It was also announced that Microsoft will have to return the souls of all of the companies they have acquired during the years. No word yet as to whether or not they will return all of the spines collected from their employees...
Just as important to consider is the environment that you are creating for:
A Company's Intranet
Some Sort Business Site
A Slashdot/Everything2 Community Based Site
The code and your approach to that code will change dependent on your target audience. I have worked at companies that only use Microsoft products and built VBScript ASP pages for their company intranet because it tied in smoothly with SQL Server, and turned around and used the exact same model in Perl for another client to use. The form looks the same, but the hardware and audience is different.
On a seperate note, ASP is very cool because IIS will let you code your server-side scripts in VBScript, Perl, or Javascript, plus you can incorporate COM objects from C/C++, VB, Java, and Python....it's one Microsoft object that actually has some promise!
So AOL takes over the existing Internet and turns it into a noisy squall of pop-up adds and spam.
While they're doing that, we're drilling holes in our walls and ceilings and networking our home-built Linux servers to our neighbor's computers, our friend's computers, our PDAs, our friggen toasters, whatever, making our own internet, one that AOL can't control, and won't be able to gain access to. AOL cannot control the internet anymore than you can hold the oceans in a thimble.
Quite true Abigail, my mistake on the redundancy. I used 25 instead of 26 though because Perl arrays are 0 based, and when starting with 0, the highest subscript is 25. @letters = ('a'..'z'); print $letters[26];
produces nothing. but that is neither here nor there.:) I appreciate you taking the time to show me the error of my ways. Take care.
WinCE? (ever notice how it spells wince, like you do each time it crashes????) In the battlefield? 'blue screen of death' takes on a whole new meaning...
Iridium. I don't believe it Bob, the Army is batting.000 right now...
Though in all seriousness, the Marines at Pendleton tried this one - two years ago and found out:
The computers were not robust enough.
It's hard enough to think straight in combat (total sensory overload) and then add trying to work with a computer attached to you, and figure out what that information means...
How do I get random lowercase letters like I would random numbers? @alphabet = ('a'..'z'); $letter = scalar($alphabet[int(rand 25)]); print "$letter"; Well, in C++ that could be: char letter = rand() % 26 + 'a';
Except you forgot to mention that my snippet is the whole program, and would run just fine, whereas, your code needs to be such:
#include/* whichever header(s) you want */
void main(void) { char letter = rand() % 26 + 'a'; print "%s\n", letter; } and then gcc -Wall -o foo foo.c (click on Build in the menu, whatever you need to do...) and while you're doing that, I'm on the next project.;) And I don't really think the C Code is any more readable or easier to understand...
Gotcha. I still think that Perl is the ultimate glue language, that let's me do anything in ten lines or less.;) There are still things that I don't understand about Perl, but I like it more every day that I use it. Take an example from PerlMonks:
How do I get random lowercase letters like I would random numbers? @alphabet = ('a'..'z'); $letter = scalar($alphabet[int(rand 25)]); print "$letter";
Now that is obfuscated, but I code clear that up and do it differently so it was easier to understand, comment it, etc. But to do that in C/C++ would take more code and Maalox. I don't expect Perl to be for everyone, but I certainly don't think that it loses anything by adding the new features.
Like English, Perl is easy to learn once you get started. Most foreign nationals will tell you that English is hard to learn at first, but they get it. It is the intimidation factor that scares many people, just like Perl. Perl was designed to operate and feel like a 'natural' language, like English (It was designed by a linguist!). So it may not have the neatness of Python, but the elegance of the code comes not from the language, but from the user. A New York cabbie may butcher the English language left and right, but in the hands of Shakespeare or Tennyson, English becomes a most beautiful, descriptive and powerful tool.
And as far as adding new features, perhaps I need clarification. I take features to mean packages such as "File::Find" or "Cwd". It seems that you mean something different. If you mean the packages, it is relatively easy to add them. You plan them, code them, save them as xxxxx.pm file and place them in Perl/Lib and use it in your code. No need to compile, etc. So I think that you mean something else by feature. Can you clarify that please?
To only look at Perl as a scripting language is to discount a lot of good and well implemented features in Perl. Just because you don't need them does not mean that no one needs that feature. If there is a need for a feature, why not include it? I have used VB, C/C++, Python, RPG, COBOL, and Perl and I have not seen a language that wraps everything I need for systems administration and reporting, etc into one powerful package. And as far as threading is concerned, Perl is using threading in Win32 to allow ActivePerl emulate the fork command from *nix. That is something that should exist (free-threading is available in VC++ for all Win32 platforms), and I'm glad that I finally have it at my disposal. Anyway, a rethink of Perl has been underway for a while. Look up the Topaz project.
