taserian

I'm not fully grokking the theory/philosophy you're trying to express here, and I'd really like to, so I'll ask for forgiveness in advance if I seem too dense.

When I think of language and getting a message across (be it to someone else, or to a computer as code), I think of the components that are required for communication:

  - Emitter (myself) (EM; mostly obvious)
  - Recipient (someone else/the computer) (RE; also obvious)
  - Message (what I want to communicate) (MS)
  - Medium (what carries the message) (MD)
  - Protocol (base rules that both sides agree on) (PR)

If I'm trying to help my mother-in-law with a computer problem, I'll tell her to click on such-and-such over phone lines using English. (MD=phone line; MS=instructions; PR=English grammar)

If I'm writing a script to unzip a bunch of files at once and distribute the contents into different folders based on the file type, I'd probably whip up a Python script. (MD=text file; MS=task description; PR=Python)

My script in turn will communicate with the file system and the operating system to complete my task. (MD=bits; MS=instructions; PR=Python-to-Machine-Language-Interpreter)

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that all application programs should distill down to just the message, as the one representation of what I want to communicate. I'm hesitant to accept that, since it tends to assume that both emitter and recipient can independently determine and adapt to the correct protocol when all they have is the message.

For example, my Python script will probably use the file extension as a heuristic for the file type, but will make an error when picture.txt actually is a badly named JPEG. If I want to increase correctness, I can change the script so that it uses the file's Magic Number, but that may be overhead I don't need if the files are correctly named. Choosing one technique over the other requires that I craft the message differently, because Python doesn't make a decision on how best to determine file type.

TL;DR: Data needs a protocol to be used as information, and languages provide that. Doing away with languages means we need to define and agree on a non-ambiguous way of reading data, which is a tall order.

Search engines are comparable in terms of how successful they are at their unique task.

Languages? What metric are you going to use that equally applicable to all tasks?

Think of it as vehicles and their different purposes. Would you support condensing all vehicles to one, so that one vehicle has to both haul and mix concrete and take your kids to get ice cream?

One way of semi-resolving the issue of the paper falling into another's hands is writing the password and adding characters to it on paper that you know not to add when using it as a password.

For example, when we visit my mother-in-law, she likes to hand over her ATM card for us to do local errands. My wife, knowing that she'll forget the PIN, writes it as a telephone number, where she knows the offset/method to extract the PIN.

Debate competitions have devolved into some sort of speed-talking, where the number of arguments that the opponent needs to address is more important than the substance of the points themselves.

There's a RadioLab episode about that at http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/ An example they use is that if a debater A has six points in his speech that need to be addressed, and the opponent B only addresses four, A wins by default, since there were two points that were unaddressed.

It reminds me a lot about this election, where there's so much polluting the discourse that there's no time to address the substance (and it plays better to the audience, as Moonves stated).

There used to be a couple of them for Python, but it seems they've died out.

- Resolver One ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One )

- Project Dirigible ( https://github.com/pythonanywhere/dirigible-spreadsheet )

My daughter's cat picture got a 6.6. I know it could use some brightness, but I still love it.

https://keegan.regaind.io/p/-HlqBiO2Qhy2xcWVeetqaA

Another aspect that seems to be glossed over is the "Incorporated By Reference" (IBR). Just as in programming, the fact that I refer to something in a pointer doesn't mean that it remains constant. What prevents the writers of a standard from changing it after a legislative body approves it as IBR? If a standard is determined to be better served by a change (due to safety, correction, or some other metric), does it need to be re-approved by the same legislative body? Or does the legislative body need to be informed of the change, and determine if it needs re-approval?

I'd hesitate to claim that OpenOffice is "excellent software", if the security issues aren't being addressed in a timely manner.

Regarding same sex attraction, the fact that you never thought of it before doesn't make the concept "unthinkable". History begs to differ with that label.

Also, you shouldn't use "i.e." to equate those who are LGBT to those who support their being accepted into society and legally recognized despite not being LGBT themselves.

I'd be interested in seeing if a transparent, fair and honest voting booth can be achieved with commodity hardware: - Raspberry Pi with a multiple checksum-verified OS image - simple receipt printer with a verifiable hash of your vote - etc.

I enjoyed The Magicians, but I found the two follow-ups lacking, when I expected them to keep up with the original.

Also, tweening between superformula shapes in d3.js: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/1020902

Play with the superformula in d3.js: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/1021103

What tends to happen in dictatorships is that actions started by the dictator are seen as their ruling, not as the best course of action given the evidence (even when they provide the evidence, it's assumed to be doctored).

The other part of it is that the dictator is presented with an image that has little to do with reality. Take a look at any large corporation where there's a lot of distance between the CEO and the base. If a branch knows that there'll be a visit from the CEO to their location, a massive effort is made to make it look like everything is wonderful (fresh paint, clean desks, etc.). Dictators make decisions based on what's presented, not what's actually happening. (Reminds me so much of the Paranoia RPG.)

Adding to the list of editors: LyX is a great cross-platform editor that I've used. https://www.lyx.org/

Have you looked at TiddlyWiki? http://tiddlywiki.com/

It's a simple wiki-on-a-page, with collapsing and linking built in. You can also keep it completely off-line, or have it sync with your preferred solution (Dropbox in my case).