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Most of the people who read this site can be labeled as "above average computer users"

OK, I'll buy that. Most of us are likely programmers, or admins, or helpdesk types, or the like. That said, what could possibly be wrong with trying to raise the level of the "average computer user" to something better than what it is now? Sure, the status quo is an often unmovable standard, but if we could, even in some small cases, tweak it ever so slightly upward, there can't possibly be a down side.

If you ever happen to see the book "When you can't find your Unix System Administrator", have a quick look at it. The sidebar stories, which are all from real users, are most enlightening. They all find out that learning new little ways to do things can be exciting, and rewarding, and in many cases it helps them to be less scared of trying completely new things. They still might need a little help with the new stuff, but they're more self-sufficient than they would otherwise have been.

It's spiderman in a nutshell, and it's just damn solid.

I haven't seen this flick yet, but it sounds like it lives up to the book.

Oh, wait...

I think the language stud you're looking for is Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of the C# language. Although generics aren't in the current version of the language, they have them working in a research version, and the Common Language Runtime has been designed from the beginning to support them. A future future version of C# will most definitely support generics.

From an interview with Anders:

I definitely think generics are a very useful concept and you can certainly tell that from all the generics research that's taking place in academia and industry. Templates are one solution to the problem. In our internal discussions, we concluded that we wanted to do it right for this new platform. But what we would really like is to have generics understood by the underlying runtime. This is different from how some of the generic prototypes have been built. Take Java's notions of "erasure" where there's really no knowledge of generics in the system. By having the common language runtime understand the concept of generics, multiple languages can share the functionality. You can write a generic class in C# over in one place and someone else using a different language can use it.

But making generics part of the runtime also enables you to do certain things much more efficiently. Instantiation of generics should ideally happen at runtime. With C++, instantiation of templates happens at compile time, and then you have two options: you can either let your code bloat or you can try, in the linker, to get rid of some of the bloat. But, if you have multiple applications, you can forget about it. You're just going to get bloated code.

If you push the knowledge of generics into the common language runtime, then the runtime can understand that when an application or a component asks for a list of "Foo's," it should first ask: "Do I already have an instantiation of a list of "Foo?" If so, use that one. Indeed, if Foo is a reference type, and if we do the design right, we can share the instantiation for all reference types. For value types, such as ints and floats, and we can create one instantiation per value type. But only when an application asks for it. We've done a lot of the design work and groundwork necessary to add generics to the runtime.

It's interesting you asked earlier about the IL because deciding to add generics impacts the design of the IL. If the instructions in the IL embed type information -- if, for example, an Add instruction is not an Add, but is an Add int or an Add float or an Add double -- then you've baked the type into the instruction stream and the IL is not generic at that point. Our IL format is actually truly type neutral. And, by keeping it type neutral, we can add generics later and not get ourselves into trouble, at least not as much trouble. That's one of the reasons our IL looks different from Java byte code. We have type neutral IL. The Add instruction adds whatever the two things are on top of the stack. In a generic world, that could translate into different code when the generic is instantiated.

Osborn:
Is that available to all .NET languages?

Hejlsberg:
Yes. Microsoft Research in Cambridge has created a generics version of the common language runtime and the C# compiler. We're looking at how to move that forward right now. It's not going to happen in the first release, that much we know, but we are working on making sure that we do things right for the first release so that generics fit into the picture.

More detailed information on C#'s generics implementation can be found here.

Actually, the entire content of the post is one question and two outright falsehoods.

Check out the ruby-lang pages list of docs there's a lot of good stuff there.

I own Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide (available in full online) known as 'The Pickaxe Book' (ie the Ruby Camel) and Ruby in a Nutshell from OReilly by the language designer Yukihiro Matsumoto (known as matz on the mailing list). Hail matz! :)
Then there's a personal favorite dead tree of mine The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. I haven't finished it yet but it's full of crunchy goodness.

Between, those books and the wealth of tutorials and docs linked from www.ruby-lang.org/en there's a lot more material available than there was for Python when I started using it.

And the fact that these books keep selling and getting published implies to me that people are using Ruby.

When in doubt check the Ruby Book list at www.rubygarden.org to see whats out now and whats in the pipe.

As far as the bindings being buggy - I've only played with a few but they seem as good as I recall pythons bindings from when I used python. (admittedly that was a while ago)

C'mon give Ruby a try - I've found it a delight to play with. You might like it - and if not -well, learning why you dislike it is a valuable type of learning as well :)

I suggest the Pickaxe book (you'll eventually want to buy a hardcopy) and if you don't want to download the interpreter right now - well hold onto your hats. A clever fellow named Clemens Wyss has an 'interactive' version of the Pickaxe with all the code examples live in your browser so you can play with the code a lil. Find it here

In closing:
RubyCentral
RubyGarden
Ruby-Lang
Ruby-Talk Mailinglist

or check out the newsgroup at comp.lang.ruby

Kevin
--
'Just another Ruby Miner'

• Programming Ruby , DaveThomas & AndyHunt, ISBN:0201710897, aka the PickAxeBook
• Ruby Developer's Guide , Michael Neumann, Robert Feldt, Lyle Johnson, ISBN:1928994644, publisher's page
• The Ruby Way , Hal Fulton, ISBN:0672320835
• Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days , Mark Slagell, ISBN:0672322528
• Ruby in a Nutshell , Matsumoto Yukihiro, ISBN:0596002149 publisher's page
• The Ruby Programming Language , Matsumoto Yukihiro, ISBN:020171096X
• Making Use of Ruby , Suresh Mahadevan, Rashi Gupta, Shweta Bhasin, Madhushree Ganguly, Ashok Appu, ISBN: 047121972X

And some in german:

• Programmieren mit Ruby, Armin Röhrl, Stefan Schmiedl, Clemens Wyss, etc. ISBN:3898641511 (February, 2002), The site of the German Publisher (dpunkt) online version
• Programmieren mit Ruby, DaveThomas, AndyHunt, ISBN:382731965X, (February 2002), Translation from Programming Ruby, The site of the German Publisher

O'Reilly will give you 30% off the next edition of a book. All you have to do is send in the title page of the old book.

--Mike

>I prefer Linux and Unix. Made by hackers, for hackers.

OS X was made by hackers too, but for normal human beings. Oh wait, that's Unix too! :)

>Not all computer users look like the folks in the advertisements where everyone is smiling

And they don't have to be. If you hate XP's day-glo interface, change it! Customizing OS X visually isn't as easy, afaik -- please correct me if I'm wrong. Using standard OS options (Folder Options and Display Preferences), you can make it look like Windows 95 if you so choose.

>Microsoft's disgraceful filesystem

NTFS 5 is disgraceful? How?

