>The language seems to encourage poor practices like building query strings directly from remote input without the use of a true query builder.
I won't entirely disagree with you on this, because there is still a ton of that code out there, but PHP has had true 'query builders' for a while now, and the mysql_ functions are being deprecated anyway.
It has them, but so many people don't use them. It's partly an issue with the language and partly with the community.
One thing I learned from NodeJS is that the quality of the community around a language can matter more than the language. JavaScript is a crap language, but the NodeJS community and the base of available modules is just so good that it makes up for a lot of the language's faults. When I tried it out I thought "who says you can't polish a turd?" I mean... Joyent and Node's community have buffed that thing down to gleaming crystal.
In counterpoint -- Java's actually a pretty good language, but its community's addiction to criminal overengineering is a big reason it hasn't been "sexy" in some time.
There are a ton of features in modern PHP which address a lot of the common criticisms brought against it. Doing a proper comparison with other languages (framework to framework, not framework to language) I think PHP measures up reasonably well.
But there is so much terrible, legacy code out there. The evolution, if it's happening is happening very slowly.
I think that the fact it has taken this long to even deprecate, let alone remove, utter garbage like these functions is a prime example of why PHP is often reviled.
It almost makes you wonder if the point isn't to keep catering to bad programmers' whims just to keep from losing the 50% of PHP's community that would never be able to write software at all if they weren't working in a language that enabled them to ignore every best practice from the past 20 years.
I'm just a single HN'er and I wasn't really thinking of PRISM... I was thinking more along the lines of how obviously valuable it would be to the NSA to either A) start companies like Google or B) infiltrate them.
I also said that I suspect that's the case, not the I assume it to be. Given that the NSA seems to do what it wants and the obvious motivation for infiltrating or starting companies like Google...I think the suspicion is warranted.
No, the buying drugs part is what's 'wrong,' if you consider breaking the law to be a bad thing.
But you're right to point out that, in sheer usage, Bitcoin really has nothing on the USD when it comes to buying drugs. Still, when you're asking why anyone would consider buying drugs with bitcoin to be wrong, you have to understand that not everyone considers that to be a positive or even entirely neutral act. Most people consider a currency whose primary use case involves breaking the law to be a net negative for society.
Both. By raising the cost (punishment * chance of getting caught), you prevent it. Sure, many of those who flaunt the law have to learn the hard way, but there's no question raising either or both of those inputs will reduce the overall amount of crime.
I don't believe the death penalty does much to deter murder or is cost-effective (although I still consider it just in most circumstances), because the perpetrator often doesn't value their own life that much. When you have to live with the punishment, I believe it is a deterrent for most, analogous to the prospect of living with a lot of debt: the price of stuff affects our behavior.
That's irrelevant; clearly some people change their behavior due to the risk of breaking the law. However, unenforced rules (ie driving 56mph in a 55mph zone) are generally ignored.
I can guarantee there are at least a dozen potential startups in this idea alone. Imagine some version of Linkedin or OKCupid, or even some general purpose scraper that correlates identities and social media accounts through facial recognition and online photos.
Even better, facial recognition plus a decent method of determining height, weight and ethinicity, and you have an x-ray specs app. The first person to make that work is probably going to be a millionaire.
Because no intelligent, technically competent person has ever had a reasonable criticism to make about Glass, or the track record of the company making it, in regards to privacy and participation with NSA surveillance, or of the potential downsides to adding even more ubiquitous, fine-grained surveillance to the modern world.
I mean, Glass is no more ominous than cellphones. It's just a cellphone strapped to your face and pointed right at everyone you're looking at. No one would be creeped out if you held your cellphone out in front of you and recorded everything going on. It even has a little light that shows when you're recording, which is controlled by perfectly trustworthy software.
Fair enough; what I know is from what we learn in school, from discussions with people, from my parents and grandparents, and of course in part from media.
You should go and read some history books, assuming you're able to read and comprehend them.
The DDR aka East Germany ended in the 90s, and the Franco regime in Spain ended 1975 with Francos death.
It is debatable if one should also count the Yugoslavian/Serbian government which existed until the mid-90s as oppressive - I certainly do, Miloševic rot in pieces.
Oh, I almost forgot the rest of the Soviet block... so you basically have oppressive regimes as low as 20-30 years ago, leaving a LOT of people with first hand experience.
But typically, the sort of people who blithely compare the US to a police state do so by invoking the Nazis. I wasn't going to credit such arguments with that much subtlety or self-awareness, since they seem to come from a sense of prejudice and knowledge of pop culture rather than history. Although you're right - there are a number of recent police states and dictatorships which the US does not resemble.
I won't entirely disagree with you on this, because there is still a ton of that code out there, but PHP has had true 'query builders' for a while now, and the mysql_ functions are being deprecated anyway.