Slashdot Mirror

Yes, running a local news server would accomplish something similar. In my case, though, both mailing lists and nntp newsgroups are harvested and imported into the same database (e-mails can be filtered into "pseudo-newsgroups with threading), and each can be scored against to remove trolls. This isn't rocket science -- Yarn has been around for a long, long time...

The cheeseshop is currently the closest thing python has to CPAN. Only ~900 modules compared to CPAN's 8,000+, so it still has a way to go. There is also the Vaults of Parnassus.

Also, the daily python url is a great way to keep up with the latest developments in the Python world.

Love the no-brackets

I love Python, but I hate the significant whitespace. Apart from anything else, it's an utter bugger to do web templates like PHP without resorting to crappy XML mixins or yet another crappy macro language.

[SQLObject is ]hard to compare to the Perl DBI because the dbi just is an interface and doesn't do mapping.

The Python equivelant to DBI is the DB-API. Any Python database module should implement that.

Lack of CPAN

The equivelant here is the vaults of Parnassus. Admittedly, CPAN has a bit of a head start :).

Probably the biggest thing going for it in Python's favour is it's sheer productivity. I learnt Python back in 1999, and then let it go for a few years. I picked it up again last year, and was absolutely amazed at how much I was able to achieve in just a few hours.

You know that feeling you get sometimes when you write a thousand lines of code, and it all compiles cleanly and runs perfectly first time? You get that feeling a lot more in Python than any other language I have ever used.

I'm not sure exactly what it is about Python that brings this productivity boost, but it's real and it's worth learning Python just for that.

Ah!
This was one of my favorite shows in the 80s.
I saw the French Canadian Version!
It had songs and lyrics!
Much better than the american version I believe.

Here is a link for nostalgia.
FULGURO-POING!
http://www.vex.net/~guru/goldorak/goldorak.htm

Now let me state the present rules,"
The lawyer then went on,
"These very simple guidelines,
You can rely upon:
Your gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it's unfair competition if
You think you can charge less!
"A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion...
Don't try to charge the same amount,
That would be Collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do you see,
Then the market would be yours -
And that's Monopoly!

While it's not nearly as big as CPAN, I often find Python code I need in the Vaults of Parnassus

such as JDBC drivers, XML parsers, SOAP tools and 3rd party components

Semi-check, built-in, check, and check (including a lot of real winners, particularly including multiple cross-platform GUIs).

(The semi-check is because I'm not 100% certain the python modules match the JDBC completely.)

The only advantage Java offers is when it has an actual library that you can't get in Python (or likely anywhere else); capability for capability the languages and libraries are pretty close to the same. I mean, we have "Web Application Servers" for Python (like Zope), but maybe you absolutely need some Java thing for some other reason. There's no one language that meets all needs. But there's no reason Python can't be used in very large scale projects successfully, as evidenced by the fact that it has been so used.

Personally, I'd much rather use Python for the larger scale projects since for a variety of reasons I think it scales better then Java; Java projects IMHO survive because they get a lot more resources thrown at them, not because the language does very much to hold large projects together. But that's just my opinion.

(Oh, and Jython, though I know it's been mentioned elsewhere.)

Actual quote:

The only controls available to those on board were two push-buttons on the center post of the cabin--one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of the Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.

From T-Quote

thad

I suppose not. Really, it's been many years since Karen Carpenter died. A whole new generation has grown up without her, so I suppose y'all can be forgiven for not knowing "BEachwood 4-5789"

Some of us old fogeys still miss Karen's mellow voice. :( I couldn't care less what I was doing the day that Elvis died, but I vividly recall how devastated I was at her death.

The book Unsafe at any speed talks about dangerous cars however some doupt the assertions made by the then young Ralph Nader.

