You're measuring the wrong statistic. I don't give a flying fuck about "gun-related deaths", and neither should anyone else. The metric should be deaths, period.
Right. That is, after the SIM cade has been associated with a phone number. In other words, activated. The other steps of the iPhone activation are just signing up for service and clicking yes to a contract. They're not related to the actual SIM activation.
Sure you have. Well, at least, the sales droid at the store you bought your cell phone at did, with you present. The iPhone activation is nothing more than associating your SIM with your phone number, signing up for service, and agreeing to a contract. The difference being that it takes about a fifth as long, and with nobody else needing to be present.
For where I work, we do expect that, basically. And it's not a drawback.
We get to work with other kickass developers on a fun project with laid-back management. We have our own personal Wii in our office that we play once or twice a week. We toss beachballs around. And we joke all the time. Work gets done -- most of it high quality. When we are forced via some kind of constraint to rush something out the door, we will come back and fix it. Without question. Management affords us this type of work environment because we have customers, we're adding features customers want, and all in all, we get shit done.
But in order to do this, we need excellent developers. The kind that read blogs and teach themselves Scala just for fun in their free time. And attend Python users' groups. And who've contributed patches to open-source projects they've never even used because they see a low-hanging fruit killer feature missing and it bugs the crap out of them. Without that kind of mindset of developer, there's no way that such a work environment is possible. Not in the long run, anyway.
The problem is in the fact that [iterative example] is infinitely more readable than [lisp map] to anyone who isn't enamored with functional programming and Lisp.
Well pardon me, but no shit! Who in their right mind cares if their code isn't readable to someone who doesn't even know the progamming language it's written in?
C-style isn't inherently more readable or intuitive. It's simply the style you and most people are familiar with. But anyone who's used Lisp for a day will find the map example more readable, and easier to type. Likewise, anyone using Ruby for a day will also be able to immediately understand what [1, 2, 3].any? {|x| x.even? } does. Plus, by removing unnecessary boilerplate that's irrelevant to the actual problem being solved, you reduce the likelihood of fat-fingering or mistakenly doing something other than you'd planned. Even a little more magical [1, 2, 3].any? &:sqrt might confuse a Ruby newcomer, but after seeing the idiom two or three times, it's second nature.
Optimizing readability for complete novices is a mistake. The pendulum can definitely be swung the other way (e.g., Perl golf), but nothing is inherent to a C-style for loop that makes it more intuitive than a map, fold, or anything else along those lines. Not to anyone who has a legitimate reason to edit/understand your code, anyway.
Putting everything as a method inside a class is just as bad an idea as having language designers be the last say in whether or not methods end up in a class. At least dynamic languages allow the developer to choose the right solution.
My original example of an avg method on Enumerable is one reason. Calculating the average of values in an array is simple, but needn't be expressed more than once, anywhere. Just because the language designers didn't have the foresight, or simply chose not to include such a method in the mixin doesn't mean it's not the right approach.
These kind of things only serve to reduce the spaghettification of code, in my experience. And without things like that, or even without operator overloading, you simply can't have awesome, intuitive libraries like Hpricot.
There's a reason for that. Take String for example. What would happen if someone subbed String and made toString() return the length, or changed hashcode() or equals() because they thought they they were smarter and could write more efficient code? (They very well might, but that's not the point here).
This is always the argument, but in my years of writing code in many languages, with developers of widely varying skill, I have only once seen it happen, and it took a few minutes to realize the error and fix it.
I have been a bit worried about an outdated skillset as lots of employers ask for lots of object oriented programming experience and I only occasionally use this.
What's stopping you from learning a language on your own, for fun? If you think employers won't care about non-professional experience, you're either simply wrong, or working for employers who hire crappy programmers. Where I work, we'll likely throw your resume in the trash if it doesn't have Haskell, Lisp, Ruby, Python, OCaml, Scheme, Scala, or some other obscure, clearly self-taught language on it.
I think this would be my primary problem if I started looking for a new job. I also think it's a bit unfair as the skills are pretty transferrable - there's only a little new theory to learn and after that, good programming practices aren't hugely dependant on language used.
You're far off here. This seems to be a prevailing thought, but it just doesn't bear out in practice.
As code gets more complex, the best way to keep it understandable to others is to follow common language idioms, indentation / code formatting practices, and use built-ins in the standard libraries. These alone often take months to become familiar with, but that's only half of it. The other half I can only describe as trying to approach problems from the unique perspective of the language. Any asshole can jump from Java to Ruby, or from C++ to Lisp, or from VB.NET to Scala. But learning how to solve problems using those languages' strengths, rather than writing code as you would in the language you're coming from, is crucial.
