Your second point tells me that such applications should be developed, to force ISPs to upgrade their networks. Or, if a game like this gets popular, CDNs help relieve that strain. It's worth mentioning that YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix present the exact same problems and solutions.
And when was the last time a game saturated a SATA bus?
Oh, and elsewhere -- places like Japan, Sweden, etc -- have plenty of fiber. The US is a bit backwards this way.
But I still think good things could be done with much less bandwidth. I was just demonstrating that it's possible right now without really making any compromises -- I still think it could be done well for a lot of games without requiring more than 1 mbit -- yes, mbit.
taking natural medicine might work better than doing nothing.
I don't recall suggesting "doing nothing". If you're going to suggest something to trigger a placebo, it can be done cheaper, since it really doesn't matter what it is.
But what I'd really suggest is taking that time and energy you'd invest in alternate cures, and put it towards using the time that you have.
The problem being that not even science can explain exactly how the human body works.
...yet.
Science can explain quite a lot about how the body works, to a high degree of accuracy. No other discipline has come close, so far -- before modern medical science, it was generally accepted that leeches were an effective medicine.
I think Dara O'Briain put it best: "We've already tried all the herbal remedies, and the ones that worked became... medicine!"
who is to say whether that interpretation is right or wrong.
Whether, what, the scientific interpretation?
Let me put it this way: People have this bad habit of trusting science for things they don't have an emotional investment in (what do you think you're typing this on?), but suddenly finding flaws in science anywhere they want to believe.
Scientists haven't done enough research to support or deny Chiropractics, so who's to say it's actually bogus.
Again, it's what they're claiming. If they claim they can ease some back pain or tension, I don't think science has a problem -- you're right, not enough is known.
If they claim they can cure, oh, blindness, they're out of their minds. We may not know everything, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that adjusting someone's spinal column isn't going to repair a damaged, underdeveloped, or severed optic nerve -- nor could any sort of pressure on the spine somehow affect either the eye itself, the optic nerve, or the brain to such an extent as to cause blindness.
Similarly, if someone tries to sell me an herbal cure for drowsiness, sure -- tea, coffee, guarana -- even ginseng, since it's not likely to hurt anything. But if someone tries to sell me an herbal cure for Swine Flu, no thanks, I'd rather get vaccinated.
What you have to understand here is that people who reject chiropractic offhand are probably assuming it's that kind of claim (a cure for blindness, cancer, etc), and indeed, mainstream chiropractic has historically endorsed such beliefs.
Backing up a Mac OS X installation with resource forks, extended attributes, etc. to a Linux box is nontrivial at best
Depends what you need. If it's just someone's laptop, a raw disk image is still useful. If it's an external drive or a network share, you can format the drive such that it can be plugged directly into a backup server, and you can use a Linux fileserver.
My choice would be a Mac laptop, a disk image, and a Linux fileserver for anything that won't fit on internal storage.
If your back is out of alignment and you go through life with undue pressure on certain nerves because of the misalignment, one would imagine that the signals could be interrupted and cause problems.
One would imagine.
Now actually go and prove that this is indeed what's happening. That's a lot harder.
And again, some Chiropractors, including the founder of the discipline, believe that all ailments can be traced to that one cause, which is demonstrably wrong.
And then there's this part:
I couldn't give a rats arse about the science, it works for me.
The reason you should care about the science is that there may be a legitimate, scientific solution that's cheaper and/or healthier.
But I can appreciate that -- since it seems to be working, and since your guy doesn't seem to be too crazy, it's not really a priority, and in a sense it's not your job.
"Would a Linux box with rsync work?" - It depends on the objective business requirements you've defined or been given. If those requirements include "has to be implemented on Foo operating system", then those requirements are not just for a backup solution.
However, the fact that it's been suggested means it probably would work. A better solution (also old enough to be in the FAQ) is rdiffbackup.
"What solution would you use?" - Almost certainly not the solution you would use, because my needs are different.
True, you often need a custom solution. Just as often, a generic solution works. For much of the population, if they're on OS X, I'd say use Time Machine. If they like Internet backup, I'd say use Jungle Disk. And so on.
In this case, yes, there are questions that need to be asked regarding the volume of data. But the differences between various backup schemes really aren't that big -- in this case, a linux server and rsync (or rdiffbackup) sounds like it'd work, and since it's a backup server, any RAID level other than 0 should be sufficient.
Proper science involves the use of inductive AND deductive reasoning together
You can't actually get very far with one or the other.
