What efficient methodology is there to write a large codebase using a scripting language that can't be used with a compiled language exactly? The "you need better developers" fallacy is exactly that, a fallacy - it doesn't matter how good your developers are, all developers introduce bugs, certainly the number decreases as you increase the skill of developers but there is not a developer on this earth that does not introduce bugs.
So there lies the problem with scripting languages, because many scripting languages don't have any kind of toolchain that prevents bugs from creeping all the way through until runtime, you have entire classes of bugs that a compiler would catch creeping through to your executing application at runtime, as the codebase grows scripted applications therefore by and large almost entirely all become much more time consuming to debug, as bugs only appear in fringe cases and it is not immediately obvious how to reproduce them. Often you find yourself having to implement tremendous logging infrastructure and so on and so forth to have confidence that your application is solid and the net result is that it's just way more efficient to develop large projects with a compiled technology. Also, whilst it's not a fault of scripting languages per-se, you tend to find that compiled languages have far superior toolchains for developing large projects in the first place anyway.
I don't say this as someone spouting opinion and theory, I say this as someone who has had experience as both a lead developer and technical architect in implementing large projects in both compiled (native and managed) and translated languages (which is usually what people mean when they say scripting, though it's getting muddier with more use of just in time compilation etc.), and even some projects mixing it all together.
For anything large the amount of time spent debugging scripted applications just gets too large for it to be worth it, at that point you might as well have used compiled because any early benefits of getting up and running quickly have long been lost.
Which isn't to say I'm of the opinion that scripting languages are always useless, not at all, I think they're fine for small non-mission critical tasks such as task automation, and for prototyping, but I think the larger a project gets, the less worthwhile scripting languages become - that's not to say you can't use them, as I say, I have myself been involved in such projects, but the project is always much more costly. This is evident at companies like Facebook with their use of PHP - last time they released server specs they had equivalent of 8gb of RAM per user of Facebook which is insane, even if a lot of that is being put into big data type processing and analytics, and the amount they've spent trying to turn PHP into something compiled similarly paints the same picture. So yeah, sure, Facebook is there, and it works, most of the time, but it's also costing them way more to run than it should if it was a properly planned project using something like Java, C++, or even C# from the outset. The flip side is, someone like Zuckerberg who was just hacking a de-facto prototype together may also never have been bothered, (or potentially even competent enough?) to do so with a compiled language and a more professional architecture, so it's a double edged sword in that respect, and I can see why many startups like to just get something developed no matter how crappy using the quick to launch (but poor to maintain) benefits of scripting languages.
The Google approach (well, it's probably unfair to call it the Google approach, other big players were doing it long before them) of writing the mission critical or speed critical stuff in Java or C++ respectively and using something like small manageable chunks of a scripting language like Python to string it together is not a bad option.
People do use it outside of Windows, it's become the defacto primary language for indie game developers nowadays developing on engines like Unity, or game development frameworks like MonoGame. Both of which support iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS X, and of course Windows.
As a Windows developer I never saw Mono as a viable option for development on Linux/MacOS X so I always reverted back to C/C++ or Java, but when I started fiddling with MonoGame and used it on Linux I was actually incredibly pleasantly surprised as to how good it is - it's good to the point of being a perfectly viable option, which is not something I expected.
Well, England also pays for things in Scotland it doesn't get to use too, so that kinda works both ways I'm afraid. You could just as well argue that the rest of the UK has to pay 91.1% of Scotland's railways even though they're by definition not in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland. I don't think that argument really has any logical grounding given it's two way nature.
"There has been absolutely no appetite in England up until now for reorganising the system of government to provide improved localism. Scotland has consistently voted differently to the rest of the UK. The Scottish Parliament was an acknowledgement of that."
You don't see how nonsensical your argument is? really?
The Scottish parliament IS an example of improved localism and has seen consistently more devolved powers offered to it, as has Wales, as has Northern Ireland.
The fact you believe that somehow moving the power to Edinburgh when most of Scotland isn't Edinburgh seems to completely miss the point. Sure a bunch of people at the centre of power in Edinburgh will be more happy but then what of those areas of Scotland that are still not represented?
It's not like all of Scotland wants to be independent for the reasons I cited- say Scotland gets a majority for independence but areas such as the outlying islands whose ocean territory is oil rich want to stick with the union, then how do you think they feel being ruled by Edinburgh against their will? Do you feel self-determination is a thing that they deserve too such that the oil heavy parts of Scotlands coast that support the union can stay with it?
Again, the only people served by moving the centre of power to Edinburgh are those close to that centre of power in Edinburgh (who are already well served by the devolved parliament) - it does absolutely nothing to resolve the underlying problems of lack of representation for everyone else, and again, Salmond has proven that over and over with cases such as that of overruling a local decision against Trump, in favour of Trump because it suited him and those in power in Edinburgh, not the people of Scotland in general.
No you're missing the point of 20 minutes up north. It's 20 minutes up north to a station that's 20 minutes away from the place you most likely want to go. HS2 to Leeds is going to end at a new station that's 20 minutes away from the center where all the businesses and shops are, to Sheffield it's going to stop at Meadowhall which is convenient if you want a 3 hour shopping round trip from London but puts you a 20 - 40 minute tram/train journey from Sheffield centre.
The point is that HS2 is literally 100% useless it seems - it doesn't stop at the normal city center destinations, it stops at destinations that are far enough out from where you most likely want to be that all benefit is lost. Worse, studies (including the official ones despite the fact they "forgot" to include the relevant pages in the original report) show areas not served will suffer economically, so you'll even see economic decline as a result. I regularly travel between Leeds, Sheffield and London and I'll still just take the East Coast Mainline, or the Sheffield - St Pancras route, because it'll be direct to where I want to go rather than me having to hope between the end points to where I actually want to be at further expense.
