User: cliveholloway

Re:So what's new?

On: Dear Microsoft Windows ...

Anyone could have used a spell checker (Skiron exempt).

cLive ;-)

Re:This could be great news...

On: File Trading Law Would Include 'Willing' Traders

I think often that Americans' view of UK is as skewed as Brits' view of the US because our starting points are so different (I'm a Brit in LA, so I have *some* insight).

I don't think I ever saw a gun in England as a kid. In the 90's I saw my first Policeman with gun in Central London and that kinda freaked me a bit. Very few people in England feel their "rights" are being trodden on by not owning a gun. It just makes sense.

Whilst over here, being brought up in a culture where guns are everywhere, it's just too radical to try to envisage ever changing the relationship with guns to anywhere near what the British mentality is.

When I moved over here, my wife had a broken, unloaded gun in her apartment. I freaked and got her to get rid of it. I'm a bit more relaxed these days, but I still wouldn't ever let anyone bring a gun into our apartment.

The general paradigms* of the two societies are so different, I can't expect either to truly 'get' where the other is coming from.

Oo, what a rant, and no conclusion.

cLive ;-)
* a valid use of the word paradigm - for once.

Re:What a coincidence!

On: EWeek Details Linux to Windows Migration

Camping Gear? I think not.

Am I supposed to psychically guess the acronym, or is that an acronym that I really should know about?

cLive ;-)

What a coincidence!

On: EWeek Details Linux to Windows Migration

We've just started porting our Perl apps to Java.

cLive ;-)

(let the flame wars begin :)

No it hasn't, MOD TROLL

On: Spam Opt-out Link Triggers Malicious Code Attack

view page source (not frame source).

cLive ;-)

Even better - choose a link with graphics on.

On: Spam Opt-out Link Triggers Malicious Code Attack

After a little guessing:

a b c d. "d" looks pretty heavy on graphics.

.02

cLive ;-)

Re:In a word

On: Is it Safe to Use Win XP SP2, Yet?

Well, I've been getting about one BSOD an hour when playing Yahoo Pool on two tables at the same time.

So can I add another word and a caveat?

Maybe - depends on what you do with your machine.

cLive ;-)

Re:BSOD jokes

On: Bill Gates Gives $20M to CMU for New Building

Try installing Win XP Sp2 and then play two games at a time in Yahoo! Pool - I get two a day at the moment...

cLive ;-)

Re:While I sympathize, this is going to far.

On: Independent Developers Fight Piracy & Lose

That sucks. But I also don't think you're doing yourself any favors.

Your website looks very amateur. You really need to find a marketing person to work with. It sucks, but you have to. If you want people to think you're a professional outfit, you have to give that impression as well as delivering the goods.

There are all sorts of ways you could coax people into paying. Polite reminders. Guilt trips. You don't have to become Real - but you do need to improve your image if you want to make a business out of it. .02

cLive ;-)

Don't worry about it...

On: Star Wars DVD Set Previews/Reviews

It all got sorted out in court

cLive ;-)

Re:(Partial) mirror

On: Kite Aerial Photography

Is that first one Oban, in Scotland?

cLive ;-)

Re:To bad for the rest of us.

On: Did You VoteOrNot.org?

Oh crap. Come on. If I said, "Which do you prefer. 'Days of Our Lives' or 'All My Children'?".

Chance are you'll say, "Well, they're both crap, so why should I care?".

Voting is pretty much irrelevant in the US, since the system pushes you towards having to make a decision that is basically, "Which rich, middle aged white guy who went to Yale do I want to vote for?".

My answer to that question is probably close to your answer about Soaps.

Both parties are 0wn3d by corporations to some degree. It's a nasty mess.

People who will not vote because their interests will never be represented by Democrats or Republicans aren't always lazy - it's a choice. The "democratic" choice of not voting. .02

cLive ;-)

Re:perhaps you should look at it this way...

On: Yahoo! Not Protected From French Anti-Nazi Laws

The entire concept behind 'free speech' is that you defend the right even if - especially if - you happen to disagree with that speech. But since you're a Brit in LA, as you said, I don't expect you to grasp that concept as easily as an American would."

Oh, I get it now. You mean like this. Glad we got that one sorted.

In the UK, we have pretty much the same rights. Just less PR/marketing.

Anyway. Thank you for pointing that out. Your kindergarten explanation makes things so much clearer.

cLive ;-)

perhaps you should look at it this way...

On: Yahoo! Not Protected From French Anti-Nazi Laws

Do you think "Friends of Osama" should be able to openly sell "Celebrating the attack on the Twin Towers" t-shirts (bad example, quickly made up)?

