Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Knuth's TeX and Metafont (Score 1) 373

But the 3 sets of double consonants are not consecutive. The only word in the english language (that I know of) for which there exist 3 consecutive sets of double consonants is "bookkeeper."

I found the consonant (not merely double letters) part kind of neat, because I can't think of any other words like that.

Comment Re:Knuth's TeX and Metafont (Score 1) 373

Think of cities that have grown (London?) rather than be designed according to some grand master plan (New York?)

(NYC is) almost the exact opposite of what you're saying ... Someone designed it to a master plan.... a long time ago. And then it grew

Almost all of Manhattan Island (which is only part of New York City) above 42nd street was planned out as one grid. The Upper West Side (along Central Park from 59th street northward, about 7 miles) has two subway train lines that were largely done by cut-and-cover before the buildings were built; some 10 or 12 miles of Broadway is really a causeway over the #1/2/3 train lines. The East Side, on the other hand, did not get as much service; the work to put it in now, tunneling below, has been disruptive for years!

I was actually thinking of 'anything Robert Moses touched', so all 5 boroughs + LI to start. I don't know how involved he was in other areas. The roads feel like they were designed to induce traffic, as if he could curtail population growth through sheer stubbornness. (stubbornness has 3 sets of double consonants. awesome).

Comment Re:Knuth's TeX and Metafont (Score 1) 373

Think of cities that have grown (London?) rather than be designed according to some grand master plan (New York?)

I've never been to London, but I work in NY. It's almost the exact opposite of what you're saying, or maybe the middle ground that you didn't cover. Someone designed it to a master plan.... a long time ago. And then it grew. Nowadays I joke that if you're designing a city and your major highways look anything like NYC, it's time to fire the designer.

Comment Re:Writing Code is like Explaining Things (Score 1) 373

Writing code can be like explaining something or teaching. You can give an explanation that is logically correct but difficult for a human to follow. Programmers tend to neglect this in their code because it can be difficult to construct something that reads well and even if it doesn't read well, it can still be executed by a computer.

I like to think that if code is 'elegant', it can be read well after at most after brief explanation of how the algorithm is supposed to work, because code alone is sometimes difficult to interpret.

Similar to my thoughts. There are levels of elegance. The minimum requirement is that it does what it's supposed to, that something is non-trivial, and the code is fairly easy for anyone familiar with the language to understand. Better is when it does all that without any prior explanation of what it's supposed to do. Even better is when the something it's doing is actually quite complex, but still easily understood.

And then there's just plain awesome, where it uses a language feature that the reader has never seen before but instantly understands because the usage makes it obvious.

Comment Re:Why all the fuss about Common Core? (Score 1) 273

Also, most states only have one of these evaluative tests a year, so you're not comparing students to their own scores, you're comparing them to the scores of the previous year's class.

If that's how the test is being interpreted, the administrators are idiots.
You have test results for each class from last year, look at the difference between those results and the results from this year. That gives you the change in test results as affected by the teacher under scrutiny.

This isn't quantum loop gravity, if your only argument against holding teachers to a standard is that the administration is too stupid to apply one correctly, then it's time to nuke the whole district and start over.

I agree that makes more sense, but I'm betting someone pointed out there's no way to evaluate kindergarten teachers that way. Also some amount of difficulty in tracking students that have moved around. The first approach is easier to implement. Still inferior, but much easier to actually do.

Comment Re:That's similar to why dial phones were invented (Score 1) 137

This is much. much older than that. Once upon a time, probably soon after paper and writing were invented, someone invented the bulletin board. Initially people used it to post messages. Then someone posted an advertisement for their apple wagon just up the street. Then someone else changed the location in the ad to the location of their apple wagon just down the street.

Probably took a little longer than that, if only because for the trick to work you need:

1) enough literate people to matter
2) a community large enough that not everybody knows everyone else.

Comment Re:God (Score 1) 794

It's surprising how much you know about other peoples' religion. You know so much that you can actually prescribe what they believe. Clearly it's all-or-nothing and there's no allegory at all in the Old Testament. And that's how EVERY theologian interprets it. Thank you for your input, dude.

I don't claim to know what he does or doesn't believe.

He said this:

In the Old Testament, the Jewish people, while wandering in the desert, after seeing the parting of the Red Sea and all the miracles Moses brought down on Egypt, continue to fall away from God. He even had an actual presence in their Temple, and would show up as a flaming column from time to time. Nonetheless, they would turn to idols and he'd have to "smite" them from time to time.

So, yes, even though literally in the presence of God, some people don't believe. Odd, that.

I should probably have been more precise. To say that "literally in the presence of God, some people don't believe." requires a belief that the sections at least referring to God's active presence in the temple are literally true, if not the Old Testament in its entirety. Without that, his last statement doesn't make sense. If you don't accept that particular part literally, then it's merely speculation as to how people would respond.

Comment Re:God (Score 4, Interesting) 794

In the Old Testament, the Jewish people, while wandering in the desert, after seeing the parting of the Red Sea and all the miracles Moses brought down on Egypt, continue to fall away from God. He even had an actual presence in their Temple, and would show up as a flaming column from time to time. Nonetheless, they would turn to idols and he'd have to "smite" them from time to time.

So, yes, even though literally in the presence of God, some people don't believe. Odd, that.

Kind of requires you to accept the Old Testament as 100% historically accurate though, which seems a tad problematic to me.

Comment Re: Debtors Prison? (Score 1) 467

If money grew on trees it would be valueless.

I know I'm nitpicking here, but my literal side has always hated this expression. Fruit is not valueless. I have to pay for it. And it grows on trees.

And sometimes, when I'm a little drunk, I start to think things like "Monkeys are REALLY expensive, and they grow IN trees.... close enough."

Slashdot Top Deals

Sentient plasmoids are a gas.

Working...