combatentropy

You're right. I often think the man page should begin with a few examples, then launch into the neverending list of options.

That is no way to learn. In foreign language 101, they start you off with a small group of examples. "Como estas?" "Muy bien. Y tu?" Afterward, they explain the rules of the language (this is a noun, this is a verb, this is how you conjugate for first-person singular, etc.). In fact, this is how we learn our first language as babies. Anyone remember Mom and Dad pulling out a flip chart? Or did they just talk to you a lot?

The same goes with apprenticeships, I would think. The blacksmith starts the apprentice with simple tasks around the shop. I suppose he would intersperse it with the occasional pontification about principles and theory, but he would not sit down the pupil for weeks explaining everything before just letting him get his hands dirty.

The Linux man pages are upside down. Examples don't come till the very end, if at all.

Thankfully, like you said, there is now Stack Overflow.

I think he wanted more content, more tests, not more words.

MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue

How long were you on your sabbatical before the interest returned? A year?

What if you added an index to the row-oriented database? Then how would it compare to a column-oriented one?

That is one way, and I agree it's ugly, but Apache came out with form-based authentication in version 2.4, https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_auth_form.html

I got spoiled by PHP as my first language. It was so easy to get going. I was surprised to learn that other languages didn't work the same way, when integrating into a web server. Also it has always been rock solid. A bug in my code brought down only that request for that user, totally did not affect or even slow down responses to other users.

People have attacked its syntax forever. I avoided the worst of it by learning PHP around version 4, when it was moving away from magic quotes and register globals --- and I also had the sense to see that those were unwanted anyway. But I think the main reason that PHP hasn't bothered me is that I try to use it as little as possible. Let me explain.

I consider PHP a glue language, between my database and the user's browser. When you use a lot of glue, things get messy. I try to push things out of the middle layer to the edges, if they will fit. So I try to do a lot of data preparation in the database, through fancy queries, so that the data is mostly ready for the HTML template by the time it is received by PHP. It helps that my database is Postgres. For authentication, I try to lean on Apache, so that PHP would just have to consult the CGI variable REMOTE_USER. So PHP acts sort of like an extension language to Apache (even when I'm using PHP-FPM instead of mod_php). It takes the data from the database and wraps it in HTML. It takes the form submission from the user and hands it to the database (and most server-side data validation is in the database).

The people attacking its syntax sound like they are writing an awful lot of PHP per app. And maybe for some things you have to, but not for CRUD apps, I think. I try to keep the middle layer as thin as possible, and I would do that whether it was PHP, Python, or Perl.

From the article: "What made the crashes so vexing is that it was impossible to pin the blame on one central villain."

Wait a minute:

"When Mr. Stonecipher became chief executive of Boeing in 2003, he brought G.E.'s model with him: He slashed costs, reduced head count, ramped up outsourcing and increased Boeing's share buyback program and shareholder dividends.

"'When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,' Mr. Stonecipher said in 2004."

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Well, I agree that it would be perjury. But then there would be no proof of perjury, and the perjurer would get away. That can't offer much assurance to the person accepting a signature.

Besides, the argument applies to other signs of consent, like verbal consent. Suppose you give a verbal consent to an agreement and then renege. The other party drags you to court. The judge says, "Did you verbally consent to this contract?" Saying "no" likewise would be perjury.

I don't totally understand it, but I was impressed by Ward Cunningham's use of awk to calculate who owes who after a vacation, http://c2.com/doc/expense/

I was never an atheist, but one of my favorite writers was until his 30s: C. S. Lewis. You might try some of his slim books: The Problem of Pain or Mere Christianity.

"the M1 ties the Radeon RX 560 (2.6 TFLOPS), and it's just a few TFLOPS away from catching the GeForce GTX 1650 (2.9 TFLOPS)" --- https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-silicon-m1-graphics-...

When I first started, I was looking for a free graphical client. I asked my more seasoned coworker what he used. He said, psql.