So fundamentally HS2 isn't useful at all, it's the anti-thesis of useful, it has no benefits when built, and destroys many people's homes at colossal tax payers expense. Make no mistake - it's a scheme designed to create jobs at the tax payers expense, whilst achieving nothing useful in practice.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for Trident either, I agree I'm not convinced it serves any purpose, I get the feeling if we're ever at serious threat of being nuked then having a deterrent wont make or break the decision to nuke us anyway, but my point is that Trident if nothing else is at least a very cheap waste of money compared to pointless schemes like HS2 - on the money wasting scale Trident just doesn't even come close to the top of the scale. I'd rather we ditch Trident AND HS2 and have an extra £70bn to £100bn to spend on useful things like nationwide 1gbps internet connections, better maintained roads, additional capacity on the East Coast Mainline, free university tuition and so forth and still had enough change left over to make the NHS more awesome.
Right, but you have to remember also that Salmond has been allowed to rig this poll in his favour, precisely so even if the result is that close the Westminster parties can say that he couldn't even win the referendum on his terms.
It's unheard of in the UK for you to not be able to vote in a referendum because of your residency, rather than your nationality yet Westminster let Salmond have his own way on exactly this such that the 20% of Scots most likely to vote against independence (those not currently resident, but otherwise nationals of because they were born there) cannot vote in the referendum. Similarly he was allowed to continue with a loaded referendum question, and he was allowed to bring in the 16 - 18 bracket who are more naive to and hence swayed by populist nationalist rhetoric.
Given that Salmond can't even get a 50:50 split when the thing is slanted completely in his favour then I think saying there's no popular support is a fair argument. If all Scots were allowed a say rather than those Salmond has fiddle the figures for it seems the polls would be running closer to about 66:34.
This is a risky but potentially smart gamble by Westminster in letting Salmond have his own way - it means Salmond cannot come back and say the vote wasn't fair, that it should be re-run, he wont have a leg to stand on because everything was allowed on his terms and yet he'll still most likely lose it seems.
"In fact it's an open question whether he would continue to even be an EU citizen."
I don't think it is an open question in anyone's mind other than Salmond's. Given that even those within the EU who would be responsible for making such decisions have made it abundantly clear that Salmond would have to reapply, and the likes of Spain's PM have said he'd likely veto them joining then I think it's pretty clear what the stance of Scotland's EU status would be.
No, it's mostly where it is because they wanted to put it somewhere where it's easy to get it out into the deep water of the Atlantic - you can rapidly disperse them to places where they'll be almost impossible to find from the North Western side of the country. Putting it on the East coast like Newcastle isn't ideal because it's much easier for a country like Russia to get it's forces there to start searching, and there's less room for a sub to run.
So most likely places would, given that Ireland gets in the way to much of the West coast would be Wales, or Cornwall.
If you look at a depth map of the world's seas then you'll see that the current location gives some of the quickest access to very deep waters that our coasts offer.
I think Kirchner is too busy ruining her nation's economy to worry about that now. She seems to have dropped that topic now she's realised that it's no longer effective at distracting her populace from the fact that she's making them lose all their jobs and rapidly pushing them to a point where they wont even be able to afford things like bread.
I used to think that, but then I saw the price tag of HS2. We could triple our nuclear deterrent for the price of that and what does it give us? 20 minutes faster journeys to new stations that are 20 minutes from the outskirts of the handful of cities you can visit giving no actual benefit in practice anyway and with no doubt much higher fares to use it on top?
Trident is an absolute bargain compared to some of the wastes of money our government has a love affair with.
Even the handful of trains themselves are going to cost 1.5x more than a 4 acre aircraft carrier. I used to think many military projects were a colossal waste of money until I saw the cost of HS2. Now I think they're a bargain.
"Scotland has only been invaded by one country in the last 1000 years, it's a country to our south."
Why do you think that might be? Do you think, if say, Scotland was independent and the rest of the UK left it to fend for itself that you wouldn't have been attacked by the Nazis?
The whole reason Scotland hasn't been invaded by anyone other than the English in the last 1000 years is because the English have been running the single biggest empire in history for most of it and Scotland has thrived and been protected as a result of that.
"we just don't like the arseholes in Westminster telling us what to do (neither does large areas of England as it happens)"
Sure, and I'm in one of those parts of England where we have even less localism than you because we don't have a devolved parliament, but the idea of independence is far more retarded because we'd be even worse off again - sure we'd have more local politicians but you think someone in Glasgow is really going to be any more represented by a parliament in Edinburgh than they are London? All Salmond is selling you is that he'll get to fuck you over instead of the politicians in London, god only knows if Salmond's deal with Trump to overrule the rights of a Scotsman and his local council so that Trump could build a golf course isn't evidence of that I don't know what is - he doesn't give a shit about you any more than the politicians in Westminster and he's proven that enough times already.
Moving the place the people in control of you sit changes fuck all, increasing the accountability of whoever controls you and changing it to a relationship of serving you rather than controlling you is the only option to achieve what you're after, and you can do that far more prosperously in the union.
But perhaps instead of chasing independence you'd have worked with those of us in England to get that accountability and improved localism for the regions we might have got somewhere, but instead you're taking the worst possible option out of laziness.
Thankfully though, it seems that plenty enough Scots aren't quite retarded enough to take the stupid option that you're pushing so fingers crossed we can soon start focussing on a solution that makes sense, rather than one that's destructive fed by petty populist nationalist rhetoric.
Well that depends on the species doesn't it? Last I checked birds aren't a single generic type of creature that are entirely interchangeable in their roles in the environment.
Cats killing 200,000,000 common songbirds out of populations in the many billions is far less of a big deal than a solar plant killing 28,000 of a species which has less than 20,000 left in it's entire population.
You do realise there is more than one species of bird right? and that they have different levels of population and different levels of importance in terms of conservation?
I know each time the Assange story comes up you like to jump on it because the whole thing is personal for you (I haven't forgotten the last time you lost the plot on the issue, don't worry), but you seem to be making things up that aren't even there, which is a new low even for you. The story states very clearly that he was convicted in absentia, not simply that he was simply awaiting an appeal when he died, using Swedish translations of common words like "prosecute" doesn't add weight to your case by the way, it just makes you look even more desperate in your argument.
"And the British court system has at every level ruled Assange to be in a state equivalent to charged under the British legal system."
