Yeah, I really hate when the tools are use daily are made more standardized and sensible. I mean really, I know how you feel. I was RAGING the day I worked on my first motherboard that didn't require me to fiddle with jumpers and man, oh man, I about blew a gasket when I didn't have manually configure my autoexec.bat file anymore so I could play games.
What the fuck is wrong with people trying to make computers accessible? Fucking pussies and their keyboards and their mice. Gimme my damn punch cards!
What I find ironic here is that what you're saying is exactly the opposite. Having everyone, oh I don't know, standardize around kilo = 1000 rather than sometimes 1024 and sometimes 1000 seems exactly like having people in the USA switch from imperial to metric.
What you're saying (and what Americans seem to get booed for all the time) is that they... wait for it... do _not_ want to change.
It's all over taught, INCLUDING SCIENCE. Lame ass science projects were a fantastic way of murdering my natural interest in science as a child. (Even better that they were judged and awarded prizes based on who had the nicest looking presentation and not the most interesting data or project.)
Some people (say, future historians) find that all those Roman emperors ARE interesting. One thing I've seen reading this thread is that geeks certainly think their disciplines are more important than anyone else's. (I wonder if it has something with the fact that the religious void around here has been replaced with a reverence for science.)
Children should be exposed generally to a lot of things, have their imaginations encouraged and be assisted down a path that suits them on an individual basis. Cramming math and science down my younger brother's throat would have been a total fucking waste of his fantastic speaking and acting talents.
The real problem isn't even WHAT we're teaching our kids, but HOW they're being taught and WHERE they're being taught.
The worst thing about formal education for young children are the huge differences in children and that school, generally speaking, is all about pushing conformity. This, to me, is dreadful for people who are at the very beginning of finding themselves and are SO impressionable.
I was a math geek as a child. I loved solving arbitrary problems and the abstract concepts, as well as their practical applications, just "made sense" to me. I had basic arithmetic down when I was 5 or so. Math interested me from a young age so I ran with it and I learned it quickly because it was exciting to me.
My brother, on the other hand, hated math. He still hates it. He was never any good at it. It doesn't interest him now and it didn't then. However, he loves Shakespeare, is a fantastic actor and public speaker and generally speaking is more likable and more effective socially than I am.
My point? In the first 10 or so years of our kids lives we shouldn't be trying to formalize them at all. We should be looking for their interests and do our best to cultivate those. And really, they should spend their time playing and working on those imaginations. We, as parents, should spend as much time with them as we can and not ship them off to a fucking indoctrination factory.
(Glad I'm not the only one who was griped at for not showing my work. Sometimes I'd draw a little person with a thought cloud over his head.)
They also had to pass an amendment to ban the sale (not the consumption) of alcohol. This is back when things like the Constitution mattered. Can someone show me where the amendment that allows the Federal Government to do anything about the production and consumption of narcotics is?
Brazil is full of brown people, so no one cares. People living outside of Europe, Japan and the US are expected to use FOSS because they are poor, underpaid mongrels who can't afford commercial software, so they're FORCED to look elsewhere.
If someone is elected president in this day and age, it's a given that they're lying, cheating douche bags who are both out of touch with the society at large and don't even particularly care about them beyond a bid for reelection.
"Bipartisanship" is a word used by the party in power so they can blame the minority when they're unable to move their agenda along. It's the minority that doesn't want to compromise or whatever.
This article isn't even anti-unicode, it's just saying unicode doesn't magically make something international.
Unicode still makes it easy to work with multiple character sets at once. Shit, use the right fucking tools for the right job and sometimes unicode is the right tool.
The worst thing, in my experience (and I've been on both sides: I've been harmed by a violent criminal and by insane police officers who let their jobs go to their heads) is that at least with a common criminal you can fight back.
If some thug slammed me up against the hood of his car, I could beat his ass. Guess what happens if I fight back against a cop doing that? I get additional charges and I get a bigger beating.
Also, there are FAR fewer "crazies" than money sucking, pension collecting, soul sucking bureaucratic assholes.
And anyone who thinks you're being paranoid has never been part of a criminal trial.
I've fought a few simple traffic tickets and watched how everyone from the attorneys to the cops to the judge would just lie and gloss over laws. It's a joke.
People who are more afraid than the average street criminal than the government are people with a totally broken view of reality. (Especially since fear of the street criminal is a mindset pushed by the government most of the time when they want to get more funding and raise taxes.)
That said, I love Python IN SPITE of its way of enforcing white space. I've had many annoying debugging issues that are the result of whitespace being broken when moving from one editor to another and it makes using blocks inside the interactive shell more annoying than it needs to be.
Most of my coding these days is in Ruby and while it doesn't enforce how you use whitespace, only a complete tool doesn't indent their code. I find that having some keyword or symbol (e.g. end or }) also makes code easier to read than just ending as a result of the indent dropping (which is not easy to see in some cases and is even more annoying if you have to use an editor without some way of visually denoting line breaks and tabs).