If you use only deductive reasoning (but no inductive reasoning), you pretty much get mathematics, and even here, you're starting from some axioms that you can't prove, without which it doesn't work. And while I don't know for certain, I assume that mathematics was originally discovered through inductive reasoning -- we use base 10 because we counted on our fingers, and it's only after working with base 10 for awhile that other number systems make sense. We use Euclidian geometry because it seems to describe the real world, and it's easy to reason about things on pencil and paper before we can prove them -- and after working with this for awhile, we can now come up with other systems of geometry.
Using only inductive reasoning, as you pointed out, pretty much gives you: "A happened, and then B did. I think it's because of some hypothesized behavior." You're right that deductive reasoning is what gives you the prediction, but the experiment is again observation and inductive reasoning, to match the new observed behavior with the prediction of the hypothesis.
I can't say I deliberately oversimplified, but I don't think this adds too much to the discussion -- taken as an anecdote, that observed "success" of Chiropractic is still enough to at least form a reasonable hypothesis.
Govender said the church would also seek a donation to be used in its work with young people. He did not specify how much the company would be asked to pay.
See, it's really about the money, not whatever "desecration" they claim. Blackmail is right.
"We are concerned about the amount of violence in these games," McKie said Monday. "It's real for us. We are living the reality here. It's not just a game."
Yes, because in reality, you're clearly fighting against Chimera.
Seems doubtful. These photos, as varied as they are, are at least all pointing at a relatively stationary object. Obviously, not every photo of any human would be in the exact same pose.
Ugh. Wish they knew what "free software" meant... 199 or 299 eur (or $292 / $440 respectively) for a piece of software which will be forever bound to either a single computer, or a single flash drive.
If it takes a year for 500 computers, does that mean it'd take a month for 6,000 computers, or a day for 182,500 computers, or an hour for 4,380,000 computers?
Or, in other words, the original version would cost about $438,000 of EC2 time.
The new version takes 21 hours on 496 cores -- again, could you do it in an hour on 10,416 cores? And that becomes $1,416 of EC2 time.
So, it's not 100 times faster, just 100 times cheaper.
Indeed, all science is derived from inductive reasoning, which is exactly "After I did X, Y happened." It just tends to get more accurate when you do it a bunch more times, and try to control other variables.
It's not really very hard to imagine a chiropractor working for some actual, physical, skeletal/muscular issues. Chiropractic is far from entirely bullshit. It's just that throughout its history, it's also been plagued by the stupid idea that chiropractic can do anything -- all the way back to the anecdotal story of Palmer curing someone's deafness by adjusting their back.
It's kind of like science fiction writers explaining anything they want with "nanotech" or "quantum mechanics" or whatever the Phlebotinum of the day is. It's clearly absurd, and could be considered pseudoscience if anyone took it seriously (which is why it's science fiction), but quantum physics is real, hard science, and we are actually trying to build some nanotech.
Serious research to test chiropractic theories did not begin until the 1970s, and is continuing to be hampered by what are characterized as antiscientific and pseudoscientific ideas that sustained the profession in its long battle with organized medicine.
I find GP's story entirely plausible, and it's easy to imagine how that might be true. Now, if he said that chiropractic cured deafness, or gave him the ability to walk, or anything like that, I'd be much more cautious...
My dad lasted five years longer with his cancer than the doctor told him he would,
We can't even predict the weather. What makes you think we can predict cancer?
When you are going to die in horrible pain, you stop giving a shit about "truth" and "science", and start looking for anything that works.
I hope I don't, because if the choice is between dying in horrible pain, and dying in horrible pain while pissing away the estate on nonsensical claims...
Now, I'm not going to side with GP on this issue and say that it's all a con or self-delusion... If nothing else, I feel good after a chiropractic session. But I'm sure as hell not going to use it in place of western science, and I'm not even going to consider demonstrable bullshit like homeopathy.
And especially, I am going to make the point to people like you that truth and science are the most reliable way of finding what works -- they are the sum total of what we know to have worked in the past, and they are the reason your dad had a chance at all. Remember, it wasn't the "absurd lying pieces of worthless trash" who removed two-thirds of his liver and his right lung, without which I assume he'd have died much more quickly.
Maybe it was the placebo effect, who knows.
Yes, maybe. And you know what? The placebo effect is measurable. Things which are more effective than that become medicine.
Or for that matter, sometimes things like this -- especially things which aren't fully understood -- seem to clear up completely on their own.
