YmMot

Saying that PHP has value because it lets beginners get up and running quickly is like suggesting we outfit babies with jetpacks so they can get about quicker without all that crawling nonsense.

I'm being over dramatic of course, but I find it interesting that in a lot of these posts the author doesn't seem to consider if it's really a feature that you can just hack away and not have to think or work to much to get something running.

Hanging out on help forums and irc I see a lot of requests for help in dealing with the fallout from poorly coded PHP applications; whether it's been hacked, they need to update it but the design is poorly thought out, etc etc.

I think in reality like most things, it's shades of grey. It is nice that people can use it to just get up and running quickly but that also lands us tons of poorly coded, brittle, and insecure websites. This of course isn't a problem unique to PHP, but I think because it's considered a "good language for beginners" and the barrier is a little lower, more beginners or "Just hack and slash until I have something that works" types end up using it and the effect is more pronounced.

> (If not, why does this same mechanism work for the AGW hypothesis?)

Because your comparison is flawed in multiple ways.

> Another unscientific claim is that all scientists agree with global warming, therefor it is scientifically "true" that it is happening.

This is something of a straw man. I have no doubt that there are people out there making this claim...just as there are people out there who think unicorns exist. It does nothing to refute this claim because only a small kooky minority are making it.

The REAL point is that "Most experts in the field believe it is true, therefore it is reasonable to go with that belief until we have a reason to think otherwise".

You are confusing "scientific proofs" with how one should act when faced with making a decision. We cannot say that "AGW is true because So-and-so says it is"....that is an argument from authority. However, as citizens trying to make decisions about how to run our society, it's reasonable to go along with the consensus of (expert) scientists in matters of science.

This brings up another point, it's not a matter of what scientists as a whole statistically believe... it's a function of what field the scientists are in, their experience, and their expertise. The assertion is that most experts in the field of climate science (and related fields) agree with AGW and that it is a somewhat concerning issue (though the issue of to what degree is in debate), and there is a sort of rippling of agreement throughout semi-related fields which is worthy of consideration but less heavily weighted.

Where your point is fatally flawed is you are making a false comparison. You cannot compare Christianity which is a vague cultural identity with what they have found via research.

I think if you talk to the majority of scientists who are Christian, you will find that they are Christian mostly only in culture. They are not fundamentalists. They believe there is something called God, and there was this guy a few thousand years ago with some good ideas and maybe he was connected with this God....but if you press them I think you will find they are generally flexible and admit they don't know for sure and are just going on belief.

What you are talking about is an UNSCIENTIFIC BELIEF that they have arrived at completely arbitrarily. It's the same as if you found out that the majority of scientists prefer chocolate ice cream....that doesn't lend some validity to chocolate...it's just an interesting statistic.

AGW on the other hand IS a scientific idea. It's something that was arrived at THROUGH A SCIENTIFIC PROCESS. The fact that most experts agree with it (if it's true) lends it credibility because they either:

a) were able to reproduce the results with their process b) studied the process of others and found them reasonable

You can argue that the science is flawed, or argue that most experts DON'T agree with it...but it's perfectly reasonable and correct to think that something is more likely to be true if the experts say it is in proportion with the amount of consensus...when you are talking about science . The logical fallacy is only if you claim it is DEFINITELY true, particularly based on a small amount of consensus.

The opinion of scientists absolutely has weight....in matters of science. Christianity as a whole is entirely outside the realm of science, and therefore the fact that many scientists happen to be Christian is irrelevant.

Furthermore, if you do a survey of all the scientists in the world, I think you may find that the majority of them are not Christian. However, the consensus for AGW and it's potential harm will remain.

> Marriage helps families by providing heavy incentives for partners to settle their differences and stay coupled rather than get frustrated and split

Yes, except it doesn't seem to be working.

> It protects a dependent spouse (say, a mother who chooses to stay home and care for her children instead of producing her own income) from abandonment by supplying the dependent with legal recourse for support even if the breadwinner decides to blow it

In theory yes...in point of fact, it doesn't always work out that way.

