With cut-and-paste and modern editors, there is little reason for short variable names.
Structure is more important than documentation because you can't document something that doesn't make sense, and even if you could you wouldn't know where to put the comments. In a well structured program each section (not each line - that's overkill) will have a clearly defined purpose and comments will be easy to write.
Perhaps the reason Hollywood has so much trouble with Sci-Fi is that so many Sci-Fi fans are engineering and science geeks while Hollywood is made up of artsy-types.
I never did like the way the internet was a government program. Spam, pop-up ads, the digital-divide that separats those who can pay $40/month from those who can't, internet viruses, credit card numbers stolen over the internet - all the symptoms of the government sticking it's nose where it shouldn't.
It makes a really interesting thought experiment to consider what would have happened without government involvement.
For example, I would have started doing computer-based banking much earlier because my bank would have provided phone-lines for me to call into so 1. I could use my modem as cheaply as making a phone call instead of paying high rates for internet access and 2. I wouldn't have to worry about who was eavesdropping.
My favorite part of living overseas was not being able to understand the advertisements. Did I violate the social contract by seeing the ads without getting out a dictionary to translate them? Using an ad blocker could be compared to purposely forgetting a language.
I have friends, including my current SO, who are not from English-speaking countries but speak English pretty well. Not one of them has been able to enjoy my favorite comedic literature due to the cultural and/or lingustic barriers. In making the film have you taken any special steps to make the material accessible to international audiences? Is it even possible to do so without ruining the material?
"What China does is *immaterial*. What Hitler did is immaterial. What Pol Pot did is immaterial. The United States is doing these things NOW. That is ALL that matters. Any noise to the contrary is just to try to distract you."
"We can't preach from the moral high ground if we're not ON the moral high ground. How can we expect other countries to live up to ethical rules that we're willing to ignore whenever we find them inconvenient?"
I once saw a murder being committed. I almost stepped in and stopped it, but then I remember that I had once stolen a pencil when I was in elementary school. Well, I realized that with that burden of guilt I was in no position to claim the moral high ground and interfere with someone else's crime.
A basic problem is people don't know what the first amendment says. It is common quoted as saying "freedom of expression" and "separation of church and state". It says neither. The amendment as commonly stated does go to far.
The right to freedom of speech was put there to protect the right of people to criticize their government and other powerful people, with no intention that it protect naughty pictures. Now with Supreme Court rulings and campaign finance laws, dirty pictures are protected but criticizing the government is not. No wonder kids are confused.
And let's not forget that the first amendment says congress may not make a law "respecting an establishment of religion or restricting the practice thereof". You can't pick out a religion for special treatment, and you can't make a law that restricts religious practice unless that law is necessary to protect other constitutional rights. Pretty simple.
If "separation of church and state" is in the first amendment, why is the state allowed to enter church property to make an arrest? Why are crimes committed on church property prosecutable?
Every time I read here on/. about how 'professional' programmers seem to think that it's to hard to actually take the time and effort to write failsafe code
So you can write 100 lines of code with no mistakes but you can't write 27 lines of text without misspelling "too"?
As you have demonstrated, stuff happens.
How about stopping bin Laden when they were warned?
It couldn't have anything to do with Saudi Arabia, and bin Laden's brother, Bush's corporate sponsor?
Or the unprecedented power and denial Bush has won in the wake of the attacks?
Why do you think any of those things would have something to do with Clinton failing accept Bin Laden when Sudan offered him? Or with Clinton's failure to do anything at all about the serious problems with terrorist attacks against America and acts of war against the American military? Did Clinton really love the Bush's that much?
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them?>
It's only happened to me every single time I've flown to someplace outside my home country since my first international flight in 1992.
But other than that? Naw, never.
I've read most of the book even though I don't normally read math books. I picked up this one because I was familiar with the author's political commentary and I knew his writing was easy to follow and pleasantly written.
Most of the book is pretty easy to follow, but there are some concepts near the end that are difficult to wrap your mind around even if you are able to follow the individual steps (which the author makes it easy to do).
Why would you expect him to take a cheap shot at Alan Turing? I've been a fan of the Mr. Derbyshire's writing for a few years and I haven't seen him take many cheap shots at anyone. I don't agree with all of his opinions, particularly some of those he admits are not considered proper by most people, but he seems honest about his reasons for them and there seems to be no hint of hatred behind them. Whatever his beliefs, he writes like a gentleman and shows sympathy for people of all races and sexual orientation. Instead of worrying about non-existent cheap shots at Alan Turing, you should be more concerned about cheap shots at John Derbyshire.