It's especially interesting how you "don't know which delayed his death" -- you're assuming that it was one of them, but you were doing so much that you have no idea what it was. That's about the most unscientific way to do things, even considering you're already an anecdote.
When you live with someone who should've been dead for 3 years already, you tend to look a bit differently at medical science.
Yes -- if I lived with someone who would've been dead three years ago without actual, real, peer-reviewed, government-approved medical science, I'd have a hell of a lot more respect for it than you seem to.
I certainly doubt it would give me any sort of belief in medical superstition.
The only real difference with closures in Java and in Ruby is that Ruby gives you a writable version of the parent stack frame, where modifications to variables can occur, whereas Java gives you a read-only version, where you declare stack variables of interest as final so that all living versions of the stack frame remain consistent.
I wasn't aware that stack variables of interest were available at all.
But yes, having access to the stack is pretty much the definition of a closure, as I understand it.
minor inconvenience overall, especially compared to static typing.
It's largely a result of static typing that this construct is so verbose in the first place, and it's largely the verbosity that bothers me, so I agree.
I don't see the difference... why bother with num.odd?
Because it's a contrived example. Let's see...
gets.split.map(&:to_i).do |num| # do something with each number end
gets grabs a line from stdin. Here, I'm splitting it by any whitespace, then parsing each as an integer. But if I stick with contrived counting examples, maybe:
(1..100).select{|x| x%10 > 5}.each do |num| # do stuff with num end
I think I'm now at the point where you'd have to do something like this in Java (untested, it's been awhile):
for(int i=0; i<100; i++) {
if (i%10 > 5) {
next;
} // do stuff with i }
I mean, sure, you can do it, but why? Or take map/inject (map/reduce) -- here's an integer parser in one line:
'12345'.each_char.map(&:to_i).inject{|a,b|a*10+b}
Again, contrived -- I'd probably do '10101.to_i instead, but how would you do it in Java, if you had to parse the number yourself? Oh, and it works for arbitrary bases, too:
It could be that it just doesn't fit well in the object-oriented paradigm. For one thing, all functions belong in a class because in Java the Object is king.
Yes, in Java, everything's an Object.
Except primitive types, which must be boxed to be objects. And classes, and methods -- those aren't objects, without using that cumbersome reflection API you've noted... All of which are objects in both JavaScript and Ruby, and are trivial to fetch in JavaScript.
Trivial example, using Prototype:
foo.some_method = (function() { // do something }).bind(); setInterval(foo.some_method, 1000);
I guess it's just convenience at that point, though.
Oh, and they aren't closures. A contrived example (jQuery this time):
var paragraphs = $('p');// all paragraph tags on the page paragraphs.each(function() { // this function is now called as a method on each paragraph in that array
var paragraph = this;
paragraph.onclick = function() { // do something to paragraph
} });
Sorry, I probably could've used a better example -- after all, the click event will probably contain the DOM element that was clicked anyway. But you can see two things here that just aren't as easy in Java:
The outer function lets you create your own control structures, by passing functions as arguments -- think of them as blocks. If there wasn't a foreach loop, you could create one using a for loop. Even where there is a foreach loop, the object defines its behavior -- thus, it's more object-oriented.
And, the inner function has access to any variables visible at its scope. Sure, you could make an anonymous singleton, store those values in there, and define a method. Or maybe an anonymous subclass of something that "onclick" expects. But these seem so hackish when the solution is so simple and intuitive.
I feel that in anything more than a contrived use-case there is really a better way to design the solution that fits within the Java way.
Quite possible, but it's still going to be cumbersome.
Keep in mind, there's nothing stopping me from doing things the Java way in JavaScript or Ruby. But these examples aren't that contrived -- I really do use things like some_range.map{...}.inject{...} -- your basic map/reduce, but trivial enough for a one-liner. So the Javascript/Ruby way looks better than the Java way, though that's a matter of taste.
On the other hand, trying to do the Javascript/Ruby way in Java is going to look ugly.
Oh, and you want <ecode>, I think, though that often seems to kill my indentation.
You certainly can find some niblet that C-pound has implemented
It's C-Sharp, or just C#. You may as well call them M$ and complete the zealotry.
it remains just logic.
Yes, yes, they're all Turing-complete. But I still wouldn't want to write it in Brainfuck, or java. I probably wouldn't mind writing it in C#.
