be true, but it doesn't matter. It reminds me of this silly net survey I took the other day that said if "everyone consumes like you consume, it would take 4.3 Earths". What is wrong about that analysis is that it assumes a static technology level, and static economics.
If/when the 3rd world catches up with the rest of the world's consumption, demand for resources will cause technology to improve such that the demand is met. Where demand is not met, it will cause prices to rise until you get a balance between supply and demand.
In other words, we are NEVER going to "run out" of land. The land will continue to be used more efficiently, and it will be used in such a way that supply and demand are balanced. If meat gets so expensive that only relatively few can afford it, then most of the world will "automatically" become vegetarian. There's no "guilt" requirement here. Things will work out automatically.
And even if we did "run out" of land, it's not like we can't "make more" land. Irrigate deserts and make them farmland. Hell, build "multi-level" farms with artificial light. How many chickens could you farm in a massive high-rise building? All of this "sky is falling" stuff is just silly.
It's the same deal with the oil supply. We have people who wring their hands about "running out of oil". The fact is we will NEVER EVER run out of oil. Never. It simply becomes more and more expensive until alternatives to oil are cheaper than oil itself. Oil in the ground is not like a gas tank where it just runs dry. It just gets more expensive to pull it out of the ground.
Is it because their lives are not important as the ones who perished on 9/11. If its confirmed that US fscked up by dropping the bomb, would the 40 men,women and children get any justice as well ?
As others have pointed out, there is definitely not a lack of coverage, but that said, the difference is that their lives were not intentionally targeted, whereas the WTC lives were.
There is a logical explanation for this, and it doesn't require racism, conspiracies or any other nonsense. First of all, "News" is about reporting things that are "new".
Child disappearances are rare, but not totally unknown. The difference between Alexis Patterson and Elizabeth Smart is that Alexis is a straight disappearance. There's nothing unusual about that beyond a child disappearing.
Elizabeth Smart, on the other hand, was taken AT GUNPOINT FROM HER HOME with her sister witnessing the act. How often does that happen? Almost never.
John, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Everything doesn't have to have a sinister reason behind it.
Exactly right. It wouldn't offend me at all if we didn't have people coming on here bragging how they wrote the package to handle financial transactions for their company's web site using MySQL. "Well, it works, so who needs transactions?? Hyuck yuck!"
It's worse than some Microsoft DBA bragging that "who needs C++ when we have Visual Basic?"
If you need a web censoring software to know your child is doing that,
Actually, I haven't said anything about web censoring software.
Maybe you don't know the internet very well, but I cannot imagine how a little girl would see constant images of that.
Apparently YOU don't know the Internet very well. I'm not talking about images of two animals having sex, I'm talking about women having sex with animals.
Hmm, I guess those boys, including me, grew up to be serial killers, right?
Once again, you confuse symptom with cause. Jeffrey Dahmer used to go into the forest, catch animals, and torture them. But hey, he was just going through a phase, right? The parents were right in just letting him "get it out of his system", right?
though only a moron believes that they'll be truly effective
Where does this bullshit come from that "they're just going to do what they're going to do anyway, and there's no way to stop them, so you might as well let them do whatever they want".
But in a free society I would think we'd err on the side of more speech rather than little, even for kids.
See, this is what I find so bizarre. I'm talking about controlling what children see and hear and guiding them along the path to adulthood. And that includes sometimes shielding them from bad influences. You're characterizing this as some jack-booted campaign to censor everything around a child.
I have a feeling you would be the kind of parent watching your kid start to hang around with the druggie crowd, and then saying to yourself, "well, [wring hands] he has a right to pick his friends [wring hands] I shouldn't interfere, it'll just drive him to do it more [wring hands] I better just stand back and let him 'find himself'".
Just curious, are you going to censor the Harry Potter series from your daughter?
If you have to ask that question, then you have absolutely no idea what the discussion is about.
And the last thing I would want to do is restrict their access to information about the ideas they care most about, even at the risk that a few of them will read something that will make them want to sleep in coffins and slash their wrists.