Alright....everyone's throwing knives at Lucas and saying that this is all his fault. But don't you all remember the hype and excitement that surrounds Star Wars? When Lucas was making ESB he had to have a whole phony movie set up with a fake script to prevent people from hearing about and gossiping about what he was really doing. When PM was coming out, people were planning to stand in line for the tickets a year in advance, etc....and now, suddenly someone leaks rumours about a DVD release, and it most certainly has to be Lucas? C'mon. You know that every fan who knows Lucas' second brother's hairstylists personal trainer thinks they have an inside line and is telling everyone one the 'OFFICIAL' word that has trickled to down to them direct. just chill out and wait for Lucas to speak, and then you'll know. 'nuff said.
Have you always wanted to work with computers or was there was something else that you wanted to do when you were a child? And if there was something else, what was it, and do you make time now to do it now?
I find if a bit inspiring that on the same day that people are debating about RMS's ideas concerning EBooks and people locking down access to information, we get a story about a University that will offer free education. I recognize that the standards needed for entrance into ArsDigita are high, but this is a step in the right direction. Maybe knowledge, like energy, cannot be destroyed or contained in one place, but comes out somewhere else transformed....
Re:A sure path to disaster
on
RMS On eBooks
·
· Score: 1
Now wait a second aav! I know that there are plenty of museums out there that charge for admission...but the Smithsonian in Washington DC does not charge at all. You can go and see the Dorothy's red slippers, The Spirit of The St Louis, the Hope Diamond and dinosaur remains for the cost of the transportation there. Not to mention hundreds of works of art... I have traveled through Europe, and paid money to get into museums and castles, etc. The phenomenom of paying for access to a historical site, or a museum is not American, but universal. On another note, you speak of culture, but culture is not soley defined by the books that we read, but comes from many sources, and I believe the if we were to look at the cross section of poorer families, we would not find a population that reads a lot, or makes use of the libraries, etc that are available to them...
Classifications of humans and human culture fail all the time because you cannot be wholly accurate and stop at some point. You will always miss some special case or some instance. We choose to think in terms of classifications because they are subjective to our experience and easier to deal with than a multitude of single items. I consider myself to be white, but I have Cherokee Indian in me, and Turkish, so am I really white, or is that just what I decide to call myself for convenience sake on the employment forms because my dad was American and my mom German? I'm Lutheran, but do I truly believe the total Lutheran doctrine, or is that just what falls closest to my beliefs. Once you start to classify you are forever splitting hairs and making subgroups or subgroups of subgroups to handle all of the exceptions.
I think an ideal geek city needs to have eclectism and night life. No one I know who works in the computer field puts in anything like normal hours....unless they work for the State in a totally 'Dilbert' job of COBOL maintenance
Here in lovely Harrisburg PA, there is nothing like a night life except Denny's. We used to have other late night diners, but they all shut down, and young high tech people leave this area as fast as they can.
Yeah well I just found out that I have to go work service in the *worst* part of town by myself if anything goes wrong for a contract...makes me wonder if I shouldn't have bought that shotgun like I wanted to. Hmmmm, thank goodness I have my claymore.
btw - I purchased 4 2.5 gallon gas cans (all the 5 gallon ones were purchased many eons ago) and lots of batteries, new flashlights, a battery powered alarm clock, a battery powered shortwave radio receiver, a battery powered police scanner, and four cases of water, because here in PA, United Water said all of a sudden that they aren't quite sure that they will be compliant. I also got a Y2K compliant handcrank can opener.
oh yeah, and a ton of vitamins and herbal goodies!
http://perso.infonie.fr/art.leonardo/assos.htm My French is dismal, I haven't studied it in years, but I know that (so far anyway) there isn't anything on their webpage about what's going on, and there may never be, but there is the page. Perhaps a Canadian brother can translate the pages for us and give us more of a clue about what's going on on the web page. Also, a search of fr.yahoo.com/actualities brought up nothing on this. So perhaps this is a hoax, or everyone's keeping their yap shut. either way, interesting story. -M
Slashdot Mirror
To Paraphrase Thomas Jefferson:
Those who would seek safety at the sake of their freedom will not find, nor shall they deserve, either.
