Yeah. That list of 50,000 known good addresses isn't going to grow unless you blindly blast out email. Pretend you're an evil spammer who is using networks of residential windows zombie machines to send spam. Or pretend you've cracked a badly maintained server in a country where administrators might be hostile to requests from the U.S. Then you can go ahead and try dictionary attacks against every mail server you can think of without any risk, and send the bounces to whatever, and you don't have to worry about the footprint.
Define "readability." In my opinion, conciseness is a major contributor to readability. Here is one of the most line-noisy Perl routines I've written recently. It extracts email addresses from a message header, splitting header lines on ",", puts them into a list, strips out addresses with certain domains, trims non-address text, removes duplicate entries and then returns the list sorted by frequency. Yes, you'll have to know Perl for this to be obvious. But if you do know Perl, I think it's perfectly readable. You could write something that's nearly identical, I expect, in Python. (Well, you'd have to indent it differently...;-)
sub likely_customer_emails {
# returns a list of unique non-xxx, non-yyy email addresses extracted fro m the message, sorted by frequency
my %uniq;
sort { $uniq{$b} <=> $uniq{$a} }
grep !$uniq{$_}++,
map {/([^\s<\@]+\@([\w-]+.)+(\w+))/ ? $1 : $_ }
grep/\@(?!(\w+\.)*(xxx.com|yyy.com))/,
map {split(/,/, $_[0]->get($_))}
("Reply-To","From","To","Cc","Return-Path"); }
Perl is strongly typed. However, 2 and "2" and \$x are all the same type. This is not just semantics -- 2 and (2) and { 2 => 2 } are different types and they are not interchangeable. Values of Perl's "scalar" type can be expressed and used as strings, numbers, references. You can't cast an list to a hash or a scalar. You can't treat a scalar reference as a list reference. You can assign a list to a hash, but that is just synactic sugar ("keys (a => 1, b => 2)" does not work -- even though that looks like a hash, it's a list).
Religion is not only the ally of limited government, but a necessary condition for it to prosper." -- Gary Bauer
Check these guys out: http://www.constitutionparty.com/
That page starts out with a claim that George Washington feared the weakening of the influence of religion on public life, which I seriously doubt is true, and at the bottom there's an article that amounts to "Vote for us because the Bible says so". They have little influence or power now, but as I said, they're working for it.
Hmm, comparing people who blow up institutions they disagree with with other people who blow up institutions they disagree with. Which is which? Which is worse? Would Operation Rescue fly a plane into an office building if it contained an abortion clinic?
Randall Terry? James Dobson? John Ashcroft? The entire antigovernment/millenarian subculture that produced Timothy McVeigh? I think there are quite a lot of small scale as well as very visible Christian leaders (as well as a lot of pragmatists who are happy to use extremist Christianity as a pretext to power) who, as you say are not currently as dangerous as the Taliban & friends but nevertheless are actively working to make the U.S. into a "Christian nation" -- starting with rewriting history (Some claim Thomas Paine of all people as a born again believer, and claiming Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln is all too common) and ending, I'm sure, with a full blown theocracy. I believe they won't succeed, but they are working.
Well, it could only be a federal offense to light your own hair on fire if you did it while conducting business across state lines, or as part of a crime against a postal employee, or something like that.:-)
Only thing wrong with using RPN on English is that lists would be annoying. To be more complete I'd have to say "adjectives adverbs prepositions conjunctions interjections and and and and" or else use a vector:-)
adjectives prepositions and rules RPN follow not should why?
(Er. Why shouldn't adjectives and prepositions follow RPN rules? I guess for that statement to work "RPN" would have to modify its argument and "and" would have to be interpreted as some sort of Perl 6-style quantum superposition...)
What do we have to worry about? Rutans, hah. Great big jellyfish sort of things... they're even less dangerous than those ridiculous pepper pots armed with sink plungers. The Sontarans at least were a credible threat. Effective, ruthless, scientific *and* they can even go up stairs.
I think any language is the best language to start with, if it is the easiest language for a project you are interested in.
Depends on the person, I suppose, but I can agree with that. Still, you will have to work at overcoming the bad habits you're almost guaranteed with Perl, and you've probably spent some time trying to figure out what the hell some part of the language meant. A different language might be as suitable for a simple web project but not have those other problems.
Am I the only one that thinks Perl or PHP would be a good choice?
