zeteo

56 ms·

601.
by zeteo 15y ago
Agreed, the best variable name is the shortest one that's still specific within its scope. A variable name of CustomerWhoHasPlacedTheMostOrdersOnThisDay is quite bad inside a three-line function, just as "public static customer" is terrible
602.
by zeteo 15y ago
> the hope is that by putting a finger on the scale in favor of equality of opportunity, eventually society (after several generations of induced equity) will actually become equitable Admirable principle, are you actually consistent wi
603.
by zeteo 15y ago
There's nothing broken about airport security, it's working perfectly. Its purpose is to keep you voting for certain politicians who spend your taxes on expensive, ineffective gadgets made by their cronies. "Fear is the mind killer", as a g
604.
by zeteo 15y ago
You know, in the infamous Black Hawk Down incident they shot down military aircraft with nothing more than an RPG. Devices that can put an explosive charge a few dozen feet into the air don't really require that much sophistication.
605.
by zeteo 15y ago
It would require split-second coordination among a group of terrorists sitting in the first few rows to take advantage of this before the crew becomes alert and closes the door. And even that opportunity is easily removed (if it isn't alrea
606.
by zeteo 15y ago
You know what? I've worked for minimum wage, not so long ago. I could still afford running water, Internet, TV, electric lighting, refrigeration, my own automobile (second-hand ofc), and even a cross-country flight once. Weren't these unbel
607.
by zeteo 15y ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm a software engineer.
608.
by zeteo 15y ago
Funny to see this on the same front page as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795064 . "[Jobs] pushed Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs stared at him and insisted he could do it in f
609.
by zeteo 15y ago
This is not about materials needs of the low skilled, but about the philosophical needs of the author. It's difficult to be a Marxist when, as you say, minimum wage routinely affords material comforts old royalty could only dream of. But, w
610.
by zeteo 15y ago
To reply to posts without bothering to understand them is... not worth responding to. I have a PhD in CS from an Ivy League school BTW, so spare me the "solid academic" lecturing.
611.
by zeteo 15y ago
>It is possible to formally prove things about programs in Turing-complete languages. But not about arbitrary programs you download from the Internet. For such programs you need to require either that they include a custom proof, or tha
612.
by zeteo 15y ago
Right, so an alternative approach is to require all client-side scripts that your browser downloads to come with a proof of safety. This requires extra work for each script. Which can be avoided if the script language was non-Turing complet
613.
by zeteo 15y ago
>There are plenty of static analysis tools that can determine if programs written in turing-complete languages will halt. But they're heuristic, which means if their use ever becomes widespread it will be very easy for malicious softwar
614.
by zeteo 15y ago
> we will have to very carefully prove that it cannot introduce any way to create a non-terminating function >The author wrote of total functional programming, a paradigm in which all functions and programs are provably terminating.
615.
by zeteo 15y ago
Yes, some software needs to run in an infinite loop. You can still prove that a single iteration of the loop is safe.
616.
by zeteo 15y ago
I don't know anything about TFP personally or whether it's the best tool for this job. (I just agree with the job description.) And you misunderstand the halting problem - you can perfectly well write never-ending programs in a non-Turing c
617.
by zeteo 15y ago
>Turing-completeness is difficult to avoid [...] For every addition to the language [...] we will have to very carefully prove that it cannot introduce any way to create a non-terminating function. Solving the halting problem doesn't me
618.
by zeteo 15y ago
It seems there's some doubt in the comments that Turing completeness is relevant to security. Here's a simple proof it is. Assume you have an arbitrary function to execute and a set of no-nos (forbidden operations, machine states etc.). If
619.
by zeteo 15y ago
This is a much less revolutionary proposal than it may seem. The web already features extensive use of a non-Turing complete language. It's a less-appreciated feature of SQL, but it makes defense against nasty attacks at least feasible (if
620.
by zeteo 15y ago
Using robots for this task is more a question of fixed cost than anything else. Rather than build a conveyor belt to each cubbyhole in the warehouse - some of which may not be used for weeks on end - it's much cheaper to have a few robots t
621.
by zeteo 15y ago
That system sounds nice in theory, but it doesn't work. Even places where virtual currency doesn't buy anything tangible, such as MMORPGs, develop black markets rather quickly.
622.
by zeteo 15y ago
Yes, I know Shannon's number is "small". The point was that it's been around for a while, and that with the right mathematical tools one can deal with such numbers without having their mind boggled.
623.
by zeteo 15y ago
I don't understand the need for creating their own currency (the "buttons" system). I hope it's something very smart, because these "exchange used goods" enterprises often fall prey to the venerable Gresham's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/w
624.
by zeteo 15y ago
Astronomical numbers may be large but in e.g. computational science people have been dealing with even larger numbers for quite a while now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number
625.
by zeteo 15y ago
The author's calculation seems to be off, 1.2 x 1.5 degrees is 1/72,000 of the total sky area, or roughly 0.0014% (not 0.004%). That still leaves an order of magnitude to be accounted for, but considering the ballpark nature of the 200k est
626.
by zeteo 15y ago
The concern is not a disaster that necessarily destroys Earth itself - an extinction event for humans is enough. There are plenty of species that have gone extinct before (including some close relatives) and since it's obviously never happe
627.
by zeteo 15y ago
Good, I'm glad we agree about the main point. I don't even see that much of a difference between the creation of ideas and other forms of creation that it needs to be protected by costly monopolies. Writers, artists and philosophers have al
628.
by zeteo 15y ago
An introductory text - thank you, but I've taken microeconomics in college. After carefully considering both points of view, I tend to rather agree with Smith, for the following simple reason. Suppose the more frivolous uses of water were s
629.
by zeteo 15y ago
> Following that line of reasoning shoudln't we be even more wary of e.g. universal suffrage and civil rights laws? Far from me the idea that "younger" laws and institutions are suspect. I was just arguing that (unauthorized) reproducti
630.
by zeteo 15y ago
>This remains true until everyone decides it's better for Fred to spend all his time designing hats rather than hunting Specialization of labor became widespread around 3500BC, with the appearance of civilization. After that point, pott

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