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User: Half-pint+HAL

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  1. Re:Bogus algorithm on The World of YouTube Bubble Sort Algorithm Dancing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As others have said, bubble sort is efficient on mostly-sorted datasets. Bubbling sorting your database after every X insertions (for some value of X) or before a search (whichever comes first) makes the world a nicer place.

  2. Re: Call me conervative, but on The World of YouTube Bubble Sort Algorithm Dancing · · Score: 1

    Actually, insertion sort can be done with a single array structure. When you insert a value into the new list, you delete it from the old list. So the total len(old) + len(new) = len(original). You can use a single int to identify the partition between the segment of the array that represents the new list and the segment that represents the new, sorted list, and effectively do sort-in-place. Hell, it's not even an extra variable, as you would need that index to keep track of the next element to add to the new list anyway.

  3. Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Like chicken fried steak, for starters....

  4. Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    *shrug* I'm sure you say plenty of stuff that would sound weird to me.

  5. Re:It looks like a friggin video game. on Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy · · Score: 1

    Did you read my message? I was referring to something JJ Abrams has said about his use of lens flares and the reason for them. I didn't say he was the first. My point about Babylon 5 wasn't about the quality or means of creation of the lens flare effects, but their result in terms of the overall atmosphere and sense of illusion. If you're looking for an argument, argue what I wrote. Otherwise it's just boring.

  6. Re:It looks like a friggin video game. on Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy · · Score: 1

    You defeat your own argument by bringing up lens flare. JJ Abrams says it adds immediacy by implying that the cameraman was actually there, filming it, and didn't have enough time to set up the camera to avoid it. What Abrams misses is that making it self-consciously "filmed" reduces immediacy, because it means that the audience isn't there. In Babylon 5, the lens flare was mostly restricted to outer space, not inside the station, and the effect was doubly powerful. Lens flare in space said "you are not here", and the viewer was consequently deeper immersed in the illusion of being trapped in a tin can floating in space.

  7. Re:It looks like a friggin video game. on Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy · · Score: 1

    It annoyed me more than it should that the one epilogue was the sailing to the west bit, and there was a modern braided synthetic rope in the rigging. Because elves are sophisticated.

  8. Re:Blah on Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy · · Score: 1

    Muscle-memory has a lot to answer for in typos. Quite often I end up typing "ing" for words ending -ing, eg withing, or "and" instead of -an.

  9. Re:Non-internet use cases. on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Of course I meant to say "for anyone based in the US"...

  10. Non-internet use cases. on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    For anyone based in the UK who wants to make a submission against this, I suggest you base your argument on the versatility of wifi and its use in closed networks.

    For example, there are apps for Android and iOS that let you use your phone as a NAS box (network addressed storage) and this would break it. Or apps that use wifi to use your phone as a remote control for the media player software on your PC.

    If you build a list of the non-internet use cases for wifi, focusing particularly on activities business travellers are very likely to use, then it would be extremely hard for the FCC to find that Marriott's move isn't antagonistic to guests....

  11. Re:No, not "in other words" ... on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Perhaps this is "Corporate Assholes" trying to monetize their investment in their hotel property and make money as most businesses are created to do?

    No, it's them refusing to accept that they overestimated the value of wifi in the first instance. If the US is anything like the UK, the big chains will have been the first to jump on the "internet" bandwagon, and being the risk-averse cheapskates that they are, will have franchised out the internet to a third party. It's quite possible that Marriott don't even own the networking infrastructure installed in the building, and that they basically act as an agent by selling it to visitors. For a good few years, they got away with it, because they were selling it to business travellers who didn't care seeing as it was going on expenses -- heck, even when many smaller hotels were rolling out free wifi, some of the big hotels still offered paid-for internet only, and even then, it was wired internet ("if you don't have an Ethernet cable, please ask at reception"). Now they find themselves in a position where that business model has been blown apart because the single important class of customer -- the expense-account business traveller -- has an internet connection in his pocket.

    IE. their business model was shit, and now rather than writing off the losses, they're trying to artificially shore it up.

  12. Re:No, not "in other words" ... on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but add in the blocking signals for all those devices, and even the hotel wifi will be goosed.

  13. Re:To FCC on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here in the UK, the problem big hotel chains have is that they sold off the wifi as a franchise, thinking it would be a marketing boon to have wifi, but without having to pay the installation costs themselves. But then wifi became heavily commoditised and al the smaller hotels set up their wifi themselves and ran it as a basic cost. By not stumping up for their own internal wifi, the big players backed themselves into a corner -- they weren't able to offer free wifi without buying out the contract and infrastructure (cabling, routers etc) from their partner, and why would a professional public wifi outfit give up one of their few sources of income? Particularly given the number of business travels who don't give two hoots about the price as they're just going to put it on expenses anyway...?

    I suspect the situation is the same in the US, and the problem is that those pesky business travellers are now using tethered phones or portable hotspots. They're trying to re-establish an environment where the business travellers will just shrug their shoulders, pay the fee and expense it. Independent travellers and the sell-employed... well, they're just low-value collateral damage.

  14. Re:Interesting on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Next thing you know, you'll be restricted to 100ml bottles of liquids...

  15. Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    A) A chicken-fried steak. What is one of those? (Now answered.)
    B) The "when it's at home" is just a turn of phrase used to emphasise cluelessness. At least where I'm from.

  16. Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    It's not difficult to parse the syntax, even if you can't grasp the semantic meaning.

  17. Re:Amazon was being dumb on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    A basic syntactic analysis would probably identify it as a noun and pronounce it as intended (if it was used in a sentence) -- just as it would distinguish between the verb "record" and the noun "record".

  18. Re:Amazon was being dumb on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't it be easier to reprogram a few text-to-speech readers to look for both hyphens and dashes based on context,

    No, it wouldn't. Grammatical analysis is still a non-trivial task, as many of the syntactic rules are only applicable with certain words or classes of words -- ie there is no rule of "correct" syntax that can be determined without understanding the semantics. Without knowing the meaning and usage of two nouns, it would be impossible to computationally determine whether "woogoobloo–boobleell" should be correctly rendered "woogoobloo-boobleell" or "woogoobloo – boobleell". It's a task you could not do on a portable ebook reader on the fly. You might be able to manage a 75-90% accuracy on a cloud server model, but that's not efficient.

  19. Re:It was probably the wrong kind of "hyphen" on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    ...which is precisely what he did. The Slashdot time warp strikes again.

  20. Re: Once every page and a half... on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Why bother writing that when you're an American and therefore hate math? If you think I'm overgeneralising, then you'll hopefully see my point.

  21. Re:About time Amazon cracked down on this on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Actually, given that the Overture is in D major and a major passage is in A major, the Marriage of Figaro is relatively light on Cs. It's probably a bit overburdened with As though....

  22. Re:Link to the source on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    If the complaint was from a screen-reader user, Amazon were obliged to act under disability/accessibility legislation.

  23. Re:If readability was a crime... on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    The only way to kill a zombie subjunctive is a sharp blow to the head verb...

  24. Re:LOL ... w00t? on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Indeed -- en-dash is nominally as long as a lower case "n" is wide, hence the name. Can you guess what an em-dash is...? Nominally, I say, because modern typefaces normally have em-dashes that are as long as en-dashes, when "m" isn't twice as wide as "n"...

  25. Re:LOL ... w00t? on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Actually, that's unlikely to be a dyslexia-caused error. Dyslexia is a problem in sound processing/distinction, and its and it's sound exactly the same. It's just a plain old spelling error, and even English teachers do it regularly when typing....