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I've never owned a games console so I don't know, but I thought they could be used to play DVD films. It makes perfect sense as part of their function. ISTM anyway.

Fresh cardboard can be a prize bitch too. Even worse perhaps.

(source: was picker in a 3M warehouse)

I said this is where it would help (AFAICS), not that it was the best solution.

At a guess, a single thread which benefits from as much cache as it can get.

Seems very complex therefore very expensive (and possibly slow where it matters, at L2). Or it might just work.

> As for what I mean by narrative, much of the appeal of D&D seems to lie in crafting the story and adventure, being a part of the plot

That's what I was after. I know some people play in a much more involved way but when I played so many years ago I love the plot and setting, but really worked the mechanics. It may have been you got a DM or group that was just not suited to you.

> with its slow pace and focus on narrative

am curious, could you elaborate a touch on these? TIA

> I hit a case where I actually test nothing and have no results. Did I pass?

equally, can you reasonably say you failed?

Okay, I'll respond because you made an interesting point, but you've also pissed me off. Let's follow this through: for a start, just because it's an intuitive doesn't mean it's wrong. However, you made me think that may be we can force at compile time that all() must take a non-empty list of Booleans where we can be sure that the problem domain should never have empty lists. I think with modern typing we can do this with dependent types (but I'm not an expert on this, but you have raised an interesting possibility, thanks).

However there are domain cases where empty lists still make sense, so you're still going to have to account for them in a rational way, and that means logically consistent, and I guarantee we will be back to what you don't like. But that's ok.

Now where you've pissed me off is this bit

> n this case, one possible solution is to not have the concept of "falsy" and "truthy"

and

> forcing 'all' to take a mapping closure

Perhaps you could un-piss me off by explaining what the bloody hell those two are supposed to mean – pretend I'm a language designer that interested in your idea (which actually I am) – what are you asking me to implement?

It's a consequence of enforcing logical consistency. You can't get around that (but if you want to suggest other behaviour and justify it, I'd be interested).

That was not an example of low risk, responsible drug use - "There is more stupidity in the universe than hydrogen"

This kind of stupid behaviour does not improve the image of drug use.

Word. I borrowed a circa 2005 – 2010 server and the fan roared on start-up. I would not want that on full-time for reasons of noise, power and wear.

Can't remember but have read you can bootstrap a forth interpreter from an amazingly low number of bytes. Maybe more of theoretical interest than practical but still.

Do those without amnesia do so?

They are fragile I've heard, and quite likely they dull quickly (don't know), but I'm not saying they're 'better' than steel; it's not a competition. Horses/courses.

apparently yes. Broken glass (which obsidian is, a volcanic glass) have edges a few atoms wide beating anything manmade.

How strangely, bafflingly, charming.

Very cute but that's all. No reason for me to consider it true. This if we are making unbacked claims then let me riposte thus, "the past is another country, they do things differently there". Which if true would mean the past has little bearing on the present – if true.

You've just made a whole load of claims this without backing any of them up. But okay, let's take one which does make sense:

> When people understand the causes and consequences of past events, they are better equipped to navigate present challenges

To a small degree. Most of this boils down to the bleeding obvious, like "avoid war when you can because it's hideously expensive", treat people with decency etc. is there really much more to it than that?

And you talk about cultural continuity – some of these continuities are not good, q.v. the Taliban. Also cultures change very rapidly – the kind of homophobia that was acceptable or even encouraged when I was a kid is now seen very much as a serious transgression or crime (speaking as a straight bloke, I'm glad it; I'm very glad things have changed). We haven't achieved gender parity in pay, we getting there. You can't stick your hands all over a woman as you could in the 60s and expect to get away with it (ditto good).

Well I don't know. I can't say I'm convinced by what you've written but I appreciate the answer anyway. Thanks.

Makes sense. Understanding the past isn't necessary to understanding yourself is your argument, which seems largely reasonable.

What kind of proof would you want?

> A people cannot understand themselves without understanding their past

This kind of stuff gets rolled out regularly by arty and literary types but never with any explanation as to why it might be true, and I don't think it is. Care to indulge me?

It makes perfect sense in context. You're assuming that the bottom % of engineers drag things down because they're bad. That's not what it's about.

Some companies imposed rather brutal policies of "we do an annual review and sack the bottom x% of employees". This is done irrespective of whether they are bad, or simply the lowest strata (by your, possibly flawed, estimation) but still good. Because workers often don't know which group they will fall into, it produces enormous stress throughout. Few people like working under those conditions so those that can, leave. Who will that be? Those most able to leave. Who were they? Your best workers. Goodbye top tier...

Be aware that some people who contribute least to the bottom line are actually still very useful.

This kind of management brutality I believe is mostly died out now, for good reason.

'qualify' is now standard? Thought it was a vendor extension currently.

evolution

Strange claim, can you explain a little more please.

I was saying that shorter code is not necessarily more readable. But what you're talking about is optimisation and I'm fine with that, uglier code for higher speed (or whatever). But is that refactoring? I don't think so. I may have led you a bit down the garden path here.

> I'm saying that "pattern" need not be restricted to the narrow sense used in the famous "Gang of Four" book

I understood that was exactly what you were saying! Sorry, I'd had a drink.

Size reduction usually follows but not necessarily. That is easily measured is an irrelevance. The claim that its a decently predictive proxy I can't buy at the moment, can you try justifying that? Some very terse code can be very hard to understand without (comprehensive) commenting eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overv...

Maybe you're right. I've had a drink, I'll think over it in the morning, thanks.