A quick look at the debate resulting from this book leads me to believe if Microsoft made cars today they'd be like the Chevrolet Corvair.
Actually Windows 2 is very much like the first run of the Corvair. The problems in Windows 2 were minnor at best but needed to be addressed in any case. While Chevrolet took the problem sereously and fixed it Microsoft would first blame the writers of Windows apps then clame the problem was in all operating systems. The famous problem is the memory leak.
At first a minnor nussence but the leak got worse with each new version of Windows.
Microsoft finnally addressed the problem when they made Windows 95 and declaired it fixed. But it wasn't and the memory leak was bigger than ever. Other problems were found in 95 as well making it the most buggy version of Windows at the time of its release this in spite of the hype of a bug free Windows 95. The first bug found was more of a feature left on by default.. letting anyone hijack any given Win 95 box. The first security bug in Windows and for the time the only security bug in any "desk top" operating system.

By the way I found this to be quite intresting.
As always you can find more information with Google.

What functionality are you lacking from the standard library and the The Vaults of Parnassus?

I searched high and low and wasn't able to find a site with any information or a picture of the product but good old eBay came through again. I hate linking to eBay as the links expire so I swiped somebody's photo and put it on my site. You can see it here. I found it by searching for "gravis gamepad" and wading through the results. The best part is they seem to be selling for about $1 (U.S. funds) so it might be worthing buying one just to try it out.

I hope someone finds this useful.

Why not buy one?

I don't have much experience with other scripting languages, but I've found python to have a lot of very easy to use modules. I've found modules for polynomial fitting to data, large data sets, polygons operations - just out there when I looked for them. And many a useful library in C or C++ has been wrapped in Python. For example, I've written some CAD software (for very specific design operations we do where I work), and needed a way to merge polygons. I found a wrapper for the generalized polygon clipper (GPC) library, installed it and got it working in a few minutes. And because of the nice structure of the language, the modules are usually very easy to learn how to use.

Sinatra sang truer than he knew, eh? "I've got the world on a string..."

Frank sinatra, one of the greatest ganster singers of all time.

What's jack upto, and is Mackie still out of town?

Frank sinatra, one of the greatest ganster singers of all time.

What's jack upto, and is Mackie still out of town?

I'm a jazz singer and I google for lyrics all the time. The songs I'm looking for aren't exactly 'top 10 hitz', so they're not easy to find in the real world. I find most of them on people's personal websites.

Yes, I agree that song lyrics are the same as poetry, but I also feel that smart lyric writers shouldn't be too concerned. Making the lyrics more freely available just encourages the song to be performed/recorded. In a perfect world the more popular a song is, the more $$$ the lyricist makes.

I think a worse problem is the outdated method in which songwriters get paid. Performance royalties are paid to an organization which doles out the checks according to an obscure formula. In other words, no one keeps track of which songs are played in clubs. They estimate the popularity of songs and pay the songwriter accordingly. [sarcasm]Of course, they do this without any outside influence and without a taint of corruption, after all, this is the music business![/sarcasm]

Let's say, for some reason, the Gillespie/Coots songs "You Go To My Head" gets very popular in jazz clubs in 2003. Well, unless the organization figures this out, the estates of Gillespie and Coots will get no additional money for this song.

Not to worry, though, Gillespie and Coots also wrote "Santa Clause is Coming to Town". So these cats will get big checks for the next 70 years, er, 90 years, er, indefintely...

(Notice that the last link is a page at a public school. Isn't that funny in light of the MPA's "Is your school a Copy-free zone?")

But I digress... The problem with MPA, RIAA, and MPAA's drives is they go against 'common sense'. See, posting a song lyric or two on the internet doesn't feel like stealing to Joe Sixpack, therefore it shouldn't be illegal (but it is). Conversely, Unsolicited Commercial E-mail feels illegal, even though it's currently not (fraudulents spams excepted).

No, no, no. It's not a matter of if you want to or not. If you do, there's a world of mathematicians who will tell you that what you are doing might not qualify as mathematics.

One is not prime. Prime means having exactly two divisors, one of which is one. Please find enclosed a snider definition and commentary.

(Yes, I took MATH 230, but no, I didn't pass. Sorry I couldn't hold on, Clive.)