I agree with you about the ecosystem. What you're missing is that the language actually is superior, in a big way. And what makes you a douche is, you still haven't retracted your obviously false statement that C# is "99% identical" to Java.
I get it, I do. I've never used Visual Basic, yet I make fun of it all the time. But when someone tries to teach me something about it, I pay attention.
obscure feature.
So obscure that it's used in things like a SQL API -- so obscure that it's actually the default method of iterating in Ruby?
Seriously, I (and many Rubyists) use this every day. If I used C#, I'd probably still use it every day. It's "obscure" like for loops are -- especially since I use it where I would use for loops, and it makes more sense there. Hell, even jQuery uses this, and it's the first thing I do in every jQuery app I write:
jQuery(function($) { // app code goes here });
This example looks like it might have some idiomatic equivalent in Java, but it's hardly an "obscure" feature -- and I didn't even mention $.each() or $('.foo').each().
alleged advantages
In other words, you haven't even taken the time to examine the advantages, you just reject anything from em-dollarsign outright. I mean, I do too, when I can, but I at least look at it to see what I'm missing.
It sounds like in the next breath you'll be telling me that "Gandalf has many powers..."
Erm, WTF?
I mean, if I'm going to take that analogy seriously, it sounds like you're trying to say that Gandalf is C#. Does that mean Java is Saruman?
So, aside from all the type garbage, there's actually an entire extra line of cruft.
So I can give up any hope of something like that ruby example. Let me expand it a bit:
(1..100).select{|num| num.odd?}.each do |num| # do something to only odd numbers end
That is actually how it works -- the &:odd? does actually create a proc that works like the above.
And yes, I did find that in a quick Google. It's just so crudely bolted on it makes Perl objects look beautiful. (No offense to whoever came up with it -- it does look pretty cool, it's just that the ugliness of Java is leaking through.)
If the iPod were just a flash drive for carrying mp3 songs,
It pretty much was. Especially now.
It was the beauty of the device, physically.
Which is not innovation.
It was the seamless integration with the iTunes store. Not rocket science.
Indeed, not rocket science. Also, I doubt very much that this was what sold it -- was the iTunes store even available at launch?
No, it was seamless integration with iTunes which is, again, not innovation.
It was the marketing whiz that goes into all Apple products
Which isn't innovation.
along with obviously superior design.
So obvious that many hate it.
You know, from your comments, there's one thing that's obvious -- you're a zealot. You can't imagine that someone could hold a different opinion than you, and somehow not be an idiot.
I don't mind the iPod design, I just don't particularly want to pay a premium for it.
It was all the things I'm named and the synergistic combination of those things
Synergistic -- buzzword bingo much?
caused Record Labels to agree to license their music.
Also not innovation.
they lack the initiative to take the risk of being a market leader in anything!
Except your complaint about Microsoft was that they make "shoddy copies" of competitors' products -- and indeed, your use of the word "original", really suggests you're trying to say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, they let others innovate, then create a shoddy copy.
Except that Apple does the same exact thing, it just usually isn't as shoddy.
To call the iPod a "pioneer" is to ignore the years of other music players that did exactly what it does, just not as well and as seamlessly. And, in case you missed the memo, "The same thing, but better," isn't innovation -- it's just a shiny copy, instead of a shoddy copy.
To call it a clone of the Walkman is a bit of a slap in the face to all the stages in between -- portable CD players, portable MP3 players, portable music players -- hell, if I remember, even Pocket PCs could do this by the time the iPod came out.
It would be a bit like calling the Porsche Boxter a "pioneer", and talking about how really, it borrowed from the horse-drawn carriage. No, dipshit, the Model T was the pioneer, you could even say the Prius is innovative. The Porsche is just well designed and expensive.
Their reluctance to lead in touch
As opposed to, what, Apple's eagerness to lead?
</sarcasm>
I don't disagree, I just think you could've chosen better examples. Java, at least you acknowledged that there's a history there -- but then, C was based on ALGOL -- and C++ was far from the first object-oriented language (Smalltalk, Self) -- and Java was far from the first JIT'd bytecode language (again, see Smalltalk). And Netscape? Try Mosaic.
But hey, at least you mention PARC, so you've got one out of four examples accurate. Good job!
Slashdot Mirror
Your second point tells me that such applications should be developed, to force ISPs to upgrade their networks. Or, if a game like this gets popular, CDNs help relieve that strain. It's worth mentioning that YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix present the exact same problems and solutions.
And when was the last time a game saturated a SATA bus?
