That link goes to a page about abortion, not infanticide. See, excising cells (even if they are human) isn't the same as killing a child.
Abortion is birth control. It's not conception-control, which even the most ardent pro-choice advocates prefer. Besides, zygotes-are-children supporters seem to stop caring the second that the baby is born. So what if the mother is not ready to become a parent, can't afford to feed or clothe her child, etc. The important thing is that the foetus was allowed to come to term. How ridiculous is that?
HTML says whitespace is not significant. Python says it is. Nuff said.
It's not just HTML either. Whitespace isn't significant in any natural language, nor in any other computer language I'm aware of. The computer world simply isn't well equipped to deal with signficant whitespace. Any time you copy/paste code around, you run the risk of messing up indentation / whitespace. it's much harder to accidentally miss a } or 'end'
Don't get me wrong. If python required signficant whitespace *and* closing tokens, that would be better. That way you'd have the best of both worlds. An editor could fix bad indentation because of the tokens, and you'd be guaranteed to have properly indented code for all working code.
And, the truth is, Python does have redundancies. In this very discussion we've had people complaining about how you get the length of things in python using len(foo), but others explaining that you can actually use foo.__len__(). Significant whitespace doesn't eliminate style wars, nor does Python eliminate redundancies. Python code is clean and readable, just like Ruby code. Ruby code, by not being whitespace-dependent is much more copy-and-paste-and-share-with-the-world-friendly.
I think you're right. I think if you don't have the confidence and experience to carry yourself properly you'll be a target. I just think that wearing long pants will help a bit otherwise. It's like a job interview. If you can show that you're an amazing candidate, it doesn't matter so much what you wear to the interview. On the other hand, if you're not the ideal candidate making a good first impression can help. Wearing a good suit might at least get things off to a good start.
I couldn't agree more about the weapon idea though. Pulling a weapon in a foreign place not only ups the ante, but it might change the situation into "foreigner vs. local". If you keep your eyes open, you can normally avoid a potentially dangerous situation before it really gets dangerous. Be *nice* to the locals and treat them with respect, you never know when you might need a friend. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and don't trust people too easily.
Having to include 'self' as the first parameter to method calls in Python is one of the biggest reasons I hate using it. Most of their reasons for why they require it as a parameter are really weak. It could just as easily be a language keyword. As it is, calling that first parameter 'self' is just a convention. I've been known to deviate from that convention just because it annoys me so much.
I found Python first, and used it without too much unhappiness until I found Ruby. When I found Ruby, there was no turning back. Mostly the problems with Python are small warts, but there were enough of them to really bother me. These days, when I'm forced to use Python, I'm not too unhappy, but I still keep wishing I could use Ruby instead.
They're both really easy to learn, at least the basics. With the interactive interpreter ('python' for Python, and 'irb' for Ruby) you can just poke at it, and try random things. Honestly, Ruby and Python are two of the most beginner friendly languages out there.
As for that page, my experience is that if you like Perl at all, you'll like Ruby more than Python. I know plenty of Ruby users who like both C and Perl, but in my experience it is rare to find a Python person who likes Perl. But don't take my word for it, try them both. They're really easy to play with.
Just kidding. You're right, documentation has been a major weakness of Ruby in the past. With 'ri' and 'rdoc', and the new wonderful book this review is all about, modern versions of Ruby are becoming better and better documented. There's still a long way to go, especially in 3rd-party libraries, but they're coming along too.
Can Idle truly indent that python code properly? Without an end token, how does it know whether 'print "world"' is part of the conditional block, or is simply a statement following the conditional block?
Ruby:
if false puts "hello" end puts "world"
Because the conditional block contains an end token, the indentation system can figure out how far to indent things.
I don't know of any programmers who are frustrated by having to end their code blocks, and those few extra keystrokes are worth it if it means that my editor can fix indentation across the entire file if I choose.
Right, but not all bulletin boards / forums / etc. let you use <pre> tags. Take slashdot, it lets you use 'ecode' but that isn't quite the same thing. In addition, copying and pasting text from a table is always troublesome, it's really hard to make sure you get all the indentation right.
When the language has start and end delimiters for a block of code, a good editor can re-indent it without having to "understand" the code. Python doesn't work that way. The lack of "reindentibility" of Python code is a huge drawback for Me.__init__(self).
Come back to the loop. A lot has changed in two years, including the release of Ruby 1.8. The community is pretty big now, and every day there are more and more bindings to C libraries, etc. With Ruby Gems and RPA there are also much better and easier ways of packaging the various libraries and extensions.
