Although I've never sued anybody, is it really the lawyer's decision or the suer's decision. To me it seems like it would kinda be like one of those 'you have to defend your client to the best of your ability' things. And if lawyers can turn down clients then somewhere along the way they would be able to get a public defender, thus wasting my money...
I've always liked the idea of having the suer have the potential of having to pay the defendent's legal fees and court costs upon losing a frivalous lawsuit... Then again I guess this is partially in place with the concept of a counter-suit...
I'm sorry but if I were him, I would sue the < pick your favorite four letter explitive > out of them. I mean if the DA is too stupid to verify middle name or SSN for cripes sake, maybe he shouldn't be a DA.
I would tend to think that SSN is a better piece of information to identify an individual than anything else. Can SSN be easily 'spoofed' (for lack of a better term) thus making it invalid or not as reliable as one would think?
Spin it around from a different perspective. If you were the government (or some other big brother type agency), would you want people to be able to fight those 'mistakes' and potentially have some piece of intelligence lost forever? I mean if at one point they had that you or your family was possibly affiliated with some "bad" organization (for lack of a better term), I don't think that they would risk giving you the ability the chance to fight it and have it removed from your history forever. I think they would leave part of the record in tact or remove it at least to what you see and keep the info as a matter of "National Security".
So although the ideas are good, and perhaps one could defend oneself to a point, I think the intelligence that is/has been/will be gathered on individuals will never truely go away on certain levels, for better or worse....
I agree though that it would be interesting to find out just what information they have on me at this point, because some of the stories up in the Air Force Story section kinda make you think...
In the game you had the matrix a somewhat equivalent to the Internet and deckers who for the most part were hackers...
You had IC's which were pretty similar to firewalls but you always could crash most of them... The white IC's were apparenly M$ software because they were easy to get past where as the Black IC's those had to be UNIX boxes....
And then the movie with the same name... Coincidence? I think not?
And riggers and some of the weaponry they had on their vehicles. It brings new meaning to the term road rage. You watch give it a couple of years...
Don't forget the Doc Wagon medical plan either... A nice combination of that "I've fallen and I can't get up" thing (Life Alert or something) and an ambulance service...
I also like the concept of coffin hotel rooms.
So what's my point. I dunno, I just felt like going on a shadowrun rant. I mean Jon Katz gets to do it why can't I?
I completely forgot about that game. The best is when the thunderstorm came through and trashed your stand.... Incidentally, I followed a similar path into BASIC as well on my IIc.
A friend of mine just mentioned to me today that brother Bill has set up some program somewhere so that students are getting their MCSE while still in High School, so just tell them to wait.
But seriously to avoid being labeled slightly off-topic. I started with BASIC on an Apple IIc and later upgraded to LS-BASIC to GW-BASIC to QuickBASIC. I then hit real programming languages like Pascal and C in late high school early college.
I think the key is to find an easy to learn language that is readily available on the machine that you can do some fun stuff with. (it was real easy to get sound and video going in GW and QuickBASIC)
I also found it helpful to find purposes to write programs that solved real problems. I wrote a program to solve puzzles for this win a guitar rig contest (Pandemonium for anybody who is wondering. They went on to do video game setups as well). Worked fine until I reached the final puzzle but thats another story....(stuff that solves math homework, etc. were some of my other favorites)
Unfortunately, I'm having a bit of a hard time coming up with some suggestions based on the criteria I've listed above. Drawing is pretty easy in Java and VB, but I feel there is a lot of other knowledge that one needs to beef up on to get to the fun stuff. (i.e. young ones might give up before getting to Mecca). Perl might not be bad, but it kinda lacks the 'fun' stuff like graphics and sound... (alright I'm sure somebody will pull some configuration from somewhere that will allow you to do this like Perl Tk or something but how easy is it to use and set up? I really don't know..)
I like the ideas other posters are putting out there of things that aren't really related to hardcore programming (for lack of a better term) Lego Mindsprings (?) and stuff like that might be good.