The point is not "restricting access", the point is controlling access. If my child is going down some unhealthy freaky path, then I need to know about it. It may be just a phase that they are going through, and that's fine.
Perhaps, but either is well within the domain of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is irrelevent to someone under legal adult age.
I would think the appropriate response in a society that values diversity of ideas would be to actually talk to your children rather than prevent them from downloading freakin' Marilyn Manson photos.
I agree. But it also depends on the age and mental development of the child. Marilyn Manson is a symptom, not a cause. My 8 year old daughter doesn't need to see the freaky photos on that site.
For whatever reason, too many people think that every child should be deluged with as much as much raw Internet sewage as possible at as early an age as possible. It never occurs to people that maybe it might have an unhealthy effect on a developing brain. "Just talk about it" is not a magic incantation. For example, I don't think it's particularly healthy for little girls to see constant images of animal sex porn.
Obviously, the older the child, the more they can be exposed to. But for someone to say that none of these things have any influence is just folly. Like I said, a lot of these things are symptoms, not causes. But that doesn't mean you have to feed unhealthy obsessions just because your kid "wants what he wants".
Simple, because the "occult" is not a religion, it's an obsession that many teenagers go through when they have severe problems. Studying religion is one thing, wearing black and pretending your some sort of "dark lord" is whole 'nother thing.
Or to put it another way, studying world war II history is one, obsessing over Nazi hate sites is another.
If you're going to base your ethical choices on what's "natural", then you have to conclude that theft, warfare, and murder are all perfectly moral, since they occur in nature.
Theft, warfare and murder are just fine -- against animals. It's only against humans that we make a distinction. Humans are considered to have certain "inalienable rights" that we do not assign to animals. Now, that doesn't mean we can't assign "protections" to animals, but that's totally different than assigning them rights.
Other animals display some degree of self-awareness
Only if you reduce the definition of self-awareness to meaninglessness can you make that argument.
and not all humans possess it.
We extend our moral protections to humans even if they only have/had the potential for self-awareness.
Jack Valenti is a gray area... I admint the temptation is there, even if I would be unlikely to act on it.
I was with you until the Jack Valenti crack.
With all due respect, even having some temptation to kill someone just because you don't like the way he distributes a freaking MUSIC CD totally kills your entire argument. What he is doing is legal and perfectly moral. He is trying to protect the property that he is responsible for.
You may be one of those who think intellectual property should be done away with, but I think most people realize that reasonable people can disagree on that.
You may disagree with how they are doing business, but ANY desire to kill Jack Valenti for such a trivial reason is just as sick as the guy willing to hit the button for money.
why the hell would i eat meat when there is a healthier more efficient alternative which doesnt deplete our natural resources? No i do not eat meat. strictly vegan here, thank you.
Just for the record, not eating meat does NOT make you morally superior. There's this thing called the "food chain". I have the absolute, natural, moral right to eat meat.
The distinction between humans and animals comes down to self-aware intelligence, and that's why we put more value on human life than other life.
You have no idea what you are talking about. There have been numerous rules changes over the last 20 years to facilitate attacking play - offside changes, less tackling, goalies unable to hold the ball for more than 6 seconds, no passbacks, etc etc.
And yet, there are still only 1 or 2 goals a side (if you're lucky). As I pointed out in another post, I think the "natural" number of points should be about 20-25 points a side. It would make it much less fluky than having one side score a goal, and then spend the rest of the time trying to prevent the other side.
I would modify this to say a good defense will beat a good offensive player every time.
OK, I'll buy that. The point is that, as someone else pointed out, the game is too fluky when you have so few points scored. I think the "natural" score that a game like soccer should attain is about 20-25 points per side (and yes, I know that is a radical departure).
You mean, when people throw beer pitchers at each other in bar fights?
You don't REALLY want to get into a comparison based on the violence of the spectators, do you? I figured I would leave that out since it's such an easy target, and soccer shouldn't be blamed for what the fans do when the watch it, but if you want to...
