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Comment Re:Syntax (Score 2) 3

Hi! Author here, the idea is not to modify JSON. The idea is improve how XML/HTML can be visualized/pretty printed and edited. There have been sooo many attempts before at this, you can check out this list of previous attempts

So I would say its the 70th attempt not 15th.... ;-) However contrary to most of the previous attempts, xmq is fully implemented and can convert back and forth between XMQ and XML/HTML (including namespaces and DTDs et al.) (and by accident it can also map to/from JSON, but the purpose is to bring JSON into the XML toolchains, not the other way round. The JSON mapping to XML through XMQ is simpler than the XSLT-3 mapping and others since the XMQ visualization of XML makes the mapping almost trivial.)

In particular you can see that NextStep Property lists in 1989 and LUA from 1993 both contributed data storage formats using braces {} and = equals. Long before JSON. The most similar previous attempt for XML was SDL by the Apache foundation 2003. In fact a subset of SDL can be parsed by XMQ! Notwithstanding that braces {} and = was used in the C programming language and its precursor B from the late 1960s.

Also using braces {} and = to render XML is trivial, the really interesting problem is how to solve the whitespace problem. I how to quote text that contains whitespace and at the same time offer a nice looking pretty printing.

You cannot pretty print HTML, since external dependencies on CSS will let you know when the whitespace is significant or not, ie if you are allowed to introduce newlines and indentation. And even if do track the whitespace through CSS and other settings, and if the conclusion is that you cannot pretty print because the whitespace is significant, then, dang, you cannot pretty print.

Submission + - XMQ/HTMQ A better html than html? (libxmq.org) 3

anjara writes: HTML and XML are the perhaps mostl widely used computer languages in the world. Alas, they are also hard to pretty print. In fact, it is nigh impossible to pretty print HTML without potentially introducing significant whitespace.

The XMQ language (https://libxmq.org) language can store XML/HTML (and JSON) documents and always be pretty printed. Use the xmq tool to pretty print any XML/HTML/JSON into XMQ which is much easier to read and can be syntax colored in your terminal or in your browser.

You can also convert back and forth between XMQ and XML, HTML and JSON, taking advantage of both XML toolchains and JSON toolchains.

Here is an excerpt from the XMQ homepage:

XML can be human readable/editable if it is used for markup of longer human language texts, ie books, articles and other documents etc. In these cases the xml-tags represent a minor part of the whole xml-file.

However XML is often used for data storage and configuration files (eg pom.xml). In such files the xml-tags represent a major part of the whole xml-file. This makes the data storage and config files hard to read and edit directly by hand. Today, the tags are a major part of html files as well, which is one reason why html files are hard to read and edit.

XMQ solves the verbosity of tags by using braces to avoid closing xml-tags and parentheses to surround the attributes. XMQ solves the whitespace confusion by requiring all intended whitespace to be quoted.

You can try it now on GNU/Linux, MacOS and Windows!

Submission + - The Lost History of Sodium Wiring

Rei writes: On the face of it, sodium seems like about the worst thing you could make a wire out of — it oxidizes rapidly in air, releases hot hydrogen gas in water, melts at 97,8C, and has virtually no tensile strength. Yet, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Nacon Corporation did just that — producing thousands of kilometers of high-gauge sodium wiring for electrical utilities — and it worked surprisingly well.

While sodium has three times the (volumetric) resistivity of copper and nearly double that of alumium, its incredibly low density gives it a gravimetric resistivity less than a third of copper and half of alumium. Priced similar to alumium per unit resistivity (and much cheaper than copper), limitless, and with almost no environmental impact apart from its production energy consumption, sodium wiring proved to be much more flexible without the fatigue or installation damage risks of alumium. The polyethylene insulation proved to offer sufficient tensile strength on its own to safely pull the wire through conduits, while matching its thermal expansion coefficient. The wiring proved to have tamer responses to both over-current (no insulation burnoff) and over-voltage (high corona inception voltage) scenarios than alumium as well. Meanwhile, "accidental cutting" tests, such as with a backhoe, showed that such events posed no greater danger than cutting copper or alumium cabling. Reliability results in operation were mixed — while few reliability problems were reported with the cables themselves, the low-voltage variety of Nacon cables appeared to have unreliable end connectors, causing some of the cabling to need to be repaired during 13 years of utility-scale testing.

Ultimately, it was economics, not technical factors, that doomed sodium wiring. Lifecycle costs, at 1970s pricing, showed that using sodium wiring was similar to or slightly more expensive for utilities than using alumium. Without an unambiguous and significant economic case to justify taking on the risks of going larger scale, there was a lack of utility interest, and Nacon ceased production.