>and complete neglect of the command line

Cygwin. Services for Unix. MKS Toolkit. XEmacs. I believe even LaTeX is available, although I can't say how good it is since I don't use it.

Here's something random to think about: If Windows is all that bad, how come Windows NT is voted the most productive Java development environment on multiple occasions? These are Java developers, not the mom n' pop set (I know, some will say, they're just as bad :->), after all.

Like Tim O'Reilly said: ``I was recently looking over the shoulder of a very well-known perl hacker as he picked his way through the cascading Windows Start Menu to find a program he wanted to run...''

Maybe, just maybe, you should check out how `power' (couldn't think of a better word) Windows users operate without losing their minds everyday? Maybe buy a book that doesn't treat its readers like dummies?

>I prefer Linux and Unix. Made by hackers, for hackers.

OS X was made by hackers too, but for normal human beings. Oh wait, that's Unix too! :)

>Not all computer users look like the folks in the advertisements where everyone is smiling

And they don't have to be. If you hate XP's day-glo interface, change it! Customizing OS X visually isn't as easy, afaik -- please correct me if I'm wrong. Using standard OS options (Folder Options and Display Preferences), you can make it look like Windows 95 if you so choose.

>Microsoft's disgraceful filesystem

NTFS 5 is disgraceful? How?

>and complete neglect of the command line

Cygwin. Services for Unix. MKS Toolkit. XEmacs. I believe even LaTeX is available, although I can't say how good it is since I don't use it.

Here's something random to think about: If Windows is all that bad, how come Windows NT is voted the most productive Java development environment on multiple occasions? These are Java developers, not the mom n' pop set (I know, some will say, they're just as bad :->), after all.

Like Tim O'Reilly said: ``I was recently looking over the shoulder of a very well-known perl hacker as he picked his way through the cascading Windows Start Menu to find a program he wanted to run...''

Maybe, just maybe, you should check out how `power' (couldn't think of a better word) Windows users operate without losing their minds everyday? Maybe buy a book that doesn't treat its readers like dummies?

For all of the people who don't understand how hard it is to write drivers for Linux I suggest to read Linux Device Drivers by Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet:

This practical guide is for anyone who wants to support computer peripherals under the Linux operating system. It shows step-by-step how to write a driver for character devices, block devices, and network interfaces, illustrating with examples you can compile and run. The second edition covers Kernel 2.4 and adds discussions of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), Universal Serial Bus (USB), and some new platforms.
[Full Description]

This book has 586 pages and it is still not everything there is to know about writing device drivers for Linux. And this is only if you have the hardware specification, because if you don't, then the reverse engineering makes it a whole lot more difficult task. Those "lazy open source driver authors with selfish attitudes" are actually working very hard to provide their drivers to the community, and they deserve a lot of respect for what they do for us, as well as for their great knowledge, skills and experience.

For all of the people who don't understand how hard it is to write drivers for Linux I suggest to read Linux Device Drivers by Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet:

This practical guide is for anyone who wants to support computer peripherals under the Linux operating system. It shows step-by-step how to write a driver for character devices, block devices, and network interfaces, illustrating with examples you can compile and run. The second edition covers Kernel 2.4 and adds discussions of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), Universal Serial Bus (USB), and some new platforms.
[Full Description]

This book has 586 pages and it is still not everything there is to know about writing device drivers for Linux. And this is only if you have the hardware specification, because if you don't, then the reverse engineering makes it a whole lot more difficult task. Those "lazy open source driver authors with selfish attitudes" are actually working very hard to provide their drivers to the community, and they deserve a lot of respect for what they do for us, as well as for their great knowledge, skills and experience.

Why don't they write a book on Human-Human interaction for Computer Science students ;-)?

They have.

If you care to see why this is true, read this article.

That 'tutorial' is mostly wrong and in fact has probably contributed to the problem described in the toplevel post. The tutorial's wrong both about the structure of DNS, and about the details of client/server interactions in WinDDNS. If you want to understand DNS, I suggest you go read an authoritative book on the subject, e.g., Albitz and Liu's DNS and BIND and perhaps the relevant RFCs. May I specifically recommend RFC1304, RFC1305, and RFC2136.

The best part is at the end of the tutorial:

• Win2K uses DNS names that use the underscore character.

It seems that "old media" (ie: books publishers) is recognizing this fact a lot faster than newer media (ie: movie and music publishers). I recently finished my first book for New Riders (see www.brendonwilson.com/projects/jxta), and they not only allowed me to post the draft chapters when I asked, but even suggested posting the final version!

This has apparently been accepted by New Riders lately for a few books. My acquisition editor, Stephanie Wall, has done this for about a dozen books, including the Zope book. According to her, New Riders has also come to the same conclusion: offering free online versions of books doesn't hurt the publisher's physical book sales. After all, if someone is crazy enough to read the entire thing off a monitor or print it off, it's doubtful they would have bought the book anyway.

O'Reilly has also taken to doing something similar with its Open Books Project.

Of course, the question is how long this phenomenon will last once we have display technology that allows us to take these electronic books with us in a form indistinguishable from a normal paper book...

Ummm...the camel...I have this sneaking suspicion that O'Reilly is going to pick the camel as the animal for their perl books.

Ummm...the camel...I have this sneaking suspicion that O'Reilly is going to pick the camel as the animal for their perl books.

The problem with Gigabit Ethernet is not the cards, it is the lack of switches or even plain hubs at an affordable price point.

Currently, all Gigabit Ethernet equipment is based on the full-duplex mode of operation. To date, none of the vendors have plans to develop equipment based on half-duplex Gigabit Ethernet operation.

Which would explain why there are no Gigabit Ethernet hubs available (hubs aka repeaters are half-duplex devices). Carrier extension and frame bursting are not needed in full-duplex mode, which would make the design of full-duplex devices simpler, I guess.

On a side note, in the article, they used Ethernet Jumbo Frames which were not part of the official IEEE standard as of the writing of the book.

so they have to go down the route of intellectual property ownership, enforcement and RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory, whatever "reasonable" means) licensing fees.

Licensing terms: what's in a name? Richard Stallman recently objected to our use of the term "reasonable and non-discriminatory" to describe certain classes of software and patent licenses. These licenses, require a payment for the use of the patented technology; the RAND terms just ensure that everybody can use that technology for the same payment. According to Mr. Stallman, the name RAND is inappropriate because:

• 
  
• By requiring a fee for use, the license is clearly discriminatory against free software.
  
  
• This discrimination, of course, is not reasonable.
  

Mr. Stallman's suggested term is "UFO" for "Uniform Fee Only."

