Forth is number 1 on my list of greatest languages -- and I've been coding Lisp full time for years. If you want to have your mind blown, take a look at what Moore has done recently with Color Forth. It's tricky to piece together the story from bits on the internet, but the resulting language is enlightened in a way no other languages can claim.
"What can be said of this? If, in order to 'really' enter a programming culture, I need to both 'be solving a significant real problem in the real world' and exercising 'the freedom to change the language, the compiler, the OS or even the hardware design', then there are very few options for entering this culture indeed. The requirement for 'real world work' is almost by definition incompatible with 'the freedom to change the language, the compiler, the OS and the hardware design'."
Only part way through that article you linked to, but it is fascinating. The part that includes Moore's rant against local variables crystallized an idea that had been bubbling around in my subconscious for some time. Very often the only reason I find I am writing a local variable is to make an expression with several sub-parts easier to see the sub-expression values in gdb. This wouldn't be quite so necessary if the debugger had a syntax for saying "list the sub expressions of this statement" and for saying "print sub-expression #N". For instance, with the debugger stopped just before a line like x = foo(bar(a,b), blat(c,d)); "list subs" -> "0: bar(a,b), 0.1: a, 0.2: b, 1: blat(c,d), 1.1: c, 2.1: d." then just typing something like sub0 would print the value of bar(a,b)."
Of course lacking such a facility I just end up scattering extra locals even though I end up feeling like the output is rather archaic. a = ...; b = ...; c = f(a,b);
My criteria is when someone mentions a right, can I meaningfully append the question 'At whose expense'? If I can, it's bogus.
These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech.
These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month.
Real rights prevent someone from doing awful things to you, basically "No one will harm you, or interfere with you doing this" (where this might be living, owning property, speaking, etc). The bogus rights are basically promises of free stuff.
Wait, just being able to ask the question? There isn't even a dependance on the answer?
Wow.
Then your two sets aren't even correct. None of the things you mention are rights. You can append the question to all of the things you put in the "These are rights" pile, even if you would then think the answer is "nobody".
Heck, sometimes the answer will even be someone besides the "right holder". Person A's hypothetical "right to liberty" can clearly come at the expense of person B, when person B is using person A as trained but unpaid labor.
"Wait, just being able to ask the question? There isn't even a dependance on the answer?"
You appear to have skipped over the word "meaningfully" in warrenwilkinson's post, or perhaps he edited it in, but either way, it addresses your concern.
(To your later point I'd observe that rights are generally considered symmetrical; in a society where you have "the right to liberty" your example falls through because A's right is being violated for your example, and your argument seems to fundamentally require asymmetry for it to make any sense.)
You are shifting all the work that the criterion was meant to do into the term "meaningfully". Without elaboration on the application of that term, this is of no help as I used a very common standard of "meaningful", "having meaning". A question has meaning, even when the answer is obvious or the answer to a "who" question is "no one". Example: "Who has been to Mars?" is a clearly meaningful sentence.
The issue at play later is: does person A have a right to liberty. Warrenwilkinson's criterion for it not being a right was the ability to append "At whose expense?". I even made that a more reasonable criterion, by implying the further requirement that, in order for a hypothetical right to be considered not a right, it had to come at the expense of someone else (the elaboration used by many other people in better statements of similar criteria, and seemingly the underlying consideration really at play in the two lists warrenwilkinson gave). The objection to even this elaboration was that in the case of a society with slavery, the hypothetical "right to liberty" would obviously come at the expense of slaver owners.
You introduce the interesting symmetry constraint, as charitably as I can gather, intending to use the symmetry between the slaves and owners. No help really, as the owners might as easily conclude that they don't have a right to liberty, they simply have liberty itself. If you landed on an island with slavery on-going, does the criteria proposed have any teeth?
There is, I think, a sharper edged point than this merely amusing slavery objection, but I've mentioned it in other threads already.
> These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech.
> These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month.
This categorization is true within American society. Other societies express different rights.
I'm not sure it's even true with respect to American society, or at least consistently true. A meritocratic-free-market mindset that supports providing education as an equal starting point is fairly common. A slogan sometimes used is "equal opportunities, not equal outcomes". It's used in various contexts, but in one context, the argument is that kids have the right to expect an education that starts them out on a level playing field, but not the right to any particular salary when they grow up. So this view would support free schools, but not support redistributive income taxes.
The negative way of phrasing that same sentiment would be: "if you don't get ahead, you have no one to blame but yourself, because you could've paid more attention in school or gone and read up in the library". It's easier to make that argument if there are in fact free schools and libraries, so that we can claim that everyone had that opportunity, and therefore if they didn't use it, it was their fault.
