Tooting the Python horn a little then, there are at least two good and free ways to generate executables from Python programs. There was a good-sized discussion of this on comp.lang.python in early January.
The two most dominant options appear to be py2exe and Gordon McMillan's Installer, which also has a nice summary of other options as well. I personally use Installer and find it to work just fine; that said I don't have any experience with its GUI capabilities - I know it's supposed to have decent support for the common Python GUI techniques, but all my stuff is command-line driven.
Used Perl, tried Python, liked it better and switched
Used Perl, tried Python, found it better for some things, use both
Never used Perl, don't care about it
I left out "Used Python, tried Perl, switched" because Perl's better-known and there are fewer people who started with Python. Besides folks who did that arguably don't qualify as Python users anymore.
There's a small subset of folks (most of whom really need to get a life and a few who are probably doing it for entertainment reasons) who publicly get really worked up about the superiority of Python. Similarly, in the Linux community there's a similar group of folks who get really worked up about Ruby. Remarkably enough, in the Perl community there is (wait for it) a similar group of folks who get really worked up about Perl. Some other products/projects with their own little fanatical subgroups: vi, emacs, Macs, FreeBSD, OpenBSD (and don't confuse the two!) and probably skript-kiddie toolsets.
The common feature that most of these folks share is that as far as the rest of us are concerned they need to get a life. I have no doubt that there are other shared behaviors within these groups, but if I went into those it could seem that I was just being nasty.
Seems to me that if people start running Freenet nodes within the network, items that come down to a small number of people will then be available "free" to others within the same local network.
Could something like this turn out to be a real boon for Freenet to get a critical mass of users in one area?
Why not grab the text version?
on
Salon Asks for Help
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Seriously, they've had a text download version available since May 21, 2001. It has all of the new content for that day.
If you want an offline version but need the pretty pictures, they also have a PDF version that was added at the beginning of July, 2001.
You can get to either of them by clicking on Subscriber Services at the top of the main page, it's listed under "If you're new to Salon Premium." Actually, even simpler, both versions are linked from the "Premium Benefits" area at the top right of the main page and the section pages.
The interesting thing about this is that SDF was down on Thursday for a scheduled move to a new location (still on NWLink, but a better facility) and simply never came back up. First it was delayed due to instability in NWLink's internal network, then apparently by just being disconnected.
Personally I find the timing suspicious - the move was originally scheduled for earlier in the week, then was delayed at NWLink's request, then when it actually happened "Oh, we're disconnecting you." Did they decide some time ago to get rid of those pesky SDF people and just try to make it look like an SDF problem instead of a NWLink disconnect?
One thing that's going to influence that is the size of the projects - very large projects are more likely to be farmed out, the smaller ones that keep a lot of business running will stay where the 2-5 people spending a year working on a custom package can actually communicate with the people they're developing for.
You might think that means that a lot of product development will go away, but a lot of software is developed by those smaller teams, and it's much harder to outsource/export those. Spending $120k a year on travel for meetings (which yes, really are needed for a lot of things) may make sense when you're saving a million a year on developer salaries & facilities, but if you're only saving $60k?
If you're interested in fantasy in a modern setting (and not the Lackey elves & cars bit), two authors to look at are: Charles deLint, who writes stories with mysticism but not a lot of "magic," set in a city similar to Toronto but with big aspects of mythology (largely Native American) thrown in. He's been around for a while. Laurell K. Hamilton sometimes gets grouped into horror instead of SF/F. Her older and longer series is based around a licensed vampire executioner and necromancer living in the St. Louis area; her newer one is based around the, hm, "unloved" niece of the Queen of the Unseelie Sidhe, who spent several years hiding from the rest of the court because her life wasn't worth spit. The Anita Blake series starts out a little young-adultish, but it (and the main character) have gone through a lot of changes. From a discussion at a con, she apparently listened mostly to The Bloodhound Gang while writing the first book of the newer series - I won't say that it shows, but that series is definitely not targeted at young adults.
You should also look at Baen's Free Library which has HTML and PDA-readable versions of quite a few books from various authors, many of them the first 1-2 books of a series so you can decide whether it's worth plunking down money for paper (or electronic, see Webscriptions on the same site) versions of the later books.