The Zen of Python should be followed by virtually every language out there though. There isn't a language on the planet that wouldn't be more readable if those conventions were followed.
I read the 3rd edition when I first started messing with Python and it's a GREAT book.
In fact, if I was teaching kids to program, this book would be my starting place. It's well written, easy to understand and just a good general introduction to programming in general.
I find one of the most annoying things about geeks critiquing is that they do it ONLY from a geek's point of view. To delve into the ever popular car analogy, someone who needs a sedan to seat 5 should not buy a compact pickup truck.
Aside from a laptop I would NEVER buy a computer with a built in screen primarily because I buy good quality monitors that will often outlast every other component in my PC (except maybe the case). However, a machine like an iMac is PERFECT for my mom, my dad and my sister-in-law. They'd be buying budget monitors in the first place so, after 4 - 5 years of using a machine, they'd replace the whole thing (monitor and all) anyway. My current monitor is about 5 years old and it stills works fine. I've got another year or two before I trade it up. However, I paid way more than $150 for it too.
A lot of people blast the iPad for the same reasons. Would I own one? Probably not. The lack of expandable storage is a mortal sin for me. My mom though? It might be the perfect computer. (Although for my aforementioned dad and sister-in-law, it wouldn't work at all.)
Ha! I was thinking the same thing. (And double points for it being not just some random fat dude, but Kevin Smith. The more time he's stuck waiting for a flight the less time he has to make movies.)
The G1 has THE BEST hardware keyboard on a phone I have used. I love it. 5 rows... COUNT THEM! FIVE!
The only way I would ever even consider switching to a phone without a hardware keyboard would be actual bluetooth support. What the hell is wrong with the iPhone and Android that they don't support external keyboards? Seriously.
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And if you think sprinkling table salt on food is the same as properly cooking with salt... you clearly aren't much of a cook.
Yeah, I really hate when the tools are use daily are made more standardized and sensible. I mean really, I know how you feel. I was RAGING the day I worked on my first motherboard that didn't require me to fiddle with jumpers and man, oh man, I about blew a gasket when I didn't have manually configure my autoexec.bat file anymore so I could play games.
What the fuck is wrong with people trying to make computers accessible? Fucking pussies and their keyboards and their mice. Gimme my damn punch cards!
Hahaha. Imperial units for Europeans.
What I find ironic here is that what you're saying is exactly the opposite. Having everyone, oh I don't know, standardize around kilo = 1000 rather than sometimes 1024 and sometimes 1000 seems exactly like having people in the USA switch from imperial to metric.
What you're saying (and what Americans seem to get booed for all the time) is that they... wait for it... do _not_ want to change.
And networking has always been base-10 as well. 100 Kbps is NOT 102400 bps.
It's all over taught, INCLUDING SCIENCE. Lame ass science projects were a fantastic way of murdering my natural interest in science as a child. (Even better that they were judged and awarded prizes based on who had the nicest looking presentation and not the most interesting data or project.)
Some people (say, future historians) find that all those Roman emperors ARE interesting. One thing I've seen reading this thread is that geeks certainly think their disciplines are more important than anyone else's. (I wonder if it has something with the fact that the religious void around here has been replaced with a reverence for science.)
Children should be exposed generally to a lot of things, have their imaginations encouraged and be assisted down a path that suits them on an individual basis. Cramming math and science down my younger brother's throat would have been a total fucking waste of his fantastic speaking and acting talents.
The real problem isn't even WHAT we're teaching our kids, but HOW they're being taught and WHERE they're being taught.
The worst thing about formal education for young children are the huge differences in children and that school, generally speaking, is all about pushing conformity. This, to me, is dreadful for people who are at the very beginning of finding themselves and are SO impressionable.
I was a math geek as a child. I loved solving arbitrary problems and the abstract concepts, as well as their practical applications, just "made sense" to me. I had basic arithmetic down when I was 5 or so. Math interested me from a young age so I ran with it and I learned it quickly because it was exciting to me.
My brother, on the other hand, hated math. He still hates it. He was never any good at it. It doesn't interest him now and it didn't then. However, he loves Shakespeare, is a fantastic actor and public speaker and generally speaking is more likable and more effective socially than I am.
My point? In the first 10 or so years of our kids lives we shouldn't be trying to formalize them at all. We should be looking for their interests and do our best to cultivate those. And really, they should spend their time playing and working on those imaginations. We, as parents, should spend as much time with them as we can and not ship them off to a fucking indoctrination factory.
(Glad I'm not the only one who was griped at for not showing my work. Sometimes I'd draw a little person with a thought cloud over his head.)
I presume both of you praising this have read the bill and can enumerate why we should be celebrating.
The only people celebrating are going to be insurance companies since this will make patronizing their business mandatory.
Even better, this expands the enforcement powers of the IRS. Hell, nothing spells celebration like empowering the IRS.