I could pick apart your extremely loose reasoning more, but let's get down to brass tacks. Your entire argument is predicated on the notion that "family" === Mother, Father, and biological children. This is patently absurd.

There are millions of infertile, adoptive, heterosexual couples who by your implicit argument don't deserve the protections and rights of marriage. However, if you expand the definition to include them, you must include homosexual couples too.

You're partially right. Marriage encourages stability. I would disagree that is the only reason for it though. More importantly what you're missing is that it's beneficial to society to have ALL families stable...regardless of whether they have biological children or not. It makes for a healthier and happier population.

> Suppose I offer friend X twenty dollars. Now suppose friend Y also demands twenty dollars, and accuses me of violating my offer when I refuse it

That's a false analogy. The government has a different responsibility to it's citizens than you would have to two of your friends. You are free to treat your friend differently based on any arbitrary criteria you choose...it's a relationship that is an extremely poor model for understanding how government works. The fact that you would bring something like that up, does not bode well for your argument that your ability to reason is intact.

The Government has a responsibility to treat all of it's citizens exactly the same. If it treats one group differently it has to have some pretty solid reasons. In the United States, the "default action" is that you are free to pursue your life as you wish unless the state has a compelling reason to stop you...furthermore if the Government extends some privilege to some ALL must have the opportunity to pursue it, if only in theory.

> There is nothing to take away; gay rights activists are not just asking to be left alone

This is extremely specious reasoning. By that rationale many atrocities of history are justified...the slaves wanted us to expand our definition of "human" and "free man".

> Furthermore, no punishment is made due to "brain chemistry"; we are not testing individuals and discarding them based on the presence of certain biological markers (either externally or internally visible)

This is based on an extremely dubious and narrow definition of "punishment".

> We are simply choosing that we do not want to incentivize, endorse, or equalize permanent homosexual coupling as we do with permanent heterosexual coupling.

Yes precisely. Except the government can't just randomly decide to "incentivize" one life style over another for no particular reason. We "incentiveize" a murder-free life style because it's necessary to have a functioning society.

There's absolutely no evidence that homosexuality is harmful to individuals or society at large. There's no reason to actively discriminate against it, which is what is going on.

At some point in time, some group of people sat down and decided marriage was between a man and a woman...that was an act of actively discriminating against another group of people. It's natural that it takes an action to rectify it....just as slavery couldn't be stopped by all the white people suddenly deciding to be nice to black people.

The sorry state of marriage rights in this country exists only by virtue of how indifferent and ignorant the general population is. The good news is that just as we look back in horror at the times we burned people at the stake, the people of the future will look back at the time we finally started to respect people's personal lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, they will probably be seeking comfort from some new horror.

You are granted copyright automatically yes, and this gives you certain protections like the ability to file DMCA takedown notices etc. However, in order to sue for statutory damages you have to have filed the copyright with the US Patent and Trademark office before the infringement occurred. You can still sue if you register after, but only for actual damages which is harder to prove.

I remember putting together a mag-stripe reader with old tape heads based on schematics/code in Phrack (or maybe 2600...been awhile). At the time, tape decks were found in almost every home, while (to me) a mag-stripe reader was exoctic. Seems we've come full circle. Actually IIRC the older Square reader (which seems to be the one in the video) is literally a tape head wired to a 1/8 jack aligned to read track 2.

That idea and even the scenario you describe has actually been used numerous times in action movies (though admittedly usually using a different principle like fingerprint reading), including the James Bond franchise. For example, in License To Kill Q invents a gun with a palm reader that can only be fired by the person programmed in. It has green lights on the grip.

- Get users to sign up.

- They post/comment on news items.

- ????

- Profit.

