Please note that not all Christians are of the Christian fundy right that the author is describing. I hear that some of them even secretly voted for Al Gore.
Likewise not everyone who voted for Bush is a part of the "Christian fundy right".
A bit of an off-topic rant but when did Slashdot stop being about Microsoft hatred, Linux and OSS and start becoming the Geek Political forum?
Guess you better not go see Lord of The Rings anymore then. Tolkin was a Christian too and his story is a "thinley-veiled Christian allegory" just like C.S. Lewis.
Re:Patrolling the Border
on
Droning On
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· Score: 2
What's to stop the government from using spy satilites, or conventional aircraft from doing the same thing?
The attitude of slashdot about this article confuses me. This drones are low level (heck even the afgans can shoot them down) so if they were using it to spy on you, you would probably know about it. Contrast that to a satilite or one of those command radar planes (AWAKS?), you'll never know its there. It makes sense that if the governent is going to do any spying on the public it would be by a means the public wouldn't know about.
fine arts is only an important skill if you were born rich. For the rest of us, it's all about communication skills and being emotionally healthy.
Simply not true. Check out this study which shows that kids who have exposure to music do better in math. Music and math is a big one just do a google for "correlation between math and music".
I'll also quote my wife who happens to have a teaching degree and a minor in music. The ability to read music improve the ability to read language. She also agrees with the math and music studies. Both music and art improve higher level logic and thinking skills.
Another reason this country is so far behind in education is because so many school districts are cutting those programs (see the linked studies above).
On a personal note, no I wasn't very popular in school but one of things that got me through 8th grade was art... not computers. I happen to remember a lot of what I did in art class even though I don't remember much about the english class I had. Also I'm not rich and I never have been.
I had a different situation growing up than a lot of people did, I lived in other countries and I saw some better ways of doing things. One thing americans don't put emphasis on is being a well rounded person. I pride myself on being such a person. To this day I still paint, I enjoy classical music (though I was never very good at making music) and I write every now and then, as well as working on computers.
The underlying problem is deeper than even that. The main reason we don't have good teachers is because the good ones get fired.
I have a friend who used to be a middle school English teacher, one of the best teachers I've ever known, he employed a variety of methods to get kids to learn. He did lots of different "cool" things like after reading a story, having the kids go in the hall and draw the story on huge newsprint scrolls.
He also didn't take any crap from his kids. They acted up, he disiplined them according to school policy (detention, office, etc). If a kid didn't participate or didn't do the homework, he failed them. If the kids at least tryed to learn he did his best to help them (and those kids passed).
The result? He was fired. Why? Because he made the other teachers look bad, and too many of his kids were failing and being disiplined. Why would teachers pass kids that weren't even trying, or refuse to disipline kids that are troublemakers?
Because at least in Texas laws have been passed that give more money to schools that have high rates of students passing and high attendence. If a kid gets disiplined and eventually suspended, the school gets less money. If the students don't make the grade its better to curve them up because then the school gets more money because they passed. Teachers are encouraged to ignore disipline problems and pass failing kids regardless of grades. Good teachers that refuse to follow the system get canned and we're left with people who only care about paycheck and will happily hand out passing grades.
Students figure out this system too and don't make an effort to learn. They don't have to. The troublemakers bully other kids around without thought of consequences, all of which probably helps to foster the rampant school shooting problems as well.
I don't want to be offensive to you but I think that teachers and principals do need to see this. One of the things that is wrong with the current educational system (in the US anyway) is too many people are worried about keeping their jobs and not making sure that kids are properly educated. It becomes a huge political circus rather than a public service to better the next generation.
Reports like this are a step in the right direction, showing teachers that Math, English and even fine arts are so much more needed skills than calculators, word processors, and MS Paint.
*rant* Now if we could just get school boards across the nation to get their heads out of their collective... well you know, and legislators to stop passing laws that give more money to districts where kids pass, thus encouraging teachers to pass kids regardless of grades. */rant*
Back on topic... don't get me wrong I do believe that educational software has its place. Personally I think its something that parents should have at home, or something that should be in libraries, even school libraries. Places where it can be used without taking away from the time to learn the real important stuff.
I actually had a PC version of it that was supposed to run in VGA color. Sadley a bug wouldn't allow it to run unless I told it I had a 4 color Hercules adapter, which after selecting made everything four shades of pink.
