Developer On Line - Latest Comments

Re: Everybody Said Something, So Will I: Google Chrome!

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Thanks! We're very excited and humbled to see so many people writing in asking us to study their conditions. Happy and honored to be a part of this and work towards ending suffering. Thank YOU for thinking and blogging about this.

Re: Everybody Said Something, So Will I: Google Chrome!

buy youtube views — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:35:19 -0000

Great to hear the articleof how things actually developed topup to the launch of the station. It seems that there was a lot of luck complicated.

Re: Perl by Example: English Dictionary In 22 Lines

Philipmorant — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:51:02 -0000

Perl is king when it comes to regexes.
Does anyone know if there's documentation anywhere on the princeton http public interface for wordnet, which would return xml or json? For xhr purposes. You can go to webwn but it returns html, and the html could change in the future (breaking one's regexes).

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

GymRat — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:44:53 -0000

Dijikstra's argument about why the array index should start at 0 instead of 1 is weak. I like his argument for denoting the sequence as a<=i<b, but="" his="" subsequent="" argument="" as="" to="" why="" the="" lower="" limit="" should="" be="" indexed="" zero="" boils="" down="" to="" the="" bogus="" claim="" that="" 0<="i<N" is="" "nicer"="" than="" 1<="i<N+1." using="" exactly="" this="" same="" approach,="" i="" can="" argue="" that="" when="" referencing="" the="" last="" element="" of="" an="" array="" x[n]="" is="" "nicer"="" than="" x[n-1]="" and="" so="" indexing="" should="" start="" at="" 1,="" not="" 0!="" programming,="" which="" is="" the="" whole="" point="" here,="" would="" unarguably="" be="" a="" bit="" simpler="" if="" array="" indexes="" started="" at="" 1.="" it's="" not="" a="" disaster="" that="" they="" instead="" start="" at="" 0,="" but="" drop="" the="" silly="" pretense="" that="" there="" is="" something="" mathematically="" proper="" about="" starting="" at="" 0.="">

Re: Using Perl Against Facebook - Part I: Login

Jerome Laramie — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:03:52 -0000

Would be nice to see a Perl program that could login to your account, and create facebook fanpages.

Re: Popular Demand: The Youtube Download PHP Scripts

shibbir — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:09:43 -0000

wrong Code. Caz ur html code should be written in body section don't head section. Fro example. <body>you html code</body>

Re: Using Perl Against Facebook - Part II: Status Updates

me — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:18:16 -0000

he i tryed to use your Facebot.pm bu it doesn't work.

i´m new in perl, so could you help me ??
this message I got:

Possible unintended interpolation of @mail in string at fbot.pl line 5.
Name "main::mail" used only once: possible typo at fbot.pl line 5.
Can't exec "del": No such file or directory at Facebot.pm line 37.
mkdir: temp: File exists

Re: The Fundamental Theorem Of Betting

md5sum — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:47:15 -0000

After reading a former article (http://developeronline.blog... I thought I would read a little more of this author's work to see if the articles were of the same quality (or lack thereof). While most of what I've seen is simply mindless drivel or personal opinions stated as fact, this article is actually quite interesting.

Amazingly, this article is pretty well DEAD on, with the exception that you'l quite often see odds where M > 1.0, a strategy that gives the IMPRESSION that the house will lose money, but that requires that the LEAST likely scenario happen, and pretty much EVERYONE to bet on it.

You can play the numbers around, but in all cases, the MOST you can stand to gain while covering your bets with other bets is depicted by the M value. Site 1 the largest possible gain is 8.28%, for site 2 you get only 7.73%. This is, of course, only if you placed your bets on the winning option, and only COVERED your bets with the other two.

Interestingly, you can fairly easily beat this system, taking higher risk, but normally coming out ahead. Eliminating the least likely ("draw" or X) option from site 1 raises M to 1.7704 and from site 2 to 1.7547.

You'll also notice that the less likely the outcome, the higher the odds. Since I don't really follow sports all that much, I would have put equal money on each team, with my money on Egypt on site 1, and on Nigeria on site 2. Outcome? I would have gained 45%. Had Nigeria won, I would have still come out with a 32.5% profit. And if it was a draw (the risky part) I would have been asking for a second mortgage. If only I were a betting man...

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

md5sum — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:56:09 -0000

I've made a comment here that defines what Dijkstra was pointing out and the errors in this author's (NOT Dijkstra) explanation.

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

md5sum — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:57:36 -0000

Before dismissing my comments as bunk, please READ the link referenced in the first paragraph of the author's work.

Dijkstra was simply implying that we should use ordinals in sequence from their most basic mathematical simplification, a fact that this author somehow MISSED apparently...

Fallacies:
All of the equations begins with 1, and end on 10. So, where index i = 0, 1 > i, making (1<=i) false.

Truth:
The proper equation should be 0 <= i < N, where N is the count of items in the array.

The Point:
1<=i<11 is not the most simplified version of the equation. The author of the article at least got the comparison symbols right... but that's all. The point was to mathematically simplify. So, to take what the author claims is correct (1<=i<11) and simplify, we can take the following step: 1 - 1 <= i - 1 < 11 - 1

Now we're left with 0 <= i < 10 which is what Dijkstra was wanting to see. Simplify your equations to make them readable and understandable. That's all Dijkstra wanted.