When I was very young I developed the habit of rereading almost every book I read multiple times; unless I found it particularly bad or boring. I think most kids do this, but some seem to lose the habit along the way. I tend to be "reading" multiple books at any given time; a new one that gets most of my attention and then 2 or 3 old ones that I will switch to to break up the pace. As a result I tend to retain a fair bit; enough that I feel it's worth my while. There are some books in my collection I can recite large portions of from reading them so many times. I've probably read the Brothers Karamazov ~20 times. I've never understood this notion some people seem to have of reading a book and then being done with it.

> "Live Free or CoffeeScript Hard".

That would be the fourth version of CoffeeScript. The 2nd version would be "CoffeeScript 2: Script Harder" which is much more awesome.

That's the issue though. It doesn't introduce anything useful in terms of replacing JSON (it can even make things worse), and for other uses better solutions already exist.

The fact that in theory if it was magically supported everywhere, it might be serviceable is neither her nor there. It's not useful information. It's not gonna happen because there's no reason to switch from JSON to this, and many reasons not to. Likewise, for other applications there are better solutions.

People started using JSON even though at that point it wasn't standard because it had real benefits over what they were currently using. There isn't any situation where using this would provide a real benefit except to satisfy personal whims, and it would have the drawbacks listed.

JSON is supported natively (i.e. fast and correctly) in all modern JS environments. Yes, at one point we used Crock's parser but that's the past. Likewise, it currently is only used as a stop-gap measure to begrudgingly support older browsers.

If we're going to undo years of progress we should do it for a very good reason.

JSON has wide support in many languages. Some of them have fast low level parsers. All that work has to be duplicated. Again, this just doesn't seem sufficient reason.

Right now if I want to throw together a Python script to crawl a bunch of NPM packages and read their package.json (let's say to put together a chart or collect statistics), I can easily.

If NPM switches to JSON5, we lose compatibility without a lot of duplicated effort. Again, there's just not enough benefits.

I consider comments a flaw, because they add little benefit. JSON is a data serialization/interchange format and there shouldn't be much need to comment on it, it should be largely self explanatory. If you really need to tag things with info, you can in JSON. Adding comments is to tempting for people to abuse.

However, if you really need lots of comments, there are many existing formats which might be better suited for your task. JSON is ultimately for machines. It has a benefit that humans can read/edit it easily...but if you have data that is intended more for humans and needs lots of meta information like a complicated config file, you should either create a front end for it or use a format better suited to that purpose.

When you consider that writing a plugin for your editor, or just a stand-alone translator would solve all of the problems this does, there's no reason to put up with all the drawbacks.

What it comes down to IMHO, is this isn't suitable to replace JSON and for other uses there are already existing formats that are better.

I won't begrudge someone a fun little personal project, however (almost) no-one will ever adopt this. It removes too many benefits of JSON/introduces drawbacks for very little pay off.

Yes, JSON is a pain to edit/write by hand at times, but that's an editing problem and therefore should be solved in the editor. In any halfway decent editor it should be trivial to extend it with helpers for editing JSON. Perhaps have it convert .json files to YAML(etc) on opening, and back to .json on save etc.

This is a problem that plagues many technical people (present company included). You had a good instinct, but then took a left turn somewhere. "JSON is hard to hand edit...let's undo all the speed/compatibility progress we've made with JSON in the last ~8 years and introduce flaws in the protocol with a new non-standardized format...all so it's superficially easier to edit by hand."

This is a cool idea, but I'm skeptical about it being worthwhile for the majority of people. There's absolutely no new ideas here, or anything that hasn't been done before. It's just a slightly novel combination of them.

The "lights on the fretboard that show you what to play" thing has been done; and while it generally gets good reviews I don't think it's revolutionizing learning guitar or anything. Likewise plugging into an iPhone for effects, etc.

The hardest part of starting guitar is simply building up your hand/finger muscles and muscle memory. Having lights on the fretboard makes it nominally easier to place your fingers, but reading tabs isn't hard to begin with (this is essentially just tabs on the fretboard anyway) and learning to look at a tab (or sheet music) on paper/a screen and translate that to finger positions is an important skill to develop as a musician.

This will encourage beginners to look at the fretboard when they play, which is a bad habit to get into.