As others have pointed out, he shouldn't have to spend money on a lawyer for a hobby that provides more benefit to others than to him. If other people want to cover the cost of a lawyer for him, they can volunteer to do so.
Personally, I think the 'tizzy' was fairly justified, and that the PCI-SIG deserves all the publicity they get by having that description up on the page. Perhaps if he gets a personal apology he'll change his mind, but I know in my case that's what it would take - possibly both personal and public apologies.
The real kicker would be if the PCI-SIG didn't have a copy of what was apparently a (the?) fairly definitive database of PCI IDs, including obscure and old ones.
Keep track of the case as much as possible - you may be eligible for a reward from an organization like CrimeStoppers (Canadian?) or (International "Parent") or something similar. Unfortunately the sites don't seem to be particularly well set up for finding programs, but you've shown that you can be determined.
The sergeant you worked with may be able to tell you if there's a CrimeStoppers or other program that might cover you - particularly if you're just hoping to cover what it cost you track everything down.
The offer in question (a 40-hour box for $199 after $50 mail-in rebate) appears to be identical to the one that TiVo is offering directly from their web site. TiVo is also throwing in free shipping, I didn't notice whether AT&T was doing the same.
Unfortunately, there's no way to determine whether you're going to get a TCD1 model or a TCD2 model (with USB2.0 instead of 1.1). The only guaranteed way to get a TCD2 model right now appears to be buying an 80-hour unit. There don't appear to be any 60-hour TCD2 units.
Elron's books became best sellers too. I think Dianetics is way up there on the all-time best seller lists. Heck, I'm pretty sure it's sold more copies than have been printed.
Are Scientologists allowed to go into bookstores and leave without buying one of Elron's books (which can later be boxed up, sent back to HQ, and sold into a bookstore again)?
Still, I don't think that's a significant part of Coulter's sales. I'd credit a lot of those more to the Jerry Springer mentality than to anything else.
Finally the point: of the "successful news/opinion type sites" that are very conservative, how many of them are public and let you see their books? For the ones that are publically held, are there any where the numbers for the sites aren't buried with other items on an overall statement?
I'll use Fox as an example - how profitable is the Fox News web site separate from the rest of the company? Is it subsidized by profits from elsewhere? Is it shortcutting quality journalism because by the time it comes out that the story was wrong it'll be off the front page anyway?
One other person has recommended grabbing the "print" versions of articles you're interested in, which should do the trick.
As an alternative, if you're a subscriber you can get the day's content as a single big text or PDF file - with the obvious exception of things updated during the day (and presumbly included in the next day's files). Easy to convert in any way you want.
No, you want two geographically diverse sites in case of natural disasters or other events that keep you from reaching (physically or electronically) one.
I'm sure that there's been lots of study of this, but I suspect that a good distance is 1-2 hours drive. Far enough to avoid most of the impact from things like a big chunk of the city being shut down for weeks, close enough to get to (with some inconvenience) if necessary.
In the Chicago area it might be something like downtown Chicago and Schaumburg, Naperville, Aurora or even Rockford (at the 2-hour mark).
Every login is preceded by "By clicking the button you agree to these policies" with a URL to the pages and pages of dos and don'ts, or else published everywhere around these workstations as dead tree reminders of "acceptable use".
Are those URLs clickable without agreeing to them before seeing them, or is the university playing a game of "To use this system, you must agree to certain conditions, details of which you will receive after you agree?"
Set up a separate checking account for use with PayPal and other online payments!
Don't put much money in, just enough to cover your regular expenses - when you need more, most banks have phone or Internet systems you can go through to transfer money between accounts.
Don't let the bank set up the account with automatic overdraft protection. Some will do this by default. Make it clear that overdraft protection from your other accounts is unacceptable and be willing to back it up by changing banks
Don't bother getting checks, just the numbers that would be in that MICR line at the bottom of the check.
Use a credit union if you have one available - in general, the account there will be free.
Never depend on that account for anything important - rent, groceries, car payments, etc. all come out of your normal account. This one is a pile of money left on a desk in a busy office.
First, you could also do something similar over http or (with a dedicated IP) https for more security. Take a look at CGI:IRC for an example that keeps the connection open, etc.
Second, I take it you're planning on switching to ex for your editing needs? Get yourself your own little unique niche in the vi vs. emacs wars?
