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Comment Re:Python: better than JS, except for JSON (Score 1) 187

You mistake eval() for JSON.parse()

Both JS and python can eval(). Yeah, it's really stupid to eval() code. And you can do it in JS and it will usually give you an object (the times it doesn't are very interesting indeed!) But JSON.parse() is not eval. JSON.parse decodes a string into an object, which is data only.

Similarly json.loads() takes a string and converts it to a dict.

What I was getting at is really a minor quibble but it comes up a lot. var o = { this:1 that: 2} is much more friendly to write than o = {"this": 1, "that":2} There are a limited number of what they key can be: string, int float. That is it. So if they key is non-numeric, then it can only be a string. That's the only point I was making. Perhaps it would be interesting to have key="this" o={ key: 1} which then makes {"this":1}, but I'd argue against it

Comment Before the apologists... (Score 1) 187

Before the apologists say you can use Babel, admittedly, you can, but, using such a tool is an admission of defeat. To compile something that is not true JS to something that is JS I would argue is not the original language. It's like using macros in assembly. It may seem pedantic, but pragmatically, Python runs _everywhere_ that C runs*. (Meaning your platform has a C compiler). Comparatively, using JSLint as an example, in order for JSLint to support a particular feature, it must be in two runtimes and at least stage 3 in proposal.

* I'm not talking about browsers, because that's where JS was designed to work. I'm talking about outside the browser, where people are taking JS. And Mozilla did have an experiment about running Python in the browser. And if you want to split hairs: https://repl.it/languages/pyth...

Comment My cancelled subscription begs to differ (Score 2) 162

I cancelled earlier in November for this very reason. They've got their market all wrong. The biggest benefit Netflix had was the volume of movies that you haven't watched but had some interest in. To recharacterize thier users as people who watch what they want prior to netflix, is a big mistake because that's where netflix had its biggest value.

If this is the real reality, the price of netflix should come down to reflect the diminished quality and selection.

I'm at amazon now. Amazon and chill.

Comment Re:IRS can only pursue taxes on "income" (Score 1) 203

Thanks to you input, I just had this revelation: https://slashdot.org/comments....

If the 1099 documentation is already being generated for the "sizable" transactions (I think the current lower limit to trigger reporting is $600 - but don't quote me) then there is only one purpose: "If they can get all the US taxpayers in the block chain and their bitcoin addresses, they can continue to erode the pseudo anonymity."

Comment IRS can only pursue taxes on "income" (Score 1) 203

There is no definition of income in the constitution, and there are a bunch of convoluted court rulings on income taxation. (It's not all that comes in.) This move by the IRS is (as I believe) to be unprecedented. It is effectively assuming that any american who traded bitcoin was evading the income tax without any evidence thereof. This presupposition of guilt is what makes it newsworthy. Anyone who traded btc is assumed to have evaded the tax, even though self-reporting is the obligation of the taxpayer always applies. Furthermore, the taxes due would only be on the profits of trading, just like a stock. But unlike a standard stock broker, a 1099-B would not be issued by coinbase automatically. It's not coinbase's responsibility to report, it's the taxpayers.

Good luck evading this one... the blockchain is public. Which begs the question... does the IRS have blockchain analysis tools?

Comment Wielding Windows Phones... (Score 1) 157

Is not a threat to anyone. Not even BlackBerry.

Your company lost the mobile wars. Suck it up. Nadella knows it's a hard sell breaking into a market. To break in you've got to break the chicken-egg cycle of getting apps on your platform. Metro wasn't the killer UI that it needed to be to pull users over in the absence of apps. Microsoft, if they really are committed, have to play the long game, basically replicating features until they can switch out the OS (the thing that runs apps, and not so much the UI) and not have users notice. However all the apps are digital data silos, vehemently protected by their owners. Don't expect it to be easy, or cheap. MS dropped $10B to get Nokia and look how that turned out.

Ultimately, MS stagnated, developers defected, and now no real innovation happens on Windows, and it's a hard sell to get mindshare back. We've seen a future that doesn't involve MS. Nadella knows this and is recapitulating for sins of his predecessors. It will take a long time because there's no real reason to continue with MS. Everything is platform independent now. Except phones. It's a losing gambit all-around.

Comment Active income vs Passive income (Score 1) 426

I don't think that we should abandon the principles of capitalism at the slightest whiff of inequity. I think it is far too short-sighted to expect that everyone have wage income. There is a thriving passive non-wage income economy and we need to get more in touch with it. This way, we don't need traditional jobs per se, but we don't have to directly subsidise people's incomes either. What we do need is better education about passive income and passive income resources.

Comment You don't own your computer anymore (Score 2) 322

I realized about 10 years ago that the mindset trend was to stop respecting device ownership and leverage the install base as a market. You see this primarily on Win, but OSX too. Microsoft started this before giving away Windows 10 for free, but now it's somehow more acceptable because, hey you didn't pay anything for it. Well now you're finding out "free" still has a price.

The only place it doesn't happen is on Linux. Which, along with a non-obtrusive updater, has become my OS of choice.

Comment Two star content? (Score 2) 90

I've not been watching much of Netflix anymore, and I'm about to cancel. Everytime I open the app, I see all this exclusive content rated 2 stars. And I've watched some of it, and it is indeed 2-star content. There's so much of it, I want a star filter, but I think that would eliminate half their library.

Some of their stuff is good, but they lost Doctor Who to Amazon, and their top rated movie selection is dwindling. It's becoming a B-movie haven.
In fact writing this has convinced me to cancel.

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One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

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