Pick an object you can see. Look closely at it. Whatever it is, chances are, it has lots of colours, not just one. Even if the material its made from is a single colour, the illumination is rarely completely uniform, and that'll give changes in brightness and saturation across it. Often there's small-scale colour detail, too. And if its at all reflective, then the differing colours of other objects in the room will also affect what you see from it.
Can an algorithm allow for that? Or is it just blocking out a whole area with the same hue and saturation, and just keeping the original brightness variation? If so, I doubt it can look at all natural.
I've read the one-paragraph version of CSP, but I can't immediately see how the CSP primitives combine naturally into large systems, nor how they're inherently different from the sort of threading primitives that, say, Java gives you. How do you work with CSP? How do you approach system design? How does it avoid the sorts of problems you get elsewhere?
Oh, I'm not suggesting that the US government thinks that any of the detainees are completely innocent. I'm just suggesting that in some cases, it's mistaken -- maybe in a good number of cases.
Mind you, I can think of some circumstances where they would expend time and effort on people they knew to be innocent. If they discover, after someone has been detained for a while, that they're innocent after all, it might be easier and less embarrassing to keep them than release them and admit their mistake. (And of course, those in the government who know about that innocence may not feel the need to share that information with others in the US government...) Maybe they want to keep the innocent there in order to demoralise other detainees who might be guilty. Maybe the innocent have sensitive information (whether rightfully obtained or not) which they don't want made public. Maybe... Well, we can speculate further.
>[?
I'm not suggesting that any of these are necessarily happening. But I hope I've shown that the US government doesn't even need to believe in their guilt in order to consider it worth detaining them, let alone be able to prove it.
And to answer your last point, another possible reason for holding an innocent person, and torturing them, is the need for a scapegoat. There are always political concerns. Torture, as I've said, is much more reliable for extracting confessions than for extracting facts, and they might consider that encouraging a few confessions might give the US public a much greater confidence in their government and its actions...
If they were former detainees, they have been released, so we haven't been locking folks up forever
Sorry, I can't see what you're getting at. Are you saying that because a small number of detainees have been released, that they all will be? I'm sure the large number left would be very pleased to hear it...
Or are you saying that while locking someone up indefinitely and subjecting them to torture is wrong, doing so only for a few years is all right?
You're saying that the evidence we've seen (and checked) for the innocence of a few must have been fixed, but the evidence (if any!) for their guilt must be genuine despite that fact that no-one's been allowed to see it?
If these people were just picked up by accident, and there was "no evidence of terrorist or other crimes for any", why would the U.S. Government still be holding them?
A pertinent question, but one that has many answers. Certainly, 'because they're Bad Men who've done Naughty Things' is the one many people will assume, but it doesn't follow.
In several cases, the true answer is much closer to 'because the US offered a bounty on terrorists, and several groups of Bad Men in the middle east kidnapped random people and handed them over to collect the bounty'.
And in other cases, the answer might well be 'because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time', 'because they happened to look like a known terrorist', 'because they have the same name as a known terrorist', 'because the CIA's secret knowledge systems flagged them up as a possible suspect and they didn't have a good enough alibi', 'because other people accused them in order to save themselves', or ultimately 'because they wore a turban and looked funny'.
The result is that you can't assume guilt follows from detainment. You can't assume anything from it. There's a good reason why juries aren't told of previous convictions, and why the press is barred from naming certain suspects for legal reasons. (It's also one of the reasons why my country abolished the death penalty, but let's not go there.) That reason: people make mistakes. We've already seen that some of the Guantanamo detainees were there due to mistakes. How do we know that doesn't apply to any or all of the others, too?
I fact, I'd like to ask another pertinent question: If there's any evidence that these people really are terrorists, why doesn't the US reveal it? Putting them on trial would not only allow justice to be done as well as letting it be seen to be done, it would also act as a deterrent. So the fact that none of these people have even been charged with any crime makes their status all the more questionable.
I just don't think that the military would be wasting its time by holding 500 humanitarian workers and interrogating them... There has to be SOMETHING.
You're assuming that torture, sorry, interrogation, is used to find the truth. But it's never been a reliable way of getting the truth from people. It's always been far better for getting people to say what you want them to say. A signed confession looks good, even if it was extracted under duress and has no truth in it. (Something else that we know occurred at Guantanamo.)
The USofA is not torturing people there... these people are not innocent
Again, I refer you to the Channel 4 programmes. (If you Google for 'guantanamo channel.4', the first several links mention the series, including Channel 4's own set of pages.)
