Fry: Now that you mention it, I do have trouble breathing underwater sometimes. I'll take the gills. Shady Guy: Yes, gills. Then, uh, you don't need lungs anymore, is right? Fry: Can't imagine why I would. Shady Guy: Lie down on table. I take lungs now, gills come next week.
The big question would be, if the shit hits the fan and you have a general civil-war type conflict, how much can you expect the military to do?
I used to think that in the event of a widespread insurgency or revolution, a country's military would stand down rather than gun down thousands. But after what happened in Libya, I am no longer confident that this is the case. It's like the Milgram experiment on a bigger and deadlier scale.
Agnosticism, sure, no problem. If you're on the fence, you can come down on either side. But I don't see an atheist converting unless he feels the hand of Providence shelter him.
A lot of Christians find your argument harmless because they believe that the book of Genesis refers to a spiritual reality as opposed to a physical one... So you see, there are some people to whom your nice little paradox doesn't apply. Perhaps being an american, you have only seen the crazy side of Christianity? In that case, I do pity you. It must be hard dealing with all that all the time.
My friends and I live in the most atheist corner of the country, so let's just say we've been able to avoid any...religious entanglements. But it has cost us (since Seattle isn't cheap).
Star Wars reference out of the way, I know a couple of people who have Facebook friends and/or relatives that may be called fundamentalist in one religion or another. They come out with the most insane statements. Dealing with them in person would be a trial, but at a distance, we can laugh and despair at the state of society.
Except that most people who convert to a religion does so because they are persuaded by the evidence (there are a few who do so in order to marry the person of their choice or some such, but I reckon those are a minority).
I am going to need some anecdotal evidence here. Who converts to a theistic religion from atheism? There is no way in hell that the evidence favors on the religious side of things.
Uuum, that's why you donâ(TM)t always use map, but oftn write your own recursive loop with exit conditions.
step across several elements on each iteration
That's what pattern matching it for.
So you agree that the map operation is less elegant than the for loop in tricky iteration situations? In that the for loop can replace a map, a custom recursive loop with exit conditions, AND this particular application of pattern matching, and all at the same time to boot?:-)
iterate a subsequence without actually creating a subsequence
Without side-effects, what would be the point of that? This only makes sense if you have side-effects.
True. I was thinking of impure functional languages, not Haskell, when I wrote that.
Yeah, itertools seems like a really nice library. I wish I had something similar in other languages.
But, you know, the itertools functions are just inefficient applications of a normal map operation. Islice, for example, iterates from the start, skipping everything until it gets to the elements you want to process. A proper for loop does not need those nop iterations, and is thus more elegant (for a certain definition of elegant).
I will grant that breaking out of the iteration works just peachy; I figure Python just abandons the iterator and goes on to the next task, rather than finishing out the iteration. But other languages that have the "map" concept, but not the "iterator" concept, may not be able to just let it drop.
What about this interesting suggestion to eliminate suicide attacks: the initiator is motivated by immediate entry into paradise. Word on the ground in Afghanistan is that when the remains are gathered and buried, inclusion of just a small piece of pigmeat with the remains will prevent Allah from seeing the martyr, thus, no paradise, thus, not motivation to die.
You don't think a terrorist imam wouldn't tell a prospective bomber that Allah would give him a pass on that bit of pig meat? Especially if he dies in action against the Great Satan, and even more especially considering this transparent attempt by the same Great Satan to cheat the bomber of his well-deserved martyrdom through the sacrilege and desecration of his corpse? Can't fool Allah that easily. These guys aren't idiots, you know.
Besides, religion is just a garnish, not the actual motivation. I have heard of several more likely ones.
Some suicide bombers are willing to be suicide bombers because they have no chance of getting laid on this earth, and are generally pissed off about it. Point them at someone to focus their pissed-off-ness on, fan it to a flame, and there you go.
Others are — surprise — suicidal. This may or may not be related to not getting laid.
And then there are the ones motivated by revenge.
