Going to work even worse than garbage collection. Making computers slower just to make programmers more lazy.
It would be faster. Most software poorly utilizes multiple cores and GPU-like architectures. If the language is simple enough, the compiler or the VM can parallelize the object code.
Programming languages usually have too much syntax and too much expressiveness, not too little. We don't need them to be even more cryptic and even more laden with hidden pitfalls for someone who is new, or imperfectly vigilant, or just makes a mistake.
If anything, programming needs to be less specific. Tell the system what you're trying to do and let the tools write the code and optimize it for your architecture.
We don't need longer character sets. We don't need more programming languages or more language features. We need more productive tools, software that adapts to multithreaded operation and GPU-like processors, tools that prevent mistakes and security bugs, and ways to express software behavior that are straightforward enough to actually be self-documenting or easily explained fully with short comments.
Focusing on improving programming languages is rearranging the deck chairs.
People do. If people are involved at all, they have free speech rights notwithstanding their involvement in a corporation (and notwithstanding anything else either).
If there were no people involved, you might have a point. But there are. And you don't.
Transparency may be "vital to democracy" but it's not explicitly in the First Amendment or in other parts of the Constitution. Until the Constitution is amended, transparency isn't really the Supreme Court's overriding concern.
Allowing free speech to be abridged by Congress for "transparency" reasons is a flat violation of the Congressional and Supreme Court oath of office. Only 4 of the 9 justices chose to break that oath.
Then, as a libertarian, you should be able to see that lawsuits, and action in the courts in general, have grown to the point where liberty is in jeopardy. Courts rule over far too many activities that should be up to individuals to decide. And the systems' processes are setup to benefit lawyers at the expense of the rest of society, leaving justice a forgotten relic of the distant past.
Liberty requires fewer lawsuits, not more. And court awards should compensate, not punish. Nor should they provide a financial incentive for lawyers or legal action. Legal action is government force. A libertarian should consider such force a necessary evil at best. And he should require it to be limited, not expanded.
Corporations didn't make government force or government corruption a problem. Limit the government's power and you limit the incentive for corporate involvement in government and politics. No other course of action can be consistent with libertarian principles.
Right because you can understand my entire world view from one statement on Slashdot.
I can guess at it. Anti-corporate people all have the same talking points. You're the ones who keep bringing up liability, as if lawsuits are what keeps the world spinning.
If you don't think lawsuits are really important, then you don't really have much of a point, do you?
When you run a business that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If they don't like it, you could always stop using the public right of way and stop operating across state lines. That would keep the intrusions mostly out.
When you live a life that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If you don't like it, you could always stop using the public streets and eating food transported across state lines.
Barring that, prepare to accept arbitrary intrusions and minute-by-minute micro-management of everything you do.
And that's what the world, right and wrong, and life itself are all about, right? Lawsuits. And the amount you can sue for.
It you can sue for one amount, all is right with the world. If you can't sue for that amount, it justifies all manner of hatred for people who work and invest to provide a service, and who want to be paid for their efforts if you benefit from them.
Let me put it another way. Every major game I care to play. Besides Halo and a few other similar titles, I don't see much the consoles bring to the table. I can think of more major games that the PC has exclusively than consoles.
My 90-year-old grandma agrees with you. She doesn't play games like Uncharted 2 or Red Dead Redemption either.
I don't understand why you folks keep buying such consoles and other locked down devices. You're only encouraging the business model. Efforts to subvert the security measures brings risk of criminal liability. Perhaps the "inferior" alternatives would stop being so inferior and you'd get what you really want, but on your terms not theirs.
Because they are fun. Because we judge their value to us as greater than the purchase price.
Because we don't believe in the pseudo-ethical geek groupthink hate campaigns against any company that wants to make money creating high value content. (Or we're just not willing to sacrifice anything of genuine value to pass the faux-ethics purity test.)
You should stop posting on Slashdot. One of the companies that makes one of the components in your computer did something against someone's skewed, self-serving ethical code once.
Those are some good questions. Luckily, the islanders have 50-100 years to come up with answers (if you believe the rising sea level predictions). If they start looking now, they should have plenty of time.
So, I take it you're defending your decision to attack the government of this island without actually reading the fucking article?
How dare anyone question a government? When did governments ever do anything that wasn't 100% selfless and noble? Governments never hurt anyone, did they?
I assume you also prefer to just skim the headlines in a newspaper, rather than actually reading the stories?
Everyone does. That's what headlines are for. I guess you pick up a newspaper and read every word from the front page to the back in numerical order of the pages, without setting it down. No?