As a species we have definitely become too concerned about safety in exploration. Can't shoot people up to space because they might get killed? Well, duh? What if the explorers like Magellan or Vasco da Game had thought about it like that?
In Magellan's time, unmanned exploration was prohibitively expensive. In our era, manned exploration is more expensive. If the goal is to explore as much as possible, unmanned is the way to go for now.
If the goal is to persuade the purse-string holders that manned space flight is necessary, we need to find something in space that will justify people there. That means we need to explore.
Space tourism is the only valid reason to be sending humans into space right now, and private industry is rapidly moving toward making that a reality. NASA should continue to focus on cutting-edge unmanned exploration.
"'Real' American? Unless your family was hunting buffalo here thousands of years ago, you're just a newbie tourist."
"I believe native americans immigrated too, just thousands of years earlier across the land bridge. There are no "real" americans."
I was born and raised in America. I think that's good enough no matter who my ancestors were or what they looked like.
We do need an immigration policy, the American Indians would have been a lot better off with effective immigration control.
As for what that policy should be, bring the Indian programmers over here. Bring as many as possible. I would rather compete for a job with an Indian programmer wanting $80K in Silicone Valley so he can afford an air-conditioned shack than an Indian programmer wanting $20K in India so he can have a gang of servants and live in a palace.
I don't think culture has that much to do with it. Imagine you're American have $20,000 to spend. You could buy a car and drive the highways and cruise for chicks. You could redo the cabinets in your kitchen or add an enclosed deck to your home. You could buy 5 acres of land out in the country.
Now imagine you're Japanese and have $20,000 to spend. You could buy a car and have no place to park it. You could add an extra square foot onto your home.
The Japanese just don't have as many spending options as Americans do. Americans can buy most things a lot cheaper. But electronics cost about the same. So as a Japanese person it makes more sense to spend your money on electronics because you get good value for money. An American has more opportunities to get good value for money buying other things.
Taiwan's government no long claims China. Even the name "Republic of China" is out of date. The only reason it hasn't been changed is the fear of war with China. In fact most Taiwanese did not come from Taiwan (though their ancestors may have). Most Taiwanese today do not consider Taiwan part of China.
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short, descriptive variable names
Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
With cut-and-paste and modern editors, there is little reason for short variable names.
Structure is more important than documentation because you can't document something that doesn't make sense, and even if you could you wouldn't know where to put the comments. In a well structured program each section (not each line - that's overkill) will have a clearly defined purpose and comments will be easy to write.
Perhaps the reason Hollywood has so much trouble with Sci-Fi is that so many Sci-Fi fans are engineering and science geeks while Hollywood is made up of artsy-types.
It makes a really interesting thought experiment to consider what would have happened without government involvement.
For example, I would have started doing computer-based banking much earlier because my bank would have provided phone-lines for me to call into so 1. I could use my modem as cheaply as making a phone call instead of paying high rates for internet access and 2. I wouldn't have to worry about who was eavesdropping.
My favorite part of living overseas was not being able to understand the advertisements. Did I violate the social contract by seeing the ads without getting out a dictionary to translate them? Using an ad blocker could be compared to purposely forgetting a language.
I have friends, including my current SO, who are not from English-speaking countries but speak English pretty well. Not one of them has been able to enjoy my favorite comedic literature due to the cultural and/or lingustic barriers. In making the film have you taken any special steps to make the material accessible to international audiences? Is it even possible to do so without ruining the material?
"What China does is *immaterial*. What Hitler did is immaterial. What Pol Pot did is immaterial. The United States is doing these things NOW. That is ALL that matters. Any noise to the contrary is just to try to distract you."
"We can't preach from the moral high ground if we're not ON the moral high ground. How can we expect other countries to live up to ethical rules that we're willing to ignore whenever we find them inconvenient?"
I once saw a murder being committed. I almost stepped in and stopped it, but then I remember that I had once stolen a pencil when I was in elementary school. Well, I realized that with that burden of guilt I was in no position to claim the moral high ground and interfere with someone else's crime.
No sunbathing at the north pole this year.
A basic problem is people don't know what the first amendment says. It is common quoted as saying "freedom of expression" and "separation of church and state". It says neither. The amendment as commonly stated does go to far.
The right to freedom of speech was put there to protect the right of people to criticize their government and other powerful people, with no intention that it protect naughty pictures. Now with Supreme Court rulings and campaign finance laws, dirty pictures are protected but criticizing the government is not. No wonder kids are confused.