What the British court has ruled is that he can be extradited under the extremely lax checks of the European Arrest Warrant, something which is a major bone of contention in the UK and has been the target of much political preference for removal by MPs and precisely because it's such an utterly stupid piece of law in the first place. Pretending stupid law somehow adds weight to your overriding bias that Assange is a rapist is another example of your further highlighting the stupidity of your argument.
"But do you somehow know more about Swedish and British law..."
What I know is that not all these things are in agreement, so to try and stack them together to add weight to your argument is again, a further example of the weakness of your argument. I know for example that the prosecutor your refer to when stating her case in British court actually admitted that Assange could indeed be interviewed and charged here under the MLA framework (exactly like they did for this guy in Serbia: http://www.expressen.se/nyhete...), but simply insisted that she be able to do so in person in Sweden regardless.
What I also know is that whilst I may not be a professor of Swedish law, that professors of Swedish law also completely disagree with you, so your appeal to authority fallacy fails miserably in the face of a similar but opposite appeal to authority:
Another thing I know is that the British courts regularly get such human rights issues wrong, they spent 10 years restricting the liberties of Abu Qatada only for him to be found innocent when he finally got to Jordan, and there have been many other cases where British courts got such issues wrong. The idea you're pushing that they consistently get such issues right, and aren't ever swayed by politics is demonstrable false, again, as in the Abu Qatada case. The British justice system is imperfect and easily manipulated by politics, in fact, the whole reason we have a Supreme Court is because politicians wanted an overriding court with a politically appointed judge panel precisely so that politics could play a part in justice, which is yet one more thing that shows how utterly laughable your appeal to authority fallacy is in this respect.
So Rei, I think you should accept what you accepted last time this discussion came up, that this issue is one that is too personal for you, and that in Rei land a man accused is a man guilty is a man convicted is not how things should work in the real world. In the real world we like justice and due process, if that isn't being followed, which it isn't - because the Swedish prosecution are insisting on avoiding processes that could resolve this issue fairly and objectively, then there's a problem.
I really could not care if Assange is found guilty or not, I have no presumption of innocence unlike your presumption and insistence of guilt, I think there's a fair chance he may well be guilty all the same. I appreciate some of the things he has talked about and some of his goals, but that's by the by, I appreciated some of the things Rolf Harris did but it doesn't change the fact it's all overshadowed b
Sure, and we took the same line with Abu Qatada - we watched his family 24/7, we held him in detention without trial, and we did this for 10 years whilst trying to send him to Jordan but requiring Jordan guarantee him a fair trial. We just had to spend millions trying to get him sent there and monitoring his family in the meantime, carrying out defacto punishments and restrictions on his freedom, because he "technically" skipped bail once or twice, we had to do this because he was accused by Jordan.
Luckily we finally were able to get Jordan to guarantee him a fair trial, we finally managed to ship him off after being good to our laws in restriction his freedoms for 10 years. This year Jordan was finally able to bring judgement on this man accused of terrorism and restricted in the UK for so long.
Oh, but turns out, in fair trial, he was found not guilty.
Seriously, UK law is completely broken on this sort of issue, the fact a person can be in and out of jail, can be constantly watched, can have his family tracked and pursued, all without charge because of accusations by a foreign nation only to be found to be not guilty all along is absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Though it's also been the case in the past that people who skipped bail but are found not guilty or have had charges dropped do in fact have punishments for skipping bail dropped because they should never have been held on bail in the first place because they were never guilty of the crime.
So if Sweden did drop the charges, how Assange would be treated for skipping bail would be quite telling - there's no reason a judge couldn't accept his argument that he believed the charges were politically motivated and that in the fact of them being dropped he could be let go without further punishment. If they decide to pursue punishment for skipping bail in light of there being no case to answer though, that'd actually be quite unusual.
Perhaps it wont die because it's not actually a myth? What you quote, and state, states that the prosecution would like to pursue 4 specific charges, but there's the problem, all they're doing is saying they'd like to, they're not actually doing it.
The point is, that if they want to actually press charges then they should just do it. Yes, yes, I know the argument is that they can't because of a magical clause that prevents Sweden charging and trying in absentia. Oh wait, they can do exactly fucking that when it suits:
All the lies about Sweden having a "different" legal system that prevents them doing things that every other country in the world manages to do are exactly that, lies. Sweden can and does do things exactly like everyone else, they're just making an exception in lying about it in Assange's case.
Actually it happens a lot, Jordan and the UK were involved in years of negotiations to get Abu Qatada extradited to Jordan and it involved Jordan making outright changes to their legal system to accomodate and ensure Qatada would not be held to trial with evidence obtained via torture.
After many tens of millions were spent on the case, and Qatada was extradited to Jordan with a guarantee of a fair trial, he was a few months ago found not guilty.
It's a prime example of a case whereby governments try to bypass fair trials to get the outcome they want but are thwarted by human rights law, only for the individual to be found to be innocent all along when they finally get the fair trial they deserve.
Sweden's actions are out of the ordinary in that they both insist the case is important enough to pursue and not be dropped, but not important enough to focus on public interest reduction of prosecution costs by either questioning Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy which is something Sweden has done in other cases, or to give him a legal guarantee of no onwards extradition to the US. These are both things that contrary to the lies floating round otherwise they can and have done previously in other cases.
In situations like this countries make one of two choices - they decide a case is worth pursuing and do everything in their power, such as the option of giving certain legal guarantees as in the Jordan-UK Abu Qatada case, or they decide the case isn't important enough to pursue and drop it. What is abnormal is to just have the costs continue to rack up indefinitely whilst there are many means available to stop that happening and to resolve the issue.
I've done exactly what you say and have seen no such thing. I have however seen people like Domscheit-Berg carry out strong defamation and sabotage campaigns against him and Wikileaks, and who also seems to have gone oddly quite now that such character assassination is mission complete.
But more importantly I prefer to judge people not on what others say about them, but what they themselves say and do, and having listened to Assange's talks in-context (rather than all the out of context quotes that are often used to defame him) it's pretty fucking clear that that guy is really little different to Snowden - a largely rational well meaning intelligent individual.
But I know this is lost on you cold fjord, given that you love submitting your life and existence to the whims of the US government, whether right or wrong.