Re:Why soccer is a bad game
on
World Cup Final
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
The whole world (minus you) thinks it's great.
"The whole world"?? I guess you missed this little part of North America called "The United States". The point is that only countries with few other options think it's great.
Do you REALLY think that you have some special insight that 1.5 billion people have missed? No you don't, so keep it shut.
As a matter of fact, I do, as I explained. Am I supposed to care what 1.5 billion people think who have few other sport options? That would be a big, fat NO. Just as I don't care what 4 billion people around the world think of the US who don't live here (not to say that ANY foreign opinion is worthless, only the vast majority).
Typical soccer fan. Criticize their sport, and they go off the deep end.
Slashdot Mirror
I had to laugh at this...
Stupid users don't doggedly stick at something for three and a half years, trying distribution after distribution in the hope of finding the holy grail of Linux desktops.
Hmmmm.... I don't know about that...
A friend of mine suggested printing post-it notes with Java code to paste over MIX code in the tAoCP.
Suggesting that Knuth should implement his algorithms in Java is the strongest argument for MIX I've ever heard.
Which is a fantastic idea by the way - just imagine, a simple -> in perl going off and querying the oracle database in the basement. That would rock.
That would indeed rock, which is why Perl already supports it. Review "Tied Variables".
That is what databases are for. Roll-your-own databases have the problem of hard-wiring the implementation into the calling code. If you change the representation, then you have to change all your calls.
I think (hope) we're talking about different things. I'm not talking about rolling up a Perl data structure for persistance purposes, I'm talking about internal data structures that can be passed between functions.
Unless you think that instead of passing back a hash reference of data from my subroutine, I should have a temporary table in a database, store the data in the database, read it back in the calling subroutine, and then delete the temporary data! If this is what you're talking about, please check yourself into the nearest mental health facility. :)
I have been a Perl guru since version 2.0, and I can honestly say that the features added since that time have not made my life any easier.
You never use references?? If you have no necessity for hash references or list references for complex data structures, then your Perl needs must be pretty low.
We've also found that cell phones are displacing the sales of watches, as most modern cell phones have a server-synchronized clock built in.
I stopped wearing a wristwatch a long time ago for just this reason. What's also interesting that I never though of before is that we went from pocket watches -> wrist watches -> and now back to pocket watches!
Word up, brother. In fact, I just ranted about this myself. If I may quote myself, "Where does this bullshit come from that 'they're just going to do what they're going to do anyway, and there's no way to stop them, so you might as well let them do whatever they want'?".
Or one last thing, when we get cheap space travel in 100 years, we'll just build massive farms in space and drop the food the earth.
We are not going to run out of food. The earth can support 10 or 100 times as many people as we have now. Fortunately, we'll never get that many, since the population is expected to stabilize at (I believe) about 10-15 billion by 2100 due to dropping birth rates in developed countries.
the amount of land required to feed one person with meat is something like 10 times the amount of land required to feed one person with vegetables or grains. Meat is simply a much less efficient use of land in terms of food supply.
That may be true, but it doesn't matter. It reminds me of this silly net survey I took the other day that said if "everyone consumes like you consume, it would take 4.3 Earths". What is wrong about that analysis is that it assumes a static technology level, and static economics.
If/when the 3rd world catches up with the rest of the world's consumption, demand for resources will cause technology to improve such that the demand is met. Where demand is not met, it will cause prices to rise until you get a balance between supply and demand.
In other words, we are NEVER going to "run out" of land. The land will continue to be used more efficiently, and it will be used in such a way that supply and demand are balanced. If meat gets so expensive that only relatively few can afford it, then most of the world will "automatically" become vegetarian. There's no "guilt" requirement here. Things will work out automatically.
And even if we did "run out" of land, it's not like we can't "make more" land. Irrigate deserts and make them farmland. Hell, build "multi-level" farms with artificial light. How many chickens could you farm in a massive high-rise building? All of this "sky is falling" stuff is just silly.
