I like to browse in bookstores with physical books. I haven't found any kind of e-browsing that competes with it. The only thing that's close to it is to download the entire book and page freely.
To avoid overfilling my house with bookshelves, or putting shelves in front of shelves and making them inaccessible, I've decided to use e-books whenever possible (they still don't work well for art books, for example).
When I decide to buy the book I'm browsing as a paper copy, I'd like to buy and download it on the spot. Even sweeter if the brick-and-mortar bookstore would get a cut of the price so I'm not pushing the place I browse out of business,
Object types aren't particularly antimodular. They're not particularly promodular either, any more than functions are.
That's one of the things I like about Modula 3. It has modules. It has object types. And they have nothing to do with each other.
What gets to be antimodular about object types is the idea that they are the only kind of module. Some languages enforce this, meaning that everything that has different natural modular structure has to be perverted to fit into the object type formalism.
Immediately after the 9/11 bombing one of the main switching centres for one of the larger US ISP's (I forget which one) had its power cut. It continued to provided uninterupted service for 24 hours from battery power. This was a real boon to one of my friends who was visiting Holland. He could find out that is family in New York was OK.
Hmmm. 20 minutes per book, that's about 24 books per 8-hour workday... about 360 days for the complete set. When did I ever find time to read all that in my 64 years? (well, of course I didn't read all the nonfiction, the encyclopedias and such) Sounds like a culling job is still in order. But perhaps a less severe one.
And isolating the 1% is a *lot* of work. I'm facing that problem with physical books, because it looks as if in the next few years I'm going to have to move into a smaller place. Which of my 9000 books are going to make the grade?
I've resolved not to buy any more paper books. Except for books that don't work well in electronic form, such as math books (where you have to page back and forth a lot, and ereaders just aren't as nimble as flipping through pages) and art books (spatial and colour space resolution problems).
If I had been able to collect my 9000 books in e-form, they would be easy to move. All 9000 books would fit on one hard drive, with maybe an extra one or two for on- and off-site backup.
Automatically indexing them from existing metatdata would be a lot easier than going through the shelves and picking out the few hundred I' really going to want to keep. Data storage is so much cheaper than paper storage these days.
But, unfortunately, I don't really have that option.
Anyone have an easy way to convert an existing paper library to a useful elibrary?
It's been proposed to have a database whose keys are metadata tags, whether improvised algorithmically, found within files of certain types, or hand-assigned. This would be fine when you want to find a file yourself. But many programs want to use file names. A Linux user-mode file system could query the data base and provide access to the files it finds. Designing the right notation would involve serious insight. The file name will likely need components addressing routing, status (do you want a developer version of a stable one?), content, and other attributes.
And there are some commercial sites that offer usenet for a fee, typically $5 per month for a limited feed.
And, of course, there's gmane, which has a whole set of its own newsgroups, mostly usenet mirrors for various mailing lists. But I can't call this usenet, although it does use usenet protocols.
But he didn't publish all of it. He had several editors of newspapers advising him -- editors that are experienced in distinguishing important news from harmful personal details. Naturally, governments that don't want their skullduggery exposed are claiming that the big leak was indiscriminate, but it wasn't.
It's always puzzled me why people get upset about burning American flags. I've always been taught that it is the only proper way to dispose of a damaged flag.
The Mormons' specific interest in genealogy is that they believe a Mormon can save his deceased ancestors by baptizing them posthumously. That's why they build the data base. Your main risk is that one of your remote descendants might become a Mormon and baptize you after you're dead.
The other thing you did wrong (aside from copying too much of the original game) was leaving your only copy on someone else's site, without having a copy on your own system, nor on a thumb drive on your bookshelf or something.
As a result, you no longer have access to your own code.
If you had kept your own copy of the source code, you'd now be in a position to change your game so it no longer infringes.
I agree with some of these points, you're factually wrong on others, but the point I made was that learning Scheme will teach you a new way of thinking about programming, and that still holds.
Details.
Scheme is *not* a lazy-eveluation language. There are facilities to do lazy evaluation, but you have to ask for them. Perhaps you're mixing it up with Haskell, which I find practically useless for exactly the reason you mention.
