And conveniently python eliminates havign to worry about all those styles: since they are all concerned about exactly where to put the braces, they are all moot in a braceless language like python.
Mathematics is an abstract game of counting, built up into great complexity.
Mathematics is a game of abstraction, played out in a wide variety of directions, counting being just one of them. The assumption that mathematics is just counting is rather frustrating. Yes, you can reduce mathematics to arithmetic, but then you can also reduce it to set theory, or to topos theory/category theory, and so on. The ability to express things in a particular way does not that that is what the the things are, especially given the profusion of different mutually interpretable "reductions" available.
1 + 1 = 2 will be true in any universe, under any god(s), in any circumstances. And all of mathematics is built up from that. It's universal truth.
Actually you can dream up universes where 1+1=2 doesn't hold. It can fail to hold for a variety of reasons. The various hypothetical universes vary with those reasons from completely uninteresting and trivial, through to, well, in this case, still relatively uninteresting. Of course there are other "fundamental truths" that you can drop (the law of excluded middle, for example, or DeMorgan's laws, which are both conceivably more fundamental than 1+1=2) and end up with remarkably rich and interesting universes. The absolute universality of mathematical truth is on rather shaky ground; certainly the mathematics we use seems pretty solid for our universe, but that doesn't make it universal over all possible universes.
We use mathematics to quantify physics, but there is no "connection" between the two
There is a connection to the extent that ideas developed in the abstract for purely mathematical reasons have often had surprising, unseen, and unlooked for applications to physics. It is the surprising aspect of that that makes philosphers question the apparently unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
In contrast, I've found it very easy to dive right into some of the large C++ code bases we have at work and immediately understand what the code does and how it does it, largely because C++ is more explicit and the (partly redundant) specification of type information...
I presume you're a big fan of Eiffel, or JML for Java, or SPARK-Ada then, since they have even more explicit and detailed specification conveniently folded into the code such that it will not fall out of date...
Actually, this sort of spending violates general welfare, because it takes money from everyone to give it to a few.
That's one view. One could also claim that by investing in such businesses in the recession the government is helping to cushion the blow to the economy for everyone (which, generally speaking, is the mentality behind many of these bailouts). I don't really subscribe to either view. The point, however, is that perfectly reasonable and rational arguments can be made -- it is is no way clear that this spending "violates general welfare". If it is believed to be in the general welfare by those doing the spending (and I expect they'll make reasonable arguments along the lines I've suggested above), then they're legally able to do it... up to the point where the supreme court (the ultimate arbiter and interpreter of the constitution for such purposes) decides otherwise. So far there have been absolutely no successful challenges to such an interpretation of "general welfare", and as long as there aren't, such spending can and will continue.
[On constitutional amendments to ensure such spending is constitutional...]
Then let them do so. By simply ignoring the constitution, the government abandons its legitimacy.
They aren't ignoring the constitution, they are following it to the best of their knowledge and ability. Now you have a different interpretation of it than they do, but neither you, nor they, are the ones who ultimately decide how the constitution should be interpreted. Until they get told otherwise, however, their interpretation is every bit as good and valid as yours. If you are sure that this is a clear undeniable violation of the general welfare clause then by all means take your case to the supreme court and have them rule so. If it is as clear a case as you claim it should be straightforward for you to win such a case. In the meantime, however, given the long history of their interpretation of the general welfare clause beign used, with absolutely no successful challenges thereto, it is not unreasonable to see their actions as not unconstitutional.
Yes, obviously. You can confirm this by perusing the constitution. You will not find any authority given to the federal government to spend tax money on promoting technology other than to grant patents.
Yes, but then there is plenty of scope for this sort of spending to fall under the general welfare clause, and thus be permissible. It is a question of exactly what constitutes the "...general Welfare of the United States", and that is certainly not the clear cut black and white argument you suggest. Spending such as this has been deemed to fall under the general welfare clause for quite some time, with no successful challenges made. You're welcome to try and challenge it, but I suspect you'll fail. Furthermore, even were you to succeed, I expect that congress would have little trouble passing a constitutional amendment the next day to explicitly grant the power for spending along these lines; there's certainly sufficient support. For all intents and purposes it is constitutional.
It seems to have escaped your notice that OPEC is a group of governments. I have never disputed that governments manipulate markets. It's wrong for the OPEC governments to do so, and it's wrong for the US government to do likewise.
OPEC happens to be governments, but nothing that the original poster is complaining about are things that could be done only if they are governments. Had OPEC happened to be made up of a cartel of middle-eastern oil companies, rather than governments, they could (and probably would) engage in exactly the practices the OP pointed to.
