But once you start writing very formal Python where the type of every argument is declared in comments, and error handling being done with exacting precision and logging, and so on, you might as well be writing in C++ or Java.
Minor quibble. That sounds a lot like you're writing Python like it is C++ or Java. Python is well suited to duck typing; generally (though not always) if you use isinstance(), you're doing something wrong.
Comparing any old Android app to Winterboard isn't exactly fair, in my opinion.
Winterboard has to implement a ton of hacks to work on iOS, because there's no official API for theming. You can call this a fault of the OS if you want, but my point is Winterboard necessarily employs more hacks than your average app. It uses MobileSubstrate which (I'm not even exaggerating) dynamically changes how existing applications work by changing their code when they start.
I believe one of the major problems is that dust on Mars can become very, very fine. There's no rain to clear dust from the atmosphere, so the little grains just keep hitting things and breaking apart, over and over. Martian fines can get down near 1 micron; for comparison, your red blood cells are about 8 microns wide. This stuff gets on everything. It goes through everything.
"Your species is obsolete," the ghost comments smugly. "Inappropriately adapted to artificial realities. Poorly optimized circuitry, excessively complex low-bandwidth sensors, messily global variables..."
— Accelerando, by Charles Stross
In a more Contact way of thinking, if you were programming a complex formal system capable of producing sentient machines and wanted to leave a signature, the dimensionless physical constants would be a great place to hide them.
And yes, it's hopelessly unlikely we would ever find them even if you think it likely that they're there. It still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I've read the essays by RMS and ESR describing the "hacker ethic", and I've read Steven Levy's "Hackers", and those are literally the only places I've ever seen "hacker" used with the positive meaning of unorthodox, enthusiastic, and highly skilled programmers, aside from the occasional references to RMS, ESR, and Levy, to complain about the prevailing usage of the term
The positive definition of the word "hacker" is in wide use in the new DIY community, and I've seen it in Make and of course BoingBoing. It's still in wide use in the subculture that it applies to. Personally I think the media has been getting (slowly) better as well, with the occasional story about hackers that isn't in the negative sense.
Normally I'm a strong supporter of dynamic language, where words mean what they're accepted to mean; I'm just emotionally attached to this particular word and it's hard to let it go. I'm still hoping we don't have to.
I'd say religion and science are pretty orthogonal.
Science kinda just tells you what is likely to happen when you do X. That's it.
Religion is simply your own personal reason that you do X.
Science and (most) religion both tell you what happened in the past. This is where the conflict comes from.
Arbitrary computations at compile time are not necessarily a bad thing. LISP had the advantage that regular code and data were notated and stored the same way, so writing macros to shovel code around was no harder than writing functions to shovel data around. Importantly, the language for the macros was the same as the language itself. The loop macro link you provided is a bad example; overall, LISP did macros right.
C++ templates are a byzantine language that shares nothing at all in common with C++ itself, which is fine if you're not trying to build a turing machine out of them. I want a C-based language with LISP-like macros so bad, but template metaprogramming has always seemed like an abuse to me. Code that convoluted could not have been intended.
Though completely off-topic, another reason people often save money when switching car insurance is that their cars are re-valued in the process. Of course, the car's current value is less than it was when the first insurance was purchased.
A very nice and thoughtful comment. Sometimes I come across more negative than I prefer, but a pet peeve of mine is speech designed to fold, spindle and mutilate the simple truth.
You might like this, then. From Neal Stephenson's Anathem:
Bulshytt: (1) In Fluccish of the late Praxic Age and early Reconstitution, a derogatory term for false speech in general, esp. knowing and deliberate falsehood or obfuscation. (2) In Orth, a more technical and clinical term denoting speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said.
Although it's not nearly as hard to read, saying GWT-generated JS is enough to examine source for trust is like saying binaries are enough to examine for trust. You can go through a binary and figure out what a certain program will do (after all, computers do this every time they run a program), but it's much more difficult.
I... uh... was not aware I though slashdotters were stupid? Huh. Sorry if it came off that way
Free software isn't ambiguous to a slashdotter, but you can probably see how "100% Free, Trisquel 4.5 STS 'Slaine' Released" is a more ambiguous headline than "100% Libre, Trisquel 4.5 STS 'Slaine' Released". The headline is horrible because nobody knows what Trisquel is, but by using libre you immediately know it's about free software. For people who haven't heard it used before, well, as you said, slashdotters are a smart crowd. It's an easy association.
Yes. That would be dumb! Telling people about how great free software is when they don't care is the worst thing to do to help the free software movement, as it's about the worst thing you can do for any idea. It'd be like telling someone "my phone is jailbroken!" when all they want to do is borrow it to make a quick call.
But when you're talking about free to people who do care (like, say, some slashdotters), it's useful to distinguish between the two very different definitions of free. Some software is neither, some is one but not the other, and some is both, and these distinctions matter if you're someone who cares about these things.
The only word in the summary that I recognise is "Release", but I can guess what "Libre" means. I don't know why you can't just use "free."?
In the open source community (and most of the larger computer nerd metacommunity) the term free software has a very specific meaning. Unfortunately, the english word free has two different meanings: free as in freedom, and free as in beer, as it's usually put. To anyone not in the know, free software is just software that can be obtained at no cost.
Using the words libre and gratis clarifies what you're talking about, and though it may not be a particularly useful distinction on slashdot, it's often used elsewhere. Most people can guess what they mean even if they've never heard them used in this context, because gratis is often used to say "this costs nothing", while libre sounds a lot like liberty.
Totally out of my element here, but would it be possible to spoof an iPad into thinking it was on the network that was directly connected to the Time Warner cable subscriber while some place not in the household?
You could just set up a VPN at home (I do it through my DD-WRT router, it was simple enough) and then you literally are on the home network. Of course, then you have to deal with the slow VPN connection.
For a more tailor-made solution, you could use MobileSubstrate to hook whatever mechanism the app would use to check out the local network, and make it look like you're at home only to the TV app. Similar things have been done to make Apps think you're on wifi when you're really on 3G, so you can use Skype, etc. over wifi.
Eureka! -- Archimedes
