if x == y:
    return True
else:
    return False

print (lambda f, n: f(f, n))(lambda fact, n: fact(fact, n - 1) * n if n > 1 else 1, 5)

fact = lambda x: x * fact(x - 1) if x > 1 else 1
print fact(5)

def fact(x):
  if x > 1:
    return fact(x - 1) * x
  else:
    return 1

def fact(x, acc = 1):
  if x > 1:
    return fact(x - 1, acc * x)
  else:
    return acc

def fact(x):
  acc = 1
  for i in xrange(2,x):
    acc *= i
  return acc

I am entirely too amused with Python right now. I just made an automatic, threaded queue which transparently wraps any generator. It's twenty lines long. Twenty lines! Beautiful language.

All it takes to use it is to change this:

for token in myGenerator():
  doStuff(token)

To this:

for token in BackgroundedGenerator(myGenerator()):
  doStuff(token)

Or alternatively, this (if you want a maximum size on the queue):

for token in BackgroundedGenerator(myGenerator(), maxQueueSize=50):
  doStuff(token)

This program is driving me crazy. How can Microsoft make such a huge usability leap in Office 2007 with, say, the ribbon (which is terribly useful), but fail to do one of the most obvious things that an email client needs to do, that is:

The Original

Hi Peter.

Sorry I missed you for lunch.

See you Tuesday?

--
John

The Wrong (Outlook 2007) Way

<-- Response goes here

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Michaels mailto:john@-------------.net]
> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:31 AM
> To: peter@-------------.net
> Subject: Lunch on Tuesday?
>
> Hi Peter.
>
> Sorry I missed you for lunch.
>
> See you Tuesday at 12:00?
>
> --
> John

What's Wrong About the Wrong Way

Why is the Outlook style so annoying? Because it's much harder to follow. If you include the whole message in one chunk at the bottom, when you go to read the response, it's harder to remember what was discussed, and then harder to find and read it so you can remember. It's not so obvious for a short email like this, but when they get longer, or there are many messages, it becomes essencial.

In many technical circles, not quoting in an easy-to-read manner is ... looked down upon ... (to put it mildly), and for good reason—in many cases, these emails are going to be archived and stored so that other people can read them.

The Right Way

John <john@-------------.net> wrote:
>Hi Peter.
>
>Sorry I missed you for lunch.
>
>See you Tuesday at 12:00?

<-- Response goes here

The Result

John <john@-------------.net> wrote:
>Sorry I missed you for lunch.
Don't worry about it. :)

>See you Tuesday at 12:00?
That sounds great! Let's go to the Thai place on Oak Rd. I dare you to get it extra spicy!

--
Peter

The Result #2

Peter <peter@-------------.net> wrote:
>John <john@-------------.net> wrote:
>>See you Tuesday at 12:00?
>That sounds great! Let's go to the Thai place on Oak Rd. I dare you to get it extra spicy!
Ha! I'll take that dare! See you there.

--
John

Even Outlook Express gets this right (or at least has an option for it), and so does literally every other email client I've ever seen. Opera even color-codes (like above), and I'm sure many others do too. Why is Outlook so remarkably brain-dead about plain text (non-HTML) email?

There are a couple of programs around which are supposed to help fix this, including the one I was using with Outlook 2003 (Outlook-QuoteFix), and "Quotefix Macro" (which doesn't seem to work at all, and is not that great of a hack anyway due to one of Outlook 2007's other major flaws, the inability to customize the ribbon).

I'd better stop writing before I start complaining that Outlook-style quoting is not just the only way in Outlook, but it's also the default way, which is even worse (because people will use the default, and send me hard-to-follow email (which, I admit, is already happening)).

Ok. So the iPhone is big news in the blogosphere. Fortunately, my blog is tiny and unnoticed, so I can say whatever I want without any editing or contemplation of whether it would interest anyone else or not. Yay! :P

Plus, I can make comments regarding why the iPhone is better/worse than my personal PDA (which is the best Verizon offers, I consider).

Why the naysayers are full of shit:

They're usually uninformed, or guessing.

In particular, people seem to be complaining about no 3G, battery life, non-user-replaceable-battery, OMFG scratches, the (lack of a) keyboard, no GPS, it's too expensive, that it's Cingular-only (and incidentally how Cingular sucks), how it's a closed system, and finally how the iPhone is really nothing new.

Ok. Let's break it down.

No 3G

This is the biggie, for me. EDGE? 150 kilobits a second if you're lucky? Come on, man. I'd rather have 3G than wifi. Hmm... well, hopefully iPhone 2.0 will have this. Jobs did hint at it.

