Haha. This really reminds me of the very first webpage I ever made, in... 2000 I think? I created a series of images of a lens flare turning a magenta background into a white flash, turned it into an animated gif and used that as the background tile. Eye-watering stuff. I knew I'd finally found what I wanted to do :P
The dollar sign usually only bothers me after I've gone away and written a little Python. Actually, has anyone ever tried a 'CoffeeScript for PHP' that removed the dollar sign, replaced the `->` with dot syntax, and smoothed over the various other syntax features that people complain about? Not that I'd think there'd be much point really, apart from being a fun project.
My only hesitation with it has been that you need Node.js to compile it to regular PHP -- it offers no analogue to coffeescript's eval-in-browser mode for development.
Exactly this. I worked in Apple's EMEIA HQ for about 11-12 months. Actually I started about a week before Steve Jobs died, and honestly, nobody on the floor seemed to care that much.
As for my own experience, I moved from a comfortable telecommute job with an amazing team, naively expecting that Apple would be a huge leap in my career experience.
Instead I found a huge factory sized cube farm (office space!) and a beleaguered internal dev team, whose job was to maintain a giant mountain of bockety legacy ball of tcsh/php/mysql. Project management and infrastructure were pretty much nil. Training and documentation didn't exist, it was sink or swim.
There was a bit of a siege mentality in the team because a lot of what they maintained was critical to a lot of people onsite, and these people frequently beat a path to your desk to berate you because 'the site was down'. Which site? There were countless report sites and webpages scattered around the place. There wasn't much time to go back and fix old code because the work pipeline was always gushing forth new work.
One feature of the job was endless, pointless meetings - these happened a lot, and it gave an glimpse into how some management types played the ladder-climbing game. I definitely came across some predatory/aggressive types. This seemed to be a good strategy because it equalled "visibility", which was often lauded as a career-making goal to aim for in the team and the company. A lot of things seemed to be done with the hope that it would "create visibility".
To be fair, I gather that things in that team are a bit better now - there were some bright, really hard guys there, working against ridiculous odds. But I cannot say I found the experience enriching - I found that I was using less of my skill-set, I hated the cube-farm corporate environment, so I took another opportunity as soon as it came along.
I'm not convinced that high tech war machinery precludes collateral damage - to use that stomach-churning phrase.
I appreciate your point on one hand - conventional weapons can be inaccurate and that can result in tragic, horrifying mistakes.
But, I'm not aware of any high tech war technology that explicitly tries to prevent risk of injury to non-combatants. The only thing that stops civilians from being fired on is the person on the other end with their finger on the trigger.
For example, in spite of the technology at hand, drone operators have made decisions based on misinformation or misinterpretation - resulting in the horrific murder of civilians.
A weapon is a weapon, and it can be easily used negligently - or malevolently. The Uragan example you mentioned is at least one of these.
> A weapon is a weapon, and it can be easily used
> negligently - or malevolently.
It's plainly obvious that, all other things (like the negligence/malevolence) being equal, some weapons are far more indiscriminate than others.
Something like a guided cruise missile is designed to destroy a single building. There can be operator error, and obviously you could intentionally (malevolently) target a civilian building with one.
But compare that to the technology we had sixty years ago: squadrons of huge bomber planes carrying hundreds of unguided bombs.
One of those things is clearly an order of magnitude less likely to cause unintended collateral damage than the other.
There are certainly downsides to the modern technology. One much-discussed one is that cruise missiles and drones give some countries a god-like ability to reign targeted death on others, without putting their own people at risk. Say what you will about the horrors of WWII bombers dropping bombs on populated cities; at least the countries dropping bombs had some skin in the game.
Good points. I wonder if the two World Wars are outliers though. I don't know if there was anything comparable before them before - there really hasn't been anything since. Of course the ability to rain thousands of tons of bombs on cities in WWII was due to technological advancement at that time. Thank goodness at least that technology has advanced beyond those horrors.
Great to see Heaney mentioned by several people here! Recently voted Ireland's favourite poet of the last 100 years. This poem is a great example of his talent to document the small but evocative, quintessential elements of Irish experience. I'm having some wonderful childhood flashbacks of days on the bog right now :)
I think your desire to participate is commendable. I don't know anything about the safety risks of collaboration to Gazans, it's very sad situation and I appreciate that it's very complex and possibly dangerous. I'd certainly be interested to learn more.
Otherwise, I'd imagine (possibly naively) that remote mentoring would be something good.
If it were possible for you to participate - would you risk repercussions for collaborating from other Israelis?
> would you risk repercussions for collaborating from other Israelis?
What? I think that most of the Israelis, including the extreme right, would agree with me and help me, given the opportunity. We hate the terrorists who have power in Gaza and keep the people as hostages and human shields, but we want to help the people themselves, if anything.
The terrorists just got reelected in Israel too. I'm always amazed that Israelis believe their government's propaganda about "human shields" used to excuse terrorist acts like the bombing of UN schools.
"the terrorists that have power in Gaza". You start from the wrong premise. You're defining them terrorists because that allows you to dismiss their fight as "terrorism". Given that Israel is an occupying power in Gaza (yes, "in January 2012, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General stated that under resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly, the UN still regards Gaza to be part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory") the combatants in Gaza are freedom fighters.
There are several things wrong with your argument. Usually, I don't respond to things like this — but I have come to learn that commenters on Hacker News are unusually reasonable and intelligent people, so I decided to make an effort and explain all things wrong with this statement.
(These are separate and atomic arguments, which don't depend on each other logically).
