How does dubbing a movie that has nothing to do with Navajo culture help preserve Navajo culture?
Using the language helps preserve it. Preserving the language helps preserve the culture.
It seems a bit insulting, the insinuation being that the whole of their culture is distilled down to their native language.
Ones language and one's culture do tend to be very closely linked. And the death of the language is likely the final nail in the coffin for the culture as well.
All that said, watching dubbed movies is wrong. Watch them in their native tongue with subtitles.
I'm assuming there's no legal reason why one would need to be 18 to get paid for something like this?
Perhaps he needs to be able to enter into a contract? Non-disclosure agreement, etc.
Perhaps he runs afoul of some law preventing children from entering contests... he's in Germany so I'm not aware of any in particular, but Maine for example, has the The Predatory Marketing against Minors Act, which has had the result of companies blocking anyone under the age of 18 from entering various contests because they don't want to risk the liability of being found in violation of this law.
Just lawyers upholding the all holy all important important EULA at the expense of what's fair and what's good PR?
Or just following the law. (Although I'm pretty sure they could do something appropriate to at least recognize him... but this is paypal... paypal sucks.)
Bluetooth earpieces are so annoying because for a lot of people that wear them phone conversations seem to outweigh face to face conversations in importance.
And now, instead of just having something they find more important to listen to, while facing you, they'll have something more important to look at while they are facing you too.
So your first argument is that it would be an enormous expense, your second argument doesn't back your first argument up at all.
Instead you've backpeddled and said pretty much everything is in metric anyway:
For everything where it matters, we've already converted to metric.
But then your last ditch hold out is this:
it doesn't matter because there's zero downside to using Imperial/US units for everyday things.
No there is zero upside. The downside is having to perpetuate two measuring systems. A measuring system that 90% of the world has stopped using.
There is no good reason to keep US units. Teach our kids to use metric, and let the US units die out. There is no reason to keep them them going, generation after generation.
Fahrenheit is a better scale for humans than Celsius and it makes no sense to change.
ONLY american's beleive that. Nobody raised in celsius finds it the least bit awkward to know what to wear or what to expect when they go outside.
You're saying the Reinhistegbot specifies that they use a minimum number of ingredients, and then just handwaves over the fact that one of those ingredients ("water") is actually highly variable ingredient containing a variety of unspecified impurities which are vitally necessary to the process.
But you aren't allowed to start with actual pure water, and add those necessary impurities back in.
The Germans love their beer, and they are a practical people, I'm pretty sure they'll reach a solution quickly.
Because the transition costs are enormous, and the taxpayers don't want to pay for it.
Why are they enormous?
That's a myth predicated on the assumption that we're going to switch overnight. The transition can take place over multiple generations. Nothing that is out there needs to change tomorrow. Only new things going forward should be dual marked.
News & weather starts dual reporting units. New laws and regulations are published in metric with English conversions parenthesized.
New road signs marked with both. Old road signs can stay as they are until they need replacing. If it takes 2-3 generations, so what.
Once >80% of signs are converted over, switch cars speedometers to metric by default. It won't be this generation, or next, maybe not even the one after that. There's no hurry.
Set a time line of 30 years to convert all manufacturing to metric tooling. When new production lines are rolled out they'll roll out in metric. Nobody has to retool anything today. They can retool in metric when they retool the line organically.
He DOES care. He doesn't want to change,
Right. He cares about not changing, he doesn't care what system he uses. But he doesn't have to change. For this generation, nothing changes except things are gradually dual marked and dual reported. This generations Joe Sixpack doesn't have to change.
3 generations from now, everyone is comfortable with both, metric is official and in front, and English is starting to fade the background. All the Joe Sixpacks of today are long dead, and even their kids are winding out their retirement years.
4-5 generations from now, the switch is complete. People still know what the old measurements are, and they know how to convert them when making grandma's traditional thanksgiving stuffing or working on an antique car.
just because it's easier for scientists, many of whom also don't care because they don't have trouble converting when necessary as you seem to?
Its a barrier to scientific literacy when non-scientists aren't familiar with the units scientists use.
Plus pretty much the rest of the world is metric. Eliminating english units isn't just for scientists, it eliminates a needless conversion when bringing anything in or out of the country. Its a pain in the ass to have metric and English tools. To have everything from rulers to wrenches in two formats. Foreign companies manufacturing goods for the US have to comply with US regulations in English units. And Americans exporting to pretty much anywhere have to comply foreign regulations written in metric.
Its not "just scientists" that are affected. There are plenty of real benefits to being on metric... and the cost and resistance to "change" are easily dealt with by doing it very gradually.
