First off, I'll confess to being a language junkie. I like to learn programming languages, and I enjoy playing with them. Secondly, my bread and butter languages are C and Perl, which I like and dislike about equally.
So I've played with Python. Written a few small programs (some for personal use, a couple at work)... What none of these so-called Python advocates are mentioning is that programming in Python is fun.
I wish I could quantify it better, but I've actually found myself chuckling as a Python program came together.
Bander
p.s. Some of you people who think the block syntax in Python is too weird should take a look at Scheme or FORTH... Some of us used to program with a line-number oriented language without any real block structure at all. Back in those ancient days, we called it BASIC and liked it.:^)
The single most important factor: Do you have small children that will be around the house most of the day?
I worked from home via modem/DSL for about three months, and it is very difficult if you have small kids (ours are 1.5 and 2.5 years old). No matter how hard you might try, it is impossible to actually "go to work" and isolate yourself from the bedlam. If you write code with complicated pointer arithmatic, you start to eat a lot of Advil.
And now that we have office space, and are moving into it, my wife really resents me not being around the house to "help out for a minute" several times a day. The kids are also having to adjust to having me out of the house most of the day...
I guess it also depends on your personal work habits. I like what I do enough that sitting down to do it does not require a manager in the immediate vicinity. Not everyone or every job is like that.
Almost everything that Tom rants about in this article is taken care of by the folks at PFU America, makers of the Happy Hacker keyboard. Though he doesn't mention it or them by name, his article is like a manifesto for the HH kbd.
I hope I get one or two of the keyboards for the holidays, they look excellent.
I do not actually believe, nor do I endorse the supposition, that Tom is in the pay of the PFU people. I just think it's interesting that there is a company that seems to be on the same Zen wave that he is on.
It never occured to me that the "proprietizing" of the Web was a direct threat to Linux. Is there anyone out there who can mount an effective response to the problem?
Tim and the W3C seem like voices in the wilderness -- why doesn't anyone listen to the guy who "invented" the Web?
Y'all:^) think that stuff is bad, Virginia just released special license plates that proclaim VA the Internet c@pital -- and yes, they screwed the pooch on the spelling of "capitol". Even though they border Washington DC, which is often inaccurately called the "Capital".
I remember him from one of the Amex "Do you know me?" ads in the 80's. The cliche "birdlike" really applied to him small and slight, and his eyes were full of both intelligence and no small amount of humor.
I have a mental image of him now, perhaps sitting in a garden or on a hill, with a pack of ideally-realized Aibo's frolicking around him...
I found the article pretty offensive, personally. It showed the ugliest side of reverse discrimination, the part that says, "your pain has no validity because you don't match our idea of an oppressed group." The fact Ms Dark assumes that the people who contributed their personal stories to Katz's series are white males is so patently racist that I'm shocked her editors didn't call her on it.
None of the respondents even mentioned their race. For all we know, many of the contributors were non-caucasian and non-male. That wasn't so much relevant as the fact that they considered themselves nerds and geeks.
I consider myself a liberal on many social issues, but this Village Voice article is exactly the kind of "liberalism" that makes me want to puke.
SCO has been the laughing-stock of the Unix community for the past decade. Anybody who ran a "real" Unix had nothing but pity for those forced to toil on SCO boxen. The only thing that kept SCO alive was that the hardware was cheap. SCO was one of NT's strongest selling points -- all the FUD that has been slung at Linux were real vulnerabilities in SCO...
Michels refuses to acknowlege that it took Linux to legitimize Unix on consumer-level hardware.
I think he's just bitter because using Linux (even Red Hat:^) compared to SCO is like having oral sex versus a getting a sharp stick in the eye. And if the sex can be had for free and the stick costs $300 per eye, well, it probably just makes him madder.
See, he ignores that Red Hat also makes its distros available for free, as long as you provide your end of the media (bandwidth).
Not a mail reader (I have Pine). Not a news reader (I have Gnus). Not an IRC client (I have bitchX). Not a contact manager (I have a Palm IIIx). Not an HTML editor (I have Emacs).
At least in the Narita hotels, they had whiskey in the vending machines. A nice, clean, brightly-colored "Asahi" one was on my floor.
Actually, the Japanese put many interesting items in vending machines. I'm surprised there isn't a website on them. Actually, maybe there are several already. Sometimes the Web is a frightening place...
Is "Linux" in the title just to be trendy, or is this book really that pathetically platform dependant? Last time I checked, gtk+ worked fine under Solaris and a slew of other Unixen.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, I'll confess to being a language junkie. I like to learn programming languages, and I enjoy playing with them. Secondly, my bread and butter languages are C and Perl, which I like and dislike about equally.
So I've played with Python. Written a few small programs (some for personal use, a couple at work)... What none of these so-called Python advocates are mentioning is that programming in Python is fun.
I wish I could quantify it better, but I've actually found myself chuckling as a Python program came together.