I think this review says it all: "Quite simply, Programming Jabber rocks! When reviewing the book, I often found myself reading along, having a good time and getting excited about Jabber instead of looking to see if something was wrong or missing." --Jeremie Miller, Founder and Lead Developer of Jabber

• http://people.hp.se/stnor [nice checklist of NT/Win2K security items, PDF linked off this page]
• http://www.ora.com/catalog/securwinserv
• http://safari.oreilly.com/main.asp?bookname=securw inserv [same book, available to read online]

From 'Ask Tim', March 2002 (in response to a question about putting the actual book on CD).

Now, to your first question. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a searchable text version of each book available on CD-ROM in the back of the book? Yes, it would be nice. Unfortunately, it's not economically all that viable. The cost of printing and binding in a CD-ROM increases the manufacturing cost of a book by about 50%, believe it or not. And remember that the publisher receives less than 50% of the cover price of the book, with the rest going to retailers and other middlemen. As a result, most books containing CDs end up being priced at $5-$10 more than books without CDs. (Simply to recover manufacturing costs, a book with a CD needs to be priced about $3 higher; usually, the publisher tries to make a little profit as well, especially if the CD assembles some real added-value information.) But how many of those CDs would go unused? For every reader who would love the CD in the back of the book, you're taxing others who might not. This is why David Pogue's Missing Manual series waggishly includes a picture of a CD on the inside back cover of each book, with the title "The Missing CD" and a reminder that you just saved $5, and can go to www.missingmanuals.com for the utilities and other goodies that might otherwise be on a CD in the back of the book.

Why? Well, what use is a four year old copy of Python when I can download a current version just as easily? I'd have been happier if that one was a couple bucks cheaper, just as I was happy about the blurbs on the back of Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and Mac OS9 Missing Manual saying that avoiding the cd keeps costs down while allowing you to get more up to date software. As a paying customer, I appreciate that sort of consideration for my needs and my wallet. So to me, it's kind of a tradeoff among several factors. In no particular order:

• Having the media for a large set of software like FreeBSD is good, because it can avoid a huge download and I can live with a complete but outdated version of things, for a while anyway.
• Having the media for the CD bookshelf is good because it gives you the text -- in this case, of several books -- in searchable digital format.
• Providing the media for smaller, rapidly evolving material like a programming language or major application is less appealing when downloading is a viable alternative.
• Providing a central website is a great way to keep updated while saving some of the publishing costs, but the risk there is that you could lose ready access to the material if the site disappears or moves (like for example the FreeBSD book, though of course that's available elsewhere too; that isn't always the case of course).
• Obviously, the shelf life of a lot of CD-ROMs is limited, and people aren't going to be happy about paying for something out of date. Even if the material happens to be current, if it can be downloaded for free then there's little benefit in having the disc.
• On the other hand, sites obviously aren't eternal but discs come close enough for most purposes (even if their contents don't hold up as well), and download size is a factor to consider.
• Copyright is another angle that your publisher will probably want to have some control over, and no one likes having to go through arcane, tedious hoops to download some tools [I'm looking at you, Apple -- your Developer's site is a royal pain in the ass...], and no one wants to be the victim of an abandoned product
• If you're going to include a CD then you might as well fill up all 600mb or so of available space: if there's room for it and you're not afraid of copyright infrigement, include the text of the book, otherwise throw in a Linux distribution, tools like Perl & Apache [for Unix, Windows, and Mac], pad it out with DeCSS code, etc. In short, make it worth the customer's extra cash. (Slight counterargument: you probably don't want to take on support liability for anything you include, so don't forget whatever legalese would be appropriate there.)

Deciding what way to go is a matter of looking at factors like these & others, and evaluating what you're trying to provide for your customer and what their expectations are likely to be over time. If the digital material is just a supplement to the book, and can be easily downloaded, then most customers will probably appreciate it if you save them a few bucks & don't include the CD. On the other hand, if the book is really a supplement to the discs, and the digital material is difficult or impossible to download (for bandwidth, copyright, or other reasons) then including the CD media is a good idea. Find out where things seem to balance and make your decision from there.

Why? Well, what use is a four year old copy of Python when I can download a current version just as easily? I'd have been happier if that one was a couple bucks cheaper, just as I was happy about the blurbs on the back of Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and Mac OS9 Missing Manual saying that avoiding the cd keeps costs down while allowing you to get more up to date software. As a paying customer, I appreciate that sort of consideration for my needs and my wallet. So to me, it's kind of a tradeoff among several factors. In no particular order:

• Having the media for a large set of software like FreeBSD is good, because it can avoid a huge download and I can live with a complete but outdated version of things, for a while anyway.
• Having the media for the CD bookshelf is good because it gives you the text -- in this case, of several books -- in searchable digital format.
• Providing the media for smaller, rapidly evolving material like a programming language or major application is less appealing when downloading is a viable alternative.
• Providing a central website is a great way to keep updated while saving some of the publishing costs, but the risk there is that you could lose ready access to the material if the site disappears or moves (like for example the FreeBSD book, though of course that's available elsewhere too; that isn't always the case of course).
• Obviously, the shelf life of a lot of CD-ROMs is limited, and people aren't going to be happy about paying for something out of date. Even if the material happens to be current, if it can be downloaded for free then there's little benefit in having the disc.
• On the other hand, sites obviously aren't eternal but discs come close enough for most purposes (even if their contents don't hold up as well), and download size is a factor to consider.
• Copyright is another angle that your publisher will probably want to have some control over, and no one likes having to go through arcane, tedious hoops to download some tools [I'm looking at you, Apple -- your Developer's site is a royal pain in the ass...], and no one wants to be the victim of an abandoned product
• If you're going to include a CD then you might as well fill up all 600mb or so of available space: if there's room for it and you're not afraid of copyright infrigement, include the text of the book, otherwise throw in a Linux distribution, tools like Perl & Apache [for Unix, Windows, and Mac], pad it out with DeCSS code, etc. In short, make it worth the customer's extra cash. (Slight counterargument: you probably don't want to take on support liability for anything you include, so don't forget whatever legalese would be appropriate there.)

Deciding what way to go is a matter of looking at factors like these & others, and evaluating what you're trying to provide for your customer and what their expectations are likely to be over time. If the digital material is just a supplement to the book, and can be easily downloaded, then most customers will probably appreciate it if you save them a few bucks & don't include the CD. On the other hand, if the book is really a supplement to the discs, and the digital material is difficult or impossible to download (for bandwidth, copyright, or other reasons) then including the CD media is a good idea. Find out where things seem to balance and make your decision from there.