Overall though, I think your assessment of the core of Ruby vs. Python is correct. They're essentially aimed at the same niche, and now that Python is finally cleaning up some of its non-OO cruft, the languages are even becoming more syntactically similar. It's more a matter of what fits for you. Ruby fits for me, and for a growing number of other people.
An open eye is important, but an open mind and brain is more important. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If you find you're making friends much faster than you expect, they might not be friends. If you feel out of place, you probably look out of place, etc.
He's also right about getting along with the folks around you. Chances are, you'll always stand out, but if you make an effort to fit in it will help. For example, in many places, people wear long pants even when it's very hot out. If you wear shorts, you stand out, and you *look* like a tourist -- a tourist is a target. If you wear long pants, you may still look like a tourist, but you may be mistaken for a tourist who has been around for long enough that he won't fall for the scams.
Tony Hawk Underground 1 had McDonalds ads. SSX 3 has 7-up ads. People are buying them and don't seem to care. People who buy these games despite the ads need to be smacked around a bit, they're letting this happen, letting advertisers think we'll stand for it. I sure as hell hope we won't.
The difference is: I don't control the movie screen or the movie theatre. I do control my house and my computer. I block ads on the web, in my email, and anywhere else they pop up on my computer... I'll block the ads in games too. Not that I plan to *buy* any games with ads in them.
But I have heard a lot more fuss about people being forced to sign a
loyalty oath at Bush events than anything similar at Kerry events. In addition, most of the people who protest at Bush events are forcibly removed and immedately arrested. Now this might have more to do with security than muzzling them, but it's still disturbing.
If you don't protect freedom here, how are you possibly going to do it in Iraq and elsewhere?
To be fair, he's also been really soft on a number of other guests, from all over the political spectrum. He's only occasionally really harsh on them, when they're trying too hard to spin him. He really went after Bush's campaign manager guy when he tried to claim that Kerry and Edwards were the 1st and 2nd most liberal senators. All he asked the guy to do is back it up, and he couldn't.
I think that by using the "comedy show" escape clause, they can avoid the pitfalls of modern American "journalism". Watch TV sometime and try to find a reporter ever saying something is true or not. If Bush claims, for example, that things are going well in Iraq, the reporter will *never* say "The facts seem to contradict this version, with X deaths in the last N days". Instead they'll show a clip from an Expert who will say "The facts seem to contradict this. There have been X deaths in the last N days."
By being a comedy show, rather than a news show, when a politician says an outrageous lie, or something outrageously stupid, the reporter can point it out directly and show how stupid it is. Politicians know how to game the media. It's really easy. Since it's always "he-said, she-said", they can get away with outrageous lies.
The net result of that is that Kerry loses somewhat in the popular vote, and that Nader wins somewhat in the popular vote. I don't personally think that's a big deal. I think the people who would be using this site are probably ones who would support third-party candidates anyhow. I agree, it has the potential to fudge the numbers a bit, but I still think the benefits outweigh the risks.
Agreeing to vote for Bush isn't possible at this site.
So there are 4 possible outcomes:
Both are honest, and a pair of votes is swapped
The one in a swing state is dishonest and votes the way he/she would have voted anyhow, in the non-swing state, a third-party candidate gets more votes
The one in the non-swing state is dishonest and votes the way he/she would ahve voted anyhow, in the swing state a 3rd party candidate votes for Kerry
Both are dishonest, and both vote the way they would have voted anyhow.
If agreeing to vote for Bush were an option, sure I could see trouble, but this is really intended for people who want Kerry to win, but support 3rd party candidates. No matter how you game the system, it won't affect the electoral college swing for president, and might only result in more votes for 3rd party candidates.
Reviewing [a] Republican tactic used in the past in your area or state
Quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics which discourage people from voting
Prime minority leadership to discuss the issue in the media; provide talking points
Place stories in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics
Warn local newspapers not to accept advertising that is not properly disclaimed or that contains false warnings about voting requirements and/or what will happen at the polls
Sure, it's partisan. They want to remind people of Republican dirty tricks... but aside from that, what's objectionable? It sounds to me like they're just trying to pre-emptively ensure that people retain the right to vote, and are not misled by false ads. If no intimidation or other dirty tricks happen, all that this will result in is making sure that people are on the watch for fraud, and that newspapers etc. don't print deceptive ads. If there are dirty tricks, then the Democrats are ready to react.
There's no fraud in reporting past dirty tricks. They're true, and it's good to be on guard against them. There's absolutely nothing there telling people to claim fraud if there isn't any.
