I never really thought about how valuable perl really is. I use it constantly. I use it based on the syntactic rules set fourth in the cammel book. I never considered evaluating changes to the language
Sounds to me like you haven't tried to do anything very hard with it. People who tackle large jobs in any language tend to find things that could be improved about it, things that would make working with it more fun and easier. Why should Perl be any different?
$9000 a year per student is a lot of money? You must be joking. Private colleges often cost students more than $20,000 per year and that only covers half the cost. The other half comes out of interest generated by the colleges' endowments.
How much do the teachers in DC get paid? I'll bet it's not enough to lure anyone who can get a job in the corporate world and doesn't have an altruistic need to teach.
1. Web services are going nowhere fast. Dynamic web sites are the most important thing on the web and what most people and businesses care about. Apache is great for dynamic sites.
2. Apache has perfectly good GUI tools for administration. They are not universally used because most people don't want them. It's much easier to use a simple text editor to edit the simple conf file, and you can do it over an SSH connection from your bedroom at 4am. Of course companies like Apple can also slap a simple GUI on top of it and hide that from people, as they have done with the Apache controls in OS X.
3. There is plenty of support for XML-RPC and SOAP from all over the open source world. The implementations I've seen on mod_perl are fast and powerful.
4. Apache 2 is a million miles from "just a better architecture for a vanilla webserver." It is a flexible server platform which can do things that IIS only dreams of. You can write drop-in replacements for the HTTP protocol and take full advantage of all the facilities Apache provides as a server framework. (Hell, you can write new protocols in Perl!)
Only someone who fundamentally doesn't understand technology would say that IIS is somehow providing a web services "platform" while Apache is not.
Well, "culture jamming" would be the point, except that RTMark are such a bunch of self-righteous pricks that they're probably just in it to get their name on Slashdot. They have a history of supporting DoS attacks, and other unsavory fare.
It's a beatiful thing seeing Slashdot incite two language wars in one day, but editor wars deserve equal time. I'm pretty sure that in the last paragraph of this article, Guido called Emacs "just an editor."
Many "web languages" are page-centric. PHP, and ASP are like this. Other "web languages" take application languages and tie them to a
page-centric mode. Mod-perl does with as does ASP+COM.
Actually, that's not true. You must be thinking of some system built on top of mod_perl, like Embperl or Mason. By itself, mod_perl is exactly like writing an Apache module, but in Perl. It's a lot closer to Java servlets than to PHP or ASP.
And there is also a difference between defacing "property" and defacing a website. If no data is lost, what exactly is the damage done? The damage is some denial of service, and clean up aftwards. Not unlike sit-ins.
DoS attacks cost the target money, sometimes lots of it. Money spent on repairing a database or paying someone to block IPs at the router is no different from money spent replacing the windows that the bricks were thrown though. There's also the loss of business in the case of commercial targets.
Unfortunately, your attitude prevails. People who would be far too chicken to ever hurl a brick in the name of their cause think it's fine to ruin someone's website and trash businesses with DoS attacks. They seem to think they're some kind of badasses when they run their URL pounding scripts.
Before you take this kind of action, think about the people you're affecting. It's highly unlikely that every one who works at a particular web site is responsible for whatever pissed you off. You may be putting a bunch of cool open source geeks out of a job just because you dislike something that one lawyer said.
...And so are you. eToys was not trying "to rob etoy.com of their domain name." They were trying to resolve complaints from parents about the adult content on the etoy.com site and were unable to reach an agreement with the etoy people who asked for an outrageous sum of money. You may not agree with using the legal system in this way, but the fact remains that etoy was well aware of the confusion between the URLs and was taking advantage of it by putting pictures of toys on their front page to further confuse accidental visitors.
You're basing your argument on some inflammatory garbage printed on Slashdot without knowing the real story. You also don't seem to know that eToys is one of the largest proponents and users of open source software and Linux, and has contributed code to multiple projects. Don't get carried away and make assumptions about everyone associated with idealab just because you don't like lawyers.
You think it's easy to be sued by a pack of hungry corporate lawyers?
Apparently etoy thinks it's a good idea, since they're doing it.
You have any idea of how much anguish was visited on people that were sued not to mention how much it cost them?
Yes, I do. It cost them nothing, since eToys paid all of their legal bills. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to see a community that you are part of (Slashdot/Linux/Open Source) shouting outrageous slander against you and mounting hundreds of DoS attacks against you?
Re:eToys == useful bastards, eToy == useless basta
on
The etoy Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
Incidentally, eToys' engineers contribute to some open source projects, like mod_perl. I don't see etoy contributing much to the community.
