cgore

I'll use a C example, GUI toolkits. Look at the code example for GTK+ at:

http://zetcode.com/tutorials/gtktutorial/gtklayoutmanagement...

All of the calls to gtk_fixed_put are of the form:

    gtk_fixed_put(GTK_FIXED(fixed), button1, 150, 50);

For most applications, the leftmost argument is going to be exactly the same window/buffer/menu/etc. for several calls in a row. A shortcut version like this is nice if you are going to add 25 buttons to the same widget:

    curried_put(button1, 150, 50);

You can do this sort of thing with curry, making a shortcut function.

I kind of relate it to modern music. Modern "academic" music is typically quite complicated and dissonant, and requires a great deal of skill on the part of the musicians to play: it sounds like crap. Modern "popular" music is simple, only a few months on the guitar will get a normal player where they can play most rock/pop.

You can waste months writing "perfect" Haskell that nobody cares about, or write some really buggy Java and make Minecraft.

Probably for the same reason you wouldn't want to ping your personal webpage from a remote computer you just hacked.

If by "real world", you mean the world of things, then I would agree with you. But the world is the totality of all facts, not the totality of all things.

Infinity. 80-ish years might not seem like much to you, but to an insect that only lives a few days it might as well be a trillion years. The point I'm trying to make is that living a really long time is not living forever, and even if your death date is the same as the universe however many trillions of years out from now, your still going to die eventually, and still going to worry about it.

The universe still dies, so you still die. A trillion years is still quite finite and small.

I grew up in the area too, and moved back a few years ago. People often give me weird looks when I say I live on the Illinois side, assuming I'm living next to Pop's or something. The Illinois side is all really nice farmland if you just go a few miles out from the city. That is one of the nice things about Saint Louis. I grew up on several acres of land, my dad was able to commute to downtown in less than 30 minutes, and he was able to afford that on a mid-level government employee salary.

Slow emacs startup ... people restart their emacs?

I've had a few returns with them over the years and they all went well.

I've typically bought computer stuff from Tiger Direct. About half of my computer parts have came from there for about the last 10 years or so. They aren't the absolute cheapest site online, but I've never had any problem with returns or customer service with them, so I keep with them.

$40k isn't much anywhere in the US, not just in San Fransisco. Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, with a median household income at $37,095.

Cite: http://www.parade.com/166996/viannguyen/what-are-the-10-rich...

Take a look at the Faker Rubygem:

http://rubygems.org/gems/faker

https://github.com/stympy/faker

Someone with a tattoo didn't consider things fully beforehand? I don't believe it.

I'm not sexist because my wife is a woman?

That's pretty cool actually.

Perhaps coming from a region where you can't produce any food at all for several months out of the year, and can't live without a large supply of firewood during that time too, weeds out some of the more short sighted?

It is clearly visible in the satellite views on Google Maps, but the map view only shows the main road going through it. I wonder how many other such places could be found just by browsing the web? This seems to be what this guy is doing. If you look at older posts of his, he is working on automatic road following in satellite imagery.

Perhaps if you are a political enemy of $political_party_in_power.

In my mind that is the only reason, because the USSR made a whole lot of them, and then shipped them out to every third-world country.

It is for a similar reason AR-15s are so popular here in the USA, because the US Military mostly uses M16s ,which are almost the same, and therefore they are the "cool, I'm almost-for-really a soldier now" gun.

I've been with them since 2006 and I've generally been happy. The only problem is their coverage in rural areas is spotty, and I like being in rural areas as much as possible.

America's vices of choice are greed and violence.

England's are sex and drugs.

I went to Slashdot for the first time in about a year or two. It still sucks.

Vanilla creme ale sounds good. I know where I'm going next time I'm over on that side of the river.

I think there is a sizable minority that wants anybody who isn't in jail to be well armed, whether or not they agree with me politically, and I'm in that minority. I think it benefits society. I sort of vacillate between conservative and libertarian depending on the issue and the day of the week myself, but I think pro-gun liberals are a great addition.

I think there is a sizable minority that wants nobody to have guns, for various reasons, but typically because they actually think it'll stop violence. I think that won't work at all, and has lots of negative effects. It isn't a coincidence that all of the mass shootings happen in "gun free zones".

I think there is a vanishingly small number of people who actually want to disarm society in order to try and push a Nazi-like situation. But, imagine an America where the NSA that Snowden has told us about are the only people with firearms. Do you want to live there?

I think the Godwin rule is good for stuff that is extreme hyperbole, and typically just examples of attacks on character. The 'Soup Nazi' from Seinfeld being a good example: it was one of my favorite episodes, but really, the soup restaurant guy is Hitler?

But I am literally making a point about something that I think is truly key to preserving democratic society in America, or whatever is left of it, and I would view the removal of private gun ownership in the United States as actually being a prelude to something as bad as Nazi Germany. I think the Second Amendment is the keystone to all of the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Basically, calling your boss Hitler because he made you work on the weekend is absurd, but making comparisons between Hitler and somebody like Pol-Pot is quite legitimate.

The problem with gun registration versus car registration is that there is no real use to having a list of car owners, other than legitimate ones. But, a list of people with weapons would be the first thing any would-be dictator would love to have.

I realize I am inviting the wrath of Godwin's Law here, but, as a real-world historical example of the threat of gun registration, the Nazis:

"In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group."

"In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/365103/how-nazis-used-...

"And, in religion, debates turn into bloody warfare, ..."

Seriously?

You sure do know how to keep discussion polite.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Oneness Pentacostals, various others. Being all-inclusive isn't the point, nor should it be.

If you want my personal definition of "Christian", it's this:

1. There is a god.

2. I'm not it, and neither are you.

3. Jesus is.

4. Therefore, Jesus is the boss.

After that, all the rest just sort of flows out of it. It is amazing how many doctrinal issues either instantly disappear or don't even matter anymore. You don't end up with all sorts or absurd "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?" questions to argue about endlessly, with one camp saying 144,000 and another saying 144,000,000. Instead you get real questions, like "what does God want of me?"

It would be like having a major disagreement within a company over if the shoe size of the CEO is 12 or 13. The CEO doesn't care if you know his shoe size, he cares if you do your job or not.

I really like Winston and Horn's Lisp. It actually is written assuming you don't know how to program at all, but quickly moves along into more complex stuff, really showing off what Lisp can do. Winston teaches (taught?) at MIT, and when the book was first written I guess it was still a reasonable possibility that you could be a freshman at MIT in computer science and have never programmed before.

http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-3rd-Edition-Patrick-Winston/dp/02...

It isn't intractable but it can be quite complicated. This is true of theology in specific and philosophy in general. It isn't ever going to be an easy top-down hierarchy.

As for "defining Christianity", this is a problem that is actually addressed in most churches, and their answer can range from as restricted to "just their church" to as open as "anything vaguely resembling trinitarianism".

As a specific example, I go to an ELCA Lutheran Church, and they are a lot more on the open side of things. http://elca.org/en/Faith/Ecumenical-and-Inter-Religious-Rela...