From my own experience, Java programmers coming fresh into Ruby don't use blocks. When you finally convince them to use blocks for enumerators, they miss the point entirely and simply use each_with_index for everything, rather than more powerful methods from functional programming like map. They also don't like to reopen classes. In Ruby, classes can be added to at will, so if you want a method to calculate the average value of an Array, you can simply define it as a new method on the class. But Java programmers will create a Util module, throw a method in there that takes an Array, and think nothing more. It's not wrong, per se, but it's ignoring Ruby's strengths, and simply writing Java code inside the Ruby interpreter. And the people who do this are bloody useless.
My rant is getting long, but the main point is this: learning syntax for a new language is easy. Learning to use that language properly (much as a screw is used differently than a nail) is crucial to being able to work with other people, and getting anything meaningful done.
Per the last half of your comment, please Google the phrase "nuclear non-proliferation treaty". Read for a bit, then go ahead and revise your statement.
The point isn't genetic diversity. It's a balance between culling the worst of the genetic fuckups and diversity. Without any selective pressure, we can expect a lot of the former and very little of the latter. One makes us as a species resistant to large-scale die-offs, and the other makes sure we as a species advances in capability.
At the end of the day, this card is bundled with the paper trail, printed throughout the day like the internal tape in a cash register, and finalized with totals and signatures from election officials.
Storage as you describe would allow the order and time of votes to be reconstructed, destroying anonymity.
It is like in poker when you are forced to fold, despite your winning hand, because you don't have enough money to match the bet.
Just FYI, but this has never happened in any sane poker game, ever. If a bet made to you is larger than you can afford with the money on the table, you can call it up to the amount you have remaining. If it's only you and the bettor in the pot, he takes the surplus of his bet back. If there are others in the pot, the surplus bet is side-potted between the remaining players.
So about that public healthcare system, tell me: what country do you import all your drugs from? And what country pioneers the techniques your doctors use on day-to-day basis?
You've clearly never played a serious game of poker. 95% of a player's behavior consists of their betting patterns and reaction to other players. 5% has to do with what their physical mannerisms.
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US
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eBay The Vote
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· Score: 1
I'll address your points against the FairTax, as they're mostly FUD.
The Fair Tax fanatics continually lie about the rate they want to charge. It's not the 23% they keep trying to push off to stupid people. Read something by someone who's not trying to relentlessly push it on us.
It is if you're comparing it to the current income tax. Not if you're comparing it to a sales tax. Since the FairTax intends to replace the Federal Income Tax, it's more than fair to use the same metric. The income tax is taken out of your total earnings. Make $100,000 with 25% tax? Take 25% out of the $100,000. Spend $100,000? Add 25% to the cost of the goods. If you considered the sales tax with the same metric, you would consider it as $25,000 of the cost of a $125,000 item. Which is 20%, not 25%.
The FairTax folk have been extremely open about this, for the record.
If the Fair Tax passes, there will be no tax deductions. Have kids? Too damn bad. Wave bye-bye to the mortgage interest deduction. No more retirement savings advantages.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Honestly, the fewer exceptions we put in for exemptions, exceptions, and ways to not pay, the less chances there are for unforeseen loopholes. Plus, having a child or buying a house should't allow you to reduce the amount of money you're paying for the services government provides.
It totally neglects people's current after-tax investments. All that Roth IRA money people have invested? They'll be paying tax on it twice--income tax when they earned it, and again when they purchase stuff.
I don't have an argument against this point, but I'm not convinced there is none. If true, it does suck (and I have significant investment holdings, for the record), but sometimes the net benefit of the change outweighs the downsides to some people. If you only make changes that have absolutely no downsides to 100% of the population, nothing can get done.
Plus I suppose there's the point that the majority of the people with these massive amounts of investments are the rich you're so seemingly antithetic towards.
(as an additional note, investments would no longer be taxed whatsoever, so those with non-Roth IRAs or other types of investments suddenly are able to cash out for the entire amount, which I assume more than offsets the fact that they'll now have to pay greater sales tax on purchases).
# Ooh, they'll be able to get rid of the IRS right? Who do you think is going to be collecting the Fair Tax and enforcing its collection? Santa Claus?
You're right. We'll need yet another Three Letter Agency to collect the taxes. But tax collection will be simpler (fewer complicated rules), require fewer resources (fewer taxable entities), and have less chances for companies to evade payment.