Hell, ask Stallman, he's always looking for a pulpit.
Or don't ask Stallman, because he's always looking for a pulpit. Find someone whose credentials are as good, but who's less likely to offend the judge by getting preachy.
The financial risk of someone stealing your laptop to hock it and get money for drugs is limited to the cost of the laptop and the cost of restoring or recreating what was on it. This is, overall, fairly trivial by corporate standards.
The financial risk of an unencrypted CEO's laptop that gets stolen by your competitors with your corporate 5-year plan, updates from subordinates on new product progress, etc. is in comparison absolutely enormous.
Something like the described system is designed to reduce the second case to being no worse than the inconvenience presented by the first case.
Assuming that the other things I'd be looking at were met (light weight, mostly), I'd seriously consider one of these if they were no more than an extra hundred to two hundred dollars. I'm not a fan of the wireless connection - I'd rather see a USBish or iButtonish physical connection - but that's a fairly minor point. If someone starts making these and they have reasonable success, I'd expect to see other manufacturers pick them up as well with some variations on function.
I've been advocating for something like this for quite a while, with only a few differences in implementation primarily in the area of what happens when the key is removed.
Most receivers use what's called "code phase" processing, which can be accurate down to about a meter.
For surveying and high-precision positioning they switch to "carrier phase" processing, which is both more expensive and can be accurate to less than a centimeter.
Slashdot Mirror
The two most dominant options appear to be py2exe and Gordon McMillan's Installer, which also has a nice summary of other options as well. I personally use Installer and find it to work just fine; that said I don't have any experience with its GUI capabilities - I know it's supposed to have decent support for the common Python GUI techniques, but all my stuff is command-line driven.
If there aren't then I'll be a little zealotish and say that that's one area where Python clearly has an advantage.
- Used Perl, tried Python, liked it better and switched
- Used Perl, tried Python, found it better for some things, use both
- Never used Perl, don't care about it
I left out "Used Python, tried Perl, switched" because Perl's better-known and there are fewer people who started with Python. Besides folks who did that arguably don't qualify as Python users anymore.There's a small subset of folks (most of whom really need to get a life and a few who are probably doing it for entertainment reasons) who publicly get really worked up about the superiority of Python. Similarly, in the Linux community there's a similar group of folks who get really worked up about Ruby. Remarkably enough, in the Perl community there is (wait for it) a similar group of folks who get really worked up about Perl. Some other products/projects with their own little fanatical subgroups: vi, emacs, Macs, FreeBSD, OpenBSD (and don't confuse the two!) and probably skript-kiddie toolsets.
The common feature that most of these folks share is that as far as the rest of us are concerned they need to get a life. I have no doubt that there are other shared behaviors within these groups, but if I went into those it could seem that I was just being nasty.
Could something like this turn out to be a real boon for Freenet to get a critical mass of users in one area?
If you want an offline version but need the pretty pictures, they also have a PDF version that was added at the beginning of July, 2001.
You can get to either of them by clicking on Subscriber Services at the top of the main page, it's listed under "If you're new to Salon Premium." Actually, even simpler, both versions are linked from the "Premium Benefits" area at the top right of the main page and the section pages.
Personally I find the timing suspicious - the move was originally scheduled for earlier in the week, then was delayed at NWLink's request, then when it actually happened "Oh, we're disconnecting you." Did they decide some time ago to get rid of those pesky SDF people and just try to make it look like an SDF problem instead of a NWLink disconnect?
You might think that means that a lot of product development will go away, but a lot of software is developed by those smaller teams, and it's much harder to outsource/export those. Spending $120k a year on travel for meetings (which yes, really are needed for a lot of things) may make sense when you're saving a million a year on developer salaries & facilities, but if you're only saving $60k?
Charles deLint, who writes stories with mysticism but not a lot of "magic," set in a city similar to Toronto but with big aspects of mythology (largely Native American) thrown in. He's been around for a while.