Why? Well, what use is a four year old copy of Python when I can download a current version just as easily? I'd have been happier if that one was a couple bucks cheaper, just as I was happy about the blurbs on the back of Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and Mac OS9 Missing Manual saying that avoiding the cd keeps costs down while allowing you to get more up to date software. As a paying customer, I appreciate that sort of consideration for my needs and my wallet. So to me, it's kind of a tradeoff among several factors. In no particular order:

• Having the media for a large set of software like FreeBSD is good, because it can avoid a huge download and I can live with a complete but outdated version of things, for a while anyway.
• Having the media for the CD bookshelf is good because it gives you the text -- in this case, of several books -- in searchable digital format.
• Providing the media for smaller, rapidly evolving material like a programming language or major application is less appealing when downloading is a viable alternative.
• Providing a central website is a great way to keep updated while saving some of the publishing costs, but the risk there is that you could lose ready access to the material if the site disappears or moves (like for example the FreeBSD book, though of course that's available elsewhere too; that isn't always the case of course).
• Obviously, the shelf life of a lot of CD-ROMs is limited, and people aren't going to be happy about paying for something out of date. Even if the material happens to be current, if it can be downloaded for free then there's little benefit in having the disc.
• On the other hand, sites obviously aren't eternal but discs come close enough for most purposes (even if their contents don't hold up as well), and download size is a factor to consider.
• Copyright is another angle that your publisher will probably want to have some control over, and no one likes having to go through arcane, tedious hoops to download some tools [I'm looking at you, Apple -- your Developer's site is a royal pain in the ass...], and no one wants to be the victim of an abandoned product
• If you're going to include a CD then you might as well fill up all 600mb or so of available space: if there's room for it and you're not afraid of copyright infrigement, include the text of the book, otherwise throw in a Linux distribution, tools like Perl & Apache [for Unix, Windows, and Mac], pad it out with DeCSS code, etc. In short, make it worth the customer's extra cash. (Slight counterargument: you probably don't want to take on support liability for anything you include, so don't forget whatever legalese would be appropriate there.)

Deciding what way to go is a matter of looking at factors like these & others, and evaluating what you're trying to provide for your customer and what their expectations are likely to be over time. If the digital material is just a supplement to the book, and can be easily downloaded, then most customers will probably appreciate it if you save them a few bucks & don't include the CD. On the other hand, if the book is really a supplement to the discs, and the digital material is difficult or impossible to download (for bandwidth, copyright, or other reasons) then including the CD media is a good idea. Find out where things seem to balance and make your decision from there.

First is pays to master Python. Make sure you own both of these books all about Python. Mastry of Python will lead to long satisfying enguagements where lerge sums of money may trade hands. Your expertise will serve you well in your travels, as lonely women seek out those who can best satisfy them. Remember, Python is not known for speed, but for flexibility and power, so go fourth young Python masters and spread the wealth.



--CTH

PS: And although some are better endowed than others, the longer the Python the better.

or like a Llama

Now that I've gotten that of my chest, I do believe that cities should be careful about funding (not using municipal bonds, for instance) and do a few other things to insure they are fair. I have written about the movement in the article Echo of the TVA Comes Over Municipal Data Networks. There have been several court cases brought in various states by telephone and cable companies; they've been resolved in different directions and the whole legal ground is unclear.

I was just reading Bob Young's piece in Open Sources . While it's certainly flush with optimism that now seems naive, he's pretty convincing when he points out that Heinz sells a absolutely replicable product, and still controls 80% of the ketchup market. They've simply built such a strong brand that they define what ketchup should taste like.
I'd say that Microsoft has built one of the strongest brands in the world, mostly by applying clever and well-branded systems integration (a fact the head of Microsoft research makes no bones about in a recent article in the Economist. Short of drastic legislation (which we just are not going to see under this administration), the only thing that would knock MS out of the catbird seat would be weakening of the brand. (one thing that would probably weaken the brand is interoperability and hence less distinguishability between Windows and Linux). What's surprising is that people don't seem to care about brand when it comes to PDAs and embedded devices, but they sure do on the desktop (after all, people spend a lot of money to BUY new versions of Windows, over and over).
There's an object lesson to be learned about tech branding as attention shifts from the OS to the embedded devices and web services, and perhaps us Linux-zealots should be clever enough to try to learn from it.

It *is* a measly sum - as the email says - how many government agencies have this sort of funding? More than just a couple of US agencies that's for sure.

Exactly.

For those of you who would like a breakdown of how a system like this would work, you may want to read Cracking DES by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Note, this book is out of print, but the EFF has made versions available online.)

It discusses building a computer from scratch that can crack DES quite fast. This same principle can be applied to any brute-force technique. And if the cost is $1Billion now, it will be considerably less in a few years.

O'Reilly has reviews of the book available. Among them, is a 'review' by Bill Gates:

Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put three man-years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product, and distributing it for free?

Bill Gates in his "Open Letter to Hobbyists," 1976

I have struggled with this certification issue and my employer didn't want to pay the money for RHCE. Then one day I seredipitously managed to stumble across LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell by O'Reilly.

Suprisingly the LPI isn't covered in the article.

As Linux certs go it doesn't depend on the financial solvency of a company (get an RHCE and if RH goes out of business then what?). It's vendor neutral (rejoice Mandrake and Suse fans).

Plus there's an animal book on it! Instant credibility.

Plus if you want to own your own certs and not have an employer to hold it over your head you can't beat the price (only a few hundred bucks for the whole shooting match).

More info available at lpi.org

Oh yes, very clever. I'm sure no one has ever thought of that scheme before.

"First of all, C# is not a Java clone. In the design of C#, we looked at a lot of languages. We looked at C++, we looked at Java, at Modula 2, C, and we looked at Smalltalk. There are just so many languages that have the same core ideas that we're interested in, such as deep object-orientation, object-simplification, and so on."

I had a client that was a realestate developer. They wanted a feature on their web site that would allow potential home buyers to browse the client's developments on a dynamic map, and get pop-up information about the houses. The original contractor on the job used javascript(javascript that was created by adobe dreamweaver) to create the dynamic map. Where the javascript solution came up short, was that the client wanted to make frequent changes to the map and the information it would display. The client also wanted this administrative feature to be completely "drag-and-drog" user-friendly. So I recreated the map in Flash, using ActionScript to pull housing information out of a MySQL database. I also created the admin system with Flash/ActionScript, that would let the realestate agent drag new homes onto a map, associate that home with information in the database, and click a "save" button in the flash movie. They loved it. Now they didn't have to bug me, the contractor, every time they wanted to update this map on there web site.

