If it did show you the mail instead of the gray area of your screen, you can still ignore it. If it doesn't show you the mail instead of the gray area, you have to work for around 4-5 seconds to get it to show. When its just 0.5 second to switch between Windows, most people prefer to switch. I find switching back and forth between windows when the screen is mostly wasted space absurd.
There's no problem if you want to tell the computer: "Don't show me this", but you should be able to tell the computer what you want to see, and have the computer do the work of finding a proper arrangement. Arranging graphical sprites in a space so that the wanted ones are seen is a perfectly solvable problem.
Even when it is obvious how to put the papers so they are all seen, the computer waits for YOU to do it.
Specifying which parts I want to see by clicking on them in some way, allows the computer to arrange the windows for me, according to my specifications.
You don't need me to explain it. Both Nelson Mandella and Bishop Desmond Tutu have called it apartheid.
Appeal to authority, eh? Why can't you make a single point based on facts or citings? You keep appealing to authority, slogans, propaganda and generalisms.
Is it simply that you don't have the facts, and you are just repeating 2nd hand propaganda, out of sheer ignorance?
I already told you. End the apartheid is palestine, obey all UN resolutions, act like civlized people.
And I already explained: There is no apartheid, and there's no similarity between the apartheid and the Palestinian territories. Obeying all of the UN resolutions would mean the destruction of the state of Israel, so that's not practical either. Acting like a "civilized people" is a luxury people in the state of war don't always have. Just ask the British and Americans in WWII.
The israeli experiment has failed. It seems to be economically successful and serves its purpose of serving as a refuge for Jews around the world from persecution. So what is this based on?
It is a nation which can only survive if it wages a perpetual war. The situation is improving though. Peace with Egypt and Jordan already done. Peace with Syria and Lebanon is possible in the future. The Palestinians will probably take longer, but they're a difficult nut, they just won't cease the violecne.
You keep saying that the occupation of palestine is war and that israel is at war with the palestenians. That's a thirty year war!
Indeed.
If israel is at war then it should treat all palestenians prisoners as prisoners of war and yes that means no torture and full geneva rights.
The Palestinians have self-government and the war is of limited scale and not against the Palestinian people - but against the Palestinian militant organizations. Israel does not use torture except when life is under immediate threat. Again, if you think otherwise, bring citations or shut up. What Geneva rights does Israel not give the Palestinians?
If israel is not able to survive without waging a perpetual war against it's neighbors then it's a failure.
Its more of the neighbours waging perpetual war against Israel than the other way around, but us in Israel hope for the arab nations to eventually come to the conclusion that Israel is a fact and here to stay - and sign a peace contract.
Democracies are not supposed to wage thirty year wars. Civilized people find a way to get along even if it means compromising sometimes.
Israel did find the way - the Palestinians didn't. See the Camp David accords as an example. Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians pretty much everything they asked for, and Clinton approves of this. The Palestinians declined and instead started the second violent streak of the intifada.
I will repeat myself. You are jewish supremacist. Yes, you keep repeating the same propaganda and slogans, without anything behind them.
You speak out of ignorance, and judge without facts.
You are no different then any skinhead or any member of the KKK. Hah. You are stupid.
You will excuse anything done by israel. Anyting at all. Torture, killing, kidnapping, destroying of an entire country (twice!), apartheid, occupation, stealing land and murder. You see nothing wrong with anything israel is doing. You can't even admit that israel could be a little wrong.
Actually, I already admitted a wrong Israel did, so now you are a liar too. I said Israel was wrong in settling the territories beyond the green lines, and that Israel is now correcting this, even though the Palestinians are making sure it is not beneficial for Israel. Torture is in some cases justified (See "24" Pallmer torture as an example). Killing of terrorists plotting to blow up buses and restaurants is justified. Kidnapping terrorist leaders to try them in a court of law is justified. Israel never destroyed a country,
Heh, the issue of User Interfaces always makes me laugh at the incompetence of seemingly the entire world when it comes to User Interfaces (or the whole computing world in general).
Some obvious trivial faults:
The whole overlapping window model is bankrupt. You want to minimize the amount of information, especially redundant information, that the user has to input, and output as much information in an accessible way. The overlapping window model does the opposite: it requires that you tile your windows manually (or through tedious, inaccessible menus) rather than specifying which windows you want to see. If you don't do that (and due to the required effort, most don't) then you don't see all of the information you want even though most of the screen is wasted space!. For reference, just look at your screen now, and watch how much of it is covered by empty "gray areas". When you open a new window, does it hide gray areas, or real information? This is even more absurd when there are just a couple of windows, hiding each other, when the entire screen is free space! The computer expects YOU to work for HIM and move these windows from hiding each other. This phonemenon is also felt in list boxes, where you are expected to adjust the column widths manually to not be too short/too long, even when there is an optimal adjustment readily available. You again have to work for the computer, and ask for a ctrl+plus to set it up. Most people don't even know about ctrl+plus in column-listboxes. Some programs make it even worse, and don't let you resize their windows when the entire screen is free, and you have to scroll through their data in a little window.
Internationalization and shortcut keys. What's so fascinating about this example - is how common it is across platforms, programs, operating systems. The feature is called "shortcut keys" and yet everyone is implementing it as "shortcut symbols". This is terrible - when you switch between languages, all shortcut keys break!
Multitude of widgets, with overlapping functionalities. This is just silly and confusing to beginners. We need less widgets, not more.
"Jumpyness". Today's GUI's all "jump". What I mean by that is that they don't smoothly switch from one state to the next, but rather do that with a single screen refresh. The human mind doesn't read that very well. For example, scrolling down "jumps" down a pageful instead of scrolling down a pageful in a smooth motion. The fact that fixing this would require modifications of all existing GUI programs is a certificate of poor architecture of GUI software.
There are many more trivial issues to fix. Until they fix these, I find it very funny to talk about future directions for the User Interface. We haven't even gotten the basics right yet!
No I am saying it should not abuse that army or use it to enforce apartheid.
"Apartheid"? Please explain how Israel or its army is similar to the Apartheid. Please explain how Israel could be more compassionate and still survive. Stop spewing buzz words and chimes.
Say what actual actions you think Israel should do - and what the consequences you think there will be.
If you don't know - which you probably don't - then try not to speak or form an opinion out of ignorance, like the rest of the herd.
