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

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

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

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

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..

I suppose we could call this 'speaker net'.

belly lol.. me too ;o)

You've done TheCarp's wife and you get modded insightful ? Only on slashdot ;o)

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

Writing mock lobster objects.

Ever had a super nerdy girlfriend ? eh ?

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

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.

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.

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 !!!