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User: maharg

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  1. Whenever this question comes up.. on Ask Slashdot: Why Are We Still Writing Text-Based Code? · · Score: 1

    It reminds me of the one of the finest comments I ever read on here, from joss:

    "If the kind of drag and drop stuff you are proposing was a better mechanism for creating complex programs than languages, then we wouldnt use languages to communicate with each other. Instead we would push a bunch of colored blocks around and drag string between them. I don't think we're going to start doing that anytime soon either."

  2. Forgot your own media library on Ask Slashdot: Keeping Your Media Library Safe From Kids? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the boy has the whole internet to peruse unless you have locked that down also... Seriously.. Are you actually running a walled garden ? If not all bets are off...

  3. you would have thought they'd designed it properly on Facebook Launches Location Based Product · · Score: 1

    and abstracted it to 'things'...

  4. Re:Fuzzy Logic on Chips That Flow With Probabilities, Not Bits · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you're into the concept of fuzzy logic, then I strongly suggest reading Aldiss' Barefoot in the Head if you've not already done so.

    I also recommend not reading it.

  5. 50 Gbps ought to be enough for anyone on Intel's 50Gbps Light Peak Successor · · Score: 1

    .. now could you just roll that out globally please :-D

  6. Re:lots of pot smokers on there on UK Gov't Launches 'Your Freedom' Website To Seek Laws Worth Repealing · · Score: 1

    I personally challenge David and Nick to sit down with some quality organic ganja, a vaporizer, and a copy of Peter Tosh's 'Legalize It' and leave the room without having firmly decided to end the ridiculous persecution of otherwise law-abiding people who wish to exercise what is basically a consumer preference.

  7. Prozone on Ranking Soccer Players By Following the Bouncing Ball · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The top UK teams (and others around the world I guess..) all use Prozone - http://www.prozonesports.com/

    From what I have seen at the International Broadcasting Convention http://www.ibc.org/ some TV production companies do a fair bit of of markup on their footage too

  8. Re:Well Hold on There on Frank Zappa's Influence On Linux and FOSS Development · · Score: 1

    Ardour / JACK rocks on my ubuntu studio, I'm using a presonus firepod. YMMV.

  9. Re:Why do you need one? on Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? · · Score: 1

    and the effect is even more intense if the clipping emphasises even order harmonics and is assymetric.

  10. Re:If you want to encrypt your data on NIST Investigating Mass Flash Drive Vulnerability · · Score: 1

    Of course. Plus the same hairstyle ffs.

  11. Re:Theres one technical point on Tim Berners-Lee Is Sorry About the Slashes · · Score: 1

    yeah, http://www.news.news.com/ :o) and you have to say "double-u, double-u, double-u" out in full !!!

  12. Re:Anti-Slashdot Effect on GMail Experiences Serious Outage · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Heh. Post First. Working fine here too (uk).

  13. Re:What is the advantage... on Japan Plans $21B Space Power Plant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    this is an interesting point. How exactly would the energy ultimately be dissipated ? As heat loss to the environment.....

  14. Re:Why I Hate All Programming Languages on Scala, a Statically Typed, Functional, O-O Language · · Score: 1

    If the kind of drag and drop stuff you are proposing was a better mechanism for creating complex programs than languages, then we wouldnt use languages to communicate with each other. Instead we would push a bunch of colored blocks around and drag string between them. I don't think we're going to start doing that anytime soon either.

    This is quite possibly both the funniest and most insightful comment *ever*. Kudos to you joss.

  15. p2p on government networks on P2P Network Exposes Obama's Safehouse Location · · Score: 0

    p2p on government networks eh, who would have thought it ? before you know it they'll be insisting on airgaps between the LAN and t'internet..

  16. better than sneaker net on Searching Google, Where Internet Access is Scarce · · Score: 4, Funny

    I suppose we could call this 'speaker net'.

