If an abstraction is being properly used in C++ then a C version program would probably be best with the same abstraction. If C++ has some language support for that abstraction which C lacks and which allows the program intent to be expressed more directly then there's no reason to imagine that whatever hand-built layers are used for that abstraction in C are necessarly going to be better than the more direct expression in C++.

For example, if a program should use dynamic dispatch then a compiler is likely to do better optimizing C++'s virtual functions (using common techinques such as devirtualization) than it will do with some hand-rolled dynamic dispatch systen in C.

The only way C comes out ahead is when comparing well written C to poorly written C++, e.g. a C program that properly does not use dynamic dispatch to a C++ program that uses virtual functions gratuitously.

The decoys aren't for confusing a dumb heat seeking missile, they're for confusing opponents' signals analysis departments, which are full of smart people that can see how much reaction mass an object is putting out at what velocity and how much acceleration is resulting from it, along with lots of other passively observable information.

Not to mention that they'll have telescopes so they can just look at the objects. To go back to your analogy, flares really don't look very much like airplanes.

The bottom line is that decoys probably need to be pretty much the same as actual spacecraft.

I think it was Thomas Sowell who likened the question "What should the Federal Reserve be replaced with?" with the question "What should a cancerous tumor be replaced with?"

Paul's actual plan is to repeal the laws that revent competition with the Federal Reserve. As a gold bug he then expects that people will choose to transact using using gold and silver. (In fact he was instrumental in getting the Federal government to start minting gold and silver coins again in the 80s.) If he's wrong and there's no currency collapse coming then people can just keep on using Federal Reserve notes and nothing happens. If he's right then there's an escape hatch available to everyone, and the economy can keep on working without resorting to black markets. (Of course the very rich have the resources and government connections to protect themselves either way.)

A free market can't solve all problems, but it can do a good deal better at solving many problems than unjust violence. Furthermore the market is only a single institution of a free society. For example the Civil Rights movement was working; many businesses had already changed their policies before the Civil Rights Act. One of the worst things about the Civil Rights Act is that in some ways it stopped the Civil Rights Movement in its tracks. People got the idea that they'd won into their heads, so many stopped fighting. (Sort of like President Obama's election was a huge setback for the anti-war movement.)

Civil Rights legislation was needed to roll back government abuses like Jim Crow and local law enforcement covering up and even participating in crimes against minorities. It wasn't needed to make the world fair.

A free society will never be a perfect, utopian society. But it will be far more just, peaceful, and prosperous than what we've got.

You forgot to capitalize "Serious".

One of Glen Greenwald's articles about Unserious people: The parade of “shrill, unserious extremists” on display at today’s impeachment hearings

No, Ron Paul often talks about working with people he disagrees with on issues (and Rand probably has similar feelings). He praises Dennis Kucinich as being good on Civil Liberties and War even though he believes that Kucinich's domestic plans would cause widespread poverty and misery. He worked with Alan Grayson on getting an Audit of the Federal Reserve even though Grayson's views on a lot of other things is anathema to Paul.

Disagreeing with people doesn't make them an enemy. You're looking at things through the lens of tribalism. Working with people on specific issues where you agree is what people ought to do. But we've all been taught that we have to band together, overlook the problems of people in our tribe for the sake of unity, and that the only way to get things done is 'compromise'.

We could do with a good deal less compromise, more cooperation based only on principles, and complete independence or decentralization in areas where groups disagree but can't justly use force.

A great classical liberal. I think if we had just listened things would be so much better.

He also knew what to think of the term 'wage slave'.

I see language designers are still making the mistake of trying to represent characters as fixed size entities. Go 1 adds a new data type 'rune' intended to represent a UTF-32 codepoint, which is fine as long as it's only used for code points, but then the example code they show is:

        delta := '' // delta has type rune.
        var DELTA rune
        DELTA = unicode.ToUpper(delta)

When you design an API that accepts or returns individual characters (as opposed to code units or code points), do not use rune, char, wchar_t, char16_t, char32_t, int, or any other fixed length type to represent a character. Characters are fundamentally variable length.

