Umm, in Perl, you create a closure by creating an anonymous sub. That sub is a lexically closed block... what's non-obvious about this?
Re:Perl 6 is evolving the language into awesome!
on
What is Perl 6?
·
· Score: 1
Umm... why, exactly, is it more consistent to use "+" for both concatenation and addition? They're not even remotely the same operation. Methinks it's these other languages that are less consistent...
That's funny. I had the exact opposite impression... strange, it's almost like a... whaddayacallit... personal preference. That would be why they offer multiple control schemes.
no WPA = one very big hole that nintendo are now forcing all their consumers to create:-(
What hole? The LAN can be protected by a firewall (any decent AP has one built in). OTA transmissions can be encrypted using transport-layer protocols (which you should be doing anyway... please tell me you aren't sending sensitive data in the clear over the internet). So about the only thing left to worry about is bandwidth theft. Well, WEP is sufficient for stopping most people, and for more hard-core folks, they'll go somewhere else... the gigabytes of data that are needed to be sniffed in order to exploit WEP doesn't make it worth the trouble.
in the Functional Programming sense of the term, e.g. functions with closures that are first-class objects
You'd be absolutely right, assuming, of course, that Python actually supported true lexical closures, which it doesn't...
Of course, I'm not so silly to think that Ruby is unique in supporting this concept. After all, the creators of Ruby stole most of their ideas from Smalltalk, who, in turn, stole many of their ideas from LISP (although, admittedly, LISP didn't switch to lexically scoped closures until somewhat later in it's lifespan). It's just a shame that Python hasn't done the same.
Not quite.:) What you're describing is centripetal force, which isn't the force at play in this situation.
Try this: imagine a yo-yo on a string. Now, if you swing the yo-yo in a circle, the center of it's swing will be your hand. Now imagine trying to make the yo-yo swing around a different center, say a position six inches *above* your hand. You can't do it. Why? Because the pull of the string will always cause the yo-yo to swing about your hand. Now, replace your hand with the earth, the string with gravity, the yo-yo with a satellite, and the six inches with the 49th parallel, and it's basically the same situation.:)
As a counter example, you can absolutely have an orbit which is tilted on an angle, and varies from, say, the 49th to the 139th parallel. You just can't create orbits that aren't centered around the earth.
Oh, nothing so exotic. Consider: First, it is impossible to just orbit, say, the 49th parallel. This is due to the downward pull of gravity, which would 'straighten out' any such orbit. Second, a geosync orbit must have a horizontal trajectory which exactly matches the direction and speed of the earth's rotation. Put two and two together, and it should be pretty clear that geosync orbits can only occur at the equator.
Right, so you can do it in C, and it'll be faster, but more prone to error, or you could do it in a high level language, and it'll be slower, but more safe (and probably more concise and easier to understand). How is this a surprise?:)
Hell, people probably made the same arguments vis a vis C vs assembler... IOW, this argument is as old as the hills, and in the end, the solution is always the same: pick the right tool for the job.
When I was a 13, the state government installed cameras on the nearby interstate. One camera was near our land, so I shot it out with my rifle. They replaced the camera and I shot that one too.
Wait wait, let me get this straight. While you could have just destroyed the camera with a baseball bat, instead, you chose to endanger people's lives and *shoot* them out. And you're telling me this is a fucking *good* thing? Christ almighty, thank you for providing me with yet another reason why, every day, I thank the lord I don't live in the US.
BTW, if the day ever comes, let me know how effective your precious firearms were for protecting your freedom after going up against a group of armoured soldiers carrying assault rifles.
Actually, this is already possible. Any email that is of the form myname+stuff@gmail.com will go to myname@gmail.com. So, you can use myname+spam@gmail.com for all your untrusted sources, and just myname@gmail.com for everything else. Then, filter on the To: line and apply appropriate labels, and voila! Problem solved.
Yeah! And if in, say, Java, you have a superclass and subclass, how do you know the subclass didn't override superclass methods to do totally different things!