Oh, and elsewhere -- places like Japan, Sweden, etc -- have plenty of fiber. The US is a bit backwards this way.
But I still think good things could be done with much less bandwidth. I was just demonstrating that it's possible right now without really making any compromises -- I still think it could be done well for a lot of games without requiring more than 1 mbit -- yes, mbit.
taking natural medicine might work better than doing nothing.
I don't recall suggesting "doing nothing". If you're going to suggest something to trigger a placebo, it can be done cheaper, since it really doesn't matter what it is.
But what I'd really suggest is taking that time and energy you'd invest in alternate cures, and put it towards using the time that you have.
unfortunately, their hardware uses port multipliers, which don't exist in a non-development version of OpenSolaris yet.
I wonder how stable ZFS is in FUSE.
The problem being that not even science can explain exactly how the human body works.
...yet.
Science can explain quite a lot about how the body works, to a high degree of accuracy. No other discipline has come close, so far -- before modern medical science, it was generally accepted that leeches were an effective medicine.
I think Dara O'Briain put it best: "We've already tried all the herbal remedies, and the ones that worked became... medicine!"
who is to say whether that interpretation is right or wrong.
Whether, what, the scientific interpretation?
Let me put it this way: People have this bad habit of trusting science for things they don't have an emotional investment in (what do you think you're typing this on?), but suddenly finding flaws in science anywhere they want to believe.
Scientists haven't done enough research to support or deny Chiropractics, so who's to say it's actually bogus.
Again, it's what they're claiming. If they claim they can ease some back pain or tension, I don't think science has a problem -- you're right, not enough is known.
If they claim they can cure, oh, blindness, they're out of their minds. We may not know everything, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that adjusting someone's spinal column isn't going to repair a damaged, underdeveloped, or severed optic nerve -- nor could any sort of pressure on the spine somehow affect either the eye itself, the optic nerve, or the brain to such an extent as to cause blindness.
Similarly, if someone tries to sell me an herbal cure for drowsiness, sure -- tea, coffee, guarana -- even ginseng, since it's not likely to hurt anything. But if someone tries to sell me an herbal cure for Swine Flu, no thanks, I'd rather get vaccinated.
What you have to understand here is that people who reject chiropractic offhand are probably assuming it's that kind of claim (a cure for blindness, cancer, etc), and indeed, mainstream chiropractic has historically endorsed such beliefs.
Backing up a Mac OS X installation with resource forks, extended attributes, etc. to a Linux box is nontrivial at best
Depends what you need. If it's just someone's laptop, a raw disk image is still useful. If it's an external drive or a network share, you can format the drive such that it can be plugged directly into a backup server, and you can use a Linux fileserver.
My choice would be a Mac laptop, a disk image, and a Linux fileserver for anything that won't fit on internal storage.
a lot of it makes sense.
A lot of things seem to make sense, but don't.
If your back is out of alignment and you go through life with undue pressure on certain nerves because of the misalignment, one would imagine that the signals could be interrupted and cause problems.
One would imagine.
Now actually go and prove that this is indeed what's happening. That's a lot harder.
And again, some Chiropractors, including the founder of the discipline, believe that all ailments can be traced to that one cause, which is demonstrably wrong.
And then there's this part:
I couldn't give a rats arse about the science, it works for me.
The reason you should care about the science is that there may be a legitimate, scientific solution that's cheaper and/or healthier.
But I can appreciate that -- since it seems to be working, and since your guy doesn't seem to be too crazy, it's not really a priority, and in a sense it's not your job.
That is, unless every bit has been copied to 3 arrays.
3 arrays? Why? Do it in software, do RAID 5. How likely is it that you'll have a bad sector, or a miswrite, that hits both the stripes and the parity?
you have no way of detecting it, or deciding which array has recorded the "right value" for that bit...
Or use ZFS. It'll checksum everything, so yes, it'll know which array has the right value.
So build two.
A backup server doesn't need redundancy if it's a backup server.
Problem: Windows/Mac only.
So, some quick answers here:
"Would a Linux box with rsync work?" - It depends on the objective business requirements you've defined or been given. If those requirements include "has to be implemented on Foo operating system", then those requirements are not just for a backup solution.
However, the fact that it's been suggested means it probably would work. A better solution (also old enough to be in the FAQ) is rdiffbackup.
"What solution would you use?" - Almost certainly not the solution you would use, because my needs are different.
