Indeed, if code is nested 8 levels deep, four or more of those levels should probably be separate functions. The first function might be:
That's a procedure, not a function.
OK, so I'm being pedantic, but I'm actually a big fan of functional programming as a way of thinking, and the more I reduce my code to short subroutines, the more it bugs me that I am still writing procedural code rather than functional. In your example, procedural imperative code works best (by avoiding the need for recursion), but it's still true that FP (where suitable) very quickly forces you to produce functions that can be analysed within human working memory.
Don't get me wrong, if it weren't for math and technology my career wouldn't exist, but why exactly do we need entire generations of programmers? Shouldn't we be teaching kids to pursue their interests instead of forcing some ideal on them?
Erm... look at the summary/article more closely. This is not about teaching computer skills, but using computers to personalise and individualise learners, and this would indeed offer the opportunity for kids to pursue their own interests, and for these to be related to curricular goals... if done properly. But it would take billions, not millions, to really do this properly.
What's code got to do with it? That's not what this story's about at all. Personalised learning may involve computers, but it does not necessarily mean teaching computers.
Sense two is the grammatical term. "The subject verbed the object." Sense 1 is not a definition of object as I'd recognise it. Objects have no agency -- they are just things.
Here's a hint when dealing with legalese: if it's your arse on the line, and they can afford better lawyers than you, stick with the most restrictive (reasonable) interpretation.
Creativity does not arise from dabbling around with existing works -- it involves, well, creating something. Derivative works tend to degrade the original property, not build on it -- look at any and all major TV and cinema adaptations of folklore and mythology in the last several decades: they've never been accurate to sources and they have broken people's connection with the originals. Lots of Robin Hood, for example, but not since the Disney cartoon have any of the traditional episodes been included (e.g. the golden arrow). Heroic fiction for decades was a series of cheap "I wish I was Tolkien" pulp paperbacks until George "R R" Martin came along and took the right royal piss out of the whole genre with his books.
But people aren't fans of this hypothetical universe. People don't want to write about this hypothetical universe. And this hypothetical universe would probably be even cheesier than the Star Trek one -- just consider how decades of "heroic fantasy" were just cheesy pseudo-Tolkien.
The rules are the same for any company. Spotify wasn't abused or picked on.
They want Apple to make special rules for them.
No, they want Apple to allow them to operate on a level playing field in competition with Apple's competing services, because if they don't, Spotify will sink much quicker than they otherwise will. The writing's already on the wall for Spotify, as they're not going to be able to compete with bundled video+music packages in the long run. But as it stands, Apple's fees and policies mean Spotify must be 13% more efficient than Apple's service to be able to offer an equivalent service at the same price.
I would love to see a situation where Apple's policy on commission for all subscriptions is successfully overturned. However, if Apple was only forced to make allowances to apps and services that compete with their own apps, that too would be a good thing. (Consider how many alternatives to Pages, GarageBand, iMovie etc there are, and they all have the double competitive disadvantage that Apple promotes their own apps in the essentials category, and takes a large cut of their competitors' profits.)
Now go back to the days when music occupied the airwaves? How much did they get then? zero. But what was the benefit? It's free advertising. Streaming is no different.
Streaming is very different. Imagine a showroom for washing machines where you can try them out by washing your clothes. There's no limit to the number of times you can come in and try them out. Is that an free advertising for Indesit, Zanussi, Hoover etc? No, because it undermines demand for washing machines. Now imagine that the showroom pays the suppliers a fraction of the usual wholesale cost for their washers. The washing machine makers lose out.
What does it cost Apple to host the Spotify client download in the App Store? A very tiny fraction of the 15%/30% of the subscription fees of every single user on iOS. I reckon we're talking in the region of pennies per user.
Apple was being unfair to artists, not its customers. Spotify customers who are paying through the app itself are the ones affected by the changes in Spotify's app, and Spotify has the gall to paint the situation as though these rules have suddenly changed.
I am no fan of Spotify -- as with all streaming services, they shortchange musicians. However, the fact is that they're operating in a space where margins are exceptionally tight (and all their competitors are shortchanging musicians, too) -- Apple's cut is humungous in relation to most of the other costs in the system, and it takes a dubious business model and makes it unworkable.