I also have concerns about this feeling and responding like a real guitar. This doesn't operate like a normal guitar, so there will probably be a lot of little areas where it differs so someone who's played this may pick up a real guitar and find that they are making all sorts of horrible squeaking and finger noise, aren't used to the action of a real guitar, etc etc.

If it was a choice between this and a real guitar for a beginner, I would go with the real guitar no question. If you happen to have ~300-500$ that you can just blow on cool gizmos, sure it'd be fun to play with.

If you've never touched a guitar before, this might get you from 0 to "Smells like Teen Spirit" slightly faster than otherwise, but I doubt by much. I think the returns will diminish over time, and this might even ultimately hurt you.

The main neat thing is using it as a midi controller/ to make cool sounds but there are plenty of other options in that area already.

Not only that, but the idea of a guitar that "teaches" you with lights in the neck has been done before (see fretlight guitars, etc). The only new thing here is the iphone.

That's a fair point. It's not so much that everyone will benefit from learning, but that they won't if they don't try. I also think that most people would get something out of it, though admittedly in some cases not much.

Indeed, the basics are all relatively simple...in fact a lot of the basics are things people do intuitively...it's just they've never really been told or thought about how it would work as a generalized computing machine.

This largely misses the point. I agree that it's not "essential" and not everyone should do it, but it's still more valuable than I think Attwood gives credit for.

I'm perhaps in a unique position to comment, having recently taught my girlfriend to program. So I can talk about how that played out.

My girlfriend understands menus, she knows about links, she can install software, she can use word, she can type away like no other, and even fix some problems. If you watched her using a computer it'd seem like she had a pretty good affinity with this black box.

However, I don't think most programmers realize what a holistic approach the average person (even a relatively tech savvy one) takes to computers. They only understand them at the highest level. They develop fetishes and incantations to fix things. When something goes wrong my girlfriend will turn the computer on an off. She'll turn the router on and off. Etc. Or just click "ok" until it stops complaining. It often fixes the problem, but it's just something she's learned to do with little understanding. She goes to the store and can pick out a decent phone or laptop, but only because she's developed an intuitive semi-understanding of the lingo. This one has more gigs, that's better...etc.

The computer will do things they don't understand, except some vague notion that the computer is "dumb".

I asked her one time how a computer works because I was legitimately curious how people without any instruction in comp sci etc visualize it. She had absolutely no idea of even the most fundamental workings of a computer except that it had something vaguely to do with "ones and zeros".

I taught her binary. I taught her boolean logic. I showed her binary math. I gave a very basic example of how you can use circuits to do binary math. I made her sit at a desk and act as a processor. Then I explained the concept of bootstrapping.

Then I taught her a little bit of Python.

Enlightenment.

She understands garbage in - garbage out. She understands dependencies. She understands algorithmic complexity. She understands types and formatting...and much more. (at least generally, which is enough).

This mysterious box no longer seems capricious and opaque. She has a much better understanding of why her computer behaves the way it does and therefore feels more at ease. Sure she can't magically fix anything, but she's recognizing general patterns more and more.

She installed Ubuntu recently in fact, and has started writing Python scripts (and Bash!) to assist in assorted data processing tasks she used to do by hand. When my girlfriend needed to update batches of reports, she would up each one BY HAND and change them. Using a computer was frustrating and scary. Learning coding won't improve her life? Seriously?

Would it make him a better mayor? Not necessarily but it sure could help. I'm sure he uses a computer and I'm willing to bet the less time the mayor spends screwing around with a computer or waiting for tech support the better. Likewise, I'm sure he has all sorts of tedious tasks which don't warrant third party software but which could be tackled by a nice Perl script. That doesn't even take into account the boost in (general) analytical thinking that comes from programming. Ditto for potential refreshment in Math.

Who says it needs to make him a better Mayor anyway? What if he just wants to be a better person?