You should use a string data type because fixed size types can only represent a subset of characters. For example, a single UTF-32 code point cannot represent the Lithuanian characte LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH OGONEK AND ACUTE. In Unicode this character can only be represented as a sequence of multiple code points (<U+0105> <U+0301> or <U+00E1> <U+0328> or <U+0061> <U+0328> <U+301>). So using strings works whereas using a fixed size type will inevitably fail.

Using strings to represent a character has another advantage beyond the fact that it's the only way that works. It eliminates the client's need to convert between the string type and the type used to hold a code point. Clients can just directly use text in whatever the native encoding is.

If you're referring to Qom/Fordow, Iran announced that in accordance with its NTP obligations and then very quickly afterwards Obama and other leaders claimed to have exposed it. You can choose to believe the story that Iran only announced it because they learned it was going to be exposed (I don't consider that story credible), but the fact remains that Iran announced it in accordance with their obligations. Nor is there any evidence that any nuclear materials where ever there (which would be a breach of the NPT).

Are there actually any national intelligence agencies that think Iran has a current nuclear weapons program? The US last NIE still said they don't, and prominent members of Israel's intelligence community have confirmed that they believe Iran still has not decided to create a nuclear weapons program. Saudi Arabia may have been urging us to attack Iran, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with them being worried about an Iranian nuclear weapon. Politicians making unfounded statements don't count.

No, the 2011 IAEA report indicated that there was evidence for a program up until 2003, the same data as previously used in, e.g., US intelligence estimates. It then says that some research may have continued at a slower rate since then, but doesn't provide any new evidence.

Basically, the new IAEA director wants to be much more accommodating to Washington than the previous director. So the 2011 report, while not actually saying anything different than previous reports, was written to make it much easier to misread and encourage people to infer that there's evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

Also there's been plenty of misreporting on Iran's 'refusal' to allow the IAEA access to facilities: http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2012/02/29/how-the-media-got-the-iran-iaea-access-story-wrong/

If only that were true. Abject surrender would basically mean they'd have to give up all effective means of defense, and no nation can exist long without those. It's not like we would suddenly leave them alone. Their government has already been overthrown once by hostile foreign powers, and because of that they went from a fairly western style of democracy, (to a brutal, western-controlled dictatorship), to a socialist-Islamic style of democracy. The world would probably be a lot better of if we had never done that. I can only imagine how much worse we can make it.

In fact both US and Israeli intelligence services confirm that Iran does not have a current nuclear weapons program. Politicians are just making things up.

One thing I found interesting about Herb Sutter's talk at the Going Native conference was his slide comparing language complexity. According to the metric he used (page count of the language specification) C++11 is very close to Java 7 and the current version of C#. (IIRC, marginally smaller than Java, marginally larger than C#).

And a great thing about C++11 is that many features exist mainly for backwards compatibility, and a new programmer doesn't need to start out learning them at all; there's a clean, modern path through learning C++, and learning the rest can be left to when you actually have to maintain legacy code. Bjarne Stroustrup's intro to programming book teaches C++ this way and it's quite good.

Well, as I said, he is cutting military spending substantially, and using those savings to avoid having to cut even more severely elsewhere.

Completely eliminating the DoD wouldn't actually give us a budget surplus, I don't think, or at least not a 'hefty' one. And certainly the growth of the rest of the budget would eventually run us into huge deficits again.

Instead of using an amorphous concept like a right I'll put this in terms of when the use of force is justified. I don't agree that your example is a case where the use of force is justified.

I do agree that it's wrong for the individual with excess not to be charitable or to put that excess to good use, but that's not the same as saying it's okay to use force to take that excess and be 'charitable' or do good with it.

Yes, absolutely. And this is best achieved when people recognize that it's not right for them to just take what they want from other people, even when they think they need it more than the people that have it. This rule of law is indeed an important pillar of civilization.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2007-11/msg00193.html