And what does Apple bring to the table? People keep saying it brings the customers, but that's a two-way street -- there are plenty of Spotify users whose decision on what tablet or phone to buy would be heavily coloured by the unavailability of Spotify on a given platform. And Apple does not bring users to Spotify -- Apple passively facilitates it. They don't promote many apps, and Spotify has to advertise independently to get any awareness. Apple is trying to make a 500% markup by offering credit card processing facilities that Spotify still have to duplicate from someone else anyway (because Apple do not offer general payments processing that non-iOS customers can access) on customers that Spotify have to get for themselves.
Apple is not a shop. They do not stock the shelves. They rely on third-parties to do that for them, and the third-parties take on all the risk; then they skim the cream off the top of all income while assuming no risk themselves. I'm grateful for the fact that I can trust most apps to be secure on my iPad, but their payment system is crazy.
Helium balloons are a kids toy. Virtually all kids toys are "wasteful products".
Most kids' toys last longer than a day or two; you can't pass the balloon you had in your childhood down to your children in the same way you can pass on teddy bears and action figures. We do buy too many toys, and we do treat too many toys as disposable, but having genuinely disposable toys encourages wasteful attitudes early on.
Nice rant about the US and UK pillaging the innocent locals. You seem to have missed the most obvious choice: Local Tanzanian officials will vastly enrich themselves and send their families to the US and UK while leaving nothing for the people.
OK, so the fact that they get rich by collusion with white-country-based multinationals and the tacit approval of white-country governments is all incidental, and we can absolve the white money machine of all culpability? Do you really reckon it's OK to give bribes, and the only people in the wrong are those that accept them?
At $1/cu foot, this could turn Tanzania into a developed country.
Ah, don't be silly. It's better for the country if the money goes to private enterprise. The government will benefit much more if the gas is extracted and sold by a company that pays practically zero tax than if it was owned and sold by the people of the country. If Shell get to extract it for a pittance, they'll be far better off than a "developed country", they'll be a developing country. See the difference?
No you can't. The GP poster was talking about something that escapes the atmosphere if released. Gold does not diffuse through the atmosphere and drift off through space. Parts of crude may volatilise and drift through the atmosphere, but none of them will ever reach a high enough altitude to escape Earth's gravity. I don't know if even methane is light enough to escape the Earth. Helium is very much a special case.
The problem here is that the government *is* controlling this, requiring the sale of helium at below-market prices and forbidding new production even as reserves fall and usage increases for the sake of "privatization".
But hey, I'm sure if we just privatized a little harder it would work out, right?
It's a ridiculous state of affairs. Let's assume that they are correct, and that the state-owned helium reserve does indeed hamper the development of private helium sequestration and storage industry. OK. How are we going to encourage the private helium industry to increase their capacity? I would say that dumping large volumes on gas on the market and undercutting all their commercial competitors is highly unlikely to encourage competition. If they really want to achieve their stated goal, they should increase their price steadily, encouraging other players to ramp up their capacity as customers try to reduce their reliance on the US reserve....
Helium can't "run out" on Earth because it's part of our atmosphere.
Except that it's the lightest component of our atmosphere, so it naturally diffuses upwards and eventually heads off into space (I can't remember whether that's escape or being stripped off by the solar wind, but it certainly does go). The helium in ground level atmosphere is a balance of atmospheric helium loss against the seepage of helium deposits from rocks combined with new helium generated as a result of radioactive decay. Sequestration of atmospheric helium would shift the equilibrium point slightly.
Personally, I'm all for banning helium balloons. Balloons of all kinds, in fact. They're one of the most wasteful products on the market.
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Indeed, if code is nested 8 levels deep, four or more of those levels should probably be separate functions. The first function might be:
That's a procedure, not a function.
OK, so I'm being pedantic, but I'm actually a big fan of functional programming as a way of thinking, and the more I reduce my code to short subroutines, the more it bugs me that I am still writing procedural code rather than functional. In your example, procedural imperative code works best (by avoiding the need for recursion), but it's still true that FP (where suitable) very quickly forces you to produce functions that can be analysed within human working memory.
Don't get me wrong, if it weren't for math and technology my career wouldn't exist, but why exactly do we need entire generations of programmers? Shouldn't we be teaching kids to pursue their interests instead of forcing some ideal on them?
