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User: minginqunt

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Comments · 159

  1. Re:One thing I don't get... on Harder-Than-Diamond Natural Carbon Crystals Found · · Score: 1

    So, are these naturally-ocurring aggregated diamond nanorods (ADNRs)?

  2. WHAT on Genre Wars — the Downside of the RPG Takeover · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The removal of mod tools is because Infinity Ward are a bunch of PC-hating cocktards.

    What that has to do with "RPG elements" is presumably left as an exercise to the reader?

    (Also, Bioshock is a terrible example, since it's a spiritual successor to a legendary RPG, System Shock 2. In many ways, Bioshock was SS2 dumbed down with more 'FPS elements'. Now shush.)

  3. Re:Blakes 7 on What SciFi Should Get the Reboot Treatment Next? · · Score: 1

    Have you been watching the same Who as the rest of us?

    The production design has been unfailingly excellent since it was resurrected, and we've had some top notch writing from the likes of Stephen Moffat, Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts and (if he's in a good mood - whisper it!) even Russell T. Davies.

    And the implication that the actors on classic Who were bad is a travesty for the most part. Troughton through Davison were amazing actors, including the beloved Tom Baker.

  4. The famous Miskatonic Antarctic Survey found on Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hope you're all preparing to welcome our new Shuggoth overlords.

    I suspect I, for one, will.

  5. Re:Ease of writing doesn't convince me on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 0, Troll

    Java hasn't eliminated constructs that are harmful, all it's really done is popularised a few more harmful constructs of its own.

  6. Re:Java too complex on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 1

    I think Java-the-language has lost the battle against C#. Given its stagnation as a language, and how "of its time" it feels, I'm inclined to say good riddance.

    Java-the-platform, however, I think has a sterling future ahead of it as an open source platform for newer, more innovative languages. You only have to look at the brilliant work being done by Martin Odersky and Rich Hickey with expressive and sexy new languages like Scala and Clojure, and then you realise that Java-the-platform has a good chance to live on via its wayward offspring.

  7. Re:Java too complex on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're right, of course. Microsoft Research has a number of fellows who are at the very cutting edge of programming language research, including the likes of Simon Peyton Jones (Mr Haskell) and Don Syme.

    And these people have had a direct hand in the evolution of C# (through its type inference, lambdas and LINQ), through F# (which started as a project to port Haskell, and then O'Caml to the CLR), the DLR, Parallel Extensions...

    The level of geekiness that Microsoft encourages at the top end of .NET is remarkable.

  8. Re:Java too complex on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 0

    Java's problem is not that it's "too complex".

    Java's problem is that it was designed in 1967.

  9. Re:Java too complex on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 1

    I feel I'm being mocked here, but I'm not exactly sure what for.

    Is it because I is rude about Java?

  10. Re:Point & Click programming on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How do you feel about the time and resources Microsoft has poured into developing Visual F#, Linq, Parallel Extensions, the DLR, IronPython/IronRuby, not to mention the funding of Microsoft Research, many of whose fellows such as Simon Peyton-Jones (maintainer of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler) are at the very bleeding edge of programming language research?

    Are these the actions of a company that wants to stultify programmers' minds?

    Microsoft, for all its failings, understands its developers. Always has.

  11. Re:.Not on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Then you are fortunate. The JVM is a good abstraction, but it is a leaky one. The point is that you can't just *assume* it will work on any platform that runs a JVM, which was the original (I would claim largely irrelevant) point behind WORA.

  12. Re:.Not on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The interesting thing was that Sun used WORA as a surrogate argument to accept the validity of virtual machines. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when VMs were treated with scepticism or outright hostility by most programmers.

    These days it's hard to imagine creating a programming language that wouldn't adopt a VM of some kind.

    Neither the CLR or the JVM truly enable WORA, but it doesn't matter. We have learned that VMs have a value to a programming language *far* beyond that rather limited concern.

  13. Re:Java too complex on Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a professional Java programmer, I've watched as Java-the-language has stagnated. Java-the-platform has only thrived thanks to Open Source, and no thanks to the sclerotic Java Community Process and an ineffectual steward in Sun Microsystems.

