Wednesday, March 10

Wikipedia - State (computer science):

In computer science and automata theory, a state is a unique configuration of information in a program or machine.

David Barbour on c2:

Computation, itself, requires MutableState because computation is the process of calculation (performing transformations over values) as carried out in a physical world -- values need representations, and physical transformations must occur over state in order to properly reflect the useful transformations over the values that said state represents. Thus, at the very least, physical or wave-form states must be mutated within the processing unit.

Steve Dekorte, "The Tao of Programming":

At some point in the development of most programmers, it becomes clear that the fundamental problem of programming is dealing with the complexity that arises from interactions between state and behavior.

2010 March 10 :: write in the margins

Monday, March 8

Sometimes, there's something revealing about your first-pass approach to a given problem.

In this case, it might just be that I shouldn't drink Dale's Pale Ale before deciding to answer questions asked in programming reddit titles.

2010 March 8 :: write in the margins

Thursday, March 4

2010 March 4 :: write in the margins

Wednesday, March 3

So my roommates are in the other room watching a film about Liam Neeson running around hurting people amidst a lot of yelling because his daughter has been stolen.

I have some thoughts about this.

a) We on the left frequently express the conviction that torture is evil.

b) They on the right frequently express the conviction that torture is a justifiable and desirable thing for governments and government-sponsored individuals to do to people, and that anyway torture isn't really torture.

c) Hollywood, or perhaps more correctly the film industry, is generally understood in America to be situated somewhere on the cultural and political left. Particularly by those on the cultural and political right, who devote much fevered invective and many column inches to the idea of a systemic media bias.

d) The only group of people I can think of who devote more public energy to depicting torture as a viable and righteous activity than right-wing ideologues are the people who make mass-market movies.

2010 March 3 :: read the margins

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