Erm... look at the summary/article more closely. This is not about teaching computer skills, but using computers to personalise and individualise learners, and this would indeed offer the opportunity for kids to pursue their own interests, and for these to be related to curricular goals... if done properly. But it would take billions, not millions, to really do this properly.
What's code got to do with it? That's not what this story's about at all. Personalised learning may involve computers, but it does not necessarily mean teaching computers.
Sense two is the grammatical term. "The subject verbed the object." Sense 1 is not a definition of object as I'd recognise it. Objects have no agency -- they are just things.
Popularity.
One of the largest entertainment media companies in the world. I don't really think they need much by way of additional exposure.
Here's a hint when dealing with legalese: if it's your arse on the line, and they can afford better lawyers than you, stick with the most restrictive (reasonable) interpretation.
Creativity does not arise from dabbling around with existing works -- it involves, well, creating something. Derivative works tend to degrade the original property, not build on it -- look at any and all major TV and cinema adaptations of folklore and mythology in the last several decades: they've never been accurate to sources and they have broken people's connection with the originals. Lots of Robin Hood, for example, but not since the Disney cartoon have any of the traditional episodes been included (e.g. the golden arrow). Heroic fiction for decades was a series of cheap "I wish I was Tolkien" pulp paperbacks until George "R R" Martin came along and took the right royal piss out of the whole genre with his books.
But people aren't fans of this hypothetical universe. People don't want to write about this hypothetical universe. And this hypothetical universe would probably be even cheesier than the Star Trek one -- just consider how decades of "heroic fantasy" were just cheesy pseudo-Tolkien.
Instead of seeing it as competition - see it as supplementary stories. If some fan stuff is good enough, then endorse it instead.
Why? What does Paramount get out of it?
Nope. "Commercially available", not "commercially obtained". That means no copying official designs that are available to be bought.
After years of saying it was fine and encouraging them to invest so much time, money and effort into fan series they can't just pull the rug now.
Yes they can. A contract's only good until it expires, and they worked under the terms they were given. They made their choice.
Fat shaming = sexist?
If it's about valuing women based on physical appearance, yes. Women are not objects.
The rules are the same for any company. Spotify wasn't abused or picked on. They want Apple to make special rules for them.
No, they want Apple to allow them to operate on a level playing field in competition with Apple's competing services, because if they don't, Spotify will sink much quicker than they otherwise will. The writing's already on the wall for Spotify, as they're not going to be able to compete with bundled video+music packages in the long run. But as it stands, Apple's fees and policies mean Spotify must be 13% more efficient than Apple's service to be able to offer an equivalent service at the same price.
I would love to see a situation where Apple's policy on commission for all subscriptions is successfully overturned. However, if Apple was only forced to make allowances to apps and services that compete with their own apps, that too would be a good thing. (Consider how many alternatives to Pages, GarageBand, iMovie etc there are, and they all have the double competitive disadvantage that Apple promotes their own apps in the essentials category, and takes a large cut of their competitors' profits.)
Now go back to the days when music occupied the airwaves? How much did they get then? zero. But what was the benefit? It's free advertising. Streaming is no different.
Streaming is very different. Imagine a showroom for washing machines where you can try them out by washing your clothes. There's no limit to the number of times you can come in and try them out. Is that an free advertising for Indesit, Zanussi, Hoover etc? No, because it undermines demand for washing machines. Now imagine that the showroom pays the suppliers a fraction of the usual wholesale cost for their washers. The washing machine makers lose out.
Google, Apple and MS all built huge empires and they have every right to occasionally strong arm competitors.
No, they don't. That's why we have antitrust laws and the like.
What does it cost Apple to host the Spotify client download in the App Store? A very tiny fraction of the 15%/30% of the subscription fees of every single user on iOS. I reckon we're talking in the region of pennies per user.
Apple was being unfair to artists, not its customers. Spotify customers who are paying through the app itself are the ones affected by the changes in Spotify's app, and Spotify has the gall to paint the situation as though these rules have suddenly changed.
