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Comment Re:Of course we can (Score 3, Insightful) 140

We're not ready as a society for elimination of aging. Currently, with money and power generally growing with age, death is the great equalizer. Rich or poor, everybody dies. This is the only thing stopping unfettered hoarding of wealth. Would Bill Gates give away his money if he never aged? I don't know, but it does seem less likely. We'd be stuck in a society where the elders own and control everything, and the young would fight to survive. Murder would replace age-related illness as the leading cause of death.

For this society to work, the time value of money has to be negative, not positive. Money has to decay with time, not grow. This is the way money should work today, but good luck convincing our overlords.

Comment IDL language (Score 3, Interesting) 729

Odd integers are true; even integers are false.

Arrays can be indexed with () or []. This leads to namespace problems with functions which are also called with (). For example:
x=a(1,2)
error: undefined variable a.
If you want to call function a, you have to forward declare it for this reason.
There's a different syntax for procedures (which don't have a return value) and functions (which do).

It is required to assign the result of a function to something. You have to write
dummy = foo(1,2,3)
as writing
foo(1,2,3)
will give an error.

Most of the time, a single element array is treated the same as a scalar. But not always, and not being very careful will lead to weird errors.
There are no zero length arrays.
An array can be length 1; a multidimensional array can be length [1,2,2], but a multidimensional array cannot be length [2,1,1]. If the last dimension has length 1, it simply vanishes to a smaller dimension, unless already 1 dimensional. Example:
a = make_array(1,2,2)
; a has dimensions [1,2,2]
a = make_array(2,1,1)
; a has dimensions [2]
This means special code must be written to handle any array operations that might end with last dimension 1.

Array slices are weird.
b = a[3,*,2]
means to take a slice of a along the second dimension. I'd expect the answer to be 1 dimensional, since there's only 1 scan in the slice. But the result has dimensions [1,3]
On the other hand, a[3,2,*] has dimensions [1,1,3], and a[*,3,2] has dimensions [3]. It makes sense in a convoluted way, but it sucks.

Businesses

Dramatic Shifts In Manufacturing Costs Are Driving Companies To US, Mexico 233

hackingbear writes: According to a new Cost-Competitiveness Index, the nations often perceived as having low manufacturing costs — such as China, Brazil, Russia, and the Czech Republic — are no longer much cheaper than the U.S. In some cases, they are estimated to be even more expensive. Chinese manufacturing wages have nearly quintupled since 2004, while Mexican wages have risen by less than 50 percent in U.S. dollar terms, contrary to our long-standing misconception that their labors were being slaved. In the same period, the U.S. wage is essentially flat, whereas Mexican wages have risen only 67%. Not all countries are taking full advantage of their low-cost advantages, however. The report found that global competiveness in manufacturing is undermined in nations such as India and Indonesia by several factors, including logistics, the overall ease of doing business, and inflexible labor markets.

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