God, I hope so. I'm a professional Perl programmer but I would never, ever recommend it as someone's first language. Both Perl and PHP are good for experts who are getting things done. Both languages are kind of weird in places. Both languages are full of opportunities for newbies to learn to do things in a really really bad way. Well, all languages are, to some degree. But a first language, I think, should be a clean and simple system, like Logo, Scheme, or Python, where there may be more than one way to do it, but the right way is easy and well documented.
I was about to disagree with you, but fortunately at the last minute I actually checked instead of vomiting my raw opinions upon the intarweb as fact. I thought former presidents were normally still referred to *directly* as "Mr. President". They're not. But, oddly, apparently Carter and Clinton can still be referred to as "Governor".
I think it's good for the drivers. I'd certainly pay five bucks to shorten my trip by two hours, decrease wear and tear on my engine and brakes, increase my fuel efficiency and not worry about collisions on twisty mountain roads. So it ain't free, so what. I'm sure the old road will still be open. People in the valley gotta get out.
But i didn't answer your question. My alternative is to put money into funding research projects just like the one this article is about. Which is what's going on, so I think we're on the right track. That, as well as pure-research-with-lots-of-side-effects projects like missions to Mars. If we don't come up with something better, and practical, we may end up being really uncomfortable for a while, or dead, but I think someone will. There is a lot of energy out there to be got.
obviously no one really takes the danger all that seriously or there would be more companies like that.
I completely agree with that. I just hope this comes out like Y2K... after lots of people put a lot of work into averting a real problem, everybody will end up wondering what all the hype was about.
That compares an apparently random but mnemonic password, like, say, 'iah1tGtlaH' (first letters of the first line of _The Hobbit_, l33t-ized) versus a very simple password, say, 'hobbit' or 'eleventy-first'.
Obviously most people will remember either of those more easily than say, 'meiKii0z' which I just created with pwgen.
Okay, consider this. Obviously nobody thinks that at some point, they will just siphon the last drop of oil out of the ground, and then society will collapse. Well actually, someone probably does think that. Doesn't matter. At some point, (after the Hubbert peak is recognized or whatever) the rate of increase in the price of oil will likely start accelerating and will not come back down. That is what I'm referring to with "sink or swim." What you're glossing over with "it will just cost more" actually may have really severe economic consequences. There should be good alternatives in place before that happens. Who knows, maybe we'll find something cheaper than oil.
Slashdot Mirror
get your personal web site linked to from an article summary, and i'll tell you who'll be uploading at that speed :-)
If you want a language that's easy for people to read if they don't know it, may I suggest COBOL?
Yeah. That list of 50,000 known good addresses isn't going to grow unless you blindly blast out email. Pretend you're an evil spammer who is using networks of residential windows zombie machines to send spam. Or pretend you've cracked a badly maintained server in a country where administrators might be hostile to requests from the U.S. Then you can go ahead and try dictionary attacks against every mail server you can think of without any risk, and send the bounces to whatever, and you don't have to worry about the footprint.
Perl is strongly typed. However, 2 and "2" and \$x are all the same type. This is not just semantics -- 2 and (2) and { 2 => 2 } are different types and they are not interchangeable. Values of Perl's "scalar" type can be expressed and used as strings, numbers, references. You can't cast an list to a hash or a scalar. You can't treat a scalar reference as a list reference. You can assign a list to a hash, but that is just synactic sugar ("keys (a => 1, b => 2)" does not work -- even though that looks like a hash, it's a list).
Using that method, they would only be able to tell how long the meteorite had been on earth, not when it was formed.
Actually, it's "anecdotal". One good spelling flame deserves another... :-)
Religion is not only the ally of limited government, but a necessary condition for it to prosper." -- Gary Bauer
Check these guys out:
http://www.constitutionparty.com/
That page starts out with a claim that George Washington feared the weakening of the influence of religion on public life, which I seriously doubt is true, and at the bottom there's an article that amounts to "Vote for us because the Bible says so". They have little influence or power now, but as I said, they're working for it.
Hmm, comparing people who blow up institutions they disagree with with other people who blow up institutions they disagree with. Which is which? Which is worse? Would Operation Rescue fly a plane into an office building if it contained an abortion clinic?