Taxation is moral only to the extent that the revenues raised are used to secure our rights. As soon as government steps beyond the powers that we have granted to it, it is immoral.
The question is, is this beyond the powers granted to the government? You claim that it is unconstitutional (and here now equate unconstitutional with immoral), but I don't see that as being clear at all. As another poster points out here, this seems perfectly within constitutionally granted powers. It may not be your idea of what a government should be granted power to do, but that does not make it unconstitutional, nor immoral. Ultimately exactly what it is reasonable for a government to spend money on is a long sliding scale, with peoples views spread across the spectrum. The government can, and should, take a position that reasonably reflects the view of the majority (keeping in mind relevant checks and balances). Apparently a sufficiently large number of Americans don't share your particular view, and the checks and balances don't prohibit this spending (i.e. this is not unconstitutional). It can be a poor decision, or even a disasterous one, but it is not "immoral". Immoral would be for the government to completely reject the will of the people to follow minority ideological view that has little or no popular support.
Math is dead mainly because computers are so good at it, and students are usually better with computers than their teachers are, hence it just feels like a huge waste of time with no rewards.
To me this says that you probably don't really know what math is. Don't feel bad, it's most likely not your fault; most school teacers don't seem to have a very solid grasp of what actually constitutes mathematics either, so it's not surprising that tat you don't hve a very good idea -- no one taught you. Real math is a little like art: computers cn provide tools (photoshop and other art and design software in the case of art) that can take some of the grunt work off your hands, but computers can't do it for you; a lot of great work can also be done for which a computer simply cannot help at all. Explaining what mathematics is is hard; I can, at least, point you toward what mathematics is not. Mathemaics is not the facts and computations that you learn and practice in school, at least not ay more than art is a matter of memorising colour theory and rote learning brush technique. Computers should not obsolete maths an more than they obsolete art.
Would Yoko Ono have sued about this if Michael Moore borrowed that same 15 second clip?
I think not.
And (presuming for a moment that this wasn't a matter of so clearly falling into fair use that suing should never have been contemplated) that's her right. Copyright is as much about keeping control of how your work is used for the duration copyright, as it is about extracting tolls for use. It's perfectly reasonable to use it as tool to ensure your work isn't used in ways you disapprove of (indeed, this is exactly what the GPL uses coopyright to do -- ensure that the software isn't used in ways the original author disapproves of: as closed source software).
> Can't the film makers just countersue to get the losses incurred by this lawsuit?
How will you coutersue if you're bankrupted before you can?
Getting bankrupted was partly coming from having a crappy film in this case. It currently sits at 8% on RottenTomattoes. This is "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" we're talking about, the pro Intelligence Design movie. I suspect the suit was as much about trying to not be associated with such drivel as it was about getting cash from the producers. Still, fair use is fair use, and Ms. Ono needed to face up to that reality to begin with. The suit should never have been brought to trial.
Good to know, but I guess that means he's done a much better job of marketing and managing expectations. Python 3000 didn't start showing up on the radar for me as something worth worrying about until a couple of years ago; I've known about, and paid attention to Perl6 for longer than that. In the end it doesn't really matter, because you know more about perl than I could even dream of, and are deeply involved so I doubt you really care what I think.
So is Ruby 2, Jython 2.6, Python 3, PHP 6, GHC 6.10, C# 3, Java 7....
Yes, that they are; and similarly I'm not expecting to use or rely on any of those until they actually make a release either. They remain on the horizon, though for some I have high confidence that said horizon is short: they haven't been "coming reall soon now!" as long as Perl6, and have stayed largely on schedule.
And I look forward to an actual announced major final release (or has Perl6 been out as a final release all this time and non one noticed?); I will actually take another look at perl once Perl6 is a solid option on the table. In the meantime, it still seems to be "on the horizon" as far as I can see.
I think the Eiffel implementation ditches the CTS, or extends it. That has its ups and downsides (mainly down imo).
It would have to do something: no multiple inheritance in Eiffel would be very bad indeed -- almost unworkable really. There's also the issue of the (relatively recent) of non-conforming inheritance (i.e. you inherit the implementation, but don't consider yourself a subclass; it essentially allows composition of classes), which is very handy, but obviously isn't going to play nice with CTS.
I'm a little disappointed Eiffel hitched itself to the.NET bandwagon; it's a nice language that's getting hammered into a badly shaped hole to make it work on.NET.
Based on what I gather in my country the use of Perl is actually in decline, while Python's is growing. Then there's Ruby that's also popular (not sure if it proves to be stable as Python's growth though).