The Flash scripting language ActionScript is really nice. It has an XML parser to import XML data, and also has simpler methods that will let you pass information back and forth to a server side language such as PHP. I really had fun on that project. For a good book on Flash's ActionScript, I'd check out "ActionScript: The Definitive Guide" published by O'Reilly press. Furthmore, dynamic Flash such as the realestate map described here, doesn't only have to be generated by Macromedia's ActionScript. SWF is an open standard, and there are open scripting languages you can try. Visit www.openswf.org for more info on what free option you have. Flash is great, but a lot of people use it for needless bells-and-whistles stuff, when it can be used to create dynamic user-friedly software interfaces.

What I've never understood about Microsoft is why they don't have licenses that give people the opportunity to learn their product. In doing this they are shutting out a huge number of developers (not just students).

Most of the software we learned about was written by Microsoft (Windows 95/NT, Visual C++, Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, IIS, ASP, Word, Excel, Front Page, etc.) and our professors always told us to get this software from somewhere and install it for educational purposes (the pirated versions of course). Some of them were even offering us their own CDs which we could borrow and install.

They used to say "it's for educational purposes, it's not a piracy, it's not unfair to Microsoft" and guess what? They were right. Microsoft should pay them for that!

Why? Because they were teaching thousands of future IT experts, which were totally unable to use free software. Will their future employers buy Windows for servers? Sure they will, because their "sysadmins" will be too dumb to run Debian or OpenBSD. Will they buy IIS? Of course, because their "webmasters" will have no idea how to run Apache. Will they buy MS SQL Server? They will have to, because their "database experts" won't be able to use MySQL. Will they use ASP for server-side scripting? What else could they do having PHP/Perl/Python-ignorant "web developers". Will they buy MCVC++? They won't have much choice as VI/Emacs+GCC will be a black magic for their "C++ programmers".

What else can I say? "Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction." This is especially true on the university.

I'm sure that every time Bill Gates gets the information that students on such a university are pirating thousands of copies of Microsoft software, he laughs like an evil genius - and he's right. People don't use IIS because it's better, faster, more secure, stable or cost effective than Apache. They use it, because that is everything they know.

And what would most of employers do when their crew knows only IIS and ASP? Would they ask them to read many different books and lots of online documentation and start the project next year? No, it'd be cheaper and faster to just give up, buy Microsoft licenses and start the project today.

But maybe I shouldn't be angry, after all I have a rare knowledge how to save hundreds thousands of dollars in just a small-sized server farm so I have quite a nice money thanks to other people's stupidity. Actually, I should (together with Bill Gates) pay those ignorant professors, or at least send them flowers!

What I've never understood about Microsoft is why they don't have licenses that give people the opportunity to learn their product. In doing this they are shutting out a huge number of developers (not just students).

Most of the software we learned about was written by Microsoft (Windows 95/NT, Visual C++, Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, IIS, ASP, Word, Excel, Front Page, etc.) and our professors always told us to get this software from somewhere and install it for educational purposes (the pirated versions of course). Some of them were even offering us their own CDs which we could borrow and install.

They used to say "it's for educational purposes, it's not a piracy, it's not unfair to Microsoft" and guess what? They were right. Microsoft should pay them for that!

Why? Because they were teaching thousands of future IT experts, which were totally unable to use free software. Will their future employers buy Windows for servers? Sure they will, because their "sysadmins" will be too dumb to run Debian or OpenBSD. Will they buy IIS? Of course, because their "webmasters" will have no idea how to run Apache. Will they buy MS SQL Server? They will have to, because their "database experts" won't be able to use MySQL. Will they use ASP for server-side scripting? What else could they do having PHP/Perl/Python-ignorant "web developers". Will they buy MCVC++? They won't have much choice as VI/Emacs+GCC will be a black magic for their "C++ programmers".

What else can I say? "Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction." This is especially true on the university.

I'm sure that every time Bill Gates gets the information that students on such a university are pirating thousands of copies of Microsoft software, he laughs like an evil genius - and he's right. People don't use IIS because it's better, faster, more secure, stable or cost effective than Apache. They use it, because that is everything they know.

And what would most of employers do when their crew knows only IIS and ASP? Would they ask them to read many different books and lots of online documentation and start the project next year? No, it'd be cheaper and faster to just give up, buy Microsoft licenses and start the project today.

But maybe I shouldn't be angry, after all I have a rare knowledge how to save hundreds thousands of dollars in just a small-sized server farm so I have quite a nice money thanks to other people's stupidity. Actually, I should (together with Bill Gates) pay those ignorant professors, or at least send them flowers!

What I've never understood about Microsoft is why they don't have licenses that give people the opportunity to learn their product. In doing this they are shutting out a huge number of developers (not just students).

Most of the software we learned about was written by Microsoft (Windows 95/NT, Visual C++, Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, IIS, ASP, Word, Excel, Front Page, etc.) and our professors always told us to get this software from somewhere and install it for educational purposes (the pirated versions of course). Some of them were even offering us their own CDs which we could borrow and install.

They used to say "it's for educational purposes, it's not a piracy, it's not unfair to Microsoft" and guess what? They were right. Microsoft should pay them for that!

Why? Because they were teaching thousands of future IT experts, which were totally unable to use free software. Will their future employers buy Windows for servers? Sure they will, because their "sysadmins" will be too dumb to run Debian or OpenBSD. Will they buy IIS? Of course, because their "webmasters" will have no idea how to run Apache. Will they buy MS SQL Server? They will have to, because their "database experts" won't be able to use MySQL. Will they use ASP for server-side scripting? What else could they do having PHP/Perl/Python-ignorant "web developers". Will they buy MCVC++? They won't have much choice as VI/Emacs+GCC will be a black magic for their "C++ programmers".

What else can I say? "Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction." This is especially true on the university.

I'm sure that every time Bill Gates gets the information that students on such a university are pirating thousands of copies of Microsoft software, he laughs like an evil genius - and he's right. People don't use IIS because it's better, faster, more secure, stable or cost effective than Apache. They use it, because that is everything they know.

And what would most of employers do when their crew knows only IIS and ASP? Would they ask them to read many different books and lots of online documentation and start the project next year? No, it'd be cheaper and faster to just give up, buy Microsoft licenses and start the project today.

But maybe I shouldn't be angry, after all I have a rare knowledge how to save hundreds thousands of dollars in just a small-sized server farm so I have quite a nice money thanks to other people's stupidity. Actually, I should (together with Bill Gates) pay those ignorant professors, or at least send them flowers!

What I've never understood about Microsoft is why they don't have licenses that give people the opportunity to learn their product. In doing this they are shutting out a huge number of developers (not just students).

Most of the software we learned about was written by Microsoft (Windows 95/NT, Visual C++, Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, IIS, ASP, Word, Excel, Front Page, etc.) and our professors always told us to get this software from somewhere and install it for educational purposes (the pirated versions of course). Some of them were even offering us their own CDs which we could borrow and install.