    Java programmers have watched in horror as C# gained fully reified generics, lambdas and closures, arbitrary monadic comprehensions and Hindley-Milner type inference, whilst we've only grudgingly been allowed a broken generics model whilst Sun spent years rejecting and rewriting closure proposals that are still 1-2 years away from adoption.

    C# is thriving because it has a benevolent dictator in the form of Anders Hjelberg. Java the language is a stagnant mess.

  14. Retinal Projection on NVIDIA Offers 3D Glasses For the Masses · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's wouldn't be susceptible to parallax error. They had it in the Star Trek future, why can't we have it in our proper future?

    Man is annoyed by this.

  15. Re:This is not Chrome-specific. on Reading Google Chrome's Fine Print · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The frequency of badsummary on this site makes me sad.

    I bet the editors of this site never intended the tag system to be used primarily as a mechanism for drawing attention to their own incompetence.

  16. Re:netbooks on Mandriva Joins the Netbook Market With the GDium · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, the 9'' Eees are already pushing what's usable in that form factor anyway. Extended use of its keyboard makes an unhappy me.

    The extra inch of the 1000 series makes all the difference in the world. But you lose some of teh tinies and teh cuteness.

    It's a tradeoff.

  17. Aperture: what we've learned on Linux Alternatives To Apple's Aperture · · Score: 1, Funny

    Please note that we have added a consequence for using proprietary software. Any contact with proprietary software will result in an 'unsatisfactory' mark on your official testing record followed by death. Good luck!

  18. Melodramatic on The Effects of Censorship — a Tale of Two Websites · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Censored? Do we mean, less melodramatically, "moderated"?

    Perhaps the author is under the impression that quantity and quality are the same thing.

  19. Re:well ... on MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams · · Score: 4, Funny

    Traffic James *IS* a dick. And if that isn't a Slashdot memetag by bedtime, there's ain't no justice.

    Tags: trafficjamesisadick

    Woo!
  20. Re:Has "fail" written all over it on How Microsoft Plans To Get Its Groove Back With Win7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While we're on the Classic Mac OS comparisons, I'd suggest that on current form, this could easily turn out to be Microsoft's Copland.

    Were it not the fact that they (eventually) got something to stumble out of the door, that honour would fall to Vista.

    The idea that Microsoft are really going to rip it all up and start again, with a company as profoundly conservative as they are, seems unlikely to me.

  21. With thanks on OOXML Rumored to be Approved, Announcement Wednesday · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft has performed a valuable service without really meaning to.

    By demonstrating once and for all how embarassingly corruptible the ISO is, it calls into doubt the validity of many past and future ISO standards, and will force us into a proper re-evaluation of self-appointed standards bodies and the standards they whore around.

    For too long we've taken the rather naive view that being an 'open standard' is enough. At last we see the foolishness of that view.

    And in this case, I think it's somewhat unfair to judge Microsoft too harshly for wanting to game the system any way they could- what company wouldn't have done in their position?

    But it is to ISO's massive, disgusting and probably reputation-destroying shame they they simply laid back and allowed themselves to be corrupted, defiled and sodomised by a large multinational. And they didn't even get a kiss afterwards.

    I hope everyone who played their part in this sordid venture has plenty of time to repent at leisure when they realise that the ISO can never, WILL never, be trusted again.

  22. Re:Two? on Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you have two of something, by definition it is no longer unique...

    Indeed. It becomes 'duique'.

  23. Re:Scrotal on Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered · · Score: 1

    Nonsense. Whipping my astronomically-proportioned yellow-glowing rotating gonads is the only way I can get people to speak to me at parties.

  24. Scrotal on Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered · · Score: 5, Funny

    A peanut? SPACEBALLS, more like.

  25. Re:What's the REAL significance of any of this? on The Coming Digital Presidency · · Score: 1

    And frankly folks, Joe Sixpack still doesn't trust what he reads about online more than he does the idiot box.

    Quite. People on the Internet != People. I guess that Ron Paul this year and Howard Dean four years ago forgot this. Obama, on the other hand, seems to have been able to square that circle, by tapping them up for squillions of dollars, whilst remembering that there's more to getting elected than being loud over my intertubes.