Is that like only obeying "reasonable" laws or only obeying laws you approve of. Israel should obey all resolutions.
A person should indeed not obey every law. Germans should not have obeyed German law in WWII. Morals and the good of your nation and human kind are more important than law.
Bullshit. Israel routinely tortures people. I mean every day.
Then cite sources. Show this torture was not used to directly save the lives of many from the next terrorist attacks. And you still haven't answered my question about Pallmer's torture in "24".
Does it charge them and try them or simply jail them and torture them?
It tries them and charges them - and their punishment is sitting in Israeli jails - which is exactly what they're doing.
Civilized nations don't do this. If I murder or rape or steal the govt does not destroy my parents house even if they fed me or gave me money. Only barbaric states do this.
Suicide bombings are barbaric. The families receive large financial incentives after such actions. Destruction of the house is not esthetic and not appealing, but its a practical counter to the financial backing and its problematic morality is negligible with comparison to the terrorist act itself and the possibility of prevention such future acts.
Well that's a pack of lies.
If they are lies - then cite sources to explain how they are lies.
You are merely throwing vague empty statements like "Israel is evil", "Those are lies" without saying what is true or citing sources.
You are obviously speaking out of ignorance, and you obviously have built your opinion of Israel and the conflict by listening to propaganda and others' opinions. You have little to no knowledge of the actual facts, and as such: You are in no position to judge Israel or its actions.
Anyway you have proved my point. You are a jewish supremacist. You are willing to justify any action, any act of barbarism, torture, stealing land, destroying property (are all lebanese your enemy? were every one of those million homeless lebanese your enemy?), any and all kinds of horrible things done as long as they are done by jews against arabs.
No, I am willing to justify acts of war as long as they are done as a part of a just war. And almost the entire world, including Arab countries, agree that Israel is fighting a just war. I am beginning to wonder if you know what the word "supremacist" means. As for your question: "are all lebanese your enemy? were every one of those million homeless lebanese your enemy?". Its a good question - and it has a good answer. Israel only destroyed the Lebanese homes that were hosting Hezbollah terrorists and their weapons. If Israel had wanted, and if the citizens of Lebanon were actually Israel's enemy, then Israel could have flattened out the entire south Lebanon and a whole lot more than 1000 Lebanese would be killed. Israel managed to harm few civilians despite Hezbollah's hiding amongst civilians.
Just another racist pig in a world full of them. There is no difference between a nazi white supremacist or a member of the KKK and you.
Oh really? What similarities do you see?
Both of you see yourselves as victims in a "war" and both of you don't see your "enemies" as human beings who suffer.
We are victims of the war, and so are the Lebanese who are human beings who suffe
Only people who are completely detached from reality believe that the survival of israel is at stake. Israel has one of the biggest armies in the world, it also has over 300 nukes. Israel is backed by the US who is willing to kill every single human being on the planet in order to assure the survival of israel.
Are you realizing the silly paradox you are raising in your own statements?
You are saying, Israel has no problem of survival because it has a large army it can use. Then you are saying, Israel must not use that army, because it should be more compassionate.
Israel survival is at stake if it cannot use the army, as you are proposing, to prevent attacks from Hezbollah and the Palestinians.
Obey all 50+ UN resolutions it's in violation of.
Israel obeys every reasonable resolution of the UN. The UN has a history of bias against Israel in its resolution, and many of them are not implementable, not without tramendous risk to the interests and even survival of Israel.
Stop tortuing people.
Israel uses torture only in the rare cases of "ticking time bombs" where the torture is necessary to save lives. Do you agree with the use of torture in "24", where Pallmer uses torture to find out the location of the nuke?
Stop stealing land.
Israel has not only stopped to "steal land", it is giving back all the land it has settled for many years, because it is out of the agreed "green line". Not that any of it is working for Israel, as every land given back is used to attack and kill more Israelis.
Stop jailing people without charges and trials.
Israel does not do this.
Stop jailing children.
Israel will stop arresting Juveniles, when the Palestinians stop sending Juveniles to try and kill Israelis.
Stop assassinating people.
Israel's assasination policy has proven extremely effective in the fight against terror. The terrorist success against Israel has dropped incredibly in the past few years, and much of this success is attribute to the assasination policy. Israel is at war with the Palestinian militants, who aim and plan to murder its citizens, and has every right to preemptively act against them in order to save dozens and hundreds of innocent Israelis. It is a sad fact that they hide amongst civilians, but that does not buy them immunity from Israeli attack.
Stop destroying other peoples property.
Again, Israel is at war, and property is only destroyed as part of war, and as retaliation to suicide bombings. One of the main incentives for suicide bombers is that their families are financially rewarded. Being unable to retaliate against a suicide bomber, a proper retaliation and a counter-measure to the financial reward is to destroy the homes of the families that send terrorist bombers to kill civilians.
In other words act like civilized people.
Would you ask Churchil to do that in WWII?
Those things are immoral you know, I think even the god of the jews probably doesn't approve of torturing and stealing.
Pacifism is nice, but it doesn't work. Israel is at war, and many of the things you mention are true, but simply justifiable and are a last resort in the fight Israel is in. If Israel does not apply these measures, it will lose the war and not survive.
I don't expect any of these words to have any effect on you however. You are a bigot and a supremacists.
You keep using ad-hominem attacks, without basing them on anything. Though your statement about the "even the god of the Jews" sounds to me like you're the bigot.
You don't register the suffering of any human being who is not a jew.
Again, would you say that to Churchil, about the suffering of the Germans?
To you the only suffering that matters is that of the jew and in order to ease their suffering the jews are justified in causing any degree of harm to any number of n
Yes. They can also be more compassionate towards the palestenians.
Again you just don't care about the suffering of arabs. Most likely because you are a jewish supremacists.
How can Israel be more compassionate to the Lebanese and Palestinians, and still survive?
If Israel stops shooting at Hezbollah, to stop harming citizens, then Hezbollah will continue to kill and kidnap Israelis. If Israel does not respond, then they will escalate for as long as Israel does not respond. If Israel removes the checkpoints in the Palestinian territories, then Palestinians will be back to blowing up in Israel. The only real thing Israel is doing wrong is settling near Palestinian population centers, out of the "green line". And note that Israel is working on correcting this, and dismantling those settlements (though at great loss of life, as every settlement evacuated truly becomes a basis for Palestinian attacks).
