Hmm, I suppose it's because I made the tacit assumption that if something isn't science, it's magic. ie, my explanation really should've been:
If ID is magic, then it's not science, therefore ID is magic.:)
Really, he's making the assumption that ID must be magic (for some unknown definition of "magic"), and then proceeding to use that "fact" as evidence that ID isn't science, without explaining why magic, itself, isn't science.
My response, that ID isn't falsifiable, addresses this issue and highlights the real, fundamental reason why ID (and also magic, as it happens) isn't science.
That is actually the wrong criticism of ID. ID can certainly predict things.
Quite correct, that is the wrong criticism. Unfortunately, yours is, too. The argument that "science doesn't accept 'magic' as an answer", and therefore ID isn't science is a circular one. ie, if ID is magic, then science doesn't accept magic, therefore ID isn't science. Well, yeah, duh, no kidding. Heck, technically, I think that might actually be "begging the question".
No, the *real* problem with ID is that it isn't *falsifiable*. And this is specifically because any attempt to falsify the theory, by providing evidence which contradicts any "predictions", could easily be reinterpreted under the lens of "god did that, too". And if a theory can't be falsified, it simply isn't science.
You *are* aware that Dark Matter has been observed, right? Or did you just miss the announcement of the Bullet Cluster results (among others)? As for Dark Energy, that isn't really a theory, so much as an observation with no explanation. Specifically, the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing. This is a fact. *Why*, we don't know, so we just call it Dark Energy for now. It's a placeholder, nothing more.
So please, take your trolls and go back into your basement, as it's pretty clear you don't really know what you're talking about.
Because they *might* get a chance one day, and that's what matters! Why do you think you average, lower-middle-class dweeb is against "death taxes"? It's because they, too, dream of one day being rich, and mysteriously believe it'll actually happen, despite the astronomical odds against it.
In short: IMHO, the American Dream(TM) was successfully co-opted as a tool to trick the poor into acquiescing to the wishes of the rich. It's kinda brilliant, in a twisted sort of way.
Wow, you really do go out of your way to come up with any possible excuse not blame the insurance companies, don't you?
Look, let's say you manage to lower healthcare costs. Whoopee, good for you! Maybe you'll even increase coverage a little as more employers will be able to pay for plans and so forth. Woo!
Well, guess what: insurance companies will still deny coverage based on egregious use of "pre-existing conditions", will still retroactively cancel plans, and will still do their best to line their pockets by finding any excuse to deny coverage.
In short: healthcare reform is absolutely about costs. But it isn't *just* about costs. And a government-run insurance option will force the insurers to start working for their customers again, instead of their shareholders.
As an aside, it's also an enormous mistake to believe that the current approach to healthcare reform is a) the only approach, and b) the "final solution" (as the right-wingers are so fond of saying these days). The current proposed reforms are a first, big step. But that's not to say that, for example, changes to the way the AMA operates are automatically taken off the table in perpetuity following their passage.
So, under socialism, we don't just help the guy with the broken leg. We help him, and then we're forced to pay for a large number of managers and administrators.
I find it really quite ironic that you use overheads as the reason why socialism is bad when the US healthcare system is virtually paralyzed with overhead, hence it's exorbitant per-capita cost. Hell, anyone who's worked for an average corporation can tell you just how overwrought with overhead they are.
Honestly, your level of self-delusion is really quite remarkable.
What? People who don't set up ipv6 just for kicks are "incurious"? Please.
Sorry, until I can access my v6 network wherever I am, be it at work or at a friends place or the library or wherever else I may be, v6 will have precisely *zero* utility for me. I mean, it's entire advantage is that I can get my own IP block. Great! Except I can't actually *access* that IP block from anywhere, as no one else has v6 connectivity. So how useful is that? Right. Not. At. All. So why the hell would I waste my time when it can be better spent doing more interesting things?
Let me get this straight- in the US, our lowest classes are so well fed, with so many calories, that they become overweight.
I know! It's like people who somehow dehydrate on a boat, even though they're *surrounded by water*! Because, as we both know, just like food, it doesn't matter what's in it or where it came from, it's all equally good for you, right?
I'm not sure why. The OP described a situation where a business wrought severe environmental damage on their surroundings. My point was simply that such situations are precisely why government intervention in the form of regulation is a good thing, as such behaviour is a textbook example of using negative externalities to subsidize business costs. Whether or not such regulation exists to cover that particular situation is entirely beside the point.
If the land is yours, you have or at least must have the right to do whatever you want with it, to it, etc.