To QUOTE the article by Dijkstra referenced here "When dealing with a sequence of length N, the elements of which we wish to distinguish by subscript, the next vexing question is what subscript value to assign to its starting element. Adhering to convention a) yields, when starting with subscript 1, the subscript range 1 ≤ i < N+1; starting with 0, however, gives the nicer range 0 ≤ i < N. So let us let our ordinals start at zero: an element's ordinal (subscript) equals the number of elements preceding it in the sequence. And the moral of the story is that we had better regard —after all those centuries!— zero as a most natural number."

See that? 0 ≤ i < N? So after reading that article, THIS author somehow managed to write 4 equations using the SAME RANGE, which happen to NOT be the most simple of any possibility, then claim that ONE OF THOSE is what Dijkstra was talking about. The author of the current article missed the entire point of Dijkstra's statement.

Re: Greece Enters the Dark Ages

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Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Bit Master — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:25:32 -0000

Mikael, you're arguments are not bad, but not sufficient. I'm not really convinced.

Re: Catalan Numbers, Dyck Words and Robots Climbing Stairs

Junjun — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 03:32:37 -0000

Kudos to you! Great article!!

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

reinier_post — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:26:07 -0000

Not more, but the same: the beauty can be mathematically expressed.

When using a for loop to iterate over an array you specify a whole lot more information, and in more places, than when you use a foreach loop: the name of an index variable, the value it should start with, and explicit stop criterion, which usually involves the name of the variable, a comparison operation, and a primitive to get the last index element or the number elements of the array; and finally, the construct to produce, given the name of the array and the name of the index variable, the corresponding array value. None of this is specified in a foreach loop. Therefore, all of this is overspecific, at least in cases where i is not used within the loop other than to access the i-th value; all of it only serves as an oppurtunity to make mistakes - at least in cases where all you do with the for loop is to express a foreach loop. This can be expressed by a program transformation that transforms such for loops into foreach loops. Given a formal specification of the semantics of the language in question, you can prove that such a transformation strictly reduces the amount of information you give to the program with no change to the effect of the program. Such conciseness is what mathematicians call elegance or beauty.

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Gary Varga — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:05:44 -0000

More coding beauty than mathematical. Surely?

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

reinier_post — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:33:29 -0000

Mathematical beauty is to use a foreach loop instead.

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Bit Master — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:17:36 -0000

Actually Mikael, you bought some pretty good arguments.

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Bit Master — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:10:42 -0000

Because stopwatches count how many seconds have passed since you started the timer, not the current second.
The years are the same.
The reason why 2000 is not in the third millenium is that in the 2000th year, 1999 years have passed, so the second millenium is not complete.
So don't confuse counting (that starts from 1, and expresses blocks of time that last 1 year), with measuring passed time (that expresses the number of finished blocks of 1 year).

And yes, v[0] is empty array (my mistake). I meant that the number between the brackets is the length, not the last element...

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Bit Master — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:54:37 -0000

Why must the sequence include the smallest natural number?

l -> array length
I don't see why this notation

[0;1] -> First two elements
[l-2;l-1] -> Last two elements
[0;l-1] -> whole array
[0;-1] -> Empty string

is any better than this notation

[1;2] -> First two elements
[l-1;l] -> Last two elements
[1;l] -> whole array
[1;0] -> Empty string

I think that index 0 should be used to count logical array length.

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Bit Master — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:43:31 -0000

At indexing from 1, the last element is length, which is a plus.

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Mikael — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:16:37 -0000

BitMaster; -1? Whats that? Thats not even a natural number. It doesn't even exist. You fail to produce a empty set with the numbers available. You *CAN'T* even practically do it at all if you would have an unsigned integers (i.e. natural number, the reasonable choice for an index in an array).
That alone should remove any doubt about the correct choice.

Compare every kind of manipulation of indices, be it matrices in mathematics, or cropping and pasting with strings, and indexing from 0 is much more logical and consistent. The code becomes much much more elegant. It is the most logical choice by far.
The only reason not to chose it is from historical reasons and misconceptions.

Oh and yes, an empty array would be v[0]. No one is arguing that. Do not mix up index with length.

We don't start our continuous stopwatches from 1.00. We start them from 0.00.
We use a decimalsystem, we have ten numbers, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. If you think our numbers range from 1-10, you are gravely mistaken.
Would you say the binary system contains the digits 1 and 10? No.

Re: Using Perl Against Facebook - Part I: Login

ftumsh — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:53:38 -0000

that should be "incorrect"

Re: Using Perl Against Facebook - Part I: Login

ftumsh — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:52:20 -0000

Well, you are unable to connect to the server. Either the net connection is failing or the username/password is correct.

Re: Using Perl Against Facebook - Part I: Login

mark — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:38:54 -0000

why i use your script and got an error: 500 Connect failed: connect: Connection timed out; Connection timed out

Re: Why The Array Index Should Start From 0

Mee — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:47:06 -0000

So the justification for having arrays starts at 0 instead of 1 like 99,9999% of the humans on this planet would have done is

" The subsequence includes the smallest natural number, 0"

ho well...