The only reason Hezbollah has any fighters left is because Israel is being compassionate to Lebanese citizens, and tries to pinpoint Hezbollah fighters and rocket launchers amidst residential areas full of citizens. These citizens are sometimes not allowed to leave by Hezbollah, because they need them as Human shields.
Israel would be extinct without our aid, obviously.
A common misconception.
You do realize Israel only started receiving aid in 1973, and even then, it was due to an emergency and fear of a crisis, and no real crisis, don't you?
Israel would definitely survive without US support, and the support it received has indeed enlarged the economy and improved the army (of both Israel and the US) but it has also costed Israel the cancellation of weapons trade with China, the development of fighter jets, and many other projects.
Not only that, but really if you want to go the whole way on that, the Caananites had it first, even by Jewish reckoning. I have no problem giving the land back to their descendants. Do you?
Not that I think any of the "who was here first" has any relevance, but just as an anecdote: There are no Caananites left.
Simply put, because there's more usable, unoccupied land in Brazil than in the middle east.
Israel was mainly a large desert waskteland before the Jews arrived. Inhabited by Arab tribes mainly doing agriculture. There was a lot of "usable, unoccupied land". Once Jews came and brought their work and money with them, this land became prosporous and attracted inhabitants from surrounding Arab countries. Jews and Arabs had no bad relations before this settlement, and any other country set up would probably be just as bad.
But that wouldn't satisfy the people who believe, rather irrationally, that the Jews *need* a state (as if a concentrated effort by a organized nation state couldn't conquer them just as well all in one place as Nazi Germany did with them spread out across Europe), nor the American evangelicals who believe the return to existence of Israel is a sign of imminent messianic return.
There is a wide consensus that one of the main reasons for hatered of Jews and the Holocaust in Europe was that they were a nation without a country. They were spread all over Europe with strong nationalistic ties but not always only to their country. Having people in a European country during the strongly nationalistic era of the 1920's and 30's, who are not pure nationalists but are also a nation of their own produces a lot of anger and hatred.
Not only this - but having no nation, there is no solution for a persecuted family. Israel gives this solution to Jews, like there's a solution to almost every other nationality in the world.
As you know, automatic multi-threading is an unsolved problem.
Ofcourse (except for purely functional languages, that is), that's why my first suggestion only applies to multithreaded code, just as multicore cpu's do today.
Your multi-stack VLIW idea is very interesting, but even that would be damn difficult for a compiler to take advantage of.
As it was difficult in the original VLIW, wasn't it? Though I think it should be just as simple and probably a lot simpler than the compiler doing a lot of shuffling in order to perform multiple unrelated parallel jobs on the same stack...
The compiler could deduce that multiple expressions it needs to calculate are indeed unrelated and split them into multiple VLIW's... Perhaps even the compiler can expose a different interface in the high-level language to allow explicit use of this VLIW parallelism - but that is another difficult idea:-)
How about achieving parallelism by using multiple stacks?
If a stack machine is that much simpler, couldn't you either have:
A vast amount of cores for many unrelated threads
Or: Multiple pipelines and explicit division of instructions into the pipelines?
The second refers to an instruction coding similar to VLIW such that you parallelise the code on multiple stacks but it still shares an instruction/data cache and allows for parallelism without heavy multi-threading at the high-level (and instead having parallelism as a compiler optimization at the low-level).
My tendency is to use functions for code that will be repeated at some point.
I strongly disagree with this method. I agree with the whole functions' section in the Linux kernel coding style.
I think that you should divide functions such that each function is trivial and more importantly trivially verifiable. With good naming conventions and division of responsibilities, you don't need to "jump between functions" as you only read the functions for implementation details. The interface and what they do should be fairly obvious.
A large function will most likely host bugs, while a tiny function that does exactly one thing (no more, and no less) will most likely be bug-free.
Division into functions is not a simple matter though, there are many criterions for the division of functions (wrappers, chronological, implementation hiding, indirection, code repeatability, etc).
I still maintain that you can't have too many comments. I would recommend commenting the end of any block, including a function block, that might often have the top of the block not on the same screen, just to make quick navigation easier.
I disagree here too. The best documentation is self-documenting code, and bad documentation is worse than no documentation. The problem with redundant comments (such as "if X: end block" and such) is not just the time they take to write and the visual noise they add, but most importantly, it is that these comments are almost never up-to-date. Nobody bothers to update such redundant comments, and they become bad documentation.
If you can replace a comment with a descriptive variable assignment, e.g instead of:
# We blit the image into the center position: image.blit((WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2))
The variable assignment will remain correct and kept up-to-date. The comment is likely to grow out of sync with the code, and even if it doesn't - the reader is not sure whether to trust the comments. Remember that the code is the most accurate documentation.
None taken, python fan boys wishing reality were different is well documented.
See, you did it again.
I can take your becoming offensive as strong evidence that you indeed lied there.:-) Ofcourse my belief that was a lie is simply based on experience arguing with several real-life developers who lie that they used Python because they know that otherwise their whitespace knee-jerk reaction is silly and they are portrayed as dumb.
You mis-spelt "of course they don't work, you have to use this totally different editor feature", there you go wishing reality away again. I can see how you must get used to it after a while and forget you're doing it. Wow. Use a totally different editor feature So you mean that if I want to learn Python.. there are two extra key shortcuts I have to remember in my editor? It is really so efficient of C and C++ to share the "indent this code" key because that way I really don't have to specifically remember that extra one key. You realize how ridiculous it is to claim that requiring an editor feature for efficient copy and paste makes a language unusable? You are using copy&paste, and indent-this-code and other features which are already specialized for each specific language.
if (0) {} else if (x) { } else if (y) { }
What's wrong with the straight-forward if ((!0) && (x)) ? It makes it quite a lot more clear what you're trying to test.
That's the most obvious use. I don't think I've ever seen use of "if(..) {} else.." blocks except in macros that don't want their lexical parser to steal an "else" from after the macro (when it includes an "if").
It's also not so much about the keystrokes, as the meaning... {} is an empty block, pass is a workaround because blocks can't be empty... mentally everytime I do it instead of thinking I don't need to put anything in that block... I have to actively think "I need to put pass there, because there isn't an invisible block".
"pass" is syntax for empty-block. The two are equivalent and if you indeed used Python and required a lot of it, then "empty" and "pass" would become synonomous in your brain. They haven't, which is further evidence that you did not really use Python a lot. Also, the only cases where I really find myself using "pass" is to define little exception classes, or when I create a lot of singletons via subclassing. In those cases, it looks like:
class MyException(Exception): pass
in which the pass has little to no overhead.