You've already laid out that metric makes sense in science and engineering. So we are keeping that.
And if you just use metric units in day to day life they are as easy to use as English units. The rest of the world does it.
What is the point of hanging onto English units as well?
But why should Joe Sixpack give a rat's ass about this? He's not a scientist or engineer, and never, ever does unit conversion.
Precisely. Joe Sixpack doesn't care. So why do we need to preserve the english system for him. He DOESNT care. Raise his kids on metric, and a generation or so from now, the new Joe Sixpacks will use metric without breaking a sweat.
A square mile is a "section", which is 640 acres. Now 640 acres...
Canada managed to cope just fine. I used to live in a rural area where the road network was pretty much a grid, divided into square miles. Converting things to metric didn't bring about the end of the world. People still talk about acreage since the historic size of the plots were even acres - I lived on a 5 acre plot which as you noted were quite common, and since the intersections are a mile apart we'll still use miles when giving directions. And there is no reason to eradicate that.
But the speed limit is 90km/h, farmers know how much property they have in hectares, and the measurements for all the properties in meters is available for legal property descriptions.
OK fine, by all means define the foot in terms of metric; but remove it from all records and from the culture? No. Just. No.
I don't think we need to actively eradicate it. But if we stop using it officially, it will gradually fade into the background. I doubt anyone in rural manitoba is ever going to completely stop using miles given the physical layout of the rural road network. But that's fine.
Aside from that, the Metric system is no less arbitrary than our customary units. The only reason 10 matters is because we have 10 digits on our hands. An alien race might not.
That is the opposite of arbitrary. Yes, we surely use base 10 due to the number of digits on our hands, but metric was designed to fit into base 10. That was not an arbitrary decision. We are not an alien race. Base 10 is natural for us; not arbitrary.
Otherwise, all the metric arguments just boil down to "my arbitrary system is better than yours".
The precise length of a meter is arbitrary; and we both use the same somewhat arbitrary unit of time (seconds) but pretty much everything else derives from that in a natural and logical way. Volume, mass, energy, speed, temperature, force. English units are not linked the same way. There is no defined relationship betwen a gallon and a foot the way there is between a meter and a liter. Or between a pound and a foot the way there is between a kilogram and a meter. A 4 liter jug of milk has a mass of 4 kilograms (for all practical purposes). To equate the arbitrariness of metric and imperial is just delusional.
but Celcius? Fuggedaboutit. Each decade of the Fahrenheit scale has a readily associated "feel" that Celcius can't match.
I've got no issues whatsoever with celsius. Instead of 10 degree feels, its more increments of 5. Its what you grow up with.
They're both arbitrary systems, so it's really just one person's preferance vs. another.
Metric is far less internally arbitrary, and pretty much all the rest of world uses it. Personal preference in my opinion seems to come down to what you grew up with; so raising the next generation in metric will take care of that. There's no real reason for -you- to change though.
Most companies already label their products with both systems which is just fine.
Sure. I don't have a problem with seeing both units. But why not mandate metric be on there? The benefits are clear. What is the harm?
As for roadsigns, the cost would be far too great, and it wouldnt be worth it for what is basically a cosmetic change, and I think would actually make things worse,
It doesn't have to happen overnight. Start with the major highways, and do both units. Gradually filter it down to the other stuff, and in two generations its done. 4 generations down we can remove the mph if we want, or not.
I do not think metric is a better system in daily use.
The goal isn't to utterly eradicate the English system.
I also find the English miles unit size to be more natural, it may be because the English system developed out of practical use in daily applications
As a Canadian, I don't see this at all. The km vs the mile makes no 'natural' difference whatsoever.
I see pounds, feet, and inches being more natural, but not miles.
We are all very used the English system
You get used to whatever you live with. We order deli meat in 100gram increments, we buy milk by the liter, and a good size jar of peanut butter is a kilgram. We know -4 is just below freezing, and that 35 is hot. Its not difficult.
I still think of my own weight in pounds because all the media (TV, magazines, etc) all refer to weight still in pounds. But I know a few nurses etc and they have no trouble thinking in kilograms.
Recipes go either way; because a lot of them are old or from american sources english units are still common. My wife is pretty comfortable in cups or mL.
The only english units that I really think are more natural are feet and inches. But my brother in law works with CAD drawings all day and metal forming, and he can eyeball something in mm or m just fine; and finds it easier than inches or feet.
So my 'intuition' that its more natural is suspect. Its what I grew up with, and its what I'm more used to, but my pre-teen kids have barely been exposed to english units at all, and they live just fine.