No, you don't. Because, some day, that land won't be yours. It'll belong to the next generation, and the next, and they shouldn't be forced to suffer with the environment destruction that you chose to wreak. Then again, I suppose you're just fine with corporations wiping out rainforests and destroying ecosystems on land they "own". Pity you can't see how that sort of behaviour affects *all* of us.
BTW, I don't know what "budding" one's nose is, but it doesn't sound good...
And when there are no neighbours, you figure it should be a free-for-all? Sorry, no way. If you want to see how that'll go, just checkout northern Alberta and the disaster that is the tarsands tailings ponds. And that's *with* government regulation controlling pond linings, cleanup schedules, and so forth. Without, the environmental disaster that's already looming would be an utter tragedy.
Personally, when I see someone using the wrong homonym, like "the ball is in there court", it has a negative effect on my opinion of their intelligence.
It shouldn't, though. Well, okay, systematic misuse of homonyms is one thing. On the other hand, while I tend to have decent spelling and grammar, without a doubt the most common errors I make are homonym or near-homonym substitutions. These include their/they're/there, where/wear, and a whole host of others. And make no mistake, I know full well how to use those words correctly. But they're very easy errors to make (especially if you write like I do, dictating in your head while composing), and especially difficult errors to spot if you aren't very careful when proofreading (as, again, they "sound" correct in your head). Heck, I even make the ol' it's/its mistake from time to time, and I find myself annoyed when I see someone else make that error.:)
The real problem is that typing makes it dead easy to just hack up a piece of text without taking the care to edit and proofread properly. Personally, I tend to obsessively edit and re-edit my emails and so forth before ever hitting the "Send" button, but I suspect most people don't share the same tendency. The result is that errors simply slip through.
Now, that said, if I ever see someone use "walla" instead of "voila", or "alot", I feel the uncontrollable urge to smack them with a trout.
Indeed. Specifically, laws which restrict campaign advertising and so forth put the parties on even footing, as otherwise a large incumbent party could easily out-spend and out-advertise the smaller parties.
Of course, the Internet is a whole other ballgame. Anyone can publish on the web, and so while I can understand the restrictions placed on, for example, TV advertising, they make little sense when applied to the Internet.
Because objects are typed. What would the result be in weakly typed language like C where you do 1 + "1234"?
Probably a warning that you're adding an integer to a pointer, resulting in a pointer result. It's still doing coercion. Worse, it's not at all what you'd expect unless you know the niggly fact that, in C, strings == arrays == pointers.
Um, that's part of the definition I gave as a distinction between statically typed languages and strongly typed languages.
And it's incorrect. Statically typed languages do whatever they do with their types primarily at compile-time. In fact, in many cases, the types could just as easily disappear at run-time, as happens in the case of C (although they don't always... Java, for example, is statically typed, but it retains some of that typing information at run-time so that it can enforce type constraints when casts are performed).
Additionally, and this goes to your claim, a statically-typed language absolutely *can* do automatic type coercion, as does C, for example, by automatically converting floats to ints and vice versa.
In short, static/dynamic and strong/weak typing are 100% orthogonal concepts, and to conflate them is a mistake.
Strong typing != static typing. Period.
Of course. As I say, they're entirely orthogonal. Comparing them doesn't even make sense. So why are you doing it?
Pointing out 3 weakly typed languages doesn't make him wrong.
Well it does, indirectly. While you're right, in that in sheer numbers strongly typed languages outnumber weakly typed ones, the claim tacitly downplays the fact that three of the most popular languages in computing today *aren't*. As such, the OP's conclusion, that the strength of the typing system doesn't matter, is unsupported by the evidence.
Uhuh. And who owns the property? Right, the business that chose to pollute the area. But, hey, let's just let them rape the earth because they obviously "own" that part of it, right? Subsequent generations be damned, I say!
I'll pass on Javascript as with PHP. Perl is strongly typed, but not statically typed - you add an integer variable to a floating point variable and you will get a numerically reasonable result, unlike something like B.
And add an integer and a string, and you'll probably get a numerical result, but it may not be what you expect, because just like Javascript, Perl does dynamic coercion at run time.
So I have to violently disagree with you, here. The minute a language does free type conversions at runtime without erroring out it's most definitely *not* strongly typed. At best, Perl falls somewhere in the middle, but to call it strongly typed destroys any meaning the phrase has.
Strong typing means that the compiler and the (optional) runtime always knows what type an object is.
No, strong typing means the compiler and/or runtime *enforce* the typing rules, either statically (ie, at compile time) or dynamically (ie, at runtime). The minute a language (like Perl or Javascript, both of which behave identical in this regard) performs dynamic coercion automagically, sorry buddy, you don't have a strong typing system.