Christ, and we wonder why the US electorate is so god damned uninformed and gullible...
Was that in the article, or are you just prejudiced against Americans?
An island that's on the knife's edge of being uninhabitable is clearly the problem of the people who live there. Those people might want to make contingency plans in case something goes wrong. Things have been known to go wrong.
And you haven't addressed why billions of people should sacrifice their prosperity for a few thousand people to continue to live in a tropical paradise. And why is it the right choice to force the billions to face an impoverished future so the islanders can avoid some infrastructure challenges they have 50-100 years to deal with.
Just as an example, if it means billions of people get to have better lives, I personally would be willing to move. Moving is always a hassle, but it's something I can handle for the good of that many people.
Also, maybe you should look up what a straw man is.
I mentioned this in another reply, but it seems unwise to force billions of people to give up on living prosperous lives for the long term convenience of a few thousand tropical islanders.
Tropical islanders should take constructive steps to deal with their own problems. If your island is on the edge of being uninhabitable now, then it might be a good idea to find a place more resilient, or find a way to improve structures to make your own island more resilient. Don't ask everyone else in the world to assume an impoverished state so you can keep your preferred tropical lifestyle without any changes or challenges.
Of course not. Is that a rhetorical question? Do the people of Kiribati know about me? Are they interested in my problems?
He is closing the fishery to protect fish stocks and to make a point for the world at large.
Protecting people from eating and making a spectacle. Bravo.
As for sea walls, those would do nothing against the salinization of groundwater on those islands. When your well draws sea water, you have to leave the island anyway, which is what is happening in those islands.
I admit to not knowing about island fresh water supplies. I'm not sure I believe a small rise in sea levels would automatically change ground water to salt water. Perhaps there is something constructive to be done about it. But I'm pretty sure whining and prohibiting fishing isn't a remedy.
Seriously? This is Slashdot. Do the editors even read the articles?
The summary talked about islands threatened by rising sea levels. People who live on tropical islands have many, many years to prepare simple structures to deal with rising sea levels (if they rise at all).
Furthermore, the idea that billions of people who don't live on tropical Pacific islands should give up leading prosperous lives to protect a few thousand people from (the risk of) having to build a 30-40 centimeter seawall over the course of the next 100 years... Well, it seems like an unwise choice.
A government restricts the lives of ordinary, innocent citizens, making them poorer in the process, while the government officials continue on without changing their lifestyles at all. Or the government officials make a profit from the change by getting payments (or something else of value) from environmental special interest groups or from the fishermen who use the other, non-restricted territory and have fewer competitors selling fish.
Governments using unnecessary force against people is oppression, even when the rulers are The Good People and they are doing it for The Good Reasons.
Someone who cared about islanders would suggest they actually solve their problems (in the event those problems actually happen) by building some small seawalls or other simple structures to deal with a modest rise in sea levels. Whining and making ridiculous and destructive spectacles is useless and childish.
I get that. I think we should concentrate on making a good future instead though. Policy efforts and advocacy should focus on improvements. We should find ways to make optimistic outcomes more realistic instead of always trying to postpone or hide from pessimistic predicted outcomes (which are, by definition, not very realistic).
Progress is when life gets better for people, not worse.
Who gives a shit what extreme anybody thinks, it doesn't mean you don't have to worry about sustainable alternatives because you don't agree with some whack that wants you to sit on your hands all day. Sounds like a convenient excuse to do whatever you want because the extreme opposition is 'wrong'.
Doing whatever I want? You mean like a free person in a free society? That's a subversive idea you have there. I can see why you posted it anonymously.
Extreme environmentalists aren't really into letting you choose whether you care about what they think. They demand obedience to their enlightened authority.
Yeah, but this article isn't about some sort of apocalyptic struggle against extinction. He wants you to start growing this stuff with your urine right now.
Is shooting yourself in the head to avoid a pointless and severely unpleasant (but "sustainable") existence in a dystopian ecologically green world "the future"? Can we deprive ourselves of everything good about life so our children can inherit a world where they'll also have to deprive themselves of everything good about life? Is this wise?
Why wouldn't we choose to strive for a good outcome rather than the worst possible outcome where we all (sort-of) survive?
Do you have the blueprints to the Discovery Channel building?
Slashdot Mirror
We need tools so that mediocre programmers can produce (nearly) bug-free software in a fraction of the time it currently takes expert programmers.
Going to work even worse than garbage collection. Making computers slower just to make programmers more lazy.
It would be faster. Most software poorly utilizes multiple cores and GPU-like architectures. If the language is simple enough, the compiler or the VM can parallelize the object code.
