cia_plant

12 ms·

61.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I can't even begin to follow some of the moral reasoning on this page. The soldiers have to be there to keep the peace, as part of their humanitarian mission towards the Iraqi people. Because the soldiers are there, they have to protect the
62.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I got into MIT by doing very well at math competitions, mostly. I also wrote a good application essay, which followed a certain kind of idea which is admired at MIT - the ideal of the "passionate" young person, who is a sort of intellectual
63.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Any discussion of education seems to bring up a whole raft of ideas about what does and does not effect the young mind, and in which direction. Plato, who was rather more observant and intelligent than you or I, felt that young people would
64.
by cia_plant 17y ago
My parents were quite irresponsible, and let me waste my time playing video games and reading escapist fiction, instead of doing valuable effortful practice. When I went to MIT, I found that many of my classmates had been neglected in the s
65.
by cia_plant 17y ago
A privately funded fire service would only put out fires in those buildings or neighborhoods which had paid the fire fee. Poor areas, where the residents could not easily afford the fire fee, would be at risk of burning down. Capitalism is
66.
by cia_plant 17y ago
How do you feel about the argument, put forth by some Christians, that Darwin is responsible for the holocaust? The evidence is that Darwinian thinking was a clear influence on Hitler's plans to purify the race. I hope you think it's absurd
67.
by cia_plant 17y ago
It is often taken for granted that you can seriously challenge the US government without any retribution, by people who have never seriously challenged the US government.
68.
by cia_plant 17y ago
If that were the nature of the subsidy, then yes, that would break the tendency to return to equilibrium in the face of altered data. However, only a fraction of tuition is paid by the government, so there is still a significant price signa
69.
by cia_plant 17y ago
You can't simultaneously believe that the free market tends towards a stable and optimal equilibrium, and also believe that a government subsidy will wildly and erratically impact the market. These two beliefs are mathematically incompatibl
70.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Knowledge is not a token which can be given away at a whim. It is impossible to communicate anything profound. If you would like to be smarter, read philosophy and drop acid.
71.
by cia_plant 17y ago
The OO approach is possible in Haskell using "existential types". However, this is an extension to the language which is rarely used. The more normal solution is to make a single data type which is a disjunction of all the shapes which you
72.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I didn't mean it personally - I obviously have no idea about your own management style. I have found that many managers are unaware of how much a formal relationship hurts open communication, and how much effort must be expended to maintain
73.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Your programmers also tell their mothers-in-law that they love having them over...
74.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Don't HTML parsers use regexes for their lexical scan phase?
75.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Your comment indicates a lack of reading skills. She said that she wished the number of graduating seniors who had jobs were higher.
76.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Java supports type erasure, which it idiosyncratically calls "generics", even though it does not allow generic programming. A generic function in a language with actual generics can work generically , on more than one type. A "generic" fun
77.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Since Java lacks generics, there are many kinds of code which require duplicate code in Java. Specifically, every place where you would use generics in another language (Templates in C++, or TypeClasses in Haskell, for instance).
78.
by cia_plant 17y ago
It is a conspiracy, as has been proven in court more than once.
79.
by cia_plant 17y ago
If their inclination is to ignore people who know more than they do about a topic, then they are more or less hopeless. I don't think that people should be shy about discussing what is actually the case with languages, just because some peo
80.
by cia_plant 17y ago
But what if a large part of the 'debate' is in actual fact just people senselessly defending inferior systems, because they don't know what they're talking about? Are we supposed to pretend otherwise, for the sake of civility?
81.
by cia_plant 17y ago
You're either setting the bar way too high for 'a good dev', or you're just unaware of how painful and bizarre IE6 bugs can be. Honestly, why would web devs just arbitrarily hate IE6 if it only took an hour to fix all the bugs for an entire
82.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I like static types, but I prefer "myShape = rectangle", with the most general applicable type (e.g. Shape) being inferred.
83.
by cia_plant 17y ago
This article is almost entirely fluff. It says that 1.4 million new toilets have been made in the last two years. Is that an increase over the previous two years? They quote a couple of Indian women who are on board with the message. Do the
84.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Mutability and immutability aren't really on a continuum. They represent different semantics. Haskell embeds mutability semantics within immutability semantics by using monads. So mutability is "100% available" in Haskell, you just have to
85.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Why should a system update ever require you to restart your computer, though?
86.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Molecular absorption and emission of photons is one mechanism by which color is created. For example, the color of water is caused by molecular absorption.
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by cia_plant 17y ago
I hope that there is no intersection between those who believe that the free market can respond to ethical concerns, because people will make consumption decisions based partly on ethics, and those who find this boycott contemptible.
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by cia_plant 17y ago
val x = unsafePerformIO $ readIORef x inc x = unsafePerformIO $ modifyIORef x (1+) >> readIORef x main = do x <- newIORef (10::Int) print $ val x + inc x The result is 21. Edit: an explanation. GH
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by cia_plant 17y ago
dobuffaloBuffalobuffalobuffalobuffaloBuffalobuffalo.com is still available!
90.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Your points about health are reasonable, but I don't think the modern diet really has more variety than the Medieval aristocrat's did. The kinds of meals eaten by the upper classes back then would still be considered extremely luxurious tod

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