It's a problem because whitespace is significant, and I'm not surprised you don't do it with python... because it sucks... due to the whitespace being significant thing. Sometimes this is very nice to do when you have much more html than code, and it works fine with every other language. Think about putting code in xml processing instructions, for example. Actually I don't do it in Python because I don't do it in any language. I am not a web developer, and have not much experience in that area. Perhaps a more experienced web Python developer could respond better about Python and HTML mixing.
The SSI bit is basically an extension to this, you build a large xml/html document from many smaller ones (that, again, have code in them) this causes even bigger problems with python, because seperate blocks can magically merge together. Again, web programming is not my thing.
Yes, welcome to python party line reality again. People don't "read" the syntax, but they _sure as hell_ parse it and use it as visual indicators -- which sane people regard as "reading" the source.
No, people don't read the syntax, they read the indentation. Sometimes they check the {} too for consistency with the indentation, but they are not the source of information. Ask a lot of C developers what
When I first learnt python I assumed the whitespace thing would be no big deal, it's only after using it for a while that I saw how moronic it was.
No offence, but I believe you are lying here. I mean, I think that a little white lie of "yeah I used it a lot and then I thought so" is much easier on your keyboard and much more probable than you ACTUALLY USING PYTHON and disliking the whitespace. People who actually use Python for REAL work, really tend to become fans of the significant whitespace.
10 year old editor habits don't work anymore, Ie. copy & paste & reindent almost never "just works". This is with an editor (xemacs) that has a lot of python support.
Ofcourse copy&paste and reindent work. Just use the emacs python-mode shortcut: C-c,l and C-c,r to move the block left or right to where you want it. Sure, "reindent" may be easier, but only because you bothered to create those little empty lines containing just "{" or "}" that push REAL code out of the screen, and let you decide at what nest-level you want the code (before or after the "}"). Deciding via C-c,l and C-c,r is just as easy, and saves a lot of screen-space.
it means you have to sprinkle "pass" warts everywhere, because it can't deal with empty blocks
Huh? How many empty blocks do you have? What exactly are you writing? How much longer is "pass" than "{}"? (hint, if you measure in keystrokes its even less)
writing code inside other languages (like html) is much harder
I don't nest my code in HTML, and I'm not sure why that would be a problem, or why I would want to nest my code in HTML and not the other way around. Hell, I'd want to write higher-level descriptions of content and let the HTML be auto-generated, but that's another discussion altogether.
likewise getting code from multiple places is basically impossible (think html + SSI) I'm not following you in this one.
IT IS harder to read, you've removed the "ends block" visual marker. You can't easily line up the end of a block with the start of a block... you can argue that all blocks should fit on a screen, but this isn't true in the core python code.
This is simply untrue, and a silly claim. NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY reads the {} when they read C/C++/Java code. Everybody reads the indentation, and only the indentation. The ONLY one who reads {} is the compiler. Blocks larger than the screen are unreadable with or without {}. Why do you think the closer } makes anything easier to read if the opener is out of the screen? In fact, having no {} lines makes more things fit the screen, so if anything, blocks larger than the screen are easier with indentation-based languages. What do you make of the following C code:
if(5 == x)
a = 1;
evil_stuff_here();
How about:
for(x=0; x<100; ++x); {
printf("%d\n", x); }
Python makes these kinds of somewhat-subtle mistakes impossible, by uniting the human-readable mark of nesting (indentation) with the compiler one, instead of having two, possibly incompatible marks.
You can't create blocks on their own (without doing if True: before it), all other languages allow this that I know of Hmm, if it gets its own block, what's wrong with putting it in a function? I am not sure what you want here, exactly.
You can't break the indentation rules for a 1 line patch to add an if statement. And that's a good thing. Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules. The trade-off between the fraction of a second indentation takes, and the potential for bugs due to mismatches of the visual indentation and the meaning of the code is clear. You really should be forced, for the good of the readers of that code (which are far more important than the writer, as reading code is much harder than writing it) to indent it properly.
In a large program, though, I do tend to use comments to identify the end of blocks.
To me, this implies that in a large program, you have very large blocks.
Why don't you just divide them up into very small functions so that each function is trivial and very easy to verify for correctness, and incidentally very easy to follow the indentation of?
No no, what I meant was: Show me a Scheme program that takes less code than Python OR that the Python code is not more readable. That's EASIER to show than showing BOTH of the conditions.
Can you do it? Saying "Scheme is more expressive" requires some backing up.
And there was still no reply about Scheme with or without macros.
Can't a large mail provider use its access to millions of sent messages to gather extra statistics about "repeated patterns" which can help it identify spam more effectively?
Many of us Pythoneers have been there. Exactly where you are, bitching about the "whitespace". Only after using it for a little while we understood that we can never go back. The way I resisted whitespace in the beginning now seems so stupid..
There really is no real claim against significant whitespace except the knee-jerk reaction of ".. but.. but.. its just wrong!"
If you actually try to use Python, you'll never want to go back to cluttering your visual space with unnecessary noise {}.
There's always the obvious option of using #{ and #} around your indented blocks:-)
The language is simpler than the others yet for more expressive and powerful. Learn something. Use it!
Oh is it?
Scheme with or without macros?
Scheme without macros is a laughably weak language compared to Python. Scheme with macros can not be said to be simpler than Python.
More expressive? Show me any good expressive Scheme program that can not be expressed with round-the-same-length Python program, that is also easier on the eyes?
At worst case scenario, you won't be able to run certain propriatary apps when running nonDRMed stuff. big deal, sounds like your don't want to run them anyways.
No, the worst case scenario is that you are locked out of:
Reading others' documents
Government services
Media distribution, as well as copying your own media
Actually that's just the "lock out" worst case. There are much worse scenarios:
Government retroactively changing documents in a 1984-like fashion.
Bosses mailing orders that are deleted or modified retroactively giving no evidence of the source later.
Of course you are only affected by the second if you choose not to be locked out. We can already see that the vast majority of the population chooses not be locked out over freedom, and could easily allow the government to start encrypting their data and services locking you out. The whole internet would be divided into its majority, and the "locked out" long-forgotten Linux users.
the process of the free market means demand will rise for computers that don't lock us out,
Just like the process of the free market gave rise to:
Open standards (Microsoft Office)
Open APIs (Direct X, Windows, etc)
Great Music and competition (RIAA, MPAA)
The free market has really proven itself, especially in the computing world.