The real problem is that people seem to view the term 'weak typing' as a perjorative. It's not. There's nothing wrong with Perl having a weak typing system. It means it's incredibly flexible, and especially great if you want to throw something together very quickly. Conversely, strong typing can be a huge pain in the arse (sometimes I *don't* want Python's runtime throwing friggin' typing exceptions at me all the time). It's all about tradeoffs.
It's also a stupid, stupid idea. On top of the security concerns, it's a waste of resources, both along the network route, and at the endpoints (mmmm... even more sockets for the web server OS to keep track of). And it's a huge hassle for firewalls.
Honestly, I've been a defender of the whole thick-ish-web-client revolution, but this is just getting ridiculous. HTTP is a request-response protocol. If you need something interactive, use a frickin' interactive protocol. Why the hell would you shoehorn it into HTTP, save to prove that you can?
In short: re-inventing non-passive FTP using HTTP is stupid. Very very stupid.
Yes, but understand that, when you're learning that language, you're doing it to expand your mind and development toolkit, *not* to add said language to the list you put on your resume, as the very fact it's niche means no one will care.
And by "development toolkit", I mean things like design patterns and approaches to software construction. Take Haskell, for example. Compared to a typical imperative language, it requires a *very* different mindset when constructing applications. But the lessons you learn (higher-order functional programming, function composition as a form of abstraction, etc) are powerful tools which can be utilized in other languages, and learning them will force you to re-think how you build software, which is a very good thing.
Most languages are strongly typed so that's not a particularly useful metric.
Hardly. The One True Language for client-side web development, aka Javascript, is weakly typed, as is PHP, that ubiquitous server-side programming language. Perl is weakly typed. Good ol' shell script is weakly typed. Heck, even C is considered weakly typed (unless you enable -Werror, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, I suppose it's because I made the tacit assumption that if something isn't science, it's magic. ie, my explanation really should've been:
If ID is magic, then it's not science, therefore ID is magic. :)
Really, he's making the assumption that ID must be magic (for some unknown definition of "magic"), and then proceeding to use that "fact" as evidence that ID isn't science, without explaining why magic, itself, isn't science.
My response, that ID isn't falsifiable, addresses this issue and highlights the real, fundamental reason why ID (and also magic, as it happens) isn't science.
That is actually the wrong criticism of ID. ID can certainly predict things.
Quite correct, that is the wrong criticism. Unfortunately, yours is, too. The argument that "science doesn't accept 'magic' as an answer", and therefore ID isn't science is a circular one. ie, if ID is magic, then science doesn't accept magic, therefore ID isn't science. Well, yeah, duh, no kidding. Heck, technically, I think that might actually be "begging the question".
No, the *real* problem with ID is that it isn't *falsifiable*. And this is specifically because any attempt to falsify the theory, by providing evidence which contradicts any "predictions", could easily be reinterpreted under the lens of "god did that, too". And if a theory can't be falsified, it simply isn't science.
You *are* aware that Dark Matter has been observed, right? Or did you just miss the announcement of the Bullet Cluster results (among others)? As for Dark Energy, that isn't really a theory, so much as an observation with no explanation. Specifically, the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing. This is a fact. *Why*, we don't know, so we just call it Dark Energy for now. It's a placeholder, nothing more.
So please, take your trolls and go back into your basement, as it's pretty clear you don't really know what you're talking about.
Because they *might* get a chance one day, and that's what matters! Why do you think you average, lower-middle-class dweeb is against "death taxes"? It's because they, too, dream of one day being rich, and mysteriously believe it'll actually happen, despite the astronomical odds against it.
In short: IMHO, the American Dream(TM) was successfully co-opted as a tool to trick the poor into acquiescing to the wishes of the rich. It's kinda brilliant, in a twisted sort of way.
Wow, you really do go out of your way to come up with any possible excuse not blame the insurance companies, don't you?
Look, let's say you manage to lower healthcare costs. Whoopee, good for you! Maybe you'll even increase coverage a little as more employers will be able to pay for plans and so forth. Woo!
Well, guess what: insurance companies will still deny coverage based on egregious use of "pre-existing conditions", will still retroactively cancel plans, and will still do their best to line their pockets by finding any excuse to deny coverage.
In short: healthcare reform is absolutely about costs. But it isn't *just* about costs. And a government-run insurance option will force the insurers to start working for their customers again, instead of their shareholders.