It's called not doing stupid stuff. Now, I don't know much about Ruby, but in Objective-C, these things are called Protocols, and in Java, they're called Interfaces, but the rule is that if you implement a given protocol, then you must conform to a given contract. Can a developer deviate from that contract? Yes. Are they fucking retards if they do? Absolutely! If you want to prevent that, your only option is to work with a language like Eiffel which incorporates design-by-contract at the language level... of course, even that isn't foolproof.
Heh, you're absolutely right, I should.:) Thanks! I've habitually just moved code, marked the block, and did a C-M-\... obviously that approach doesn't work with Python.
You know, at first I agreed with you. Emacs seemed to take care of the indentation for me, and I though, 'hey, this isn't as bad as I thought'. And then I tried to actually refactor some code. You see, the minute you start moving blocks of code around, the editor is largely helpless, as it's impossible to know, just by examining a piece of code, what the indent level should be. Example:
if (a == b):
while (c == d):
do_some_stuff
more_if_statements
while (e == f):
do_some_stuff
Now, let's say you decide to move the 'if' statement inside the while. You cut and paste, and then try to reindent. But... wtf... the editor did this!
while (e == f):
if (a == b):
while (c == d):
do_some_stuff
more_if_statements
do_some_stuff
That ain't right. So now you have to go back and fix it, which in this case is relatively trivial, but for any complicated body of code, it's *incredibly* tedious. And there's no way for the editor to get this right! The minute I started running across this, I decided to put Python on the shelf... it's simply too damned annoying.
Or (a lot) less. The Amoeba dubia, a single-celled organism, has the largest known genome, at 670,000,000,000 base pairs. To contrast, humans have a mere 2,900,000,000.
Umm... that already exists in the form of Parrot's NCI, or Native Call Interface. It's been used to bind, among other things, SDL to Parrot.
Re:Parrot more interesting than Perl 6
on
Larry Wall on Perl 6
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I think the main thing that sets.net apart is not so much language support, but the rich software library which is conveniently accessable from *any* of those languages.
You do realize that the goal of Parrot is to allow exactly that, right? So a Python programmer could, conceivable, leverage modules from C6PAN, or vice versa. But, like.NET, whether this will work in practice remains to be seen.
If something like this two-tier model goes through on VZ, then there's nothing stopping Charter (the cable company around here) from doing the same...or anyone else who owns the pipe.
Hopefully laws against collusion, but then again, there seems to be a reluctance to punish companies for such uncompetative behaviour.
Of course, there's always the third party ISPs who will undoubtly buck the trend in order to attract customers... hence the beauty of the free market. Then again, that presumes that the government will continue to force the telcos to open up their networks to competition.
Perhaps you should re-read your own posts... you seem confused.
My original point was that the military protects us by preventing others from attacking us
Right, that they are, to quote, "defending our freedom in the sense that they exist and are a very good deterrant".
But my entire point (which you really seem to be missing) is that this deterrant effect is no longer necessary. Trade relations with the big nations (such as Canada and Mexico, not to mention China, the EU, India, etc) preclude any major wars there... they're simply too interdependant on one another (at least globalization was good for something). And the small nations simply don't have the resources to wage such a war effectively (ironically also a product of globalization), even if the US was largely defenseless.
Pfft, Iran and North Korea are both far more interested in keeping their own local populations in line, and haven't the resources to mount any sort of offensive against a geographically extended country half the world away across the worlds oceans... about the only possibility is long-range missile attacks, but neither have the launch capability, nor could they develop it without people taking notice *VERY* quickly. As for Mexico, they have the same economic incentives to avoid war as Canada does. Moreover, you're comment about strain on administration applies to all three of your proposed attackers.
Face it, the way the world is right now, the US, specifically, really doesn't need the massive military it possesses. Now, don't get me wrong, some amount of military purely for defensive purposes is, I think, an important thing... there are really crazy people out there. But the US's military is, frankly, pretty darn ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, in Perl, you create a closure by creating an anonymous sub. That sub is a lexically closed block... what's non-obvious about this?
Umm... why, exactly, is it more consistent to use "+" for both concatenation and addition? They're not even remotely the same operation. Methinks it's these other languages that are less consistent...