If you live with it, you get used to it.
Is it worth converting a population over to metric? No, definitely not. They are used to it, and it works fine for them.
But is it worth gradually shifting a population to metric so that future generations are using metric natively, yes, I think so.
Again with the deliberately awkward interpretations.
Its not 'deliberately awkward'. Its just awkward in its natural state.
In the case of a void pointer either there is one item of size zero, or zero items of any size; take your pick.
That's awkward. One item of size zero is awkward. Zero items of any size is awkward. The idea that either is valid and I can take my pick is awkward. Plus you forgot to mention that it could be many items of zero size too. But these are all just complicated ways of saying 'nothing'.
Its just plain awkward.
The code is perfectly legalâ"you're allowed to have a pointer to the location just past the end of an arrayâ"but there is nothing there.
And you did it all without void* too.
The only difference between p and a void pointer, aside from pointer arithmetic, is that the compiler won't stop you from dereferencing p; you'll just get a runtime error, if you're very, very lucky.
To paraphrase what you wrote: The only different between [other pointer type] and void*, aside from [this one difference], is that there is also [this other difference].
C also supports implicit conversion from void* to other pointer types... so that's a third difference between void* and other types of pointer.
So they are different one way, different another way, and also treated different a 3rd way.
And I'm the one being "deliberately awkward"?
and rather than make up a completely separate "address" type and special-case everything for no reason
But void* is ALREADY a special-case. It can't be dereferenced. You can't (shouldn't!) do pointer arithmetic with it. It implicitly converts to other pointer types. And every book on C requires a special section to talk about void* because its different.
Anyone who really wants an "address" keyword for personal reasons can just write "typedef void *address".
True enough, but that has nothing to do with language design.
And my goal here isn't really an argument to go back and 'fix C'; it's about designing new languages and questioning whether dragging along keywords and conventions from C really makes any sense. On the one hand its familiar for longtime programmers coming from C, on the other its needlessly obtuse for new programmers who are really just learning the new language.
Which is bullshit, because the only real technical difference between a server and a client is that a server is configured to generally accept incoming connections
Its a "business" distinction not a "technical" distinction.
Every server is a client, most clients are also (implicitly) servers. Multi-player games, VoIP, file transfers, VNC, etc.... technically speaking, all of those things turn your computer into a server.
Exactly. TECHNICALLY speaking, but we aren't speaking technically. We are using a 'business' definition, not a 'technical' one.
They aren't ever going to come after you using VNC or remote desktop. They aren't ever going
but it's disturbing enough that their ToS worded like it is, giving them carte blanche to restrict your Internet connection for using it as... an Internet connection!
They hardly need the ToS to cut you off carte blanche.
They surely already separately reserve the right to discontinue providing you service at their sole discretion. (i.e. for no reason at all.) You don't have a "right" to be their customer, and they can terminate your service for pretty much any reason as long as isn't sexual/racial/gender/ discrimination.
The ToS is just a notification to you what sort of things they want you to know about upfront. So when they decide to restrict your service, they can point at it and say, you knew this is one of the things we're picky about. Don't act surprised.
They could terminate your service for dating the CEOs daughter. It would be a pretty dick move, and a PR nightmare for the company... but entirely legal. Buyers and sellers are both free to choose each other. And free to reject each other. That's part of the free market.
Besides how would you word it differently, it a way that wouldn't be just as vague and/or just as open to abuse?
Bingo! So why not reserve the keyword 'address'. And call it that? Its just an address. "address" is simple, and everyone gets it. There's no indirection operator raising questions about whether you can deference it. Its just an address. Its meaning is clear. How you would use it is clear.
Because, as far as the type is concerned, it is a pointer to nothing.
Its a pointer. If its initialized then it points to something. The type of that something is unknown, but its not nothing.
Given just a void pointer, the only safe assumption is that there is nothing there.
True for any pointer.:p
It's like a pointer to a zero-length array or an empty structure.
So void is a type with a sizeof (void) = 0 ? (Nope -- its either a compile time error which is sort of ok, or apparently gcc defaults to compile that to "1" which is truly horrific.)
You have to perform a typecast, and thus tell the compiler that there is actually something there, before you can do anything with it.
We know something is there, we have to typecast to tell the compiler what it is.
Working backwards, if we take the void pointer to mean a pointer to something without type information, then for consistency a void function is a function that returns a value of indeterminate type. But its not, it's a function without a return value at all. Its not semantically consistent.
