mooeypoo

Why are you using a huge array of letters? Beyond the fact that this increases the size and operation of your code, it's also insufficient. I mean, if you go at it with this type of thinking, then you're missing the *entire* range of Unicode, too. I could set up a delimiter that's written in Russian letters, or Hebrew letters, or Arabic letters. This is a good way of falling into an endless pit of language-despair I think that if you actually need recognizable letters, you should go with unicode *ranges* in regexp, which would include all of the actual characters that are valid. But again -- why do you even need those at all?

Actually, I would say the opposite of this conclusion. You could be a successful programmer without having a degree, but not without having industry skills. It really depends what you want to do, and how far you want to go. I wouldn't say being a doctor is easy, and I wouldn't say that being a programmer is hard or easy -- it is mostly what you make of it, and where you want to work, and how far "up" the ladder you feel you want to go. Whatever it is, though, you should have the basic skills that the industry is looking for, and in that aspect, school is a good chance to get them. There are people who are extremely good programmers without having the degrees, and they are very successful programmers, but they were accepted to their jobs because of *provable* skillsets they've shown they had. For the most part, these type of software engineers had to really show their skills. Computer science also includes a pretty large set of jobs, and while you get a lot of "industry skills" in school, you don't get them all. You get the basics, and those basics are very helpful. More than that, though, having the degree is an indicator to potential employers about what kind of knowledge and basic skills you are supposedly coming with, which is something they don't know if you have no degree. They will test you anyways, but there are certain things that they'll definitely expect. There's a big difference between working as a Software Engineer for a company like Google or Facebook, and working as one in financial company like Bloomberg, or working in a non-profit open-source environment like Wikimedia. Like most professions, if you *like* what you do, you'll do it well, both in school and at work, and you'll find your niche and be successful.

You can go with process of elimination. n^2 + anything is bigger than n^2, so S1 is bigger than S4 for sure S4 is also bigger, than S3 (n^2 > n) So, it's between S3 and S2. The simplest way is to plug in bigger and bigger numbers; 1000 and 10000 just to see which is bigger. A more educational approach would be to look at how the graphs of n^2, logn and nlogn look like. You can see here for a chart (and a generally good Big-O "cheat sheet" site) http://bigocheatsheet.com/#chart

I think you're conflating "religion" with "philosophy". The arguments for ethics and morality, while existing in the time of religion, didn't come *from* religion. On the contrary, many of these arguments were seen to be against religion because they challenged the dogma of having a perfectly rigid set of rules given by God. Of course in earlier times philosophers were religious because everyone was religious (though, honestly, if you read a lot of Hobbes, I am not sure at all that he really was, and neither are some others, but that's besides the point) That doesn't mean that morals came from religion, and it doesn't mean that religion was required to have morals. You seem to claim that since the discussion came from religion, religion was required for morality. But that's not the case at all; the discussion came from philosophical discussions (and publications of those discussions) *DESPITE* religious dogma. You don't need religion to have morals, we as human beings are perfectly capable of making rational, logical explanations for what should and shouldn't be considered valid in a society. Whether some come from our nature as human beings ("genetic") or from our existence in groups ("social") is besides the point. These are just angles that allow us to analyze our situation and discuss morality. Most moral discussions, from Descartes to Hobbes to Plato and Socrates were done *despite* of religion's insistence of dogmatic rules, not because of it.

Because knowledge is power, and power may only be God's. And in a more practical sense, because the parable warns you, the lowly human, of the dangers of asking too many questions and being overly curious. God gave you a good thing here, dude. He knows best, and when he doesn't, your pastor does. This is all about power. That said, I disagree that the tree of knowledge is *all* of knowledge. Adam and Eve ate from it and they don't know everything; they got the sense of curiosity and the sense of doubt. It's a tree that has the *essense* of knowldge (which is the danger to god) rather than pure 1+1=2 knowldge.

I always love hearing this excuse; yes, everything in the old testament is tossed out when Jesus came. Except for that bit about homosexuals. That stayed. Oh, and those 10 commandments. We want those too. You know, maybe we should keep those laws about adultery, just in case. Maybe some other things from Leviticus... 'cause, you know, those ancient Israelites did a good job phrasing... But Jesus' words invalidated the laws of the old testament! ... Except for the ones they didn't.

You were already shown to be wrong with B12 (which even the vegan research admits) -- but in any case that's besides the point. You make extravagant claims you simply cannot support. There's a difference between "veganism is healthier" and "eating meat is equal to smoking".

When you get B12 from other sources than meat,we can talk about having B12 from sources other than meat. Anyways, you posted an article that explained how there are benefits in veganism and how excessive consumption of meat is bad and took that to say that meat is as poisonous as cigarettes. .... Do you really still not see what's wrong with this?

Are you seriously suggesting meat and cheese consumption is equal in damage to cigarette consumption!? There's absolutely no evidence for this. Everything excessive is unhealthy. There's a difference between making that statement and announcing meat and cheese as poisonous. And aaaaaaaall of that is ignoring the fact that the vegan lifestyle *ITSELF* has problems.

If we go by the story of creation alone, free will can't be a sin, it was given by god. The question was whether the first sin was disobedience (in which case the tree of knowledge doesn't matter, because the sin was ignoring God's command) or Curiosity (in which case the tree of knowledge was meaningful.) Of course that ignores the contradictions and the fact God pretty much set everybody up, including the poor snake.

Ah, the arguments about "Yom." It's funner when you actually speak the language "yom" is used in. But I digress.

As far as I always understood, the problem wasn't the tree of life, but rather a MIX. So, once man ate from the tree of knowledge, he knew "right and wrong" -- similar to god, could make decisions of morals. So, to make sure that man doesn't become god, he was prevented from eating the tree of knowledge. The text is vague, and you may be right, but that was always my understanding. I'll look up if there are other interpretations.

There are many contradictions in the creation story (the least of which is the fact there are three versions of it...) but I don't remember anything about the Tree of Life being prohibited later. The tree of knowledge, as far as I remember, was the intended dogmatic message, and Adam and Eve lost access to the Tree of Life when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden, which is why we don't live forever. QED, etc. etc.

I can give those examples as well, if you want. I skipped over those because I thought the focus was on genocide.

What's the worst thing people in the religion could do? Doubt. The majority of the old testament is created as a set of dogmatic rulebook and cautionary tales for people in the tribal culture of the Israelites to follow. It emphasizes control over the masses, limits the way of communication with other societies to prevent intermarriage and "degradation" of the culture (and power) and states clear rules about what can and can't be done in the family unit. In this context, the story of creation is cautionary. God gives you everything, even the pretense of free will -- just don't you dare doubt. Don't dare being curious about the world around you with questions your religious leaders can't answer. It's a culture-control book. And it worked.