Does it diminish humans in any way that they can now be beaten at chess by a computer, especially by a computer that can do almost nothing else? If you've defined your life around chess, it might be depressing, but this just shows that it's important to be well-rounded. But even then, chess is a game. It is supposed to be fun to play. Does it become less fun now that a computer can play the game better than you, better than the best in the world? Why should it?
I might find it depressing if computers were eventually able to write more interesting poetry than a human, or paint better pictures, or do something else creative. But, perhaps not even then. It wouldn't diminish the quality of a human's art if a computer could do it better -- it simply means that there's more beautiful art!
I think this is a triumph for humanity, in its ability to create chess-playing-computers, not a tragedy for humanity because they're no longer better than computers at some random thing.
Have you seen the footage of "The Leader Of The Free World" falling off his Segway? It looked like a pretty violent fall. If an old man did that he'd be seriously injured. If his cheerleading instincts hadn't taken over, W could have been seriously injured. Twice now the US has been close to having Cheney as president. Once with the pretzel, and once with the segway.
Anyhow, unless you're getting the segway for someone who can still jump like a cheerleader, I think they could get seriously hurt.
The standards are so different that there's not much point in talking about them as if they were one cohesive set of rules. Do you know how different EPC Class 0 and EPC Class 1 are?
If you go back to the early 1900s there were lots of "cars" on the road -- only back then they called them "horseless carriages". We now have a term for those, and looking back, we see them as part of the same family. So yeah, I think the first generation tags and readers deserve the name RFID, even if the name was coined after they came about.
If you have your card out of your pocket, might someone not scan it without your permission? If you have it in a pocket, might someone not use an IR scanner to read it through your pocket?
I'll grant you that RF makes an RFID tag easier to read without your permission than a visual bar-code, but it's not a clear-cut thing. If you have an RFID tag on a card in your wallet, it's unlikely anybody will be able to read it at any great distance. The RFID tags I use to get into my building have to be rubbed up against the reader for it to read them, and have to be positioned in the wallet so that the reader is close enough. I'll give you that a bar-code based id would actually have to be taken out of the wallet to be read, but it's not a major difference.
The paranoia over RFID tags is not at all justified based on how similar they are to bar codes.
I'd argue that RFID implies a system where an ID is read using electromagnetic radiation, and doesn't necessarily imply reading at a distance. At least that's how it's talked about in the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
That link goes to a page about abortion, not infanticide. See, excising cells (even if they are human) isn't the same as killing a child.
Abortion is birth control. It's not conception-control, which even the most ardent pro-choice advocates prefer. Besides, zygotes-are-children supporters seem to stop caring the second that the baby is born. So what if the mother is not ready to become a parent, can't afford to feed or clothe her child, etc. The important thing is that the foetus was allowed to come to term. How ridiculous is that?
HTML says whitespace is not significant. Python says it is. Nuff said.
It's not just HTML either. Whitespace isn't significant in any natural language, nor in any other computer language I'm aware of. The computer world simply isn't well equipped to deal with signficant whitespace. Any time you copy/paste code around, you run the risk of messing up indentation / whitespace. it's much harder to accidentally miss a } or 'end'
Don't get me wrong. If python required signficant whitespace *and* closing tokens, that would be better. That way you'd have the best of both worlds. An editor could fix bad indentation because of the tokens, and you'd be guaranteed to have properly indented code for all working code.
And, the truth is, Python does have redundancies. In this very discussion we've had people complaining about how you get the length of things in python using len(foo), but others explaining that you can actually use foo.__len__(). Significant whitespace doesn't eliminate style wars, nor does Python eliminate redundancies. Python code is clean and readable, just like Ruby code. Ruby code, by not being whitespace-dependent is much more copy-and-paste-and-share-with-the-world-friendly.
I think you're right. I think if you don't have the confidence and experience to carry yourself properly you'll be a target. I just think that wearing long pants will help a bit otherwise. It's like a job interview. If you can show that you're an amazing candidate, it doesn't matter so much what you wear to the interview. On the other hand, if you're not the ideal candidate making a good first impression can help. Wearing a good suit might at least get things off to a good start.
I couldn't agree more about the weapon idea though. Pulling a weapon in a foreign place not only ups the ante, but it might change the situation into "foreigner vs. local". If you keep your eyes open, you can normally avoid a potentially dangerous situation before it really gets dangerous. Be *nice* to the locals and treat them with respect, you never know when you might need a friend. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and don't trust people too easily.
