epoch time has a new meaning to me.
printf("goodbye, Dennis");
101–109 of 109 posts
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#102People who don't regularly read The Economist probably ought to. It wears its biases on its sleeve, and is the only place in the English language press to find quality, in-depth coverage of parts of the world other than the Lower East Side and the Isle of Dogs.
Yes, indeed. It is truly the smart person's news source. There's also an audio edition, where they read the entire issue word for work, which is the best way to spend a long commute. (It takes 8 hours or so.) It is free for subscribers of either the print or online editions.
And they have a very nice app for subscribers as well.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. You're not agreeing or disagreeing with me. Did you reply to the wrong post? Also, using printf() for debugging? In 2011? I seriously hope you guys don't do this.
"Also, using printf() for debugging? In 2011? I seriously hope you guys don't do this." OK, I'll bite. I haven't done any serious straight up C programming in over a decade, and yes, I used a lot of printf for debugging back then. What's the best way to debug C programs now? (I imagine printf wasn't the best way to debug programs when I was writing C, either.) A different logging library? gdb?
printf() is fine if you just want to see if something is being run (assuming, of course, you recognize the flushing caveat we're discussing).
If you're dumping printf()s all over the place to see exactly what flow your program is taking at runtime, you're better off just setting a breakpoint or two and using a debugger to quickly step through it.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#104I am slightly bothered by the lack of a '\n'.
As both programmer and journalist, I can guess what happened behind the scenes. The author probably originally put in the newline into his headline but was overruled by the editor who felt that it would have distracted too many non-technical people. You and I see the correctness of the \n but a non-programmer will just see it as strange noise or punctuation.
He allowed him the C statement but kept it simplified - a good compromise I think.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference being that there is a metric pants-load of evidence of the free market system producing better results in terms of individual wealth, individual liberty, life expectancy, and quality of life than other systems. You are basically saying that both the journal Nature and Astrology Today both have a heavy degree of dogmatism (one in the scientific method, the other in superstition) and that puts them on eq…
The difference is that Nature will change their position (as much as they have an editorial position) as new facts come to light. I was never convinced by the argument that the scientific method is like a religion when it came from creationists and I'm not any more convinced when free-market fundamentalists use it as an excuse to ignore facts. (I won't disagree with your comparison of the Economist to Astrology Today…
> dogmatic adherence to financial deregulation is not a neutral position that is backed up by facts; it has plenty of problems, as most economists will tell you.
Is that something they advocate? From actually reading it, that's not the impression I get.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
"""At the time it was far from clear that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destructions. In fact, there was ample proof he had used those weapons previously on Kurds and American intelligence reports claimed he had more where those came from (which turned out to be false, of course, but who knew).""" Everybody in the world knew, except American's watching FOX News and giving any basis on Bush era "intellig…
I debated the WMD topic in high school pre-Iraq war and the expert consensus was that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Arguing otherwise was a losing debate. It may have been obvious that invading Iraq would be disastrous, but it wasn't obvious that they didn't have WMD. The experts had little information and were misinformed. The tone of your response to the OP is belittling and adds little to discussion of…
"""I debated the WMD topic in high school pre-Iraq war and the expert consensus was that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons."""
What experts? Bush appointed bozos? Media pundits, the John C. Dvorak's of the political world? "Intelligence" agents? The whole WMD charge was a thin veiled excuse of invasion to take control of the petrol supply. They could care less about WMD, not to mention that it's not the US job to say what another state should or should not have those. Doesn't the US have WMD aplenty? Doesn't Russia? Doesn't half of Europe? Doesn't Israel? I don't see any invasions there.
Just think how difficult it is to get accurate and intelligent tech reporting in the US media, and then think how more difficult it would be if there is political pressure and huge economic and geo-strategical interests.
"""You think the Economist relied solely on Fox News and Bush intelligence when believing that Iraq had WMDs?"""
No, I believe that the Economist in general tries to accommodate the interests of the ruling economic elite. It's FOX News for rich, neoliberal people, and in fact it wears its biases on its sleeve.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
For Americans, perhaps. The Guardian is also excellent - I subscribe to their weekly and it's fantastic.
The Guardian is excellent, but I maintain that The Economist is the best newspaper on the planet, at least in English, even as my politics are much more consonant with The Guardian .
Disagree.The Financial Times is much better than those two, which are pretty patchy.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the time it was far from clear that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destructions. In fact, there was ample proof he had used those weapons previously on Kurds and American intelligence reports claimed he had more where those came from (which turned out to be false, of course, but who knew). There was no way to know that Bush would bungle the whole rebuilding phase and let Iraq slide into anarchy. Hinds…
Please don't write anarchy when you mean chaos.
When the Iraqi army was dissolved there was no recognized form of government left, the very definition of anarchy. Chaos did indeed ensue.
Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I debated the WMD topic in high school pre-Iraq war and the expert consensus was that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Arguing otherwise was a losing debate. It may have been obvious that invading Iraq would be disastrous, but it wasn't obvious that they didn't have WMD. The experts had little information and were misinformed. The tone of your response to the OP is belittling and adds little to discussion of…
"""I debated the WMD topic in high school pre-Iraq war and the expert consensus was that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons.""" What experts? Bush appointed bozos? Media pundits, the John C. Dvorak's of the political world? "Intelligence" agents? The whole WMD charge was a thin veiled excuse of invasion to take control of the petrol supply. They could care less about WMD, not to mention that it's not the US job…
Forget all the experts: You have a mad men who previously used WMDs on his own population, flagrantly ignored 20 UN resolutions to give them up, actually claimed he had WMDs at some point, and now all of a sudden he has given them up just like that?
You can claim that is "obvious" behavior now that we haven't been able to find them, but it really wasn't obvious back then. A lot of mistakes were made, the Economist concedes that too, but rewriting history to fit your cause really isn't helping the debate.