Its dynamic typing is a problem. I prefer secure, statically typed languages, like Algol 68 or Modula 3, or, for that matter, the experimental typed scheme. What's interesting about typed scheme is that is implemented using regular Scheme. Yes, that's the kind of thins Scheme programmers do, and it's the kind of expansion in the way its users think about programming that I was talking about.
There's nothing keeping you from using a series of bindings to local expressions -- much as you did in your so-called declarative language.
Still, I agree completely with the parenthesis-matching problem. The principal palliatives Scheme afficionados use to argue that it's no problem are:
(1) a specialized editor that shows you how parentheses math while you're editing.
(2) an editor that manages indentation and layout for you to make it more obvious,
(3) Multiple kinds of brackets, such as square and curly, and then having the implementation enforce that brackets match only their own kind.
(a 2 3 (b 2) 4 (c (d e 2) (f (g)) h [i (j (k 2 (l) (m 2) 3) 443) 53]) (n 23))
You use this whenever things get confusing. I don't have this option with, say, matching BEGINs and ENDs in Pascal.
Finally, it's possible in most Schemes to define your own syntax. Most serious programmers do this for any substantial piece of code. The point here is not that Scheme can be used to implement programming languages, it's that it's fairly easy to define complex and useful notations while remaining within the language. And that's another part of the new understanding I mentioned.
Have a look, in particular, at PLT Scheme, recently renamed as Racket. Or look at Gambit, designed for easy interoperation with C.
Yes. Learn Scheme. It'll give you a new understanding of what it can mean to program. I recommend starting with tehe book "How to Design Programs" and the Racket implementation.
And it's not available in an easily indexable machine-readable form? Anything more than a thousand pages needs to be machine-readable to save on weight alone.
Slashdot Mirror
I like to browse in bookstores with physical books. I haven't found any kind of e-browsing that competes with it. The only thing that's close to it is to download the entire book and page freely.
To avoid overfilling my house with bookshelves, or putting shelves in front of shelves and making them inaccessible, I've decided to use e-books whenever possible (they still don't work well for art books, for example).
When I decide to buy the book I'm browsing as a paper copy, I'd like to buy and download it on the spot. Even sweeter if the brick-and-mortar bookstore would get a cut of the price so I'm not pushing the place I browse out of business,
-- hendrik
Object types aren't particularly antimodular. They're not particularly promodular either, any more than functions are.
That's one of the things I like about Modula 3. It has modules. It has object types. And they have nothing to do with each other.
What gets to be antimodular about object types is the idea that they are the only kind of module. Some languages enforce this, meaning that everything that has different natural modular structure has to be perverted to fit into the object type formalism.
-- hendrik
Immediately after the 9/11 bombing one of the main switching centres for one of the larger US ISP's (I forget which one) had its power cut. It continued to provided uninterupted service for 24 hours from battery power. This was a real boon to one of my friends who was visiting Holland. He could find out that is family in New York was OK.
Hmmm. 20 minutes per book, that's about 24 books per 8-hour workday ... about 360 days for the complete set. When did I ever find time to read all that in my 64 years? (well, of course I didn't read all the nonfiction, the encyclopedias and such) Sounds like a culling job is still in order. But perhaps a less severe one.
-- hendrik
You may be right, though it goes against the grain to destroy books.
-- hendrik
And isolating the 1% is a *lot* of work. I'm facing that problem with physical books, because it looks as if in the next few years I'm going to have to move into a smaller place. Which of my 9000 books are going to make the grade?
I've resolved not to buy any more paper books. Except for books that don't work well in electronic form, such as math books (where you have to page back and forth a lot, and ereaders just aren't as nimble as flipping through pages) and art books (spatial and colour space resolution problems).
If I had been able to collect my 9000 books in e-form, they would be easy to move. All 9000 books would fit on one hard drive, with maybe an extra one or two for on- and off-site backup.
Automatically indexing them from existing metatdata would be a lot easier than going through the shelves and picking out the few hundred I' really going to want to keep. Data storage is so much cheaper than paper storage these days.
But, unfortunately, I don't really have that option.
Anyone have an easy way to convert an existing paper library to a useful elibrary?
No. Minecraft is a completely different game. See http://www.minecraft.net/
-- hendrik
What! A now product comes on the market now, and it still doesn't do IPv6?
Linux has software RAID, which doesn't really care what kind of hard drives you have. But that probably won't help you with Windows.
