I code in PHP for my day job. There's almost nothing I can't do in PHP. Millions of people use my PHP code. I also know several other languages, so I have some basis of comparison to say PHP 5.0 kinda sucked as a general purpose programming language, and I can tell you exactly WHY it sucked.

PHP was originally a blog / CMS script written in Perl. It was designed to be a blog, not language for general programming. In fact, it wasn't even supposed to be used by programmers at all. It was designed for webmasters who didn't know Perl and didn't want to learn. Up through version 4, it's roots were painfully obvious. Lerdorf has said "I know nothing about language design ", and he's right. Fortunately, he hired some people who do have a clue for the 5.4 versions, so it's getting better.

That's a tough question.

No kidding. One of the scariest quotes of the article: "42 per cent of Canadians are able to read and understand newspaper stories detailing scientific findings."

The scary part is Canada is ahead of everyone else on that stat. Newspaper stories are not exactly deep in scientific detail and hard-to-understand words.

It's not like it's rocket science to get it right

You just don't hear about the humans who aren't attention seekers, because......they aren't seeking attention. I think this is somewhat obvious?

Er, what even made you believe that I was making an argument along those lines? What I wrote is pretty much the opposite... the separatists were getting crushed precisely because of what you say - that not even most Russian and russophone Ukrainian population in the areas they claim supports it. Russia actually had step up and send in its own troops, and not just weapons and advisors as they did before, to reverse the tide.

The problem is that fighting spirit and dedication are not enough; you still need artillery and tanks and planes to win a war, and people who know how to strategically apply all this. That's where Ukraine is lagging far behind, especially after the significant build-up that Russia had since 2008. And Russian troops are not exactly lacking in motivation, either - they've been fed propaganda about fascists burning people alive and crucifying children, on one hand, and about the "Russian World" on the other hand, and are itching for a fight.

So, regardless of where the sympathies of the majority of Ukrainians lie, if Putin does give the order, Ukraine will fall with no outside help. And I don't know whether it'll get that help. A few months ago I thought that it would be a given, but then we saw basically nothing done over the annexation of Crimea, and very little done over all the affronts since then... and even today Western newspapers are still mulling over maybe more sanctions (?!!).

Well then, let us make sure they have no internet until they solve all their other problems.

You might think it's rude, but perhaps that is because of the way you use the internet. If I had to produce food, lest I die, Rain, and or crop information might just be of real interest to me.

So who is the arbiter of what these people are allowed to have or not have. Should they be converted to Christianity first? Some look at that as job number one.

Should we just give them food? Feed them forever and ever?

Medical information - No, wouldn't want anyone to have that, would we.

Or should you personally be allowed to determine what is or isn't allowed for these people to have access to. Are you willing to make life and death decisions for them?

You might think I'm rude. I think you are so shortsighted that it stinks.

Nope. It's the "Therefore you are a bigot" part that's hurtful, that ends conversation, and starts the fight, the battle.

I am canadian, and if we are the most scientiically literate. I really pity the rest of you.

I pity us also. Does Canada have lots of relatively successful* politicians with whackadoodle opinions on climate change, Earth's age, and female reproductive biology?

* In terms of votes, not intelligence ranking.

Normally if someone intends to pursue a different job, both he and the company are supposed to say he's "stepping down to spend more time with his family". Then, a week later, the new company announces they've hired him.

Obviously the Red Hat higher ups haven't been attending enough seminars at tropical resorts...

It would actually be easier than Georgia, I suspect. The big problem that Ukraine has is that, like most other ex-Soviet states, it let its military deteriorate in the 90s to the point of utter inefficiency (did you see the photos a govt guy just posted of what their BTR reserves look like, in response to a Facebook question as to why volunteers aren't getting vehicles?), but unlike them, it didn't get a wake-up call until now, like Russia itself got in Chechnya, or Georgia got in Ossetia and Abkhazia. So now they have to recover and learn very quickly. There's a lot of enthusiasm on the troop level, but logistics is in shambles, their officers seem to have a poor grasp of tactics (like e.g. ordering an artillery unit to stay in one place while firing... needless to say, they get fucked by counter-battery fire, and the reason why we know about this story is because there were survivors), and their generals don't understand that grand plans they make bear little in common with reality. This, again, is a lot like Russia was during the first conflict in Chechnya, but that was an easier opponent, and consequences of defeat were not as far reaching.

What's going for Ukraine is that their population reserves are bigger, and they retained a larger arsenal as part of the Soviet legacy. Also, the fact that a significant part of Soviet military industry was in Ukraine, so they have experience manufacturing the things they need.

Either way, I think that the only reason why they can still fight effectively, even with large casualties, is because Russian involvement is still undercover. It became noticeably less so over the last week, what with armored columns openly crossing the border (but still with removed flags) etc, and notice how the situation that was so dire for the rebels suddenly became so dire for the Ukrainian troops. If Russia were to go all in, openly, throwing all units that it already converged at the border, I don't think Ukraine stands a chance without outside help.

How long can Russia occupy Ukraine, now, is a different question. That area has a long history of guerrilla warfare against occupiers of all kinds, including Soviets back in WW2 days. And there's a strong resolve to resist among the populace today. An occupying force might win in the field, but find itself facing bullets from every window in the cities at night.

There's a ROFL episode of Big Bang where a cast member is using a robot hand for "personal pleasure", when it locks up.

Mind telling me which one that was? I just watched "damsels in distress (part one)" and it seemed pretty reasonable, handing out a lot of criticism but also pointing out some positive examples as well. Did she get a lot more vitriolic in later videos or something?

On the other hand, if you find that your quarter pounder from McDonald's doesn't weigh four ounces, you're not getting far in court. Moreover, the meter is not rigged, it's just that the OP and the telco disagree on exactly what it should be recording.

iconv lets you convert things, but what are you going to convert it to? UTF-8? Sure, and how many libraries (including core PHP ones) are UTF-8 aware? Most won't use mbstring, they'll just treat strings as arrays of bytes, and you're really lucky if they don't assume byte = char anywhere.

Treating strings as 8-bit clean works well in some cases, but fails pathetically in so many others. Yet that is the game that PHP is trying to play.