Re:I see whitespace is still syntactically relevan
on
Python 2.3 Final Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Putting a large block of code into a while or for loop.
Editor support is very useful in this case. In Emacs you can indent/dedent a region with C-C > and C-C < (i.e., control-C, then > or <); you mark a region by going to one end, hitting C-space, then putting your cursor at the other end (or dragging with the mouse).
TABS and order of whitespace
Python treats all tabs like 8 spaces, no matter the location. But mixing tabs and spaces is considered bad and potentially dangerous if you display tabs as something other than 8 spaces. You can use the -t flag to Python to warn you about this.
Discussions on tabs and spaces can lead to flamewars in Python circles. Many people hate tabs, and a significant majority of code does not use tabs.
As far as screen width, that's no different in Python than any other language. Deep nesting is a sign of a program in need of refactoring.
How is the utility going to store the power that is generated during daylight hours? Storing power doesn't work very well. Solar energy has some serious reliability problems, and electricity is a perishable good.
It's very likely that the patent does not cover all possible (or even useful) forms of encrypted pkzip, but it does cover the particular technique that PKWare is using. If that is the case, other software could not support this format of secure zip file without a license from PKWare. Prior art probably doesn't matter so long as they aren't trying to patent the very concept of encrypted zip files, but just the particular implementation used in their format.
If that is the case, and considering how many implementations of pkzip exist (often embedded in other applications, e.g. jar files) I find it highly unlikely they would succede in gaining adoption of their zip extensions.
This is correct. So the secure pkzip involves compression, encryption, and archiving in that order. This is in contrast to tar, where you usually archive first, then compress (with gzip), and then perhaps encrypt the result (though most encryption programs also compress).
I believe the zip format allows for much faster decryption of individual files inside an archive, compared with tar+gzip -- pkzip keeps an index of all the files in the archive, whereas gzip is content neutral, so you have to decompress to get at the underlying tar file.
.gz.tar would be something different (a tar with its constituent files gzipped). I know nothing about how efficient tar is about accessing individual files, but I don't believe it's very efficient.
Also you can't usefully compress encrypted content -- if you could find compressable patterns in an encrypted message, it wouldn't be very well encrypted, would it?
A strong encryption process shouldn't need compression for security. But compression can easily improve the speed of the encryption, since if you compress the text that means that much less text to encrypt (and compression is usually a lot faster than encryption).
You will never be able to beat the cost of offshore labor. Even if you could, you wouldn't want to. There's a reason it's so cheap...everything here costs 10 times more (rent, food, clothing, etc...) than it does in India and China.
Not true! Rent is cheaper... but in part because people live in small buildings and apartments, with less services. Most material goods cost about the same, except food (though prepackaged food like Americans tend to eat isn't that much cheaper -- and raw foods in the US aren't that expensive either).
Admittedly you can have a less reliable car because mechanics are cheaper, or no car at all because buses run more often due to higher demand (with drivers who are paid less); you can get food at a restaurant (made from raw ingredients) because the cook and waiter are paid less; maybe your wife can stay home because she has the skills to make that economically viable (by saving money with her at-home labor)... and it goes on like that. It's a different sort of economy, but one rooted in poverty, with a tremendous practical and ethical impact on society.
The third world is a different lifestyle and a different standard of living. But don't imagine that those Indian programmers are living it up over there because everything is so cheap.
No, all that was true before he moved to Alaska. What he really proved was that he was willing to walk away. That's what gave him the leverage in negotiations.
Nah, that's unreasonable. There's many people will clear copyright claims on Linux, and there's no way in which copyright for that code could be reassigned to SCO. I don't think the courts even have the authority to do that sort of thing at all, especially not when many of those copyright holders aren't associated with any wrongdoing.
I think it should be clear that child pornography is different from KKK material. If the KKK beat up some black guy who they didn't like, then taken pictures of it and distributed it, then it would be analogous. As it is, the KKK mostly just distributes at worse incitement to commit crimes, not actual evidence of crimes. There's a qualitative difference.