And a very few are probably intelligent yet naive enough to do this on ideological or rational grounds.
And finally, I figure some suicide bombers have probably succumbed to heavy peer pressure/indoctrination/brain-washing of the sort applied by armies, gangs, abusive spouses, and interrogators.
What I do have a problem with however is that I do own an iPad (1 & 2) that syncs with my iTunes library and i use some Universal and iPhone apps on it that REQUIRE updates to function on iOS4. Those apps aren't guaranteed to run on iOS3.
On a recent visit to the #iphonedev IRC channel on freenode, someone asked the community whether there was any point in refraining from using iOS 4-only features in the interest of better compatibility.
Most of the developers there at the time said not to bother supporting older devices, saying they are only 10% of the market. I mentioned how often I see first-gen iPhones still around (limited to iOS 3.1) but I'm not sure any of them believed me. A couple conceded that if you already have an app that works on older devices, you should not break existing compatibility. But everyone there except me said that new apps should be written for iOS 4, without concern for backwards compatibility, even in the cases where it is possible.
iOS 3.2 and up have hella useful and convenient capabilities for developers. And, if I were to write a certain type of media-centric app, iOS 3.2 just does not have the APIs needed.
The number of times I've heard the Pioneer Anomaly brought up as evidence that modern physics was fundamentally broken and the Scientific Clergy refused to admit it is... very large.
Well, I admit I am disappointed. If they've explained it, they've explained it. But it woulda been cool if physics had had to changeâ¦
The home remedies in this previous version are worth the read.
I started reading, and the next thing I knew, I was back on Slashdot, the back button on my keyboard was smoking, and I had a rapidly fading memory of the words "soldering iron."
Normally, I don't worry much about genetic engineering. But then, I assume it is the U.S. doing the engineering. I am confident in our ability to pull it off.
Butâ¦Malaysia? Are they savvy enough to do this? I didn't think they were anything like a leader in genetic research or environmental studies.
Slashdot Mirror
Google is an advertising/search company! Okay, so they started up with the Android. And a self-driving car. And they've got numerous other projects.
But solar power research? When will the madness end!
Full quote, if you'd like to read it. :-)
Fry: Now that you mention it, I do have trouble breathing underwater sometimes. I'll take the gills.
Shady Guy: Yes, gills. Then, uh, you don't need lungs anymore, is right?
Fry: Can't imagine why I would.
Shady Guy: Lie down on table. I take lungs now, gills come next week.
The big question would be, if the shit hits the fan and you have a general civil-war type conflict, how much can you expect the military to do?
I used to think that in the event of a widespread insurgency or revolution, a country's military would stand down rather than gun down thousands. But after what happened in Libya, I am no longer confident that this is the case. It's like the Milgram experiment on a bigger and deadlier scale.
Agnosticism, sure, no problem. If you're on the fence, you can come down on either side. But I don't see an atheist converting unless he feels the hand of Providence shelter him.
My friends and I live in the most atheist corner of the country, so let's just say we've been able to avoid any...religious entanglements. But it has cost us (since Seattle isn't cheap).
Star Wars reference out of the way, I know a couple of people who have Facebook friends and/or relatives that may be called fundamentalist in one religion or another. They come out with the most insane statements. Dealing with them in person would be a trial, but at a distance, we can laugh and despair at the state of society.
I am going to need some anecdotal evidence here. Who converts to a theistic religion from atheism? There is no way in hell that the evidence favors on the religious side of things.
So you agree that the map operation is less elegant than the for loop in tricky iteration situations? In that the for loop can replace a map, a custom recursive loop with exit conditions, AND this particular application of pattern matching, and all at the same time to boot? :-)
True. I was thinking of impure functional languages, not Haskell, when I wrote that.
Yeah, itertools seems like a really nice library. I wish I had something similar in other languages.
But, you know, the itertools functions are just inefficient applications of a normal map operation. Islice, for example, iterates from the start, skipping everything until it gets to the elements you want to process. A proper for loop does not need those nop iterations, and is thus more elegant (for a certain definition of elegant).