Perl has the potential to end up being the next COBOL -- a language with vast amounts of hard to understand code, and few people that can make any sense of it. I think fewer and fewer newcomers are bothering to learn perl. It used to be the case that perl was the do all language: from web scripting, to data processing, to UNIX glue and general purpose scripting. Many different scripting languages have encroached on those different niches now, from PHP at the web end, through Ruby and Python, and even Javascript. Perl is no longer the obvious first port of call. Worse, Perl 6, the behemoth on the perpetual horizon, is threatening to change almost everything but never actually arriving. None of that is to say that perl is bad a choice, just that it is no longer the obvious first choice for beginners to scripting to learn. If the trend continues that's going to leave an awful lot of perl code out there to be maintained, and a limited supply of older geeks who are still fluent enough in perl to do it.
Java is also the perfect high security language, because you can't make security holes with it. Same with C#. Same with VB.NET. We've heard this again and again from people who simply don't understand the problem.
Yes, the first assumption should always be that the NSA don't understand security... Or perhaps there are languages and tools that help you write more secure code. Let's be honest, the average Java program is more secure than the average C program, thanks to slightly stronger type checking and bounds checking. Sure, Java isn't a going to magically make your code perfectly secure, but it does make it a little harder to make mistakes, and a little easier to catch them when you do make them. One can imagine that perhaps there are other things that can be done to make mistakes harder again to make, and even easier to catch. Sure, it's all incremental, and nothing is going to be a silver bullet, but enough small gains and it can become worthwhile for software you want to be robust and/or secure.
I've programmed in C and Java, and I've also played with SPARK Ada. Believe me when I tell you that SPARK really does make a huge difference in catching mistakes. Just using SPARK won't magically make your code secure, but it will provide you with very powerful tools to help you write secure code. It really is a very distinct improvement. If it's the Ada part that you find distasteful, then check out JML and ESC/Java2 which provide similar (though not quite as powerful) facilities for Java.
/* function foo() does this, that, and another thing.... big long description of inputs, outputs, constants that affect it, whatever... */ void foo() {blah }
... and the description is horribly out of date because it's been changed a million times.
One way to assist with these situations is to use something like JML, which gives you a more formal language to write your "does this, does that, constraints on inputs and outputs" comment wit the following bonuses: the formal comment gets included in the documentation; you can automatically generate unit tests from the formal comment, so tests will fail badly if the comment and code fall out of sync; you can use other tools (like ESC/Java2) to run automated checks that the rest of your code is using the function correctly (i.e. not assuming anything about inputs or outputs that can't be guaranteed by your formal comments). All up that's quite good gains for the tiny extra work of learning JML to write your comments in.
So are we to throw out all patents because anyone who is an expert would consider a new invention to be trivial and obvious? Is "non-obvious" really a good measure of patentability?
I would suggest non-obviousness is a decent measure. Consider that the goal of patents is advance arts and sciences by simultaneously rewarding those who come up with new advances and ensuring that thiose advances are publicly documented. There's not a lot of point if providing rewards to get people to publicly document advances that are obvious to anyone in the field. Nor is there much to gain by encouraging and rewarding obvious advances -- it will do far more to hold things back as people are forced to wait for the expiry of the patent before making the next obvious advancement on that idea. Ideally you would probably want the length of time a patent is good for to be roughly the amount of tiem it will take to develop the next equivalent advance; unless you're suggesting patents that are good for a matter of days, obvious ideas are clearly not the way to go.
Can anyone say DRM? Consumers do not like DRM and thus are not buying Blu-Ray. The poor economy is also a factor.
DRM has little or nothing to do with it (outside of geek circles anyway). While the DRM may be a significant potential problem, I don't think too many people have actually been badly bitten by it yet (that will change the longe the format is around). Most average consumers don't know enough about it to realise the problem it represents.
The reason Blu-ray is doing badly is fairly simple: it just isn't that compelling. The difference in quality and durability between video and DVD was quite apparent to even the average viewer (particularly durability, given how bad a video tape can look after many viewings), and so DVD took off fairly quickly. The difference between Blu-ray and DVD is less clear, particularly when you're comparing an upscaling DVD player. The difference is there, but it is simply not enough to get consumers excited about buying a whole new player and re-buying their DVD library in an even more expensive format. Through in an ailing economy and lower consumer spending and Blu-ray's fate is clear. There's much potential for Blu-ray to go the way of SACD -- it will matter to those devoted to the medium, but average consumers will pass it buy, and it will end up as a niche product.
If the ad itself is being talked about, then it has been successful on some level.