They used to say "it's for educational purposes, it's not a piracy, it's not unfair to Microsoft" and guess what? They were right. Microsoft should pay them for that!

Why? Because they were teaching thousands of future IT experts, which were totally unable to use free software. Will their future employers buy Windows for servers? Sure they will, because their "sysadmins" will be too dumb to run Debian or OpenBSD. Will they buy IIS? Of course, because their "webmasters" will have no idea how to run Apache. Will they buy MS SQL Server? They will have to, because their "database experts" won't be able to use MySQL. Will they use ASP for server-side scripting? What else could they do having PHP/Perl/Python-ignorant "web developers". Will they buy MCVC++? They won't have much choice as VI/Emacs+GCC will be a black magic for their "C++ programmers".

What else can I say? "Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction." This is especially true on the university.

I'm sure that every time Bill Gates gets the information that students on such a university are pirating thousands of copies of Microsoft software, he laughs like an evil genius - and he's right. People don't use IIS because it's better, faster, more secure, stable or cost effective than Apache. They use it, because that is everything they know.

And what would most of employers do when their crew knows only IIS and ASP? Would they ask them to read many different books and lots of online documentation and start the project next year? No, it'd be cheaper and faster to just give up, buy Microsoft licenses and start the project today.

But maybe I shouldn't be angry, after all I have a rare knowledge how to save hundreds thousands of dollars in just a small-sized server farm so I have quite a nice money thanks to other people's stupidity. Actually, I should (together with Bill Gates) pay those ignorant professors, or at least send them flowers!

Damn, that was a good post. I'm keeping a copy of it.

Thanks, that's nice to hear. :) I'm keeping a copy too, and maybe one day I'll make a website from it. It's good to know that people actually find it interesting. These are all important things, but unfortunately most of web designers don't care about them. When my Lynx or Galeon can't render a website which I absolutely have to see (and it's the only place with the information I need), I can always use Netscape and everything is fine (except for microsoft.com which usually crash my Netscape for some reason). But there are people who can't use Netscape or Internet Explorer on their Braille terminal or speech synthesiser and they are effectively unable to use most of the Web. That's very sad. We have 21st century, all the informations they need are there on-line, but they can't reach them because of web designers ignorance. There are no borders for them other than ignorance of web designers.

Web Pages That Suck is a great site for learning about good design through bad design.

Very good one, I didn't know it before. It reminded me ESR's HTML Hell Page: How not to design junk Web pages. I see it has changed a lot in the last few years since I last saw it. Now there are many things from my post (or maybe in my post there are many things from HTML Hell), but I'll still tell you about it even if it makes my comment less insightful. ;) So, the HTML Hell Page is surely worth reading, there are also links to other similar websites:

Here's a list of gripes similar to this one. And there's a fine rant about web page design by C. J. Silverio. Horrible Examples of bad technique are listed at Web Pages That Suck. Jakob Nielsen's column Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design is very good. The Yale Style Guide is worth reading.

I haven't seen all of the above links yet, but I'm sure they're interesting.

Regarding disabled access, try Bobbie as your automatic checker.

Thanks. I knew about it, but I forgot the name. It's a great tool. But there's one thing I don't like about Bobby, it's the license:

"No Reverse Engineering. Licensee shall not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Licensed Software or documentation therefor, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. Licensee shall not remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notices, trademark notices, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the Licensed Software or documentation."

"License Fee. Licensee shall pay CAST or its designee a license fee for each simultaneous user of the Licensed Software ("Single User License Fee") or each server on which it shall install the Licensed Software ("Server License Fee") as set forth at http://www.cast.org/bobby/DownloadBobby316.cfm."

They say on the main page:

"Bobby was created by CAST to help Web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

"Center for Applied Special Technology, CAST is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology."

"Above, you can test a Web page using our server version of Bobby Worldwide. This server version gives you a preview of the downloadable version of Bobby Worldwide."

But the downloadable version costs:

Single User copy: $99.00
Site License of server version: $3,000.00 per server
Multiple server site license: $2,000.00 per server for 5 or more servers

I think it's exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software. Yes, I'm a free software freak, so in my opinion every software is exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software...

But this is software made by "a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology".

I could tell my employer:
-- Hey, maybe we could install Bobby on the servers?
-- What's that?
-- It's a program to expand opportunities for people with disabilities.
-- Does it cost anything?
-- It's free-as-in-beer.
-- Sure, why not.
but when I tell him that it'll cost him $3k per server... You know what the answer would be even if we only need a single user copy for 100 bucks.

Bobby would serve its purpose much better if it was released as a free software. I'd be proud to contribute patches to Bobby, as I'm sure would lots of other people, and best of all, much more people would use Bobby. If there is any place for proprietary software, it's not software which "was created [...] to help [...] identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

In other words: great idea, fatal license.

Keep graphics content (hence download time) low, and always compress images using Gifbot or something similar.

Good point, it's a very important thing which I didn't say about at all. I noticed that I wait the same time for the average website to load today on 768kb/s DSL, as I waited few years ago on 28.8kb/s modem.

I didn't know Gifbot. It's great, because people who don't understand the image compression techniques (i.e. most of people making personal webpages) can improve ther graphics and save time and bandwidth. It only lacks PNG output which is important to me, not only because of the GIF problems, but because it's a great format, even recommended by The World Wide Web Consortium and it has Adam7 interlacing feature for great progressive loading on slow connections, very good for the WWW (see this image or this one if your connection is to fast to notice the effect), read more about Adam7 interlacing on stl.caltech.edu Introduction to PNG.

What I would add about the graphics is to first of all, always use JPEG for photographs, and always use PNG for computer generated graphics (logos, headers, text, screenshots). Of course there are sitiations when it's better to use PNG for photo or JPEG for something generated (like rendered landscapes), but for most of situations (especially for usual homepages) this rule works great: JPEG for photos, PNG for logos.

People sometimes use JPEG for flat few-color logos, which looks terrible on the hard edges and solid color areas. People also (however not so often) use PNG or GIF to save photos, and they are ten times larger than JPEG of the same quality.

My personal choice for editing web graphics is The Gimp, it's a great tool especially for web designing purposes. It has a great JPEG saving dialog, where you can set different quality values and see the real-time preview, so you can save at the lowest quality (highest compression) when you don't see the difference, You can also set subsampling type or DCT method and restart markers for more advanced users.

I almost forgot! See the Cooltext.com:

"Cooltext.com is an online graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you might need an impressive logo without a lot of work. We provides real-time generation of graphics customized exactly the way you want them.