I am sure many more such great examples exist, showing how the free market always guarantees that our freedom, just like quality is always top priority of the companies.
We can continue to entrust our freedom with it, and all will be well.
Slashdot Mirror
If it did show you the mail instead of the gray area of your screen, you can still ignore it.
If it doesn't show you the mail instead of the gray area, you have to work for around 4-5 seconds to get it to show. When its just 0.5 second to switch between Windows, most people prefer to switch.
I find switching back and forth between windows when the screen is mostly wasted space absurd.
There's no problem if you want to tell the computer: "Don't show me this", but you should be able to tell the computer what you want to see, and have the computer do the work of finding a proper arrangement. Arranging graphical sprites in a space so that the wanted ones are seen is a perfectly solvable problem.
Even when it is obvious how to put the papers so they are all seen, the computer waits for YOU to do it.
Specifying which parts I want to see by clicking on them in some way, allows the computer to arrange the windows for me, according to my specifications.
You don't need me to explain it. Both Nelson Mandella and Bishop Desmond Tutu have called it apartheid.
Appeal to authority, eh?
Why can't you make a single point based on facts or citings?
You keep appealing to authority, slogans, propaganda and generalisms.
Is it simply that you don't have the facts, and you are just repeating 2nd hand propaganda, out of sheer ignorance?
I already told you. End the apartheid is palestine, obey all UN resolutions, act like civlized people.
And I already explained: There is no apartheid, and there's no similarity between the apartheid and the Palestinian territories. Obeying all of the UN resolutions would mean the destruction of the state of Israel, so that's not practical either. Acting like a "civilized people" is a luxury people in the state of war don't always have. Just ask the British and Americans in WWII.
The israeli experiment has failed.
It seems to be economically successful and serves its purpose of serving as a refuge for Jews around the world from persecution. So what is this based on?
It is a nation which can only survive if it wages a perpetual war.
The situation is improving though. Peace with Egypt and Jordan already done. Peace with Syria and Lebanon is possible in the future. The Palestinians will probably take longer, but they're a difficult nut, they just won't cease the violecne.
You keep saying that the occupation of palestine is war and that israel is at war with the palestenians. That's a thirty year war!
Indeed.
If israel is at war then it should treat all palestenians prisoners as prisoners of war and yes that means no torture and full geneva rights.
The Palestinians have self-government and the war is of limited scale and not against the Palestinian people - but against the Palestinian militant organizations. Israel does not use torture except when life is under immediate threat. Again, if you think otherwise, bring citations or shut up.
What Geneva rights does Israel not give the Palestinians?
If israel is not able to survive without waging a perpetual war against it's neighbors then it's a failure.
Its more of the neighbours waging perpetual war against Israel than the other way around, but us in Israel hope for the arab nations to eventually come to the conclusion that Israel is a fact and here to stay - and sign a peace contract.
Democracies are not supposed to wage thirty year wars. Civilized people find a way to get along even if it means compromising sometimes.
Israel did find the way - the Palestinians didn't. See the Camp David accords as an example. Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians pretty much everything they asked for, and Clinton approves of this. The Palestinians declined and instead started the second violent streak of the intifada.
I will repeat myself. You are jewish supremacist.
Yes, you keep repeating the same propaganda and slogans, without anything behind them.
You speak out of ignorance, and judge without facts.
You are no different then any skinhead or any member of the KKK.
Hah. You are stupid.
You will excuse anything done by israel. Anyting at all. Torture, killing, kidnapping, destroying of an entire country (twice!), apartheid, occupation, stealing land and murder. You see nothing wrong with anything israel is doing. You can't even admit that israel could be a little wrong.
Actually, I already admitted a wrong Israel did, so now you are a liar too. I said Israel was wrong in settling the territories beyond the green lines, and that Israel is now correcting this, even though the Palestinians are making sure it is not beneficial for Israel.
Torture is in some cases justified (See "24" Pallmer torture as an example). Killing of terrorists plotting to blow up buses and restaurants is justified. Kidnapping terrorist leaders to try them in a court of law is justified. Israel never destroyed a country,
Some obvious trivial faults:
For reference, just look at your screen now, and watch how much of it is covered by empty "gray areas". When you open a new window, does it hide gray areas, or real information?
This is even more absurd when there are just a couple of windows, hiding each other, when the entire screen is free space! The computer expects YOU to work for HIM and move these windows from hiding each other.
This phonemenon is also felt in list boxes, where you are expected to adjust the column widths manually to not be too short/too long, even when there is an optimal adjustment readily available. You again have to work for the computer, and ask for a ctrl+plus to set it up. Most people don't even know about ctrl+plus in column-listboxes.
Some programs make it even worse, and don't let you resize their windows when the entire screen is free, and you have to scroll through their data in a little window.
What's so fascinating about this example - is how common it is across platforms, programs, operating systems.
The feature is called "shortcut keys" and yet everyone is implementing it as "shortcut symbols".
This is terrible - when you switch between languages, all shortcut keys break!
The fact that fixing this would require modifications of all existing GUI programs is a certificate of poor architecture of GUI software.
There are many more trivial issues to fix. Until they fix these, I find it very funny to talk about future directions for the User Interface. We haven't even gotten the basics right yet!
No I am saying it should not abuse that army or use it to enforce apartheid.
"Apartheid"? Please explain how Israel or its army is similar to the Apartheid.
Please explain how Israel could be more compassionate and still survive.
Stop spewing buzz words and chimes.
Say what actual actions you think Israel should do - and what the consequences you think there will be.
If you don't know - which you probably don't - then try not to speak or form an opinion out of ignorance, like the rest of the herd.
Is that like only obeying "reasonable" laws or only obeying laws you approve of. Israel should obey all resolutions.
A person should indeed not obey every law.
Germans should not have obeyed German law in WWII.
Morals and the good of your nation and human kind are more important than law.
Bullshit. Israel routinely tortures people. I mean every day.
Then cite sources. Show this torture was not used to directly save the lives of many from the next terrorist attacks. And you still haven't answered my question about Pallmer's torture in "24".
Does it charge them and try them or simply jail them and torture them?