Right now the IRS estimates they fail to collect on about 17% of what's owed to them. Simplified tax structures generally have better compliance, so for less manpower we collect more of the owed tax.
According to the Wikipedia article, 47% of all retail sales are made by 688 businesses, while 87% are made by 193,000 businesses (about 3.7% of all U.S. businesses). Meaning way fewer taxable entities, and the ones who would pay the most can be far, far more easily scrutinized.
Speaking of collection, it turns millions of people into tax collectors. Keep in mind that the Fair Tax applies to services, too.
This of course completely ignores the fact that right now, they still have the same responsibility.
Your son is still responsible for state sales taxes on his lawn mowing "enterprise". He may even be responsible for reporting his income to the IRS (I honestly don't know). Tons of money exchanges hands "under the table" in this way, and the government doesn't care. It's small potatoe
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US
on
eBay The Vote
·
· Score: 1
Third of all, if you're paying 33% of your income, then you must be extremely wealthy and extremely stupid. The marginal rate of 33% only applies if you make over $97,925 a year. If your total income tax is 33%, do you have any clue what that makes your income? $694,850.
Not true.
I take home about 72% of my pay, which is nowhere near $694,850. That's 28% right off the bat. Factor in another 6.25% that my employer has to match (which is still an effective tax on _my_ income), we're up to 34.25%. Assume I spend 75% of that remaining 65.75%, which is taxed at 5% in my state. According to estimates by the FairTax folk, without the embedded taxes in our goods and services, the cost of products would decrease by roughly 22%. That equates to a 28% tax(100 / (100 - 22) - 1). Pair those two up for their combined 33%, and I'm taxed another 24.75% of my income through spending. Grand total: 59%
When all is said and done, that's almost 60% of my income every year that goes to the government. As necessary as some parts of government are, paying that much for the services they provide is nothing short of insane.
Honestly, none of those hold a candle to VS 2005 for.NET development.
Which, in and of itself, doesn't hold a candle to EMACS or Vim for development on pretty much any other platform.
A language which pretty much requires a giant fucking IDE with refactoring support and embedded utilities to do everything from picking one's ass to waxing their cat isn't exactly my idea of something I'd like to use on a day-to-day basis.
(By the way, in US english, commas and periods should ALWAYS go inside the quotes.)
In many places, yes. But any community is free to choose to disregard that rule, and implement (what I and many others believe to be) a superior method. I'd argue that many Wikipedia editors simply believe that this kind of quoting structure is outright wrong. Especially considering the technical origins and the technical nature of many of its editors and articles, I can see why they would try to enforce that style of quoting strictly.
An analogy, since you seem to be completely incapable of rational thought. I tell you that speeding increases your chance of an accident, and you could die.
One week later, you're in an accident while speeding, and die. Premeditated?
They told users that it might brick their phones precisely because of that. The update might brick the phones. That's a fair warning, not a sign that the bricking was intentional. Could it be intentional? Sure. But there's not a goddamn bit of evidence that it was.
Parallelizing encryption on these types of scales does nothing to help defeat cryptography.
From Bruce Schneier in Applied Cryptography:
One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information. To record a single bit by changing the state of a system requires an amount of energy no less than kT where T is the absolute temperature of the system and k is the Boltzman constant. (Stick with me; the physics lesson is almost over.) Given that k = 1.38x10^-16 erg/Kelvin, and that the ambient temperature of the universe is 3.2K, an ideal computer running at 3.2K would consume 4.4x10^-16 ergs every time it set or cleared a bit. To run a computer any colder than the cosmic background radiation would require extra energy to run a heat pump. Now, the annual energy output of our sun is about 1.21x10^41 ergs. This is enough to power about 2.7x10^56 single bit changes on our ideal computer; enough changes to put a 187-bit counter through all of its values. If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all of its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2^192. Of course it wouldn't have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this counter. But that's just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 10^51 ergs. (About a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but let them go for now.) If all of the energy could be channedel into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states. These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maxiumums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.
Slashdot Mirror
You're measuring the wrong statistic. I don't give a flying fuck about "gun-related deaths", and neither should anyone else. The metric should be deaths, period.
Nobody was "told" they aren't allowed to have nuclear weapons.
Please go Wikipedia the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, then post a public apology for not having a clue what you're fucking talking about.
And in turn, you seem to be confusing flash memory with a hard drive.
Right. That is, after the SIM cade has been associated with a phone number. In other words, activated. The other steps of the iPhone activation are just signing up for service and clicking yes to a contract. They're not related to the actual SIM activation.