As for myself, I'm going to throw my kids straight into the fire and tell 'em to learn assembly and/or C... (it'll put hair on their chest... unless I have a daughter, then I may have to rethink my philosophy...)
Scanning is one option, but there are companies out there who rely on that firewall to keep all the bad guys out. (i.e. no backup plan) If you can get root access, you can essentially destroy any protection that the firewall was once providing and potentially run rampant depending on what is exposed internally. (promiscuous r* commands, XWindows and packet sniffers come to mind for starters...)
Boy are you a little negative and that is a very naive statement. What's to say that somebody (possibly even a non-mathematician) couldn't approach these problems with a different mindset. Consider a CS student who is really good at writing algorithms. Perhaps this student with a little mathematics background could come up with one hell of a program for performing numerical analysis/crunching on a given problem. (Possibly an angle not considered by an "expert") It may not prove the theorem, but it may provide some inroads into solving the larger problem. I'll agree that chances are a non-mathematician or a mediocre mathematician solving these is pretty slim, but to outright say it can't be done, to me is just dumb...
Open your mind a little. One of the most influential statements I've seen was on my high school Civics teacher classroom wall: 'You never fail until you stop trying.' As corny as it may sound, I've lived by this philosophy and you be surprised how far a little persistance can carry you.
One more for you, '...(we) do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.' (If you don't know who said it, do a web search on the saying and possibly include 1962 and moon)
Think about em, they just might change your outlook on life...
Boy I'd hate to be a restaurant owner and have my robot break down around lunchtime. Not to mention, I'm sure it would take a couple days to get someone to come out and repair it once it happened, thus requiring you to hire more burger flippers in the interim.... Hey I'm going to start a new consulting firm charging huge rates for simple tasks that will need to happen once the machines break down...
I wonder what Roger Moore is thinking right now...
We've all heard and maybe even seen (hopping between the p0rn sites and other junk) that the Internet is a wealth of knowledge. How about implementing some sort of machine learning on a given domain utilizing a NLP engine or something to extract data from web pages and learn new things about the domain.
Another thing to think about is doing something similar and tying in forward or backward chaining (don't know how viable it would be though, its been a while since I've looked at AI its all fuzzy logic at this point..)
I know a couple years back, there was also a lot of work being done with putting web interfaces on intelligent agents, NLP engines, knowledge bases, etc. Might be worth looking into that also...
I highly doubt that there was a DDOS attack launched from Microsoft on Slashdot. Definitely not authorized, but even unauthorized. You'd have a hard time convincing me that anybody has that much company morale to go and do something like that. I think you've seen one too many X-files episodes.
Seriously though. I think if I were Microsoft I'd take the political flak of abusing the DMCA to supress the first admendment right of another any day over being accused of unscrupulous tactics to cover up bad press. I tend to think its a bit easier to say, "Oops, we messed up in accusing slashdot readers of copyright infringment and now recognize that this was a violation of their first amendment rights." Not to mention, if you were in Microsoft's shoes and you sincerely felt you had a legitimate case (as I, unfortunately, think they might have) why would you need to stoop so low?
I don't know exactly what NSI had/has in mind but I highly doubt that it is to pull established and reputable domain names from existing companies.
I mean really, they must know that pulling a stunt like taking away a domain from somebody like slashdot.org, microsoft, intel, etc. would land them some serious lawsuits. Not to mention, I highly doubt that they can turn around and say that in retrospect they own a previously established address. Its like charging somebody for a a crime commited before a law was passed that made it a crime (can't remember what that is called now).
Now whether new domains are actually subject to the ownerships is another thing. Bad business move though, as many have pointed out, I'd go find a new registrar. I tend to think this move is probably oriented towards squashing cyber-squatting, but unfortunately methinks nobody will use them for a registrar if they keep that ultimate power. (Yeah , I want to get my domain from NSI become a multi-million dollar company and leave myself open to having NSI do kinda a reverse cyber-squatting thing...)
Don't forget, if you get the GNU regex library or something of similar quality you can do anything you do with perl regular expressions in Java. My favorite feature is the fact that it allows you to choose your regex language syntax (perl 4 vs. perl 5 vs. sed vs. awk vs. grep, etc.)
