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Comment Re:We used to love going to theaters... (Score 1) 49

Big screen and big sound. Maybe it doesn't mean much because you have a house in the suburbs, but if you're in an apartment (either because you don't want to commute, you want to live in a city, or it's all you can afford for housing), TV speakers are pretty much it because anything more will get you noise complaints.

Depending on your income and housing costs, you may be limited on how big a TV you can have as well.

So a theatre is pretty much the only place if you want that sort of thing.

Granted, I don't go out to theatres much anymore either - and I spent $35 on the ticket (one, for myself), mostly because I want the big screen IMAX, but it's a far drive. And the local theatres are regular screens which aren't great. I pretty much limit myself to one movie a year or so tops.

Comment Re:Part of the reason: 2038 (Score 1) 24

I believe part of the reason is the year 2038 issue. A while ago I remember seeing posts about the issues FreeBSD has/had with getting around 2038 on their system. IIRC, it was a huge effort.

*EVERY* UNIX and UNIX-like system has to deal with the problem. But it's got nothing to do with 32-bit systems, because OpenBSD and NetBSD have it working since 2012 on 32-bit systems. Linux since 2020 (Linux supported 64-bit time_t on 64-bit platforms already, but 2020 is when 32-bit systems supported it).

It's not a simple solution, but it's been done before on other systems. It's also why Linux has a bunch of system calls that are merely using 64-bit versions.

Comment Another retirement goal I can toss (Score 1) 73

When I retired (10y) I was a whiz with Perl, had learned enough Python to know I could switch over easily, and was being told by Paul Graham that if people were too dumb to see that LISP was the ultimate language that had made his fortune, that Ruby had the same deep structure allowing the ultimate trick of self-modifying code and true compactness and elegance and all that stuff the Great Programming Languages all had to have for the most-elite work.

Of course, I didn't have to work any more, and I hate writing toy programs, and didn't have a problem that really required it, so at 10y, the O'Reilly Ruby book is dusty, and when I have something too hard for a bash script, it's still perl. Which still works.

But I was feeling guilty about it, and now I can put the Ruby book away with satisfaction that the moment passed. (Giving up on FORTH was the hard one; loved that language.)

Comment A lot of them really have issues (Score 1) 203

I have a kid like that, privileged, good school. He cannot spell, he will never be able to spell, he cannot see the letters. It is usual in French schools to count spelling mistakes in any test, be it French or English, or history or physics. Without the protection of special instructions, my kid would be forced to leave school.

Comment Re:Scala? (Score 1) 73

Modern C++ is a seriously powerful and fast - albeit perhaps too complicated - language without all the gotchas of older C++ and plain C.

Modern C++ didn't get rid of the gotchas, it just added more of them. It's fine if you're working by yourself, but you can't prescribe what features other people will use (including the writers of libraries you want to use). But old C++ was fine when working by yourself too.

Comment Re:Writer's Tricks (Score 2) 73

You can add types to your variables in Python. You can use typescript with Javascript.

You can also introspect your types in Ruby, so his point is moot.

There is also the question of why you would add type checking to a dynamic language: if you don't want a dynamic language, why did you choose one? But the reality is most of us don't choose languages anymore, we choose libraries and have to accept whatever language they are attached to.

Comment Re: Holup (Score 1) 128

A lot of lawyers prefer checks because a signed check is proof of intention. Not only is it signed, it often has a "reason" memo written.

This can also work in behalf of the person writing the check (in court). For example, if you pay your rent by check, the landlord shows the intent to accept it when they deposit the check. Whereas if you pay with direct deposit, the landlord can claim they had no intention to accept the money.

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