While there is some truth to that, I'm not sure exactly how successful you can judge an ad to be simply because it gets talked about. I mean an ad that consisted of a long, detailed and graphic discussion between Gates and Ballmer as to their preferred methods for torturing and maiming kittens would probably get talked about; I'm not sure such an ad could be considered as positive for Microsoft. An series of ads that has Bill Gates working his way through the Microsoft product line, explaining how bad each product is, highlighting several flaws, and then laughing over how the public has been so easily duped into buying it... that would probably get plenty of people talking about it; again, I'm not sure that's likely to be judged a successful campaign. There's more to advertising and marketing than getting talked about -- the context and nature of the discussion does matter. If people are talking about these ads with regard to how out of touch they demonstrate Microsoft to be (as has been the case in a lot of conversation I've read and heard), I am not sure that actually count as a net positive for Microsoft.
You understand of course that extra energy in the system causes larger fluctuations right? The global average will increase, but so will the variance. Your colds will be colder, and your hots will be hotter.
That's not a prediction of the IPCC, who gather together and summarise the peer reviewed literature. Climate is variable because there are a lot of things that effect it, from solar influences, to the La Nina/El Nino cycles. Regional variation is greater than global variation. Due to that variation we can still expect extremes to occur: some years are just very cold (for a number of factors not related to anthropogenic warming), and some are hot, and that will continue, regardless of warming. However, as noted in IPCC assessment reports (TAR WGI 9.3.6):
...a warmer mean temperature increases the probability of extreme warm days and decreases the probability of extreme cold days. This result has appeared consistently in a number of more recent different climate model configurations.
In other words, individual cold days or years are not evidence against global warming, since they may well be a result of natural variation caused by other factors (and would have simply been even colder without global warming). To count as notable evidence against global warming you would need a significant sustained cold spell (5 to 10 years at this point). However, extreme cold days or years are not predicted effects of global warming. They may well happen, but there isn't any significant evidence that they are caused by global warming.
To pass it, the alarmist would have to advocate replacing all measures to combat CO2 emissions, with some method of internalization of the environmental costs (possibly with a subsidy to those that remove it from the atmosphere
That's simply unrealistic. As far as I am concerned carbon taxes, suitably levied, or cap and trade schemes, are definitely the way to go, so in some sense I agree with you. In the real world, however, idealism isn't going to cut it, and from a pragmatic point of view we should expect to temporarily supplement carbon tax measures with other approaches to get the job done. Yes, the market is a fine thing for finding and maintaining a suitable equilibrium, but it doesn't always get there fast (i.e. markets often take quite some time to adjust as information and adjustments cascade/percolate through the system). If we know the general direction we want things to go and can give the market a nudge in that direction, I don't see that as disasterous. Yes such measures are going to be a little ad hoc and arbitrary, but you shoudl also expect them to be temporary, and a little bit of ad hoc heuristics can often be very useful.
I would judge someone on the overall shape of their approach and the overarching themes that they are driving for, not on their ideological purity, particularly when absolute pruity isn't really that practical. By all means look for people who see carbon taxes or cap and trade as the primary solution, but don't be so silly as to begrudge the odd minor deviations to deal with the practical situation on the ground.
(Note that I am not defending Al Gore here; I don't think he actually meets the requirement of having a strong underlying foundation in carbon tax as the primary solution; rather I am trying to point out that absolute ideological purity is rarely a good way to judge things.)
I think what needs to be focused on is not the "who's right or wrong about global warming," but the fact that there are so many factors involved.
If you look at the scientific papers on the subject, or even just summary papers such as the IPCC reports, you'll find that wide variety of factors are considered and analysed. Solar influence, according to the IPCC, is responsible for around 30% of the warming over the last century, so they certainly don't see it as insignificant. Of course there's still the other 70% to account for, and anthropogenic CO2 makes up a good chunk of that. Consider, if we're now without sunsots we're at the sort of solar activity of the Maunder minimum; despite that we are still facing mean global temperatures well above the mean for last century, let alone anything comparable to the Maunder minumum period. The lesson to take from this is our present CO2 is more than enough to quash the cooling effects of solar cycles.
...so he rescinded the tax exemption for cheaper proletarian meals, which actually failed to bring significant additional revenue, given the extra administrative costs.
I'm mssing something here -- how are there extra administrative costs in not bothering to check and keep account of a special exemption? Removing exemptions generally reduces administrative costs.
I mean lets look at McCain vs Obama on Taxes. McCain wants to keep taxes low across the board and cut federal spending. Obama wants to cut taxes for people earning less than $75k a year and increase taxes for those earning more than $250k a year and he says he will increase federal spending.
Of course looking back historically over the last few Republican presidents (and, indeed, Republican congresses as well), we can safely assume that McCain will see an increase in federal spending as well, he's just not telling you that that's what will happen.