It was also announced that Microsoft will have to return the souls of all of the companies they have acquired during the years. No word yet as to whether or not they will return all of the spines collected from their employees...
Just as important to consider is the environment that you are creating for:
The code and your approach to that code will change dependent on your target audience. I have worked at companies that only use Microsoft products and built VBScript ASP pages for their company intranet because it tied in smoothly with SQL Server, and turned around and used the exact same model in Perl for another client to use. The form looks the same, but the hardware and audience is different.
On a seperate note, ASP is very cool because IIS will let you code your server-side scripts in VBScript, Perl, or Javascript, plus you can incorporate COM objects from C/C++, VB, Java, and Python....it's one Microsoft object that actually has some promise!
How about we just buy an unused Iridium Satellite and start there instead! :)
I stand corrected. (sheepish grin) Thank you for pointing out my error. Though embarassing, I have learned something. :) Kudos to you.
So AOL takes over the existing Internet and turns it into a noisy squall of pop-up adds and spam.
While they're doing that, we're drilling holes in our walls and ceilings and networking our home-built Linux servers to our neighbor's computers, our friend's computers, our PDAs, our friggen toasters, whatever, making our own internet, one that AOL can't control, and won't be able to gain access to. AOL cannot control the internet anymore than you can hold the oceans in a thimble.
Quite true Abigail, my mistake on the redundancy. I used 25 instead of 26 though because Perl arrays are 0 based, and when starting with 0, the highest subscript is 25.
:) I appreciate you taking the time to show me the error of my ways. Take care.
@letters = ('a'..'z');
print $letters[26];
produces nothing. but that is neither here nor there.
WinCE? (ever notice how it spells wince, like you do each time it crashes????) In the battlefield? 'blue screen of death' takes on a whole new meaning...
Iridium. I don't believe it Bob, the Army is batting .000 right now...
Though in all seriousness, the Marines at Pendleton tried this one - two years ago and found out:
Sometimes more information is not so good.
How do I get random lowercase letters like I would random numbers? @alphabet = ('a'..'z'); $letter = scalar($alphabet[int(rand 25)]); print "$letter"; Well, in C++ that could be: char letter = rand() % 26 + 'a';
Except you forgot to mention that my snippet is the whole program, and would run just fine, whereas, your code needs to be such:
/* whichever header(s) you want */
;) And I don't really think the C Code is any more readable or easier to understand...
#include
void main(void) {
char letter = rand() % 26 + 'a';
print "%s\n", letter;
}
and then gcc -Wall -o foo foo.c (click on Build in the menu, whatever you need to do...) and while you're doing that, I'm on the next project.
Good one! I still have much learn. :)
Gotcha. I still think that Perl is the ultimate glue language, that let's me do anything in ten lines or less. ;) There are still things that I don't understand about Perl, but I like it more every day that I use it. Take an example from PerlMonks:
How do I get random lowercase letters like I would random numbers?
@alphabet = ('a'..'z');
$letter = scalar($alphabet[int(rand 25)]);
print "$letter";
Now that is obfuscated, but I code clear that up and do it differently so it was easier to understand, comment it, etc. But to do that in C/C++ would take more code and Maalox. I don't expect Perl to be for everyone, but I certainly don't think that it loses anything by adding the new features.
Like English, Perl is easy to learn once you get started. Most foreign nationals will tell you that English is hard to learn at first, but they get it. It is the intimidation factor that scares many people, just like Perl. Perl was designed to operate and feel like a 'natural' language, like English (It was designed by a linguist!). So it may not have the neatness of Python, but the elegance of the code comes not from the language, but from the user. A New York cabbie may butcher the English language left and right, but in the hands of Shakespeare or Tennyson, English becomes a most beautiful, descriptive and powerful tool.
And as far as adding new features, perhaps I need clarification. I take features to mean packages such as "File::Find" or "Cwd". It seems that you mean something different. If you mean the packages, it is relatively easy to add them. You plan them, code them, save them as xxxxx.pm file and place them in Perl/Lib and use it in your code. No need to compile, etc. So I think that you mean something else by feature. Can you clarify that please?
To only look at Perl as a scripting language is to discount a lot of good and well implemented features in Perl. Just because you don't need them does not mean that no one needs that feature. If there is a need for a feature, why not include it?
I have used VB, C/C++, Python, RPG, COBOL, and Perl and I have not seen a language that wraps everything I need for systems administration and reporting, etc into one powerful package.
