Slashdot Mirror

http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html

The article doesn't mention that you can do functional programming in python. For someone who uses python already, is there any reason to try haskell etc (i.e., beside just the interest in learning another language)? Python use is pretty widespread these days.

What medium?

This one, for instance, when you use the HTML formatted option.

Here's some code for you, from here:

(Yes, I used slashdot's ecode tag, which fails to preserve the leading spaces even though it is for inserting code snippets)

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import string, sys

# If no arguments were given, print a helpful message
if len(sys.argv)==1:
print 'Usage: celsius temp1 temp2 ...'
sys.exit(0)

# Loop over the arguments
for i in sys.argv[1:]:
try:
fahrenheit=float(string.atoi(i))
except string.atoi_error:
print repr(i), "not a numeric value"
else:
celsius=(fahrenheit-32)*5.0/9.0
print '%i\260F = %i\260C' % (int(fahrenheit), int(celsius+.5))

I am aware that the plain old text option mostly works nowadays, but there are sometimes problems with that as well. A few months ago, it was totally broken as well in this regard.

Countless other forums out there have issues with preserving code formatting, not to mention some web-based chat systems where you might want to paste a code snippet.

If, for example, one guy uses tabs and one guy uses spaces, and the tab guy has his tabstop set to 2 or 4, while the spaces guy has left it at 8... well, stuff is going to look weird. Forcing everyone to the same convention is something you should be doing anyway, and I'd rather it happen automatically (by breaking stuff).

In languages that use delimiters as block and line markers, you can run a code beautifier to standardize the code, and even fix code that is horribly malformatted. If the white space gets screwed up really bad in a python program (line endings are deleted somehow), it will it not only fail to run, it will require a human to go in and unscrew it.

In fact, there's still lame justifications going around about other warts about the language.

Still, there are sites like this that list flaws in the language, and the community tends to whine about the warts all the time. The warts are also going to be fixed. The whitespace issue is not considered a wart.

I do suggest he tweak his attention span. To tune unhelpful people like yourself out.

It's generally considered a good thing to try to avoid giving up immediately. It's an extremely important virtue for a programmer...

Andrew Kuchling wrote a very nice overview of the Zeroconf technology.
Complete with a pure Python module implementation and some example programs.

See my other post with links on how to setup TLS for your mail server, more info on building the web-of-trust, and GPG downloads for your windows friends.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132181&cid =11046941

Also note that the ======== http://link ======== at the end of the parent post has been mangled by Slashdot Submissions Co. and should be fixed before forwarding it on to your friends, or posting anywhere. Broken links have never impressed anybody.

WTF - Here are some links from the link above again. Sorry about the bandwidth wastage but I think it's worth people seeing as practices contained within are sure to benefit us all (in Utopia - yay!)

[--snip-- (abridged) ]

WinPT :: Windows Privacy Tray [sf.net] is a good place to direct your friends still using windows.

I think a resource for mail administrators on how to add TLS capabilities to their SMTP handlers could be healthy for the net as well. On there would be step by steps on how to TLS-enable sendmail, postfix, qmail, proprietary-this, and proprietary-gateway-that.
:: Sendmail
:: Exim
:: Qmail

If you're running Postfix you've got little excuse to not be running TLS.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.gen eral/979

My SMTP traffic is opportunisticly TransportLayerSecure. Is yours?

Get a free server certificate from cacert.org If you haven't already you should add their Root Certificate to the list your browser accepts. They will also remotely sign your PGP/GPG keys and issue free S/MIME certificates as well. Very cool, totally free, and a distributed trust model rather than a top-down, it'll-cost-you-$199.00-for-an-SSL-cert model.

For more keysigning fun DO NOT MISS http://biglumber.com/! Find people nearby and extend your web-o-trust.

Host a keysigning party at] your next LUG [debian.org] meeting .

You can get a email-address-verified signature at http://www.imperialviolet.org/keyverify.html

Learn about using subkeys .

- - - - - - GPG keys -- The new web. - - - - - - -

[--snip-- (abridged) ]

Does anybody know of a good clearinghouse with information on plugins for a variety of mailers I could send my dad, high school friends, or grandmother to?

Anybody know of a list out there that collects information on how to secure your email, what's it's all about, and general key maintainence issues (for "the everyday net user")?

WinPT :: Windows Privacy Tray is a good place to direct your friends still using windows.