Slashdot Mirror
And conveniently python eliminates havign to worry about all those styles: since they are all concerned about exactly where to put the braces, they are all moot in a braceless language like python.
Mathematics is an abstract game of counting, built up into great complexity.
Mathematics is a game of abstraction, played out in a wide variety of directions, counting being just one of them. The assumption that mathematics is just counting is rather frustrating. Yes, you can reduce mathematics to arithmetic, but then you can also reduce it to set theory, or to topos theory/category theory, and so on. The ability to express things in a particular way does not that that is what the the things are, especially given the profusion of different mutually interpretable "reductions" available.
1 + 1 = 2 will be true in any universe, under any god(s), in any circumstances. And all of mathematics is built up from that. It's universal truth.
Actually you can dream up universes where 1+1=2 doesn't hold. It can fail to hold for a variety of reasons. The various hypothetical universes vary with those reasons from completely uninteresting and trivial, through to, well, in this case, still relatively uninteresting. Of course there are other "fundamental truths" that you can drop (the law of excluded middle, for example, or DeMorgan's laws, which are both conceivably more fundamental than 1+1=2) and end up with remarkably rich and interesting universes. The absolute universality of mathematical truth is on rather shaky ground; certainly the mathematics we use seems pretty solid for our universe, but that doesn't make it universal over all possible universes.
We use mathematics to quantify physics, but there is no "connection" between the two
There is a connection to the extent that ideas developed in the abstract for purely mathematical reasons have often had surprising, unseen, and unlooked for applications to physics. It is the surprising aspect of that that makes philosphers question the apparently unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
In contrast, I've found it very easy to dive right into some of the large C++ code bases we have at work and immediately understand what the code does and how it does it, largely because C++ is more explicit and the (partly redundant) specification of type information...
I presume you're a big fan of Eiffel, or JML for Java, or SPARK-Ada then, since they have even more explicit and detailed specification conveniently folded into the code such that it will not fall out of date...
Actually, this sort of spending violates general welfare, because it takes money from everyone to give it to a few.
That's one view. One could also claim that by investing in such businesses in the recession the government is helping to cushion the blow to the economy for everyone (which, generally speaking, is the mentality behind many of these bailouts). I don't really subscribe to either view. The point, however, is that perfectly reasonable and rational arguments can be made -- it is is no way clear that this spending "violates general welfare". If it is believed to be in the general welfare by those doing the spending (and I expect they'll make reasonable arguments along the lines I've suggested above), then they're legally able to do it ... up to the point where the supreme court (the ultimate arbiter and interpreter of the constitution for such purposes) decides otherwise. So far there have been absolutely no successful challenges to such an interpretation of "general welfare", and as long as there aren't, such spending can and will continue.
[On constitutional amendments to ensure such spending is constitutional...]
Then let them do so. By simply ignoring the constitution, the government abandons its legitimacy.
They aren't ignoring the constitution, they are following it to the best of their knowledge and ability. Now you have a different interpretation of it than they do, but neither you, nor they, are the ones who ultimately decide how the constitution should be interpreted. Until they get told otherwise, however, their interpretation is every bit as good and valid as yours. If you are sure that this is a clear undeniable violation of the general welfare clause then by all means take your case to the supreme court and have them rule so. If it is as clear a case as you claim it should be straightforward for you to win such a case. In the meantime, however, given the long history of their interpretation of the general welfare clause beign used, with absolutely no successful challenges thereto, it is not unreasonable to see their actions as not unconstitutional.
Yes, obviously. You can confirm this by perusing the constitution. You will not find any authority given to the federal government to spend tax money on promoting technology other than to grant patents.
Yes, but then there is plenty of scope for this sort of spending to fall under the general welfare clause, and thus be permissible. It is a question of exactly what constitutes the "...general Welfare of the United States", and that is certainly not the clear cut black and white argument you suggest. Spending such as this has been deemed to fall under the general welfare clause for quite some time, with no successful challenges made. You're welcome to try and challenge it, but I suspect you'll fail. Furthermore, even were you to succeed, I expect that congress would have little trouble passing a constitutional amendment the next day to explicitly grant the power for spending along these lines; there's certainly sufficient support. For all intents and purposes it is constitutional.
It seems to have escaped your notice that OPEC is a group of governments. I have never disputed that governments manipulate markets. It's wrong for the OPEC governments to do so, and it's wrong for the US government to do likewise.
OPEC happens to be governments, but nothing that the original poster is complaining about are things that could be done only if they are governments. Had OPEC happened to be made up of a cartel of middle-eastern oil companies, rather than governments, they could (and probably would) engage in exactly the practices the OP pointed to.
