See also my talk
Geek Culture Considered Harmful that I gave a few
weeks ago at YAPC. It addresses this very issue of
the condecension of those in-the-know against the
rest of the world who doesn't, or who disagrees.
It's ostensibly about the Perl community, but it
speaks to the rest of Open Source as well.
I have been looking for a set of ports/subnets to block in order to disable instant messengers behind my firewall.
What's your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you concerned about security? Then make it known as a security issue ("Don't open IM file attachments").
But if this is a management issue, where you're concerned about productivity, don't waste your time and money.
People do not need technology in order to waste time and be unproductive. If some people are being unproductive because of AIM, they'll go be unproductive on the web. If you block the web, they'll go to email. If you block the email, they'll doodle. If you take away the paper and pencil, they'll get up and talk to the guy next to 'em about last night's game.
Management issues should not be "solved" with technology.
buy Lincoln Stein and Doug Eachern's book from O'Reilly? It is a classic.
A classic, and no longer the only book in the field.
mod_perl Developer's Cookbook is a tremendous tome, and I use it more than the the LDS/DOUGM book. It's well worth looking at.
It's not better than the eagle book, but if I could only buy one, that would be it.
Those flashing "IF THIS GIF IS FLASHING (WHICH OF COURSE THERE'S NO REASON IT WOULDN'T) THEN YOU ARE A WINNER" banner ads drove me away within seconds.
Do site owners not consider the effects of the advertising on their image and usability?
That's pretty huge in my book. PHP already doesn't support any sort of accessing of the callback stack (although I see it's in the new one), much less interactive debugging.
The lack of debugging facilities is the #1 reason why I and my department are getting away from PHP.
Well, when you consider that PHP is primarily used as a scripting language on web servers, it makes sense to optimize for performance. You
can't have processes hanging around too long, else they start to clog things up and pretty soon you have a really lovely rackmounted
paperweight.
And that's what happens now if you do any amount of use of classes. Unless you buy the Zend Optimizer, anything that uses classes requires tons of recompilation of the PHP code for each page. We found that we were spending 20% of real response time just recompiling the class files for each page.
This performance tweak is just a drop in the bucket compared to that.
Private Members.
The Zend Engine 2.0 introduces private member variables. Note
that for performance reasons no error message is emitted in
case of an illegal access to a private member variable.
"For performance reasons", they're ignoring the encapsulation that would help correctness...
Agreed on the value of pipelines, but if there's a radical difference in Korn vs. Perl code, then your Perl studs aren't so studly. They're prob'ly not using all of Perl's features.
Explain WHY the code works as it does, not WHAT it does.
Anybody can tell what it's doing. The reasons behind the design are another matter entirely.
Here are some examples.
# This code doesn't use URI::URL because URI::URL
# doesn't handle foo:// URLs, at least as of
# version 1.1.4.
# This goofy switch statement is called
# Duff's Device, and it speeds up the loop about
# 15-20% under load. See p. 182 of "Writing
# Efficient Programs" by Jon Bentley for more.
# Using the DB this way is a performance hit,
# but it's the only way we can be sure that we
# don't have a conflict in the detail records.
# Normally, we'd display magic-button-animated.gif
# here, but Marketing hasn't given us the updated
# version yet (as of 5/20/2002), so we have to
# use magic-button-static.gif instead.
And a real-life example that I pulled from our code:
my $delve_link_image = "";
# XXX The interface fashion of the week dictates removing the image
# link. I'm leaving the code for now in
# case fashions change again. -- mmh 020515
#my $delve_link_image = (old code)
Just make sure that coders know that their comments are to be factual, not emotional. Comments like "I'm doing it this way because Bob said I had to" are useless at best, and inflammatory at worst.
Here in Portland OR many people have taken up anti-spam measures. In Southeast Portland these signs don't last long before being torn down or,
even better, defaced. A group has made giant stickers saying, "I AM UGLY LITTER" and pasted them over these "work from home/lose weight
now" things. Very cool.
They have a site, uglylitter.com with PDFs for you to print on sticker paper so you can deface the signs yourself.