One programme, 'The Guantanamo Guidebook', attempted to reproduce some of the interrogation methods used there. These include sleep deprivation, extremes of heat and cold (hypothermia), verbal abuse, enforced nudity, shaving and sexual humiliation, bombardment with bright lights and loud music, sensory deprivation, and being forced to hold stressful positions for hours, &c. In combination. While carefully crafted to fall short of the legal definition of 'torture', it certainly sounds like torture to me. (See some of those sites for reports by the programme's volunteers who submitted to it. They're shocking.)
Another, 'Is Torture A Good Idea?' was made by a lawyer who represented some of the Guantanamo detainees. Among other things, he looks at how the methods used there led to confessions that were completely and demonstrably false. I don't expect that all the detainees are innocent, but some certainly are. And without due process, how can you tell?
A documentary shown here recently (Channel 4, UK) followed the stories of a few former Guantanamo detainees. IIRC, there was strong evidence for the innocence of a few, and no evidence of terrorist or other crimes for any.
Besides which, how on earth could you know that any of the detainees were guilty of crimes? They haven't been charged with any, let alone had their cases heard in any form of court. Or are people now guilty of crimes simply because the US military thinks they are?
So Americans are allowed to torture innocent people, provided they don't do it at home. Lovely loophole.
So it's not illegal...
Ah, well that's all right then. Not illegal. Good. Indefensible, certainly. Morally reprehensible, absolutely. Barbaric, without question. But not illegal. Oh good.
I feel so much safer now.
Just out of interest, I wonder what would happen if, say, Japan had imprisoned a bunch of innocent US citizens at an offshore location, held them there for several years, and tortured them, without even charging them, let alone any other due process? I doubt assurances from the Japanese that their detention was perfectly legal would count for much...
I think the mere fact that you have to split the world into 'good guys' and 'bad guys' shows several important points:
You have a 'them and us' mentality. IMO, the moment you start dividing the world into 'them' and 'us', the roots of trouble are sown. You start identifying with 'us', you start putting their goals and wellbeing over that of 'them'; you start treating 'them' unfairly; you start valuing 'them' as less important, worthy, or ultimately less human. This tribal mentality seems to be a natural human behaviour, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
You have a simplistic Aristotelian notion that a person can be wholly 'good' or wholly 'evil'. The truth is that most people are some way in the middle. Even people who are mostly 'good' do bad things, and vice versa, whether through ignorance, carelessness, or just having a bad day.
You somehow assume that every US citizen is a good guy, and by extension, that every non-US citizen isn't. Leaving aside the arrogance and parochiality which that displays, just how realistic is it?
The fact is that people in power will always want more power. It's human nature. Power corrupts, &c. There will always be bureaucratic empire-building, technological over-enthusiasm, pandering to the media and the mob; and while in a company those things are limited and to some extent correctable, in the government they are dangerous. So there must always be safeguards to stop them taking more power than is absolutely necessary.
Do you implicitly trust every single person currently in your NSA? Do you believe that every one has only have your best interests at heart? Do you believe that every one is skilful and diligent enough that they'll always act in those interests, even if there's a conflict of interest somewhere? Do you believe that that will always be the case in future, however the organisation develops?
If you can't say 'yes' to every question there, I'd be a bit careful before you start calling them 'good guys' and all the baggage which goes along with that.
Of course the world isn't an ideal place, and some security forces are needed. But the dangers of a police state are known, unlike the somewhat nebulous and much exaggerated fears that the media and governments are using to scare the US and UK people into granting them such sweeping and, some would say, unnecessary powers.
For example, while the UK is probably comparable to a US state by area, it has something like a quarter of the population of the whole USA.
But then, judging by the ludicrous antics of the European Commission as regards software patents, I wouldn't say that the EU is being governed at all well at present... Which is probably why individual European states are so wary of giving up national powers.
Is this the same 'spatial metaphor' that's been an integral part of the 'classic' Mac OS for the last 20 years?
If so, then I can see why its addition wasn't popular. IME, people who started off using Mac OS Classic tend to love it, and miss it on anything else. But people who started on any other graphical OS (like myself) tend to hate it. (I found myself battling against Mac OS 9 constantly for the year or so I used it, and found even the public beta of Mac OS X a breath of fresh air. I found even the Windows GUI more comfortable, and really missed MagiC which was my main OS before going Mac.)