That's funny. I had the exact opposite impression... strange, it's almost like a... whaddayacallit... personal preference. That would be why they offer multiple control schemes.
no WPA = one very big hole that nintendo are now forcing all their consumers to create :-(
What hole? The LAN can be protected by a firewall (any decent AP has one built in). OTA transmissions can be encrypted using transport-layer protocols (which you should be doing anyway... please tell me you aren't sending sensitive data in the clear over the internet). So about the only thing left to worry about is bandwidth theft. Well, WEP is sufficient for stopping most people, and for more hard-core folks, they'll go somewhere else... the gigabytes of data that are needed to be sniffed in order to exploit WEP doesn't make it worth the trouble.
Yeah, too bad it's b0rked (or, more generously, it behaves strangely compared to other languages). Lexically closed variables in Python are read-only.
in the Functional Programming sense of the term, e.g. functions with closures that are first-class objects
You'd be absolutely right, assuming, of course, that Python actually supported true lexical closures, which it doesn't...
Of course, I'm not so silly to think that Ruby is unique in supporting this concept. After all, the creators of Ruby stole most of their ideas from Smalltalk, who, in turn, stole many of their ideas from LISP (although, admittedly, LISP didn't switch to lexically scoped closures until somewhat later in it's lifespan). It's just a shame that Python hasn't done the same.
Hey, irregardless of his spelling, grammar, and punctuation, low and behold, he still managed to get his message across. ;)
You just can't create orbits that aren't centered around the earth.
:)
BTW, for observers, I realize this isn't technically true (eg, elliptical orbits), but for this discussion it's a reasonable simplification.
Not quite. :) What you're describing is centripetal force, which isn't the force at play in this situation.
:)
Try this: imagine a yo-yo on a string. Now, if you swing the yo-yo in a circle, the center of it's swing will be your hand. Now imagine trying to make the yo-yo swing around a different center, say a position six inches *above* your hand. You can't do it. Why? Because the pull of the string will always cause the yo-yo to swing about your hand. Now, replace your hand with the earth, the string with gravity, the yo-yo with a satellite, and the six inches with the 49th parallel, and it's basically the same situation.
As a counter example, you can absolutely have an orbit which is tilted on an angle, and varies from, say, the 49th to the 139th parallel. You just can't create orbits that aren't centered around the earth.
Oh, nothing so exotic. Consider: First, it is impossible to just orbit, say, the 49th parallel. This is due to the downward pull of gravity, which would 'straighten out' any such orbit. Second, a geosync orbit must have a horizontal trajectory which exactly matches the direction and speed of the earth's rotation. Put two and two together, and it should be pretty clear that geosync orbits can only occur at the equator.
Right, so you can do it in C, and it'll be faster, but more prone to error, or you could do it in a high level language, and it'll be slower, but more safe (and probably more concise and easier to understand). How is this a surprise? :)
Hell, people probably made the same arguments vis a vis C vs assembler... IOW, this argument is as old as the hills, and in the end, the solution is always the same: pick the right tool for the job.
That's true. However I'd really like to not have to switch languages between all the different stuff I do
So, what you're saying is you don't want to use the best tool for the job. Well, to each his/her own.
When I was a 13, the state government installed cameras on the nearby interstate. One camera was near our land, so I shot it out with my rifle. They replaced the camera and I shot that one too.
Wait wait, let me get this straight. While you could have just destroyed the camera with a baseball bat, instead, you chose to endanger people's lives and *shoot* them out. And you're telling me this is a fucking *good* thing? Christ almighty, thank you for providing me with yet another reason why, every day, I thank the lord I don't live in the US.
BTW, if the day ever comes, let me know how effective your precious firearms were for protecting your freedom after going up against a group of armoured soldiers carrying assault rifles.
Actually, this is already possible. Any email that is of the form myname+stuff@gmail.com will go to myname@gmail.com. So, you can use myname+spam@gmail.com for all your untrusted sources, and just myname@gmail.com for everything else. Then, filter on the To: line and apply appropriate labels, and voila! Problem solved.
Now that's just hurtful...
Yeah! And if in, say, Java, you have a superclass and subclass, how do you know the subclass didn't override superclass methods to do totally different things!