As an aside, it's also an enormous mistake to believe that the current approach to healthcare reform is a) the only approach, and b) the "final solution" (as the right-wingers are so fond of saying these days). The current proposed reforms are a first, big step. But that's not to say that, for example, changes to the way the AMA operates are automatically taken off the table in perpetuity following their passage.
So, under socialism, we don't just help the guy with the broken leg. We help him, and then we're forced to pay for a large number of managers and administrators.
I find it really quite ironic that you use overheads as the reason why socialism is bad when the US healthcare system is virtually paralyzed with overhead, hence it's exorbitant per-capita cost. Hell, anyone who's worked for an average corporation can tell you just how overwrought with overhead they are.
Honestly, your level of self-delusion is really quite remarkable.
What? People who don't set up ipv6 just for kicks are "incurious"? Please.
Sorry, until I can access my v6 network wherever I am, be it at work or at a friends place or the library or wherever else I may be, v6 will have precisely *zero* utility for me. I mean, it's entire advantage is that I can get my own IP block. Great! Except I can't actually *access* that IP block from anywhere, as no one else has v6 connectivity. So how useful is that? Right. Not. At. All. So why the hell would I waste my time when it can be better spent doing more interesting things?
Let me get this straight- in the US, our lowest classes are so well fed, with so many calories, that they become overweight.
I know! It's like people who somehow dehydrate on a boat, even though they're *surrounded by water*! Because, as we both know, just like food, it doesn't matter what's in it or where it came from, it's all equally good for you, right?
Then I am confused by your comment.
I'm not sure why. The OP described a situation where a business wrought severe environmental damage on their surroundings. My point was simply that such situations are precisely why government intervention in the form of regulation is a good thing, as such behaviour is a textbook example of using negative externalities to subsidize business costs. Whether or not such regulation exists to cover that particular situation is entirely beside the point.
If the land is yours, you have or at least must have the right to do whatever you want with it, to it, etc.
No, you don't. Because, some day, that land won't be yours. It'll belong to the next generation, and the next, and they shouldn't be forced to suffer with the environment destruction that you chose to wreak. Then again, I suppose you're just fine with corporations wiping out rainforests and destroying ecosystems on land they "own". Pity you can't see how that sort of behaviour affects *all* of us.
BTW, I don't know what "budding" one's nose is, but it doesn't sound good...
They don't own the neighbors property.
And when there are no neighbours, you figure it should be a free-for-all? Sorry, no way. If you want to see how that'll go, just checkout northern Alberta and the disaster that is the tarsands tailings ponds. And that's *with* government regulation controlling pond linings, cleanup schedules, and so forth. Without, the environmental disaster that's already looming would be an utter tragedy.
What regulation are you proposing?
Who said anything about "proposing"? The government already regulates pollution via environmental regulations. My point is that this is a good thing.
Though, as an aside, I think the rule you propose would be a very good one, as anything else amounts to fraud on the part of the seller.
Whoops, obviously I meant homophone, not homonym. Thanks a lot, OP. :)
Personally, when I see someone using the wrong homonym, like "the ball is in there court", it has a negative effect on my opinion of their intelligence.
It shouldn't, though. Well, okay, systematic misuse of homonyms is one thing. On the other hand, while I tend to have decent spelling and grammar, without a doubt the most common errors I make are homonym or near-homonym substitutions. These include their/they're/there, where/wear, and a whole host of others. And make no mistake, I know full well how to use those words correctly. But they're very easy errors to make (especially if you write like I do, dictating in your head while composing), and especially difficult errors to spot if you aren't very careful when proofreading (as, again, they "sound" correct in your head). Heck, I even make the ol' it's/its mistake from time to time, and I find myself annoyed when I see someone else make that error. :)
The real problem is that typing makes it dead easy to just hack up a piece of text without taking the care to edit and proofread properly. Personally, I tend to obsessively edit and re-edit my emails and so forth before ever hitting the "Send" button, but I suspect most people don't share the same tendency. The result is that errors simply slip through.
Now, that said, if I ever see someone use "walla" instead of "voila", or "alot", I feel the uncontrollable urge to smack them with a trout.
Indeed. Specifically, laws which restrict campaign advertising and so forth put the parties on even footing, as otherwise a large incumbent party could easily out-spend and out-advertise the smaller parties.
Of course, the Internet is a whole other ballgame. Anyone can publish on the web, and so while I can understand the restrictions placed on, for example, TV advertising, they make little sense when applied to the Internet.
Because objects are typed. What would the result be in weakly typed language like C where you do 1 + "1234"?