Skeptically I tried, and after a little while, I prefer nothing else. I was already sold on vi, so it's not much surprise.

I use the \i command a lot, to run SQL commands from a file. That gives me a chance to nicely organize and indent complex queries, and tweak them as needed (with vi, of course).

That's also I do migrations. I script them in a long SQL file (surrounded by BEGIN and ROLLBACK). When it runs satisfactorily, I change ROLLBACK to COMMIT and run it again.

> Awareness and consciousness is different then responding to stimulus.

This is not some clump of cells that "responds to stimulus" before birth and magically becomes "conscious and aware" after birth. It doesn't even line up with fetal viability.

> We're not talking about human cells being alive. were talking about the whole organism being considered alive and its own thing.

The whole organism is alive and its own thing from conception. This is undisputed among biologists.

> That's not what a human is. These things have names, zygotes, embryos, fetus.

Yes, and they are all human, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/human

> None of these are living humans yet. They're pre humans.

Citation needed.

> without an identity or awareness

That is pretty easily disproven scientifically. Not even a biologist who is for legal abortion would say that a baby in the womb is unaware. There was an ultrasound a long time ago where you see the fetus recoil from the abortionist's knife. Of course it's aware. Just because it can't see the outside world yet doesn't mean it's unaware.

As far as identity, well, it has a unique fingerprint, DNA, etc. Are you saying you don't have an identity until there's a birth certificate?

> At what point do you think the sperm and egg are human?

Well, they are human from inception (see above). But they are a separate human being at conception.

> What proof do you have that says a fetus at 16 weeks is alive? How are you defining alive?

Even a single cell is alive. You have drifted from textbook science at this point.

> This is still dependent on the mother

Dependence doesn't disqualify you from being human or alive.

> Why do you feel a fetus is a human life?

Because it is human, and it is alive.

It is human, in the sense that it is descended from humans and is not dog or a dandelion or a caterpillar. It has human genetic code. It is one continuous line from the merge of two human sex cells to full-grown human. There is no jump, somewhere along the way, from not human to human.

It is alive. A plant is alive, so surely so is a fetus.

> A fetus isn't viable until week 20ish.

Whether it is viable doesn't determine whether it is human or alive. A two-year-old outside the womb isn't very viable either. In fact, some 20-year-olds aren't very viable.

Viability is shaky ground upon which to base legal protection. Just think of the handicapped or those with other chronic maladies. Or any of us can become unviable temporarily through some accident or acute illness. Does our right to life disappear?

> Why do you feel an unviable collection of cells is a human

A "collection of cells" does not describe a fetus any better than an adult.

- At about 18 days, there is a heartbeat

- At about 40 days, there is brain activity

- By the end of the first trimester, it has all its organs. It just needs to grow.

"Photography of the human fetus developing in the womb": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD1gW88Lm-Y

> What does location have to do with it?

Inside the womb or outside the womb, its location seems to be the dimension used by those who say abortion is okay.

And a fetus is a human life. A person does not get redefined based on their location. What science is there that defends the right to an abortion?

For me, it was an extraordinarily well-made movie, one of my favorites. I was a film major, though, so I am concentrating on the camerawork and editing. The director, John McTiernan, was not famous enough --- right up there with Spielberg in his ability to compose scenes, https://vimeo.com/76739972

> low quality 1080p jpegs

imagemagick reports their quality as 75, based on a few I picked at random:

  identify -format '%Q' marnie007.jpg
  75

--- which is not terrible but not great either. The thumbnails are PNG. It's too bad they didn't use that for the full-size ones.

I am shocked and dismayed that people are emailing you because your blog is too fun and diverse.

It reminds me of my wish for anyone who is even semipopular on the internet, whether it be through a blog, Youtube channel, etc. I wish for them to ignore the comments. Log into your email, select all, and delete. That might be healthier, not just for you but for the world, because you would not be dragged down by their negativity.

I wish that you and others could remember that it takes a certain kind of person even to begin writing an email to a stranger with a blog. They are likely neurotic, https://web.archive.org/web/20170430010047/https://www.truth...