What if they opened a store in Times Square?

Don't you think that might incite a riot or something? Isn't that a bit *too* close to home?

And what if those t-shirts were being used to incite a whole new generation of Osamas to finish what he started? Wouldn't that upset you just a little?

Using Iconography from previous terrors to promote new terrors is not (IMHO) a good thing.

That's my rough interpretation of the French law. Do I agree with it? Not 100%, but I can see where they're coming from.

Yadda yadda 1st amendment or whatever rights (don't ask me, I'm a Brit in LA).

cLive ;-)

Re:is it just me...

On: Virtual Girlfriend

I remember seeing a comedian once who said, "When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to grow up and get married so I could have sex every day".

Most married men tend to laugh a bit too loudly at that one ;-)

cLive ;-)

Been there, done that :)

On: Jabberwocky In ActionScript

First scene from Macbeth

cLive ;-)

Re:The way source code looks

On: The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham

That's a map in void context. As soon as you add parentheses, you might as well rewrite it as a for loop.

cLive ;-)

Re:The way source code looks

On: The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham

I'll add a caveat though. You can't do this:

blah($_); blahblah($_) for @x;

as it's treated like this:

blah($_);
for @x {
blahblah($_)
};

I found that I code how I speak. Which is fine until you need to expand the commands that are iterated through. Sometimes I'll do this:

blah($_) and blahblah($_) for @x;

but that will not do what you want if blah returns 0/undef/'', so you have to be careful.

I used to always use if/else statements, but find myself getting lazy on that.

# this
if ($condition) {
do_this()
}
else {
do_that()
}

# becomes
$condition ? do_this() : do_that();

Again, that's quicker for statements, but messy for blocks.

No idea where this rant's going... Perhaps you should log back into perlmonks (assuming you're that fnord) and see what's there ;-)

cLive ;-)

Re:The way source code looks

On: The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham

Well, assuming the values of @collection are objects /namespaces rather than scalars, yes (I don't know anything about Ruby to interpret original example). But even then, you can simplify to:

$_->do_something() for @collection;

Hardly a punctuation nightmare ;-)

cLive ;-)

Re:The way source code looks

On: The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham

Err, two things:

1. You're not dereferencing the hashref ( $hr->{$_} )
2. You're not doing what was asked - you're iterating through keys of a hash rather than an array.

Damn Perl trolls ;-)

for (@x) { do_something($_); }

# or even simpler
do_something($_) for @x;

cLive ;-)

Bell's telephone? Bzzzzt. Try Antonio Meucci

On: Google and Yahoo Settle Overture Lawsuit

"If you invented something completely new and revolutionary, such as Bell's telephone..."

What a great example from an IP lawyer! The telephone was invented by Antonio Meucci. He died seven years into a lawsuit with Bell. There's even been a Congress resolution admitting he invented it.

Oh the irony.

"Patents provide an incentive to discover and invent new things, and ensure your time, money and efforts don't go to waste."

Try telling that to Meucci.

cLive ;-)

"mass migration of users " and "join us on IRC"

On: Mass Migration/Bughunt For Thunderbird Tuesday

Talk about preaching to the converted! And how is this going to work???

Geek - "Get rid of crappy Outlook. Come join us in a mass migration to Thunderbird!"

Marketing Droid - "Err, OK, what do I do?"

Geek - "Just join us on IRC channel #mozmigration on smug.geek.com"

Marketing Droid - "Err, yeah, right"

Talk about Oxymoronic. Of course, I can't RTFA coz it's slashdotted, so ignore the above if I'm missing something.

cLive ;-)

Re:I think we should show our appreciation...

On: Publisher Renames 'Katie.com'

Oh, I'm sorry, I forget that sarcasm needs explaining to a lot of people. Let me spell it out for you. How thankful do you think a marketing droid would be to receive several hundred emails from geeks saying thank you? *Sigh* Trouble is, if you have to explain it, it just isn't funny anymore...

cLive ;-)

I think we should show our appreciation...

On: Publisher Renames 'Katie.com'

Not often these things happen. Please take the time to thank Penguin. I suggest you email the writer of the Press Release, Brant Janeway at Brant.Janeway(at)US.PenguinGroup.com

I'm sure they'd appreciate hearing how grateful we all are.

cLive ;-)

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

On: Katie Jones Interviewed

"Judge a book by its content, and nothing more."

So, if the book was written by a convicted pedophile, and they were getting $5 for every copy sold, you would see no reason not to buy that book. Would you honestly buy it if you knew that?

Interesting...

cLive ;-)