You should check it out. My biggest problem with perl is the fact that it's too flexible. You can write really clear, easy to understand code or you can write something that will give obfuscated C code contest winners a run for their money... but then again, I can write and read obfuscated perl code. Job security/insanity...
Choosing a CGI-language is like any other software development process. You've got to choose the right tool for the job. That being said here are some of my lessons learned.
Perl - an excellent choice for simpler projects. It can be used in large systems, but suffers from too much flexibility. What I mean is that you can write a Perl program that looks similar to C or you can write real ugly, but compact and elegant code (not saying that C isn't elegant). Regular expressions are a real plus checking validity of arguments. The library's available for perl make it extremely powerful. Since the memory allocation, arrays and types are relaxed it makes it very flexible to do all sorts of data input from the web, etc. Output wise, its very easy to make a perl script read from a source file and substitute dynamic content into a page via regular expression substitution.
Other scripting languages - (sh, csh, ksh, bash, etc.) Pretty much as powerful as Perl. Problem is many times they can be difficult to program and understand for non-shell scripters. Also, chances are if you are on a UNIX box (or any other for that matter) you can use perl if you don't have it already. My opinon is take the time and invest in learning/installing/using perl.
C or C++- performance oriented, but one must weigh it because things like sh, ksh, bash, perl are very fast (csh is sluggish for those who don't know) I'm sure there are reg. exp. libraries for them so they can be decent in terms of value checking/substitution. Both are a bit more structured than the previous scripting languages so the code might not be as messy. I'm not sure, but I'd assume there are more C/C++ proficient programmers than perl, sh, ksh, etc. ones. If so, one could argue that the code might be more maintainable. Another problem is the code is non-interpreted so their might be compatibility issues and there is the ever famous memory leakage problems...
Servlets- One of my personal favorites. Java is a solid OO language so its a bit easier (I find) to do OO development in Java than in something like Perl and C++ (not saying C++ isn't solid but I don't feel it is as solid). The server offers a lot of features like session tracking, object persistance, threading across requests etc. making it much easier to make use of these features than in another language. Tack on the regex library and set it to perl and you have all the power of Perl regular expression listed above. (or sh, or ksh if thats what one's comfortable with). Java has a diverse set of support classes so its good for lots of different tasks. Problems are again its interpreted, but it seems to run fairly fast. Because of Write Once Run Nowhere, it can become a pain to do system specific things... (changing file permissions to something specific (at least in 1.1 of JDK))
Cold Fusion - I'm torn on this one. It's a relatively easy language to use, offers much of the power in servlets and is extendible by using custom CFM tags. My problem with it is that you end up coding with HTML-like tags (CFM tags actual); a somewhat bizzarre feat if you haven't tried it, but not impossible. Last time I checked it only ran on NT or Solaris (about a year ago) and custom tag development was limited to C++ only. Haven't used it much, but after starting with servlets I felt that I could get all the power I wanted out of the servlet and it was a much more natural language for a programmer/developer like myself. Maybe CF is better for non-IT types?
JSP- Another technology I have limited experience with, but have been impressed with it so far. Basically offers all the power of servlets and separates the business logic from the presentation layer. A little weird like Cold Fusion in that you are coding around an HTML page, but the code constructs are actual Java code at least rather than if, while, and sql tags. Another side benefit is that your business code typically resides in a Java Bean. As a result if you wanted to build other presentation layers on top of it you could fairly easy (command line, applet, VB/VC++ through CORBA?)
So in summary, in my opinion for what I've seen:
I like servlets and JSP best (haven't done a lot of JSP though yet so I may end up eating those words). They're powerful development architectures when hooked with the server. Performance wise they are decent. With the regex library they have a lot of the power of Perl (oh yeah and they're portable) Not to mention I feel they fair best in developing growing systems or very large systems. Perl is my number two choice. Extremely powerful but lacks some of the support that servlet servers have built into them (threading, sessions, etc.) which means extra work for the developer. Not to mention, although I am very good with Perl, I have seen some real ugly looking perl systems that would send many spinning. Finally all the rest. Cold Fusion is not right for me, but for somebody else it might be good. C/C++ you need to justify the perfomance requirement or other reason for using it. Other scripting languages, justify why not use perl.