I am surprised by what people say in the comments sections of various websites. But I am equally surprised when I see the author take them seriously and give them the dignity of a reply. Or a Youtuber who seems like a healhty happy intelligent person with interesting content start to talk about some of the crazy things people have been saying in the comments. "Why are you even listening to those people?" I think. But I try to remember that I myself would probably be tempted to wonder if they're right or to start replying --- and get ensnared.

Why does Haskell cause an algebraic perspective while Python causes an operational one? In Python I can write:

  x = 2 * y + 1

which looks like algebra to me.

I do not know Haskell, but I read about it that it is a purely functional language. So is the mindset because of that?

Got it. Thanks!

> its not beautiful to most people

I think the same could be said about audio mixing boards, for example. I've found that interfaces for professionals often look ugly to the uninitiated.

I've said many times that you should give an interface two weeks, not two seconds. Interfaces that you love after two seconds, you may come to hate after using it every day. Interfaces that are intimidating on the first day, you may come to love after a few weeks, and even more and more through the years. For me, a great example is vi.

> What happened to the scratch pad and press an index key in FMCs? Age old UI and it is so crisp and clear, there is absolutely zero ambguity. Write something in a scratch pad, click the button where you wanna insert the data.

I am not a pilot but am always interested in seeing examples of great user interfaces. Can you post a link or more information about what this device is? (Bonus: the version you love and the version you now hate)

I went the opposite way and bought a $240 Panasonic commercial microwave, because I also wanted it to last. It's just a little big.

He does not claim to introduce the concepts of horizontal and vertical scaling. He mentions them only to immediately discourage them: "Lots of people make the mistake of thinking there's only two vectors you can go to improve performance, high or wide. [...] There's a third direction you can go, I call it 'going deep'." Like I said, it's a long post, so I tried my best to summarize it and then linked to it.

I totally agree. It is similar to a post by Derek Sivers, "Ideas are just a multiplier of execution", https://sive.rs/multiply

One of my favorites is a super-long one by a user named bane, about three solutions to speeding up computing: (1) "high" (more RAM, CPU), (2) "wide" (more machines), and (3) "deep" (refactoring), which is what he recommends first. More than once he has rewritten something that was running slowly even on the latest and greatest architectures (perhaps partially because of that), to running on a single machine, even an old personal computer. He reminds us that a modern computer, with its solid-state drives, gigabytes of memory, and multicore gigahertz processors, can take on many large problems, if you just stoop to give the problem a decent amount of attention first, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739

> back to the root of it all

https://www.amazon.com/More-Than-Carpenter-Josh-McDowell/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/006065...

It looks like a total waste of time.

As a developer of internal web apps, it is apparent what I must do next to serve my users, in the next week, month, quarter, year --- I have a long to-do list! It is also apparent what I must do to serve my team, in the next week, month, quarter, year. (I get rave reviews from both, unsolicited.)

The goals that cascade from the executives are laughably vague and obvious: cut costs, increase revenue, reduce maintenance, get to the root of recurring problems, please the customer (of course they phrase those things with your typical multisyllabic jargon). So what the process ends up being is taking my goals that I have already got and writing them down in another place (a shockingly flimsy and probably expensive web application they bought from a vendor) using certain words that they like. It is a total waste of money and time (which, ironically, is counter to at least two of their supreme goals).

Let me be clear. While it is theoretically possible that the executives know of a problem or need at the company that I don't, and when they share their company-wide goals it would be news to me, this has never happened. There has never been a time when the yearly goals come out and I say, "Oh, well, now that you put it that way . . . "

On the other hand, I must be above average, because there exist many at my company who, left to themselves, would sit around and do nothing, or worse. Presumably this whole ceremony is in reaction to their behavior. In my opinion, such people should be fired, not babysat.

> If it’s good enough for Lionel Richie, it’s good enough for you.

I was about to downvote you, but this last shout saved you.

"Sometimes life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one." --- Stella Adler