I am no fan of Spotify -- as with all streaming services, they shortchange musicians. However, the fact is that they're operating in a space where margins are exceptionally tight (and all their competitors are shortchanging musicians, too) -- Apple's cut is humungous in relation to most of the other costs in the system, and it takes a dubious business model and makes it unworkable.
And what does Apple bring to the table? People keep saying it brings the customers, but that's a two-way street -- there are plenty of Spotify users whose decision on what tablet or phone to buy would be heavily coloured by the unavailability of Spotify on a given platform. And Apple does not bring users to Spotify -- Apple passively facilitates it. They don't promote many apps, and Spotify has to advertise independently to get any awareness. Apple is trying to make a 500% markup by offering credit card processing facilities that Spotify still have to duplicate from someone else anyway (because Apple do not offer general payments processing that non-iOS customers can access) on customers that Spotify have to get for themselves.
Apple is not a shop. They do not stock the shelves. They rely on third-parties to do that for them, and the third-parties take on all the risk; then they skim the cream off the top of all income while assuming no risk themselves. I'm grateful for the fact that I can trust most apps to be secure on my iPad, but their payment system is crazy.
Bribes are the only way to get things done, it's part of their culture(s) and they see nothing wrong with it.
The question is: was it a part of their culture before white Europeans first bribed them?
Helium balloons are a kids toy. Virtually all kids toys are "wasteful products".
Most kids' toys last longer than a day or two; you can't pass the balloon you had in your childhood down to your children in the same way you can pass on teddy bears and action figures. We do buy too many toys, and we do treat too many toys as disposable, but having genuinely disposable toys encourages wasteful attitudes early on.
Nice rant about the US and UK pillaging the innocent locals. You seem to have missed the most obvious choice: Local Tanzanian officials will vastly enrich themselves and send their families to the US and UK while leaving nothing for the people.
OK, so the fact that they get rich by collusion with white-country-based multinationals and the tacit approval of white-country governments is all incidental, and we can absolve the white money machine of all culpability? Do you really reckon it's OK to give bribes, and the only people in the wrong are those that accept them?
At $1/cu foot, this could turn Tanzania into a developed country.
Ah, don't be silly. It's better for the country if the money goes to private enterprise. The government will benefit much more if the gas is extracted and sold by a company that pays practically zero tax than if it was owned and sold by the people of the country. If Shell get to extract it for a pittance, they'll be far better off than a "developed country", they'll be a developing country. See the difference?
You can extend this argument to any commodity.
No you can't. The GP poster was talking about something that escapes the atmosphere if released. Gold does not diffuse through the atmosphere and drift off through space. Parts of crude may volatilise and drift through the atmosphere, but none of them will ever reach a high enough altitude to escape Earth's gravity. I don't know if even methane is light enough to escape the Earth. Helium is very much a special case.
The problem here is that the government *is* controlling this, requiring the sale of helium at below-market prices and forbidding new production even as reserves fall and usage increases for the sake of "privatization".
But hey, I'm sure if we just privatized a little harder it would work out, right?
It's a ridiculous state of affairs. Let's assume that they are correct, and that the state-owned helium reserve does indeed hamper the development of private helium sequestration and storage industry. OK. How are we going to encourage the private helium industry to increase their capacity? I would say that dumping large volumes on gas on the market and undercutting all their commercial competitors is highly unlikely to encourage competition. If they really want to achieve their stated goal, they should increase their price steadily, encouraging other players to ramp up their capacity as customers try to reduce their reliance on the US reserve....
there is going to be a massive price shock when the reserve is finally empty.
Then why don't you buy up the helium now, while it is cheap, and then get rich when the price skyrockets?
Because very few people have vast caverns at their disposal in which to store sequestered gas.
Helium can't "run out" on Earth because it's part of our atmosphere.
Except that it's the lightest component of our atmosphere, so it naturally diffuses upwards and eventually heads off into space (I can't remember whether that's escape or being stripped off by the solar wind, but it certainly does go). The helium in ground level atmosphere is a balance of atmospheric helium loss against the seepage of helium deposits from rocks combined with new helium generated as a result of radioactive decay. Sequestration of atmospheric helium would shift the equilibrium point slightly.
Personally, I'm all for banning helium balloons. Balloons of all kinds, in fact. They're one of the most wasteful products on the market.