As a former politician recently said, the truth with politics is that *everything* revolves around money generated by drugs, war and energy.
Some pundits say that the biggest worry of US financial interests is that the international drug and arms markets will switch from the dollar to the Euro.
(Though I suppose they can sleep better now, with the Euro-union in such wobbly state.)
Why should we assume that the exact same regulatory scheme is correct for pot as it is alcohol? In fact, there is ample evidence that they are wildly different, and should be treated as such.
Maybe so, but even a sub-optimal scheme would be far better than what we're inflicting on ourselves now.
I've never used marijuana, but at this point I don't see its' continued illegality being beneficial.
Same here. But in the unlikely event that a politician starts making progress toward rolling back the New Prohibition, they'd probably be assassinated by someone who'd stand to lose gigabucks if they succeeded.
But no politician is going to make progress on that topic in this f*cked up country. So the best approach for citizens is to adopt vices that don't put money in the hands of organized crime or neighborhood thugs.
So actually the universe is a big vaccum production facility, and all we see is just a bit of dirt contaminating the otherwise perfect vacuum. Well, be prepared for the coming of the large vacuum cleaner...:-)
I wonder what the average density of the universe is. Probably about the same as the best vacuum we can create.
Would have been nice if he didn't create all those asteroids, cosmic rays, and other things from which the earth needs constant protection though.
Also, given all his sexual hangups he should have made a lot of things different right here on earth.
Re:No climate fluctuations but we're working on it
on
Is the Earth Special?
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· Score: 2
Climate fluctuations may actually be *beneficial* to the rise of life. There is speculation that a "snowball earth" scenario played an important role here.
"The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space."
Yes, if the universe if fine-tuned for anything, it's for vacuum.
We're even getting more of it as the universe expands.
Re:David Icke says the moon is a hollow spaceship
on
Is the Earth Special?
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· Score: 1
of the 708 exo-planets so far identified, not a single one may be habitable by life.
Our methods preferentially find gas giants in close orbits.
If only one star in a billion harbors a habitable planet there will still be a couple of hundred in our galaxy, and a few trillion in the observable universe.
Being unique in the cosmos is not, by any stretch, irrefutable indication that there is a creator.
Consistency would require claiming that *every* unlikely event is the result of divine intervention.
Though I'm skeptical that the earth is "unlikely". The entire history of progress in understanding the universe has been an unbroken chain of discoveries that it is *not* special. I think this is just a last-chance effort to grab the cheese before Kepler finds some exact matches.
Re:Almost as if someone had designed it....
on
Is the Earth Special?
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· Score: 4, Informative
Actually - if there is a God, he could have created life on an infinity of worlds, and separated all the worlds intentionally.
Yup. Every observation is compatible with the God Hypothesis.
Thus it has no predictive power. A hypothesis that "explains" anything actually explains nothing. You might as well say "something made it happen".
Actually to top that I was once told that comments make the code harder to read because it breaks the code up. That's not a joke and I'm going to say what company told me that but it's by fair the most insane thing I've heard.
I had someone who didn't want comments because "sometimes they're wrong".
I wonder whether Ada came up in the "Other"? Previous research I've seen shows Ada with a much lower error rate than other languages (although it wasn't clear whether that was because Ada only tends to get chosen when there are a lot of constraints in place to keep the error rate lot).
Unlike many popular languages, Ada makes you say what you mean and mean what you say. The compiler finds errors that you wouldn't find until you ran the program for most other languages, and run-time checking (if enabled) finds errors that you wouldn't find until you noticed that your program has been running wrong for god-knows-how-long, for most other languages.
It's not a panacea, but it sure helps enforce badly needed discipline on its users.
There is no way to compare the quality of two languages without using the same set of programmers (seasoned and unseasoned) on both languages and then create an implementation.
I don't know about that. ISTM that a post hoc analysis like this might give a pretty good expected value for what you're going to get if you order new code.
Slashdot Mirror
Only now, we're giving power to Mexican Cartels instead of Al Capones.
Plenty of gangs in the USA too.
Whenever you hear on the news about a "gang killing", it's probably actually a "drug-money killing".
As a former politician recently said, the truth with politics is that *everything* revolves around money generated by drugs, war and energy.
Some pundits say that the biggest worry of US financial interests is that the international drug and arms markets will switch from the dollar to the Euro.
(Though I suppose they can sleep better now, with the Euro-union in such wobbly state.)
Why should we assume that the exact same regulatory scheme is correct for pot as it is alcohol? In fact, there is ample evidence that they are wildly different, and should be treated as such.
Maybe so, but even a sub-optimal scheme would be far better than what we're inflicting on ourselves now.
I've never used marijuana, but at this point I don't see its' continued illegality being beneficial.