Boo-hoo! Instead of beating Microsoft in the marketplace, it appears now that Ralph and his band of merry socialists want to use the heavy hand of Government to manipulate the OS market. Why does every problem require a government solution for Mr. Nader? If you don't like Microsoft, don't use their products, tell your friends not to use their products, tell your employer not to use Microsoft and go set up a stupid Geocities free web page telling the world not to use Microsoft. Eventually, if you are not some unbathed OS zealot, people might start to listen. If they don't, don't go crying to Uncle Sam.

I have no problem with the Government diversifying their OS platform for protection against worms, trojans, viruses and other security issues but this is nothing more than Nader bashing Microsoft and trying to use the US Government as the club. Trying to get HIS way, not America's way. The market has already shown America's desires.

I don't remember electing Nader to anything, anyways (but I am glad he runs). Yet, he is constantly trying to bypass our elected officials and influence the bureaucracywith threats of legal action and media assaults. Sometimes, I wish he would have been a an avid Corvair driver.

Disclaimer: I don't even like Microsoft operating systems! I just don't know what's worse, dealing with Windows or listening to Nader's griping!

One tuesday morning the DSL just stopped working. Help desk phone lines were ringing busy, clients were mad, and we were pretty much helpless. When we finally did get through to someone at the help desk (the next morning) the person we talked to said it was planned network maintence. Network maintence doesn't happen tuesday afternoons. We were mighty pissed, espescially when this started happenning more and more often.

Long story short though, your ISP isn't really accountable like a hosting provider when it comes to availability. They don't care you were running a server off that DSL connection. Any home broadband is just too unreliable in my opinion.

If you wanted my advice, go find a small hosting provider that isn't mainly concerned with how many people they can fit on a stock RedHat machine.

In my opinion Vex is a group like that, or (shameless plug), UpNIX

Especially considering that, say, Python already has MP libraries. A research paper from UO, another fellow who's trod this path before, several MUD/MOO/MP libraries and games, Merchant Empire, Twisted, Eve, and so on.

Using Python would allow this fellow to achieve his goal of learning a new language, fast. He can then properly focus on the important things: program structure and gameplay.

Oh, and that picture Mr. intuition supplied of Jim was taken back in Jim's early days of college. Of all the pictures since then, updated, that Mr. intuition could've picked, notice he picked Jim's geekiest, oldest photo? Shows a lovely bias, don'tcha think? ;)

Might as well provide my own reverse propaganda, by showing a more recent picture of Jim.

Next time you want to criticise an article, folks, at least have the guts to argue about the article itself and not divert the argument to fingerpointing at the author and pointing out some completely unrelated piece he wrote for the sake of humor. That just shows immaturity and playground tactics when you don't have anything useful to point out.

@}>-`--,-- Lisa "Maxi Rose" Lai - Wife to Jim "GrimJim" Lai

As for Hastings Research : maybe you would like to see a sample of some of their other quality research. When have you ever heard a white paper draw a metaphor between market conditions and a glass being half full? But seriously they do have a six foot magnetic whiteboard to "prototype" their research. (they don't put rookies in center field either.) If you need to know they also provide a list of profitable web sites. (Look to the bottom of the page for their judicious use of "keywords" to help prop up their standing in search engine results.)

This is the worst article ever on slashdot.

As for Hastings Research : maybe you would like to see a sample of some of their other quality research. When have you ever heard a white paper draw a metaphor between market conditions and a glass being half full? But seriously they do have a six foot magnetic whiteboard to "prototype" their research. (they don't put rookies in center field either.) If you need to know they also provide a list of profitable web sites. (Look to the bottom of the page for their judicious use of "keywords" to help prop up their standing in search engine results.)

This is the worst article ever on slashdot.

As for Hastings Research : maybe you would like to see a sample of some of their other quality research. When have you ever heard a white paper draw a metaphor between market conditions and a glass being half full? But seriously they do have a six foot magnetic whiteboard to "prototype" their research. (they don't put rookies in center field either.) If you need to know they also provide a list of profitable web sites. (Look to the bottom of the page for their judicious use of "keywords" to help prop up their standing in search engine results.)