It tries them and charges them - and their punishment is sitting in Israeli jails - which is exactly what they're doing.
Civilized nations don't do this. If I murder or rape or steal the govt does not destroy my parents house even if they fed me or gave me money. Only barbaric states do this.
Suicide bombings are barbaric. The families receive large financial incentives after such actions. Destruction of the house is not esthetic and not appealing, but its a practical counter to the financial backing and its problematic morality is negligible with comparison to the terrorist act itself and the possibility of prevention such future acts.
Well that's a pack of lies.
If they are lies - then cite sources to explain how they are lies.
You are merely throwing vague empty statements like "Israel is evil", "Those are lies" without saying what is true or citing sources.
You are obviously speaking out of ignorance, and you obviously have built your opinion of Israel and the conflict by listening to propaganda and others' opinions. You have little to no knowledge of the actual facts, and as such: You are in no position to judge Israel or its actions.
Anyway you have proved my point. You are a jewish supremacist. You are willing to justify any action, any act of barbarism, torture, stealing land, destroying property (are all lebanese your enemy? were every one of those million homeless lebanese your enemy?), any and all kinds of horrible things done as long as they are done by jews against arabs.
No, I am willing to justify acts of war as long as they are done as a part of a just war. And almost the entire world, including Arab countries, agree that Israel is fighting a just war.
I am beginning to wonder if you know what the word "supremacist" means.
As for your question: "are all lebanese your enemy? were every one of those million homeless lebanese your enemy?".
Its a good question - and it has a good answer. Israel only destroyed the Lebanese homes that were hosting Hezbollah terrorists and their weapons.
If Israel had wanted, and if the citizens of Lebanon were actually Israel's enemy, then Israel could have flattened out the entire south Lebanon and a whole lot more than 1000 Lebanese would be killed.
Israel managed to harm few civilians despite Hezbollah's hiding amongst civilians.
Just another racist pig in a world full of them. There is no difference between a nazi white supremacist or a member of the KKK and you.
Oh really? What similarities do you see?
Both of you see yourselves as victims in a "war" and both of you don't see your "enemies" as human beings who suffer.
We are victims of the war, and so are the Lebanese who are human beings who suffe
Only people who are completely detached from reality believe that the survival of israel is at stake. Israel has one of the biggest armies in the world, it also has over 300 nukes. Israel is backed by the US who is willing to kill every single human being on the planet in order to assure the survival of israel.
Are you realizing the silly paradox you are raising in your own statements?
You are saying, Israel has no problem of survival because it has a large army it can use.
Then you are saying, Israel must not use that army, because it should be more compassionate.
Israel survival is at stake if it cannot use the army, as you are proposing, to prevent attacks from Hezbollah and the Palestinians.
Obey all 50+ UN resolutions it's in violation of.
Israel obeys every reasonable resolution of the UN. The UN has a history of bias against Israel in its resolution, and many of them are not implementable, not without tramendous risk to the interests and even survival of Israel.
Stop tortuing people.
Israel uses torture only in the rare cases of "ticking time bombs" where the torture is necessary to save lives. Do you agree with the use of torture in "24", where Pallmer uses torture to find out the location of the nuke?
Stop stealing land.
Israel has not only stopped to "steal land", it is giving back all the land it has settled for many years, because it is out of the agreed "green line". Not that any of it is working for Israel, as every land given back is used to attack and kill more Israelis.
Stop jailing people without charges and trials.
Israel does not do this.
Stop jailing children.
Israel will stop arresting Juveniles, when the Palestinians stop sending Juveniles to try and kill Israelis.
Stop assassinating people.
Israel's assasination policy has proven extremely effective in the fight against terror. The terrorist success against Israel has dropped incredibly in the past few years, and much of this success is attribute to the assasination policy.
Israel is at war with the Palestinian militants, who aim and plan to murder its citizens, and has every right to preemptively act against them in order to save dozens and hundreds of innocent Israelis.
It is a sad fact that they hide amongst civilians, but that does not buy them immunity from Israeli attack.
Stop destroying other peoples property.
Again, Israel is at war, and property is only destroyed as part of war, and as retaliation to suicide bombings.
One of the main incentives for suicide bombers is that their families are financially rewarded. Being unable to retaliate against a suicide bomber, a proper retaliation and a counter-measure to the financial reward is to destroy the homes of the families that send terrorist bombers to kill civilians.
In other words act like civilized people.
Would you ask Churchil to do that in WWII?
Those things are immoral you know, I think even the god of the jews probably doesn't approve of torturing and stealing.
Pacifism is nice, but it doesn't work. Israel is at war, and many of the things you mention are true, but simply justifiable and are a last resort in the fight Israel is in. If Israel does not apply these measures, it will lose the war and not survive.
I don't expect any of these words to have any effect on you however. You are a bigot and a supremacists.
You keep using ad-hominem attacks, without basing them on anything. Though your statement about the "even the god of the Jews" sounds to me like you're the bigot.
You don't register the suffering of any human being who is not a jew.
Again, would you say that to Churchil, about the suffering of the Germans?
To you the only suffering that matters is that of the jew and in order to ease their suffering the jews are justified in causing any degree of harm to any number of n
Yes. They can also be more compassionate towards the palestenians.
Again you just don't care about the suffering of arabs. Most likely because you are a jewish supremacists.
How can Israel be more compassionate to the Lebanese and Palestinians, and still survive?
If Israel stops shooting at Hezbollah, to stop harming citizens, then Hezbollah will continue to kill and kidnap Israelis. If Israel does not respond, then they will escalate for as long as Israel does not respond.
If Israel removes the checkpoints in the Palestinian territories, then Palestinians will be back to blowing up in Israel.
The only real thing Israel is doing wrong is settling near Palestinian population centers, out of the "green line". And note that Israel is working on correcting this, and dismantling those settlements (though at great loss of life, as every settlement evacuated truly becomes a basis for Palestinian attacks).
So, how do you propose Israel should act?
The difference is, that the non-pacifists to attack always exist.
But not the palestenians or the lebanese right?
The only reason Hezbollah has any fighters left is because Israel is being compassionate to Lebanese citizens, and tries to pinpoint Hezbollah fighters and rocket launchers amidst residential areas full of citizens. These citizens are sometimes not allowed to leave by Hezbollah, because they need them as Human shields.
Can Israel be more compassionate to the Lebanese?
Israel would be extinct without our aid, obviously.
