robinh

Sadly not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcoma

The color red is often associated with bad; needs to stop; wrong. Removal isn't such a big step from there, I think. The opposite probably applies to green.

Best of luck to you today, too.

Ha, fairy nuff. It's what prompts one to have such a day that matters, methinks. ;)

I'm pretty sure that's not even remotely related.

Thank you. :)

I suppose it's an OK sentiment, but I'm not in contact with my parents and on days like these I keep getting reminded of that fact. I was secretly hoping there wouldn't be anything about it on HN, but I guess I'll just have to learn to deal with it.

<goes back to reading a book in pyjamas, today is not a very good day. />

I agree that concurrency isn't fundamentally hard, but the reason everyone kind of prefers faster serial execution is because a lot of algorithms (extremely simple example: f^100000(x)) are fundamentally unparallelizable. Faster serial execution is just so much more straightforward.

So a common problem with concurrency tends to be not "How do I make these functions run in parallel", but "Is there an algorithm that does the same thing I want without relying on constant function composition?"

Okay, but that's not actually an answer to my question. My question basically comes down to this:

> Yes, that is intellectually dishonest, which is a huge problem. Scientists have two options: (1) accept parapsychology as real, or (2) accept that the "scientific method" (in social "sciences", at least) is insufficient.

I don't get why the whole thing is such a huge problem. The entire problem rests on needing parapsychology effects to not be real. If that need did not exist, we could just go "Okay, interesting, seems likely that there's something to it then. Let's do more research!" because, you know, we take that approach everywhere else. So my question remains: what is it about parapsychology that makes option two even valid to consider? All I can see is people just not liking that that may be how things work.

So... I know next to nothing about parapsychology itself, but have seen a lot of the drama around it, and I just have to ask: is it not intellectually dishonest to call something the 'control group of science' when their results overwhelmingly support the hypothesis? I have a hard time seeing how this is different from any other form of science denialism. "We don't like the results because they clash with our preconceived notions of how the universe works so we made up this thing to ignore your evidence"? That's hardly a valid complaint. Basically, on what grounds can people claim one field to be nonsense (e.g. calling parapsychology the control group of science) but not others? Can someone explain this to me?

I think you accidentally commented in the wrong thread. Gave me a hearty chuckle in this context, though.

Good god, if only mathematics professors would learn this. If I hear the word 'trivial' one more time I swear I'm going to scream.

Except if you post a comment in a dead thread, your account is practically banned from participating again.

I'm not yet sure how to feel about this, but I have one question that remains unanswered: Will this apply to submissions (possibly in the future) as well?

I have two questions.

1. I'm unfamiliar with the term 'unpacking'. Is it any different from pattern matching in, say, Haskell (but perhaps not as feature-rich)?

2. Aren't slices pretty much a staple in Python? I didn't think using them was considered a 'trick'.

Even in those extreme cases (which I hope we all agree are the exception rather than the norm), I would still consider putting someone in a few-square-meter box "cruel and unusual punishment" by any reasonable standard.

RWH is a good recommendation, although it contains a rather large number of errors. LYAH is very good for learning the basics, too.

But, if you're already a very experienced programmer, you can probably learn how to write practical programs in Haskell by just reading the IO chapter (http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/io.html) and the Systems Programming chapter (http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/systems-programming-in...) from RWH. These will help you understand how IO actually works in Haskell. The rest is just libraries and learning the language itself.

On a related note: I've found that starting with the main IO function is a good way to start writing any large program in Haskell. Most people I know who complain about Haskell being a mess in impure environments tend to write pure functions first, then build their IO functions on top of that, instead of the other way around. I'm not sure whether this applies for everyone, and of course this approach works well in domains that have little to do with IO (e.g. mathematical programming), but it's something to keep in mind.

Yes. Although I have no experience with Racket (so correct me if I'm wrong), the Lisps are inherently multi-paradigm languages. Haskell, on the other hand, is functional programming in its purest form. I would consider it worth learning if only for that reason, even if you don't end up using Haskell a lot.

EDIT: ...Did I just accidentally paraphrase what ESR used to say about Lisp?

Similar issues plague Haskell. A bunch of functions have illogical names, just because that's how they've always been used. And, there's the annoying matter of Applicative not being a superclass of Monad in the language, when it mathematically should be. This should be fixed in Haskell 2014, though.

Forkenheit 451.

This incoherent rant as a response to a single sentence isn't really helping your case.

"All those portability claims and that there somehow good: you're just doing things for lowest common denominator. Requiring a huge amount of effort to change or develop low level bits across BSD and Linux."

I don't even know what you're trying to say here.

"it will always be a result of human effort and ultimately an expression of human intent"

Like babies? (Well, most of the time.)

This is probably the best guide (and I've read a lot of them) to actually writing assembly on your average PC one can get. I definitely recommend reading it.

Well... I'll see what I can do.

Author here. And yes, that's a bug. I recently restored most of the pages on my website, and didn't check whether each page was the most recent version. When I first wrote the HOWTO, I for some reason was under the impression that the 'write' system call required the address of the length of the string to be loaded in EDX, which is obviously a bit silly. You're right that EDX should just hold the value 13. I'll change this as soon as I get the time.

"In addition, I'm sure there are hunt and peck typists that still legitimately use caps locks instead of shift because it requires less coordination and hand contortions, so leaving caps lock alone also has accessibility benefits."

A recent poll I posted on HN suggests that I'm in the minority on this one, but I actually don't remap caps lock myself. And I like to think I'm a pretty capable writer, touch typing with a decent WPM.

Consider the following bit of assembly:

  .set MBOOT_PAGE_ALIGN,   1<<0
  .set MBOOT_MEM_INFO,     1<<1 
  .set MBOOT_HEADER_MAGIC, 0x1BADB002 
  .set MBOOT_HEADER_FLAGS, MBOOT_PAGE_ALIGN | MBOOT_MEM_INFO
  .set MBOOT_CHECKSUM,     -(MBOOT_HEADER_MAGIC + MBOOT_HEADER_FLAGS)

(These are multiboot header definitions used by a kernel to get GRUB to load it, for the curious.)

I'm sure there are plenty of programmers who just use the shift key if they were to write code similar to the above, but I simply prefer the caps lock key myself. Habit, perhaps.

A fair point, I should probably have mentioned that. Thanks for pointing that out.

I agree wholeheartedly. The syntax doesn't even have to be extremely obscure, it can be highly useful in lower-level languages such as C as well: Often, I just want to get a quick idea of what the next big block of code is going to do without having to read the entire block of code.

Since I'm not from the US and we don't have 'levels' of math where I live (you take math in high school and get some or all of the above combined), can someone explain to me what each level entails?

While I know the definitions of each term, I'm unclear on what exactly 'Pre Calculus' would be in this case. Also, is Trigonometry higher than Algebra or Algebra 2, if that question even makes much sense? Finally, what are the differences between Algebra and Algebra 2, and Geometry and Geometry 2?

Agreed, although I must say I was positively surprised that I could actually try out the game before having to sign up in the first place. More people should definitely do something like this.