Sure but it's not merely violent crime I'm talking about, even things like burglary of empty homes has decreased. The only real increases have been sexual offences and most of these are because of mass revelations of historic abuse in the 70s/80s such that much of the increase is actual down to historic crimes, rather than recent crimes.
"Yes, that means punishing the victim. Whereas the victim here is a facilitator for the culprit. It's like leaving your car unlocked and open on the main road and someone using it for a bank heist. I don't know about yours, in my country, if that's your car you're due for facilitating a crime."
I actually agree that some victims should be left to suffer the consequences - god only knows there's been enough TV and newspaper articles aimed at every age range now that means anyone who is victim of a phishing scam deserves what they get.
But I have to ask, what the fuck kind of backwards country do you live in whereby you're guilty of facilitating a crime just because you did something stupid like left your car wide open? It's one thing to suggest the person not be covered by insurance (which is normally what happens in just about every sane country I'm aware of the laws of) but to hold them partially responsible for a further crime committed with their vehicle? what the fuck? Unless there's proof of intent that they did so with the intention of helping facilitate the crime (but then it's not stupidity is it? it's malice) then I don't think this is the case in just about any western nation.
That's the sort of twisted logic that implies a girl who wears a short skirt and gets raped is guilty of facilitating a rape, and someone who runs a Tor node should sign a sex offenders register if someone transits something dodgy across it. The only places I'm aware of such things happening are nations with really backwards laws like some parts of India, tribal areas of Pakistan, and some African nations.
It's one thing to not compensate someone who suffered financially for their own stupidity to ensure that there's a cost to such stupidity to act as a deterrent, but to hold people liable for other people's crimes just because they were stupid? That's really not a thing I hope to see in any country I ever have to transit through.
Interestingly since the UK changed governments to an austerity oriented government in 2010 and since the police saw large reductions in funding crime in the UK has actually dropped to the lowest point it's ever been in recorded history such that the UK is now one of the lowest crime countries in Europe (just over 10 years on from it being the highest).
Now, it's not that the cuts were the cause of this - it was trending in that direction anyway, but it's pretty clear that the cuts didn't stop or reverse the trend - a reduction in funding did not translate to a reduction in policing effectiveness.
British copyright law really isn't that weird, perhaps the most weird things about it are the desperate attempts by police to take down piracy websites using fraud laws because it's the closest thing they could find - a tactic which has only netted them mixed success at best. British copyright law is actually fairly typical because it's based on the Berne convention like that of most countries. The Premier League is clearly arguing that Fair Dealing does not exist under UK law, which is patently false.
Posting short snippets of a match on Twitter could arguably fall under any of the fair dealing exemptions, though at least 3 of them it seems to clearly fall under - i.e. criticism, review, and reporting of current events. The argument that such posts are for research are tenuous, but not impossible to make, but the argument that they fall under criticism, review, and reporting of current events seem to be pretty bulletproof.
Provided there is no commercial gain in the posting, and provided people stick to small snippets of just the goals then it seems pretty clear that the Premier League is outright lying and should simply be told to go fuck itself. Fair Dealing also requires that the original work already be available to the public in the first place, but that's also a given given that the whole fucking point in such football matches is that they're a public performance - the guys on the pitch aren't playing for shits and giggles like kids in a schoolyard, they're playing to make money and entertain, that is after all why they have stadiums and cameras around them that also then make a fortune broadcasting the event across the globe to millions of people, so the Premier League clearly can't use that argument either.
Given that the reason people post goals in the first place is to say "What an amazing goal!" or "What a shit goal!", given that the performances are clearly available to the public to start with (anyone can pay to see one live or on TV), and providing no commercial motive then I don't see how the Premier League could ever possibly argue that this isn't a legitimate use of the criticism or review clauses against the performance in question.
Sure, but my point is that by the time it's a year into it's lifecycle the X1 will have been patched with all the things it was lacking such that it can do everything the 360 did and then some, whilst being actually less of a pain in terms of DRM.
If all you use your 360 for is offline gaming and viewing media then the X1 will do all that too, so the only real thing that matters about it is whether it has any games you want, if not then there's really no big deal.
Personally I'm a bit of a console whore as I have a PS4 and a Wii U as well (on top of the 2x 360s and my Wii and PS3). I actually like all of them, probably less excited by the PS4's games line up right now - The Order just isn't my thing, and frankly despite the Wii U's deficiency of games the games it does have are actually excellent such that it's still got more excellent games - i.e. those deserving a review ranking of 95%+ than the PS4 and X1 combined even though the PS4 and X1 have more games overall. I've found actually owning the consoles that you get a completely different picture of them than that painted by fanboys and the press.
Well it depends what you class as a technology issue - I'd say that trying to make an application portable but not copyable is quite a technological challenge. That doesn't mean it's politically ideal but I can see why they're going down that route. This isn't really like PCs where companies try to bolt DRM onto an open architecture, this is about an architecture that is explicitly closed, being kept closed, because sometimes that's the intention - no one's pretending consoles are these great open devices, if you're staunchly anti-DRM then consoles never were and never will be for you but that doesn't mean there isn't a market for them and it doesn't change the fact that the market exists in part because of that DRM - there is a market for systems that are closed and fairly cheat free as a result.
"At the end of the day, the Xbone is a very anti-consumer piece of technology, and I simply will not buy one."
I'd argue it's actually less anti-consumer than some of the older consoles, certainly they've done away with things like online passes and shit this generation. I don't really understand why you have so much love for the 360, but so much hate for the X1 when the X1 is an all round improvement in terms of freedoms. The X1's DRM is actually a big improvement for the consumer on the 360s - cross profile content sharing works far better for example.
Microsoft made a lot of mistakes early on with the X1, but there was a complete reversal since the announcements and it's release (hell, you can even buy a Kinectless version now so all the NSA is spying on you through it nonsense is long dead), it's now a much more consumer friendly system than the 360 was and as consoles go, though consoles in general aren't exactly consumer friendly, so it's not exactly a high bar it has to surpass anyway.