Battery Life

Jobs says that you get five hours of video/talk time, and 16 hours of music playback. In a device less than half an inch thick. Presuming that's really how long it lasts, that's a damn long time. If you're going to be watching video or talking on the phone for more than FIVE HOURS (!), then go get an iPod extendo-battery. They're everywhere, and they're optional, something a bigger internal battery wouldn't be.

The Battery

You can't replace the battery yourself. Boo-hoo. Yes, it would be better if you could (easily... I'm sure aftermarket kits will show up in no time). Um. Get over it.

OMFG Scratches

The screen is scratch-resistant. If you're worried, put a screen protector over it. The horror.

The (Lack of a) Keyboard

We'll see. I always think "well, what alternative would you prefer?"... I'd prefer the much larger screen. By lots.

No GPS.

This one's got some merit. Come on, even the tiniest cell phones have at least carrier-assisted GPS now. If this thing could be my phone, PDA, to-go Camera, AND personal navigation system, that would be very cool. As it is, however, I use a bluetooth GPS unit anyway, so... at least it's not any worse than my current solution.

It's Too Expensive

Uh-huh. And what would a vaguely comparable solution with seperate devices cost? About the same. And they're not as nice.

Cingular only

Sucks, but from Apple's perspective, nearly unavoidable. There are basically two GSM carriers in the US—Cingular and T-Mobile. T-Mobile blows, and the rest of the world uses GSM. Stupid rest-of-the world...

It's a Closed System

Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. Keep in mind that Jobs's job right now for the iPhone is to generate enough media attention that everybody and their dog (and particularly geeks, i.e., those who would buy one early on) know everything they possibly would be interested in about the iPhone. What he says (or, really, implies) now is not necessarily reality.

It's Nothing New!

Ok, the Reality Distortion Field has worn off, and people are noticing there are really no or very few completely new features in the iPhone. Even the multi-touch screen is not totally new (I've seen at least one news article from before the iPhone release about a multi-touch screen on a cell phone. Maybe the gimmicky (though useful) sensors are new, but that's not a big deal, it's certainly no revolution in mobile devices.

But you forget. It's one device. Yes, you could have a cell phone/PDA/camera, and a video iPod, and you'd be almost there in terms of functionality, or you could have an iPhone, which is smaller than just your cell phone/PDA, and is much smarter.

You get a call, your music turns off. You don't have to switch to a different headset, because your current one is also your cell phone's. You decide that you need to look up that resturaunt that was just mentioned on your phone call? No problem (presuming you're in range of a Wifi connection -- I'm guessing voice and data won't get along). Etc, etc. Convergance!

Second, while Apple is doing very little new, it's doing it all well, for the first time. Yes, I have a web browser on my phone. It sucks. Yes, I have a cool picture/caller ID interface on my phone. It also sucks, and I bought a third-party app to get just that level of suck. Yes, I have a contact manager. Without Microsoft Voice Command, its interface sucks. Yes, I have a camera, and it sucks too.

Apple, a company which actually cares about its interfaces, has made the first really usable PDA/phone, and thrown in iPod-like functionality at the same time. Yes, there are some problems with its design, it would be really cool if it were a legitamitely open platform, etc, etc, but just look at the thing! If the rest of the interface is as good as the interface shown off by Jobs, it's honestly better at being a cell phone than any cell phone I've ever seen or heard of—and it does tons more.

Warning: I can't imagine how the following could be interesting to anyone but me, but, hey, go for it:

I've been thinking about it for an inordinate amount of time, and I've come up with reasons for my preference about links (see last post), and the reason for my cognitive dissonance on the subject:

First, the realization/postulate which allowed all of this to lay out clearly in my head:

Links are (or should be) a property of noun phrases. Note that this is only true if the link describes a thing (rss feed, HTML page) and not an action ("Add to friends", "bookmark this page").

In other words, a noun phrase describes something. The text of a link should describe the target of the link—if the target of the link is a thing, then the text should be a noun (or noun phrase).

• Therefore, don't say things like "Read the article here.", because you're not providing a link for reading, you're providing a link—the user can save the target, bookmark the link, send the link to someone else, etc. Use "Read the article." Better yet, use "There's a great article on foo over at bar.tld.", if you really must reference the link in such a direct manner.
  
  And therefore:
• Since entire sentences are not typically treated mentally as noun phrases (though it could possibly happen—slogans, for example), one should not include the period in the link (and also, you may often omit the verb part of the sentence entirely):

  (this is/here is some/whatever) More amusement.

• Aesthetically, adding a period (and most other punctuation) as part of a link looks wrong.

The cognitive dissonance for me was that I could not see why the period should not be considered part of the link (as adding it as part of the link looked wrong), as I erroneously thought that the link was a property of the sentence, and failed to realize that it was only the noun phrase that the link was a property of, not the (implied) sentence.