Re: _G, _ENV

[Jorge <xxopxe@...>]

On Mon, 2010-07-12 at 08:39 +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> Uruguay did not deserve "winning" against Ghana.  A red card for a
> _defense_ player who chooses to play handball in the last minute of the
> extension is actually a reward since it improves the chances of winning
> the penalty shootout (the good players get to shoot again earlier).  Too
> bad a referee can't award a goal when the ball does not cross the line
> for reasons not having anything to do with soccer.

First, the red card was for Suarez, like in "Forlan and Suarez duo",
hardly a defense player. For what is fair or not, that incidence started
with a Ghana player diving and winning a free shot, and then there were
two Ghana players in offside in that pinball. And way before that, there
was an obvious penalty against Forlan, not called by the referee. As for
having nothing to do with soccer, well, nothing except the laws of the
game. And Gyan missing the match winning penalty. A nice example of one
team not surrendering in the face of defeat, and another surrendering in
the face of victory.

> And I have no issues with Spain winning over Germany: they played
> excellent soccer, very fast and well-combined, in that game.  A lot of
> very good soccer was to be seen on both sides, and while the game could
> well have ended the other way round, it also could have ended with a
> stronger result.  I think it was about the best game I have seen in the
> tournament.
> 
> And while I have not followed closely, I believe that the Netherlands
> were playing reasonably well before the finals, too.

Netherland played against Uruguay the same as against Spain. Not as
violently because they weren't so scared but the same spirit. Von Bommel
in particular looked like an uruguayan defense from the 70s. He should
have got a red like in minute 20, but only got a yellow for *dissent* in
extra time. I swear referees are hypnothised by this guy, or he couldn't
play two games in row. 
Anyway, this is not a sympathy contest, the team who make more goals
wins.

> 
> But the game yesterday... yuch.  If the referee would have rewarded
> every obvious red card, without being worried about giving those a
> second yellow card that clearly asked for it (sometimes in open argument
> after felling their opponent), the game would have been decided quite
> earlier in a democratic manner by a plain majority voting with their
> feet.
> 
> One has to admit that both sides were quite successful in destroying
> that kind of soccer that had brought the respective other side into the
> finals.  And the leftovers particularly on the Dutch side were not
> pretty.

That was what i meant. In the Uruguay-Germany match, both teams wanted
to win. Here both (specially the dutch) were terrorized of losing.

> 
> And _G and _ENV are ugly, too.  Maybe a quite longer name would be
> better: perhaps it is more educational if they are hard to write rather
> than to read.
> 

I agree, a word like all the other reserved words would be just fine.
After all, they're all just variables, no? Non asignable, but that's it.
The underscore+all caps says "someone could accidentally clash with
this", but that's true with every reserved word.
But to be fair, perhaps i'm just rationalizing my hate of the
underscore: that thing's placement on the keyboard depends on the
language selected, like the arithmetic symbols. I hate that.

Jorge