Let Freedom ring baby!
Indeed.
Republicans are only fiscal conservatives when they aren't in power.
Democrats only give a shit about the "working class" when they aren't in power.
Unsustainability is a fast track to REAL change.
I can't wait until we start setting up guillotines in the streets.
They also had to pass an amendment to ban the sale (not the consumption) of alcohol. This is back when things like the Constitution mattered. Can someone show me where the amendment that allows the Federal Government to do anything about the production and consumption of narcotics is?
Brazil is full of brown people, so no one cares. People living outside of Europe, Japan and the US are expected to use FOSS because they are poor, underpaid mongrels who can't afford commercial software, so they're FORCED to look elsewhere.
(I'm only partially joking.)
I don't even know why get this detailed.
If someone is elected president in this day and age, it's a given that they're lying, cheating douche bags who are both out of touch with the society at large and don't even particularly care about them beyond a bid for reelection.
So what if he's a law professor?
That just means he's more adept at lying.
Here... lemme remove the unnecessary part of your sentence:
All politicians are 'authoritarian.'
There we go!
"Bipartisanship" is a word used by the party in power so they can blame the minority when they're unable to move their agenda along. It's the minority that doesn't want to compromise or whatever.
Or... worse... it's a word used to describe the worst assfucking you can get in this country. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGlVhss6Gr4
This article isn't even anti-unicode, it's just saying unicode doesn't magically make something international.
Unicode still makes it easy to work with multiple character sets at once. Shit, use the right fucking tools for the right job and sometimes unicode is the right tool.
The worst thing, in my experience (and I've been on both sides: I've been harmed by a violent criminal and by insane police officers who let their jobs go to their heads) is that at least with a common criminal you can fight back.
If some thug slammed me up against the hood of his car, I could beat his ass. Guess what happens if I fight back against a cop doing that? I get additional charges and I get a bigger beating.
Also, there are FAR fewer "crazies" than money sucking, pension collecting, soul sucking bureaucratic assholes.
And anyone who thinks you're being paranoid has never been part of a criminal trial.
I've fought a few simple traffic tickets and watched how everyone from the attorneys to the cops to the judge would just lie and gloss over laws. It's a joke.
People who are more afraid than the average street criminal than the government are people with a totally broken view of reality. (Especially since fear of the street criminal is a mindset pushed by the government most of the time when they want to get more funding and raise taxes.)
Disclaimer: I love Python.
That said, I love Python IN SPITE of its way of enforcing white space. I've had many annoying debugging issues that are the result of whitespace being broken when moving from one editor to another and it makes using blocks inside the interactive shell more annoying than it needs to be.
Most of my coding these days is in Ruby and while it doesn't enforce how you use whitespace, only a complete tool doesn't indent their code. I find that having some keyword or symbol (e.g. end or }) also makes code easier to read than just ending as a result of the indent dropping (which is not easy to see in some cases and is even more annoying if you have to use an editor without some way of visually denoting line breaks and tabs).
The Zen of Python should be followed by virtually every language out there though. There isn't a language on the planet that wouldn't be more readable if those conventions were followed.
I read the 3rd edition when I first started messing with Python and it's a GREAT book.
In fact, if I was teaching kids to program, this book would be my starting place. It's well written, easy to understand and just a good general introduction to programming in general.
If the blessed apps suit PRACTICAL (rather than philosophical) needs I'd say that's the definition of practical.
Like most people give a shit about the development process if anything. If they did, no one in America would shop at Walmart.
I find one of the most annoying things about geeks critiquing is that they do it ONLY from a geek's point of view. To delve into the ever popular car analogy, someone who needs a sedan to seat 5 should not buy a compact pickup truck.
Aside from a laptop I would NEVER buy a computer with a built in screen primarily because I buy good quality monitors that will often outlast every other component in my PC (except maybe the case). However, a machine like an iMac is PERFECT for my mom, my dad and my sister-in-law. They'd be buying budget monitors in the first place so, after 4 - 5 years of using a machine, they'd replace the whole thing (monitor and all) anyway. My current monitor is about 5 years old and it stills works fine. I've got another year or two before I trade it up. However, I paid way more than $150 for it too.
A lot of people blast the iPad for the same reasons. Would I own one? Probably not. The lack of expandable storage is a mortal sin for me. My mom though? It might be the perfect computer. (Although for my aforementioned dad and sister-in-law, it wouldn't work at all.)
Ha! I was thinking the same thing. (And double points for it being not just some random fat dude, but Kevin Smith. The more time he's stuck waiting for a flight the less time he has to make movies.)
And the typical Mac user manages to survive without a taskbar too!
The G1 has THE BEST hardware keyboard on a phone I have used. I love it. 5 rows... COUNT THEM! FIVE!
The only way I would ever even consider switching to a phone without a hardware keyboard would be actual bluetooth support. What the hell is wrong with the iPhone and Android that they don't support external keyboards? Seriously.