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Comment Re:Web hosting providers slow to offer new PHP (Score 1) 261

Which looks a little like how Python would look without list comprehensions:

filtered = filter((lambda x: x.foo == "bar"), unfiltered)

True, but my brain just auto-converted that to a car analogy: "You know, if I take off one of the wheels off this fancy sports car, it doesn't drive too good" :)

Comment Re:Only two warts (Score 2) 261

No, it uses white space for block structure only, and honestly, don't knock it until you've tried it. Most people working with C-derived languages use some form of block indentation, and large shops usually have coding standards that insist you stick to it rigorously. This means most people already have the tooling in place to enforce indentation, so it's not like it'd be any extra effort to do it for Python. I'm in no way suggesting you'd find it to be a revelatory experience, but I think you would find that when it comes to writing code, it doesn't make things any harder, it in fact makes things slightly easier. But the difference is so small that it's practically irrelevant. I used to think the same way as you, that it was the dumbest idea I'd ever heard of. Then I tried it and realised I couldn't care less :D

Comment Re:Damn... (Score 2) 602

I'm just going to jump in here and yell "BULLSHIT!". Ever looked up the definition of normal? Aspergers is a significant deviation from how a person functions mentally on average.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you don't actually have a statistical definition of normal human mental processes to hand, so trying to use formal definitions of "normal" and "significance" is meaningless.

What a nice load of pathos. All irrelevant to the topic.

No. I'm pointing out that humans have a cognitive defect that causes us to label inconvenient mental configurations as "diseases", rather than addressing the important questions directly. Is this person happy? Can they achieve their goals without assistance? Can they effectively function in our society as it currently exists?

Comment Re:Damn... (Score 5, Insightful) 602

Diseases of the brain sometimes nothing but semantics. When you declare something as being a disease, you are implicitly saying it's not normal, it's disadvantageous and it's something that we should seek to cure. But it's culturally-defined what is and isn't normal. There are situations where being a sociopath are an advantage. There are (controversial) theories that suggest that schizophrenics were treated as shaman in hunter-gatherer societies. And obviously, we can't forget the DSM's classification of homosexuality as a disease. As you point out, things we regard as genetic diseases sometimes confer benefits, which why they haven't been selected out of the gene pool. Evolution doesn't draw this line between normal and diseased, but we insist on trying to do so, which is why the DSM skitters about like water on a frying pan - all it's doing is tracking cultural norms and current obsessions. Personally, I think we should do the opposite of what you're suggesting: abandon the word "disease" for all mental differences. Stop trying to draw artificial distinctions. Stop trying to pigeonhole. Approach each one - and each person - as an individual.

Comment Re:Word (Score 1) 586

That is not the only thing that "yield" is for; it can be used to perform just-in-time execution of memory- or CPU-intensive operations, but it can also be used to make composable chains of list iterators that only process as much of the list as they need to satisfy the caller's requirements. Microsoft's own guidance explicitly states that properties should avoid side effects. Anyone dumb enough to code like that is not smart enough to think of using "yield", or to use it correctly.

Comment Re:It's too bad tablets are pretty much useless. (Score 1) 287

I look at the average person and think, now here is a guy with more money than sense. Yeah nice to have some overpriced gadget to sit between a more expensive gadget that can actually do stuff, and time spent actually enjoying life and not surfing the web and writing emails. Most people with less or no money to waste have no choice but to do the correct thing in down time and enjoy life and not surf the web and write emails.

...or post to /.? Your signature is apposite.

Comment Re:Truth or dare... (Score 1) 617

Uhuh. Of course, it's still disputed whether that role was positive or negative. Personally, I'd be more tempted to lay most of the blame on the 4 billion USD's worth of E-mini contracts dumped onto the market by an exceptionally dumb trading algorithm. The more I learn about traders, the more horrified I become that we apparently have so many people writing trading bots with, it seems, almost no understanding of economics. They understand the layered, arcane rules of the game they play on the stock exchange, but seem to have no particular deep understanding of what's actually happening.

Comment Re:Leave you phone^W lojack at home. (Score 1) 306

It's not like hard lines are secure. The FBI can tap your calls from their desks. With a warrant, obviously, cough cough. How much do you wish to inconvenience yourself to protect yourself from theoretical monitoring? How many technologies are you going to allow your fear to block you from using? People use these phones willingly because they find value in them. If you don't use something you desire because you're afraid of what your government would do to you, then aren't you oppressed? Aren't you actually allowing them to oppress you, complicit in your own subjugation?

Comment Re:Hint for future "Ask Slashdot" articles (Score 1) 311

The problem is that GUI and SUI are not synonymous, which should be obvious if you read the supplied link. Which i sense you didn't. It was the correct term. An equivalent term would've been "GUIs which mimic the attributes of analogous physical objects", which is unwieldy.

Comment Re:The question is (Score 1) 840

I was imprecise, I apologise. I think, from other comments, you're from a farming family? So I don't mean a poor harvest, I mean loss of your entire crop. And it happening over and over again, because the crop is especially vulnerable.

Extending the pet analogy, yes I take your point about congenital defects, but what would you think of someone who deliberately or carelessly (as in, being capable of knowing better) bred those defects into their children?

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