Basic programming jobs will leave the US. As applications get more complex there is less incentive to hire local programmers to do basic code work. I can hire foreigners to do the grunt work or use OSS toolkits/libraries to save money.
Huh? This doesn't make any sense. As applications get more complex you need programmers to do complex programming, not grunt work. I mean, there's nothing saying foreign workers can't do that, but complex applications certainly do not mean you need more grunt workers. If you sell your code by the pound maybe it makes sense...
You're right, not all republicans are bastards. However, unlike some stupid perjury claim, Iran-Contra was about the government selling arms to a terrorists (Iran) to fund other terrorists (the Contras). Iran-Contra was about doing evil things, which is a hell of a lot worse than dishonest.
The Reagan administration supported Mujahideen, the Afghani group that before its militarization was notable for throwing acid in the faces of women who did not wear veils. The Reagan administration supported Saddam, even as he was using chemical weapons. And (in Iran-Contra) was supporting Saddam's opponent, just to try to keep things bloodier for longer. That's just a short list of things that are particularly notable in light of recent events.
Okay, you can give Reagan the benefit of the doubt -- he was a fool and a figurehead for a bunch of immoral people. Or he was a immoral person himself.
Not that I'm discounting the importance of that 1.1 pounds, but I must say that losing 1.1 pounds off your body isn't that hard, or heck, 1.1 pounds off the clothing you wear. If it's just about carrying things around, 1.1 pounds isn't much. If there's an advantage, I have a feeling it's in ease of handling the computer more than the carrying.
It is being worked on -- PyPI (Python Package Index). It's quite new, so it's not as big as CPAN, and doesn't do a lot of things CPAN does (many of which I'm sure I'm unaware of) since it's just an index. But it is specifically intended to be a start on the path to CPAN. The distutils package for Python is another piece of the puzzle, to make distribution and installation easier.
Just on the topic of file processing, the path module for Python is really cool. I'd like to see it become a part of the standard library, actually. I think it makes Python code much more on-par with Perl for that task (and I fully admit that Python's os.path functions are not very pretty).
Re:Is Python PARTICULARLY good for text processing
on
Text Processing in Python
·
· Score: 2, Informative
No, Python is not particularly good for text processing. Python is very much a general-purpose language, and there's no specific task for which Python was designed.
Text processing is, after all, only the start of things. Eating and spitting out text gets kind of boring pretty quick (see Awk or XSLT). More often you'll want to do something with that text. You'll process it then present it, email it, perform actions based on it, etc.
That said, Python is quite good for text processing. For instance, it doesn't have a regex literal, but it does have a special string literal which doesn't parse backslashes. So regexes don't stick out quite as nicely as in Perl, but they aren't painful to write like in PHP (how many backslashes do you need in your string when looking for a backslash?). Python has a few little touches that make it work well, even if there's nothing you can point to and say "that's for text processing."
Compared to Java, for instance, text processing in Python will be much easier and require much less code. But that holds true for any task. Compared to Perl, code written to do text processing in Python will be much more readable. Like any task. Python is just a good language.
I can understand how an RFID tag could be really cool -- it certainly isn't hard to imagine all the neat things you could do with it. But it's easy to imagine how it can be dangerous. People who think about advertising or purchase tracking are aiming low on the danger level -- if that was the only problem, I'd say get over it, RFID is too cool, we can figure out a way to fix the other problems later. Really, how bad is targeted advertising?
It's all the other tracking. We're talking about a potential record of everyplace a person goes. The government is clearly willing to abuse such information -- organizations like the FBI have abused just about every other piece of information they are given, and have never made any attempt at reform. And there's a resurgence of suppression and punishment of dissidents, including arrests and who knows what else.
I wonder if there is a way that we could safely use this, though. Off the top of my head, here's the laws I might propose:
First, all items with RFID tags must be prominently marked. I don't care if it's a "green tag" or whatever -- so long as there's no variety, and it's directly on the item (not on a label somewhere). Second, all RFID reading machines must be in plain site of any place that they can read, and must be prominently marked. Maybe a blinking green light too, or something -- make it a little obnoxious, and make the reader's intent very clear.