Programming languages usually have too much syntax and too much expressiveness, not too little. We don't need them to be even more cryptic and even more laden with hidden pitfalls for someone who is new, or imperfectly vigilant, or just makes a mistake.
If anything, programming needs to be less specific. Tell the system what you're trying to do and let the tools write the code and optimize it for your architecture.
We don't need longer character sets. We don't need more programming languages or more language features. We need more productive tools, software that adapts to multithreaded operation and GPU-like processors, tools that prevent mistakes and security bugs, and ways to express software behavior that are straightforward enough to actually be self-documenting or easily explained fully with short comments.
Focusing on improving programming languages is rearranging the deck chairs.
If it's WiFi,
It isn't WiFi.
Thank you very much.
You are welcome.
People do. If people are involved at all, they have free speech rights notwithstanding their involvement in a corporation (and notwithstanding anything else either).
If there were no people involved, you might have a point. But there are. And you don't.
Transparency may be "vital to democracy" but it's not explicitly in the First Amendment or in other parts of the Constitution. Until the Constitution is amended, transparency isn't really the Supreme Court's overriding concern.
Allowing free speech to be abridged by Congress for "transparency" reasons is a flat violation of the Congressional and Supreme Court oath of office. Only 4 of the 9 justices chose to break that oath.
Then, as a libertarian, you should be able to see that lawsuits, and action in the courts in general, have grown to the point where liberty is in jeopardy. Courts rule over far too many activities that should be up to individuals to decide. And the systems' processes are setup to benefit lawyers at the expense of the rest of society, leaving justice a forgotten relic of the distant past.
Liberty requires fewer lawsuits, not more. And court awards should compensate, not punish. Nor should they provide a financial incentive for lawyers or legal action. Legal action is government force. A libertarian should consider such force a necessary evil at best. And he should require it to be limited, not expanded.
Corporations didn't make government force or government corruption a problem. Limit the government's power and you limit the incentive for corporate involvement in government and politics. No other course of action can be consistent with libertarian principles.
Right because you can understand my entire world view from one statement on Slashdot.
I can guess at it. Anti-corporate people all have the same talking points. You're the ones who keep bringing up liability, as if lawsuits are what keeps the world spinning.
If you don't think lawsuits are really important, then you don't really have much of a point, do you?
When you run a business that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If they don't like it, you could always stop using the public right of way and stop operating across state lines. That would keep the intrusions mostly out.
When you live a life that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If you don't like it, you could always stop using the public streets and eating food transported across state lines.
Barring that, prepare to accept arbitrary intrusions and minute-by-minute micro-management of everything you do.
And that's what the world, right and wrong, and life itself are all about, right? Lawsuits. And the amount you can sue for.
It you can sue for one amount, all is right with the world. If you can't sue for that amount, it justifies all manner of hatred for people who work and invest to provide a service, and who want to be paid for their efforts if you benefit from them.
Let me put it another way. Every major game I care to play. Besides Halo and a few other similar titles, I don't see much the consoles bring to the table. I can think of more major games that the PC has exclusively than consoles.
My 90-year-old grandma agrees with you. She doesn't play games like Uncharted 2 or Red Dead Redemption either.
I don't understand why you folks keep buying such consoles and other locked down devices. You're only encouraging the business model. Efforts to subvert the security measures brings risk of criminal liability. Perhaps the "inferior" alternatives would stop being so inferior and you'd get what you really want, but on your terms not theirs.
Because they are fun. Because we judge their value to us as greater than the purchase price.
Because we don't believe in the pseudo-ethical geek groupthink hate campaigns against any company that wants to make money creating high value content. (Or we're just not willing to sacrifice anything of genuine value to pass the faux-ethics purity test.)
You should stop posting on Slashdot. One of the companies that makes one of the components in your computer did something against someone's skewed, self-serving ethical code once.
Those are some good questions. Luckily, the islanders have 50-100 years to come up with answers (if you believe the rising sea level predictions). If they start looking now, they should have plenty of time.
How do you know this was forced on "the people"? Where did you get that info?
All government prohibitions are forced on people. If everyone agreed, the government wouldn't have any activity to prohibit.
So, I take it you're defending your decision to attack the government of this island without actually reading the fucking article?
How dare anyone question a government? When did governments ever do anything that wasn't 100% selfless and noble? Governments never hurt anyone, did they?
I assume you also prefer to just skim the headlines in a newspaper, rather than actually reading the stories?
Everyone does. That's what headlines are for. I guess you pick up a newspaper and read every word from the front page to the back in numerical order of the pages, without setting it down. No?