First off, I believe "Area 51" was decommisioned a few years back.
Besides even if it wasn't, its a top secret maximum security air force base. I'm sure they are aware of what satellites are flying overhead, etc. Not to mention, the satellite can't see through the hangars, which is where most "top secret" stuff would probably be taking place, right? The exception would be for test flights and they would probably perform those under the cover of night...
Anybody ever consider the posibility of another language being in use here. Who said the intended message is in modern English? I guess this is a debate better left to someone with a better Literature and History person to validate this (if in fact it was done by Poe), but I wouldn't discount it.
I intend to look at this in detail later. Don't expect to crack it, but its fun to spin the wheels ocassionally. (maybe it'll move me towards a career with the NSA or CIA):-)
When I was a kid I was making tanks out of Tinker-Toys, had really cool exploading action on my Lincoln Log cabins (acheived by sliding one of the flat roof pieces under the foundation, using a small log for a fulcrum and pushing down on the opposite end). And most definitely I made lots of guns out of Lego's, Lock-Blocks, and whatever else they had back then... Granted, mine didn't actually shoot anything, but if I had the ingenuity you can bet they would have.
And as for the Lego towns and spaceships. They never got blown up by an enemy star cruiser or something, and you never took advantage of the fact that Lego people could be split into multiple parts. Its all natural.. (I think?!?!)
Wow the memories are now coming back of all the crazy menacing devices I created with Capsela and Robotix, also. Boy that was fun stuff. Thanks for invoking the trip down memory lane...
Imagine getting carded at CompUsa when you go to buy software. I have pictures of kids running out to buy Quake or something, and making up good stories for the clerk like "I forgot my ID in the car" or "I'm buying it for a friend..."
Hey, maybe somebody will start bootlegging software... Buying games for minors, spend a year in prison... but I digress...
You've got to read the documentation. End of story.
Coming up with a way to represent date data type is one that is subject to whoever is building a language. There is no standard or common thread. Just taking a look at a handful of languages you'll find differences... (i.e. Java and C do dates differently, etc.) Why would Perl be any different?
If anything Perl handles dates very similarly to C, therefore its more standardized (if you wish to call it that) than others....
Accept the fact that you made an assumption that was wrong and move on, don't blame Perl...
Slashdot Mirror
I've always liked the idea of having the suer have the potential of having to pay the defendent's legal fees and court costs upon losing a frivalous lawsuit... Then again I guess this is partially in place with the concept of a counter-suit...
I'm sorry but if I were him, I would sue the < pick your favorite four letter explitive > out of them. I mean if the DA is too stupid to verify middle name or SSN for cripes sake, maybe he shouldn't be a DA.
I would tend to think that SSN is a better piece of information to identify an individual than anything else. Can SSN be easily 'spoofed' (for lack of a better term) thus making it invalid or not as reliable as one would think?
Spin it around from a different perspective. If you were the government (or some other big brother type agency), would you want people to be able to fight those 'mistakes' and potentially have some piece of intelligence lost forever? I mean if at one point they had that you or your family was possibly affiliated with some "bad" organization (for lack of a better term), I don't think that they would risk giving you the ability the chance to fight it and have it removed from your history forever. I think they would leave part of the record in tact or remove it at least to what you see and keep the info as a matter of "National Security".
So although the ideas are good, and perhaps one could defend oneself to a point, I think the intelligence that is/has been/will be gathered on individuals will never truely go away on certain levels, for better or worse....
I agree though that it would be interesting to find out just what information they have on me at this point, because some of the stories up in the Air Force Story section kinda make you think...
Just my 2 cents....
Can somebody install a cortex bomb in Katz and set the damn thing off???
In the game you had the matrix a somewhat equivalent to the Internet and deckers who for the most part were hackers...