I'd like to be able to say to a friend: "Here's my key. Go to keepitprivate.com and find a plugin for the email software you use. Then next time you send me some email, just be sure to put it in an "envelope" (it just takes one extra click or can be set to happen automatically). You don't even need to lick a stamp! I value your privacy as much as I hope you value mine!"

I think a resource for mail administrators on how to add TLS capabilities to their SMTP handlers could be healthy for the net as well. On there would be step by steps on how to TLS-enable sendmail, postfix, qmail, proprietary-this, and proprietary-gateway-that. My SMTP traffic is opportunisticly TransportLayerSecure. Is yours?
Red Hat :: Sendmail
:: Exim
:: Qmail

If you're running Postfix you've got little excuse to not be running TLS.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.gen eral/979

Get a free server certificate from cacert.org If you haven't already you should add their Root Certificate to the list your browser accepts. They will also remotely sign your PGP/GPG keys and issue free S/MIME certificates as well. Very cool, totally free, and a distributed trust model rather than a top-down, it'll-cost-you-$199.00-for-an-SSL-cert model.

For more keysigning fun DO NOT MISS http://biglumber.com/! Find people nearby and extend your web-o-trust.

Host a keysigning party at your next LUG meeting.

You can get a email-address-verified signature at http://www.imperialviolet.org/keyverify.html

Learn about using subkeys.

- - - - - - GPG keys -- The new web. - - - - - - -

Except that ESR does indeed play a damn mean flute.. So what if he attributes his skill to some higher being?

(I heard ESR at the Eight Python Conference, when Barry Warsaws band The Cravin' Dogs played and ESR just fetched his flute unannounced and joined in for a jam. Sorry, couldn't find any online photos anymore and no sound recordings where made; here is a report instead).

They aren't competitors. Notes is a collaboration/groupware suite.

And we aren't collaborating in a group right now? People don't use Intranets and Internet email for what they would have bought Notes for in the mid-90s? I knwo for a fact that that's what happens at non-Microsoft shops. w.g. Oracle doesn't use Notes internally. It uses Internet email, web-based solutions and some collaborative addons of their own.

They aren't competitors. XML is just one of many protocols that can be used to implement CORBA. Corba is an Architecture, XML is a data transmission format.

I was talking about XML in the large: XML+SOAP+WSDL, etc. Obviously these are both pitched as enterprise integration technologies and XML-based ones have a lot more traction in business today (think .NET and Axis) than CORBA does.

You don't (if you are sane) use a scripting language to write enterprise-level apps like finance or CRM software, or secure distributed systems, or high-performance numerical software.

GNU Enterprise is finance software written in Python. Secure distribute systems in Python? How about mojo nation or ZEO, or the MEMS Exchange or BitTorrent. High performance numerical software? You'd better tell someone down at Lawrence Livermore National Labs that they are insane because they show up at every Python conference and by now have spent millions on Python code. I don't see Java or C# mentioned on their list of key languages. Java in particular is a horrible language for that sort of thing. Do a Google for "Java Floating Point".

Look: you can understimate Python just as the Unix vendors understimated Linux. In the long run it doesn't really hurt anyone, even you. It is always more comfortable to presume that things will stay in the mental boxes we've built for them in our minds.

Commerce and Science have always striven to serve and benefit humanity. Out of nothing but the noblest and most generous ideals - the ample distribution of peace, comfort and plenty.

Like, here,
or here,
But, that's in the past. It's *today* that counts! :)

Quote from http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/xrays. htm :
X-ray machines in shoe stores

In the 1950s, every shoe store had a x-ray machine. People would try on a pair of shoes and stick their feet under the x-ray machine to look at how well the shoes fit their feet. Not only could you see the outline of the feet and the bones inside the shoe, but you could also see the nails that held parts of the shoe together.

After an increase of cancer among shoe salesmen and people using those shoe x-ray machines often, they were banned.
From TV monitors

X-rays coming from TV tube and PC monitors is general low-level. There has been efforts to provide shielding in the monitor screen to reduce any harmful rays.

Most people don't sit close to a TV for 8 hours a day, but man y do sit close to their PC monitor at work. It is uncertain if the low-level x-ray radiation from the monitor can cause harm, but it does not seem to be the case.