It's been proposed to have a database whose keys are metadata tags, whether improvised algorithmically, found within files of certain types, or hand-assigned. This would be fine when you want to find a file yourself. But many programs want to use file names. A Linux user-mode file system could query the data base and provide access to the files it finds. Designing the right notation would involve serious insight. The file name will likely need components addressing routing, status (do you want a developer version of a stable one?), content, and other attributes.
Mine does: teksavvy in Canada.
And there are some commercial sites that offer usenet for a fee, typically $5 per month for a limited feed.
And, of course, there's gmane, which has a whole set of its own newsgroups, mostly usenet mirrors for various mailing lists. But I can't call this usenet, although it does use usenet protocols.
-- hendrik
A text-only medium -- like usenet?
Thanks.
Yes, he does have an ego ...
I'd be interested in reading about those conversations and the editors' opinions -- got any links?
But he didn't publish all of it. He had several editors of newspapers advising him -- editors that are experienced in distinguishing important news from harmful personal details. Naturally, governments that don't want their skullduggery exposed are claiming that the big leak was indiscriminate, but it wasn't.
It's always puzzled me why people get upset about burning American flags. I've always been taught that it is the only proper way to dispose of a damaged flag.
I wore the cheese one evening as a Hallowe'en costume. Won first prize for a costume with only a Kraft slice on my head.
The Mormons' specific interest in genealogy is that they believe a Mormon can save his deceased ancestors by baptizing them posthumously. That's why they build the data base. Your main risk is that one of your remote descendants might become a Mormon and baptize you after you're dead.
The other thing you did wrong (aside from copying too much of the original game) was leaving your only copy on someone else's site, without having a copy on your own system, nor on a thumb drive on your bookshelf or something.
As a result, you no longer have access to your own code.
If you had kept your own copy of the source code, you'd now be in a position to change your game so it no longer infringes.
Too late now, I suspect.
He stole stolen credit card numbers? They ended up being twice stolen? And why was the Federal Reserve Bank harboring stolen numbers anyway?
They already have forked the code base. The fork is now called LibreOffice; q.v. I'm told it's a temporary name until they think of something better.
I agree with some of these points, you're factually wrong on others, but the point I made was that learning Scheme will teach you a new way of thinking about programming, and that still holds.
Details.
Scheme is *not* a lazy-eveluation language. There are facilities to do lazy evaluation, but you have to ask for them. Perhaps you're mixing it up with Haskell, which I find practically useless for exactly the reason you mention.
Its dynamic typing is a problem. I prefer secure, statically typed languages, like Algol 68 or Modula 3, or, for that matter, the experimental typed scheme. What's interesting about typed scheme is that is implemented using regular Scheme. Yes, that's the kind of thins Scheme programmers do, and it's the kind of expansion in the way its users think about programming that I was talking about.
There's nothing keeping you from using a series of bindings to local expressions -- much as you did in your so-called declarative language.
Still, I agree completely with the parenthesis-matching problem. The principal palliatives Scheme afficionados use to argue that it's no problem are:
(1) a specialized editor that shows you how parentheses math while you're editing.
(2) an editor that manages indentation and layout for you to make it more obvious,
(3) Multiple kinds of brackets, such as square and curly, and then having the implementation enforce that brackets match only their own kind.
(a 2 3 (b 2) 4 (c (d e 2) (f (g)) h [i (j (k 2 (l) (m 2) 3) 443) 53]) (n 23))
You use this whenever things get confusing. I don't have this option with, say, matching BEGINs and ENDs in Pascal.
Finally, it's possible in most Schemes to define your own syntax. Most serious programmers do this for any substantial piece of code. The point here is not that Scheme can be used to implement programming languages, it's that it's fairly easy to define complex and useful notations while remaining within the language. And that's another part of the new understanding I mentioned.
Have a look, in particular, at PLT Scheme, recently renamed as Racket. Or look at Gambit, designed for easy interoperation with C.
Try Lo, and behold. Or else try Lo.o, pronounced Loo.
Yes. Learn Scheme. It'll give you a new understanding of what it can mean to program. I recommend starting with tehe book "How to Design Programs" and the Racket implementation.
And it's not available in an easily indexable machine-readable form? Anything more than a thousand pages needs to be machine-readable to save on weight alone.