Bander
p.s. Some of you people who think the block syntax in Python is too weird should take a look at Scheme or FORTH... Some of us used to program with a line-number oriented language without any real block structure at all. Back in those ancient days, we called it BASIC and liked it. :^)
--
The single most important factor: Do you have small children that will be around the house most of the day?
I worked from home via modem/DSL for about three months, and it is very difficult if you have small kids (ours are 1.5 and 2.5 years old). No matter how hard you might try, it is impossible to actually "go to work" and isolate yourself from the bedlam. If you write code with complicated pointer arithmatic, you start to eat a lot of Advil.
And now that we have office space, and are moving into it, my wife really resents me not being around the house to "help out for a minute" several times a day. The kids are also having to adjust to having me out of the house most of the day...
I guess it also depends on your personal work habits. I like what I do enough that sitting down to do it does not require a manager in the immediate vicinity. Not everyone or every job is like that.
Bander
Kevin! Stop spoofing NASA!
Bander"Windows powered"... Heh.
Sounds a lot like "military intelligence" or "government service," doesn't it?
One day, I will have Emacs on my palmtop, then I will be happy (and TeX and a dvi viewer)... Well, okay, and Angband.
Bander
Almost everything that Tom rants about in this article is taken care of by the folks at PFU America, makers of the Happy Hacker keyboard. Though he doesn't mention it or them by name, his article is like a manifesto for the HH kbd.
I hope I get one or two of the keyboards for the holidays, they look excellent.
I do not actually believe, nor do I endorse the supposition, that Tom is in the pay of the PFU people. I just think it's interesting that there is a company that seems to be on the same Zen wave that he is on.
Bander
It never occured to me that the "proprietizing" of the Web was a direct threat to Linux. Is there anyone out there who can mount an effective response to the problem?
Tim and the W3C seem like voices in the wilderness -- why doesn't anyone listen to the guy who "invented" the Web?
Sigh...
Nick Vargish
I thought capitol was a place, and capital was a letter or money
BTW, I sure hope Mozilla fixes those character entity problems... :^)
Y'all :^) think that stuff is bad, Virginia just released special license plates that proclaim VA the Internet c@pital -- and yes, they screwed the pooch on the spelling of "capitol". Even though they border Washington DC, which is often inaccurately called the "Capital".
Sigh.
I remember him from one of the Amex "Do you know me?" ads in the 80's. The cliche "birdlike" really applied to him small and slight, and his eyes were full of both intelligence and no small amount of humor.
I have a mental image of him now, perhaps sitting in a garden or on a hill, with a pack of ideally-realized Aibo's frolicking around him...
I found the article pretty offensive, personally. It showed the ugliest side of reverse discrimination, the part that says, "your pain has no validity because you don't match our idea of an oppressed group." The fact Ms Dark assumes that the people who contributed their personal stories to Katz's series are white males is so patently racist that I'm shocked her editors didn't call her on it.
None of the respondents even mentioned their race. For all we know, many of the contributors were non-caucasian and non-male. That wasn't so much relevant as the fact that they considered themselves nerds and geeks.
I consider myself a liberal on many social issues, but this Village Voice article is exactly the kind of "liberalism" that makes me want to puke.
-- Bander
SCO has been the laughing-stock of the Unix community for the past decade. Anybody who ran a "real" Unix had nothing but pity for those forced to toil on SCO boxen. The only thing that kept SCO alive was that the hardware was cheap. SCO was one of NT's strongest selling points -- all the FUD that has been slung at Linux were real vulnerabilities in SCO...
Michels refuses to acknowlege that it took Linux to legitimize Unix on consumer-level hardware.
Bander
I think he's just bitter because using Linux (even Red Hat :^) compared to SCO is like having oral sex versus a getting a sharp stick in the eye. And if the sex can be had for free and the stick costs $300 per eye, well, it probably just makes him madder.
See, he ignores that Red Hat also makes its distros available for free, as long as you provide your end of the media (bandwidth).
Bander
All I want is a freaking Web browser!
Not a mail reader (I have Pine).
Not a news reader (I have Gnus).
Not an IRC client (I have bitchX).
Not a contact manager (I have a Palm IIIx).
Not an HTML editor (I have Emacs).
See a pattern?
Nick (Bander)
I didn't want to make it too tough for poor ol' Louis Freeh. Apparently real crypto wilts his woody.
Bander
At least in the Narita hotels, they had whiskey in the vending machines. A nice, clean, brightly-colored "Asahi" one was on my floor.
Actually, the Japanese put many interesting items in vending machines. I'm surprised there isn't a website on them. Actually, maybe there are several already. Sometimes the Web is a frightening place...
Bander
Is "Linux" in the title just to be trendy, or is this book really that pathetically platform dependant? Last time I checked, gtk+ worked fine under Solaris and a slew of other Unixen.
Bah humbug.