You had IC's which were pretty similar to firewalls but you always could crash most of them... The white IC's were apparenly M$ software because they were easy to get past where as the Black IC's those had to be UNIX boxes....
And then the movie with the same name... Coincidence? I think not?
And riggers and some of the weaponry they had on their vehicles. It brings new meaning to the term road rage. You watch give it a couple of years...
Don't forget the Doc Wagon medical plan either... A nice combination of that "I've fallen and I can't get up" thing (Life Alert or something) and an ambulance service...
I also like the concept of coffin hotel rooms.
So what's my point. I dunno, I just felt like going on a shadowrun rant. I mean Jon Katz gets to do it why can't I?
I completely forgot about that game. The best is when the thunderstorm came through and trashed your stand.... Incidentally, I followed a similar path into BASIC as well on my IIc.
Wow, thanks for the memories....
But seriously to avoid being labeled slightly off-topic. I started with BASIC on an Apple IIc and later upgraded to LS-BASIC to GW-BASIC to QuickBASIC. I then hit real programming languages like Pascal and C in late high school early college.
I think the key is to find an easy to learn language that is readily available on the machine that you can do some fun stuff with. (it was real easy to get sound and video going in GW and QuickBASIC)
I also found it helpful to find purposes to write programs that solved real problems. I wrote a program to solve puzzles for this win a guitar rig contest (Pandemonium for anybody who is wondering. They went on to do video game setups as well). Worked fine until I reached the final puzzle but thats another story....(stuff that solves math homework, etc. were some of my other favorites)
Unfortunately, I'm having a bit of a hard time coming up with some suggestions based on the criteria I've listed above. Drawing is pretty easy in Java and VB, but I feel there is a lot of other knowledge that one needs to beef up on to get to the fun stuff. (i.e. young ones might give up before getting to Mecca). Perl might not be bad, but it kinda lacks the 'fun' stuff like graphics and sound... (alright I'm sure somebody will pull some configuration from somewhere that will allow you to do this like Perl Tk or something but how easy is it to use and set up? I really don't know..)
I like the ideas other posters are putting out there of things that aren't really related to hardcore programming (for lack of a better term) Lego Mindsprings (?) and stuff like that might be good.
As for myself, I'm going to throw my kids straight into the fire and tell 'em to learn assembly and/or C... (it'll put hair on their chest... unless I have a daughter, then I may have to rethink my philosophy...)
Scanning is one option, but there are companies out there who rely on that firewall to keep all the bad guys out. (i.e. no backup plan) If you can get root access, you can essentially destroy any protection that the firewall was once providing and potentially run rampant depending on what is exposed internally. (promiscuous r* commands, XWindows and packet sniffers come to mind for starters...)
Boy are you a little negative and that is a very naive statement. What's to say that somebody (possibly even a non-mathematician) couldn't approach these problems with a different mindset. Consider a CS student who is really good at writing algorithms. Perhaps this student with a little mathematics background could come up with one hell of a program for performing numerical analysis/crunching on a given problem. (Possibly an angle not considered by an "expert") It may not prove the theorem, but it may provide some inroads into solving the larger problem. I'll agree that chances are a non-mathematician or a mediocre mathematician solving these is pretty slim, but to outright say it can't be done, to me is just dumb...
Open your mind a little. One of the most influential statements I've seen was on my high school Civics teacher classroom wall: 'You never fail until you stop trying.' As corny as it may sound, I've lived by this philosophy and you be surprised how far a little persistance can carry you.
One more for you, '...(we) do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.' (If you don't know who said it, do a web search on the saying and possibly include 1962 and moon)
Think about em, they just might change your outlook on life...
Boy I'd hate to be a restaurant owner and have my robot break down around lunchtime. Not to mention, I'm sure it would take a couple days to get someone to come out and repair it once it happened, thus requiring you to hire more burger flippers in the interim.... Hey I'm going to start a new consulting firm charging huge rates for simple tasks that will need to happen once the machines break down...
I wonder what Roger Moore is thinking right now...