Sure you have. Well, at least, the sales droid at the store you bought your cell phone at did, with you present. The iPhone activation is nothing more than associating your SIM with your phone number, signing up for service, and agreeing to a contract. The difference being that it takes about a fifth as long, and with nobody else needing to be present.
For where I work, we do expect that, basically. And it's not a drawback.
We get to work with other kickass developers on a fun project with laid-back management. We have our own personal Wii in our office that we play once or twice a week. We toss beachballs around. And we joke all the time. Work gets done -- most of it high quality. When we are forced via some kind of constraint to rush something out the door, we will come back and fix it. Without question. Management affords us this type of work environment because we have customers, we're adding features customers want, and all in all, we get shit done.
But in order to do this, we need excellent developers. The kind that read blogs and teach themselves Scala just for fun in their free time. And attend Python users' groups. And who've contributed patches to open-source projects they've never even used because they see a low-hanging fruit killer feature missing and it bugs the crap out of them. Without that kind of mindset of developer, there's no way that such a work environment is possible. Not in the long run, anyway.
C-style isn't inherently more readable or intuitive. It's simply the style you and most people are familiar with. But anyone who's used Lisp for a day will find the map example more readable, and easier to type. Likewise, anyone using Ruby for a day will also be able to immediately understand what [1, 2, 3].any? {|x| x.even? } does. Plus, by removing unnecessary boilerplate that's irrelevant to the actual problem being solved, you reduce the likelihood of fat-fingering or mistakenly doing something other than you'd planned. Even a little more magical [1, 2, 3].any? &:sqrt might confuse a Ruby newcomer, but after seeing the idiom two or three times, it's second nature.
Optimizing readability for complete novices is a mistake. The pendulum can definitely be swung the other way (e.g., Perl golf), but nothing is inherent to a C-style for loop that makes it more intuitive than a map, fold, or anything else along those lines. Not to anyone who has a legitimate reason to edit/understand your code, anyway.
Putting everything as a method inside a class is just as bad an idea as having language designers be the last say in whether or not methods end up in a class. At least dynamic languages allow the developer to choose the right solution.
My original example of an avg method on Enumerable is one reason. Calculating the average of values in an array is simple, but needn't be expressed more than once, anywhere. Just because the language designers didn't have the foresight, or simply chose not to include such a method in the mixin doesn't mean it's not the right approach.
These kind of things only serve to reduce the spaghettification of code, in my experience. And without things like that, or even without operator overloading, you simply can't have awesome, intuitive libraries like Hpricot.
As code gets more complex, the best way to keep it understandable to others is to follow common language idioms, indentation / code formatting practices, and use built-ins in the standard libraries. These alone often take months to become familiar with, but that's only half of it. The other half I can only describe as trying to approach problems from the unique perspective of the language. Any asshole can jump from Java to Ruby, or from C++ to Lisp, or from VB.NET to Scala. But learning how to solve problems using those languages' strengths, rather than writing code as you would in the language you're coming from, is crucial.
From my own experience, Java programmers coming fresh into Ruby don't use blocks. When you finally convince them to use blocks for enumerators, they miss the point entirely and simply use each_with_index for everything, rather than more powerful methods from functional programming like map. They also don't like to reopen classes. In Ruby, classes can be added to at will, so if you want a method to calculate the average value of an Array, you can simply define it as a new method on the class. But Java programmers will create a Util module, throw a method in there that takes an Array, and think nothing more. It's not wrong, per se, but it's ignoring Ruby's strengths, and simply writing Java code inside the Ruby interpreter. And the people who do this are bloody useless.
My rant is getting long, but the main point is this: learning syntax for a new language is easy. Learning to use that language properly (much as a screw is used differently than a nail) is crucial to being able to work with other people, and getting anything meaningful done.
i switched to colemak, you insensitive clod!
XML doesn't allow for attributes on closing tags.
Per the last half of your comment, please Google the phrase "nuclear non-proliferation treaty". Read for a bit, then go ahead and revise your statement.
The point isn't genetic diversity. It's a balance between culling the worst of the genetic fuckups and diversity. Without any selective pressure, we can expect a lot of the former and very little of the latter. One makes us as a species resistant to large-scale die-offs, and the other makes sure we as a species advances in capability.
Won't a technology like this put the battery through excessive charge / discharge cycles, killing battery life?
Just FYI, but this has never happened in any sane poker game, ever. If a bet made to you is larger than you can afford with the money on the table, you can call it up to the amount you have remaining. If it's only you and the bettor in the pot, he takes the surplus of his bet back. If there are others in the pot, the surplus bet is side-potted between the remaining players.