Re: Ugh! Can Lucas destroy Episode VI any further?
on
Star Wars Episode 3 PG-13?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Er, how come you got moderated as 'Funny' rather than the 'Insightful' you so richly deserved?
Anyway, just what I was thinking. People have extremely rose-coloured memories. It's only natural! It's almost impossible to objectively judge something that you've known and loved (or hated) for so long.
Okay, so Jar-Jar was an annoying twat. But then C3PO was also an annoying twat, just a slightly different sort of annoying twat, one who's overlaid by years of warm fuzzy feelings. I wish I could compare the two of them fairly, but I can't. Like a lot of people, I see the former as execrable, and the latter as loveable; however, if I were coming fresh to them both, would I still see them that way round? I don't know. But maybe it's a useful exercise trying to guess.
They don't have to. They can just rewrite it slightly -- no more copyright violation.
So rewriting software is easy? Hmm...
They just need a bigger marketing budget to squeeze out the little guy.
I bet MS has a bigger advertising budget than Mozilla has, and yet Firefox seems to be doing okay at the moment... Marketing will always give the edge, but quality, originality, usefulness and style will always count for a lot too.
Because, as I've said elsewhere, software is qualitatively different from physical inventions.
For one thing, there's already a perfectly good mechanism for protecting actual software and source code: copyright.
And for another, the bar to entry is much, much lower with software. You don't need all the resources for mass production, manufacturing, duplication, marketing, or anything other than a web site.
AIUI, the raison d'être of patents is to protect the inventor: to stop a big company coming along, copying his or her invention, and using their much bigger resources to develop and mass produce the product and lock him or her out. But that's not a problem for software; the big company can't copy the software directly, and they don't have much of an advantage in mass production either. So why have them?
The knack is to use a fingernail, not a fingertip. Much more accurate, too. (You don't need long fingernails; just bend and/or twist your finger a little.)
I have a Psion 5mx, which I use all the time, and would be lost without. But it's a little more than most people think of a PDA; with its clamshell design, touch-type keyboard and VGA-width screen, I usually call it a pocket computer.
As well as the usual PDA-type apps (agenda, address book, notepad), I have tons more on it: several bookcases' worth of ebooks and reference works (novels, short stories, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Encarta, 4 Bible translations, &c); an off-line reader for the BBS I'm on, with a messagebase of over 200,000 messages; crosswords and other games; route planning and navigation; when I'm away from home I do all my email on it; it has Java, Perl, and its own inbuilt language, so I do development on it too.
In short, I use it for many of the things I might do on a laptop if I had one; the advantage there is that the Psion lives in my trouser pocket, so it's always to hand wherever I am*. I also use it for some of the things I can do on my mobile phone: writing text messages is much easier on the Psion's proper keyboard!
* I think this is really the key to PDA-type functionality. If it's not to hand, you won't use it; so it won't be useful, and you won't carry it. Vicious circle. Whereas in my case, because I can always whip it out and be ready for action ('ere, no, missus!) in a couple of seconds, I've got into the habit of putting appointments and stuff in it immediately, so it becomes invaluable. I also get into the habit of using the dictionary &c that way too, so I learn from it!
Agreed. Full Hungarian notation is an abomination. A variable's type has no business being in its name; not only does that preclude changing the type at some point, but the type is usually clear from the context anyway.
Whether the scope should be there probably depends on the language and system. In C, like you I've found p_ (for function parameters), g_ (for system-wide globals) and m_ (for module-level variables) useful; also s_ (for 4GL screen fields). That way, you know where to look for the definition, so you can find anything else out there. (Local variables get no prefix.)
In Java, though, I find scope is usually obvious. Methods tend to be short enough that parameters are usually obvious; class names should start in upper case, which should make them obvious (and you can track them down from import statements); fields in other classes are always obvious from context; and there are no globals to worry about. The only confusion is between local variables and class fields; for a while I used a single underscore prefix for fields, but I really don't find it necessary.
I'm sure that other languages have their own needs.
While we're here, might as well repeat my own principle for meaningful variable names: The length of a variable name should be directly proportional to its scope. A variable that's only used for a couple of lines after it's defined is best kept to a few characters; but one that's used throughout the system should have a name long enough to make its function clear.
Parent, you should be aware that that language you use, English, is named after a place: England. And that in some parts of the world (notably, the USA) you spell some words differently from* how we here in England do. (* You'll note that I didn't say 'differently than', which is an abomination.)