True, you often need a custom solution. Just as often, a generic solution works. For much of the population, if they're on OS X, I'd say use Time Machine. If they like Internet backup, I'd say use Jungle Disk. And so on.
In this case, yes, there are questions that need to be asked regarding the volume of data. But the differences between various backup schemes really aren't that big -- in this case, a linux server and rsync (or rdiffbackup) sounds like it'd work, and since it's a backup server, any RAID level other than 0 should be sufficient.
It's not so much blasphemy, as the title wasn't quite obviously a joke.
That is: It would have been amazing if someone had actually decided to go and encase those servers. That's the story I want to see.
As it is, they're probably not either -- probably simply being repurposed.
Proper science involves the use of inductive AND deductive reasoning together
You can't actually get very far with one or the other.
If you use only deductive reasoning (but no inductive reasoning), you pretty much get mathematics, and even here, you're starting from some axioms that you can't prove, without which it doesn't work. And while I don't know for certain, I assume that mathematics was originally discovered through inductive reasoning -- we use base 10 because we counted on our fingers, and it's only after working with base 10 for awhile that other number systems make sense. We use Euclidian geometry because it seems to describe the real world, and it's easy to reason about things on pencil and paper before we can prove them -- and after working with this for awhile, we can now come up with other systems of geometry.
Using only inductive reasoning, as you pointed out, pretty much gives you: "A happened, and then B did. I think it's because of some hypothesized behavior." You're right that deductive reasoning is what gives you the prediction, but the experiment is again observation and inductive reasoning, to match the new observed behavior with the prediction of the hypothesis.
I can't say I deliberately oversimplified, but I don't think this adds too much to the discussion -- taken as an anecdote, that observed "success" of Chiropractic is still enough to at least form a reasonable hypothesis.
Wow.
Govender said the church would also seek a donation to be used in its work with young people. He did not specify how much the company would be asked to pay.
See, it's really about the money, not whatever "desecration" they claim. Blackmail is right.
"We are concerned about the amount of violence in these games," McKie said Monday. "It's real for us. We are living the reality here. It's not just a game."
Yes, because in reality, you're clearly fighting against Chimera.
Seems doubtful. These photos, as varied as they are, are at least all pointing at a relatively stationary object. Obviously, not every photo of any human would be in the exact same pose.
Ugh. Wish they knew what "free software" meant... 199 or 299 eur (or $292 / $440 respectively) for a piece of software which will be forever bound to either a single computer, or a single flash drive.
Cool idea. Would be better free.
If it takes a year for 500 computers, does that mean it'd take a month for 6,000 computers, or a day for 182,500 computers, or an hour for 4,380,000 computers?
Or, in other words, the original version would cost about $438,000 of EC2 time.
The new version takes 21 hours on 496 cores -- again, could you do it in an hour on 10,416 cores? And that becomes $1,416 of EC2 time.
So, it's not 100 times faster, just 100 times cheaper.
Obligatory XKCD.
Indeed, all science is derived from inductive reasoning, which is exactly "After I did X, Y happened." It just tends to get more accurate when you do it a bunch more times, and try to control other variables.
It's not really very hard to imagine a chiropractor working for some actual, physical, skeletal/muscular issues. Chiropractic is far from entirely bullshit. It's just that throughout its history, it's also been plagued by the stupid idea that chiropractic can do anything -- all the way back to the anecdotal story of Palmer curing someone's deafness by adjusting their back.
It's kind of like science fiction writers explaining anything they want with "nanotech" or "quantum mechanics" or whatever the Phlebotinum of the day is. It's clearly absurd, and could be considered pseudoscience if anyone took it seriously (which is why it's science fiction), but quantum physics is real, hard science, and we are actually trying to build some nanotech.
Or, as Wikipedia puts it:
Serious research to test chiropractic theories did not begin until the 1970s, and is continuing to be hampered by what are characterized as antiscientific and pseudoscientific ideas that sustained the profession in its long battle with organized medicine.
I find GP's story entirely plausible, and it's easy to imagine how that might be true. Now, if he said that chiropractic cured deafness, or gave him the ability to walk, or anything like that, I'd be much more cautious...
Maybe it was the act of not giving up that triggered the placebo effect. Fact is, I don't care. He proved the official story wrong.
All he proved is that people are more ready than ever to fill in things science doesn't fully understand with whatever bullshit they want to make up.
My dad lasted five years longer with his cancer than the doctor told him he would,
We can't even predict the weather. What makes you think we can predict cancer?