A common misconception.
You do realize Israel only started receiving aid in 1973, and even then, it was due to an emergency and fear of a crisis, and no real crisis, don't you?
Israel would definitely survive without US support, and the support it received has indeed enlarged the economy and improved the army (of both Israel and the US) but it has also costed Israel the cancellation of weapons trade with China, the development of fighter jets, and many other projects.
Not only that, but really if you want to go the whole way on that, the Caananites had it first, even by Jewish reckoning. I have no problem giving the land back to their descendants. Do you?
Not that I think any of the "who was here first" has any relevance, but just as an anecdote: There are no Caananites left.
Simply put, because there's more usable, unoccupied land in Brazil than in the middle east.
Israel was mainly a large desert waskteland before the Jews arrived. Inhabited by Arab tribes mainly doing agriculture. There was a lot of "usable, unoccupied land". Once Jews came and brought their work and money with them, this land became prosporous and attracted inhabitants from surrounding Arab countries. Jews and Arabs had no bad relations before this settlement, and any other country set up would probably be just as bad.
But that wouldn't satisfy the people who believe, rather irrationally, that the Jews *need* a state (as if a concentrated effort by a organized nation state couldn't conquer them just as well all in one place as Nazi Germany did with them spread out across Europe), nor the American evangelicals who believe the return to existence of Israel is a sign of imminent messianic return.
There is a wide consensus that one of the main reasons for hatered of Jews and the Holocaust in Europe was that they were a nation without a country. They were spread all over Europe with strong nationalistic ties but not always only to their country. Having people in a European country during the strongly nationalistic era of the 1920's and 30's, who are not pure nationalists but are also a nation of their own produces a lot of anger and hatred.
Not only this - but having no nation, there is no solution for a persecuted family.
Israel gives this solution to Jews, like there's a solution to almost every other nationality in the world.
Almost everybody lies.
By that definition, almost everyone is a liar.
So don't be too hard on yourself. You only lied a little white lie about using a lot of Python.
Its really no big deal.
As you know, automatic multi-threading is an unsolved problem.
:-)
Ofcourse (except for purely functional languages, that is), that's why my first suggestion only applies to multithreaded code, just as multicore cpu's do today.
Your multi-stack VLIW idea is very interesting, but even that would be damn difficult for a compiler to take advantage of.
As it was difficult in the original VLIW, wasn't it?
Though I think it should be just as simple and probably a lot simpler than the compiler doing a lot of shuffling in order to perform multiple unrelated parallel jobs on the same stack...
The compiler could deduce that multiple expressions it needs to calculate are indeed unrelated and split them into multiple VLIW's...
Perhaps even the compiler can expose a different interface in the high-level language to allow explicit use of this VLIW parallelism - but that is another difficult idea
If a stack machine is that much simpler, couldn't you either have:
- A vast amount of cores for many unrelated threads
- Or: Multiple pipelines and explicit division of instructions into the pipelines?
The second refers to an instruction coding similar to VLIW such that you parallelise the code on multiple stacks but it still shares an instruction/data cache and allows for parallelism without heavy multi-threading at the high-level (and instead having parallelism as a compiler optimization at the low-level).My tendency is to use functions for code that will be repeated at some point.
I strongly disagree with this method. I agree with the whole functions' section in the Linux kernel coding style.
I think that you should divide functions such that each function is trivial and more importantly trivially verifiable. With good naming conventions and division of responsibilities, you don't need to "jump between functions" as you only read the functions for implementation details. The interface and what they do should be fairly obvious.
A large function will most likely host bugs, while a tiny function that does exactly one thing (no more, and no less) will most likely be bug-free.
Division into functions is not a simple matter though, there are many criterions for the division of functions (wrappers, chronological, implementation hiding, indirection, code repeatability, etc).
I still maintain that you can't have too many comments. I would recommend commenting the end of any block, including a function block, that might often have the top of the block not on the same screen, just to make quick navigation easier.
I disagree here too. The best documentation is self-documenting code, and bad documentation is worse than no documentation.
The problem with redundant comments (such as "if X: end block" and such) is not just the time they take to write and the visual noise they add, but most importantly, it is that these comments are almost never up-to-date. Nobody bothers to update such redundant comments, and they become bad documentation.
If you can replace a comment with a descriptive variable assignment, e.g instead of:
# We blit the image into the center position:
image.blit((WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2))
Use:
center_position = (WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2)
image.blit(center_position)
The variable assignment will remain correct and kept up-to-date. The comment is likely to grow out of sync with the code, and even if it doesn't - the reader is not sure whether to trust the comments. Remember that the code is the most accurate documentation.
None taken, python fan boys wishing reality were different is well documented.
:-)
.." blocks except in macros that don't want their lexical parser to steal an "else" from after the macro (when it includes an "if").
... {} is an empty block, pass is a workaround because blocks can't be empty ... mentally everytime I do it instead of thinking I don't need to put anything in that block ... I have to actively think "I need to put pass there, because there isn't an invisible block".
... because it sucks ... due to the whitespace being significant thing. Sometimes this is very nice to do when you have much more html than code, and it works fine with every other language. Think about putting code in xml processing instructions, for example.
See, you did it again.
I can take your becoming offensive as strong evidence that you indeed lied there.
Ofcourse my belief that was a lie is simply based on experience arguing with several real-life developers who lie that they used Python because they know that otherwise their whitespace knee-jerk reaction is silly and they are portrayed as dumb.
You mis-spelt "of course they don't work, you have to use this totally different editor feature", there you go wishing reality away again. I can see how you must get used to it after a while and forget you're doing it.
Wow. Use a totally different editor feature
So you mean that if I want to learn Python.. there are two extra key shortcuts I have to remember in my editor?
It is really so efficient of C and C++ to share the "indent this code" key because that way I really don't have to specifically remember that extra one key.
You realize how ridiculous it is to claim that requiring an editor feature for efficient copy and paste makes a language unusable?
You are using copy&paste, and indent-this-code and other features which are already specialized for each specific language.
if (0) {}
else if (x)
{
}
else if (y)
{
}
What's wrong with the straight-forward if ((!0) && (x)) ? It makes it quite a lot more clear what you're trying to test.
That's the most obvious use.