This is the worst article ever on slashdot.

So why did Scheme never take off? It is one serious, kick-ass, efficient, clean, compileable gem of a language, and believe me, I've programmed one hell of a lot of languages.

My theory is that Scheme never really took off because of a lack of useful standardized libraries. Utility libraries is really the only reason why Perl is popular, and Python is making tremendous inroads with its ever-growing collection of libraries.

Ruby is suffering from the same problem. People like me do not want to have to write an HTTP parser, binary tree library, socket interface, whatever, Yet Again.

...a Richard. Couldn't help it. I've had tons of luck with HE.net and Vex. Shell access as well as top notch service. Good luck!

Apparently you haven't used Python, or even read the docs; modularity is one of its strongest features.

Programming in python might produce better code, but it is enjoyable to write? Most write-only code (ie, scripting tasks) are tedious if you write them the "nice" way.

First of all, I use the interactive Python console to accomplish simple scripting tasks, which is a breeze. I spend so little time accomplishing my goal that I can move on to something I really enjoy in short order, such as a more challenging program.

If the task is slightly more complex, I figure out the basics on the console and then write the complete program in a module (in Python, a module is just a file of code--a "script"). When I'm done with my simple scripting task, that module lies around waiting for me to need some slice of its functionality (a function, for instance) in the future. If I do, I just 'import' it and go to town.

For more complex tasks I use OOP, which is pleasant in Python, though not as formal and featureful as in the likes of C++. For example, I've written a fairly involved network app that uses both multithreading and sockets extensively. OOP happens to match the way I think, so I consider solid support for it indispensable (before you suggest this, I was not "raised on OO" and therefore did not begin exploring the broad world of languages with a favorable bias toward it).

As for power, Python has it aplenty. The language's philosophy, though, is that extra power should be added uniformly--through the modules and class mechanisms--rather than cluttering the core language with lots of bizarre constructs.

Concurrent programs are a breeze with the threading, there's a parser module for manipulating Python parse trees, an shlex module for concocting simple lexers right off the bat, a Numeric module for maxtrix manipulation and other scientifically oriented numeric programming, various imaging/graphics modules for graphics programming. These are just a few of the modules that I actually use. All of this, and the core language remains the best compromise of simpilicity (Lisp) and comfort I've ever used.

For most programming tasks (even complex ones), C++/Java-type languages aren't clearly superior. Bruce Eckels, author of _Thinking_in_C++_ and _Thinking_in_Java_ (thus clearly well acquainted with both), says "Python is my language of choice for virtually all my own programming projects".

It wasn't a complete loss though. Rogers@Home has a connection to Torix, in addition to the @home backbone. Since my shell ISP (Vex.net) also connects though Torix, I was able to ssh to them, and still get to the web (using Lynx... memories of Toronto FreeNet), and transfer files to my school account.

Do you see things in a similar way? If so, why has Python not evolved something similar or better, and what can I do to help it along in this realm?

Learning Python is not hard (remember how long it took you to learn Perl?) -- you can do it in an evening by reading any one of these free (and Free) online books:

• Dive Into Python - written for the Slashdot crowd, it assumes you know one real language (like Perl, Java, or C++) and takes you from there. Steps through real code to teach you the language basics (and not-so-basics), and makes frequent comparisons to the language(s) you already know.
• How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (Python version) - better for those with less programming experience. Not as detailed, but gentler.
• Learning To Program - for those with no programming experience whatsoever who want to learn Python as their first programming language.

Once you've read any or those, you'll want to dig into some real code, so head over to the Python Knowledge Base for tons of real code examples, and Vaults of Parnassus for tons of free third-party modules and libraries.

-M

The Vaults of Parnassus are where you can find interesting Python applications. There is a sub-vault on audio and music applications.

The Vaults of Parnassus are where you can find interesting Python applications. There is a sub-vault on audio and music applications.

Heh. I read that article about SF ISPs being gobbled up. I got thinking, "hey, that sounds familiar, only it happened here five years ago!"

A really good article about the demise of io.org can be found here.And another version of the story is available here.