It's the same deal with the oil supply. We have people who wring their hands about "running out of oil". The fact is we will NEVER EVER run out of oil. Never. It simply becomes more and more expensive until alternatives to oil are cheaper than oil itself. Oil in the ground is not like a gas tank where it just runs dry. It just gets more expensive to pull it out of the ground.
Is it because their lives are not important as the ones who perished on 9/11. If its confirmed that US fscked up by dropping the bomb, would the 40 men,women and children get any justice as well ?
As others have pointed out, there is definitely not a lack of coverage, but that said, the difference is that their lives were not intentionally targeted, whereas the WTC lives were.
There is a logical explanation for this, and it doesn't require racism, conspiracies or any other nonsense. First of all, "News" is about reporting things that are "new".
Child disappearances are rare, but not totally unknown. The difference between Alexis Patterson and Elizabeth Smart is that Alexis is a straight disappearance. There's nothing unusual about that beyond a child disappearing.
Elizabeth Smart, on the other hand, was taken AT GUNPOINT FROM HER HOME with her sister witnessing the act. How often does that happen? Almost never.
John, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Everything doesn't have to have a sinister reason behind it.
Exactly right. It wouldn't offend me at all if we didn't have people coming on here bragging how they wrote the package to handle financial transactions for their company's web site using MySQL. "Well, it works, so who needs transactions?? Hyuck yuck!"
It's worse than some Microsoft DBA bragging that "who needs C++ when we have Visual Basic?"
If you need a web censoring software to know your child is doing that,
Actually, I haven't said anything about web censoring software.
Maybe you don't know the internet very well, but I cannot imagine how a little girl would see constant images of that.
Apparently YOU don't know the Internet very well. I'm not talking about images of two animals having sex, I'm talking about women having sex with animals.
Hmm, I guess those boys, including me, grew up to be serial killers, right?
Once again, you confuse symptom with cause. Jeffrey Dahmer used to go into the forest, catch animals, and torture them. But hey, he was just going through a phase, right? The parents were right in just letting him "get it out of his system", right?
though only a moron believes that they'll be truly effective
Where does this bullshit come from that "they're just going to do what they're going to do anyway, and there's no way to stop them, so you might as well let them do whatever they want".
But in a free society I would think we'd err on the side of more speech rather than little, even for kids.
See, this is what I find so bizarre. I'm talking about controlling what children see and hear and guiding them along the path to adulthood. And that includes sometimes shielding them from bad influences. You're characterizing this as some jack-booted campaign to censor everything around a child.
I have a feeling you would be the kind of parent watching your kid start to hang around with the druggie crowd, and then saying to yourself, "well, [wring hands] he has a right to pick his friends [wring hands] I shouldn't interfere, it'll just drive him to do it more [wring hands] I better just stand back and let him 'find himself'".
Just curious, are you going to censor the Harry Potter series from your daughter?
If you have to ask that question, then you have absolutely no idea what the discussion is about.
And the last thing I would want to do is restrict their access to information about the ideas they care most about, even at the risk that a few of them will read something that will make them want to sleep in coffins and slash their wrists.
The point is not "restricting access", the point is controlling access. If my child is going down some unhealthy freaky path, then I need to know about it. It may be just a phase that they are going through, and that's fine.
Perhaps, but either is well within the domain of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is irrelevent to someone under legal adult age.
I would think the appropriate response in a society that values diversity of ideas would be to actually talk to your children rather than prevent them from downloading freakin' Marilyn Manson photos.
I agree. But it also depends on the age and mental development of the child. Marilyn Manson is a symptom, not a cause. My 8 year old daughter doesn't need to see the freaky photos on that site.
For whatever reason, too many people think that every child should be deluged with as much as much raw Internet sewage as possible at as early an age as possible. It never occurs to people that maybe it might have an unhealthy effect on a developing brain. "Just talk about it" is not a magic incantation. For example, I don't think it's particularly healthy for little girls to see constant images of animal sex porn.