Simply choose what kind of image you would like to create. Then, fill out a form and you'll have your own images created on the fly.

Cooltext.com will always be available for use free of charge."

They use Gimp as the backend so it's a great introduction to Gimp power as a web graphics authoring tool. Everyone should check out Cooltext, you can make great logos in few seconds. Great for lazy webmasters who want to have nice websites with no effort. Great preview of Gimp.

Speaking about the software, another great tool I use daily is ImageMagick. The best set of programs I've seen for conversion, optimizing and compression of lots of pictures at the same time. Once I used it to automatically scale, stretch contrast, add logos, compress and save over 10,000 pictures. It took over two days to my PC back then, but it was two days of rest for me. It would've taken me weeks if I'd had to do it manually.

Important links: PNG home, PNG at W3C, JPEG home, JPEG at W3C, The Gimp, Cooltext, ImageMagick.

Great, I wrote another comment for ten screens, while I should work instead... But what can I do, when I have a subject which is one of the main areas of my interest? Actually I didn't realize that I have so much to say about web design, maybe I should write a book, teach or something... It reminds me a funny situation I had few months ago:

A friend of mine phoned me once and asked:
-- Tell me, how do you make websites?
I saw all of my life scrolling before my eyes. I was trying to figure out where to start my answer, and after ten seconds of my silence, he said:
-- But hurry up, I'm using a cell phone.
Here I started to laugh like a mad man, and I couldn't explain him why I laughed when he kept asking me, because I couldn't stop laughing.

He really thought that I could explain everything to him in few minutes... Later I told him, that I had been learning how to make websites for many years, and now he's proud that he's the man who asked me to summarize many years of my life in few minutes. I tried to give him few books but he thought it'd be faster and even when I suggested Netscape Composer, it wasn't worth the effort for him... :) Great story, I always laugh when I remember it.

That's about it. I say again, Damn that was a good post. 5++ (Moderators please mod original post up).

Thanks once again. It's good to know that there's someone who likes it more than the moderators. :)

From the last minute: I just found The greatest WWW page ever!

Damn, that was a good post. I'm keeping a copy of it.

Thanks, that's nice to hear. :) I'm keeping a copy too, and maybe one day I'll make a website from it. It's good to know that people actually find it interesting. These are all important things, but unfortunately most of web designers don't care about them. When my Lynx or Galeon can't render a website which I absolutely have to see (and it's the only place with the information I need), I can always use Netscape and everything is fine (except for microsoft.com which usually crash my Netscape for some reason). But there are people who can't use Netscape or Internet Explorer on their Braille terminal or speech synthesiser and they are effectively unable to use most of the Web. That's very sad. We have 21st century, all the informations they need are there on-line, but they can't reach them because of web designers ignorance. There are no borders for them other than ignorance of web designers.

Web Pages That Suck is a great site for learning about good design through bad design.

Very good one, I didn't know it before. It reminded me ESR's HTML Hell Page: How not to design junk Web pages. I see it has changed a lot in the last few years since I last saw it. Now there are many things from my post (or maybe in my post there are many things from HTML Hell), but I'll still tell you about it even if it makes my comment less insightful. ;) So, the HTML Hell Page is surely worth reading, there are also links to other similar websites:

Here's a list of gripes similar to this one. And there's a fine rant about web page design by C. J. Silverio. Horrible Examples of bad technique are listed at Web Pages That Suck. Jakob Nielsen's column Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design is very good. The Yale Style Guide is worth reading.

I haven't seen all of the above links yet, but I'm sure they're interesting.

Regarding disabled access, try Bobbie as your automatic checker.

Thanks. I knew about it, but I forgot the name. It's a great tool. But there's one thing I don't like about Bobby, it's the license:

"No Reverse Engineering. Licensee shall not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Licensed Software or documentation therefor, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. Licensee shall not remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notices, trademark notices, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the Licensed Software or documentation."

"License Fee. Licensee shall pay CAST or its designee a license fee for each simultaneous user of the Licensed Software ("Single User License Fee") or each server on which it shall install the Licensed Software ("Server License Fee") as set forth at http://www.cast.org/bobby/DownloadBobby316.cfm."

They say on the main page:

"Bobby was created by CAST to help Web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

"Center for Applied Special Technology, CAST is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology."

"Above, you can test a Web page using our server version of Bobby Worldwide. This server version gives you a preview of the downloadable version of Bobby Worldwide."

But the downloadable version costs:

Single User copy: $99.00
Site License of server version: $3,000.00 per server
Multiple server site license: $2,000.00 per server for 5 or more servers

I think it's exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software. Yes, I'm a free software freak, so in my opinion every software is exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software...

But this is software made by "a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology".

I could tell my employer:
-- Hey, maybe we could install Bobby on the servers?
-- What's that?
-- It's a program to expand opportunities for people with disabilities.
-- Does it cost anything?
-- It's free-as-in-beer.
-- Sure, why not.
but when I tell him that it'll cost him $3k per server... You know what the answer would be even if we only need a single user copy for 100 bucks.

Bobby would serve its purpose much better if it was released as a free software. I'd be proud to contribute patches to Bobby, as I'm sure would lots of other people, and best of all, much more people would use Bobby. If there is any place for proprietary software, it's not software which "was created [...] to help [...] identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

In other words: great idea, fatal license.

Keep graphics content (hence download time) low, and always compress images using Gifbot or something similar.

Good point, it's a very important thing which I didn't say about at all. I noticed that I wait the same time for the average website to load today on 768kb/s DSL, as I waited few years ago on 28.8kb/s modem.

I didn't know Gifbot. It's great, because people who don't understand the image compression techniques (i.e. most of people making personal webpages) can improve ther graphics and save time and bandwidth. It only lacks PNG output which is important to me, not only because of the GIF problems, but because it's a great format, even recommended by The World Wide Web Consortium and it has Adam7 interlacing feature for great progressive loading on slow connections, very good for the WWW (see this image or this one if your connection is to fast to notice the effect), read more about Adam7 interlacing on stl.caltech.edu Introduction to PNG.

What I would add about the graphics is to first of all, always use JPEG for photographs, and always use PNG for computer generated graphics (logos, headers, text, screenshots). Of course there are sitiations when it's better to use PNG for photo or JPEG for something generated (like rendered landscapes), but for most of situations (especially for usual homepages) this rule works great: JPEG for photos, PNG for logos.

People sometimes use JPEG for flat few-color logos, which looks terrible on the hard edges and solid color areas. People also (however not so often) use PNG or GIF to save photos, and they are ten times larger than JPEG of the same quality.