Another thing to think about is doing something similar and tying in forward or backward chaining (don't know how viable it would be though, its been a while since I've looked at AI its all fuzzy logic at this point..)
I know a couple years back, there was also a lot of work being done with putting web interfaces on intelligent agents, NLP engines, knowledge bases, etc. Might be worth looking into that also...
Seriously though. I think if I were Microsoft I'd take the political flak of abusing the DMCA to supress the first admendment right of another any day over being accused of unscrupulous tactics to cover up bad press. I tend to think its a bit easier to say, "Oops, we messed up in accusing slashdot readers of copyright infringment and now recognize that this was a violation of their first amendment rights." Not to mention, if you were in Microsoft's shoes and you sincerely felt you had a legitimate case (as I, unfortunately, think they might have) why would you need to stoop so low?
Just my thoughts....
I don't know exactly what NSI had/has in mind but I highly doubt that it is to pull established and reputable domain names from existing companies.
I mean really, they must know that pulling a stunt like taking away a domain from somebody like slashdot.org, microsoft, intel, etc. would land them some serious lawsuits. Not to mention, I highly doubt that they can turn around and say that in retrospect they own a previously established address. Its like charging somebody for a a crime commited before a law was passed that made it a crime (can't remember what that is called now).
Now whether new domains are actually subject to the ownerships is another thing. Bad business move though, as many have pointed out, I'd go find a new registrar. I tend to think this move is probably oriented towards squashing cyber-squatting, but unfortunately methinks nobody will use them for a registrar if they keep that ultimate power. (Yeah , I want to get my domain from NSI become a multi-million dollar company and leave myself open to having NSI do kinda a reverse cyber-squatting thing...)
You should check it out. My biggest problem with perl is the fact that it's too flexible. You can write really clear, easy to understand code or you can write something that will give obfuscated C code contest winners a run for their money... but then again, I can write and read obfuscated perl code. Job security/insanity...
Choosing a CGI-language is like any other software development process. You've got to choose the right tool for the job. That being said here are some of my lessons learned.
Perl - an excellent choice for simpler projects. It can be used in large systems, but suffers from too much flexibility. What I mean is that you can write a Perl program that looks similar to C or you can write real ugly, but compact and elegant code (not saying that C isn't elegant). Regular expressions are a real plus checking validity of arguments. The library's available for perl make it extremely powerful. Since the memory allocation, arrays and types are relaxed it makes it very flexible to do all sorts of data input from the web, etc. Output wise, its very easy to make a perl script read from a source file and substitute dynamic content into a page via regular expression substitution.
Other scripting languages - (sh, csh, ksh, bash, etc.) Pretty much as powerful as Perl. Problem is many times they can be difficult to program and understand for non-shell scripters. Also, chances are if you are on a UNIX box (or any other for that matter) you can use perl if you don't have it already. My opinon is take the time and invest in learning/installing/using perl.
C or C++- performance oriented, but one must weigh it because things like sh, ksh, bash, perl are very fast (csh is sluggish for those who don't know) I'm sure there are reg. exp. libraries for them so they can be decent in terms of value checking/substitution. Both are a bit more structured than the previous scripting languages so the code might not be as messy. I'm not sure, but I'd assume there are more C/C++ proficient programmers than perl, sh, ksh, etc. ones. If so, one could argue that the code might be more maintainable. Another problem is the code is non-interpreted so their might be compatibility issues and there is the ever famous memory leakage problems...
Servlets- One of my personal favorites. Java is a solid OO language so its a bit easier (I find) to do OO development in Java than in something like Perl and C++ (not saying C++ isn't solid but I don't feel it is as solid). The server offers a lot of features like session tracking, object persistance, threading across requests etc. making it much easier to make use of these features than in another language. Tack on the regex library and set it to perl and you have all the power of Perl regular expression listed above. (or sh, or ksh if thats what one's comfortable with). Java has a diverse set of support classes so its good for lots of different tasks. Problems are again its interpreted, but it seems to run fairly fast. Because of Write Once Run Nowhere, it can become a pain to do system specific things... (changing file permissions to something specific (at least in 1.1 of JDK))
Cold Fusion - I'm torn on this one. It's a relatively easy language to use, offers much of the power in servlets and is extendible by using custom CFM tags. My problem with it is that you end up coding with HTML-like tags (CFM tags actual); a somewhat bizzarre feat if you haven't tried it, but not impossible. Last time I checked it only ran on NT or Solaris (about a year ago) and custom tag development was limited to C++ only. Haven't used it much, but after starting with servlets I felt that I could get all the power I wanted out of the servlet and it was a much more natural language for a programmer/developer like myself. Maybe CF is better for non-IT types?