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What efficient methodology is there to write a large codebase using a scripting language that can't be used with a compiled language exactly? The "you need better developers" fallacy is exactly that, a fallacy - it doesn't matter how good your developers are, all developers introduce bugs, certainly the number decreases as you increase the skill of developers but there is not a developer on this earth that does not introduce bugs.
So there lies the problem with scripting languages, because many scripting languages don't have any kind of toolchain that prevents bugs from creeping all the way through until runtime, you have entire classes of bugs that a compiler would catch creeping through to your executing application at runtime, as the codebase grows scripted applications therefore by and large almost entirely all become much more time consuming to debug, as bugs only appear in fringe cases and it is not immediately obvious how to reproduce them. Often you find yourself having to implement tremendous logging infrastructure and so on and so forth to have confidence that your application is solid and the net result is that it's just way more efficient to develop large projects with a compiled technology. Also, whilst it's not a fault of scripting languages per-se, you tend to find that compiled languages have far superior toolchains for developing large projects in the first place anyway.
I don't say this as someone spouting opinion and theory, I say this as someone who has had experience as both a lead developer and technical architect in implementing large projects in both compiled (native and managed) and translated languages (which is usually what people mean when they say scripting, though it's getting muddier with more use of just in time compilation etc.), and even some projects mixing it all together.
For anything large the amount of time spent debugging scripted applications just gets too large for it to be worth it, at that point you might as well have used compiled because any early benefits of getting up and running quickly have long been lost.
Which isn't to say I'm of the opinion that scripting languages are always useless, not at all, I think they're fine for small non-mission critical tasks such as task automation, and for prototyping, but I think the larger a project gets, the less worthwhile scripting languages become - that's not to say you can't use them, as I say, I have myself been involved in such projects, but the project is always much more costly. This is evident at companies like Facebook with their use of PHP - last time they released server specs they had equivalent of 8gb of RAM per user of Facebook which is insane, even if a lot of that is being put into big data type processing and analytics, and the amount they've spent trying to turn PHP into something compiled similarly paints the same picture. So yeah, sure, Facebook is there, and it works, most of the time, but it's also costing them way more to run than it should if it was a properly planned project using something like Java, C++, or even C# from the outset. The flip side is, someone like Zuckerberg who was just hacking a de-facto prototype together may also never have been bothered, (or potentially even competent enough?) to do so with a compiled language and a more professional architecture, so it's a double edged sword in that respect, and I can see why many startups like to just get something developed no matter how crappy using the quick to launch (but poor to maintain) benefits of scripting languages.
The Google approach (well, it's probably unfair to call it the Google approach, other big players were doing it long before them) of writing the mission critical or speed critical stuff in Java or C++ respectively and using something like small manageable chunks of a scripting language like Python to string it together is not a bad option.
People do use it outside of Windows, it's become the defacto primary language for indie game developers nowadays developing on engines like Unity, or game development frameworks like MonoGame. Both of which support iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS X, and of course Windows.
As a Windows developer I never saw Mono as a viable option for development on Linux/MacOS X so I always reverted back to C/C++ or Java, but when I started fiddling with MonoGame and used it on Linux I was actually incredibly pleasantly surprised as to how good it is - it's good to the point of being a perfectly viable option, which is not something I expected.
Well, England also pays for things in Scotland it doesn't get to use too, so that kinda works both ways I'm afraid. You could just as well argue that the rest of the UK has to pay 91.1% of Scotland's railways even though they're by definition not in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland. I don't think that argument really has any logical grounding given it's two way nature.
So just remind me why Scotland wasn't Nazi Scotland during World War II?
No?
Can't answer?
I wonder why.
"There has been absolutely no appetite in England up until now for reorganising the system of government to provide improved localism. Scotland has consistently voted differently to the rest of the UK. The Scottish Parliament was an acknowledgement of that."
You don't see how nonsensical your argument is? really?
The Scottish parliament IS an example of improved localism and has seen consistently more devolved powers offered to it, as has Wales, as has Northern Ireland.
The fact you believe that somehow moving the power to Edinburgh when most of Scotland isn't Edinburgh seems to completely miss the point. Sure a bunch of people at the centre of power in Edinburgh will be more happy but then what of those areas of Scotland that are still not represented?
It's not like all of Scotland wants to be independent for the reasons I cited- say Scotland gets a majority for independence but areas such as the outlying islands whose ocean territory is oil rich want to stick with the union, then how do you think they feel being ruled by Edinburgh against their will? Do you feel self-determination is a thing that they deserve too such that the oil heavy parts of Scotlands coast that support the union can stay with it?
Again, the only people served by moving the centre of power to Edinburgh are those close to that centre of power in Edinburgh (who are already well served by the devolved parliament) - it does absolutely nothing to resolve the underlying problems of lack of representation for everyone else, and again, Salmond has proven that over and over with cases such as that of overruling a local decision against Trump, in favour of Trump because it suited him and those in power in Edinburgh, not the people of Scotland in general.
No you're missing the point of 20 minutes up north. It's 20 minutes up north to a station that's 20 minutes away from the place you most likely want to go. HS2 to Leeds is going to end at a new station that's 20 minutes away from the center where all the businesses and shops are, to Sheffield it's going to stop at Meadowhall which is convenient if you want a 3 hour shopping round trip from London but puts you a 20 - 40 minute tram/train journey from Sheffield centre.
The point is that HS2 is literally 100% useless it seems - it doesn't stop at the normal city center destinations, it stops at destinations that are far enough out from where you most likely want to be that all benefit is lost. Worse, studies (including the official ones despite the fact they "forgot" to include the relevant pages in the original report) show areas not served will suffer economically, so you'll even see economic decline as a result. I regularly travel between Leeds, Sheffield and London and I'll still just take the East Coast Mainline, or the Sheffield - St Pancras route, because it'll be direct to where I want to go rather than me having to hope between the end points to where I actually want to be at further expense.