And grandparent, you should be aware that even here where 'programme' is a valid spelling for general use, we still use 'program' when referring to a list of instructions controlling the operation of a computer; 'disk' and 'dialog' are also US spellings which we use in that context.
So there.
Getting back on topic, I'm with the grandparent. Code should be completely transparent as to what its doing, but it's usually an extremely good idea to comment why. To fill in the big picture, and this bit of code's place in it. I wonder if the main reason for much crap code is that the coder simply didn't know the big picture...
Okay, perhaps 'hottie' was putting it a bit strongly. But JN-T is supposed to have pressed for her addition, to bring a recogniseable celebrity to the programme -- you see why I mentioned her?
Technically, yes, but there's practically nothing in it if you use a decent MP3 encoder like lame.
The greater portability of MP3, combined with the range of tools available for it (encoders, decoders, splitter/joiners, repair tools, wrappers, level adjusters &c) mean that many folks might consider the negligible quality loss worthwhile.
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Can an algorithm allow for that? Or is it just blocking out a whole area with the same hue and saturation, and just keeping the original brightness variation? If so, I doubt it can look at all natural.
I've read the one-paragraph version of CSP, but I can't immediately see how the CSP primitives combine naturally into large systems, nor how they're inherently different from the sort of threading primitives that, say, Java gives you. How do you work with CSP? How do you approach system design? How does it avoid the sorts of problems you get elsewhere?
Remember, you're holding citizens of another nuclear power there. Don't we have just as much justification for nuking you as you did the Japanese?
Mind you, I can think of some circumstances where they would expend time and effort on people they knew to be innocent. If they discover, after someone has been detained for a while, that they're innocent after all, it might be easier and less embarrassing to keep them than release them and admit their mistake. (And of course, those in the government who know about that innocence may not feel the need to share that information with others in the US government...) Maybe they want to keep the innocent there in order to demoralise other detainees who might be guilty. Maybe the innocent have sensitive information (whether rightfully obtained or not) which they don't want made public. Maybe... Well, we can speculate further. >[? I'm not suggesting that any of these are necessarily happening. But I hope I've shown that the US government doesn't even need to believe in their guilt in order to consider it worth detaining them, let alone be able to prove it.
And to answer your last point, another possible reason for holding an innocent person, and torturing them, is the need for a scapegoat. There are always political concerns. Torture, as I've said, is much more reliable for extracting confessions than for extracting facts, and they might consider that encouraging a few confessions might give the US public a much greater confidence in their government and its actions...
Sorry, I can't see what you're getting at. Are you saying that because a small number of detainees have been released, that they all will be? I'm sure the large number left would be very pleased to hear it...
Or are you saying that while locking someone up indefinitely and subjecting them to torture is wrong, doing so only for a few years is all right?
You're saying that the evidence we've seen (and checked) for the innocence of a few must have been fixed, but the evidence (if any!) for their guilt must be genuine despite that fact that no-one's been allowed to see it?
A pertinent question, but one that has many answers. Certainly, 'because they're Bad Men who've done Naughty Things' is the one many people will assume, but it doesn't follow.
In several cases, the true answer is much closer to 'because the US offered a bounty on terrorists, and several groups of Bad Men in the middle east kidnapped random people and handed them over to collect the bounty'.
And in other cases, the answer might well be 'because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time', 'because they happened to look like a known terrorist', 'because they have the same name as a known terrorist', 'because the CIA's secret knowledge systems flagged them up as a possible suspect and they didn't have a good enough alibi', 'because other people accused them in order to save themselves', or ultimately 'because they wore a turban and looked funny'.
The result is that you can't assume guilt follows from detainment. You can't assume anything from it. There's a good reason why juries aren't told of previous convictions, and why the press is barred from naming certain suspects for legal reasons. (It's also one of the reasons why my country abolished the death penalty, but let's not go there.) That reason: people make mistakes. We've already seen that some of the Guantanamo detainees were there due to mistakes. How do we know that doesn't apply to any or all of the others, too?
I fact, I'd like to ask another pertinent question: If there's any evidence that these people really are terrorists, why doesn't the US reveal it? Putting them on trial would not only allow justice to be done as well as letting it be seen to be done, it would also act as a deterrent. So the fact that none of these people have even been charged with any crime makes their status all the more questionable.
