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qwphon Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum (1880)

Going back as far as 1604, King James I of England had the following to say about smoking:

A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/james1.html

qwphon [dead]

why not try writing a 2D video game?

qwphon Blind optimization: bad

All it takes is a moment to hook up a profiler, and you will know FOR SURE where your performance problems are. Don't sit there thrashing away at shadows when you could be done and on to more important things. Diagnose, THEN fix; always in that order.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

qwphon Python variable binding oddities

I kind of agree - I find the particulars of class definitions to be quite unintuitive in Python, compared to other languages.

qwphon The Problem with Every Implementation of a "Forgot Your Password?" Feature

I pick an arbitrary question, and treat the answer like a second password.

eg: what is your pet's name? qw9er8rty

qwphon The NSA Teams Up with the Chinese Government to Limit Internet Anonymity

Human history has always been a struggle between those who want to limit the freedom of the individual and those who want to preserve it.

I don't think either side has ever got the upper hand, and I doubt either side ever will.

qwphon Aesthetics Send A Message

I own both a MacBook and a Thinkpad, and use them pretty much interchangably. I think that they're both perfectly decent machines, and I like the aesthetics of both (albeit for different reasons).

I'm starting to feel like the only person who hasn't taken sides in this...

qwphon Are Cocky Developers Worth It?

It must be great being you.

qwphon Fare: Metaprogramming from the ground up: avoid C

But that doesn't mean it is impossible to write trivial harmful metaprograms in CPP, as is easily demonstrated in my counter-example die_die_stupid_c_compiler.c

I'm slightly disappointed that

  gcc -E die_die_stupid_c_compiler.c

didn't die, although it did produce about 750k of output, which is quite impressive...

qwphon Are New Programming Languages Bad?

New programming languages are only bad if you're afraid of learning.

qwphon BlueScreen - a screen saver for Windows

I wouldn't recommend this in a corporate environment. I used to have this screensaver at work, until a helpful member of IT took it upon himself to replace my PC's hard disk while I was away from my desk as he thought my machine was repeatedly crashing.

I changed screensaver after that...

qwphon How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself

This seems to imply that in 5 years (or less) time, we can expect the music industry in its current form to collapse in on itself?

Or am I reading too much into this? Otherwise it might not be too bad a time to start thinking about what Music Industry 2.0 might look like...

qwphon This is the page that made doing OOP in Javascript click for me.

For some reason, nesting closures like that seems very reminiscent of how you'd implement objects in Scheme.

So I guess there's some truth to the rumour that Javascript is basically Scheme with C syntax. Either that, or I've drunk too much coffee this morning...

qwphon A Web OS? Are You Dense?

Can you publish the results that this assertion is based on please?

qwphon The Elephant: Why is JRuby such a polarizing issue?

If that's the kind of thing that makes you feel dirty, I might suggest turning your computer off, and going out drinking...

qwphon Ask YC: Version++, Hardware-- ?

Firefox 3 is reported to use less memory than Firefox 2, but I've not been able to prove that myself.

qwphon The Zen TV Experiment

I think I might give this a go over the weekend, if circumstances permit...

qwphon Lenovo won't refund the Windows fee without an NDA

When I bought a Lenovo thinkpad, I ended up paying around $20 extra just to get XP on it instead of Vista. And it came preinstalled so I didn't get an installation disc!

qwphon Revisiting GNU Awk YouTube Video Downloader

It's not fair of me to single out this particular site, but why do people insist on presenting source code in tiny little windows with both vertical and horizontal scrollbars?

It makes it really hard to browse the code without copying it and pasting it somewhere else...

qwphon Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

Yeah, I actually think I really like Smalltalk-the-Language - it's a really tight set of primitives which interact in a powerful way - it reminds me of Scheme or Forth.

But being born and raised on the commandline, it's Smalltalk-the-Environment which causes me trouble. I often find myself wishing that I could just play with it like you would with, say, Ruby's irb. I find the conventions (having to highlight code and hit Ctrl-I to get it to run, and so on) quite off-putting. If I can get over that, I'm sure it'll be worth it, but it's a bit of a struggle.

qwphon Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

I actually found Squeak to be a bit non-intuitive and lurid, but I have played with VisualWorks and Dolphin, to try & get a feel for Smalltalk, but I never really got my head round how things worked.

Having a book handy means I have something to turn to the next time I give it a go.

qwphon No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

This is exactly the reason any software I develop in my spare time I'd release as an open source project.

I think open source also has a more attractive price tag too, but maybe I might consider selling support somewhere down the line...

qwphon Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

I'm currently reading a book about Smalltalk - does that count?

qwphon In Defense of C

I think you meant:

  #include <stdlib.h>
  #include <stdio.h>

  int main()
  {
      printf("true that\n");
      return EXIT_SUCCESS;
  }

qwphon Ask YC: What's your day job?

I'm an audio programmer in the games industry. It's never been as glamourous as it sounds...

qwphon Overview: C++ Gets an Overhaul (C++0x)

Except that the actual compiler I was using was for the PlayStation 2, so I very much doubt it had that precise code you just outlined, and it really did have NULL defined as ((void* )0), and it really did break. I saw it happen.

qwphon UNICEF says Britain is the worst country for children in the Western world

We are witnessing the Graying of Europe.

You mean - people are moving around?

EDIT: I just foung the phrase "Graying of Europe" to be a bit Enoch Powell, perhaps it's just me. Apologies...