So fundamentally HS2 isn't useful at all, it's the anti-thesis of useful, it has no benefits when built, and destroys many people's homes at colossal tax payers expense. Make no mistake - it's a scheme designed to create jobs at the tax payers expense, whilst achieving nothing useful in practice.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for Trident either, I agree I'm not convinced it serves any purpose, I get the feeling if we're ever at serious threat of being nuked then having a deterrent wont make or break the decision to nuke us anyway, but my point is that Trident if nothing else is at least a very cheap waste of money compared to pointless schemes like HS2 - on the money wasting scale Trident just doesn't even come close to the top of the scale. I'd rather we ditch Trident AND HS2 and have an extra £70bn to £100bn to spend on useful things like nationwide 1gbps internet connections, better maintained roads, additional capacity on the East Coast Mainline, free university tuition and so forth and still had enough change left over to make the NHS more awesome.
Right, but you have to remember also that Salmond has been allowed to rig this poll in his favour, precisely so even if the result is that close the Westminster parties can say that he couldn't even win the referendum on his terms.
It's unheard of in the UK for you to not be able to vote in a referendum because of your residency, rather than your nationality yet Westminster let Salmond have his own way on exactly this such that the 20% of Scots most likely to vote against independence (those not currently resident, but otherwise nationals of because they were born there) cannot vote in the referendum. Similarly he was allowed to continue with a loaded referendum question, and he was allowed to bring in the 16 - 18 bracket who are more naive to and hence swayed by populist nationalist rhetoric.
Given that Salmond can't even get a 50:50 split when the thing is slanted completely in his favour then I think saying there's no popular support is a fair argument. If all Scots were allowed a say rather than those Salmond has fiddle the figures for it seems the polls would be running closer to about 66:34.
This is a risky but potentially smart gamble by Westminster in letting Salmond have his own way - it means Salmond cannot come back and say the vote wasn't fair, that it should be re-run, he wont have a leg to stand on because everything was allowed on his terms and yet he'll still most likely lose it seems.
"In fact it's an open question whether he would continue to even be an EU citizen."
I don't think it is an open question in anyone's mind other than Salmond's. Given that even those within the EU who would be responsible for making such decisions have made it abundantly clear that Salmond would have to reapply, and the likes of Spain's PM have said he'd likely veto them joining then I think it's pretty clear what the stance of Scotland's EU status would be.
No, it's mostly where it is because they wanted to put it somewhere where it's easy to get it out into the deep water of the Atlantic - you can rapidly disperse them to places where they'll be almost impossible to find from the North Western side of the country. Putting it on the East coast like Newcastle isn't ideal because it's much easier for a country like Russia to get it's forces there to start searching, and there's less room for a sub to run.
So most likely places would, given that Ireland gets in the way to much of the West coast would be Wales, or Cornwall.
If you look at a depth map of the world's seas then you'll see that the current location gives some of the quickest access to very deep waters that our coasts offer.
I think Kirchner is too busy ruining her nation's economy to worry about that now. She seems to have dropped that topic now she's realised that it's no longer effective at distracting her populace from the fact that she's making them lose all their jobs and rapidly pushing them to a point where they wont even be able to afford things like bread.
I used to think that, but then I saw the price tag of HS2. We could triple our nuclear deterrent for the price of that and what does it give us? 20 minutes faster journeys to new stations that are 20 minutes from the outskirts of the handful of cities you can visit giving no actual benefit in practice anyway and with no doubt much higher fares to use it on top?
Trident is an absolute bargain compared to some of the wastes of money our government has a love affair with.
Even the handful of trains themselves are going to cost 1.5x more than a 4 acre aircraft carrier. I used to think many military projects were a colossal waste of money until I saw the cost of HS2. Now I think they're a bargain.
"Scotland has only been invaded by one country in the last 1000 years, it's a country to our south."
Why do you think that might be? Do you think, if say, Scotland was independent and the rest of the UK left it to fend for itself that you wouldn't have been attacked by the Nazis?
The whole reason Scotland hasn't been invaded by anyone other than the English in the last 1000 years is because the English have been running the single biggest empire in history for most of it and Scotland has thrived and been protected as a result of that.
"we just don't like the arseholes in Westminster telling us what to do (neither does large areas of England as it happens)"
Sure, and I'm in one of those parts of England where we have even less localism than you because we don't have a devolved parliament, but the idea of independence is far more retarded because we'd be even worse off again - sure we'd have more local politicians but you think someone in Glasgow is really going to be any more represented by a parliament in Edinburgh than they are London? All Salmond is selling you is that he'll get to fuck you over instead of the politicians in London, god only knows if Salmond's deal with Trump to overrule the rights of a Scotsman and his local council so that Trump could build a golf course isn't evidence of that I don't know what is - he doesn't give a shit about you any more than the politicians in Westminster and he's proven that enough times already.
Moving the place the people in control of you sit changes fuck all, increasing the accountability of whoever controls you and changing it to a relationship of serving you rather than controlling you is the only option to achieve what you're after, and you can do that far more prosperously in the union.
But perhaps instead of chasing independence you'd have worked with those of us in England to get that accountability and improved localism for the regions we might have got somewhere, but instead you're taking the worst possible option out of laziness.
Thankfully though, it seems that plenty enough Scots aren't quite retarded enough to take the stupid option that you're pushing so fingers crossed we can soon start focussing on a solution that makes sense, rather than one that's destructive fed by petty populist nationalist rhetoric.
No I didn't. Check GPs numbers, I was following from them.
Well that depends on the species doesn't it? Last I checked birds aren't a single generic type of creature that are entirely interchangeable in their roles in the environment.
Cats killing 200,000,000 common songbirds out of populations in the many billions is far less of a big deal than a solar plant killing 28,000 of a species which has less than 20,000 left in it's entire population.
You do realise there is more than one species of bird right? and that they have different levels of population and different levels of importance in terms of conservation?
I know each time the Assange story comes up you like to jump on it because the whole thing is personal for you (I haven't forgotten the last time you lost the plot on the issue, don't worry), but you seem to be making things up that aren't even there, which is a new low even for you. The story states very clearly that he was convicted in absentia, not simply that he was simply awaiting an appeal when he died, using Swedish translations of common words like "prosecute" doesn't add weight to your case by the way, it just makes you look even more desperate in your argument.
"And the British court system has at every level ruled Assange to be in a state equivalent to charged under the British legal system."