And let's not forget that the first amendment says congress may not make a law "respecting an establishment of religion or restricting the practice thereof". You can't pick out a religion for special treatment, and you can't make a law that restricts religious practice unless that law is necessary to protect other constitutional rights. Pretty simple.
If "separation of church and state" is in the first amendment, why is the state allowed to enter church property to make an arrest? Why are crimes committed on church property prosecutable?
As I just demonstrated myself by marking the wrong "to" in bold :P
Every time I read here on /. about how 'professional' programmers seem to think that it's to hard to actually take the time and effort to write failsafe code
So you can write 100 lines of code with no mistakes but you can't write 27 lines of text without misspelling "too"? As you have demonstrated, stuff happens.
How about stopping bin Laden when they were warned?
It couldn't have anything to do with Saudi Arabia, and bin Laden's brother, Bush's corporate sponsor?
Or the unprecedented power and denial Bush has won in the wake of the attacks?
Why do you think any of those things would have something to do with Clinton failing accept Bin Laden when Sudan offered him? Or with Clinton's failure to do anything at all about the serious problems with terrorist attacks against America and acts of war against the American military? Did Clinton really love the Bush's that much?
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them?> It's only happened to me every single time I've flown to someplace outside my home country since my first international flight in 1992. But other than that? Naw, never.
I hope you don't work in one of those non-earthquake-proof buildings in St. Louis just a couple hundred miles from the New Madrid Fault.
I've seen what rock mines can do to a mountain. Give the miners a few years and they can dismantle the volcano piece by piece.
This sounds promising. Is there some way they could force it to break up like they do with potential avalanches in Alaska?
I've read most of the book even though I don't normally read math books. I picked up this one because I was familiar with the author's political commentary and I knew his writing was easy to follow and pleasantly written.
Most of the book is pretty easy to follow, but there are some concepts near the end that are difficult to wrap your mind around even if you are able to follow the individual steps (which the author makes it easy to do).
Why would you expect him to take a cheap shot at Alan Turing? I've been a fan of the Mr. Derbyshire's writing for a few years and I haven't seen him take many cheap shots at anyone. I don't agree with all of his opinions, particularly some of those he admits are not considered proper by most people, but he seems honest about his reasons for them and there seems to be no hint of hatred behind them. Whatever his beliefs, he writes like a gentleman and shows sympathy for people of all races and sexual orientation. Instead of worrying about non-existent cheap shots at Alan Turing, you should be more concerned about cheap shots at John Derbyshire.
As a species we have definitely become too concerned about safety in exploration. Can't shoot people up to space because they might get killed? Well, duh? What if the explorers like Magellan or Vasco da Game had thought about it like that? In Magellan's time, unmanned exploration was prohibitively expensive. In our era, manned exploration is more expensive. If the goal is to explore as much as possible, unmanned is the way to go for now. If the goal is to persuade the purse-string holders that manned space flight is necessary, we need to find something in space that will justify people there. That means we need to explore. Space tourism is the only valid reason to be sending humans into space right now, and private industry is rapidly moving toward making that a reality. NASA should continue to focus on cutting-edge unmanned exploration.
"'Real' American? Unless your family was hunting buffalo here thousands of years ago, you're just a newbie tourist."
"I believe native americans immigrated too, just thousands of years earlier across the land bridge. There are no "real" americans."
I was born and raised in America. I think that's good enough no matter who my ancestors were or what they looked like.
We do need an immigration policy, the American Indians would have been a lot better off with effective immigration control.
As for what that policy should be, bring the Indian programmers over here. Bring as many as possible. I would rather compete for a job with an Indian programmer wanting $80K in Silicone Valley so he can afford an air-conditioned shack than an Indian programmer wanting $20K in India so he can have a gang of servants and live in a palace.
I don't think culture has that much to do with it. Imagine you're American have $20,000 to spend. You could buy a car and drive the highways and cruise for chicks. You could redo the cabinets in your kitchen or add an enclosed deck to your home. You could buy 5 acres of land out in the country. Now imagine you're Japanese and have $20,000 to spend. You could buy a car and have no place to park it. You could add an extra square foot onto your home. The Japanese just don't have as many spending options as Americans do. Americans can buy most things a lot cheaper. But electronics cost about the same. So as a Japanese person it makes more sense to spend your money on electronics because you get good value for money. An American has more opportunities to get good value for money buying other things.
Taiwan's government no long claims China. Even the name "Republic of China" is out of date. The only reason it hasn't been changed is the fear of war with China. In fact most Taiwanese did not come from Taiwan (though their ancestors may have). Most Taiwanese today do not consider Taiwan part of China.