Taxation is moral only to the extent that the revenues raised are used to secure our rights. As soon as government steps beyond the powers that we have granted to it, it is immoral.
The question is, is this beyond the powers granted to the government? You claim that it is unconstitutional (and here now equate unconstitutional with immoral), but I don't see that as being clear at all. As another poster points out here, this seems perfectly within constitutionally granted powers. It may not be your idea of what a government should be granted power to do, but that does not make it unconstitutional, nor immoral. Ultimately exactly what it is reasonable for a government to spend money on is a long sliding scale, with peoples views spread across the spectrum. The government can, and should, take a position that reasonably reflects the view of the majority (keeping in mind relevant checks and balances). Apparently a sufficiently large number of Americans don't share your particular view, and the checks and balances don't prohibit this spending (i.e. this is not unconstitutional). It can be a poor decision, or even a disasterous one, but it is not "immoral". Immoral would be for the government to completely reject the will of the people to follow minority ideological view that has little or no popular support.
Math is dead mainly because computers are so good at it, and students are usually better with computers than their teachers are, hence it just feels like a huge waste of time with no rewards.
To me this says that you probably don't really know what math is. Don't feel bad, it's most likely not your fault; most school teacers don't seem to have a very solid grasp of what actually constitutes mathematics either, so it's not surprising that tat you don't hve a very good idea -- no one taught you. Real math is a little like art: computers cn provide tools (photoshop and other art and design software in the case of art) that can take some of the grunt work off your hands, but computers can't do it for you; a lot of great work can also be done for which a computer simply cannot help at all. Explaining what mathematics is is hard; I can, at least, point you toward what mathematics is not. Mathemaics is not the facts and computations that you learn and practice in school, at least not ay more than art is a matter of memorising colour theory and rote learning brush technique. Computers should not obsolete maths an more than they obsolete art.
Would Yoko Ono have sued about this if Michael Moore borrowed that same 15 second clip?
I think not.
And (presuming for a moment that this wasn't a matter of so clearly falling into fair use that suing should never have been contemplated) that's her right. Copyright is as much about keeping control of how your work is used for the duration copyright, as it is about extracting tolls for use. It's perfectly reasonable to use it as tool to ensure your work isn't used in ways you disapprove of (indeed, this is exactly what the GPL uses coopyright to do -- ensure that the software isn't used in ways the original author disapproves of: as closed source software).
> Can't the film makers just countersue to get the losses incurred by this lawsuit?
How will you coutersue if you're bankrupted before you can?
Getting bankrupted was partly coming from having a crappy film in this case. It currently sits at 8% on RottenTomattoes. This is "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" we're talking about, the pro Intelligence Design movie. I suspect the suit was as much about trying to not be associated with such drivel as it was about getting cash from the producers. Still, fair use is fair use, and Ms. Ono needed to face up to that reality to begin with. The suit should never have been brought to trial.
Good to know, but I guess that means he's done a much better job of marketing and managing expectations. Python 3000 didn't start showing up on the radar for me as something worth worrying about until a couple of years ago; I've known about, and paid attention to Perl6 for longer than that. In the end it doesn't really matter, because you know more about perl than I could even dream of, and are deeply involved so I doubt you really care what I think.
So is Ruby 2, Jython 2.6, Python 3, PHP 6, GHC 6.10, C# 3, Java 7....
Yes, that they are; and similarly I'm not expecting to use or rely on any of those until they actually make a release either. They remain on the horizon, though for some I have high confidence that said horizon is short: they haven't been "coming reall soon now!" as long as Perl6, and have stayed largely on schedule.
And I look forward to an actual announced major final release (or has Perl6 been out as a final release all this time and non one noticed?); I will actually take another look at perl once Perl6 is a solid option on the table. In the meantime, it still seems to be "on the horizon" as far as I can see.
I think the Eiffel implementation ditches the CTS, or extends it. That has its ups and downsides (mainly down imo).
It would have to do something: no multiple inheritance in Eiffel would be very bad indeed -- almost unworkable really. There's also the issue of the (relatively recent) of non-conforming inheritance (i.e. you inherit the implementation, but don't consider yourself a subclass; it essentially allows composition of classes), which is very handy, but obviously isn't going to play nice with CTS.
I'm a little disappointed Eiffel hitched itself to the .NET bandwagon; it's a nice language that's getting hammered into a badly shaped hole to make it work on .NET.
Based on what I gather in my country the use of Perl is actually in decline, while Python's is growing. Then there's Ruby that's also popular (not sure if it proves to be stable as Python's growth though).
