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Comment Re:Patten troll or not? (Score 1) 172

How can that even be called "XML" in the first place? XML has a specific format, described in a standard - and it describes the tags as being in-line with the data. A format that separates them, no matter how useful it might be, is not XML.

What is being stored on disk is not an XML document only in the same sense that foo.xml.gz is not an XML document. Just because you store foo.xml.gz doesn't mean foo.xml stops being XML.

Sorry, but the disk format _does_ matter, since the XML standard specifies what the disk format is supposed to be. Making up your own format and calling that XML because a transformation exists that turns it into XML is disingeneous at best.

If something is XML then it can be used with the large number of XML tools that are out there. Neither the format described here, nor your .gz format, nor for that matter .odf, meets that criterium. And you'll notice that in fact the ODF people are careful to state that ODF is _based on_ XML, not that it _is_ XML.

Comment Re:Patten troll or not? (Score 1) 172

It's about a somewhat specific way of storing xml for documents in file systems or streams that has gains some efficiency over the conventional XML format. Specifically you write the documents plain text out as raw plain text without any XML tags. Then in separate location you write our all the xml tags. After each tag you write a pointer to the chearacter position in the plain text where the tag needs to go.

How can that even be called "XML" in the first place? XML has a specific format, described in a standard - and it describes the tags as being in-line with the data. A format that separates them, no matter how useful it might be, is not XML.

Comment Re:Actually.. (Score 4, Insightful) 86

Ok, fair enough, I can understand that. But the other poster is right: you treat this as it is almost meaningless, while in reality someone who was blind can now at least read a clock. That's a better level of vision than I have without my glasses, btw.

And hey, who knows, maybe you are curing blindness every day, maybe this will _not_ lead to further enhanced cures, maybe the "real" breakthrough is just around the corner. But for now this seems to be a major step, and once in a while it is good to step back and stare in awe at what mankind has achieved thus far.

Now bring on that Mars-colony already, damnit. I was born after the first man walked on the moon, I don't want to die before the first man walks on Mars...

Comment Re:Artists aren't distributed by multiple labels (Score 2, Interesting) 386

If you like a particular artist, you have to buy that artist's work from their label. It's not like Walmart and Target where if you don't like the price of Coca-Cola at Walmart then you can just buy it at Target. If your favorite artist's work is locked up with DRM, which you want to avoid, your only choice is to violate the DMCA. Or you can violate copyright and download it for free. What other choice do you have? Download YouTube videos of someone doing a bad cover version of the songs you like? There is no other choice.

How about not buying anything at all? Will your life come to a sudden end if you cannot listen to a handful of tunes? Not buying that music, not listening to that music, is a choice as well. And it has the major advantages that (1) it is legal, and (2) it stops putting money in the pocket of the record companies, giving them less power to corrupt laws on a worldwide scale.

Comment Re:Not exactly a surprise ... (Score 1) 386

You mention copyright violation by an individual. Well. as soon as it hits a P2P sharing program, it is no longer an individual. It is potentially everone on the planet.

The problem with that approach is that it makes a single crime, "spreading music to everyone on the planet", punishable multiple times. In fact, you could punish everyone on the planet for spreading the music to themselves!

It seems a lot like double dipping to me: either that single person committed the crime and can be punished for all subsequent damages, or he is only responsible for spreading to a handful of people, and punishment is recursively allocated to each of those as well.

Of course, the biggest limiting factor is knowledge. iTunes exists because people do not know how to obtain digital goods for free. The folks that know aren't paying any more, so the system is now supported on the backs of the ignorant.

What an incredibly sad view of humanity. iTunes exists because people really don't mind paying artists for their hard work, and because Apple aren't total asshats about DRM and instead make it convenient to download, pay for, and listen to music.

Comment Re:WWTBD? (Score 1) 389

"Show this experiment to your boss the next time you are selecting a programming language for a project at work."J

What would the boss do? Maybe he'd come to the conclusion that Java and C# are for professionals while Python and Ruby are for hobbyists?

The boss would make you work in Java or C# because if it were fun, it wouldn't be work...

Comment Re:Thank goodness (Score 1) 517

Oblig movie quote:

Dr. Evil: You know Goldmember, I don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch. Okay, perv boy?

Yeah, I'm sure you've NEVER heard that one before and all, but, you know, it never gets old. :p

By the way, how do you pronounce "vrij" - is it like "fridge", but with a vee, or what? I'm gonna start using that just to throw people off.

The "ij" sound in Dutch is a vowel, you are not supposed to pronounce the "j" as a separate consonant. I don't think there is an equivalent sound in English, but if you think of it as "i" you are not too far off. It will mark you instantly as an English speaker though ;-)

Comment Re:Thank goodness (Score 1) 517

In fact, the value is so enormous that no one can afford it...

If you're a techie, you should use be more accurate in your use of language. Substituting the word 'price' for 'value' is something you should only do in sleazy sales pitches.

The mind boggles at the quality of todays' trolls. If I had substituted the word "price" for "value", I would imagine that my posting would contain the word "price" somewhere. Since it doesn't, I can only conclude that you are full of it.

Besides, yours is a language in which you need qualifiers for "free" to indicate whether you mean "as in beer" or "as in speech". I was merely making a clever play on that by substituting "value" (as in beer) for "value" (as in speech). Meanwhile, a decent language, such as mine, makes the distinction between freedoms naturally through the simple measure of using different words to begin with ("gratis" and "vrij").

We will have this discussion again when you can speak my language, Dutch, as well as I can speak yours...

Comment Re:Thank goodness (Score 3, Insightful) 517

People are starting to see the value of this. Also of programming in logic based languages like Haskell, ML etc.

People have seen the value of this since the first days of programming. In fact, the value is so enormous that no one can afford it... And they have just finished proving that first few lines of code they wrote. In another five decades they hope to be able to have Notepad proven and ready to run so you can actually get some work done!

Comment The Amiga Hand? (Score 5, Interesting) 517

The Amiga Hand was the boot screen, not an error screen. You're thinking of the famous Guru Meditation.

Besides, who says that the Amiga kernel did _not_ meet the specifications? Have you read them? Does it mention "crash free" anywhere?

The Haskell code is called a "specfication", but if it is Haskell code, surely it should count as a _program_ already? How can you prove that that program is bug-free? How about conceptual bugs?

Was the toolchain verified? How about the hardware on which it runs?

What overhead does this approach have? Are the benefits worth it?

I'm not saying this is all bullshit, but it looks like me that they are pointing to one program, calling it a "specification", and then demonstrating machine translation / verification to a similar program. I'm not sure if I buy that methodology.

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