maximusprime

I would personally add

2) Websites that are known for mallware, phishing, or otherwise going to mess you up.

As I said I don't know if SOPA is good/bad, but my point was that "I support an Open Internet" is a bit of a cop out.

So if a company starts infringing trademarks, polluting search engines en masse, tricking people into buying their rubbish, phishing their details, getting credit card details etc, you'd be fine with that?

What about people who DDoS attack you? Is that fine? No need to have any recourse there?

How about those that hack DNS to dupe people into visiting their site etc

Those are all "Open Internet", but they're also not very nice.

I don't think it's as clear cut as some make it.

I don't know if SOPA gets it right or wrong, or if the current laws are sufficient, but I'm glad we have some of those laws in place to make the internet a slightly nicer place.

You've missed the point. This is an internet hate mob formation. The facts aren't important.

I just think the sky isn't falling that's all. I think the endless posting of articles, protesting, etc etc is a big waste of man hours.

What does "Open Internet" mean though?

You can't reasonably support free speech in all instances, just like you can't reasonably support an "open internet" in all instances. There have to be some exceptions.

It's the listing of those exceptions and how you deal with them that's the tricky bit. So saying "I support an open internet" is just ignoring the issue.

Please can we at least try to ensure HN doesn't go the way of Reddit?

I'm against SOPA as much as the next guy, but it's a moot issue. Browsers will just release new versions that use alternate DNS systems or get past any 'blocks'.

There's nothing uglier than an internet hate/protest mob.

A single currency across countries with such different economies, histories, cultures and languages would still result in the same outcome IMHO.

Their mistake was to join the Euro.

"the idea of a single currency" caused it. A truly terrible idea.

Everything that happened was inevitable.

You're conveniently ignoring the fact that the + operator also means string concatenation.

Javascript thinks to itself 'hello' string concatenated with a 1 value.

It wasn't. At least in the UK in the 80s, you could go out to any town center, walk into a shop, and buy a "home" computer. They were everywhere.

"hello" - 1 doesn't return NaN out of some sense of exception to trying to subtract from a string.

It returns it because parseFloat("hello") = NaN, and NaN - 1 = NaN.

Well, I grew up in a day when it was even easier.

  * Buy home computer (ZX81)
  * Turn on
  * 10 Print "Hello world"
  * run

That would be ridiculous because then what would 'hello' + 1 equal? Everyone would expect it to equal 'hello1'.

OK here's plain english simple explain...

Left hand side is a string, and "+" is string concatenation as well as addition. So '5' + 3 = '53' (String concatenation). Just as "Hello" + 1 would equal "Hello1". The right hand side is converted to a string.

Left hand side is a string, but "-" is subtraction for numbers. JS converts the '5' to a number, then subtracts. So '5' - 3 = 2 (Numerical subtraction).

That's the explanation, and it's not terribly hard to get past.

Everyone already has a browser, which includes a profiler, debugger, REPL etc.

Not everyone has a c compiler or JDK, or wants the hassle of having to set them up just to start learning.

See my comment below. It's not about being trapped in any mindset. It's about thinking logically.

Either '5' - 3 results in an error of some kind, or it evaluates to 2. There is no other logical outcome. Javascript chooses to do the latter.

I also disagree that starting language matters. It's like saying you need to have a steinway grand to learn the piano properly.

Learning is about learning what not to do just as much, if not more, than what to do.

Also if you learn to swim through syrup, imagine how fast you'll be when you try swimming through water...

No it's not.

Logically, the only other thing that could happen is for an "error" or "exception" be thrown when you do

  '5' - 3

That's not perverse. It's very logical.

Disagree... for example from the link:

  In JavaScript:

  '5' + 3 gives '53'
  Whereas

  '5' - 3 gives 2

Every language has 'gotchas'. Doesn't really matter which you pick to learn first at all. The more important thing is that you don't give up. possibly there are languages that just make people want to give up, but I'd say perhaps they're not motivated enough to learn if that's the case.

I started out on BASIC, and after a while I decided it was a piece of shit language and learnt assembly. But it taught me programming which is what I wanted to learn. I'm really glad I learnt BASIC first... essentially I learnt to swim really fast through syrup, and then switched to swimming in water.

The good thing about javascript as a first language is that people can be programming in it immediately, in their browser. They have a built in REPL to help them, as well as a debugger, profiler, etc. They have numerous docs to look at, and if they go to any website they can check the source to see how it works. That's a big win.

What's the point? What's the difference between a stream of messages, and a stream of bytes? Nothing.

If it was up to HN users, no website would have advertising on it.

HN users are very far removed from normal users. HN feedback is interesting, but it's not as useful as feedback from normal people.

From what I've seen twitter isn't really a social network. The majority on twitter are just consumers for the "celebrities".

> "If Twitter is making money..."

Is it? Doesn't seem very likely at all that it is.

I hope you're being sarcastic.

There's being against proposed legislation, and there's "OH no! soon DNS will not work, we need to quickly collect IP addresses. Lets build an alternate DNS system. Lets overthrow the government!".

Do you really think the DNS entry for wikipedia.org will be removed? In the stupidly ridiculously rare event that it did, obviously they'd quickly remedy it, or we'd all just proxy through other countries etc, or it'd get mirrored onto other domains.

We had the same "The sky is falling" for the UKs "Digital Economy Bill". It's a ridiculous law, and is now being revised/investigated. ISPs are against it, and it'll never be enforced. People again wasted hours of their lives worrying about it.

Flagged. Up-voters should be ashamed perpetuating scaremongering propaganda.

The sky is not falling. Shame to see the "I need to be outraged by something, regardless of whether it's true or not" spilling over here from Reddit.

> JavaScript doesn't have to go anywhere, it can run on a shared VM like any other language.

JS running on a general VM would be slower. That's against the interests of the user.

People should stop caring what language it is. If you really don't have the skill required to use Javascript, use something easier for you and get it to compile to JS.

I've really never understood developers that bitch and whine about programming languages all day.

Adding alternate languages to the browser does absolutely nothing for the user. It would only be there to appease the "I shall only develop in lisp" extremist developers.

HN used to be about hacking. It's now largely about politics and lolcats. It's "Reddit lite" if you like.

It's not immoral to give the public what they are asking you for.

Lego, create things that sell. They give the public what they want. You just have a different idea of what the public want, than the public do.

You have to understand you're a minority.