First... almost no professional web programmer puts HTML in their code anymore (PHP or Perl), we tend to use OOP based templating systems. Makes it much easier to separate content and code in non trivial web applications.
Yes and being a proffesional developer I do that. For me its a lot easier to do in Perl than it is in PHP. Granted I haven't used PHP as long as I have Perl, so its a matter of personal preference.
Second... OOP makes it tons easier to write, again, non-trivial apps and libraries. snip... Plus, there's the added benefit of you not having to be a slave to CPAN for the tiniest bit of additional functionality.
Most of CPAN is reusable OO code so your statement is a contridiction. Perl includes many modules in its default install and its easy to add them. That doesn't make one a slave, it allows one to build programs that has only the things they need in them. If my program doesn't need a graphic interface or a mysql backend why should it be in my namespace at all??? With PHP there isn't anyway to take that out.
Finally I'm not trying to start a "my language is better war" my post was intended to refute untrue claims by a troll. Statements that Perl has no graphics interface or bad database interfaces just aren't true. The fact that they aren't in the core language doesn't make a difference, they are still availible if needed, and many people including myself feel that is a better way to do things.
If you like PHP that's fine. I like Perl and i"m sticking with it.
Well since someone modded up the troll I suppose I should reply to it.
* Ease of use.
I started with Perl, I was writting web pages in a day with it. Maybe it depends on the teacher.
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work
I use PHP, I have yet to see a reason to do much OO in what is primarily a web scripting language to embed in an HTML page. What I have seen seems incomplete and difficult to use. Contrast to Perl which while it may not be as feature complete as say Java or Smalltalk it is certainly easy to use and I think it has the right principles behind it. Especially after Perl 5.6. As far is PHP being as good as Smalltalk at OO, I have my doubts but I can't say for sure as I don't program in Smalltalk.
* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
This is simply untrue, Perl supports tons of databases through the DBI (which is also fairly simple to write new drivers for if you need them) and even if there isn't a native DBI driver, DBI supports ODBC and you can use any database that has it. That's certainly far more than just MySql and Postgres. I think your description of databases in Perl fits better for databases under PHP especially before PHP 4.
* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires that much rewriting.
FUD. It depends on what you do. Last I saw Perl has been ported to every major platform except Palm. Contrast to PHP which is on what Linux and Windows? Okay maybe some other Unixes. Perl is on dozens of Unixes, OS/2, Windows, MacOS (Before OSX), and I even had a friend using it on VMS and I also think there's even a DOS version. Some networking features used to have issues on windows but that's been fixed now with emulation
* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
If your using if for administration scripts and text processing I don't know if Perl is faster or not, but for that sort of thing I doubt there is enough difference to care and i can't imagine how annoying it would be to try writting that sort of thing in PHP. (That's just personal preference though)... On the web PHP beats a CGI script written in Perl because PHP is normally compiled into the server. Using mod_perl fixes this problem and gives you the power of Perl with equal or greater speed... I'm not going to say one is faster than the other because benchmarks are very subjective. Finally as I understand it, mod_perl scales better.
* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library of any kind.
More FUD: How about OpenGL or maybe the GD library (which is what PHP uses). Oh yeah there's even a Gimp Perl interface. Not to mention SDL tie in and several others. In fact if you go to CPAN Search frontpage there is a link that says "Graphics" which lists several common ones. The fact that these are not in the core language is a good thing. PHP's braindead way of putting everything_in_the_same_namespace() gets really old.
* Data Structures. Perl has references which can point to sub routines, arrays hashes or other contants or scalars. You can also muck around with the underlying GLOBS and there are a bunch of B::* modules for mucking around with internals as well. I certain that you can probably accomplish the same things using those tools. However even if you can't when do you need that sort of thing in a website? I think that if I need a data structure that complex I'll write it in C.
IMHO PHP will be good when the developers stop dumping one hacked subroutine after another into the core of the language. When they fix interpolation which is a nightmare (works sometimes and other times doesn't???), when new versions quit breaking existing code and when they build in better support for system wide modules and add ons.
If Perl has nothing else it still has CPAN nothing PHP has even comes close to the amount of add-ons and extras that are easy to find and just work.
Re:insurance
on
Complications
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Which is one of the two reasons that medical care in the US is so freaking expensive. The other being that drug companies are allowed to advertise prescriptions on TV, wasting millions on a nation of hypocondriacs that think "just one more pill will make everything okay"./rant
Obviously you didn't read the article. It doesn't just decide to clean a room. You tell it where to go and it stops when its done cleaning a room. You don't trip over it at 2am if you don't tell it to clean at 2am! And it certainly isn't going to be in the room when you're having sex unless you put it there.
Your comment is probably a troll because of your last statement when suddenly makes "Southern Baptist Soccor Moms" the bad people that want gun control and you all but state that their opinion does not matter because "they are in the minority". That attitude is offensive to me, not because I just happen to be Southern Baptist but because its so misinformed even if you are generalizing.
Fact is that most Southern Baptists live in the south and in Texas. The majority of people here are bitterly opposed to gun control. Trust me, I live in Texas, whole campaigns in this area (from either major party) are based on "The other guy is going to take your gun away".
The other problem I have is that your last paragraph makes it a pointless religious argument. You justify your obvious distaste for Christianity by labeling all Christians (Southern Baptists in particular) as gun control freaks.
Religion has nothing to do with this argument. It frustrates me to no end as a religious person how often religion is pointlessly dragged into an argument and set up as a very weak strawman simply to voice one's dislike for religion (particularly Christianity)! "The Christians all support Bush", "The Christians all like Microsoft", "The Christians all support gun control." I've heard all these statements in this forum.
Well I don't use Microsoft, I don't particular care to much for Bush and I'm certainly not a gun control advocate. I am however someone who thinks that everyone's opinion matters. "The soccor mom's" opinion obviously doesn't mean much to you, even though her idea of of freedom is not having to fear being attacked in parking lots by hoodlums with guns. She feels the best way to prevent that is with gun control. I'm not debating wheither or not she's right, but if you feel that her opinion is wrong then its your job to change her mind not say that she's against freedom like she's some kind of nazi faciest!
Most of the people in this country (other than politicians) don't have an agenda, they vote for the people that they feel will make the most difference, and preserve their freedom. They may be misinformed. God-forbid they may disagree with what you believe! But that is what a democracy is all about.
Your post is a troll because your idea of "freedom" is a group of people that agree specifically with you. I don't call that freedom, I call freedom everyone expressing their ideas freely. Obviously the majority of people in New Jersey voted for people that are for gun control, if they don't like it then they will vote for someone else next time and this particular piece of legislation will get overturned. If this law is unconstitutional that someone will take it to court and a judge will decide.
If you want to only be surrounded by people who buy into your idea of freedom then I suggest you buy an island somewhere and start your own country.
That's really funny, you know if the MPAA gets its way, pretty soon none of us will actually get to *see* movies (or at least if we do MPAA execs will use the flashy things on us) we'll just go pay 14.95 at the theatre to sit there. At then another 49.95 for the DVD that won't play.
I can understand why this opinion is moderated "Insightful", too bad this opinion is so far from reality. Reality is that Bill doesn't want to kill anything from Macromedia, he wants to control it and make it windows only. Make flash work only in IE, boom, all the less tech-saavy people use IE because "Netscape is broken it doesn't do flash".
And its not just flash, there is another Macromedia product that I'm far more worried about Microsoft getting their hands on: Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has quickly become the standard HTML editor. Can you imagine what's going to happen if it starts making code like Frontpage does now?
My bet is that Bill and Friends have their eyes on Dreamweaver more than Macromedia.
You get more reaction by playing "the Hitler card" though.
True, it is for reaction purposes:), but it really doesn't matter who's doing the killing, killing people because they aren't "productive members of society" is simply wrong. This country was founded on the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There isn't supposed to be any reason those rights are taking away. Who are we to decide that someone with Down Syndrome is still not productive, as an example I have a good friend who works with autistic children, she has kids that can't communicate but given the correct tools can write stories and paint pictures. Granted autism is a lot different from Down Syndrome but who's to say we won't discover a way to communicate with people have the disease and find that they aren't as incohenrent as we thought?
If we go down that slippery slope we aren't coming back. Who decides who is a productive member of society? The Bush Administration? I don't hate Bush (voted for him in fact) but I don't trust him to make that sort of descision. And then, where does it stop? Do we just kill people who have Down Syndrome? What about people so mentally retarded they can't communicate... so all the people who can't communicate well that includes people that are deaf, mute and blind... okay lets get rid of anyone born blind or deaf or mute because its obvious they aren't going to be "productive". Okay well then what about people that are partially blind, people that have to wear corrective lenses, that would include a lot of computer people (myself included!). Where does it end?
Its obvious from your sig that you probably don't believe in a higher power so I won't give the standard "playing God" argument, but I think that even you agree that if we start taking away the right to life from "non-productive people" we then have a precedent to take it away from anyone since "non-productive" is very subjective.
Religious reasons aside that's the problem I have with abortion, it makes society as a whole respect life even less than they already do. It's not really "alive" right? But it is alive, its made up of living tissue and created by other living things! And even if you believe its not, abortion still takes the right to life away from someone who would have had it otherwise.
aahhhrrg! Every one says this "OpenOffice can't handle complex formatting of word docs"
What complex formating? I've been using OO instead of Word for a long time now. I've converted tables, footnotes, tabstops, embedded images, bulleted lists, graphs and combinations of it all in the same document. I've never had a problem with formatting. More often I have problems with Word 97 or RTF documents opening in Office XP. Screws it up everytime. So please tell me what OO can't do I'm dying to know.
I read part of it, it sounded much like Jon Katz old dribble. I read where he said he wants us to examine the Dark Lord's intentions. Why should I have to? Its exactly as the original poster said, it isn't a social commentary its a fairy tale. The book and the movie clearly state that he wanted power over all living things (i.e. he wanted to become God). Later when Frodo is shown the future by the Lady of the Wood, the Dark Lord burns down people's houses and enslaves them. People that had nothing to do with resisting him. That doesn't sound like a good guy to me! And yes I came up with that all by myself, I am not brainwashed by corporations, Tolken or MTV (i hate MTV).
The whole premise of this article is just dumb. Its as though the guy is saying that by watching the movie he has some sort of higher perspective then the rest of us. How can you or he claim that everyone else is a brainwashed consumer when you have to watch the movie to come to any conclusions at all about it? The corporation already has your money if you went, they don't really care what your conclusions were.
I can't find it now but isn't this the same guy that said the Empire from Star Wars was a good thing? He's basically saying the same thing now, sounds like a canned article that you could write for any movie, just switch the Fellowship of the ring for any protagonist and the dark Lord for any antagonist you can think of. Personally I think the guy just wants a dictator, go move to Iraq.
Oh well, I guess he gets paid for writing down his goofy opinion, can't say the same for mine:)
This is very true. Often I've looked on Amazon for religious type books to find that sometimes reviewers gave it a bad review because it was a religious book. Its obvious that these reviews are just there to antagonize people.
Because of this I simply disregard the reviews on Amazon and get advice from my friend that I know will give me a real answer and understand my tastes and opinions on things.
No I do understand the post. And I even stated that it was either the school yard bullie attitude or the fear of it. I make no presumptions about why the poster feels the way he does.
That said, my point is that guns aren't the problem, that society is the problem and the attitude of "my rights before anyone else's" and the attitude of "being number 1". My point is that its a problem with almost everyone in this country wheither we choose to shoot someone or not.
My second point was that the government should do something about violent crime here before chasing terrorists all over the place.
I think I have a problem with the violent attitude that is becoming more and more prevelent in our society. We have become a nation of school-yard bullies, "I'm going to beat you up if you even look at me wrong!". Its evident in schools, in sporting events, and in the way we all drive. Everyone seems angry at everyone else.
I carry a gun every day, in fact. It's MY responsibility for my and my family's safety, not the police deparment who will show up 20 minutes late to clean up the mess.
This post reflects that attitude, (or fear of that attitude, which is not unfounded) by stating that he always carries a gun. I don't think that solves the problem. I think to solve the problem we need to examine why people feel they need to exert physical force over everyone else.
Personally I believe that media and society feed off of one another to create this attitude. Society wants more violence, TV gives it to them, thus society in turn gets bored and wants even more. Now I'm not saying that things like Columbine were caused directly by violence in media, but I think it contributes to the overall attitude of the nation.
Finally I wish that the government would let up on this whole terrorism thing and start doing something to stop the domestic terrorism of violent crime. And I don't mean to put more police on the street, I mean things like education, and drug rehab, etc... anything to get at the root of the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
3. Make the selection during install that DOESN'T start X on bootup.
.xinitrc file in your home directory. Put "exec icewm", "exec fluxbox" or whatever you like for your window manager in it.
4. After installation, put a
Small correction. If you install other window managers and leave X on by default it will ask you which one you want to run.
Last I checked Adobe is purely software ... as well as EA.
Please note that not all Christians are of the Christian fundy right that the author is describing. I hear that some of them even secretly voted for Al Gore.
Likewise not everyone who voted for Bush is a part of the "Christian fundy right".
A bit of an off-topic rant but when did Slashdot stop being about Microsoft hatred, Linux and OSS and start becoming the Geek Political forum?
Guess you better not go see Lord of The Rings anymore then. Tolkin was a Christian too and his story is a "thinley-veiled Christian allegory" just like C.S. Lewis.
What's to stop the government from using spy satilites, or conventional aircraft from doing the same thing?
The attitude of slashdot about this article confuses me. This drones are low level (heck even the afgans can shoot them down) so if they were using it to spy on you, you would probably know about it. Contrast that to a satilite or one of those command radar planes (AWAKS?), you'll never know its there. It makes sense that if the governent is going to do any spying on the public it would be by a means the public wouldn't know about.
fine arts is only an important skill if you were born rich. For the rest of us, it's all about communication skills and being emotionally healthy.
... not computers. I happen to remember a lot of what I did in art class even though I don't remember much about the english class I had. Also I'm not rich and I never have been.
Simply not true. Check out this study which shows that kids who have exposure to music do better in math. Music and math is a big one just do a google for "correlation between math and music".
I'll also quote my wife who happens to have a teaching degree and a minor in music. The ability to read music improve the ability to read language. She also agrees with the math and music studies. Both music and art improve higher level logic and thinking skills.
Another reason this country is so far behind in education is because so many school districts are cutting those programs (see the linked studies above).
On a personal note, no I wasn't very popular in school but one of things that got me through 8th grade was art
I had a different situation growing up than a lot of people did, I lived in other countries and I saw some better ways of doing things. One thing americans don't put emphasis on is being a well rounded person. I pride myself on being such a person. To this day I still paint, I enjoy classical music (though I was never very good at making music) and I write every now and then, as well as working on computers.
The underlying problem is deeper than even that. The main reason we don't have good teachers is because the good ones get fired.
I have a friend who used to be a middle school English teacher, one of the best teachers I've ever known, he employed a variety of methods to get kids to learn. He did lots of different "cool" things like after reading a story, having the kids go in the hall and draw the story on huge newsprint scrolls.
He also didn't take any crap from his kids. They acted up, he disiplined them according to school policy (detention, office, etc). If a kid didn't participate or didn't do the homework, he failed them. If the kids at least tryed to learn he did his best to help them (and those kids passed).
The result? He was fired. Why? Because he made the other teachers look bad, and too many of his kids were failing and being disiplined. Why would teachers pass kids that weren't even trying, or refuse to disipline kids that are troublemakers?
Because at least in Texas laws have been passed that give more money to schools that have high rates of students passing and high attendence. If a kid gets disiplined and eventually suspended, the school gets less money. If the students don't make the grade its better to curve them up because then the school gets more money because they passed. Teachers are encouraged to ignore disipline problems and pass failing kids regardless of grades. Good teachers that refuse to follow the system get canned and we're left with people who only care about paycheck and will happily hand out passing grades.
Students figure out this system too and don't make an effort to learn. They don't have to. The troublemakers bully other kids around without thought of consequences, all of which probably helps to foster the rampant school shooting problems as well.
I don't want to be offensive to you but I think that teachers and principals do need to see this. One of the things that is wrong with the current educational system (in the US anyway) is too many people are worried about keeping their jobs and not making sure that kids are properly educated. It becomes a huge political circus rather than a public service to better the next generation.
... well you know, and legislators to stop passing laws that give more money to districts where kids pass, thus encouraging teachers to pass kids regardless of grades. */rant*
... don't get me wrong I do believe that educational software has its place. Personally I think its something that parents should have at home, or something that should be in libraries, even school libraries. Places where it can be used without taking away from the time to learn the real important stuff.
Reports like this are a step in the right direction, showing teachers that Math, English and even fine arts are so much more needed skills than calculators, word processors, and MS Paint.
*rant* Now if we could just get school boards across the nation to get their heads out of their collective
Back on topic
My two cents.
I actually had a PC version of it that was supposed to run in VGA color. Sadley a bug wouldn't allow it to run unless I told it I had a 4 color Hercules adapter, which after selecting made everything four shades of pink.
Anyone else have that problem?
First... almost no professional web programmer puts HTML in their code anymore (PHP or Perl), we tend to use OOP based templating systems. Makes it much easier to separate content and code in non trivial web applications.
...
Yes and being a proffesional developer I do that. For me its a lot easier to do in Perl than it is in PHP. Granted I haven't used PHP as long as I have Perl, so its a matter of personal preference.
Second... OOP makes it tons easier to write, again, non-trivial apps and libraries. snip
Plus, there's the added benefit of you not having to be a slave to CPAN for the tiniest bit of additional functionality.
Most of CPAN is reusable OO code so your statement is a contridiction. Perl includes many modules in its default install and its easy to add them. That doesn't make one a slave, it allows one to build programs that has only the things they need in them. If my program doesn't need a graphic interface or a mysql backend why should it be in my namespace at all??? With PHP there isn't anyway to take that out.
Finally I'm not trying to start a "my language is better war" my post was intended to refute untrue claims by a troll. Statements that Perl has no graphics interface or bad database interfaces just aren't true. The fact that they aren't in the core language doesn't make a difference, they are still availible if needed, and many people including myself feel that is a better way to do things.
If you like PHP that's fine. I like Perl and i"m sticking with it.
Well since someone modded up the troll I suppose I should reply to it.
... On the web PHP beats a CGI script written in Perl because PHP is normally compiled into the server. Using mod_perl fixes this problem and gives you the power of Perl with equal or greater speed... I'm not going to say one is faster than the other because benchmarks are very subjective. Finally as I understand it, mod_perl scales better.
* Ease of use.
I started with Perl, I was writting web pages in a day with it. Maybe it depends on the teacher.
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work
I use PHP, I have yet to see a reason to do much OO in what is primarily a web scripting language to embed in an HTML page. What I have seen seems incomplete and difficult to use. Contrast to Perl which while it may not be as feature complete as say Java or Smalltalk it is certainly easy to use and I think it has the right principles behind it. Especially after Perl 5.6. As far is PHP being as good as Smalltalk at OO, I have my doubts but I can't say for sure as I don't program in Smalltalk.
* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
This is simply untrue, Perl supports tons of databases through the DBI (which is also fairly simple to write new drivers for if you need them) and even if there isn't a native DBI driver, DBI supports ODBC and you can use any database that has it. That's certainly far more than just MySql and Postgres. I think your description of databases in Perl fits better for databases under PHP especially before PHP 4.
* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires
that much rewriting.
FUD. It depends on what you do. Last I saw Perl has been ported to every major platform except Palm. Contrast to PHP which is on what Linux and Windows? Okay maybe some other Unixes. Perl is on dozens of Unixes, OS/2, Windows, MacOS (Before OSX), and I even had a friend using it on VMS and I also think there's even a DOS version. Some networking features used to have issues on windows but that's been fixed now with emulation
* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's
strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
If your using if for administration scripts and text processing I don't know if Perl is faster or not, but for that sort of thing I doubt there is enough difference to care and i can't imagine how annoying it would be to try writting that sort of thing in PHP. (That's just personal preference though)
* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library
of any kind.
More FUD: How about OpenGL or maybe the GD library (which is what PHP uses). Oh yeah there's even a Gimp Perl interface. Not to mention SDL tie in and several others. In fact if you go to CPAN Search frontpage there is a link that says "Graphics" which lists several common ones.
The fact that these are not in the core language is a good thing. PHP's braindead way of putting everything_in_the_same_namespace() gets really old.
* Data Structures. Perl has references which can point to sub routines, arrays hashes or other contants or scalars. You can also muck around with the underlying GLOBS and there are a bunch of B::* modules for mucking around with internals as well. I certain that you can probably accomplish the same things using those tools. However even if you can't when do you need that sort of thing in a website? I think that if I need a data structure that complex I'll write it in C.
IMHO PHP will be good when the developers stop dumping one hacked subroutine after another into the core of the language. When they fix interpolation which is a nightmare (works sometimes and other times doesn't???), when new versions quit breaking existing code and when they build in better support for system wide modules and add ons.
If Perl has nothing else it still has CPAN nothing PHP has even comes close to the amount of add-ons and extras that are easy to find and just work.
Which is one of the two reasons that medical care in the US is so freaking expensive. The other being that drug companies are allowed to advertise prescriptions on TV, wasting millions on a nation of hypocondriacs that think "just one more pill will make everything okay". /rant
Obviously you didn't read the article. It doesn't just decide to clean a room. You tell it where to go and it stops when its done cleaning a room. You don't trip over it at 2am if you don't tell it to clean at 2am! And it certainly isn't going to be in the room when you're having sex unless you put it there.
Your comment is probably a troll because of your last statement when suddenly makes "Southern Baptist Soccor Moms" the bad people that want gun control and you all but state that their opinion does not matter because "they are in the minority". That attitude is offensive to me, not because I just happen to be Southern Baptist but because its so misinformed even if you are generalizing.
Fact is that most Southern Baptists live in the south and in Texas. The majority of people here are bitterly opposed to gun control. Trust me, I live in Texas, whole campaigns in this area (from either major party) are based on "The other guy is going to take your gun away".
The other problem I have is that your last paragraph makes it a pointless religious argument. You justify your obvious distaste for Christianity by labeling all Christians (Southern Baptists in particular) as gun control freaks.
Religion has nothing to do with this argument. It frustrates me to no end as a religious person how often religion is pointlessly dragged into an argument and set up as a very weak strawman simply to voice one's dislike for religion (particularly Christianity)! "The Christians all support Bush", "The Christians all like Microsoft", "The Christians all support gun control." I've heard all these statements in this forum.
Well I don't use Microsoft, I don't particular care to much for Bush and I'm certainly not a gun control advocate. I am however someone who thinks that everyone's opinion matters. "The soccor mom's" opinion obviously doesn't mean much to you, even though her idea of of freedom is not having to fear being attacked in parking lots by hoodlums with guns. She feels the best way to prevent that is with gun control. I'm not debating wheither or not she's right, but if you feel that her opinion is wrong then its your job to change her mind not say that she's against freedom like she's some kind of nazi faciest!
Most of the people in this country (other than politicians) don't have an agenda, they vote for the people that they feel will make the most difference, and preserve their freedom. They may be misinformed. God-forbid they may disagree with what you believe! But that is what a democracy is all about.
Your post is a troll because your idea of "freedom" is a group of people that agree specifically with you. I don't call that freedom, I call freedom everyone expressing their ideas freely. Obviously the majority of people in New Jersey voted for people that are for gun control, if they don't like it then they will vote for someone else next time and this particular piece of legislation will get overturned. If this law is unconstitutional that someone will take it to court and a judge will decide.
If you want to only be surrounded by people who buy into your idea of freedom then I suggest you buy an island somewhere and start your own country.
That's really funny, you know if the MPAA gets its way, pretty soon none of us will actually get to *see* movies (or at least if we do MPAA execs will use the flashy things on us) we'll just go pay 14.95 at the theatre to sit there. At then another 49.95 for the DVD that won't play.
:)
Might as well enjoy them now
I can understand why this opinion is moderated "Insightful", too bad this opinion is so far from reality. Reality is that Bill doesn't want to kill anything from Macromedia, he wants to control it and make it windows only. Make flash work only in IE, boom, all the less tech-saavy people use IE because "Netscape is broken it doesn't do flash".
And its not just flash, there is another Macromedia product that I'm far more worried about Microsoft getting their hands on: Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has quickly become the standard HTML editor. Can you imagine what's going to happen if it starts making code like Frontpage does now?
My bet is that Bill and Friends have their eyes on Dreamweaver more than Macromedia.
You get more reaction by playing "the Hitler card" though.
:), but it really doesn't matter who's doing the killing, killing people because they aren't "productive members of society" is simply wrong. This country was founded on the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There isn't supposed to be any reason those rights are taking away. Who are we to decide that someone with Down Syndrome is still not productive, as an example I have a good friend who works with autistic children, she has kids that can't communicate but given the correct tools can write stories and paint pictures. Granted autism is a lot different from Down Syndrome but who's to say we won't discover a way to communicate with people have the disease and find that they aren't as incohenrent as we thought?
... so all the people who can't communicate well that includes people that are deaf, mute and blind ... okay lets get rid of anyone born blind or deaf or mute because its obvious they aren't going to be "productive". Okay well then what about people that are partially blind, people that have to wear corrective lenses, that would include a lot of computer people (myself included!). Where does it end?