Same here. But in the unlikely event that a politician starts making progress toward rolling back the New Prohibition, they'd probably be assassinated by someone who'd stand to lose gigabucks if they succeeded.
But no politician is going to make progress on that topic in this f*cked up country. So the best approach for citizens is to adopt vices that don't put money in the hands of organized crime or neighborhood thugs.
Why are there no Mexican Olympics? All the Mexicans who can run, swim, and jump are already in the USA.
In Texas it's popular to call Mexicans "wetbacks", because some of them got there by crossing the Rio Grande.
I'd like to ask the AC poster how much water *his* ancestors crossed to get here.
From what I've heard, the thoroughness of Ada's compile-time checking is unequalled. "If it compiles successfully, an Ada program is bug-free."
Unfortunately, no compile-time checker can detect flaws in your logic.
So actually the universe is a big vaccum production facility, and all we see is just a bit of dirt contaminating the otherwise perfect vacuum. ... :-)
Well, be prepared for the coming of the large vacuum cleaner
I wonder what the average density of the universe is. Probably about the same as the best vacuum we can create.
\subject
Climate schlimate. Must be the branch of science with most false predictions by far.
Yeah, they consistently underestimate how fast climate is changing.
Why should anyone believe these climate theories when they cannot accurately predict even next week's weather?
A ten-year-old can accurately predict that next winter will be colder than next summer.
Predicting the big picture tends to be a lot easier than predicting the little details.
May I be the first to post: God did it!
Would have been nice if he didn't create all those asteroids, cosmic rays, and other things from which the earth needs constant protection though.
Also, given all his sexual hangups he should have made a lot of things different right here on earth.
Climate fluctuations may actually be *beneficial* to the rise of life. There is speculation that a "snowball earth" scenario played an important role here.
"The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space."
Yes, if the universe if fine-tuned for anything, it's for vacuum.
We're even getting more of it as the universe expands.
It's sending out brainwashing beams which make humans do things they definitely wouldn't do otherwise, such as thinking
...that the moon is a hollow spaceship that sends out brainwashing beams?
Didn't he already have his fifteen minutes of fame for something else?
of the 708 exo-planets so far identified, not a single one may be habitable by life.
Our methods preferentially find gas giants in close orbits.
If only one star in a billion harbors a habitable planet there will still be a couple of hundred in our galaxy, and a few trillion in the observable universe.
Being unique in the cosmos is not, by any stretch, irrefutable indication that there is a creator.
Consistency would require claiming that *every* unlikely event is the result of divine intervention.
Though I'm skeptical that the earth is "unlikely". The entire history of progress in understanding the universe has been an unbroken chain of discoveries that it is *not* special. I think this is just a last-chance effort to grab the cheese before Kepler finds some exact matches.
Actually - if there is a God, he could have created life on an infinity of worlds, and separated all the worlds intentionally.
Yup. Every observation is compatible with the God Hypothesis.
Thus it has no predictive power. A hypothesis that "explains" anything actually explains nothing. You might as well say "something made it happen".
...is better than the stuff made now?
Yeah, 30 years ago we got everything from Korea instead of China.
Where?
If you have a job, it probably prints your paycheck.
The only real coding practices that mean anything are:
1) Does the program work
2) Can the program be maintained
3) Can a normal developer understand your program
4) Is your program acceptably bug free
Your list is redundant. (1) and (4) follow from (2), and (2) follows from (3).
Readability is the single most important property for any program that isn't a one-off solo hack.
Actually to top that I was once told that comments make the code harder to read because it breaks the code up. That's not a joke and I'm going to say what company told me that but it's by fair the most insane thing I've heard.
I had someone who didn't want comments because "sometimes they're wrong".
I wonder whether Ada came up in the "Other"? Previous research I've seen shows Ada with a much lower error rate than other languages (although it wasn't clear whether that was because Ada only tends to get chosen when there are a lot of constraints in place to keep the error rate lot).
Unlike many popular languages, Ada makes you say what you mean and mean what you say. The compiler finds errors that you wouldn't find until you ran the program for most other languages, and run-time checking (if enabled) finds errors that you wouldn't find until you noticed that your program has been running wrong for god-knows-how-long, for most other languages.
It's not a panacea, but it sure helps enforce badly needed discipline on its users.
I, for one, welcome our New Old COBOL Fart Overlords!
There is no way to compare the quality of two languages without using the same set of programmers (seasoned and unseasoned) on both languages and then create an implementation.
I don't know about that. ISTM that a post hoc analysis like this might give a pretty good expected value for what you're going to get if you order new code.
Where are these massively overpaid COBOL jobs.
I think it's the ones doing payroll applications.
Like it really even matters TO ME IN MY MOM's BASEMENT anyway.
There. Fixed that for'cha.
And I fixed it for you...
(I wonder what it costs to maintain comments.)