You're assuming that torture, sorry, interrogation, is used to find the truth. But it's never been a reliable way of getting the truth from people. It's always been far better for getting people to say what you want them to say. A signed confession looks good, even if it was extracted under duress and has no truth in it. (Something else that we know occurred at Guantanamo.)
Again, I refer you to the Channel 4 programmes. (If you Google for 'guantanamo channel.4', the first several links mention the series, including Channel 4's own set of pages.)
One programme, 'The Guantanamo Guidebook', attempted to reproduce some of the interrogation methods used there. These include sleep deprivation, extremes of heat and cold (hypothermia), verbal abuse, enforced nudity, shaving and sexual humiliation, bombardment with bright lights and loud music, sensory deprivation, and being forced to hold stressful positions for hours, &c. In combination. While carefully crafted to fall short of the legal definition of 'torture', it certainly sounds like torture to me. (See some of those sites for reports by the programme's volunteers who submitted to it. They're shocking.)
Another, 'Is Torture A Good Idea?' was made by a lawyer who represented some of the Guantanamo detainees. Among other things, he looks at how the methods used there led to confessions that were completely and demonstrably false. I don't expect that all the detainees are innocent, but some certainly are. And without due process, how can you tell?
Besides which, how on earth could you know that any of the detainees were guilty of crimes? They haven't been charged with any, let alone had their cases heard in any form of court. Or are people now guilty of crimes simply because the US military thinks they are?
Ah, well that's all right then. Not illegal. Good. Indefensible, certainly. Morally reprehensible, absolutely. Barbaric, without question. But not illegal. Oh good.
I feel so much safer now.
Just out of interest, I wonder what would happen if, say, Japan had imprisoned a bunch of innocent US citizens at an offshore location, held them there for several years, and tortured them, without even charging them, let alone any other due process? I doubt assurances from the Japanese that their detention was perfectly legal would count for much...
- You have a 'them and us' mentality. IMO, the moment you start dividing the world into 'them' and 'us', the roots of trouble are sown. You start identifying with 'us', you start putting their goals and wellbeing over that of 'them'; you start treating 'them' unfairly; you start valuing 'them' as less important, worthy, or ultimately less human. This tribal mentality seems to be a natural human behaviour, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
- You have a simplistic Aristotelian notion that a person can be wholly 'good' or wholly 'evil'. The truth is that most people are some way in the middle. Even people who are mostly 'good' do bad things, and vice versa, whether through ignorance, carelessness, or just having a bad day.
- You somehow assume that every US citizen is a good guy, and by extension, that every non-US citizen isn't. Leaving aside the arrogance and parochiality which that displays, just how realistic is it?
The fact is that people in power will always want more power. It's human nature. Power corrupts, &c. There will always be bureaucratic empire-building, technological over-enthusiasm, pandering to the media and the mob; and while in a company those things are limited and to some extent correctable, in the government they are dangerous. So there must always be safeguards to stop them taking more power than is absolutely necessary.Do you implicitly trust every single person currently in your NSA? Do you believe that every one has only have your best interests at heart? Do you believe that every one is skilful and diligent enough that they'll always act in those interests, even if there's a conflict of interest somewhere? Do you believe that that will always be the case in future, however the organisation develops?
If you can't say 'yes' to every question there, I'd be a bit careful before you start calling them 'good guys' and all the baggage which goes along with that.
Of course the world isn't an ideal place, and some security forces are needed. But the dangers of a police state are known, unlike the somewhat nebulous and much exaggerated fears that the media and governments are using to scare the US and UK people into granting them such sweeping and, some would say, unnecessary powers.
For example, while the UK is probably comparable to a US state by area, it has something like a quarter of the population of the whole USA.
But then, judging by the ludicrous antics of the European Commission as regards software patents, I wouldn't say that the EU is being governed at all well at present... Which is probably why individual European states are so wary of giving up national powers.
If so, then I can see why its addition wasn't popular. IME, people who started off using Mac OS Classic tend to love it, and miss it on anything else. But people who started on any other graphical OS (like myself) tend to hate it. (I found myself battling against Mac OS 9 constantly for the year or so I used it, and found even the public beta of Mac OS X a breath of fresh air. I found even the Windows GUI more comfortable, and really missed MagiC which was my main OS before going Mac.)
Anyway, just what I was thinking. People have extremely rose-coloured memories. It's only natural! It's almost impossible to objectively judge something that you've known and loved (or hated) for so long.