JSP- Another technology I have limited experience with, but have been impressed with it so far. Basically offers all the power of servlets and separates the business logic from the presentation layer. A little weird like Cold Fusion in that you are coding around an HTML page, but the code constructs are actual Java code at least rather than if, while, and sql tags. Another side benefit is that your business code typically resides in a Java Bean. As a result if you wanted to build other presentation layers on top of it you could fairly easy (command line, applet, VB/VC++ through CORBA?)
So in summary, in my opinion for what I've seen:
I like servlets and JSP best (haven't done a lot of JSP though yet so I may end up eating those words). They're powerful development architectures when hooked with the server. Performance wise they are decent. With the regex library they have a lot of the power of Perl (oh yeah and they're portable) Not to mention I feel they fair best in developing growing systems or very large systems. Perl is my number two choice. Extremely powerful but lacks some of the support that servlet servers have built into them (threading, sessions, etc.) which means extra work for the developer. Not to mention, although I am very good with Perl, I have seen some real ugly looking perl systems that would send many spinning. Finally all the rest. Cold Fusion is not right for me, but for somebody else it might be good. C/C++ you need to justify the perfomance requirement or other reason for using it. Other scripting languages, justify why not use perl.
Besides even if it wasn't, its a top secret maximum security air force base. I'm sure they are aware of what satellites are flying overhead, etc. Not to mention, the satellite can't see through the hangars, which is where most "top secret" stuff would probably be taking place, right? The exception would be for test flights and they would probably perform those under the cover of night...
I intend to look at this in detail later. Don't expect to crack it, but its fun to spin the wheels ocassionally. (maybe it'll move me towards a career with the NSA or CIA) :-)
When I was a kid I was making tanks out of Tinker-Toys, had really cool exploading action on my Lincoln Log cabins (acheived by sliding one of the flat roof pieces under the foundation, using a small log for a fulcrum and pushing down on the opposite end). And most definitely I made lots of guns out of Lego's, Lock-Blocks, and whatever else they had back then... Granted, mine didn't actually shoot anything, but if I had the ingenuity you can bet they would have.
And as for the Lego towns and spaceships. They never got blown up by an enemy star cruiser or something, and you never took advantage of the fact that Lego people could be split into multiple parts. Its all natural.. (I think?!?!)
Wow the memories are now coming back of all the crazy menacing devices I created with Capsela and Robotix, also. Boy that was fun stuff. Thanks for invoking the trip down memory lane...
Now all we need to do is manufacture Lego's out of C4 and then the fun will really begin.
Imagine the Lego howitzer, mortar launcher, or Tank cannon....
The possibilities are endless. Couple it with that really cool Lego mindstorm stuff and we've just given playtime a whole new definition of fun.
Imagine getting carded at CompUsa when you go to buy software. I have pictures of kids running out to buy Quake or something, and making up good stories for the clerk like "I forgot my ID in the car" or "I'm buying it for a friend..."
Hey, maybe somebody will start bootlegging software... Buying games for minors, spend a year in prison... but I digress...
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Coming up with a way to represent date data type is one that is subject to whoever is building a language. There is no standard or common thread. Just taking a look at a handful of languages you'll find differences... (i.e. Java and C do dates differently, etc.) Why would Perl be any different?
If anything Perl handles dates very similarly to C, therefore its more standardized (if you wish to call it that) than others....
Accept the fact that you made an assumption that was wrong and move on, don't blame Perl...