compile-time type safety is pretty irrelevant to Lisp, being really a concept from the batch-language world, where the compilers routinely deny your programs the knoledge they have about them. I'd say compile-time type safety is important where types themselves are predominantly a compile-time concept. moreover, the term "compile time" is itself less useful in Lisp than it may seem.
anyway, I hope the snippet I gave was helpful.
consider that the people who do not view Lisp as a kind of C++ (and such people are, thankfully, the majority of Lisp users) really appreciate CMUCL's reluctance to perform invasive compile-time checking of function argument types. that's because in Lisp, unlike in C++, functions can be redefined at any time. if you still want the compiler to perform such checks, though, try declaiming FOO's type at the top level (so that it effectively becomes a part of FOO's interface), like this:
(declaim (ftype (function (float) float) foo))
that way you will (among other compiler verbiage) get a warning about the type of 1 not being FLOAT.
I'm quite amazed at the ongoing info-vs-man debate. are you people serious? what makes you think those two things are even comparable? it's cheat-sheet versus reference manual, you know. I like having both.
(but then again, my perspective might be skewed due to my complete lack of religious fervor regarding the grand emacs-vs-vi debate. if so, I'm sorry for this inadvertent attempt at spoiling the fun).
what freenix desktop needs is more "dead projects" which are nevertheless maintained. when some people wished that Emacs would "die" at 19.34, they had a point.
I might look at Epiphany again when it lets me keep the tabs vertically on the right side, dammit. until then, its authors can take their pimply teenage interface fascism and shove it, as far as I'm concerned. nothing personal.
one bug (inconsistency, actually) in the RSS thing, though: the "regular" Advogato code does case-unification. if you try the address bram, you get to Bram.
but this doesn't work with RSS links, unfortunately. what's worse, it fails silently, so you get an empty RSS feed if you use the wrong case. so no Bram's diary among my Livejournal "friends" yet, due to Livejournal's unconditional smashing of URL's to lowercase (which is, of course, their bug, not Advogato's. but since Advogato seems to make some effort to correct case in the regular links, simply being consistent would solve this too. but I'll bitch at the Livejournal guys anyway, of course).
I see there is a way to get Advogato headlines over RSS.
what I don't see is a way to get individual diaries over RSS.
I think it's a shame. there are several people here whose diaries I'm very interested in. the "features", on the other hand, are for the most part completely uninteresting.
since I'm not at all about to volonteer to implement the missing functionality, please see this entry for what it is: pure whining. thank you.
(I won't say anything about the relative merits of RSS and, say, NNTP. no-no. RSS would be perfectly fine. this is the brave new world.)
heh. let's see...
first of all, I don't find the free software community (and the segment thereof present here) particularly well-informed or rational. sure, better informed than the general population, but is that really saying much? rational? I dunno; I don't find the love for free software to be a very rational thing. there are plenty of exellent emotional reasons for people to want to belong to this community, but that doesn't have anything to do with rationality.
now here goes an Israeli point of view (you asked for it):
Sharon's huge electoral victory indicates that he understands the Israeli public better than his rivals. it also indicates that Israelis are coming to realize that "the situation" won't end any time soon. I'd also like to thank Belgium for their help. I mean, Sharon's international image is a huge fucking caricature as it is, but the Belgians have just reached the peak of the grotesque.
the new coalition is not finalized yet. the way it looks now, it seems to be a surprizingly accurate representation of the current public moods and preferences.
I can't speak for all Israelis, but I'm not very hopeful about the conflict ending quickly. "palestinians" and their puppet masters need to realize that Israel is not going away any time soon; this realization is bound to take a long time to sink in, as the Oslo accords have set their hopes too high.
(it looks like when I write here at all, I write about politics. that's because I'm not involved in any free software any more. is there a way to kill an Advogato account?)
but your referencing Lerner's article does not in any way justify the dishonest bullshit you wrote here earlier.
let me address your points one by one:
it's the little spins and exaggerations that are most damaging, more than blatant lies.
think before you speak.
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