Okay, so Jar-Jar was an annoying twat. But then C3PO was also an annoying twat, just a slightly different sort of annoying twat, one who's overlaid by years of warm fuzzy feelings. I wish I could compare the two of them fairly, but I can't. Like a lot of people, I see the former as execrable, and the latter as loveable; however, if I were coming fresh to them both, would I still see them that way round? I don't know. But maybe it's a useful exercise trying to guess.
No, copyright only protects the implementation of an idea. But then, that's all patents are supposed to protect, too...
So rewriting software is easy? Hmm...
I bet MS has a bigger advertising budget than Mozilla has, and yet Firefox seems to be doing okay at the moment... Marketing will always give the edge, but quality, originality, usefulness and style will always count for a lot too.
For one thing, there's already a perfectly good mechanism for protecting actual software and source code: copyright.
And for another, the bar to entry is much, much lower with software. You don't need all the resources for mass production, manufacturing, duplication, marketing, or anything other than a web site.
AIUI, the raison d'être of patents is to protect the inventor: to stop a big company coming along, copying his or her invention, and using their much bigger resources to develop and mass produce the product and lock him or her out. But that's not a problem for software; the big company can't copy the software directly, and they don't have much of an advantage in mass production either. So why have them?
The knack is to use a fingernail, not a fingertip. Much more accurate, too. (You don't need long fingernails; just bend and/or twist your finger a little.)
As well as the usual PDA-type apps (agenda, address book, notepad), I have tons more on it: several bookcases' worth of ebooks and reference works (novels, short stories, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Encarta, 4 Bible translations, &c); an off-line reader for the BBS I'm on, with a messagebase of over 200,000 messages; crosswords and other games; route planning and navigation; when I'm away from home I do all my email on it; it has Java, Perl, and its own inbuilt language, so I do development on it too.
In short, I use it for many of the things I might do on a laptop if I had one; the advantage there is that the Psion lives in my trouser pocket, so it's always to hand wherever I am*. I also use it for some of the things I can do on my mobile phone: writing text messages is much easier on the Psion's proper keyboard!
* I think this is really the key to PDA-type functionality. If it's not to hand, you won't use it; so it won't be useful, and you won't carry it. Vicious circle. Whereas in my case, because I can always whip it out and be ready for action ('ere, no, missus!) in a couple of seconds, I've got into the habit of putting appointments and stuff in it immediately, so it becomes invaluable. I also get into the habit of using the dictionary &c that way too, so I learn from it!
Whether the scope should be there probably depends on the language and system. In C, like you I've found p_ (for function parameters), g_ (for system-wide globals) and m_ (for module-level variables) useful; also s_ (for 4GL screen fields). That way, you know where to look for the definition, so you can find anything else out there. (Local variables get no prefix.)
In Java, though, I find scope is usually obvious. Methods tend to be short enough that parameters are usually obvious; class names should start in upper case, which should make them obvious (and you can track them down from import statements); fields in other classes are always obvious from context; and there are no globals to worry about. The only confusion is between local variables and class fields; for a while I used a single underscore prefix for fields, but I really don't find it necessary.
I'm sure that other languages have their own needs.
While we're here, might as well repeat my own principle for meaningful variable names: The length of a variable name should be directly proportional to its scope. A variable that's only used for a couple of lines after it's defined is best kept to a few characters; but one that's used throughout the system should have a name long enough to make its function clear.
Parent, you should be aware that that language you use, English, is named after a place: England. And that in some parts of the world (notably, the USA) you spell some words differently from* how we here in England do. (* You'll note that I didn't say 'differently than', which is an abomination.)
And grandparent, you should be aware that even here where 'programme' is a valid spelling for general use, we still use 'program' when referring to a list of instructions controlling the operation of a computer; 'disk' and 'dialog' are also US spellings which we use in that context.
So there.
Getting back on topic, I'm with the grandparent. Code should be completely transparent as to what its doing, but it's usually an extremely good idea to comment why. To fill in the big picture, and this bit of code's place in it. I wonder if the main reason for much crap code is that the coder simply didn't know the big picture...
Okay, perhaps 'hottie' was putting it a bit strongly. But JN-T is supposed to have pressed for her addition, to bring a recogniseable celebrity to the programme -- you see why I mentioned her?
Oh, great. Wonderful. Coz 'hotties' always make for great stories and characterisation, don't they?
The greater portability of MP3, combined with the range of tools available for it (encoders, decoders, splitter/joiners, repair tools, wrappers, level adjusters &c) mean that many folks might consider the negligible quality loss worthwhile.