When you are going to die in horrible pain, you stop giving a shit about "truth" and "science", and start looking for anything that works.
I hope I don't, because if the choice is between dying in horrible pain, and dying in horrible pain while pissing away the estate on nonsensical claims...
Now, I'm not going to side with GP on this issue and say that it's all a con or self-delusion... If nothing else, I feel good after a chiropractic session. But I'm sure as hell not going to use it in place of western science, and I'm not even going to consider demonstrable bullshit like homeopathy.
And especially, I am going to make the point to people like you that truth and science are the most reliable way of finding what works -- they are the sum total of what we know to have worked in the past, and they are the reason your dad had a chance at all. Remember, it wasn't the "absurd lying pieces of worthless trash" who removed two-thirds of his liver and his right lung, without which I assume he'd have died much more quickly.
Maybe it was the placebo effect, who knows.
Yes, maybe. And you know what? The placebo effect is measurable. Things which are more effective than that become medicine.
Or for that matter, sometimes things like this -- especially things which aren't fully understood -- seem to clear up completely on their own.
It's especially interesting how you "don't know which delayed his death" -- you're assuming that it was one of them, but you were doing so much that you have no idea what it was. That's about the most unscientific way to do things, even considering you're already an anecdote.
When you live with someone who should've been dead for 3 years already, you tend to look a bit differently at medical science.
Yes -- if I lived with someone who would've been dead three years ago without actual, real, peer-reviewed, government-approved medical science, I'd have a hell of a lot more respect for it than you seem to.
I certainly doubt it would give me any sort of belief in medical superstition.
The only real difference with closures in Java and in Ruby is that Ruby gives you a writable version of the parent stack frame, where modifications to variables can occur, whereas Java gives you a read-only version, where you declare stack variables of interest as final so that all living versions of the stack frame remain consistent.
I wasn't aware that stack variables of interest were available at all.
But yes, having access to the stack is pretty much the definition of a closure, as I understand it.
minor inconvenience overall, especially compared to static typing.
It's largely a result of static typing that this construct is so verbose in the first place, and it's largely the verbosity that bothers me, so I agree.
I don't see the difference... why bother with num.odd?
Because it's a contrived example. Let's see...
gets grabs a line from stdin. Here, I'm splitting it by any whitespace, then parsing each as an integer. But if I stick with contrived counting examples, maybe:
I think I'm now at the point where you'd have to do something like this in Java (untested, it's been awhile):
I mean, sure, you can do it, but why? Or take map/inject (map/reduce) -- here's an integer parser in one line:
Again, contrived -- I'd probably do '10101.to_i instead, but how would you do it in Java, if you had to parse the number yourself? Oh, and it works for arbitrary bases, too:
It could be that it just doesn't fit well in the object-oriented paradigm. For one thing, all functions belong in a class because in Java the Object is king.
Yes, in Java, everything's an Object.
Except primitive types, which must be boxed to be objects. And classes, and methods -- those aren't objects, without using that cumbersome reflection API you've noted... All of which are objects in both JavaScript and Ruby, and are trivial to fetch in JavaScript.
Trivial example, using Prototype:
I guess it's just convenience at that point, though.
Oh, and they aren't closures. A contrived example (jQuery this time):
Sorry, I probably could've used a better example -- after all, the click event will probably contain the DOM element that was clicked anyway. But you can see two things here that just aren't as easy in Java:
The outer function lets you create your own control structures, by passing functions as arguments -- think of them as blocks. If there wasn't a foreach loop, you could create one using a for loop. Even where there is a foreach loop, the object defines its behavior -- thus, it's more object-oriented.
And, the inner function has access to any variables visible at its scope. Sure, you could make an anonymous singleton, store those values in there, and define a method. Or maybe an anonymous subclass of something that "onclick" expects. But these seem so hackish when the solution is so simple and intuitive.
I feel that in anything more than a contrived use-case there is really a better way to design the solution that fits within the Java way.
Quite possible, but it's still going to be cumbersome.
Keep in mind, there's nothing stopping me from doing things the Java way in JavaScript or Ruby. But these examples aren't that contrived -- I really do use things like some_range.map{...}.inject{...} -- your basic map/reduce, but trivial enough for a one-liner. So the Javascript/Ruby way looks better than the Java way, though that's a matter of taste.
On the other hand, trying to do the Javascript/Ruby way in Java is going to look ugly.
