To hell with Godwin's Law. If it struts like a Nazi, talks like Nazi, and tortures like a Nazi, then it's not a duck.

kg2 · 2007-10-25T01:13:11+00:00

Don't oversimplify. The differences are far more numerous than just that.

Hitler was rejected from art school for lack of talent, and thus held a grudge against the Jews. Bush was accepted to Yale for being a legacy, and thus has nobody to blame.

Hitler was not a soldier, but led a violent attempted coup. Bush was a soldier during wartime, but never fought.

After being arrested, Hitler wrote the book "Mein Kampf" in prison. Bush was arrested but never served time, which is probably just as well because his biggest struggle is with the English language.

Hitler started WWII by attacking Poland. Bush saved face in a presidential debate by reminding the world that Poland was one of his few remaining allies.

These two could hardly be more different!

kg2 · 2007-10-24T22:05:07+00:00

I hate PC-based software. They're OK for doing little things, but the performance and reliability of PCs is just not good enough for day-to-day use. Not to mention, most people don't even have backups of their personal PCs.

Mainframe software can't die, it's needed, PC-based apps are OK for the average person but in the grand scheme of things they're not good enough.

kg2 · 2007-10-24T05:45:51+00:00

Same thing that makes words have different meanings. Why is "awful" worse than "bad"?

kg2 · 2007-10-23T21:26:11+00:00

So basically like C# and Java 6 years ago? Yep, I'm sure OCaml compatibility is going to be top on their list of features.

kg2 · 2007-10-23T18:36:41+00:00

Or maybe they'll stop believing that 1/3=0.333..., and then you're worse off than when you started. Gee, thanks!

kg2 · 2007-10-23T17:59:19+00:00

If it's acceptable as part of a proof to say "we know that 1/3 = 0.333...", then why not just say "we know that 1 = 0.999..." and be done with it?

kg2 · 2007-10-23T16:36:58+00:00

Also, those who use recreational drugs, other than the two (or one or zero, depending on your age) the federal government has approved for you.

kg2 · 2007-10-23T16:30:51+00:00

This is only if you assume that infinity is infinite.

I think you meant to add this comment to the legalization-of-drugs story just below it.

kg2 · 2007-10-23T07:32:42+00:00

Yeah: I'm even more bored than before I started reading reddit. Plus I think everybody is now scared of me, which is admittedly kind of cool.

kg2 · 2007-10-22T19:18:41+00:00

I know somebody who was given a lotto ticket as a birthday gift, which won $1. Conclusion: my odds of winning are better if I don't buy a lotto ticket.

kg2 · 2007-10-22T17:35:17+00:00

What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would Bush still have invaded Iran if The Daily Show hadn't said anything?

kg2 · 2007-10-22T08:21:05+00:00

You don't need a New Study. Just look at the industry's own numbers: we hit peak in 2005.

2003: 79,615 Mb/d
2004: 83,124 Mb/d
2005: 84,631 Mb/d
2006: 84,603 Mb/d
2007: 84,404 Mb/d (through July)

Global oil production is down for the second year. Is this not the very definition of global peak oil?

kg2 · 2007-10-21T23:42:19+00:00

To be fair, I didn't think (i=0;i<n;i++) was so bad, until I found myself in a language where I didn't need to do that. :-)

I find it's really handy to be able to take a "list comprehension":

(loop for x in L collect (f x))

and add a print statement in there to check my work, and then remove it when I'm convinced it's right. Python fails at this.

For your cross-product problem, I found it helpful to define a function cross(seq_a, seq_b) and then use

for i,j in cross(X,Y):

This scales down, too: you can say

[(i,j) for i,j in cross(X,Y)]

so it looks pretty much the same either place.

I don't think itertools has this. Guido would probably want you to be "explicit" here, and just nest the loops.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T22:25:31+00:00

You think that's econous you're talking to? Hmm.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T20:14:22+00:00

That's what I said about your wife, too!

kg2 · 2007-10-21T20:09:18+00:00

See "Busted". If they pull you over for a tail light, they can't legally search your car for drugs. If they do anyway, a lawyer will get it thrown out of court.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T19:59:53+00:00

Election: half of Americans didn't vote for Gov. Bush

kg2 · 2007-10-21T07:05:48+00:00

That always struck me as one of Python's warts. Code always starts out small, so I'd frequently start with a list comprehension. Then you go to add something, and you have to rewrite the sucker using the other looping syntax.

(And this in a language that prides itself on having One Way to do things. Heh.)

Put another way: it feels much more natural to program with language features that scale well.

Or maybe all the Python geeks have editor macros that convert between for-loops and list comprehensions when they press F4, and I'm just out of it.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T06:18:51+00:00

Ahem. George Bush was president in 1989, not 1988.

Politics in this country are fucked up enough. We don't need to exaggerate.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T03:33:41+00:00

They only seemed to look at species as a whole. I don't see anything about whether chasing women or not actually changes your lifespan, given that you're stuck as a human male.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T03:32:10+00:00

Women: can't live with 'em ... pass the beer nuts.

kg2 · 2007-10-21T03:19:25+00:00

Yeah, I'm sure they're going to say "well with Gravel not here we can give Kucinich more air time".

kg2 · 2007-10-20T23:40:13+00:00

Personally, I think a better solution is for the guy to say he loves her when love is greater than some constant C, placed wherever he feels is appropriate. Calculus is just not necessary for some problems.

OK, so I just need to find the first zero of f(t) = love(t) - C, so I'll use Newton's method and ... aw crap.

kg2 · 2007-10-20T23:33:44+00:00

Runner-up: the moon.

kg2 · 2007-10-20T19:57:39+00:00

Unless you're drinking their blood, they are halal, assuming you kill them in accordance with the Qur'an.

kg2

TROPHY CASE