1. You assume that "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" are mutually exclusive definitions, while one of them refers to the organisation methods and the other to organisation goals. Deliberately (this is very important word) attacking civilians and trying to increase civilian death toll in order to create a state of terror is, by definition, a terrorist tactic.
2. You go from "UN regards" to "objective fact" pretty easily. This implies that you hold UN as organisation to be of highest authority and consider it's opinion true by default. This approach needs some backup. All other things considered, you could write it as "UN regards them as freedom fighters" (which UN doesn't). Or "by UN logic".
3. You assume that these organisation goal is freedom from perceived (not debating this point now) occupation. However, that's not what they state. These organisations state that their goal is (1) destruction of state of Israel and (2) murder of all jews, primarily living in these territories (but not limited to them). If these organisations succeeded in their stated goals, they, of course, would get "freedom from occupation" (as they perceive it), but it would only be a byproduct of their mail goal, which can not be described other than genocide.
And finally, just out of respect for anonymous commenter on the site that I keep in a very high regard. Just in case you really want to keep a reasonable, logical, healthy discussion, and not a flame war. When you try to put a positive spin on these terrorist organisations, 99% of israelis wouldn't even consider responding to you. Because when you start telling people that organisations with motto "kill all jews" are misunderstood good guys, you don't seem like a guy worth having a discussion with.
1) You might be right in saying that terrorist and freedom fighter are not mutually exclusive definitions. But the importance you attribute to the methods doesn't convince me. Partly because there's an obvious overlap between regular military actions and terroristic actions. I could cite the infamous Dresden bombing, or the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ones. Were those military or terror attacks? Was Israel's attack on Gaza in 2014 a military or a terror attack, given that 3/4 of the victims were civilians (among which 550 children, 300 women)? Is more of a terrorist an Hamas combatant who launches a rocket in the direction of a city, knowing perfectly that most probably it won't cause any victims (he should be very stupid to think otherwise), or the pilot of a jet that knows that 3/4 of his victims will be civilians? To be totally frank with you, I think that most "terrorists" would much prefer to be able to fly fighter jets and surgically bomb only the enemy's combatants, at least with the precision demonstrated by Israel in Gaza. So for you it is a difference of methods; for me, it is a difference of means.
2) It's often repeated that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, and what it got in return? Only hatred and terrorism. Well, this make it sound like Israel made peace with Gaza and gave it absolute freedom, but this is completely false. Israel removed its settlers from Gaza, but retained total control over its airspace, maritime access and all borders. Would you call Israel free if Iran had complete control of your airspace, coasts and borders? Oh, no, what an idea! Israel would be under siege! And so it is for Gaza. After Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza in 2006 (with an electoral platform that among other things renounced the call for the destruction of Israel), Israel shut the borders of Gaza preventing the flow of people and goods. As a consequence of that, 70% of Gaza's workforce are unemployed and 80% of its residents live in poverty.
3) I don't know where you're getting this idea that the goal of Hamas (I suppose you're talking about Hamas) is to "murder all the Jews". The original charter of Hamas, dated 1988, calls for the end of Israel but stresses, in two separate articles, that it "strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned". (Yes, Judaism is explicitly included). It's an extremists' manifesto, no doubts. But no murdering of the Jews as far as I can see. Then, in the elections of 2006, the electoral platform explicitly renounced the (political, not physical, which was never even contemplated) end of Israel and embraced a two states solution. Now, consider Likud, which just won another election in Israel. Its charter states that Likud flatly opposes a two-states solution, and it wants to gain to Israel all land west of the Jordan. Its leader Netanyahu was elected just the other day after promising that with him no two states solution was possible. Who's calling for the demise of the other?
As for the Israelis that wouldn't even respond to me.. well, seen the results of the recent elections, I doubt that the majority of Israelis are even vaguely aware of what the reality of the situation is and of what would be a balanced point of view. Israel is very rapidly losing the sympathies of the western world - a good part of which it had never earned with its actions but were just the results of the west's sense of guilt. Israelis seem hypnotized by some desire of revenge and total military victory, and completely incapable of seeing their own faults. Nothing good can come out of it, for anybody.
Thanks for your answer. Maybe my use of the word repercussions was a bit strong - I don't know much about attitudes there and I am asking out of curiosity, not as a challenge etc. In any case, it sounds like the general population are empathetic, and there would be little or no prejudice from your peers etc. These are small, but good things. So... if there were no risks of collaboration for Gazans, I assume there would be a lot more positive interaction between everyone?
It is illegal, but the sole reason is the risk for israelis. In 2000 or 2001 (I don't remember exactly) two soldiers took a wrong turn and got into a palestinian village by mistake; they were literally torn to pieces by an angry mob. If the risk would be gone, these rules would be gone too.
Still, I have a couple of friends who travelled to the territories illegally, with help from their local friends — just for sightseeing. Personally, I think that they were being reckless and stupid, but it's certainly not unheard of.
They didn't hype Go either. All "hype" Go has is team members and community members writing blog posts and giving talks. Even the web page is designed by the Go guys themselves.
Can you point me to any evidence that Google ever "hyped" Go ???? Like some kind of company announcement by Larry Paige? What language (any???) has Google every hyped? They hype products, that's it.
Not only that, but there's less than 6 people probably in Google who work "full time" on it. For the vast majority of other Google employees it's a "20%" project. More and more of the pie is being worked on by the community, not the core Google team.
I know you hate Go, I realize that, but other people like it, and it's not because "The Great and Almighty Google" is shoving it down our throats?
I hate PHP with a passion for example, but I don't think there's a vast conspiracy to see it still being pushed around?
