blog: file knapsack problem

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog spot found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/file-knapsack.htm

[Kilmatead]

But why do we have to think in bytes in order to use it? I mean, if I have 400MB of free space on a drive, I don't jolly well sing to myself (like in Mary Poppins) about having to type in 419430400 bytes, now do I? That's not a song I want to listen to.

I mean, in one of the Find-dialog children you break the size-selection dropdown to 1, Kilo, Mega, and Giga - so what's with bytes? How about an entry for "Free-space Size of Opposite Pane", conveniently labelled "Whatever Fits and Fills your Codpiece"?

An intelligent knapsack... isn't "wearable computing" supposed to be the next big thing? Considering my fridge was supposed to have an intelligent computer in it 20 years ago (and it still doesn't), I won't hold my breath for an intelligent backback that fills itself with enough socks to last me a week.

And what's with the "Synthetic a priori toolset" - did I write this blog post and forget that I had done it? Aren't you supposed to be using small words to appeal to the great unwashed? It's my job to alienate and challenge the reader - it's yours to be the soft and cuddly uncle who understands the users' problems and offer logical solutions to them.

I seriously doubt John Smith from Kansas City would know a Synthetic a priori toolset if it came up and mugged him. Obviously, we know he uses one every day of the week - but he doesn't think like that: all he sees are the old rusting toolboxes left in the garage after his father passed away, filled with journeyman tools of a bygone era - leaving the son to wonder what a set of lathing callipers would go for on EBay in this century.

And that stuff weighs a tonne! How many bytes in a tonne? Eh? Where's a good a priori dropdown when you really need one?

Come on Uncle Nikos, get with the times!

[Tuxman]

I mean, in one of the Find-dialog children you break the size-selection dropdown to 1, Kilo, Mega, and Giga - so what's with bytes?

... or kibibytes.

[Kilmatead]

Or not? Long live ambiguity.

How many kibibyte in 1 kilobyte? The answer is 0.9765625.

I don't care if it's kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi, exbi, zebi, yobi or any other silly prefix that yobbos, tossers, or trainspotters in white coats invent out of boredom so the rest of us can have more accurate measurements of sheets-per-toilet-roll, so long as the only bytes I need to worry about are from sizeof(datatypes).

[Tuxman]

Depends on what you define as "size".

[Kilmatead]

Until one of these fancy prefix-boffins comes over to my house and chops my green-peppers and onions into perfectly shaped non-contiguous cubes of ligatureless plant-matter (so I can cook an omelette in peace), I'm not going to worry about whether half the population thinks a colloquial 24-count offset is really going to cause Armageddon. And hey, even if it did, I'd applaud that kind of foulup. If you're going to mess things up, at least do it properly.

Besides, didn't you get the memo? "Size" doesn't matter - and you can stick that in your codpiece and smoke it.

[Tuxman]

Heh heh, "stick"...

Basically I would consider x² to be a file manager for those who do care about SI units. If you don't, use Windows Explorer again.

[Kilmatead]

Ah, but thankfully Nikos' (otherwise infuriating) conservatism would never try to overtly shove SI (Sanguine Intelligence?) rice-crispy "standards" down our throats in a literal fashion - he'd find a more devious method. Like putting fluoride in the tapwater.

Bring back the Firewood Blogs I say, now those had practical applications this time of year!

[Kilmatead]

Wait - I get it now - your "...or kibibytes" remark was actually your 1024th post! Very punny of you.

[Tuxman]

Oh, degrading by surrounding with quotes. Now that's subtle!

This time of the year is boring.

[Tuxman]

Wait - I get it now - your "...or kibibytes" remark was actually your 1024th post! Very punny of you.

Wow - I haven't even noticed that. Probably I should suggest the admin to add special user ranks for 1,024, 2,048 etc. posts.

[Kilmatead]

I wasn't degrading, I was belittling. I don't like makey-upy terms that are relying upon 2^10 and 2^20 exponent maths to support their linguistic claims. It's like those so-called "bagels" that supermarkets sell these days in a bag. They're not real! Yet they call them bagels! A whole generation misled by cheap propaganda! Sometimes I'd give my left arm for a decent New-York bakery.

Wow - I haven't even noticed that.

A good samurai is always aware of his surroundings. Very important when travelling on subways or commenting on a BBS. Or when trying to prove the butterfly effect. No detail is too small in the greater cacophony of internet noise.

[nikos]

I moved to slovakia recently (!) and since all TV is dubbed, the only thing I can do is work and read books... hence the synthetic stuff (thanks Bertrand Russell )

regarding the kb/mb issue, you must have noticed that this kind of generic text dialog pops up in a hundred places in xplorer2, so it cannot have any special KB/MB dropdowns. Yes, probably my DNA descends from Leonidas himself (or call me spartan). But the conversion formula is simple, add 000 for kilo and another 000 for mega (for those that are math challenged)

[Kilmatead]

I moved to slovakia recently

But are you on the good-side or the bad-side of the Danube? These things matter, you know. Supporting the wrong hockey-team can get you gutted.

...you must have noticed that this kind of generic text dialog pops up in a hundred places in xplorer2, so it cannot have any special KB/MB dropdowns.

Yes, but that's just laziness and poor-coding (like the fiasco you pulled with the export-settings modal):



What I'm saying is that with a little care and attention to using KB/MB dropdowns you could add a little class to our lives. Or, at least, decent bagels. Budapest ('pesshht') has some decent bakeries.

[Tuxman]

Now that nikos is Slovakian, how can we make fun of his Greek blood now?