all the calls to methods as well as accesses to class properties are interpreted
.
It's also not quite true. Objective-c message passing is quite fast, only 4x the cost of a virtual table call in C++. If you are really interested in what happens behind the scene, see obj-c fast-path
Now, namespaces are still a honking good idea.
I have used matplotlib for journal plots and actually gave away a copy at a conference I ran so I have to say I really do like the book overall, but if you scan through the pages, you might be turned off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1942_Nash_Ambassador_X-ray.jpg
Now, of course future works may be considered derivative. In any case, I think in many cases, having constraints actually is quite beneficial to artistic endeavors.
Likewise, a technically good drawing that doesn't (try to) convey anything beyond the drawing, is not in fact art, in much the same way a security camera recording is not art.
I think this is fundamentally wrong. The symbolism in technical drawings is not realism, it is implied realism. Having tried to do it multiple times, just the abstraction of information into a usable form is as much art as it is skill.
It's kind of surprising that Learning python is only 1000 pages, which is not too say that it isn't too wordy.
I thought it strange at first that it used a virtual cursor instead of just tapping on an object on the screen but it actually ended up working better and they were able to use the same engine underneath the hood. But the thing was, you moved the cursor with your finger and your finger didn't obscuring what the virtual cursor was pointing out.
Now, that being said I'm not sure I would want to have two different idioms but saying that it can't be done is just stupid.
You will note that the best scoring criteria for our data fusion was when an individual went between checkpoints, and was interrogated by a trained guard. What I meant by enhanced interrogation at checkpoints is a little more subtle.
As opposed to:
Danger: Phil is in facility X!
consider
Guard at checkpoint:Phil, we noticed that you went into facility X where you don't normally go, could you tell us why?
As the Israeli's will tell you, nothing beats a good, well trained, interrogator, and the more information he has the better. I will agree that our facilities had far fewer people in them than in an airport so what it boils down to is that you can't interrogate everybody so triage will need to be done.
And you are quite right that detecting objects being left behind was quite complicated. We had two particular benefits (1) We were more worried about objects leaving the facility than entering and particular objects at that and (2) we were in complete (almost) control of the facility with regards to checkpoints.
All that being said, the intrusion detection system from EDS simply sucked. Our best success was using it to toggle the camera priorities, i.e. we didn't show alerts we just cycled the cameras to view the hotspots first, again we used it to guide human intervention rather than supplant it.
However, when we used our data fusion algorithms to augment the history of a person at a checkpoint (simulated) false positives were okay, they just enhanced the interrogation.
The problem is false negatives which is much harder to quantify. Of course we had access to a scintillator that could identify trace radioactive potassium from the banana you had for lunch...
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce