Perl Creative Daemon Contest

eisen writes "We are pleased to announce the Perl Creative Daemon Content sponsored by Mother of Perl, O'Reilly, Stonehenge Consulting, and Whirlwind Interactive. The First, Second, and Third place entries will win a copy of the book "Mastering Algorithms with Perl". In addition the First place entry will win $300. The Second place entry will win $200. The deadline for submitting entries is April 15th. Randal Schwartz has graciously volunteered to judge the entries. More information including contest rules are available at the contest homepage."

Comments

Re:I Feel That I Must Warn You...

[Anonymous Coward]

here's some info on the case.

How about

[348]

# load required modules
use strict;
use POSIX qw(setsid);
use LWP::Simple;
# set costants
my $URL = 'http://www.slashdot.org/';
my $FILE = '/tmp/firstpostbaby.html';
# flush the buffer
$| = 1;
# daemonize the program
&daemonize;
# first post infinite loop
while(1) {
# mirror the file
mirror($URL,$FILE);
# wait for 20 seconds
sleep(20);
}
sub daemonize {
chdir '/' or die "Can't chdir to /: $!";
open STDIN, '/dev/null' or die "Can't read /dev/null: $!FIRST POST;;
open STDOUT, '>>/dev/null' or die "Can't write to /dev/null: $!FISRT POST;;
open STDERR, '>>/dev/null' or die "Can't write to /dev/null: $!NOFIRSTPOST;;
defined(my $pid = fork) or die "Can't fork: $!";
exit if $pid;
setsid or die "Can't get a first post, start a new session: $!";
umask 0;
}

Odd choice of prize

[Mr. Piccolo]

Think about it. If the winner writes the most creative daemon on the planet, what does he/she need a book about mastering algorithms for?

At least money is involved, so the prize isn't _all_ useless... ;-)

Re:I Feel That I Must Warn You...

[crucini]

This (bashing of Randal) is almost certainly a troll, but I'll reply for the benefit of those who don't already know. Randal was convicted of three felony counts for performing tasks that essentially fell within his professional scope as sysadmin. Read the whole story. It's worth learning about, because many people who work with computers are in danger of similar prosecution if they piss off the wrong person. So before you condemn Randal, answer this: have you ever accessed a corporate information resource without explicit authorization? If you say no, and you work in a large, heterogeneous corporate environment, I can rest assured that you don't get much accomplished. If you say yes, you are confessing to the crux of the charges against Randal. The real problem here is that the average person (judge, juror) has so little understanding of how computers work that many innocent actions can be portrayed as criminal. Ever grepped a password file? Now picture how that could sound in court. Anyway, if someone has a serious reason to disbelieve Randal's side of the story, please post it or a link to it. In the 4+ years since the conviction, I haven't seen any.