True, it is for reaction purposes
If we go down that slippery slope we aren't coming back. Who decides who is a productive member of society? The Bush Administration? I don't hate Bush (voted for him in fact) but I don't trust him to make that sort of descision. And then, where does it stop? Do we just kill people who have Down Syndrome? What about people so mentally retarded they can't communicate
Its obvious from your sig that you probably don't believe in a higher power so I won't give the standard "playing God" argument, but I think that even you agree that if we start taking away the right to life from "non-productive people" we then have a precedent to take it away from anyone since "non-productive" is very subjective.
Religious reasons aside that's the problem I have with abortion, it makes society as a whole respect life even less than they already do. It's not really "alive" right? But it is alive, its made up of living tissue and created by other living things! And even if you believe its not, abortion still takes the right to life away from someone who would have had it otherwise.
Hitler killed people that he deemed un-productive or a hinderence to society as well.
aahhhrrg! Every one says this "OpenOffice can't handle complex formatting of word docs"
What complex formating? I've been using OO instead of Word for a long time now. I've converted tables, footnotes, tabstops, embedded images, bulleted lists, graphs and combinations of it all in the same document. I've never had a problem with formatting. More often I have problems with Word 97 or RTF documents opening in Office XP. Screws it up everytime. So please tell me what OO can't do I'm dying to know.
I read part of it, it sounded much like Jon Katz old dribble. I read where he said he wants us to examine the Dark Lord's intentions. Why should I have to? Its exactly as the original poster said, it isn't a social commentary its a fairy tale. The book and the movie clearly state that he wanted power over all living things (i.e. he wanted to become God). Later when Frodo is shown the future by the Lady of the Wood, the Dark Lord burns down people's houses and enslaves them. People that had nothing to do with resisting him. That doesn't sound like a good guy to me! And yes I came up with that all by myself, I am not brainwashed by corporations, Tolken or MTV (i hate MTV).
:)
The whole premise of this article is just dumb. Its as though the guy is saying that by watching the movie he has some sort of higher perspective then the rest of us. How can you or he claim that everyone else is a brainwashed consumer when you have to watch the movie to come to any conclusions at all about it? The corporation already has your money if you went, they don't really care what your conclusions were.
I can't find it now but isn't this the same guy that said the Empire from Star Wars was a good thing? He's basically saying the same thing now, sounds like a canned article that you could write for any movie, just switch the Fellowship of the ring for any protagonist and the dark Lord for any antagonist you can think of. Personally I think the guy just wants a dictator, go move to Iraq.
Oh well, I guess he gets paid for writing down his goofy opinion, can't say the same for mine
This is very true. Often I've looked on Amazon for religious type books to find that sometimes reviewers gave it a bad review because it was a religious book. Its obvious that these reviews are just there to antagonize people.
Because of this I simply disregard the reviews on Amazon and get advice from my friend that I know will give me a real answer and understand my tastes and opinions on things.
But since Linux is GPL'd all they can copyright is the name. Someone else could make a competing MS Linux and include Apache, MySQL, PHP etc...
No I do understand the post. And I even stated that it was either the school yard bullie attitude or the fear of it. I make no presumptions about why the poster feels the way he does.
That said, my point is that guns aren't the problem, that society is the problem and the attitude of "my rights before anyone else's" and the attitude of "being number 1". My point is that its a problem with almost everyone in this country wheither we choose to shoot someone or not.
My second point was that the government should do something about violent crime here before chasing terrorists all over the place.
I think I have a problem with the violent attitude that is becoming more and more prevelent in our society. We have become a nation of school-yard bullies, "I'm going to beat you up if you even look at me wrong!". Its evident in schools, in sporting events, and in the way we all drive. Everyone seems angry at everyone else.
I carry a gun every day, in fact. It's MY responsibility for my and my family's safety, not the police deparment who will show up 20 minutes late to clean up the mess.
This post reflects that attitude, (or fear of that attitude, which is not unfounded) by stating that he always carries a gun. I don't think that solves the problem. I think to solve the problem we need to examine why people feel they need to exert physical force over everyone else.
Personally I believe that media and society feed off of one another to create this attitude. Society wants more violence, TV gives it to them, thus society in turn gets bored and wants even more. Now I'm not saying that things like Columbine were caused directly by violence in media, but I think it contributes to the overall attitude of the nation.
Finally I wish that the government would let up on this whole terrorism thing and start doing something to stop the domestic terrorism of violent crime. And I don't mean to put more police on the street, I mean things like education, and drug rehab, etc... anything to get at the root of the problem.
agreed, like sitting in front of the computer letting slashdot pound away at your brain :)