Whether VA Linux will even exist as a company by the time this suit is resolved so Slashdot can report the results is, unfortunately, also an open question
It doesn't really help much to put one of VA Linux's biggest clients (eToys) out of business. For all we know, they might owe VA Linux (and thus Slashdot) some money right now.
It sure is. And when VA Linux can't afford to pay the bills for Slashdot anymore because they lost one of their biggest clients (eToys), you can be proud of the fact that you helped make it happen.
They have not yet been punished for going after an independant website which posed no threat to them, was not in their field (so trademark dilution wouldn't apply), on an illegitimate trademark claim anyway, and blatently for only the Christmas season (both to get publicity, and try to shut down misdirection over the holidays, their biggest sales season in theory).
Where do you get these crackpot theories from? You sound like a conspiracy junkie. eToys had a very simple reason for going after etoy: they were getting angry complaints from parents whose children were getting onto etoy.com by mistake and found some S&M pictures there. Since etoy wasn't willing to do anything to help the situation (the asked for more money than eToys was willing to pay them), they took it to court. You may not agree with that move, but the evil motives you're making up are ridiculous.
Besides what is the alternative if you have been screwed over good by a sleazy corporation like E-toys?
Which part is the sleazy part? The support of Toys for Tots? The contributions to open source projects like mod_perl? (You know, the thing that runs this site...)
eToys would never have bothered to do anything with etoy if they hadn't received angry letters from parents complaining about the etoy site. Maybe you should check your assumptions.
Etoy was just minding their own, doing the Internet-is-all-commercialized-but-we're-still-a-b unch-of-weird-tech-art-people thing, and then Etoys went "Money+Internet=good" and decided to walk over the good guys.
You are so wrong. Etoy was well aware of the traffic they were receiving from typos and confusion, and took advantage of it with pictures of toys on their front page, as well as their whole "IPO" thing. eToys did nothing to them until they received angry letters from parents whose children had gone to the etoy site and found some S&M pictures there.
You assume that there was some kind of evil motive for eToys, but it's just not the case.
You know, I remember when Slashdot posted a bunch of anti-eToys articles, and everyone was rushing to post their code for DoS attacks and trying to rally people to run it. That time it was "a protest." Now some guy does exactly the same thing, but to a resource that Slashdot readers like, and everyone here is calling for his head on a stick.
A DoS attack is never okay. It's a crime and should be treated as such. Don't encourage these people the next time a "noble" cause comes around.
As a long-time user of the web/db discussion board at http://photo.net/wtr/, I've watched it degenerate from a useful resource into an ongoing flamewar against anyone who doesn't use AOLServer. Do you have any plans for how to improve the quality of content on your message boards and make them more self-moderating? Some of the features on Slashdot come to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds to me like you haven't tried to do anything very hard with it. People who tackle large jobs in any language tend to find things that could be improved about it, things that would make working with it more fun and easier. Why should Perl be any different?
National Public Radio is making their own Quake distribution? Looks like they're not as culturally elite as we thought (or is that 3l33t?).
How much do the teachers in DC get paid? I'll bet it's not enough to lure anyone who can get a job in the corporate world and doesn't have an altruistic need to teach.
This guy is way, way off on a number of things.
1. Web services are going nowhere fast. Dynamic web sites are the most important thing on the web and what most people and businesses care about. Apache is great for dynamic sites.
2. Apache has perfectly good GUI tools for administration. They are not universally used because most people don't want them. It's much easier to use a simple text editor to edit the simple conf file, and you can do it over an SSH connection from your bedroom at 4am. Of course companies like Apple can also slap a simple GUI on top of it and hide that from people, as they have done with the Apache controls in OS X.
3. There is plenty of support for XML-RPC and SOAP from all over the open source world. The implementations I've seen on mod_perl are fast and powerful.
4. Apache 2 is a million miles from "just a better architecture for a vanilla webserver." It is a flexible server platform which can do things that IIS only dreams of. You can write drop-in replacements for the HTTP protocol and take full advantage of all the facilities Apache provides as a server framework. (Hell, you can write new protocols in Perl!)
Only someone who fundamentally doesn't understand technology would say that IIS is somehow providing a web services "platform" while Apache is not.
Well, "culture jamming" would be the point, except that RTMark are such a bunch of self-righteous pricks that they're probably just in it to get their name on Slashdot. They have a history of supporting DoS attacks, and other unsavory fare.
This story is about the mini-series, not the movie. Your posting refers to the movie.
It's a beatiful thing seeing Slashdot incite two language wars in one day, but editor wars deserve equal time. I'm pretty sure that in the last paragraph of this article, Guido called Emacs "just an editor."
When used with mod_perl, Perl is fast enough for just about any web site. In fact, so is PHP, or Java.