There is a semantic difference between "something is there but its type is unknown" and "nothing is there at all". In C, void can mean either, depending on whether it is a void pointer, or just void.
"use of military force against civilians by a non-state actor to advance political goal"
Ah, well then this wasn't terroism because it was force against a member of the military. He wasn't in uniform, but he was a solider, and the attackers knew he was a solider, and selected him because he was a soldier. I guess from their perspective that makes him a legitimate enemy combatant? And sadly its more discerning than our own definition which labels as enemy combatant as "all males of military age in the attack zone". (Talk about a self serving definition.)
And as has been said so many times now, we can't act surprised when people try to kill us in our country, when we try to kill them in their country. That doesn't justify their attacks on us, but it serves as a reminder that they can't justify our attacks on them either.
kno w what im cutting this short: you're an idiot and a troll out to bash cops.
Ok, I came off poorly there. I've got nothing against cops, and I'm not out to bash them. No hard feelings for calling me on it.
My issue is that I dislike the kneejerk reactions to any and every proposal that anyone might make to improve gun safety or reduce gun violence.
And the comment on 70% to pass; isn't to disparage cops, but its to highlight the inconsistency.
The gun-nut crowd says that even a fraction of a percent of malfunctions due to smart tech would be totally unacceptable, yet it would be lost in the noise of the other malfunctions and operator error, and on the other end hundreds perhaps even thousands of lives would be saved.
Allowing a pointer to be of type void makes sense for defining functions that accept a pointer to several data structures that will be cast into the right form in the function.
Does it really? Why not have an indeterminate type keyword... "unknown", "anything" or just a keyword "pointer"? Why does it make sense to reuse the void keyword which literally means "nothing"?
It is not a pointer to void. There is something there.
Look, I get that it 'works'. In the sense that its not broken, and that there even is a perverse logic to it. But you can't possibly really think it is the clearest way imaginable to express a pointer to 'something' is to call it a pointer to 'nothing'.
Precisely. They needed a way to tell the lexer nothing gets returned from this and they wanted it to be concise. Asterisk represents a pointer so yes it is different
That was a rhetorical question. I could probably draw the C syntax tree in my sleep. The point was the lack of consistent meaning for 'void'.
Makes sense to me it would support static members.
It makes sense it would support what we call static members in C++. Its a lot less clear that it makes sense to call them "static" except to be consistent with C++
It is called static because it is statically allocated
That's a circular argument. What does statically allocated mean? Is it called "static" because its kind of the opposite of dynamic? I checked two thesaurus that don't make that connection... they suggested 'fixed' or 'stable' or 'permanent'. Those make at least as much sense as 'static'.
. It is a compiler concept which became an OO concept due to being somewhat similar.
Even you have got to realize that is pretty weak. Could have just as easily called them shared, or something more directly applicable.
It is called void because it returns nothing
So void is nothing, and its not to be confused with a void* which is a pointer to absolutely anything, right?
But ultimately the issue is that a variety of decisions were made back when C was written, and there is absolutely a sort of logic to it all, but if you don't know C they don't make a lot of sense, especially when you encounter them in quasi "somewhat similar" roles in modern languages.
Like why are they in dart? Nothing is statically allocated in a language that compiles to javascript to run in a browser. And there are any number of ways of writing function/method declarations to communicate return values or lack thereof without invoking the 'ghost of C' void keyword.
I mean, if you are designing a new language... the advantage to re-using old keywords from C is that it makes it easier for people coming to the language from C and its descendants. But its needless complexity and confusion for new programmers.
The static keyword has very well defined meaning in every language it is used in.
I think his point was that that static doesn't map semantically very well. They could have just made the keyword "ketchup" and defined it the same way and it would be no better or worse.
You are damn right I want a void return type
But why call it "void" and why call it a "function" if it doesn't return something?
Slashdot Mirror
"Opera has also included a faster bookmarking tool dubbed 'Stash,' allowing users to return to the links quickly."
Was anyone complaining that bookmarks were too slow?
How does dubbing a movie that has nothing to do with Navajo culture help preserve Navajo culture?
Using the language helps preserve it. Preserving the language helps preserve the culture.
It seems a bit insulting, the insinuation being that the whole of their culture is distilled down to their native language.
Ones language and one's culture do tend to be very closely linked. And the death of the language is likely the final nail in the coffin for the culture as well.
All that said, watching dubbed movies is wrong. Watch them in their native tongue with subtitles.
I'm assuming there's no legal reason why one would need to be 18 to get paid for something like this?
Perhaps he needs to be able to enter into a contract? Non-disclosure agreement, etc.
