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User: zmughal

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  1. Re:So why *don't* other mail readers use labels? on The Case Against Gmail · · Score: 2

    You could also use the X-Label header like I did with a IMAP proxy I wrote for Gmail.

    Another way of doing things is notmuch.

  2. Re:A (very) recent OSCON talk on Remember the Computer Science Past Or Be Condemned To Repeat It? · · Score: 1

    Turing's Curse

    I though the UK government were trying to get that conviction overturned?

    The pardon should be granted Real Soon Now. John Graham-Cumming was actually the one who started the petition for issuing an apology.

  3. A (very) recent OSCON talk on Remember the Computer Science Past Or Be Condemned To Repeat It? · · Score: 5, Informative

    John Graham-Cumming gave a talk at OSCON 2013 titled "Turing's Curse" that speaks to this same idea. Worth a watch.

  4. Re:Our collective memory on Doug Engelbart Passes Away · · Score: 1

    Thank you for these words. I never knew him personally, but his ideas have affected my thought even when I did not know it. I am often pleasantly surprised to find his work and vision close to my own endeavours. I wish I was able to have met him.

  5. Re:Perl analogue on How Does a Single Line of BASIC Make an Intricate Maze? · · Score: 1
    The book actually has a Perl example. :-)

    {binmode STDOUT,"utf8";print chr(9585.5+rand);redo}

  6. Re:Leave my Hearing Aids Alone on Apple Plans Hearing Aid Social Networking · · Score: 1

    Sadly, these same patent issues still apply.

  7. Re:What's different about an ereader? on When Your e-Books Read You · · Score: 1

    Saw the doctor? Noted. Diagnosis? Noted.

    Noted, but not as open records, c.f. HIPPA privacy rules.

  8. Re:Uh what? on When Your e-Books Read You · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "'There's a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else's business,'"... no, no there isn't.

    When speaking about the act of reading, there is some expectation of privacy, at least from the government. This isn't related to businesses per se, but librarians have fought to keep library records private and as such, their policies and software try to keep records for only as long as necessary (e.g. the duration of loan). Librarians often refuse to give out information on their patrons unless there is a court order.

    This same sort of ideal can be applied to businesses in the form of opt-in data mining, but U.S. society needs to make this sort of decision in the form of information privacy law.

  9. Re:Why do you need an example? on U.S. Judge Grants Apple Injunction Against Samsung Galaxy Tab · · Score: 1

    If high schoolers can compete in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad , they can surely teach themselves the concepts behind regular expressions and then whip up a bit of Perl to implement it. I know I could. In fact, another competition, ACSL, has existed for a very long time (late 70s) for high-school students that want to improve their CS theory and it tests regular expression knowledge from time to time.

  10. Re:URL representing a given subject on Wikipedia As a "War Zone," Rather Than a Collaboration · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia is good for use as a URL representing a given real-world subject. For example, an article about graphics in Linux could refer to "this DRM, not that other DRM"

    Which is why DBpedia (which is based on Wikipedia) plays such a central role for Linked Data.

  11. DIY with an optical mouse on Ask Slashdot: Advice On Child-Friendly Microscopes? · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you can cultivate a sense of DIY by showing how you can make a microscope using an optical mouse.

  12. Re:Get off my lawn on Ask Slashdot. Best Online Science Course? · · Score: 1

    I agree with this. Schaum's Outlines are surprisingly comprehensive, easy to follow, and well-written. They are meant to complement textbooks, but given the low priority on conceptual organisation found in many textbooks, these can often be used alone if you do the problems.

  13. Re:Too Bad for Humanity as a Whole... on The Real-Life Doogie Howser · · Score: 2

    From TFA, he actually worked on both a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and cell biology as well as an M.D., so it is likely he will be working on research as well.

  14. Since the site is down... on Photographer Threatened With Legal Action After Asserting His Copyright · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Jay Lee also hosts a technology radio show out of Houston called Technology Bytes.