Python is getting closer, but it's still not the fastest.
In most of the benchmarks I've seen, it's the slowest. Even so, it's probably fast enough.
Actually, that's not true. You must be thinking of some system built on top of mod_perl, like Embperl or Mason. By itself, mod_perl is exactly like writing an Apache module, but in Perl. It's a lot closer to Java servlets than to PHP or ASP.
DoS attacks cost the target money, sometimes lots of it. Money spent on repairing a database or paying someone to block IPs at the router is no different from money spent replacing the windows that the bricks were thrown though. There's also the loss of business in the case of commercial targets.
Unfortunately, your attitude prevails. People who would be far too chicken to ever hurl a brick in the name of their cause think it's fine to ruin someone's website and trash businesses with DoS attacks. They seem to think they're some kind of badasses when they run their URL pounding scripts.
Before you take this kind of action, think about the people you're affecting. It's highly unlikely that every one who works at a particular web site is responsible for whatever pissed you off. You may be putting a bunch of cool open source geeks out of a job just because you dislike something that one lawyer said.
You believe people are right when the Slashdot editors tell you that they are.
Actually that raging search thing is Alta Vista, not Yahoo.
...And so are you. eToys was not trying "to rob etoy.com of their domain name." They were trying to resolve complaints from parents about the adult content on the etoy.com site and were unable to reach an agreement with the etoy people who asked for an outrageous sum of money. You may not agree with using the legal system in this way, but the fact remains that etoy was well aware of the confusion between the URLs and was taking advantage of it by putting pictures of toys on their front page to further confuse accidental visitors.
You're basing your argument on some inflammatory garbage printed on Slashdot without knowing the real story. You also don't seem to know that eToys is one of the largest proponents and users of open source software and Linux, and has contributed code to multiple projects. Don't get carried away and make assumptions about everyone associated with idealab just because you don't like lawyers.
They run on Apache/mod_perl. That's a good enough to reason to give them a try.
Apparently etoy thinks it's a good idea, since they're doing it.
You have any idea of how much anguish was visited on people that were sued not to mention how much it cost them?
Yes, I do. It cost them nothing, since eToys paid all of their legal bills. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to see a community that you are part of (Slashdot/Linux/Open Source) shouting outrageous slander against you and mounting hundreds of DoS attacks against you?
Incidentally, eToys' engineers contribute to some open source projects, like mod_perl. I don't see etoy contributing much to the community.
Yeah, etoy.com is a pretty weak site. Only on the Internet can a bunch of guys with ugly Flash animations and a lawyer get taken seriously as artists.
It doesn't really help much to put one of VA Linux's biggest clients (eToys) out of business. For all we know, they might owe VA Linux (and thus Slashdot) some money right now.
It sure is. And when VA Linux can't afford to pay the bills for Slashdot anymore because they lost one of their biggest clients (eToys), you can be proud of the fact that you helped make it happen.
Where do you get these crackpot theories from? You sound like a conspiracy junkie. eToys had a very simple reason for going after etoy: they were getting angry complaints from parents whose children were getting onto etoy.com by mistake and found some S&M pictures there. Since etoy wasn't willing to do anything to help the situation (the asked for more money than eToys was willing to pay them), they took it to court. You may not agree with that move, but the evil motives you're making up are ridiculous.
Which part is the sleazy part? The support of Toys for Tots? The contributions to open source projects like mod_perl? (You know, the thing that runs this site...)
eToys would never have bothered to do anything with etoy if they hadn't received angry letters from parents complaining about the etoy site. Maybe you should check your assumptions.
You are so wrong. Etoy was well aware of the traffic they were receiving from typos and confusion, and took advantage of it with pictures of toys on their front page, as well as their whole "IPO" thing. eToys did nothing to them until they received angry letters from parents whose children had gone to the etoy site and found some S&M pictures there.
You assume that there was some kind of evil motive for eToys, but it's just not the case.
I'll bet etoy is really proud to have your support.
You know, I remember when Slashdot posted a bunch of anti-eToys articles, and everyone was rushing to post their code for DoS attacks and trying to rally people to run it. That time it was "a protest." Now some guy does exactly the same thing, but to a resource that Slashdot readers like, and everyone here is calling for his head on a stick.
A DoS attack is never okay. It's a crime and should be treated as such. Don't encourage these people the next time a "noble" cause comes around.
As a long-time user of the web/db discussion board at http://photo.net/wtr/, I've watched it degenerate from a useful resource into an ongoing flamewar against anyone who doesn't use AOLServer. Do you have any plans for how to improve the quality of content on your message boards and make them more self-moderating? Some of the features on Slashdot come to mind.