Oh, by the way :
http://www.amk.ca/personal/pictures/qmd.html

Two years of Parrot development and it still cannot run Perl. And as for this talk of Parrot running Python and Ruby - it's just talk.
Here is what a Python guru said about Parrot when he tried to port Python to it:

Parrot development is stalled

The VM hasn't yet been shown to be useful as a language target. The main list for Parrot development, perl6-internals, was started in September 2000. Over two years later, in March 2003, there are still no real languages running on the VM. There are only a few toy languages such as Befunge and Jako, and fragments of Perl, BASIC, and Scheme compilers that are far from being able to run any percentage of the Perl and Scheme programs out there. (They're at about the same level as parrot-gen.py; if you pick a random example from a book or a random program found on a web page, the chance of being able to successfully run it is essentially zero.) To some degree this is because Parrot is closely tied to the development of Perl 6, and Perl 6 development is also proceeding very slowly.
No obvious benefit from using Parrot

What new possibilities does Parrot provide for Python? Stacklessness? Better GC? A new I/O layer? Interoperability with other languages? None of these is more than mildly interesting to me, and none, I suspect, will be viewed as a killer application by the Python community in general.

Most of the claimed benefits, such as better performance, haven't been actually demonstrated at this point. There are no real languages running on Parrot, so you can't compare the standard implementation of language X to the Parrot version of language X. Instead it's simply stated that Parrot will be faster than existing language implementations, but proof-by-assertion isn't very convincing.

• PHP Perl-compatible
• Python re module
• Python re howto

It would be more decentralized to encourage people to publish data as RDF. I have a near-trivial book review schema for marking things as reviews, and
Dublin Core can already express title/author/publisher information.

But still, what does it all matter as long as userfriendly.org is still online?

To: Illiad

We respectfully ask you to delete all content hosted at userfriendly.org at your earliest convenience.

What's currently hosted there is, by its astonishing amateurism and outright offensive unfunniness, diluting the "User Friendly" concept currently used by parodies of boring and badly drawn web comics based on the incessant repetition of ancient tech support jokes and stereotypical anti-Microsoft zealotry.

These parodies are facing a bleak future, when there are sites like yours that are honestly intended to be "entertaining" by using even more tired clichés and even worse artwork than the parodies. How are parody authors supposed to survive if the objects of parody suddenly start to express the parodied traits even more extremely than the parodies?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-04 -07
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-08 -20&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-04 -17
http://www.somethingawful.com/features/usarfreindl ey/
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-11.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-20.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-27.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-32.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-39.htm
http://somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/phot oshop/variety3/Eegah_comic.jpg
http://www.themushroom.com/mush0122/unfriendlyuser .html

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=user%20fr iendly
http://internettrash.com/users/theepisodes/keenshi t.htm
http://rmitz.org/comics.html
http://www.amk.ca/books/h/User_Friendly.html
http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Rant s/ComicStrips.html

Enough already. Stop it.

why is userfriendly.org still on-line?

To: Illiad

We respectfully ask you to delete all content hosted at userfriendly.org at your earliest convenience.

What's currently hosted there is, by its astonishing amateurism and outright offensive unfunniness, diluting the "User Friendly" concept currently used by parodies of boring and badly drawn web comics based on the incessant repetition of ancient tech support jokes and stereotypical anti-Microsoft zealotry.

These parodies are facing a bleak future, when there are sites like yours that are honestly intended to be "entertaining" by using even more tired clichés and even worse artwork than the parodies. How are parody authors supposed to survive if the objects of parody suddenly start to express the parodied traits even more extremely than the parodies?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-04 -07
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-08 -20&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-04 -17
http://www.somethingawful.com/features/usarfreindl ey/
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-11.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-20.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-27.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-32.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /comic-39.htm
http://somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/phot oshop/variety3/Eegah_comic.jpg
http://www.themushroom.com/mush0122/unfriendlyuser .html

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=user%20fr iendly
http://internettrash.com/users/theepisodes/keenshi t.htm
http://rmitz.org/comics.html
http://www.amk.ca/books/h/User_Friendly.html
http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Rant s/ComicStrips.html

Enough already. Stop it.

Ah, XML ... the be all and end all silver bullet for the web.

I believe these are starting points.

http://www.amk.ca/recipe/

http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=192

tography/page-1.html for more quotations like that:)

I wrote a guide to becoming a Python developer that will be of interest.

Untrue. They have been added to Python 2.1. See this document

BTW, Python 2.1 also has garbage collection for reclaiming cyclic datastructures. I'm not sure if it helps extension writers, though.