Perl has the potential to end up being the next COBOL -- a language with vast amounts of hard to understand code, and few people that can make any sense of it. I think fewer and fewer newcomers are bothering to learn perl. It used to be the case that perl was the do all language: from web scripting, to data processing, to UNIX glue and general purpose scripting. Many different scripting languages have encroached on those different niches now, from PHP at the web end, through Ruby and Python, and even Javascript. Perl is no longer the obvious first port of call. Worse, Perl 6, the behemoth on the perpetual horizon, is threatening to change almost everything but never actually arriving. None of that is to say that perl is bad a choice, just that it is no longer the obvious first choice for beginners to scripting to learn. If the trend continues that's going to leave an awful lot of perl code out there to be maintained, and a limited supply of older geeks who are still fluent enough in perl to do it.
Java is also the perfect high security language, because you can't make security holes with it. Same with C#. Same with VB.NET. We've heard this again and again from people who simply don't understand the problem.
Yes, the first assumption should always be that the NSA don't understand security... Or perhaps there are languages and tools that help you write more secure code. Let's be honest, the average Java program is more secure than the average C program, thanks to slightly stronger type checking and bounds checking. Sure, Java isn't a going to magically make your code perfectly secure, but it does make it a little harder to make mistakes, and a little easier to catch them when you do make them. One can imagine that perhaps there are other things that can be done to make mistakes harder again to make, and even easier to catch. Sure, it's all incremental, and nothing is going to be a silver bullet, but enough small gains and it can become worthwhile for software you want to be robust and/or secure.
I've programmed in C and Java, and I've also played with SPARK Ada. Believe me when I tell you that SPARK really does make a huge difference in catching mistakes. Just using SPARK won't magically make your code secure, but it will provide you with very powerful tools to help you write secure code. It really is a very distinct improvement. If it's the Ada part that you find distasteful, then check out JML and ESC/Java2 which provide similar (though not quite as powerful) facilities for Java.
Or another fun one.
does this, that, and another thing.
*/
void foo() {blah }
... and the description is horribly out of date because it's been changed a million times.
One way to assist with these situations is to use something like JML, which gives you a more formal language to write your "does this, does that, constraints on inputs and outputs" comment wit the following bonuses: the formal comment gets included in the documentation; you can automatically generate unit tests from the formal comment, so tests will fail badly if the comment and code fall out of sync; you can use other tools (like ESC/Java2) to run automated checks that the rest of your code is using the function correctly (i.e. not assuming anything about inputs or outputs that can't be guaranteed by your formal comments). All up that's quite good gains for the tiny extra work of learning JML to write your comments in.
So are we to throw out all patents because anyone who is an expert would consider a new invention to be trivial and obvious? Is "non-obvious" really a good measure of patentability?
I would suggest non-obviousness is a decent measure. Consider that the goal of patents is advance arts and sciences by simultaneously rewarding those who come up with new advances and ensuring that thiose advances are publicly documented. There's not a lot of point if providing rewards to get people to publicly document advances that are obvious to anyone in the field. Nor is there much to gain by encouraging and rewarding obvious advances -- it will do far more to hold things back as people are forced to wait for the expiry of the patent before making the next obvious advancement on that idea. Ideally you would probably want the length of time a patent is good for to be roughly the amount of tiem it will take to develop the next equivalent advance; unless you're suggesting patents that are good for a matter of days, obvious ideas are clearly not the way to go.
Can anyone say DRM? Consumers do not like DRM and thus are not buying Blu-Ray. The poor economy is also a factor.
DRM has little or nothing to do with it (outside of geek circles anyway). While the DRM may be a significant potential problem, I don't think too many people have actually been badly bitten by it yet (that will change the longe the format is around). Most average consumers don't know enough about it to realise the problem it represents.
The reason Blu-ray is doing badly is fairly simple: it just isn't that compelling. The difference in quality and durability between video and DVD was quite apparent to even the average viewer (particularly durability, given how bad a video tape can look after many viewings), and so DVD took off fairly quickly. The difference between Blu-ray and DVD is less clear, particularly when you're comparing an upscaling DVD player. The difference is there, but it is simply not enough to get consumers excited about buying a whole new player and re-buying their DVD library in an even more expensive format. Through in an ailing economy and lower consumer spending and Blu-ray's fate is clear. There's much potential for Blu-ray to go the way of SACD -- it will matter to those devoted to the medium, but average consumers will pass it buy, and it will end up as a niche product.
If the ad itself is being talked about, then it has been successful on some level.