I will grant that breaking out of the iteration works just peachy; I figure Python just abandons the iterator and goes on to the next task, rather than finishing out the iteration. But other languages that have the "map" concept, but not the "iterator" concept, may not be able to just let it drop.
"The versatility of Justin is achieved by combining the performant hardware with intelligent software."
No shit. I always wondered why that Tinker Toy/Speak-N-Spell robot I built never did much.
Don't get me wrong, this stuff is impressive. But that last statement is so...axiomatic? Banal?
You don't think a terrorist imam wouldn't tell a prospective bomber that Allah would give him a pass on that bit of pig meat? Especially if he dies in action against the Great Satan, and even more especially considering this transparent attempt by the same Great Satan to cheat the bomber of his well-deserved martyrdom through the sacrilege and desecration of his corpse? Can't fool Allah that easily. These guys aren't idiots, you know.
Besides, religion is just a garnish, not the actual motivation. I have heard of several more likely ones.
Some suicide bombers are willing to be suicide bombers because they have no chance of getting laid on this earth, and are generally pissed off about it. Point them at someone to focus their pissed-off-ness on, fan it to a flame, and there you go.
Others are — surprise — suicidal. This may or may not be related to not getting laid.
And then there are the ones motivated by revenge.
And a very few are probably intelligent yet naive enough to do this on ideological or rational grounds.
And finally, I figure some suicide bombers have probably succumbed to heavy peer pressure/indoctrination/brain-washing of the sort applied by armies, gangs, abusive spouses, and interrogators.
Perhaps the inelegance comes because, with for loops, you can:
and you can't do any of that with a map operation. Not the ones I've seen, anyway.
"â¦and this is something that is difficult to implement in software." â" but a hardware implement will get the job done.
I lul'd much, but I have no mod points.
On a recent visit to the #iphonedev IRC channel on freenode, someone asked the community whether there was any point in refraining from using iOS 4-only features in the interest of better compatibility.
Most of the developers there at the time said not to bother supporting older devices, saying they are only 10% of the market. I mentioned how often I see first-gen iPhones still around (limited to iOS 3.1) but I'm not sure any of them believed me. A couple conceded that if you already have an app that works on older devices, you should not break existing compatibility. But everyone there except me said that new apps should be written for iOS 4, without concern for backwards compatibility, even in the cases where it is possible.
iOS 3.2 and up have hella useful and convenient capabilities for developers. And, if I were to write a certain type of
media-centric app, iOS 3.2 just does not have the APIs needed.
Should have asked to go to the bathroom. "Unclassy" would be accurate. My advice? Learn the lesson and suck it up. Nothing else you can do.
Wait, he sneezed? OMG OMG why didn't anyone tell me?!! DAMN YOU MASS MEDIA!
Well, I admit I am disappointed. If they've explained it, they've explained it. But it woulda been cool if physics had had to changeâ¦
The home remedies in this previous version are worth the read.
I started reading, and the next thing I knew, I was back on Slashdot, the back button on my keyboard was smoking, and I had a rapidly fading memory of the words "soldering iron."
True, but...have you seen what they put on dildos? Clearly, spines do have some kind of appeal.
I'm glad you asked! Let me tell you about this fantasy of mine...
Dammit! Never mind.
Well, it is a horrific creatureâ¦but not a la Hellraiser.
"Turning?" Man, they passed freakazoid years ago.
It's a common enough name for those of germanic origin. It means "Farmer".
So, very familiar with fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, things of that nature?
And plants too. Well, he seems to be the right man for the job.
(And it seems the new Slashdot handles Unicode even worse than the old one. That was supposed to be an ellipse up there.)
Normally, I don't worry much about genetic engineering. But then, I assume it is the U.S. doing the engineering. I am confident in our ability to pull it off.
Butâ¦Malaysia? Are they savvy enough to do this? I didn't think they were anything like a leader in genetic research or environmental studies.