Violation should result in heavy fines, but more importantly, a revokation of the RFID license -- the license to tag things with RFID sensors, to use readers, and all of that. You should not be able to simply risk it with not labeling the items properly -- because in doing it you risk being shut out of the game entirely. And obviously creating these tags should be carefully monitored, as should be fairly easy to do, since RFIDs are all about monitoring -- unauthorized ID numbers should be easy to track. The readers, though, would be harder to track... I imagine it won't be too long before you could rig up your own reader if you wanted.
So... destruction of the RFID tag should also be fairly easy. All of these would be fairly reasonable, I think.
Of course, this doesn't keep the government from breaking these rules on its own. And any law the government makes against itself will be ignored and grossly violated, because that's what the Justice Department does. So maybe this wouldn't work.
Or rather, Americans may realize that their government and their corporations are quickly becoming one and the same, that even the fuzzy lines of before are disapearing.
What the fuck am I talking about? I have no idea. I was still waking up when I wrote this, and names and places were confused in my mind. Disregard this comment.
My impression is that they are doing much like Singapore, which not that long ago was very poor and undereducated, and has no natural resources or any reason to be successful. Singapore seems kind of disturbing, but maybe it shouldn't -- a sort of enlightened, maternal dictatorship, which seems to have actually had the country's best interest in mind. High levels of self-investment, companied with careful protectionism, and careful alignment with the international powers-that-be (allowing but also shaping foreign investment, discouraging speculative investment).
I think some of the lesson is that modernization isn't that hard -- it can happen quickly, and democratically (meaning modernization of the masses, not just the elite). Productivity -- even in an underdeveloped nation -- is high enough that a self-investment feedback loop can do incredible things.
I think that's even true in the US, if we spent more of our wealth investing in infrastructure, education, society, etc., instead of wasting it on our petty consumerist tendencies, it would be amazing what we could accomplish. Instead we go to great lengths to fritter our wealth away.
Gates also isn't just giving to rich people charities, like American Heart Society, or cultural institutions. Those are nice and all, I guess I'd call them charities, but giving to them isn't altruistic. But Gates is giving a lot of things to organizations that aren't solving problems that directly affect him -- he, nor anyone he knows, is going to go hungry, suffer HIV in Africa, etc. And from what I've seen of a number of them, they are pretty progressive projects as well, not enabling projects (that is, projects that only keep things from getting too bad, but don't try to solve the problem). (Though I find the African AIDS stuff to be highly suspect
While generally I would agree that cell phones are intrinsically unsafe in cars, there have been times when I felt that my using a cell phone made my driving more safe. On long-distance drives, or when I'm otherwise getting sleepy while driving, it's far better to be slightly distracted by the cell phone (but awake) than to be drifting off. So it's not all bad.
Open Office is not an example of an Open Source program -- it was opened, but it was not originally developed open. If you want to criticize the Open Source/Free Software process, use an appropriate example, like AbiWord or KWord. Or give OpenOffice a few years to become a real Open Source program.
I think most of the problems you note about OO are very much because it was a commercial product. It did things to unnecessarily copy MS Office, or to look superficially fancy or featureful, or it used a monolithic structure necessitated by the commercial distribution process.
I suppose that VAT may be collected differently than taxes in the US, since it's taken from the total, rather than added to the total. In the US I believe most things get rounded to the nearest cent. In cases where you are aportioning the money (like VAT), then you want to be sure the divided money adds up to the same total as the original total, so if you are dividing a dollar into thirds you want to come up with $0.33, $0.33, and $0.34 -- somebody gets a little extra, maybe it doesn't matter who, but the total is maintained. I don't think accountants would like it at all if this wasn't always, completely true -- unfairness is better than losing money to the ether.
I'm sure there are some transactions where a one cent rounding per transaction could add up to significant money -- maybe you need more decimal points. But you still have to round at some point (unless you are using rational numbers), and you want to maintain totals quite strictly. Floating point values are not predictable when it comes to this rounding.