Perhaps he runs afoul of some law preventing children from entering contests... he's in Germany so I'm not aware of any in particular, but Maine for example, has the The Predatory Marketing against Minors Act, which has had the result of companies blocking anyone under the age of 18 from entering various contests because they don't want to risk the liability of being found in violation of this law.
Just lawyers upholding the all holy all important important EULA at the expense of what's fair and what's good PR?
Or just following the law. (Although I'm pretty sure they could do something appropriate to at least recognize him... but this is paypal... paypal sucks.)
Bluetooth earpieces are so annoying because for a lot of people that wear them phone conversations seem to outweigh face to face conversations in importance.
And now, instead of just having something they find more important to listen to, while facing you, they'll have something more important to look at while they are facing you too.
Yes. I didn't make the law, nor do I follow it in my brewing, but that's what the law says
Other posters have stated that its not actually a law in force, but more of a respected tradition.
Keep in mind it was written 400 years ago when water chemistry was not understood at all.
Oh I understand that it predates modern chemistry.
But that only lends weight to the argument that no rational person should feel compelled to slavishly adhere to it.
So your first argument is that it would be an enormous expense, your second argument doesn't back your first argument up at all.
Instead you've backpeddled and said pretty much everything is in metric anyway:
For everything where it matters, we've already converted to metric.
But then your last ditch hold out is this:
it doesn't matter because there's zero downside to using Imperial/US units for everyday things.
No there is zero upside. The downside is having to perpetuate two measuring systems. A measuring system that 90% of the world has stopped using.
There is no good reason to keep US units. Teach our kids to use metric, and let the US units die out. There is no reason to keep them them going, generation after generation.
Fahrenheit is a better scale for humans than Celsius and it makes no sense to change.
ONLY american's beleive that. Nobody raised in celsius finds it the least bit awkward to know what to wear or what to expect when they go outside.
This is just silly.
You're saying the Reinhistegbot specifies that they use a minimum number of ingredients, and then just handwaves over the fact that one of those ingredients ("water") is actually highly variable ingredient containing a variety of unspecified impurities which are vitally necessary to the process.
But you aren't allowed to start with actual pure water, and add those necessary impurities back in.
The Germans love their beer, and they are a practical people, I'm pretty sure they'll reach a solution quickly.
Because the transition costs are enormous, and the taxpayers don't want to pay for it.
Why are they enormous?
That's a myth predicated on the assumption that we're going to switch overnight. The transition can take place over multiple generations. Nothing that is out there needs to change tomorrow. Only new things going forward should be dual marked.
News & weather starts dual reporting units. New laws and regulations are published in metric with English conversions parenthesized.
New road signs marked with both. Old road signs can stay as they are until they need replacing. If it takes 2-3 generations, so what.
Once >80% of signs are converted over, switch cars speedometers to metric by default. It won't be this generation, or next, maybe not even the one after that. There's no hurry.
Set a time line of 30 years to convert all manufacturing to metric tooling. When new production lines are rolled out they'll roll out in metric. Nobody has to retool anything today. They can retool in metric when they retool the line organically.
He DOES care. He doesn't want to change,
Right. He cares about not changing, he doesn't care what system he uses. But he doesn't have to change. For this generation, nothing changes except things are gradually dual marked and dual reported. This generations Joe Sixpack doesn't have to change.
3 generations from now, everyone is comfortable with both, metric is official and in front, and English is starting to fade the background. All the Joe Sixpacks of today are long dead, and even their kids are winding out their retirement years.
4-5 generations from now, the switch is complete. People still know what the old measurements are, and they know how to convert them when making grandma's traditional thanksgiving stuffing or working on an antique car.
just because it's easier for scientists, many of whom also don't care because they don't have trouble converting when necessary as you seem to?
Its a barrier to scientific literacy when non-scientists aren't familiar with the units scientists use.
Plus pretty much the rest of the world is metric. Eliminating english units isn't just for scientists, it eliminates a needless conversion when bringing anything in or out of the country. Its a pain in the ass to have metric and English tools. To have everything from rulers to wrenches in two formats. Foreign companies manufacturing goods for the US have to comply with US regulations in English units. And Americans exporting to pretty much anywhere have to comply foreign regulations written in metric.
Its not "just scientists" that are affected. There are plenty of real benefits to being on metric... and the cost and resistance to "change" are easily dealt with by doing it very gradually.
The problem is, who cares?
You've already laid out that metric makes sense in science and engineering. So we are keeping that.
And if you just use metric units in day to day life they are as easy to use as English units. The rest of the world does it.