Laurell K. Hamilton sometimes gets grouped into horror instead of SF/F. Her older and longer series is based around a licensed vampire executioner and necromancer living in the St. Louis area; her newer one is based around the, hm, "unloved" niece of the Queen of the Unseelie Sidhe, who spent several years hiding from the rest of the court because her life wasn't worth spit. The Anita Blake series starts out a little young-adultish, but it (and the main character) have gone through a lot of changes. From a discussion at a con, she apparently listened mostly to The Bloodhound Gang while writing the first book of the newer series - I won't say that it shows, but that series is definitely not targeted at young adults.
You should also look at Baen's Free Library which has HTML and PDA-readable versions of quite a few books from various authors, many of them the first 1-2 books of a series so you can decide whether it's worth plunking down money for paper (or electronic, see Webscriptions on the same site) versions of the later books.
A quick googling reveals that "His middle initials stand for Raymond Richard"
Personally, I think the 'tizzy' was fairly justified, and that the PCI-SIG deserves all the publicity they get by having that description up on the page. Perhaps if he gets a personal apology he'll change his mind, but I know in my case that's what it would take - possibly both personal and public apologies.
The real kicker would be if the PCI-SIG didn't have a copy of what was apparently a (the?) fairly definitive database of PCI IDs, including obscure and old ones.
The sergeant you worked with may be able to tell you if there's a CrimeStoppers or other program that might cover you - particularly if you're just hoping to cover what it cost you track everything down.
Unfortunately, there's no way to determine whether you're going to get a TCD1 model or a TCD2 model (with USB2.0 instead of 1.1). The only guaranteed way to get a TCD2 model right now appears to be buying an 80-hour unit. There don't appear to be any 60-hour TCD2 units.
Are Scientologists allowed to go into bookstores and leave without buying one of Elron's books (which can later be boxed up, sent back to HQ, and sold into a bookstore again)?
Still, I don't think that's a significant part of Coulter's sales. I'd credit a lot of those more to the Jerry Springer mentality than to anything else.
Finally the point: of the "successful news/opinion type sites" that are very conservative, how many of them are public and let you see their books? For the ones that are publically held, are there any where the numbers for the sites aren't buried with other items on an overall statement?
I'll use Fox as an example - how profitable is the Fox News web site separate from the rest of the company? Is it subsidized by profits from elsewhere? Is it shortcutting quality journalism because by the time it comes out that the story was wrong it'll be off the front page anyway?
One other person has recommended grabbing the "print" versions of articles you're interested in, which should do the trick.
As an alternative, if you're a subscriber you can get the day's content as a single big text or PDF file - with the obvious exception of things updated during the day (and presumbly included in the next day's files). Easy to convert in any way you want.
That's exactly what the Mojo Nation folks are doing now. Info at http://www.mojonation.net/.
I'm sure that there's been lots of study of this, but I suspect that a good distance is 1-2 hours drive. Far enough to avoid most of the impact from things like a big chunk of the city being shut down for weeks, close enough to get to (with some inconvenience) if necessary.
In the Chicago area it might be something like downtown Chicago and Schaumburg, Naperville, Aurora or even Rockford (at the 2-hour mark).
Are those URLs clickable without agreeing to them before seeing them, or is the university playing a game of "To use this system, you must agree to certain conditions, details of which you will receive after you agree?"
Second, I take it you're planning on switching to ex for your editing needs? Get yourself your own little unique niche in the vi vs. emacs wars?
Or don't ask Stallman, because he's always looking for a pulpit. Find someone whose credentials are as good, but who's less likely to offend the judge by getting preachy.
The financial risk of an unencrypted CEO's laptop that gets stolen by your competitors with your corporate 5-year plan, updates from subordinates on new product progress, etc. is in comparison absolutely enormous.
Something like the described system is designed to reduce the second case to being no worse than the inconvenience presented by the first case.
How close they came to my "dream" system as described here.
Assuming that the other things I'd be looking at were met (light weight, mostly), I'd seriously consider one of these if they were no more than an extra hundred to two hundred dollars. I'm not a fan of the wireless connection - I'd rather see a USBish or iButtonish physical connection - but that's a fairly minor point. If someone starts making these and they have reasonable success, I'd expect to see other manufacturers pick them up as well with some variations on function.
I've been advocating for something like this for quite a while, with only a few differences in implementation primarily in the area of what happens when the key is removed.
For surveying and high-precision positioning they switch to "carrier phase" processing, which is both more expensive and can be accurate to less than a centimeter.
More information on Magellan's site