Slashdot Mirror
Discussions on tabs and spaces can lead to flamewars in Python circles. Many people hate tabs, and a significant majority of code does not use tabs.
As far as screen width, that's no different in Python than any other language. Deep nesting is a sign of a program in need of refactoring.
How is the utility going to store the power that is generated during daylight hours? Storing power doesn't work very well. Solar energy has some serious reliability problems, and electricity is a perishable good.
If that is the case, and considering how many implementations of pkzip exist (often embedded in other applications, e.g. jar files) I find it highly unlikely they would succede in gaining adoption of their zip extensions.
This is correct. So the secure pkzip involves compression, encryption, and archiving in that order. This is in contrast to tar, where you usually archive first, then compress (with gzip), and then perhaps encrypt the result (though most encryption programs also compress).
A strong encryption process shouldn't need compression for security. But compression can easily improve the speed of the encryption, since if you compress the text that means that much less text to encrypt (and compression is usually a lot faster than encryption).
Admittedly you can have a less reliable car because mechanics are cheaper, or no car at all because buses run more often due to higher demand (with drivers who are paid less); you can get food at a restaurant (made from raw ingredients) because the cook and waiter are paid less; maybe your wife can stay home because she has the skills to make that economically viable (by saving money with her at-home labor)... and it goes on like that. It's a different sort of economy, but one rooted in poverty, with a tremendous practical and ethical impact on society.
The third world is a different lifestyle and a different standard of living. But don't imagine that those Indian programmers are living it up over there because everything is so cheap.
No, all that was true before he moved to Alaska. What he really proved was that he was willing to walk away. That's what gave him the leverage in negotiations.
Nah, that's unreasonable. There's many people will clear copyright claims on Linux, and there's no way in which copyright for that code could be reassigned to SCO. I don't think the courts even have the authority to do that sort of thing at all, especially not when many of those copyright holders aren't associated with any wrongdoing.
I think it should be clear that child pornography is different from KKK material. If the KKK beat up some black guy who they didn't like, then taken pictures of it and distributed it, then it would be analogous. As it is, the KKK mostly just distributes at worse incitement to commit crimes, not actual evidence of crimes. There's a qualitative difference.
Tab everything, whether the original programmer thought of it or not: ion
The Reagan administration supported Mujahideen, the Afghani group that before its militarization was notable for throwing acid in the faces of women who did not wear veils. The Reagan administration supported Saddam, even as he was using chemical weapons. And (in Iran-Contra) was supporting Saddam's opponent, just to try to keep things bloodier for longer. That's just a short list of things that are particularly notable in light of recent events.
Okay, you can give Reagan the benefit of the doubt -- he was a fool and a figurehead for a bunch of immoral people. Or he was a immoral person himself.
Not that I'm discounting the importance of that 1.1 pounds, but I must say that losing 1.1 pounds off your body isn't that hard, or heck, 1.1 pounds off the clothing you wear. If it's just about carrying things around, 1.1 pounds isn't much. If there's an advantage, I have a feeling it's in ease of handling the computer more than the carrying.
It is being worked on -- PyPI (Python Package Index). It's quite new, so it's not as big as CPAN, and doesn't do a lot of things CPAN does (many of which I'm sure I'm unaware of) since it's just an index. But it is specifically intended to be a start on the path to CPAN. The distutils package for Python is another piece of the puzzle, to make distribution and installation easier.
Just on the topic of file processing, the path module for Python is really cool. I'd like to see it become a part of the standard library, actually. I think it makes Python code much more on-par with Perl for that task (and I fully admit that Python's os.path functions are not very pretty).
Text processing is, after all, only the start of things. Eating and spitting out text gets kind of boring pretty quick (see Awk or XSLT). More often you'll want to do something with that text. You'll process it then present it, email it, perform actions based on it, etc.