It's called not doing stupid stuff. Now, I don't know much about Ruby, but in Objective-C, these things are called Protocols, and in Java, they're called Interfaces, but the rule is that if you implement a given protocol, then you must conform to a given contract. Can a developer deviate from that contract? Yes. Are they fucking retards if they do? Absolutely! If you want to prevent that, your only option is to work with a language like Eiffel which incorporates design-by-contract at the language level... of course, even that isn't foolproof.
Heh, you're absolutely right, I should. :) Thanks! I've habitually just moved code, marked the block, and did a C-M-\... obviously that approach doesn't work with Python.
So... you've avoided the problems caused by significant indentation by... avoiding indenting. LOL. :)
You know, at first I agreed with you. Emacs seemed to take care of the indentation for me, and I though, 'hey, this isn't as bad as I thought'. And then I tried to actually refactor some code. You see, the minute you start moving blocks of code around, the editor is largely helpless, as it's impossible to know, just by examining a piece of code, what the indent level should be. Example:
if (a == b):
while (c == d):
do_some_stuff
more_if_statements
while (e == f):
do_some_stuff
Now, let's say you decide to move the 'if' statement inside the while. You cut and paste, and then try to reindent. But... wtf... the editor did this!
while (e == f):
if (a == b):
while (c == d):
do_some_stuff
more_if_statements
do_some_stuff
That ain't right. So now you have to go back and fix it, which in this case is relatively trivial, but for any complicated body of code, it's *incredibly* tedious. And there's no way for the editor to get this right! The minute I started running across this, I decided to put Python on the shelf... it's simply too damned annoying.
Or (a lot) less. The Amoeba dubia, a single-celled organism, has the largest known genome, at 670,000,000,000 base pairs. To contrast, humans have a mere 2,900,000,000.
Umm... that already exists in the form of Parrot's NCI, or Native Call Interface. It's been used to bind, among other things, SDL to Parrot.
I think the main thing that sets .net apart is not so much language support, but the rich software library which is conveniently accessable from *any* of those languages.
.NET, whether this will work in practice remains to be seen.
You do realize that the goal of Parrot is to allow exactly that, right? So a Python programmer could, conceivable, leverage modules from C6PAN, or vice versa. But, like
If something like this two-tier model goes through on VZ, then there's nothing stopping Charter (the cable company around here) from doing the same...or anyone else who owns the pipe.
Hopefully laws against collusion, but then again, there seems to be a reluctance to punish companies for such uncompetative behaviour.
Of course, there's always the third party ISPs who will undoubtly buck the trend in order to attract customers... hence the beauty of the free market. Then again, that presumes that the government will continue to force the telcos to open up their networks to competition.
When did I say we needed to worry about Mexico?
Err... right here:
"I could just as easily have said Mexico"
Perhaps you should re-read your own posts... you seem confused.
My original point was that the military protects us by preventing others from attacking us
Right, that they are, to quote, "defending our freedom in the sense that they exist and are a very good deterrant".
But my entire point (which you really seem to be missing) is that this deterrant effect is no longer necessary. Trade relations with the big nations (such as Canada and Mexico, not to mention China, the EU, India, etc) preclude any major wars there... they're simply too interdependant on one another (at least globalization was good for something). And the small nations simply don't have the resources to wage such a war effectively (ironically also a product of globalization), even if the US was largely defenseless.
Pfft, Iran and North Korea are both far more interested in keeping their own local populations in line, and haven't the resources to mount any sort of offensive against a geographically extended country half the world away across the worlds oceans... about the only possibility is long-range missile attacks, but neither have the launch capability, nor could they develop it without people taking notice *VERY* quickly. As for Mexico, they have the same economic incentives to avoid war as Canada does. Moreover, you're comment about strain on administration applies to all three of your proposed attackers.
Face it, the way the world is right now, the US, specifically, really doesn't need the massive military it possesses. Now, don't get me wrong, some amount of military purely for defensive purposes is, I think, an important thing... there are really crazy people out there. But the US's military is, frankly, pretty darn ridiculous.