So about that public healthcare system, tell me: what country do you import all your drugs from? And what country pioneers the techniques your doctors use on day-to-day basis?
You've clearly never played a serious game of poker. 95% of a player's behavior consists of their betting patterns and reaction to other players. 5% has to do with what their physical mannerisms.
It is if you're comparing it to the current income tax. Not if you're comparing it to a sales tax. Since the FairTax intends to replace the Federal Income Tax, it's more than fair to use the same metric. The income tax is taken out of your total earnings. Make $100,000 with 25% tax? Take 25% out of the $100,000. Spend $100,000? Add 25% to the cost of the goods. If you considered the sales tax with the same metric, you would consider it as $25,000 of the cost of a $125,000 item. Which is 20%, not 25%.
The FairTax folk have been extremely open about this, for the record.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Honestly, the fewer exceptions we put in for exemptions, exceptions, and ways to not pay, the less chances there are for unforeseen loopholes. Plus, having a child or buying a house should't allow you to reduce the amount of money you're paying for the services government provides.
I don't have an argument against this point, but I'm not convinced there is none. If true, it does suck (and I have significant investment holdings, for the record), but sometimes the net benefit of the change outweighs the downsides to some people. If you only make changes that have absolutely no downsides to 100% of the population, nothing can get done.
Plus I suppose there's the point that the majority of the people with these massive amounts of investments are the rich you're so seemingly antithetic towards.
(as an additional note, investments would no longer be taxed whatsoever, so those with non-Roth IRAs or other types of investments suddenly are able to cash out for the entire amount, which I assume more than offsets the fact that they'll now have to pay greater sales tax on purchases).
You're right. We'll need yet another Three Letter Agency to collect the taxes. But tax collection will be simpler (fewer complicated rules), require fewer resources (fewer taxable entities), and have less chances for companies to evade payment.
Right now the IRS estimates they fail to collect on about 17% of what's owed to them. Simplified tax structures generally have better compliance, so for less manpower we collect more of the owed tax.
According to the Wikipedia article, 47% of all retail sales are made by 688 businesses, while 87% are made by 193,000 businesses (about 3.7% of all U.S. businesses). Meaning way fewer taxable entities, and the ones who would pay the most can be far, far more easily scrutinized.
This of course completely ignores the fact that right now, they still have the same responsibility.
Your son is still responsible for state sales taxes on his lawn mowing "enterprise". He may even be responsible for reporting his income to the IRS (I honestly don't know). Tons of money exchanges hands "under the table" in this way, and the government doesn't care. It's small potatoe
Not true.
I take home about 72% of my pay, which is nowhere near $694,850. That's 28% right off the bat. Factor in another 6.25% that my employer has to match (which is still an effective tax on _my_ income), we're up to 34.25%. Assume I spend 75% of that remaining 65.75%, which is taxed at 5% in my state. According to estimates by the FairTax folk, without the embedded taxes in our goods and services, the cost of products would decrease by roughly 22%. That equates to a 28% tax(100 / (100 - 22) - 1). Pair those two up for their combined 33%, and I'm taxed another 24.75% of my income through spending. Grand total: 59%
When all is said and done, that's almost 60% of my income every year that goes to the government. As necessary as some parts of government are, paying that much for the services they provide is nothing short of insane.
Which, in and of itself, doesn't hold a candle to EMACS or Vim for development on pretty much any other platform.
A language which pretty much requires a giant fucking IDE with refactoring support and embedded utilities to do everything from picking one's ass to waxing their cat isn't exactly my idea of something I'd like to use on a day-to-day basis.
In many places, yes. But any community is free to choose to disregard that rule, and implement (what I and many others believe to be) a superior method. I'd argue that many Wikipedia editors simply believe that this kind of quoting structure is outright wrong. Especially considering the technical origins and the technical nature of many of its editors and articles, I can see why they would try to enforce that style of quoting strictly.
An analogy, since you seem to be completely incapable of rational thought. I tell you that speeding increases your chance of an accident, and you could die.
One week later, you're in an accident while speeding, and die. Premeditated?
They told users that it might brick their phones precisely because of that. The update might brick the phones. That's a fair warning, not a sign that the bricking was intentional. Could it be intentional? Sure. But there's not a goddamn bit of evidence that it was.
Parallelizing encryption on these types of scales does nothing to help defeat cryptography.
From Bruce Schneier in Applied Cryptography: