werner34's comments

Hey Tim,

I knew what you were trying to get at, but wanted to point out that the sentence that you initially wrote wasn't entirely accurate.

Of course I agree that attitude matters, but skills are certainly important, hence my comment.

I know loads of hairdressers that have a good attitude.

Oona's work is always amazing. Loads of interesting hardware stuff in her blog. I wish I would be better at some mechanical engineering/electrical engineering stuff, my work is mostly web-related or big data stuff, never really get my hands dirty :(

London and Berlin have 3).

Cheers, thanks!

Alright, got it. Thanks!

I didn't watch the numberphile video and just read this.

Can someone explain to me why I am allowed to add a padding zero at the start without taking it out at the end?

By adding it, I am giving the sum an offset, and I can kind of understand why adding zero is not a big deal, but they reasoned:

Then S1 + S1 = (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (0 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 + 0) + (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) ....

= 1 + 0 + 0 ... = 1

But I might as well leave the leading Zero out and argue that:

Then S1 + S1 = (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 + 1) + ( -1 - 1) + (1 + 1) ....

= (2 - 2) + (2 - 2) + (2 - 2)... = 0

This is great, thanks! I unminified it first to look at the code, but it looks like its not doing anything nasty.

Who has the copyright for these images?

Exactly.

The same is probably true for this one here:

public bool ShowOptional() { bool bolReturn = false;

    return bolReturn;

}

There should be descriptions why the code snippets are supposed to be interesting, your and my example just look like legacy code to me.

sure, but specific instances of both are sometimes baffling.

Yes, if you have an IDE you don't have this problem at all.

I am more with the VIM/Emacs crowd though I guess.

I didn't know though that you could create an "evaluation window" in Eclipse. I really liked the refactoring features in Eclipse though and miss them sometimes.

Well, I looked into it but gave up soon-ish because it looked to annoying and my hack was sufficient for me at the time.

Ah, I forgot to mention gdb as well. gdb and python hooked me on this way of developing.

I am a fan of python. when developing python and needing a breakpoint I just write >> import pdb;pdb.set_trace() in the respective line and can then execute the code till that point and have all the current variables available in the console.

This was missing for me when I started doing stuff in scala, so I hacked something to be able to do the same in Scala and jump straight to the REPL(unfortunately variables need to be passed explicitly here, but most of the REPL functionality works:

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/7693857

I clicked on that link as well and was astonished

Well, I believe that people should be left alone as often as possible and should only be interfered with when urgently needed.

But I also believe that commanding wealth comes with responsibilities, and if some people are not willing to act responsible, they might need someone(the public) to remember them and take some of that wealth to build schools, universities or the like.

I am not saying that Mr. Hiltons wealth should be seized and randomly given to people on the streets. I am certainly not of the opinion that todays western governments are super effective either. But if I have the choice of having Paris spend that massive fortune or the government, I would opt for the government I am afraid.

If Larry Ellison decides to build himself a big pink bouncy castle the size of Oklahoma with his Oracle money he is free to do so and thats fine by me. He earned that money, he is free to do with it what he likes, I don't have to like his choices, but I won't interfere(not that I could anyways).

If someone earns his money by being born and decides to spend it on the big bouncy castle I am not fine with it. If most of what he would have inherited was taken by the public and he still manages to amass a fortune that is enough to build himself that bouncy castle, he is free to do so, and I won't interfere. He made the money,its his choice, not mine.

Well, true, somebody that wants to game the system will find a way.

However, you could still say that everything up to 20 Million* has a lower tax on it and you can give that to your kids in legal ways. I think Warren Buffett and Bill Gates want to give most of their wealth away with a similar reasoning anyways.

That amount of money is still enough to buy a Ferrari and never work again while taking loads of drugs in Monaco every day.

The extra layer of indirection might be enough to guide people in the right direction. I am not sure many people would bet their fortune on their son/daughter in law being good to their kids indefinitely. That would probably provoke some very annoying lawsuits between your kids and their spouses sooner or later.

*= With some correction for inflation over the years, but lets say 20 Million of todays Dollars for example.

Exactly my opinion. And even though I normally lean towards free market related views when it comes to regulation and government, I think a high inheritance tax would be justified in western countries. With it universities & infrastructure could be funded and possibly enable more people to get a university degree.

My underlying reasoning: Every new generation is a giant possiblity for mankind. Now who do we want to command the most resources? If we had kings, it would be the kings heir, no matter if he is clever or not. Thats bad obviously. If we have capitalism without a high inheritance tax, we might have people like Paris Hilton commanding massive fortunes even though some poor kids might have done a lot better with it if they had a chance of acquiring wealth in the first place.

By having a high inheritance tax one would avoid unbelievable fortunes being handed down to people that are not qualified at all.

Another aspect is obviously that the state needs to motivate people to work better than their peers. If - like in communism - it doesn't matter anymore if I work harder than my peers, so I don't work hard. Assuming that most people work for personal gain, wealth, and so that they children have it better than themselves, you need to leave them their wealth during their lifetime and enable them to hand down some part of their income to their kids, and not give all back to the public. If they would have to give everything to the public, the really bright people might stop working at 35 when they accumulated enough wealth for themselves, knowing their children won't benefit from it anyways.

Good article.

I am sorry, but what is the message here?