  17. Re:finally, a use for a dremel tool on Stuck Knob Causes Serious Window Damage To Atlantis · · Score: 2, Funny

    belly lol.. me too ;o)

  18. Re:fraunhofer? on Frank Herbert's Moisture Traps May Be a Reality · · Score: 1

    That's ok, I'm working on AMOT (Ain't a MOisture Trap) right now :o)

  19. Re:Itsatrap!!! on Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In? · · Score: 2, Funny

    Writing mock lobster objects.

  20. Re:Girlfriend? on Robot Love Goes Bad · · Score: 1

    Ever had a super nerdy girlfriend ? eh ?

  21. Re:Time to play Spin The Wheel, Techie edition... on Phantom OS, the 21st Century OS? · · Score: 1

    Assembler ! Why aren't you setting the bits with a magnet !

  22. Re:Time to play Spin The Wheel, Techie edition... on Phantom OS, the 21st Century OS? · · Score: 1

    I have some sympathy with your plight, but, a persistent object does not necessarily equate to a file. For example, a persistent object can be stored in a database table. Equally, a persistent object can be stored as multiple files. A persistent object can be stored in non-volatile memory.

    Only a persistent object which is wholly stored as a single entity within a traditional filesystem can possibly be equated to a file. Even then, it's fairly tenuous, as the file representation of the object can be manipulated via the filesystem API, whilst the object itself cannot.

  23. Re:Opera of the phantom on Phantom OS, the 21st Century OS? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Everything about this appears to be designed for developers, not users. There's absolutely nothing that indicates anything that would make a user want to use this OS.

    I expect Babbage came up against the same attitude. Good job it didn't put him off, eh ! Not to compare this guy with Babbage, but really, does lack-of-user-appeal really mean that it's not worthwhile ? I think this is very interesting indeed. If you consider something like a database application, which needs to persist state changes to disk pronto, then why not let the OS handle this for you ? It needs to be done either way. I just wonder how a generalised object persistance layer can can handle specialised cases such as text storage (where you might want compression to save space at the expense of some speed) and video storage (where the object data is already compressed and you don't want to re-compress it). Actually thinking about video is interesting - what would the equivalent of seeking through a huge video file be if it was stored as an object ? Would the whole video object be loaded into RAM ? Some *very* interesting programming challenges here, which for some people makes it all worthwhile, even if it is ultimately a dead-end commercially, it *can* advance the field.

  24. Simple... on iTunes DRM-Free Files Contain Personal Info · · Score: 0, Redundant

    1) Download DRM-free song from iTunes
    2) Open in Notepad, Find and replace email address, Save
    3) Share on p2p network of choice
    4) ???
    5) Profit !!!

  25. Semantic Search != Personalisation on Google's Mayer Says Personalization is Key To Future Search · · Score: 3, Informative

    The author of the Daniweb article fundamentally misunderstands semantic search, stating that "Search certainly has a key role in helping us sift through the mountains of information and semantic search, where the search engine has a sense of the meaning and context of our search, which is essentially what Mayer refers to when she cites personalization, could be the key to helping us access the data that's most relevant to us."

    Actually semantic search is not really about personalisation at all. Personalisation could enhance semantic search, but they are two separate disciplines. I posted on what semantic search really means a while back, but I'll re-iterate here.

    say a guitarist wants to search for a guitar amp speaker cabinet that would handle the 100w (that's RMS watts) output of his Marshall amp, and fit in the boot/trunk of his car - let's say it's a Ford whatever... anyhow, the point is that the semantic search app would need to discover the dimensions of the car's boot/trunk from Ford, then it could search for speaker cabs that would fit in the boot/trunk that could handle 100w (that's RMS remember) so, if the dimensions of the boot/trunk are expressed in inches by Ford and the dimensions of the cab are expressed in cm by Marshall/Mesa Boogie/Fender et al, then of course there needs to be a standard scheme to express units of size, and then the conversions are easy. Don't forget, that's 100w RMS...

    Today you would need to run multiple searches, holding information (the size of the cabinet v.s. size of the boot/trunk) in your head to complete the task. With semantic search, the computer would do it all for you.