If I want to define something that acts like an array/hash in Ruby, I define the operator like:
The dichotomy between the name for the internal implementation of the method and the use is yet another thing that bothers me about Python.
Having to include 'self' as the first parameter to method calls in Python is one of the biggest reasons I hate using it. Most of their reasons for why they require it as a parameter are really weak. It could just as easily be a language keyword. As it is, calling that first parameter 'self' is just a convention. I've been known to deviate from that convention just because it annoys me so much.
I found Python first, and used it without too much unhappiness until I found Ruby. When I found Ruby, there was no turning back. Mostly the problems with Python are small warts, but there were enough of them to really bother me. These days, when I'm forced to use Python, I'm not too unhappy, but I still keep wishing I could use Ruby instead.
They're both really easy to learn, at least the basics. With the interactive interpreter ('python' for Python, and 'irb' for Ruby) you can just poke at it, and try random things. Honestly, Ruby and Python are two of the most beginner friendly languages out there.
As for that page, my experience is that if you like Perl at all, you'll like Ruby more than Python. I know plenty of Ruby users who like both C and Perl, but in my experience it is rare to find a Python person who likes Perl. But don't take my word for it, try them both. They're really easy to play with.
Learn Japanese, ya lazy bum!
Just kidding. You're right, documentation has been a major weakness of Ruby in the past. With 'ri' and 'rdoc', and the new wonderful book this review is all about, modern versions of Ruby are becoming better and better documented. There's still a long way to go, especially in 3rd-party libraries, but they're coming along too.
Python:
Can Idle truly indent that python code properly? Without an end token, how does it know whether 'print "world"' is part of the conditional block, or is simply a statement following the conditional block?
Ruby:
Because the conditional block contains an end token, the indentation system can figure out how far to indent things.
I don't know of any programmers who are frustrated by having to end their code blocks, and those few extra keystrokes are worth it if it means that my editor can fix indentation across the entire file if I choose.
Right, but not all bulletin boards / forums / etc. let you use <pre> tags. Take slashdot, it lets you use 'ecode' but that isn't quite the same thing. In addition, copying and pasting text from a table is always troublesome, it's really hard to make sure you get all the indentation right.
When the language has start and end delimiters for a block of code, a good editor can re-indent it without having to "understand" the code. Python doesn't work that way. The lack of "reindentibility" of Python code is a huge drawback for Me.__init__(self).
Come back to the loop. A lot has changed in two years, including the release of Ruby 1.8. The community is pretty big now, and every day there are more and more bindings to C libraries, etc. With Ruby Gems and RPA there are also much better and easier ways of packaging the various libraries and extensions.
Overall though, I think your assessment of the core of Ruby vs. Python is correct. They're essentially aimed at the same niche, and now that Python is finally cleaning up some of its non-OO cruft, the languages are even becoming more syntactically similar. It's more a matter of what fits for you. Ruby fits for me, and for a growing number of other people.
An open eye is important, but an open mind and brain is more important. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If you find you're making friends much faster than you expect, they might not be friends. If you feel out of place, you probably look out of place, etc.
He's also right about getting along with the folks around you. Chances are, you'll always stand out, but if you make an effort to fit in it will help. For example, in many places, people wear long pants even when it's very hot out. If you wear shorts, you stand out, and you *look* like a tourist -- a tourist is a target. If you wear long pants, you may still look like a tourist, but you may be mistaken for a tourist who has been around for long enough that he won't fall for the scams.
Tony Hawk Underground 1 had McDonalds ads. SSX 3 has 7-up ads. People are buying them and don't seem to care. People who buy these games despite the ads need to be smacked around a bit, they're letting this happen, letting advertisers think we'll stand for it. I sure as hell hope we won't.
The difference is: I don't control the movie screen or the movie theatre. I do control my house and my computer. I block ads on the web, in my email, and anywhere else they pop up on my computer... I'll block the ads in games too. Not that I plan to *buy* any games with ads in them.
But I have heard a lot more fuss about people being forced to sign a loyalty oath at Bush events than anything similar at Kerry events. In addition, most of the people who protest at Bush events are forcibly removed and immedately arrested. Now this might have more to do with security than muzzling them, but it's still disturbing.
If you don't protect freedom here, how are you possibly going to do it in Iraq and elsewhere?
To be fair, he's also been really soft on a number of other guests, from all over the political spectrum. He's only occasionally really harsh on them, when they're trying too hard to spin him. He really went after Bush's campaign manager guy when he tried to claim that Kerry and Edwards were the 1st and 2nd most liberal senators. All he asked the guy to do is back it up, and he couldn't.