What is the point of hanging onto English units as well?
But why should Joe Sixpack give a rat's ass about this? He's not a scientist or engineer, and never, ever does unit conversion.
Precisely. Joe Sixpack doesn't care. So why do we need to preserve the english system for him. He DOESNT care. Raise his kids on metric, and a generation or so from now, the new Joe Sixpacks will use metric without breaking a sweat.
Actually, the length of the meter was chosen to be 1/10 millionth of the length from the equator to the north pole on the Prime Meridian.
And you have to admit that is a pretty arbitrary choice.
It is mandated if it's a food or drug. Do you have something that is not labeled in metric?
Yes. Everything.
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/product/templates/samsShop_productTypeIndex.jsp?altQuery=&searchTerm=&rootDimension=1430221+4294952644&brand=&searchCategoryId=430221
Yes, its on the physical package, but its not in the advertising, on the flyers, the website, the coupons...
Putting it on the package is the first step, but its not enough to make it actually useful.
Clever but wrong. Water doesn't boil at 32F. It melts.
standard atmospheric pressure
A square mile is a "section", which is 640 acres. Now 640 acres...
Canada managed to cope just fine. I used to live in a rural area where the road network was pretty much a grid, divided into square miles. Converting things to metric didn't bring about the end of the world. People still talk about acreage since the historic size of the plots were even acres - I lived on a 5 acre plot which as you noted were quite common, and since the intersections are a mile apart we'll still use miles when giving directions. And there is no reason to eradicate that.
But the speed limit is 90km/h, farmers know how much property they have in hectares, and the measurements for all the properties in meters is available for legal property descriptions.
OK fine, by all means define the foot in terms of metric; but remove it from all records and from the culture? No. Just. No.
I don't think we need to actively eradicate it. But if we stop using it officially, it will gradually fade into the background. I doubt anyone in rural manitoba is ever going to completely stop using miles given the physical layout of the rural road network. But that's fine.
Aside from that, the Metric system is no less arbitrary than our customary units. The only reason 10 matters is because we have 10 digits on our hands. An alien race might not.
That is the opposite of arbitrary. Yes, we surely use base 10 due to the number of digits on our hands, but metric was designed to fit into base 10. That was not an arbitrary decision. We are not an alien race. Base 10 is natural for us; not arbitrary.
Otherwise, all the metric arguments just boil down to "my arbitrary system is better than yours".
The precise length of a meter is arbitrary; and we both use the same somewhat arbitrary unit of time (seconds) but pretty much everything else derives from that in a natural and logical way. Volume, mass, energy, speed, temperature, force. English units are not linked the same way. There is no defined relationship betwen a gallon and a foot the way there is between a meter and a liter. Or between a pound and a foot the way there is between a kilogram and a meter. A 4 liter jug of milk has a mass of 4 kilograms (for all practical purposes). To equate the arbitrariness of metric and imperial is just delusional.
but Celcius? Fuggedaboutit. Each decade of the Fahrenheit scale has a readily associated "feel" that Celcius can't match.
I've got no issues whatsoever with celsius. Instead of 10 degree feels, its more increments of 5. Its what you grow up with.
They're both arbitrary systems, so it's really just one person's preferance vs. another.
Metric is far less internally arbitrary, and pretty much all the rest of world uses it. Personal preference in my opinion seems to come down to what you grew up with; so raising the next generation in metric will take care of that. There's no real reason for -you- to change though.
Most companies already label their products with both systems which is just fine.
Sure. I don't have a problem with seeing both units. But why not mandate metric be on there? The benefits are clear. What is the harm?
As for roadsigns, the cost would be far too great, and it wouldnt be worth it for what is basically a cosmetic change, and I think would actually make things worse,
It doesn't have to happen overnight. Start with the major highways, and do both units. Gradually filter it down to the other stuff, and in two generations its done. 4 generations down we can remove the mph if we want, or not.
I do not think metric is a better system in daily use.
The goal isn't to utterly eradicate the English system.
I also find the English miles unit size to be more natural, it may be because the English system developed out of practical use in daily applications
As a Canadian, I don't see this at all. The km vs the mile makes no 'natural' difference whatsoever.
I see pounds, feet, and inches being more natural, but not miles.
We are all very used the English system
You get used to whatever you live with. We order deli meat in 100gram increments, we buy milk by the liter, and a good size jar of peanut butter is a kilgram. We know -4 is just below freezing, and that 35 is hot. Its not difficult.
I still think of my own weight in pounds because all the media (TV, magazines, etc) all refer to weight still in pounds. But I know a few nurses etc and they have no trouble thinking in kilograms.