What the British court has ruled is that he can be extradited under the extremely lax checks of the European Arrest Warrant, something which is a major bone of contention in the UK and has been the target of much political preference for removal by MPs and precisely because it's such an utterly stupid piece of law in the first place. Pretending stupid law somehow adds weight to your overriding bias that Assange is a rapist is another example of your further highlighting the stupidity of your argument.
"But do you somehow know more about Swedish and British law..."
What I know is that not all these things are in agreement, so to try and stack them together to add weight to your argument is again, a further example of the weakness of your argument. I know for example that the prosecutor your refer to when stating her case in British court actually admitted that Assange could indeed be interviewed and charged here under the MLA framework (exactly like they did for this guy in Serbia: http://www.expressen.se/nyhete...), but simply insisted that she be able to do so in person in Sweden regardless.
What I also know is that whilst I may not be a professor of Swedish law, that professors of Swedish law also completely disagree with you, so your appeal to authority fallacy fails miserably in the face of a similar but opposite appeal to authority:
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/a...
Another thing I know is that the British courts regularly get such human rights issues wrong, they spent 10 years restricting the liberties of Abu Qatada only for him to be found innocent when he finally got to Jordan, and there have been many other cases where British courts got such issues wrong. The idea you're pushing that they consistently get such issues right, and aren't ever swayed by politics is demonstrable false, again, as in the Abu Qatada case. The British justice system is imperfect and easily manipulated by politics, in fact, the whole reason we have a Supreme Court is because politicians wanted an overriding court with a politically appointed judge panel precisely so that politics could play a part in justice, which is yet one more thing that shows how utterly laughable your appeal to authority fallacy is in this respect.
So Rei, I think you should accept what you accepted last time this discussion came up, that this issue is one that is too personal for you, and that in Rei land a man accused is a man guilty is a man convicted is not how things should work in the real world. In the real world we like justice and due process, if that isn't being followed, which it isn't - because the Swedish prosecution are insisting on avoiding processes that could resolve this issue fairly and objectively, then there's a problem.
I really could not care if Assange is found guilty or not, I have no presumption of innocence unlike your presumption and insistence of guilt, I think there's a fair chance he may well be guilty all the same. I appreciate some of the things he has talked about and some of his goals, but that's by the by, I appreciated some of the things Rolf Harris did but it doesn't change the fact it's all overshadowed b
Sure, and we took the same line with Abu Qatada - we watched his family 24/7, we held him in detention without trial, and we did this for 10 years whilst trying to send him to Jordan but requiring Jordan guarantee him a fair trial. We just had to spend millions trying to get him sent there and monitoring his family in the meantime, carrying out defacto punishments and restrictions on his freedom, because he "technically" skipped bail once or twice, we had to do this because he was accused by Jordan.
Luckily we finally were able to get Jordan to guarantee him a fair trial, we finally managed to ship him off after being good to our laws in restriction his freedoms for 10 years. This year Jordan was finally able to bring judgement on this man accused of terrorism and restricted in the UK for so long.
Oh, but turns out, in fair trial, he was found not guilty.
Seriously, UK law is completely broken on this sort of issue, the fact a person can be in and out of jail, can be constantly watched, can have his family tracked and pursued, all without charge because of accusations by a foreign nation only to be found to be not guilty all along is absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Though it's also been the case in the past that people who skipped bail but are found not guilty or have had charges dropped do in fact have punishments for skipping bail dropped because they should never have been held on bail in the first place because they were never guilty of the crime.
So if Sweden did drop the charges, how Assange would be treated for skipping bail would be quite telling - there's no reason a judge couldn't accept his argument that he believed the charges were politically motivated and that in the fact of them being dropped he could be let go without further punishment. If they decide to pursue punishment for skipping bail in light of there being no case to answer though, that'd actually be quite unusual.
Perhaps it wont die because it's not actually a myth? What you quote, and state, states that the prosecution would like to pursue 4 specific charges, but there's the problem, all they're doing is saying they'd like to, they're not actually doing it.
The point is, that if they want to actually press charges then they should just do it. Yes, yes, I know the argument is that they can't because of a magical clause that prevents Sweden charging and trying in absentia. Oh wait, they can do exactly fucking that when it suits:
http://www.thelocal.se/2010052...
All the lies about Sweden having a "different" legal system that prevents them doing things that every other country in the world manages to do are exactly that, lies. Sweden can and does do things exactly like everyone else, they're just making an exception in lying about it in Assange's case.
Actually it happens a lot, Jordan and the UK were involved in years of negotiations to get Abu Qatada extradited to Jordan and it involved Jordan making outright changes to their legal system to accomodate and ensure Qatada would not be held to trial with evidence obtained via torture.
After many tens of millions were spent on the case, and Qatada was extradited to Jordan with a guarantee of a fair trial, he was a few months ago found not guilty.
It's a prime example of a case whereby governments try to bypass fair trials to get the outcome they want but are thwarted by human rights law, only for the individual to be found to be innocent all along when they finally get the fair trial they deserve.
Sweden's actions are out of the ordinary in that they both insist the case is important enough to pursue and not be dropped, but not important enough to focus on public interest reduction of prosecution costs by either questioning Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy which is something Sweden has done in other cases, or to give him a legal guarantee of no onwards extradition to the US. These are both things that contrary to the lies floating round otherwise they can and have done previously in other cases.
In situations like this countries make one of two choices - they decide a case is worth pursuing and do everything in their power, such as the option of giving certain legal guarantees as in the Jordan-UK Abu Qatada case, or they decide the case isn't important enough to pursue and drop it. What is abnormal is to just have the costs continue to rack up indefinitely whilst there are many means available to stop that happening and to resolve the issue.
I've done exactly what you say and have seen no such thing. I have however seen people like Domscheit-Berg carry out strong defamation and sabotage campaigns against him and Wikileaks, and who also seems to have gone oddly quite now that such character assassination is mission complete.
But more importantly I prefer to judge people not on what others say about them, but what they themselves say and do, and having listened to Assange's talks in-context (rather than all the out of context quotes that are often used to defame him) it's pretty fucking clear that that guy is really little different to Snowden - a largely rational well meaning intelligent individual.