The reaction to nested scopes was widespread concern about the dangers of breaking code with the 2.1 release, and it was strong enough to make the Pythoneers take a more conservative approach. This approach consists of introducing a convention for enabling optional functionality in release N that will become compulsory in release N+1.

what you have on your red hat box would be fine if thats how python was distributed, it kinda emulates what i was blabbering about above. but when someone using python on another platform who only has 2.1 and mabe some extentions gives you a bunch of scripts, the least youll have to do is s/python/python2/ in the first line. maybe thats all it takes. ill have to play with it.

i did just look on a another machine that only has python 2.1 installed. it did install a binary called python2.1. theres still the question of extentions written in python and thier compatibility with newer releases, have to look at that too.

this may seem bitchy or whatever but i really dont want to spend my time learning a new language and writing a buch of stuff and then get bitten by something chaging incompatibly to where i end up having to write different version for certain platforms. at least not more than changes that can themselves be easily scripted...

The reaction to nested scopes was widespread concern about the dangers of breaking code with the 2.1 release, and it was strong enough to make the Pythoneers take a more conservative approach. This approach consists of introducing a convention for enabling optional functionality in release N that will become compulsory in release N+1.

what you have on your red hat box would be fine if thats how python was distributed, it kinda emulates what i was blabbering about above. but when someone using python on another platform who only has 2.1 and mabe some extentions gives you a bunch of scripts, the least youll have to do is s/python/python2/ in the first line. maybe thats all it takes. ill have to play with it.

i did just look on a another machine that only has python 2.1 installed. it did install a binary called python2.1. theres still the question of extentions written in python and thier compatibility with newer releases, have to look at that too.

this may seem bitchy or whatever but i really dont want to spend my time learning a new language and writing a buch of stuff and then get bitten by something chaging incompatibly to where i end up having to write different version for certain platforms. at least not more than changes that can themselves be easily scripted...

At the 1999 Ottawa Linux Symposium, Ian Goldberg, Zero Knowledge's Chief Technical Officer, gave a talk about their system (using xdvi as his presentation software, amusingly). Basically it applies the principles of an anonymous remailer network to individual IP packets. It's a really nifty hack, but given the general population's indifference to security and anonymity, it's hard to see how a business can be built through providing it.

#!/usr/local/bin/python-1.5.2

for some scripts and

#!/usr/local/bin/python-2.1

for others than maybe this could work if the different versions of python are treated like differnt languages that just happen to resemble eachother and have thier own sets of extentions and libs etc that each interpreter knows how to handle (and of course, the sym link to your "default" python interpreter)

i realize that you can make wrappers that would create the proper environment, but thats not exactly a portable solution. the way it is now looks like they want you to keep re writing your old code.

But, FYI, Perl has a coupla thousand killer apps, most of which are available on CPAN.

Industry Standards include:

• CGI
• LWP
• DBI
• AxKit
• mod_perl
• and, of course, slash

The Beatles never flamed the Stones. The Stones never dissed the Beatles. And at no time did either party rip on Bob Dylan or badmouth Marvin Gaye. Language designers should celebrate their brethren. Particularly when the similarities so overwhelmingly outnumber the differences.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall, 14 Oct 1998

Frankly, I'd rather not try to compete with Perl in the areas where Perl is best -- it's a battle that's impossible to win, and I don't think it is a good idea to strive for the number of obscure options and shortcuts that Perl has acquired through the years. Guido van Rossum, 7 Jul 1992

When I originally designed Perl 5's OO, I thought about a lot of this stuff, and chose the explicit object model of Python as being the least confusing. So far I haven't seen a good reason to change my mind on that. Larry Wall, 27 Feb 1997 on perl5-porters

If Perl weren't around, I'd probably be using Python right now. Tom Christiansen in comp.lang.perl, 2 Jun 1995

Python is an excellent language for learning object orientation. (It also happens to be my favorite OO scripting language.) Sriram Srinivasan, Advanced Perl Programming

But, FYI, Perl has a coupla thousand killer apps, most of which are available on CPAN.

Industry Standards include:

• CGI
• LWP
• DBI
• AxKit
• mod_perl
• and, of course, slash

The Beatles never flamed the Stones. The Stones never dissed the Beatles. And at no time did either party rip on Bob Dylan or badmouth Marvin Gaye. Language designers should celebrate their brethren. Particularly when the similarities so overwhelmingly outnumber the differences.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall, 14 Oct 1998

Frankly, I'd rather not try to compete with Perl in the areas where Perl is best -- it's a battle that's impossible to win, and I don't think it is a good idea to strive for the number of obscure options and shortcuts that Perl has acquired through the years. Guido van Rossum, 7 Jul 1992

When I originally designed Perl 5's OO, I thought about a lot of this stuff, and chose the explicit object model of Python as being the least confusing. So far I haven't seen a good reason to change my mind on that. Larry Wall, 27 Feb 1997 on perl5-porters

If Perl weren't around, I'd probably be using Python right now. Tom Christiansen in comp.lang.perl, 2 Jun 1995

Python is an excellent language for learning object orientation. (It also happens to be my favorite OO scripting language.) Sriram Srinivasan, Advanced Perl Programming

But, FYI, Perl has a coupla thousand killer apps, most of which are available on CPAN.