Me, I just carry a couple of cans of spray paint in the trunk and paint big red "NO" circles over them, making sure that the phone/URL gets obscured.
Also, the best commentary track, hands down: Ghostbusters. Every bit as funny as the movie. Three guys (one was Harold Ramis, don't
remember who the other two were), talking MST3K style.
The audio for This Is Spinal Tap is similarly hilarious, with Nigel, David and Derek commenting on the making of the film and the aftermath of it on their careers.
Slashdot Mirror
Porn.
Duh.
It's ostensibly about the Perl community, but it speaks to the rest of Open Source as well.
In all my experience, the office refrigerators are never very cold, and the vending machines always serve the cans nice and frigid.
This summer, however, I've been hitting the local McDonald's twice a day to get a 42-oz diet Coke with extra ice for only 59 cents...
What's your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you concerned about security? Then make it known as a security issue ("Don't open IM file attachments").
But if this is a management issue, where you're concerned about productivity, don't waste your time and money.
People do not need technology in order to waste time and be unproductive. If some people are being unproductive because of AIM, they'll go be unproductive on the web. If you block the web, they'll go to email. If you block the email, they'll doodle. If you take away the paper and pencil, they'll get up and talk to the guy next to 'em about last night's game.
Management issues should not be "solved" with technology.
Why is this under the BillBorg icon, and not the Monty Python "it's funny!" foot?
A classic, and no longer the only book in the field. mod_perl Developer's Cookbook is a tremendous tome, and I use it more than the the LDS/DOUGM book. It's well worth looking at.
It's not better than the eagle book, but if I could only buy one, that would be it.
Do site owners not consider the effects of the advertising on their image and usability?
That's pretty huge in my book. PHP already doesn't support any sort of accessing of the callback stack (although I see it's in the new one), much less interactive debugging.
The lack of debugging facilities is the #1 reason why I and my department are getting away from PHP.
And that's what happens now if you do any amount of use of classes. Unless you buy the Zend Optimizer, anything that uses classes requires tons of recompilation of the PHP code for each page. We found that we were spending 20% of real response time just recompiling the class files for each page.
This performance tweak is just a drop in the bucket compared to that.
Agreed on the value of pipelines, but if there's a radical difference in Korn vs. Perl code, then your Perl studs aren't so studly. They're prob'ly not using all of Perl's features.
That's not good enough for you?
Oh no! It's the infamous "stuff-to-read" department! It's the most populous department on all of /.!
Bah, all you need is Saturday morning television to know how a bill becomes a law.
Explain WHY the code works as it does, not WHAT it does.
Anybody can tell what it's doing. The reasons behind the design are another matter entirely. Here are some examples.
Just make sure that coders know that their comments are to be factual, not emotional. Comments like "I'm doing it this way because Bob said I had to" are useless at best, and inflammatory at worst.For other rock classics that are ripped from old blues guys, see Rhino's Blues Masters, Vol. 6: Blues Originals.
Oh, wait, I also have to say "Cap'n, my body canna take no more a' this!"
Now everyone else doesn't need to bother.
That explains why so many helpful merchants are able to help me "SAVE UP TO 80% ON INKJET REFILLS! ALL MAKES AND MODELS!"
They have a site, uglylitter.com with PDFs for you to print on sticker paper so you can deface the signs yourself.
Me, I just carry a couple of cans of spray paint in the trunk and paint big red "NO" circles over them, making sure that the phone/URL gets obscured.
Sure, if the books were left out in a public thoroughfare just like any other litter, I'd be perfectly glad to do that.
The audio for This Is Spinal Tap is similarly hilarious, with Nigel, David and Derek commenting on the making of the film and the aftermath of it on their careers.
Post-Columbine, now Post-9/11. What other horrors can turn into tech articles?
I'd bet my left nut that "stuff-to-read" has to be the most common department by a longshot.
Or, since we all know that Delaware is bigger than Rhode Island, you could just have said it's about the size of Delaware.
That is, unless you wanted to start a list of things that it's bigger than.