I'll bet the version off pirate bay works fine. I know this is kind of snarky, but if they want to successfully combat piracy they need to make the pay-and-play experience better than the pirate one. DRM only affects those who play the unmodified game.
I bought the mac version from Gametreemac -- when I have periods of dropped connections, my game doesn't give me a warning, it completely dies. This has forced me to save nearly every minute or so. Terrible UX :(
Having courts retroactively redefine contracts based on their fairness weakens contract law greatly. Besides being very subjective, things that start fair often seem unfair in time. For example Microsoft's deal with IBM, or Mosaic's deal with Microsoft. It's better if the rules stay the same, the ball will be played where it lands.
That's what I thought too. I stumbled across this yesterday, while searching for a market for my script.
The deal sounds great, I'm too busy to market my script properly, but I can just upload it to them, get feedback, exposure, possibly win some money, and maybe make $200,000 if they buy it.
Worst case scenario is I leave in 18 months with just my script again -- but I figure that's the expected case for self promotion anyway.
Agree. Even though I haven't tried to publish anything in print media format, but I suspect that, at worst case scenario, this is no different from a writer submitting his work and getting turned down with some comments.
I agree. The only thing standing in the way is state licensing. The AMA lobbied for medical practitioner licensing in the earlier 1900s on the grounds that they would set high standards for future doctors. The end result was different:
"The licensing boards in each state soon began refusing licenses to health professionals who had not been trained at one of the 'approved' medical schools. Only half of the existing medical schools were approved, so most of the others had to close their doors by 1920. By 1932, almost half the medical school applicants had to be turned away. Those who apprenticed, went to unapproved schools, or developed their own therapies were stopped- at gunpoint, if necessary- from healing. As a result, the number of medical doctors per 100,000 people dropped from 157 in 1900 to 125 by 1929. Specialists, such as midwives, were usually forbidden to practice unless they had a full-fledged medical degree."
Today most of the environment is federally owned as crown or public land. 89% of Canada and at least 20% of the US are in this state (some western states are between 25% and 75% public land).
As government property the land is not salable and its true worth is unknown. Currently, businesses approach government and lease access rights for grazing, timber, oil, etc.
This leads to environmentally unsound decisions because most businesses only understand the land as is relevant to their work. And politicians make the deals because it adds jobs, builds the economy, and improves their re-election chances.
If the land was sold, the market would bring a wider range of buyers: developers, businesses, speculators, and environmentalists. Land important to wildlife would be prized by conservationists and their respective charities. They could buy and protect that land, and only permit sustainable development. Farmers could no longer lease cheap graze land from the government, they would have to buy it (and treat it sustainably) or lease it from private owners. Oil producers would have an incentive to work cleanly: if they work clean, the land will resell at a higher price when they finish.
Land is an asset of various values. Setting price tags stops it from being undervalued.
In an ideal world what you say may well be true. In this world, strip-mining and clear-cutting argue otherwise. As one who lives in one of those western states mostly owned by the federal government and one with an over whelming republican government I note that even at that, no one is reckless enough to sell off (or even sue to gain possession) the assets that this represents. I'd point out that in the 'bad' old days, private enterprise created one of the largest hazardous waste clean up sites in the country. The notion that this would all be somehow different now, flies in the face of history... I may not trust the feds, but I most assuredly don't trust private enterprise.
Immunity from liability (or limited liability) is a fundamental reason why governments and corporations are not to be trusted. When government officials, financers, and corporate (stock) owners are shielded from liability, they tend to take on more risk. An easy way to make them consider the risks is to take away their immunity.
But you have to remember that the market will not factor in the value of externalities. If a wetland is providing $100m in water purification services to a community, the market won't price it at $100m, because the benefit is non-excludable. The price of the wetland ends up being the price of the only protectable property right (the right to exclusive possession) which is a small fraction of the net economic value of the land.
True, but that value isn't for sale, it's manifest as easements owned by your neighbors. (the true price is buying the land and the easements that conflict with your agenda).
For example, if you fish the wetland, or set up a water front hotel, or drink the water then you have an easement right to clean water. It cuts both ways though; if a polluter moves to unoccupied land and pollutes 10 barrels a day, then he has an easement right to continue polluting at this rate.
In theory, if it could identify the food & quantity, it should be able to produce every useful food statistic. From daily nutrition, to calories, to a map showing which regions of the earth commonly grow the fruit and vegetables in it.