And as far as threading is concerned, Perl is using threading in Win32 to allow ActivePerl emulate the fork command from *nix. That is something that should exist (free-threading is available in VC++ for all Win32 platforms), and I'm glad that I finally have it at my disposal.
Anyway, a rethink of Perl has been underway for a while. Look up the Topaz project.
Alright....everyone's throwing knives at Lucas and saying that this is all his fault. But don't you all remember the hype and excitement that surrounds Star Wars? When Lucas was making ESB he had to have a whole phony movie set up with a fake script to prevent people from hearing about and gossiping about what he was really doing. When PM was coming out, people were planning to stand in line for the tickets a year in advance, etc....and now, suddenly someone leaks rumours about a DVD release, and it most certainly has to be Lucas? C'mon. You know that every fan who knows Lucas' second brother's hairstylists personal trainer thinks they have an inside line and is telling everyone one the 'OFFICIAL' word that has trickled to down to them direct. just chill out and wait for Lucas to speak, and then you'll know. 'nuff said.
Yeah, I heard CNN was going to have an interview with the Smoking Man next about why the Terraserver is not responding....
Have you always wanted to work with computers or was there was something else that you wanted to do when you were a child? And if there was something else, what was it, and do you make time now to do it now?
I find if a bit inspiring that on the same day that people are debating about RMS's ideas concerning EBooks and people locking down access to information, we get a story about a University that will offer free education.
I recognize that the standards needed for entrance into ArsDigita are high, but this is a step in the right direction.
Maybe knowledge, like energy, cannot be destroyed or contained in one place, but comes out somewhere else transformed....
Now wait a second aav! I know that there are plenty of museums out there that charge for admission...but the Smithsonian in Washington DC does not charge at all. You can go and see the Dorothy's red slippers, The Spirit of The St Louis, the Hope Diamond and dinosaur remains for the cost of the transportation there. Not to mention hundreds of works of art... I have traveled through Europe, and paid money to get into museums and castles, etc. The phenomenom of paying for access to a historical site, or a museum is not American, but universal. On another note, you speak of culture, but culture is not soley defined by the books that we read, but comes from many sources, and I believe the if we were to look at the cross section of poorer families, we would not find a population that reads a lot, or makes use of the libraries, etc that are available to them...
Classifications of humans and human culture fail all the time because you cannot be wholly accurate and stop at some point. You will always miss some special case or some instance. We choose to think in terms of classifications because they are subjective to our experience and easier to deal with than a multitude of single items.
I consider myself to be white, but I have Cherokee Indian in me, and Turkish, so am I really white, or is that just what I decide to call myself for convenience sake on the employment forms because my dad was American and my mom German? I'm Lutheran, but do I truly believe the total Lutheran doctrine, or is that just what falls closest to my beliefs. Once you start to classify you are forever splitting hairs and making subgroups or subgroups of subgroups to handle all of the exceptions.
I think an ideal geek city needs to have eclectism and night life. No one I know who works in the computer field puts in anything like normal hours....unless they work for the State in a totally 'Dilbert' job of COBOL maintenance
Here in lovely Harrisburg PA, there is nothing like a night life except Denny's. We used to have other late night diners, but they all shut down, and young high tech people leave this area as fast as they can.
I'm leaving as soon as I can.
Yeah well I just found out that I have to go work service in the *worst* part of town by myself if anything goes wrong for a contract...makes me wonder if I shouldn't have bought that shotgun like I wanted to. Hmmmm, thank goodness I have my claymore.
btw - I purchased 4 2.5 gallon gas cans (all the 5 gallon ones were purchased many eons ago) and lots of batteries, new flashlights, a battery powered alarm clock, a battery powered shortwave radio receiver, a battery powered police scanner, and four cases of water, because here in PA, United Water said all of a sudden that they aren't quite sure that they will be compliant. I also got a Y2K compliant handcrank can opener.
oh yeah, and a ton of vitamins and herbal goodies!
http://perso.infonie.fr/art.leonardo/assos.htm My French is dismal, I haven't studied it in years, but I know that (so far anyway) there isn't anything on their webpage about what's going on, and there may never be, but there is the page. Perhaps a Canadian brother can translate the pages for us and give us more of a clue about what's going on on the web page. Also, a search of fr.yahoo.com/actualities brought up nothing on this. So perhaps this is a hoax, or everyone's keeping their yap shut. either way, interesting story. -M