While there is some truth to that, I'm not sure exactly how successful you can judge an ad to be simply because it gets talked about. I mean an ad that consisted of a long, detailed and graphic discussion between Gates and Ballmer as to their preferred methods for torturing and maiming kittens would probably get talked about; I'm not sure such an ad could be considered as positive for Microsoft. An series of ads that has Bill Gates working his way through the Microsoft product line, explaining how bad each product is, highlighting several flaws, and then laughing over how the public has been so easily duped into buying it ... that would probably get plenty of people talking about it; again, I'm not sure that's likely to be judged a successful campaign. There's more to advertising and marketing than getting talked about -- the context and nature of the discussion does matter. If people are talking about these ads with regard to how out of touch they demonstrate Microsoft to be (as has been the case in a lot of conversation I've read and heard), I am not sure that actually count as a net positive for Microsoft.
You understand of course that extra energy in the system causes larger fluctuations right? The global average will increase, but so will the variance. Your colds will be colder, and your hots will be hotter.
That's not a prediction of the IPCC, who gather together and summarise the peer reviewed literature. Climate is variable because there are a lot of things that effect it, from solar influences, to the La Nina/El Nino cycles. Regional variation is greater than global variation. Due to that variation we can still expect extremes to occur: some years are just very cold (for a number of factors not related to anthropogenic warming), and some are hot, and that will continue, regardless of warming. However, as noted in IPCC assessment reports (TAR WGI 9.3.6):
In other words, individual cold days or years are not evidence against global warming, since they may well be a result of natural variation caused by other factors (and would have simply been even colder without global warming). To count as notable evidence against global warming you would need a significant sustained cold spell (5 to 10 years at this point). However, extreme cold days or years are not predicted effects of global warming. They may well happen, but there isn't any significant evidence that they are caused by global warming.
To pass it, the alarmist would have to advocate replacing all measures to combat CO2 emissions, with some method of internalization of the environmental costs (possibly with a subsidy to those that remove it from the atmosphere
That's simply unrealistic. As far as I am concerned carbon taxes, suitably levied, or cap and trade schemes, are definitely the way to go, so in some sense I agree with you. In the real world, however, idealism isn't going to cut it, and from a pragmatic point of view we should expect to temporarily supplement carbon tax measures with other approaches to get the job done. Yes, the market is a fine thing for finding and maintaining a suitable equilibrium, but it doesn't always get there fast (i.e. markets often take quite some time to adjust as information and adjustments cascade/percolate through the system). If we know the general direction we want things to go and can give the market a nudge in that direction, I don't see that as disasterous. Yes such measures are going to be a little ad hoc and arbitrary, but you shoudl also expect them to be temporary, and a little bit of ad hoc heuristics can often be very useful.
I would judge someone on the overall shape of their approach and the overarching themes that they are driving for, not on their ideological purity, particularly when absolute pruity isn't really that practical. By all means look for people who see carbon taxes or cap and trade as the primary solution, but don't be so silly as to begrudge the odd minor deviations to deal with the practical situation on the ground.
(Note that I am not defending Al Gore here; I don't think he actually meets the requirement of having a strong underlying foundation in carbon tax as the primary solution; rather I am trying to point out that absolute ideological purity is rarely a good way to judge things.)
I think what needs to be focused on is not the "who's right or wrong about global warming," but the fact that there are so many factors involved.
If you look at the scientific papers on the subject, or even just summary papers such as the IPCC reports, you'll find that wide variety of factors are considered and analysed. Solar influence, according to the IPCC, is responsible for around 30% of the warming over the last century, so they certainly don't see it as insignificant. Of course there's still the other 70% to account for, and anthropogenic CO2 makes up a good chunk of that. Consider, if we're now without sunsots we're at the sort of solar activity of the Maunder minimum; despite that we are still facing mean global temperatures well above the mean for last century, let alone anything comparable to the Maunder minumum period. The lesson to take from this is our present CO2 is more than enough to quash the cooling effects of solar cycles.
...so he rescinded the tax exemption for cheaper proletarian meals, which actually failed to bring significant additional revenue, given the extra administrative costs.
I'm mssing something here -- how are there extra administrative costs in not bothering to check and keep account of a special exemption? Removing exemptions generally reduces administrative costs.
I mean lets look at McCain vs Obama on Taxes. McCain wants to keep taxes low across the board and cut federal spending. Obama wants to cut taxes for people earning less than $75k a year and increase taxes for those earning more than $250k a year and he says he will increase federal spending.
Of course looking back historically over the last few Republican presidents (and, indeed, Republican congresses as well), we can safely assume that McCain will see an increase in federal spending as well, he's just not telling you that that's what will happen.