Comment Re:Stretching things? (Score 1) 2

Nah, when the license specify that the recipient must receive the copyright notice, the conditions and the disclaimer in the documentation and/or other material, then it is for the purpose of the recipient to read and be able to understand. If you printed the license in a completely unreadable font in the manual, then you would not comply. If you store the license completely unreadable Huffman coded inside a flash, then you would not comply.

Submission + - The secret use of Minix3 inside Intel ME can be copyright infringement 2

anjara writes: Almost all Free Software licenses (BSD,MIT,GPL...) require some sort of legal notice (legal attribution) given to the recipient of the software. Both when the software is distributed in source and in binary forms. The legal notice usually contains the copyright holder's name and the license text.

This means that it is not possible to hide and keep secret, the existence of Free Software that you have stuck into your product that you distribute. If you do so, then you are not complying with the Free Software license and you are committing a copyright infringement!

This is exactly what Intel seems to have done with the Intel ME. The Minix3 operating system license require a legal notice, but so far it seems like Intel has not given the necessary legal notices. (Probably because they want to keep the inside of the ME secret.) Thus not only is Minix3 the most installed OS on our recent x86 cpus, but it might also the most pirated OS on our recent x86 cpus!

Here is a longer explanation that I wrote:
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017...

Comment Re:Imagine the day you're booted off Google (Score 2) 250

FUD? I don't work for the competition. In fact I am pretty dependent on Google services, and this is a source of anxiety for me. This is real concern for me. You, on the other hand, sound real defensive and like you kinda might work for Google or someone making Chromebooks.

I posted the two links I posted because I couldn't find the really dramatic ones I had seen before, and didn't feel like spending time searching for them. They're out there. But my point stands. If your Google account is blocked, it's YOUR problem. There is nobody to phone, and nobody who cares. You're not a Google customer, just an eyeball. There are account recovery options, which may or may not work. Nobody cares.

You could still use your Chromebook as a web browser, but all the nicely integrated Google services you depend on won't work, or if you use a new account, won't have your data. Your data's missing. Again, nobody is responsible.

And the Chromebook customer support centre will tell you that your Chromebook works fine, and you're welcome to open a new account. Google takes no responsibility for your missing data. Check your TOS.

And you sound like someone who's never had an accidental TOS violation or a false-positive security lockout. I have. It's mildly annoying if it happens with your bank or with Facebook. With Google if you 'live in the cloud', it could be devastating. As that first link shows. Your faith in Google only blocking your account if someone's hacked it is charming but seems overly trusting to me. What if they're wrong? What if they're right but you still need that data?

Comment Imagine the day you're booted off Google (Score 5, Interesting) 250

Google is a wonderful company, and their products are useful and seductive and beautifully interlinked. But they're free to use and you're not the customer. And every day a certain number of people have their Google account blocked, for one reason or another, and find that there's no recourse to Google to fix that. In fact, there's no customer service department at all.

Examples on the internet of this are easy to find:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/open-letter-to-google-why-have-you-taken-away-my-google-gmail-accounts/7873/
http://classicsynth.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Get-Disabled-Google-Account-Back

Now imagine that this happens to you, and your laptop has just become a paperweight. And this time, you've paid for it. Hmmm.

Comment Response confirms the author's paranoia. (Score 1) 197

Author of anonymous letter:
"You have many smart employees, many that have great ideas for the future, but unfortunately the culture at RIM does not allow us to speak openly without having to worry about the career-limiting effects."

Anonymous RIM corporate-speak response:
"It is obviously difficult to address anonymous commentary and it is particularly difficult to believe that a “high level employee” in good standing with the company would choose to anonymously publish a letter on the web rather than engage their fellow executives in a constructive manner"

I'd hate to be a smart productive person at RIM right now with this kind of bullshit attitude going on. Obviously the points the employee makes are dead-on. There's too much deadwood, not enough vision, and a misplaced loyalty culture: people who speak up are in danger of losing their jobs, whereas high-level managers who make crap software just keep on making more of it.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Tethering my iPad Wifi to an Android HTC G1 was much easier than I'd expected! 1

I thought this was gonna be one of those long scary hacks where I bricked the phone eventually. Not at all so. After reading through plenty of different methods and looking up a few apps, here's what happened. Note that I'm in the UK and using a T-mobile G1 with a free data plan good for 1GB a month. Pretty good really. It's so rare that stuff just works the first time, so I thought I'd post and let the world know.

Space

Introducing Magnet-Responsive Memory Foam 69

Roland Piquepaille writes "The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force. This polycrystalline nickel-manganese-gallium alloy is potentially cheaper and lighter than other materials currently used in devices ranging from sonar to precision valves. It also could be used to design biomedical pumps without moving parts and even for space applications and automobiles."

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