But I know this is lost on you cold fjord, given that you love submitting your life and existence to the whims of the US government, whether right or wrong.
Sure but it's not merely violent crime I'm talking about, even things like burglary of empty homes has decreased. The only real increases have been sexual offences and most of these are because of mass revelations of historic abuse in the 70s/80s such that much of the increase is actual down to historic crimes, rather than recent crimes.
"Yes, that means punishing the victim. Whereas the victim here is a facilitator for the culprit. It's like leaving your car unlocked and open on the main road and someone using it for a bank heist. I don't know about yours, in my country, if that's your car you're due for facilitating a crime."
I actually agree that some victims should be left to suffer the consequences - god only knows there's been enough TV and newspaper articles aimed at every age range now that means anyone who is victim of a phishing scam deserves what they get.
But I have to ask, what the fuck kind of backwards country do you live in whereby you're guilty of facilitating a crime just because you did something stupid like left your car wide open? It's one thing to suggest the person not be covered by insurance (which is normally what happens in just about every sane country I'm aware of the laws of) but to hold them partially responsible for a further crime committed with their vehicle? what the fuck? Unless there's proof of intent that they did so with the intention of helping facilitate the crime (but then it's not stupidity is it? it's malice) then I don't think this is the case in just about any western nation.
That's the sort of twisted logic that implies a girl who wears a short skirt and gets raped is guilty of facilitating a rape, and someone who runs a Tor node should sign a sex offenders register if someone transits something dodgy across it. The only places I'm aware of such things happening are nations with really backwards laws like some parts of India, tribal areas of Pakistan, and some African nations.
It's one thing to not compensate someone who suffered financially for their own stupidity to ensure that there's a cost to such stupidity to act as a deterrent, but to hold people liable for other people's crimes just because they were stupid? That's really not a thing I hope to see in any country I ever have to transit through.
Interestingly since the UK changed governments to an austerity oriented government in 2010 and since the police saw large reductions in funding crime in the UK has actually dropped to the lowest point it's ever been in recorded history such that the UK is now one of the lowest crime countries in Europe (just over 10 years on from it being the highest).
Now, it's not that the cuts were the cause of this - it was trending in that direction anyway, but it's pretty clear that the cuts didn't stop or reverse the trend - a reduction in funding did not translate to a reduction in policing effectiveness.
British copyright law really isn't that weird, perhaps the most weird things about it are the desperate attempts by police to take down piracy websites using fraud laws because it's the closest thing they could find - a tactic which has only netted them mixed success at best. British copyright law is actually fairly typical because it's based on the Berne convention like that of most countries. The Premier League is clearly arguing that Fair Dealing does not exist under UK law, which is patently false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Posting short snippets of a match on Twitter could arguably fall under any of the fair dealing exemptions, though at least 3 of them it seems to clearly fall under - i.e. criticism, review, and reporting of current events. The argument that such posts are for research are tenuous, but not impossible to make, but the argument that they fall under criticism, review, and reporting of current events seem to be pretty bulletproof.
Provided there is no commercial gain in the posting, and provided people stick to small snippets of just the goals then it seems pretty clear that the Premier League is outright lying and should simply be told to go fuck itself. Fair Dealing also requires that the original work already be available to the public in the first place, but that's also a given given that the whole fucking point in such football matches is that they're a public performance - the guys on the pitch aren't playing for shits and giggles like kids in a schoolyard, they're playing to make money and entertain, that is after all why they have stadiums and cameras around them that also then make a fortune broadcasting the event across the globe to millions of people, so the Premier League clearly can't use that argument either.
Given that the reason people post goals in the first place is to say "What an amazing goal!" or "What a shit goal!", given that the performances are clearly available to the public to start with (anyone can pay to see one live or on TV), and providing no commercial motive then I don't see how the Premier League could ever possibly argue that this isn't a legitimate use of the criticism or review clauses against the performance in question.
Sure, but my point is that by the time it's a year into it's lifecycle the X1 will have been patched with all the things it was lacking such that it can do everything the 360 did and then some, whilst being actually less of a pain in terms of DRM.
If all you use your 360 for is offline gaming and viewing media then the X1 will do all that too, so the only real thing that matters about it is whether it has any games you want, if not then there's really no big deal.
Personally I'm a bit of a console whore as I have a PS4 and a Wii U as well (on top of the 2x 360s and my Wii and PS3). I actually like all of them, probably less excited by the PS4's games line up right now - The Order just isn't my thing, and frankly despite the Wii U's deficiency of games the games it does have are actually excellent such that it's still got more excellent games - i.e. those deserving a review ranking of 95%+ than the PS4 and X1 combined even though the PS4 and X1 have more games overall. I've found actually owning the consoles that you get a completely different picture of them than that painted by fanboys and the press.
Well it depends what you class as a technology issue - I'd say that trying to make an application portable but not copyable is quite a technological challenge. That doesn't mean it's politically ideal but I can see why they're going down that route. This isn't really like PCs where companies try to bolt DRM onto an open architecture, this is about an architecture that is explicitly closed, being kept closed, because sometimes that's the intention - no one's pretending consoles are these great open devices, if you're staunchly anti-DRM then consoles never were and never will be for you but that doesn't mean there isn't a market for them and it doesn't change the fact that the market exists in part because of that DRM - there is a market for systems that are closed and fairly cheat free as a result.
"At the end of the day, the Xbone is a very anti-consumer piece of technology, and I simply will not buy one."
I'd argue it's actually less anti-consumer than some of the older consoles, certainly they've done away with things like online passes and shit this generation. I don't really understand why you have so much love for the 360, but so much hate for the X1 when the X1 is an all round improvement in terms of freedoms. The X1's DRM is actually a big improvement for the consumer on the 360s - cross profile content sharing works far better for example.
Microsoft made a lot of mistakes early on with the X1, but there was a complete reversal since the announcements and it's release (hell, you can even buy a Kinectless version now so all the NSA is spying on you through it nonsense is long dead), it's now a much more consumer friendly system than the 360 was and as consoles go, though consoles in general aren't exactly consumer friendly, so it's not exactly a high bar it has to surpass anyway.