  15. Re:Whatever happened to Perl 6? on Perl 5.16.0 Released · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As far as the matching capabilities of Perl 6, I think they're trying to do something that will advance the state-of-the-art in terms of programming langauge integration in the same way that Perl 5's regex did. The Perl 6 rules are similar to the tricks and hacks that people do with regular expressions to build up full grammars. By separating out the parts into logical components, you will get better readability and reusability. Not only will we get cleaner text processing, but this (along with the VM architecture) will aid the development of DSLs that will extend the language into an exciting future.

    Yeah, it's some good Kool-Aid and the Perl community been waiting for a while, but bringing these ideas into a production-ready language isn't trivial. I'm still using Perl 5 because of CPAN, but I feel that Perl 6 will eventually get to the same level especially with a source-to-source compiler. The hardest part would be dealing with native-code bindings.

  16. Re:Go have a look at the Oatmeal's latest on Disentangling Facts From Fantasy In the World of Edison and Tesla · · Score: 5, Informative

    Which is precisely what TFA is addressing.

  17. Re:Statistics of motivation on Programming — Now Starting In Elementary School · · Score: 1

    My initial motivation was learning about fractals, so, in a way, it was about building a graphics demo. However, I soon got into figuring out how to get my computer and graphing calculator to do my mathematics homework. That was where I learnt about breaking things down into fundamental abstractions.

  18. Atomic wrist watch on Ask Slashdot: Wrist Watch For the Tech Minded · · Score: 2

    For the discerning measurement enthusiast, the first ever atomic wristwatch!

  19. Re:lush (Lisp Universal SHell) on Julia Language Seeks To Be the C For Numerical Computing · · Score: 1

    I've looked at Lush and I like the fact you can embed C code straight in the Lisp. And it's fast. Though it concentrates on the numerical computing, rather than symbolic computing. It could do with more clean and easily installable library bindings, which is where MATLAB and Octave shine in terms of the breadth of functions available.

  20. Re:World Bank Hackathon on World Bank Embraces Open Access and Makes All of Its Research Freely Available · · Score: 1

    Neat! I would say you should look into the NYC Resistor hackerspace, General Assembly, and the people behind different hack days like Music Hack Day and Photo Hack Day.

    I don't know how many people you could get that would be interested in something like this since it probably doesn't have enough of a cool factor to draw people in. Maybe look at Code for America for some inspiration?

    Heh, I'm not even from NY.

  21. Re:Is PERL still active on Craigslist Donates $100,000 To the Perl Foundation · · Score: 1

    For GUI, I've had a great experience using Tkx. That is just a lightweight wrapper around the Tcl interpreter and there are nice tutorials for it at TkDocs.

    For something to make bindings easier, there is work on a ctypes for Perl. And there's also the Inline namespace on CPAN, but that makes your code a bit difficult to distribute.

  22. Re:the US Government on Democratic Super PAC Buys Newtgingrich.com · · Score: 1

    I took a course in American political thought and I would say the best source of information on the Constitution would be the writings of James Madison followed by The Federalist and The Anti-Federalist papers. Reading those gives a deep insight into the reasoning behind the U.S. Constitution.

  23. Re:Isn't there a way... on Ask Slashdot: Handling and Cleaning Up a Large Personal Email Archive? · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is DBMail.

  24. Re:RTFA... on Court Renders $3 Judgment Against Spamhaus · · Score: 1

    Here you go. Now use pdftotext and read it however you like.

  25. Thank you for creating this community on Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot · · Score: 1

    I've been on /. for nearly half my life (I finally registered only 8 years later). While I was growing up, I read Slashdot almost daily and every time I would learn something interesting from either the FA or the comments. It is the variety of stories, diversity of opinions, and the signal-to-noise ratio that keeps me coming back here as opposed to than any other discussion site.

    I can truly say that this site has changed my life. Thank you, Rob and Jeff. And thanks to all the other editors and users that have made this a positive experience and hopefully will continue to do so.

    - Zaki

    P.S.: Great timing with the 20th anniversary of Linux. Now I have two things to think about as my own 21st birthday approaches. :-)