Oh, and you want <ecode>, I think, though that often seems to kill my indentation.
You certainly can find some niblet that C-pound has implemented
It's C-Sharp, or just C#. You may as well call them M$ and complete the zealotry.
it remains just logic.
Yes, yes, they're all Turing-complete. But I still wouldn't want to write it in Brainfuck, or java. I probably wouldn't mind writing it in C#.
I agree with you about the ecosystem. What you're missing is that the language actually is superior, in a big way. And what makes you a douche is, you still haven't retracted your obviously false statement that C# is "99% identical" to Java.
I get it, I do. I've never used Visual Basic, yet I make fun of it all the time. But when someone tries to teach me something about it, I pay attention.
obscure feature.
So obscure that it's used in things like a SQL API -- so obscure that it's actually the default method of iterating in Ruby?
Seriously, I (and many Rubyists) use this every day. If I used C#, I'd probably still use it every day. It's "obscure" like for loops are -- especially since I use it where I would use for loops, and it makes more sense there. Hell, even jQuery uses this, and it's the first thing I do in every jQuery app I write:
This example looks like it might have some idiomatic equivalent in Java, but it's hardly an "obscure" feature -- and I didn't even mention $.each() or $('.foo').each().
alleged advantages
In other words, you haven't even taken the time to examine the advantages, you just reject anything from em-dollarsign outright. I mean, I do too, when I can, but I at least look at it to see what I'm missing.
It sounds like in the next breath you'll be telling me that "Gandalf has many powers..."
Erm, WTF?
I mean, if I'm going to take that analogy seriously, it sounds like you're trying to say that Gandalf is C#. Does that mean Java is Saruman?
So, aside from all the type garbage, there's actually an entire extra line of cruft.
So I can give up any hope of something like that ruby example. Let me expand it a bit:
That is actually how it works -- the &:odd? does actually create a proc that works like the above.
And yes, I did find that in a quick Google. It's just so crudely bolted on it makes Perl objects look beautiful. (No offense to whoever came up with it -- it does look pretty cool, it's just that the ugliness of Java is leaking through.)
If the iPod were just a flash drive for carrying mp3 songs,
It pretty much was. Especially now.
It was the beauty of the device, physically.
Which is not innovation.
It was the seamless integration with the iTunes store. Not rocket science.
Indeed, not rocket science. Also, I doubt very much that this was what sold it -- was the iTunes store even available at launch?
No, it was seamless integration with iTunes which is, again, not innovation.
It was the marketing whiz that goes into all Apple products
Which isn't innovation.
along with obviously superior design.
So obvious that many hate it.
You know, from your comments, there's one thing that's obvious -- you're a zealot. You can't imagine that someone could hold a different opinion than you, and somehow not be an idiot.
I don't mind the iPod design, I just don't particularly want to pay a premium for it.
It was all the things I'm named and the synergistic combination of those things
Synergistic -- buzzword bingo much?
caused Record Labels to agree to license their music.
Also not innovation.
they lack the initiative to take the risk of being a market leader in anything!
Except your complaint about Microsoft was that they make "shoddy copies" of competitors' products -- and indeed, your use of the word "original", really suggests you're trying to say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, they let others innovate, then create a shoddy copy.
Except that Apple does the same exact thing, it just usually isn't as shoddy.
To call the iPod a "pioneer" is to ignore the years of other music players that did exactly what it does, just not as well and as seamlessly. And, in case you missed the memo, "The same thing, but better," isn't innovation -- it's just a shiny copy, instead of a shoddy copy.
To call it a clone of the Walkman is a bit of a slap in the face to all the stages in between -- portable CD players, portable MP3 players, portable music players -- hell, if I remember, even Pocket PCs could do this by the time the iPod came out.
It would be a bit like calling the Porsche Boxter a "pioneer", and talking about how really, it borrowed from the horse-drawn carriage. No, dipshit, the Model T was the pioneer, you could even say the Prius is innovative. The Porsche is just well designed and expensive.
Their reluctance to lead in touch
As opposed to, what, Apple's eagerness to lead?
</sarcasm>
I don't disagree, I just think you could've chosen better examples. Java, at least you acknowledged that there's a history there -- but then, C was based on ALGOL -- and C++ was far from the first object-oriented language (Smalltalk, Self) -- and Java was far from the first JIT'd bytecode language (again, see Smalltalk). And Netscape? Try Mosaic.
But hey, at least you mention PARC, so you've got one out of four examples accurate. Good job!