My short list:
Captain Harlock (aka Albator)
Grandizer (aka Goldorak)
Captain Future (aka Capitaine FLAM)
Robotech the MACROSS Saga
---

The problem with all these wonderful solutions is that they are overkill for the simple problem of putting content in a consistent presentation.

Yup, that's for sure. Here are a few lighter-weight (positively-speaking) python html generating utilities. Maybe they will have some useful ideas/components for you:

1. makepage 0.1.x

   This one sounds the most like what you want/already have (?)

   Abstract:

   Generate HTML files from a formatted input template description files.

   Details:

   makepage.py takes a specially formatted input file and a HTML format file and generates a HTML file from them. It also generates labels and a contents line for all sections of a file at the top of each page to jump directly to a section without scrolling through the file. The default layout file (html_format.py) can be ``overwritten'' partially or completely by a layout file supplied by you.

2. Poor Man's Zope (PMZ)

   This one is probably too lightweight for your purposes, but I don't really know...

   Abstract:

   Is very similar to Active Server Pages or PHP3/4 and allows you to include Python code into your HTML pages.

   Details:

   If you don't need an application server like ZOPE than PMZ should be your choice. In general this is a technology preview. For performance issues it might be necessary to rewrite the code into an Apache web server module for best performance. This piece of software is not thought to be used on a high performance web server with much traffic. However it might be useful in some situations when you need some Python functionalities in your environment.

3. HTMLgen 2.2.2

   This one is probably the heaviest-duty of the ones listed here. May be too much for what you need?...

   WHAT'S IT FOR?

   HTMLgen is a class library for the generation of HTML documents with Python scripts. It's used when you want to create HTML pages containing information which changes from time to time. For example, you might want to have a page which provides an overall system summary of data collected nightly. Or maybe you have a catalog of data and images that you would like formed into a spiffy set of web pages for the world to browse. Python is a great scripting language for these tasks and with HTMLgen it's very straightforward to construct objects which are rendered out into consistently structured web pages. Of course, CGI scripts written in Python can take advantage of these classes as well.

The problem with all these wonderful solutions is that they are overkill for the simple problem of putting content in a consistent presentation.

Yup, that's for sure. Here are a few lighter-weight (positively-speaking) python html generating utilities. Maybe they will have some useful ideas/components for you:

1. makepage 0.1.x

   This one sounds the most like what you want/already have (?)

   Abstract:

   Generate HTML files from a formatted input template description files.

   Details:

   makepage.py takes a specially formatted input file and a HTML format file and generates a HTML file from them. It also generates labels and a contents line for all sections of a file at the top of each page to jump directly to a section without scrolling through the file. The default layout file (html_format.py) can be ``overwritten'' partially or completely by a layout file supplied by you.

2. Poor Man's Zope (PMZ)

   This one is probably too lightweight for your purposes, but I don't really know...

   Abstract:

   Is very similar to Active Server Pages or PHP3/4 and allows you to include Python code into your HTML pages.

   Details:

   If you don't need an application server like ZOPE than PMZ should be your choice. In general this is a technology preview. For performance issues it might be necessary to rewrite the code into an Apache web server module for best performance. This piece of software is not thought to be used on a high performance web server with much traffic. However it might be useful in some situations when you need some Python functionalities in your environment.

3. HTMLgen 2.2.2

   This one is probably the heaviest-duty of the ones listed here. May be too much for what you need?...

   WHAT'S IT FOR?

   HTMLgen is a class library for the generation of HTML documents with Python scripts. It's used when you want to create HTML pages containing information which changes from time to time. For example, you might want to have a page which provides an overall system summary of data collected nightly. Or maybe you have a catalog of data and images that you would like formed into a spiffy set of web pages for the world to browse. Python is a great scripting language for these tasks and with HTMLgen it's very straightforward to construct objects which are rendered out into consistently structured web pages. Of course, CGI scripts written in Python can take advantage of these classes as well.

...and more! In addition to the excellent official Python Web site, there's Tim M's brilliant resource called Parnassus.