Obviously, the older the child, the more they can be exposed to. But for someone to say that none of these things have any influence is just folly. Like I said, a lot of these things are symptoms, not causes. But that doesn't mean you have to feed unhealthy obsessions just because your kid "wants what he wants".
Simple, because the "occult" is not a religion, it's an obsession that many teenagers go through when they have severe problems. Studying religion is one thing, wearing black and pretending your some sort of "dark lord" is whole 'nother thing.
Or to put it another way, studying world war II history is one, obsessing over Nazi hate sites is another.
If you're going to base your ethical choices on what's "natural", then you have to conclude that theft, warfare, and murder are all perfectly moral, since they occur in nature.
Theft, warfare and murder are just fine -- against animals. It's only against humans that we make a distinction. Humans are considered to have certain "inalienable rights" that we do not assign to animals. Now, that doesn't mean we can't assign "protections" to animals, but that's totally different than assigning them rights.
Other animals display some degree of self-awareness
Only if you reduce the definition of self-awareness to meaninglessness can you make that argument.
and not all humans possess it.
We extend our moral protections to humans even if they only have/had the potential for self-awareness.
As others have pointed out, that was Watson of IBM. Given we're talking 1943, it's not as absurd as this one (my personal favorite):
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home" Ken Olson, founder of DEC, 1977
Sorry, I failed to notice that your reasons for being a vegan didn't include moral ones. My mistake.
You're also totally wrong about the whole environmental thing, but that's a different subject. :)
Jack Valenti is a gray area ... I admint the temptation is there, even if I would be unlikely to act on it.
I was with you until the Jack Valenti crack.
With all due respect, even having some temptation to kill someone just because you don't like the way he distributes a freaking MUSIC CD totally kills your entire argument. What he is doing is legal and perfectly moral. He is trying to protect the property that he is responsible for.
You may be one of those who think intellectual property should be done away with, but I think most people realize that reasonable people can disagree on that.
You may disagree with how they are doing business, but ANY desire to kill Jack Valenti for such a trivial reason is just as sick as the guy willing to hit the button for money.
why the hell would i eat meat when there is a healthier more efficient alternative which doesnt deplete our natural resources? No i do not eat meat. strictly vegan here, thank you.
Just for the record, not eating meat does NOT make you morally superior. There's this thing called the "food chain". I have the absolute, natural, moral right to eat meat.
The distinction between humans and animals comes down to self-aware intelligence, and that's why we put more value on human life than other life.
You have no idea what you are talking about. There have been numerous rules changes over the last 20 years to facilitate attacking play - offside changes, less tackling, goalies unable to hold the ball for more than 6 seconds, no passbacks, etc etc.
And yet, there are still only 1 or 2 goals a side (if you're lucky). As I pointed out in another post, I think the "natural" number of points should be about 20-25 points a side. It would make it much less fluky than having one side score a goal, and then spend the rest of the time trying to prevent the other side.
I would modify this to say a good defense will beat a good offensive player every time.
OK, I'll buy that. The point is that, as someone else pointed out, the game is too fluky when you have so few points scored. I think the "natural" score that a game like soccer should attain is about 20-25 points per side (and yes, I know that is a radical departure).
You mean, when people throw beer pitchers at each other in bar fights?
You don't REALLY want to get into a comparison based on the violence of the spectators, do you? I figured I would leave that out since it's such an easy target, and soccer shouldn't be blamed for what the fans do when the watch it, but if you want to...
The whole world (minus you) thinks it's great.
"The whole world"?? I guess you missed this little part of North America called "The United States". The point is that only countries with few other options think it's great.
Do you REALLY think that you have some special insight that 1.5 billion people have missed? No you don't, so keep it shut.
As a matter of fact, I do, as I explained. Am I supposed to care what 1.5 billion people think who have few other sport options? That would be a big, fat NO. Just as I don't care what 4 billion people around the world think of the US who don't live here (not to say that ANY foreign opinion is worthless, only the vast majority).
Typical soccer fan. Criticize their sport, and they go off the deep end.