In addition to being a programmer, I happen to be a musician as well...which puts me into contact with a lot of artists. I'm always surprised by how much they could benefit learning programming because a lot of art involves hacking; creating weird one off contraptions...often requiring lots of tedious work. Many want to experiment with technology and art, but are unsure how. Processing could blow some minds. Ditto Overtone.

Using a computer is largely about software; and software is similar to arts and crafts in that it's a reflection of the creator and the tools they used.

Learning about an artist helps you interpret the meaning of their work. Learning about the techniques help you evaluate and appreciate their work.

Learning to code makes you sympathize with the people who wrote the software you use. It helps you understand how software is put together. Which is good, because the more you sympathize with the author and the more you understand how it fits together the easier time you will have using it.

To be fair there are a lot of things I feel everyone should learn. I think it's fair to say though that out of all the ones you could pick, learning to program will be more beneficial practically relative to most others.

> Research voraciously, and understand how the things around us work at a basic level. Communicate effectively with other human beings.

I think this is the heart of the misunderstanding between sides. Learning to program is actually the first step in that. He mentions having "basic internet skills" as a necessary life skill. Learning some programming will greatly facilitate that.

Likewise programming will introduce concepts and develop skills that help you understand technology in general. It even helps in in non-technological areas. It facilitates communication because it forces you to confront and think about how difficult it is to communicate certain things clearly.

It's perhaps worth noting that it's not calling a spade a spade though. A moron is literally a person who is mentally retarded, though it's use in science is now limited since it's considered offensive.

It's one thing to say "Your idea is a bad one", "What you say doesn't make sense", "Your reasoning is flawed"....etc. It's lazy and offensive to just dismiss someone by suggesting they are disabled in some way.

I also don't understand why people feel the need to take these conversations into the realm of absolutes.

If someone stands up and suggests "Hey maybe we shouldn't call eachother morons and try to be nicer in our conversations"...all of a sudden they're a pitchfork-wielding PC crusader?

This is just a reminder. A suggestion.

(almost) Nobody is saying:

"Linus is a horrible person because he made an off the cuff remark that perhaps was slightly misguided"

"Let's destroy anyone who uses the word 'moron'"

"Hey we're all such better people than Linus right?"

"If someone called me a moron, I wouldn't know what to do...I'd just cry and break down like a baby...it'd be the end of the world"

Humans are fickle and changing creatures. Every now and then we need to take personal inventory as individuals and as a culture. Every now and then we need to say "Hey, maybe we should be nicer to each other"; especially when we are starting to develop a culture of being offensive, rude, and unproductive.

There's no excuse for calling someone a moron as far as I'm concerned. It will always be a lazy and wrong thing; it's just a question of to what extent. Being lazy and wrong is a part of being human, so yes...there are many situations where I saw one person calling another a moron I would be understanding and wouldn't make a big deal out of it. That doesn't mean it's not something that shouldn't have happened...

We as programmers should have an intuitive understanding that when something goes wrong you don't start pointing fingers, assigning blame, and insulting eachother.... No, we talk about what happened; why it happened and how we can try to make it not happen again.

Here we have one person calling another a moron. This is something that, ideally, should never happen ever. It's also something that is occurring in our community often enough that we as a community could use some talking about it to start trying to work our way back towards the ideal, regardless of whether we will ever reach it or not.

This is ludicrous. Everyone knows "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" was written to provide cover for Pete Wellers research into oscillating over thrusters and their applications in time travel and rock music.

Lady Gaga is prob not a good example since she writes or has a big hand in writing pretty much all her songs. Like most pop artists she utilizes producers and songwriters, but she relies on them less than say Rihanna who essentially has had all her hit songs written for her (or picked up songs originally written for other singers).

I think this is a fair point, and mostly agree. However, when I look back at my life and see all the things I got which I considered to be beyond what I deserved simply by for asking them....I have a hard time faulting them.