Recipes go either way; because a lot of them are old or from american sources english units are still common. My wife is pretty comfortable in cups or mL.
The only english units that I really think are more natural are feet and inches. But my brother in law works with CAD drawings all day and metal forming, and he can eyeball something in mm or m just fine; and finds it easier than inches or feet.
So my 'intuition' that its more natural is suspect. Its what I grew up with, and its what I'm more used to, but my pre-teen kids have barely been exposed to english units at all, and they live just fine.
If you live with it, you get used to it.
Is it worth converting a population over to metric? No, definitely not. They are used to it, and it works fine for them.
But is it worth gradually shifting a population to metric so that future generations are using metric natively, yes, I think so.
Again with the deliberately awkward interpretations.
Its not 'deliberately awkward'. Its just awkward in its natural state.
In the case of a void pointer either there is one item of size zero, or zero items of any size; take your pick.
That's awkward. One item of size zero is awkward. Zero items of any size is awkward. The idea that either is valid and I can take my pick is awkward. Plus you forgot to mention that it could be many items of zero size too. But these are all just complicated ways of saying 'nothing'.
Its just plain awkward.
The code is perfectly legalâ"you're allowed to have a pointer to the location just past the end of an arrayâ"but there is nothing there.
And you did it all without void* too.
The only difference between p and a void pointer, aside from pointer arithmetic, is that the compiler won't stop you from dereferencing p; you'll just get a runtime error, if you're very, very lucky.
To paraphrase what you wrote: The only different between [other pointer type] and void*, aside from [this one difference], is that there is also [this other difference].
C also supports implicit conversion from void* to other pointer types... so that's a third difference between void* and other types of pointer.
So they are different one way, different another way, and also treated different a 3rd way.
And I'm the one being "deliberately awkward"?
and rather than make up a completely separate "address" type and special-case everything for no reason
But void* is ALREADY a special-case. It can't be dereferenced. You can't (shouldn't!) do pointer arithmetic with it. It implicitly converts to other pointer types. And every book on C requires a special section to talk about void* because its different.
Anyone who really wants an "address" keyword for personal reasons can just write "typedef void *address".
True enough, but that has nothing to do with language design.
And my goal here isn't really an argument to go back and 'fix C'; it's about designing new languages and questioning whether dragging along keywords and conventions from C really makes any sense. On the one hand its familiar for longtime programmers coming from C, on the other its needlessly obtuse for new programmers who are really just learning the new language.
Which is bullshit, because the only real technical difference between a server and a client is that a server is configured to generally accept incoming connections
Its a "business" distinction not a "technical" distinction.
Every server is a client, most clients are also (implicitly) servers. Multi-player games, VoIP, file transfers, VNC, etc. ... technically speaking, all of those things turn your computer into a server.
Exactly. TECHNICALLY speaking, but we aren't speaking technically. We are using a 'business' definition, not a 'technical' one.
They aren't ever going to come after you using VNC or remote desktop. They aren't ever going
but it's disturbing enough that their ToS worded like it is, giving them carte blanche to restrict your Internet connection for using it as ... an Internet connection!
They hardly need the ToS to cut you off carte blanche.
They surely already separately reserve the right to discontinue providing you service at their sole discretion. (i.e. for no reason at all.) You don't have a "right" to be their customer, and they can terminate your service for pretty much any reason as long as isn't sexual/racial/gender/ discrimination.
The ToS is just a notification to you what sort of things they want you to know about upfront. So when they decide to restrict your service, they can point at it and say, you knew this is one of the things we're picky about. Don't act surprised.
They could terminate your service for dating the CEOs daughter. It would be a pretty dick move, and a PR nightmare for the company... but entirely legal. Buyers and sellers are both free to choose each other. And free to reject each other. That's part of the free market.
Besides how would you word it differently, it a way that wouldn't be just as vague and/or just as open to abuse?
No, it doesn't point to anything.
So a void pointer isn't a pointer. Clear as mud.
It's just an address.
Bingo! So why not reserve the keyword 'address'. And call it that? Its just an address. "address" is simple, and everyone gets it. There's no indirection operator raising questions about whether you can deference it. Its just an address. Its meaning is clear. How you would use it is clear.
It makes a hell of a lot more sense than void*.
Because, as far as the type is concerned, it is a pointer to nothing.
Its a pointer. If its initialized then it points to something. The type of that something is unknown, but its not nothing.
Given just a void pointer, the only safe assumption is that there is nothing there.
True for any pointer. :p
It's like a pointer to a zero-length array or an empty structure.