Probably a warning that you're adding an integer to a pointer, resulting in a pointer result. It's still doing coercion. Worse, it's not at all what you'd expect unless you know the niggly fact that, in C, strings == arrays == pointers.
Um, that's part of the definition I gave as a distinction between statically typed languages and strongly typed languages.
And it's incorrect. Statically typed languages do whatever they do with their types primarily at compile-time. In fact, in many cases, the types could just as easily disappear at run-time, as happens in the case of C (although they don't always... Java, for example, is statically typed, but it retains some of that typing information at run-time so that it can enforce type constraints when casts are performed).
Additionally, and this goes to your claim, a statically-typed language absolutely *can* do automatic type coercion, as does C, for example, by automatically converting floats to ints and vice versa.
In short, static/dynamic and strong/weak typing are 100% orthogonal concepts, and to conflate them is a mistake.
Strong typing != static typing. Period.
Of course. As I say, they're entirely orthogonal. Comparing them doesn't even make sense. So why are you doing it?
Pointing out 3 weakly typed languages doesn't make him wrong.
Well it does, indirectly. While you're right, in that in sheer numbers strongly typed languages outnumber weakly typed ones, the claim tacitly downplays the fact that three of the most popular languages in computing today *aren't*. As such, the OP's conclusion, that the strength of the typing system doesn't matter, is unsupported by the evidence.
Uhuh. And who owns the property? Right, the business that chose to pollute the area. But, hey, let's just let them rape the earth because they obviously "own" that part of it, right? Subsequent generations be damned, I say!
I'll pass on Javascript as with PHP. Perl is strongly typed, but not statically typed - you add an integer variable to a floating point variable and you will get a numerically reasonable result, unlike something like B.
And add an integer and a string, and you'll probably get a numerical result, but it may not be what you expect, because just like Javascript, Perl does dynamic coercion at run time.
So I have to violently disagree with you, here. The minute a language does free type conversions at runtime without erroring out it's most definitely *not* strongly typed. At best, Perl falls somewhere in the middle, but to call it strongly typed destroys any meaning the phrase has.
Strong typing means that the compiler and the (optional) runtime always knows what type an object is.
No, strong typing means the compiler and/or runtime *enforce* the typing rules, either statically (ie, at compile time) or dynamically (ie, at runtime). The minute a language (like Perl or Javascript, both of which behave identical in this regard) performs dynamic coercion automagically, sorry buddy, you don't have a strong typing system.
The real problem is that people seem to view the term 'weak typing' as a perjorative. It's not. There's nothing wrong with Perl having a weak typing system. It means it's incredibly flexible, and especially great if you want to throw something together very quickly. Conversely, strong typing can be a huge pain in the arse (sometimes I *don't* want Python's runtime throwing friggin' typing exceptions at me all the time). It's all about tradeoffs.
Actually, the third (I think) BBC video contains the "years" quote. 'course, I have no idea which is the more accurate figure.
And for you libertarian-minded folks, *this* is called a negative externality, and is why government regulations are, in fact, sometimes a good thing.
It's also a stupid, stupid idea. On top of the security concerns, it's a waste of resources, both along the network route, and at the endpoints (mmmm... even more sockets for the web server OS to keep track of). And it's a huge hassle for firewalls.
Honestly, I've been a defender of the whole thick-ish-web-client revolution, but this is just getting ridiculous. HTTP is a request-response protocol. If you need something interactive, use a frickin' interactive protocol. Why the hell would you shoehorn it into HTTP, save to prove that you can?
In short: re-inventing non-passive FTP using HTTP is stupid. Very very stupid.
Yes, but understand that, when you're learning that language, you're doing it to expand your mind and development toolkit, *not* to add said language to the list you put on your resume, as the very fact it's niche means no one will care.
And by "development toolkit", I mean things like design patterns and approaches to software construction. Take Haskell, for example. Compared to a typical imperative language, it requires a *very* different mindset when constructing applications. But the lessons you learn (higher-order functional programming, function composition as a form of abstraction, etc) are powerful tools which can be utilized in other languages, and learning them will force you to re-think how you build software, which is a very good thing.
Most languages are strongly typed so that's not a particularly useful metric.
Hardly. The One True Language for client-side web development, aka Javascript, is weakly typed, as is PHP, that ubiquitous server-side programming language. Perl is weakly typed. Good ol' shell script is weakly typed. Heck, even C is considered weakly typed (unless you enable -Werror, of course).
What does that even mean?
It means you're not qualified to even enter this discussion. Go take a course on programming languages and then get back to us.