Industry Standards include:

• CGI
• LWP
• DBI
• AxKit
• mod_perl
• and, of course, slash

The Beatles never flamed the Stones. The Stones never dissed the Beatles. And at no time did either party rip on Bob Dylan or badmouth Marvin Gaye. Language designers should celebrate their brethren. Particularly when the similarities so overwhelmingly outnumber the differences.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall, 14 Oct 1998

Frankly, I'd rather not try to compete with Perl in the areas where Perl is best -- it's a battle that's impossible to win, and I don't think it is a good idea to strive for the number of obscure options and shortcuts that Perl has acquired through the years. Guido van Rossum, 7 Jul 1992

When I originally designed Perl 5's OO, I thought about a lot of this stuff, and chose the explicit object model of Python as being the least confusing. So far I haven't seen a good reason to change my mind on that. Larry Wall, 27 Feb 1997 on perl5-porters

If Perl weren't around, I'd probably be using Python right now. Tom Christiansen in comp.lang.perl, 2 Jun 1995

Python is an excellent language for learning object orientation. (It also happens to be my favorite OO scripting language.) Sriram Srinivasan, Advanced Perl Programming

But, FYI, Perl has a coupla thousand killer apps, most of which are available on CPAN.

Industry Standards include:

• CGI
• LWP
• DBI
• AxKit
• mod_perl
• and, of course, slash

The Beatles never flamed the Stones. The Stones never dissed the Beatles. And at no time did either party rip on Bob Dylan or badmouth Marvin Gaye. Language designers should celebrate their brethren. Particularly when the similarities so overwhelmingly outnumber the differences.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall, 14 Oct 1998

Frankly, I'd rather not try to compete with Perl in the areas where Perl is best -- it's a battle that's impossible to win, and I don't think it is a good idea to strive for the number of obscure options and shortcuts that Perl has acquired through the years. Guido van Rossum, 7 Jul 1992

When I originally designed Perl 5's OO, I thought about a lot of this stuff, and chose the explicit object model of Python as being the least confusing. So far I haven't seen a good reason to change my mind on that. Larry Wall, 27 Feb 1997 on perl5-porters

If Perl weren't around, I'd probably be using Python right now. Tom Christiansen in comp.lang.perl, 2 Jun 1995

Python is an excellent language for learning object orientation. (It also happens to be my favorite OO scripting language.) Sriram Srinivasan, Advanced Perl Programming

But, FYI, Perl has a coupla thousand killer apps, most of which are available on CPAN.

Industry Standards include:

• CGI
• LWP
• DBI
• AxKit
• mod_perl
• and, of course, slash

The Beatles never flamed the Stones. The Stones never dissed the Beatles. And at no time did either party rip on Bob Dylan or badmouth Marvin Gaye. Language designers should celebrate their brethren. Particularly when the similarities so overwhelmingly outnumber the differences.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall, 14 Oct 1998

Frankly, I'd rather not try to compete with Perl in the areas where Perl is best -- it's a battle that's impossible to win, and I don't think it is a good idea to strive for the number of obscure options and shortcuts that Perl has acquired through the years. Guido van Rossum, 7 Jul 1992

When I originally designed Perl 5's OO, I thought about a lot of this stuff, and chose the explicit object model of Python as being the least confusing. So far I haven't seen a good reason to change my mind on that. Larry Wall, 27 Feb 1997 on perl5-porters

If Perl weren't around, I'd probably be using Python right now. Tom Christiansen in comp.lang.perl, 2 Jun 1995

Python is an excellent language for learning object orientation. (It also happens to be my favorite OO scripting language.) Sriram Srinivasan, Advanced Perl Programming

See recent python-dev summaries for what ESR is up to. Such as this one (adding string methods) and this one (speculating about Tk's fate).

See recent python-dev summaries for what ESR is up to. Such as this one (adding string methods) and this one (speculating about Tk's fate).