So void is a type with a sizeof (void) = 0 ? (Nope -- its either a compile time error which is sort of ok, or apparently gcc defaults to compile that to "1" which is truly horrific.)
You have to perform a typecast, and thus tell the compiler that there is actually something there, before you can do anything with it.
We know something is there, we have to typecast to tell the compiler what it is.
Working backwards, if we take the void pointer to mean a pointer to something without type information, then for consistency a void function is a function that returns a value of indeterminate type. But its not, it's a function without a return value at all. Its not semantically consistent.
There is a semantic difference between "something is there but its type is unknown" and "nothing is there at all". In C, void can mean either, depending on whether it is a void pointer, or just void.
"use of military force against civilians by a non-state actor to advance political goal"
Ah, well then this wasn't terroism because it was force against a member of the military. He wasn't in uniform, but he was a solider, and the attackers knew he was a solider, and selected him because he was a soldier. I guess from their perspective that makes him a legitimate enemy combatant? And sadly its more discerning than our own definition which labels as enemy combatant as "all males of military age in the attack zone". (Talk about a self serving definition.)
And as has been said so many times now, we can't act surprised when people try to kill us in our country, when we try to kill them in their country. That doesn't justify their attacks on us, but it serves as a reminder that they can't justify our attacks on them either.
kno w what im cutting this short: you're an idiot and a troll out to bash cops.
Ok, I came off poorly there. I've got nothing against cops, and I'm not out to bash them. No hard feelings for calling me on it.
My issue is that I dislike the kneejerk reactions to any and every proposal that anyone might make to improve gun safety or reduce gun violence.
And the comment on 70% to pass; isn't to disparage cops, but its to highlight the inconsistency.
The gun-nut crowd says that even a fraction of a percent of malfunctions due to smart tech would be totally unacceptable, yet it would be lost in the noise of the other malfunctions and operator error, and on the other end hundreds perhaps even thousands of lives would be saved.
That's not rational logic.
Allowing a pointer to be of type void makes sense for defining functions that accept a pointer to several data structures that will be cast into the right form in the function.
Does it really? Why not have an indeterminate type keyword... "unknown", "anything" or just a keyword "pointer"? Why does it make sense to reuse the void keyword which literally means "nothing"?
It is not a pointer to void. There is something there.
Look, I get that it 'works'. In the sense that its not broken, and that there even is a perverse logic to it. But you can't possibly really think it is the clearest way imaginable to express a pointer to 'something' is to call it a pointer to 'nothing'.
Precisely. They needed a way to tell the lexer nothing gets returned from this and they wanted it to be concise. Asterisk represents a pointer so yes it is different
That was a rhetorical question. I could probably draw the C syntax tree in my sleep. The point was the lack of consistent meaning for 'void'.
Makes sense to me it would support static members.
It makes sense it would support what we call static members in C++. Its a lot less clear that it makes sense to call them "static" except to be consistent with C++
That's all I'm saying.
It is called static because it is statically allocated
That's a circular argument. What does statically allocated mean? Is it called "static" because its kind of the opposite of dynamic? I checked two thesaurus that don't make that connection... they suggested 'fixed' or 'stable' or 'permanent'. Those make at least as much sense as 'static'.
. It is a compiler concept which became an OO concept due to being somewhat similar.
Even you have got to realize that is pretty weak. Could have just as easily called them shared, or something more directly applicable.
It is called void because it returns nothing
So void is nothing, and its not to be confused with a void* which is a pointer to absolutely anything, right?
But ultimately the issue is that a variety of decisions were made back when C was written, and there is absolutely a sort of logic to it all, but if you don't know C they don't make a lot of sense, especially when you encounter them in quasi "somewhat similar" roles in modern languages.
Like why are they in dart? Nothing is statically allocated in a language that compiles to javascript to run in a browser. And there are any number of ways of writing function/method declarations to communicate return values or lack thereof without invoking the 'ghost of C' void keyword.
hell simply
method_name [return type] (params)...
or perhaps the more verbose:
method_name (params) returns (return type|nothing)
I mean, if you are designing a new language... the advantage to re-using old keywords from C is that it makes it easier for people coming to the language from C and its descendants. But its needless complexity and confusion for new programmers.
The static keyword has very well defined meaning in every language it is used in.
I think his point was that that static doesn't map semantically very well. They could have just made the keyword "ketchup" and defined it the same way and it would be no better or worse.
You are damn right I want a void return type
But why call it "void" and why call it a "function" if it doesn't return something?
To be honest, I kind of see his point.