My personal choice for editing web graphics is The Gimp, it's a great tool especially for web designing purposes. It has a great JPEG saving dialog, where you can set different quality values and see the real-time preview, so you can save at the lowest quality (highest compression) when you don't see the difference, You can also set subsampling type or DCT method and restart markers for more advanced users.

I almost forgot! See the Cooltext.com:

"Cooltext.com is an online graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you might need an impressive logo without a lot of work. We provides real-time generation of graphics customized exactly the way you want them.

Simply choose what kind of image you would like to create. Then, fill out a form and you'll have your own images created on the fly.

Cooltext.com will always be available for use free of charge."

They use Gimp as the backend so it's a great introduction to Gimp power as a web graphics authoring tool. Everyone should check out Cooltext, you can make great logos in few seconds. Great for lazy webmasters who want to have nice websites with no effort. Great preview of Gimp.

Speaking about the software, another great tool I use daily is ImageMagick. The best set of programs I've seen for conversion, optimizing and compression of lots of pictures at the same time. Once I used it to automatically scale, stretch contrast, add logos, compress and save over 10,000 pictures. It took over two days to my PC back then, but it was two days of rest for me. It would've taken me weeks if I'd had to do it manually.

Important links: PNG home, PNG at W3C, JPEG home, JPEG at W3C, The Gimp, Cooltext, ImageMagick.

Great, I wrote another comment for ten screens, while I should work instead... But what can I do, when I have a subject which is one of the main areas of my interest? Actually I didn't realize that I have so much to say about web design, maybe I should write a book, teach or something... It reminds me a funny situation I had few months ago:

A friend of mine phoned me once and asked:
-- Tell me, how do you make websites?
I saw all of my life scrolling before my eyes. I was trying to figure out where to start my answer, and after ten seconds of my silence, he said:
-- But hurry up, I'm using a cell phone.
Here I started to laugh like a mad man, and I couldn't explain him why I laughed when he kept asking me, because I couldn't stop laughing.

He really thought that I could explain everything to him in few minutes... Later I told him, that I had been learning how to make websites for many years, and now he's proud that he's the man who asked me to summarize many years of my life in few minutes. I tried to give him few books but he thought it'd be faster and even when I suggested Netscape Composer, it wasn't worth the effort for him... :) Great story, I always laugh when I remember it.

That's about it. I say again, Damn that was a good post. 5++ (Moderators please mod original post up).

Thanks once again. It's good to know that there's someone who likes it more than the moderators. :)

From the last minute: I just found The greatest WWW page ever!

And even if your wallet is not enough evidence: Perl is Instrumental in Data Warehouse for Italy's Top Bank.

DSL is a kludge, in George Gilder's words "the equivalent of the Pony Express engineering winged horses". It's time to build new fiber-to-the-home nets. Some thoughts on that:

1) Use these in the homes, assuming folks still want to use their 100BaseT copper gear.
2) One could let existing ISPs plug into the "local" net to provide "long distance" Internet service, as well as the usual email/Usenet/personal web pages and customer support. Someone like Earthlink might go for that?
2b) Or just buy the usual backbone feed from the usual suspects.
3) Free peering for local traffic with any networks you can run a cable to, like your local university.
4) Any recommendations for switches and core routers? Ought to be able to turn individual ports on and off from remote.
5) High density developments, like the condo complex I live in, seem like a good place to start. I just don't know how to run the cable with minimum mess. Anyhow, start with the easy targets to build a solid customer base, then let the neighbors beg for network extensions.

Works in theory. If I ever finish reading the obligatory O'Reilly book maybe I'll take a shot at it, but I'd rather a real network engineer did the work. I'm getting tired of waiting, though. It's not like the existing telcos are going to get a clue. 100Mbps fiber-to-the-home with 1Gbps backbone (upgrading to 10Gbps when the gear is ready and semi-economical) seems very doable, just a lot of grunt work.

Also seems like IP multicast would be a neat distribution means for 20Mbps HDTV datastreams, but that can wait.

it was already taken.

That would have been funny as hell. What did they use, blackbirds? The hell is that?!

speaking of RMS, check this out Free as in Freedom, and chapter 3: a portrait of the hacker as a young man.

speaking of RMS, check this out Free as in Freedom, and chapter 3: a portrait of the hacker as a young man.

Well, you can read the docs (somewhere on MS's site; I'm not going to search for it), or you can go check out the mono project, or you can go check out dotGNU, which is somewhat larger in scope than mono but also implementing a .NET runtime, or you can go read O'Reilly's books on the subject, some of which are already in their second editions.

Well, I don't know anything about the history of Russian/Soviet computing. However, I was over there last summer, and found a computer store which had state-of-the-art peripherals for sale, right alongside a bootleg copy of Windows 2000. In a bookstore, I found (and bought) a Russian translation of Olaf Kirch's Linux Network Administrator's Guide (aka, The NAG). The text was Russian but the examples were all in the default language of Linux, English.

The products in the computer store were selling for about the same as in America given the exchange rate at the time (except for the Win2K which was ~USD13). When you consider that the average Russian salary is USD2000-3000/yr, you aren't going to find many Russians online, at least not at home. Businesses seem to be fairly up-to-date as far as technology goes, aside from the mom-and-pop shops. Broadband internet access seems to be more myth than reality there.

Some of posts here said that they were a couple generations behind because they were just copying American technology. Appears they're catching up.

The problem is that programmers that care will differ radically in which the consider the most readable one and many programmers just don't care at all. So in either case we have trouble reading each other's code because even when we are trying our hardest we can easily make code that is mutually incomprehensible.

It doesn't meter if someone has written
print "ITEM: $_\n" for @items;
or
for(@items){ print "ITEM: $_\n" }
or
foreach $item (@items) { print "ITEM: $item\n" }
or
print map {"ITEM: $_\n"} @items;
when you know the basics of Perl, you understand it.

Also you have to remember a very important thing, true for Perl, Python, Smalltalk, C++, Ruby, Java or any other higher-level language. When you have a good code, you don't have to fully understand or often even read the implementation details to maintain it (not to say about simply using it). All you need is to understand the interfaces. When you have a working class and you need to add a new functionality, you shouldn't edit the implementation. You should subclass it instead. These are the most basic concepts of code design for future reuse. But you have to actually design the code in the first place, not just write some crap.

Python cannot prevent this but it can encourage a consistent and readable style. The language encourages good taste. No more, no less.

A relevant resource in this field is the Alliance For Childhood, sponsored by Steve Talbott of NetFuture fame.

I've been following NetFuture for years now, it's a very interesting newsletter about the relationship between technology and human society.

Computers and education frequently comes up in Steve Talbott's NetFuture e-zine, which can be accessed on O'Reilly's web site. Here's an example article from an indexed list of NetFuture articles on the subject.