I think that by using the "comedy show" escape clause, they can avoid the pitfalls of modern American "journalism". Watch TV sometime and try to find a reporter ever saying something is true or not. If Bush claims, for example, that things are going well in Iraq, the reporter will *never* say "The facts seem to contradict this version, with X deaths in the last N days". Instead they'll show a clip from an Expert who will say "The facts seem to contradict this. There have been X deaths in the last N days."
By being a comedy show, rather than a news show, when a politician says an outrageous lie, or something outrageously stupid, the reporter can point it out directly and show how stupid it is. Politicians know how to game the media. It's really easy. Since it's always "he-said, she-said", they can get away with outrageous lies.
Oh, and it's Stewart.
The net result of that is that Kerry loses somewhat in the popular vote, and that Nader wins somewhat in the popular vote. I don't personally think that's a big deal. I think the people who would be using this site are probably ones who would support third-party candidates anyhow. I agree, it has the potential to fudge the numbers a bit, but I still think the benefits outweigh the risks.
Agreeing to vote for Bush isn't possible at this site.
So there are 4 possible outcomes:
If agreeing to vote for Bush were an option, sure I could see trouble, but this is really intended for people who want Kerry to win, but support 3rd party candidates. No matter how you game the system, it won't affect the electoral college swing for president, and might only result in more votes for 3rd party candidates.
Did you read the thing?
Sure, it's partisan. They want to remind people of Republican dirty tricks... but aside from that, what's objectionable? It sounds to me like they're just trying to pre-emptively ensure that people retain the right to vote, and are not misled by false ads. If no intimidation or other dirty tricks happen, all that this will result in is making sure that people are on the watch for fraud, and that newspapers etc. don't print deceptive ads. If there are dirty tricks, then the Democrats are ready to react.
There's no fraud in reporting past dirty tricks. They're true, and it's good to be on guard against them. There's absolutely nothing there telling people to claim fraud if there isn't any.
Does it diminish humans in any way that they can now be beaten at chess by a computer, especially by a computer that can do almost nothing else? If you've defined your life around chess, it might be depressing, but this just shows that it's important to be well-rounded. But even then, chess is a game. It is supposed to be fun to play. Does it become less fun now that a computer can play the game better than you, better than the best in the world? Why should it?
I might find it depressing if computers were eventually able to write more interesting poetry than a human, or paint better pictures, or do something else creative. But, perhaps not even then. It wouldn't diminish the quality of a human's art if a computer could do it better -- it simply means that there's more beautiful art!
I think this is a triumph for humanity, in its ability to create chess-playing-computers, not a tragedy for humanity because they're no longer better than computers at some random thing.
Have you seen the footage of "The Leader Of The Free World" falling off his Segway? It looked like a pretty violent fall. If an old man did that he'd be seriously injured. If his cheerleading instincts hadn't taken over, W could have been seriously injured. Twice now the US has been close to having Cheney as president. Once with the pretzel, and once with the segway.
Anyhow, unless you're getting the segway for someone who can still jump like a cheerleader, I think they could get seriously hurt.
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.573; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.573
Maybe they should have used Apache on OS X?
The standards are so different that there's not much point in talking about them as if they were one cohesive set of rules. Do you know how different EPC Class 0 and EPC Class 1 are?
If you go back to the early 1900s there were lots of "cars" on the road -- only back then they called them "horseless carriages". We now have a term for those, and looking back, we see them as part of the same family. So yeah, I think the first generation tags and readers deserve the name RFID, even if the name was coined after they came about.
If you have your card out of your pocket, might someone not scan it without your permission? If you have it in a pocket, might someone not use an IR scanner to read it through your pocket?
I'll grant you that RF makes an RFID tag easier to read without your permission than a visual bar-code, but it's not a clear-cut thing. If you have an RFID tag on a card in your wallet, it's unlikely anybody will be able to read it at any great distance. The RFID tags I use to get into my building have to be rubbed up against the reader for it to read them, and have to be positioned in the wallet so that the reader is close enough. I'll give you that a bar-code based id would actually have to be taken out of the wallet to be read, but it's not a major difference.
The paranoia over RFID tags is not at all justified based on how similar they are to bar codes.
I'd argue that RFID implies a system where an ID is read using electromagnetic radiation, and doesn't necessarily imply reading at a distance. At least that's how it's talked about in the industry.
Spoken as someone who has never seen, touched, or used an RFID tag.