Christ, and we wonder why the US electorate is so god damned uninformed and gullible...
Was that in the article, or are you just prejudiced against Americans?
An island that's on the knife's edge of being uninhabitable is clearly the problem of the people who live there. Those people might want to make contingency plans in case something goes wrong. Things have been known to go wrong.
And you haven't addressed why billions of people should sacrifice their prosperity for a few thousand people to continue to live in a tropical paradise. And why is it the right choice to force the billions to face an impoverished future so the islanders can avoid some infrastructure challenges they have 50-100 years to deal with.
Just as an example, if it means billions of people get to have better lives, I personally would be willing to move. Moving is always a hassle, but it's something I can handle for the good of that many people.
Also, maybe you should look up what a straw man is.
I mentioned this in another reply, but it seems unwise to force billions of people to give up on living prosperous lives for the long term convenience of a few thousand tropical islanders.
Tropical islanders should take constructive steps to deal with their own problems. If your island is on the edge of being uninhabitable now, then it might be a good idea to find a place more resilient, or find a way to improve structures to make your own island more resilient. Don't ask everyone else in the world to assume an impoverished state so you can keep your preferred tropical lifestyle without any changes or challenges.
Do you even know anything about Kiribati?
Of course not. Is that a rhetorical question? Do the people of Kiribati know about me? Are they interested in my problems?
He is closing the fishery to protect fish stocks and to make a point for the world at large.
Protecting people from eating and making a spectacle. Bravo.
As for sea walls, those would do nothing against the salinization of groundwater on those islands. When your well draws sea water, you have to leave the island anyway, which is what is happening in those islands.
I admit to not knowing about island fresh water supplies. I'm not sure I believe a small rise in sea levels would automatically change ground water to salt water. Perhaps there is something constructive to be done about it. But I'm pretty sure whining and prohibiting fishing isn't a remedy.
WTF... did you even bother to read the article?
Seriously? This is Slashdot. Do the editors even read the articles?
The summary talked about islands threatened by rising sea levels. People who live on tropical islands have many, many years to prepare simple structures to deal with rising sea levels (if they rise at all).
Furthermore, the idea that billions of people who don't live on tropical Pacific islands should give up leading prosperous lives to protect a few thousand people from (the risk of) having to build a 30-40 centimeter seawall over the course of the next 100 years... Well, it seems like an unwise choice.
A government restricts the lives of ordinary, innocent citizens, making them poorer in the process, while the government officials continue on without changing their lifestyles at all. Or the government officials make a profit from the change by getting payments (or something else of value) from environmental special interest groups or from the fishermen who use the other, non-restricted territory and have fewer competitors selling fish.
Governments using unnecessary force against people is oppression, even when the rulers are The Good People and they are doing it for The Good Reasons.
Someone who cared about islanders would suggest they actually solve their problems (in the event those problems actually happen) by building some small seawalls or other simple structures to deal with a modest rise in sea levels. Whining and making ridiculous and destructive spectacles is useless and childish.
I get that. I think we should concentrate on making a good future instead though. Policy efforts and advocacy should focus on improvements. We should find ways to make optimistic outcomes more realistic instead of always trying to postpone or hide from pessimistic predicted outcomes (which are, by definition, not very realistic).
Progress is when life gets better for people, not worse.
Who gives a shit what extreme anybody thinks, it doesn't mean you don't have to worry about sustainable alternatives because you don't agree with some whack that wants you to sit on your hands all day. Sounds like a convenient excuse to do whatever you want because the extreme opposition is 'wrong'.
Doing whatever I want? You mean like a free person in a free society? That's a subversive idea you have there. I can see why you posted it anonymously.
Extreme environmentalists aren't really into letting you choose whether you care about what they think. They demand obedience to their enlightened authority.
Yeah, but this article isn't about some sort of apocalyptic struggle against extinction. He wants you to start growing this stuff with your urine right now.
Like driving or flying to a nice vacation spot? Nope.
Like reclining in air conditioned comfort of their spacious homes? Nope and nope.
There's nothing good about life that extreme environmentalists wouldn't frown on.
Is shooting yourself in the head to avoid a pointless and severely unpleasant (but "sustainable") existence in a dystopian ecologically green world "the future"? Can we deprive ourselves of everything good about life so our children can inherit a world where they'll also have to deprive themselves of everything good about life? Is this wise?
Why wouldn't we choose to strive for a good outcome rather than the worst possible outcome where we all (sort-of) survive?
Do you have the blueprints to the Discovery Channel building?