That said, Python is quite good for text processing. For instance, it doesn't have a regex literal, but it does have a special string literal which doesn't parse backslashes. So regexes don't stick out quite as nicely as in Perl, but they aren't painful to write like in PHP (how many backslashes do you need in your string when looking for a backslash?). Python has a few little touches that make it work well, even if there's nothing you can point to and say "that's for text processing."
Compared to Java, for instance, text processing in Python will be much easier and require much less code. But that holds true for any task. Compared to Perl, code written to do text processing in Python will be much more readable. Like any task. Python is just a good language.
It's all the other tracking. We're talking about a potential record of everyplace a person goes. The government is clearly willing to abuse such information -- organizations like the FBI have abused just about every other piece of information they are given, and have never made any attempt at reform. And there's a resurgence of suppression and punishment of dissidents, including arrests and who knows what else.
I wonder if there is a way that we could safely use this, though. Off the top of my head, here's the laws I might propose:
First, all items with RFID tags must be prominently marked. I don't care if it's a "green tag" or whatever -- so long as there's no variety, and it's directly on the item (not on a label somewhere). Second, all RFID reading machines must be in plain site of any place that they can read, and must be prominently marked. Maybe a blinking green light too, or something -- make it a little obnoxious, and make the reader's intent very clear.
Violation should result in heavy fines, but more importantly, a revokation of the RFID license -- the license to tag things with RFID sensors, to use readers, and all of that. You should not be able to simply risk it with not labeling the items properly -- because in doing it you risk being shut out of the game entirely. And obviously creating these tags should be carefully monitored, as should be fairly easy to do, since RFIDs are all about monitoring -- unauthorized ID numbers should be easy to track. The readers, though, would be harder to track... I imagine it won't be too long before you could rig up your own reader if you wanted.
So... destruction of the RFID tag should also be fairly easy. All of these would be fairly reasonable, I think.
Of course, this doesn't keep the government from breaking these rules on its own. And any law the government makes against itself will be ignored and grossly violated, because that's what the Justice Department does. So maybe this wouldn't work.
Or rather, Americans may realize that their government and their corporations are quickly becoming one and the same, that even the fuzzy lines of before are disapearing.
What the fuck am I talking about? I have no idea. I was still waking up when I wrote this, and names and places were confused in my mind. Disregard this comment.
I think some of the lesson is that modernization isn't that hard -- it can happen quickly, and democratically (meaning modernization of the masses, not just the elite). Productivity -- even in an underdeveloped nation -- is high enough that a self-investment feedback loop can do incredible things.
I think that's even true in the US, if we spent more of our wealth investing in infrastructure, education, society, etc., instead of wasting it on our petty consumerist tendencies, it would be amazing what we could accomplish. Instead we go to great lengths to fritter our wealth away.
Gates also isn't just giving to rich people charities, like American Heart Society, or cultural institutions. Those are nice and all, I guess I'd call them charities, but giving to them isn't altruistic. But Gates is giving a lot of things to organizations that aren't solving problems that directly affect him -- he, nor anyone he knows, is going to go hungry, suffer HIV in Africa, etc. And from what I've seen of a number of them, they are pretty progressive projects as well, not enabling projects (that is, projects that only keep things from getting too bad, but don't try to solve the problem). (Though I find the African AIDS stuff to be highly suspect
While generally I would agree that cell phones are intrinsically unsafe in cars, there have been times when I felt that my using a cell phone made my driving more safe. On long-distance drives, or when I'm otherwise getting sleepy while driving, it's far better to be slightly distracted by the cell phone (but awake) than to be drifting off. So it's not all bad.
I think most of the problems you note about OO are very much because it was a commercial product. It did things to unnecessarily copy MS Office, or to look superficially fancy or featureful, or it used a monolithic structure necessitated by the commercial distribution process.
I'm sure there are some transactions where a one cent rounding per transaction could add up to significant money -- maybe you need more decimal points. But you still have to round at some point (unless you are using rational numbers), and you want to maintain totals quite strictly. Floating point values are not predictable when it comes to this rounding.