I would also note that things are not always as disparate as they seem. I'm sure some people at my high school raised an eyebrow when someone generally regarded as a strange, nerdy, and not particularly attractive loner started dating one of the most popular and attractive cheerleaders in school, but if they dug deeper they might have realized that we had a relationship based on a shared love of music and various other interests. So what at first might have seemed lopsided was rather balanced.

It could be that 42Floors has something to offer that Dan finds attractive, even if it's just a steady paycheck that provides the freedom to work on other things. I'll let them sort that out themselves.

I also think it's important to read this whole post. I think they probably don't expect this offer to be taken up...they're using it as link bait. I think they legitimately admire Dan and wanted a way to show that, and figured they could do that while also commenting on their hiring process, benefits, and draw in other interested parties. I'm sure they're also serious about the offer.

I have mixed feelings about link-baity content, but I can see where they're coming from.

> We're courting on all fronts. Contact us at [email protected].

If anyone is a little jealous of this offer, hit them up. You never know.

Sleep is something that's highly variable from person to person, there's no "right" amount of time to sleep, only what's right for you (obviously this is a little bit of simplification, I don't think anyone could function on 1 hour of sleep a day for very long). 8 hours is generally thrown around as a good benchmark, but some people may only need 5 or 6 while others need 9 or 10. It depends on your metabolism, general health, and a variety of other factors I'm sure.

I find with exercise and by sticking to a very rigid sleep schedule (I've learned that for me, It's very bad to fight the sleepies to "just get a little more work done"), 6 is generally enough for me personally. This depends on a nice solid sleep though, if something is periodically interrupting my sleep (like a noisy air conditioner or what have you) I can sleep for longer and still not feel terribly rested. I find oversleeping too much also tends to make me groggy. YMMV

Operation and Hungry Hungry Hippos don't really belong on this list as they are not board games per se, they are games of skill. By this rationale quite a lot of video games are "bad" because they don't fit the criteria for a good board game; of course it doesn't make sense to judge them by that rubric.

It should be noted that they both we created in a time before video games were widely available, so perhaps they are rather quaint in some respects today, but I think the fact that the skill required is different from that required by most video games today causes them to retain enough novelty to still be entertaining.

The author says that without the theme, Operation would be nothing but picking stuff up with tweezers. In fact, that is a game my siblings and I (all firmly in the Nintendo generation) enjoyed very much and spent many many hours doing (in a version called "pick up sticks").

Right. Though Teller probably makes most of his money from performance rather than selling tricks. I know P&T do a lot of their own research and creating their own illusions, they may sometimes sell them to other pros but I doubt they engage in the large scale "kit" selling a lot of the less famous magicians do.

The problem here is telling how much of this Teller can lay claim to. He has been performing it a long time, and it's one of his signature tricks.

However, the heart of the trick is not terribly original. Illusions where a drawing or shadow interact with/mirror real life objects are very common and old. What teller did was take a unique version of it with a rose and package it up into a whole performance piece...and I think the issue is that this guy took that wholesale and is selling it basically as "Teller's rose trick" rather than using his knowledge of how the trick worked to create something similar but still unique.

The former is troubling, but without allowing the latter professional magic would grind to a halt.

There are very few illusions in magic that are not for sale, it's how a lot of non-famous magicians make a living and how many magicians who are just starting fill out their act. So I don't think the issue here is the commercialization of magic per se, or even the fact that this guy recreated the illusion...but the fact that he deliberately recreated the entire performance from Teller rather than using his reverse engineering of it to create a new illusion.

I think it's a little hazy. Magic has a long tradition of magicians performing similar tricks, and as long as you either reverse-engineered it on your own or came up with your own way to accomplish the illusion, I think most magicians would respect it.

I think the issue here is that he's taking the performance whole-sale rather than coming up with a similar illusion. Teller offered to buy him out, which I think is a combination of class on his part and recognition of the nature of tricks in professional magic.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

> the lower number of different syllables

I have a theory that this is why the Japanese are so (seemingly) fond of portmanteaus. It makes it easier to smoosh words together.

Here's her linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/donnaklinekirschler

Don't trust the game client.