I don't think I've ever seen use of "if(..) {} else
It's also not so much about the keystrokes, as the meaning
"pass" is syntax for empty-block. The two are equivalent and if you indeed used Python and required a lot of it, then "empty" and "pass" would become synonomous in your brain. They haven't, which is further evidence that you did not really use Python a lot.
Also, the only cases where I really find myself using "pass" is to define little exception classes, or when I create a lot of singletons via subclassing. In those cases, it looks like:
class MyException(Exception): pass
in which the pass has little to no overhead.
It's a problem because whitespace is significant, and I'm not surprised you don't do it with python
Actually I don't do it in Python because I don't do it in any language.
I am not a web developer, and have not much experience in that area. Perhaps a more experienced web Python developer could respond better about Python and HTML mixing.
The SSI bit is basically an extension to this, you build a large xml/html document from many smaller ones (that, again, have code in them) this causes even bigger problems with python, because seperate blocks can magically merge together.
Again, web programming is not my thing.
Yes, welcome to python party line reality again. People don't "read" the syntax, but they _sure as hell_ parse it and use it as visual indicators -- which sane people regard as "reading" the source.
No, people don't read the syntax, they read the indentation. Sometimes they check the {} too for consistency with the indentation, but they are not the source of information. Ask a lot of C developers what
When I first learnt python I assumed the whitespace thing would be no big deal, it's only after using it for a while that I saw how moronic it was.
... you can argue that all blocks should fit on a screen, but this isn't true in the core python code.
No offence, but I believe you are lying here. I mean, I think that a little white lie of "yeah I used it a lot and then I thought so" is much easier on your keyboard and much more probable than you ACTUALLY USING PYTHON and disliking the whitespace. People who actually use Python for REAL work, really tend to become fans of the significant whitespace.
10 year old editor habits don't work anymore, Ie. copy & paste & reindent almost never "just works". This is with an editor (xemacs) that has a lot of python support.
Ofcourse copy&paste and reindent work. Just use the emacs python-mode shortcut: C-c,l and C-c,r to move the block left or right to where you want it.
Sure, "reindent" may be easier, but only because you bothered to create those little empty lines containing just "{" or "}" that push REAL code out of the screen, and let you decide at what nest-level you want the code (before or after the "}"). Deciding via C-c,l and C-c,r is just as easy, and saves a lot of screen-space.
it means you have to sprinkle "pass" warts everywhere, because it can't deal with empty blocks
Huh? How many empty blocks do you have? What exactly are you writing?
How much longer is "pass" than "{}"? (hint, if you measure in keystrokes its even less)
writing code inside other languages (like html) is much harder
I don't nest my code in HTML, and I'm not sure why that would be a problem, or why I would want to nest my code in HTML and not the other way around. Hell, I'd want to write higher-level descriptions of content and let the HTML be auto-generated, but that's another discussion altogether.
likewise getting code from multiple places is basically impossible (think html + SSI)
I'm not following you in this one.
IT IS harder to read, you've removed the "ends block" visual marker. You can't easily line up the end of a block with the start of a block
This is simply untrue, and a silly claim.
NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY reads the {} when they read C/C++/Java code. Everybody reads the indentation, and only the indentation. The ONLY one who reads {} is the compiler.
Blocks larger than the screen are unreadable with or without {}. Why do you think the closer } makes anything easier to read if the opener is out of the screen?
In fact, having no {} lines makes more things fit the screen, so if anything, blocks larger than the screen are easier with indentation-based languages.
What do you make of the following C code:
if(5 == x)
a = 1;
evil_stuff_here();
How about:
for(x=0; x<100; ++x);
{
printf("%d\n", x);
}
Python makes these kinds of somewhat-subtle mistakes impossible, by uniting the human-readable mark of nesting (indentation) with the compiler one, instead of having two, possibly incompatible marks.
You can't create blocks on their own (without doing if True: before it), all other languages allow this that I know of
Hmm, if it gets its own block, what's wrong with putting it in a function?
I am not sure what you want here, exactly.
You can't break the indentation rules for a 1 line patch to add an if statement.
And that's a good thing.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
The trade-off between the fraction of a second indentation takes, and the potential for bugs due to mismatches of the visual indentation and the meaning of the code is clear.
You really should be forced, for the good of the readers of that code (which are far more important than the writer, as reading code is much harder than writing it) to indent it properly.
In a large program, though, I do tend to use comments to identify the end of blocks.
To me, this implies that in a large program, you have very large blocks.
Why don't you just divide them up into very small functions so that each function is trivial and very easy to verify for correctness, and incidentally very easy to follow the indentation of?
No no, what I meant was: Show me a Scheme program that takes less code than Python OR that the Python code is not more readable. That's EASIER to show than showing BOTH of the conditions.
Can you do it? Saying "Scheme is more expressive" requires some backing up.
And there was still no reply about Scheme with or without macros.
Can't a large mail provider use its access to millions of sent messages to gather extra statistics about "repeated patterns" which can help it identify spam more effectively?
Like what?
Many of us Pythoneers have been there. Exactly where you are, bitching about the "whitespace".
.. but .. its just wrong!"
:-)
Only after using it for a little while we understood that we can never go back.
The way I resisted whitespace in the beginning now seems so stupid..
There really is no real claim against significant whitespace except the knee-jerk reaction of ".. but
If you actually try to use Python, you'll never want to go back to cluttering your visual space with unnecessary noise {}.
There's always the obvious option of using #{ and #} around your indented blocks
The language is simpler than the others yet for more expressive and powerful. Learn something. Use it!
Oh is it?
Scheme with or without macros?
Scheme without macros is a laughably weak language compared to Python.
Scheme with macros can not be said to be simpler than Python.
More expressive? Show me any good expressive Scheme program that can not be expressed with round-the-same-length Python program, that is also easier on the eyes?
Eh...
What freedoms are we giving up now with the GPLv3?
No, the worst case scenario is that you are locked out of:
Actually that's just the "lock out" worst case. There are much worse scenarios:
Of course you are only affected by the second if you choose not to be locked out. We can already see that the vast majority of the population chooses not be locked out over freedom, and could easily allow the government to start encrypting their data and services locking you out. The whole internet would be divided into its majority, and the "locked out" long-forgotten Linux users.
Just like the process of the free market gave rise to:
The free market has really proven itself, especially in the computing world.
I am sure many more such great examples exist, showing how the free market always guarantees that our freedom, just like quality is always top priority of the companies.
We can continue to entrust our freedom with it, and all will be well.