Randall Terry? James Dobson? John Ashcroft? The entire antigovernment/millenarian subculture that produced Timothy McVeigh? I think there are quite a lot of small scale as well as very visible Christian leaders (as well as a lot of pragmatists who are happy to use extremist Christianity as a pretext to power) who, as you say are not currently as dangerous as the Taliban & friends but nevertheless are actively working to make the U.S. into a "Christian nation" -- starting with rewriting history (Some claim Thomas Paine of all people as a born again believer, and claiming Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln is all too common) and ending, I'm sure, with a full blown theocracy. I believe they won't succeed, but they are working.
Well, it could only be a federal offense to light your own hair on fire if you did it while conducting business across state lines, or as part of a crime against a postal employee, or something like that. :-)
Only thing wrong with using RPN on English is that lists would be annoying. To be more complete I'd have to say "adjectives adverbs prepositions conjunctions interjections and and and and" or else use a vector :-)
I would infixify yours as "RPN Calculators of the Future" -- which is a better title for the story anyway. :-)
adjectives prepositions and rules RPN follow not should why?
(Er. Why shouldn't adjectives and prepositions follow RPN rules? I guess for that statement to work "RPN" would have to modify its argument and "and" would have to be interpreted as some sort of Perl 6-style quantum superposition...)
What do we have to worry about? Rutans, hah. Great big jellyfish sort of things... they're even less dangerous than those ridiculous pepper pots armed with sink plungers. The Sontarans at least were a credible threat. Effective, ruthless, scientific *and* they can even go up stairs.
I think any language is the best language to start with, if it is the easiest language for a project you are interested in.
Depends on the person, I suppose, but I can agree with that. Still, you will have to work at overcoming the bad habits you're almost guaranteed with Perl, and you've probably spent some time trying to figure out what the hell some part of the language meant. A different language might be as suitable for a simple web project but not have those other problems.
God, I hope so. I'm a professional Perl programmer but I would never, ever recommend it as someone's first language. Both Perl and PHP are good for experts who are getting things done. Both languages are kind of weird in places. Both languages are full of opportunities for newbies to learn to do things in a really really bad way. Well, all languages are, to some degree. But a first language, I think, should be a clean and simple system, like Logo, Scheme, or Python, where there may be more than one way to do it, but the right way is easy and well documented.
I was about to disagree with you, but fortunately at the last minute I actually checked instead of vomiting my raw opinions upon the intarweb as fact. I thought former presidents were normally still referred to *directly* as "Mr. President". They're not. But, oddly, apparently Carter and Clinton can still be referred to as "Governor".
I think it's good for the drivers. I'd certainly pay five bucks to shorten my trip by two hours, decrease wear and tear on my engine and brakes, increase my fuel efficiency and not worry about collisions on twisty mountain roads. So it ain't free, so what. I'm sure the old road will still be open. People in the valley gotta get out.
I wonder if the architect /knew/ about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge... You should write him and make sure.
Sometimes it's just shortened to "a/s/l",
:-)
Yeah, you know I'm stealing that.
But i didn't answer your question. My alternative is to put money into funding research projects just like the one this article is about. Which is what's going on, so I think we're on the right track. That, as well as pure-research-with-lots-of-side-effects projects like missions to Mars. If we don't come up with something better, and practical, we may end up being really uncomfortable for a while, or dead, but I think someone will. There is a lot of energy out there to be got.
obviously no one really takes the danger all that seriously or there would be more companies like that.
I completely agree with that. I just hope this comes out like Y2K... after lots of people put a lot of work into averting a real problem, everybody will end up wondering what all the hype was about.
That compares an apparently random but mnemonic password, like, say, 'iah1tGtlaH' (first letters of the first line of _The Hobbit_, l33t-ized) versus a very simple password, say, 'hobbit' or 'eleventy-first'.
Obviously most people will remember either of those more easily than say, 'meiKii0z' which I just created with pwgen.
Okay, consider this. Obviously nobody thinks that at some point, they will just siphon the last drop of oil out of the ground, and then society will collapse. Well actually, someone probably does think that. Doesn't matter. At some point, (after the Hubbert peak is recognized or whatever) the rate of increase in the price of oil will likely start accelerating and will not come back down. That is what I'm referring to with "sink or swim." What you're glossing over with "it will just cost more" actually may have really severe economic consequences. There should be good alternatives in place before that happens. Who knows, maybe we'll find something cheaper than oil.