Even better....go to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/. There's a whole tracking system for reporting bugs on the browser, built with Open Source tools!
I've used it myself -- it's not easy easy (like the Talkback for the Windows browsers) but it's complete, and you can not just report, but also track the bug as it gets fixed.
They don't just want you to use it, the developers ENCOURAGE you to reports bugs. That's what the nightly, M-series, and Preview releases are for...to do something proactive about bugs before the final version is out.
Everyone grips about bugs. With Bugzilla, you can DO something about them. Isn't that the Open source way?
It's not bloated if you want! Choose Custom install. You can choose to install anything from just the browser to the whole shebang. It's good to see that, esp. since it was nigh-impossible to turn off in the 4.x series... One of the nice things about the small "kick-off" program is that you can choose to install just what you want w/o having to download it at all. I'm not really a fan of these types of programs, personally, but I have to admit that feature comes in handy. Check it out before you crap on it, friend!:)
Yes, I do -- Robert X. Cringely. Sharp, precise writing -- his columns have been Slashdot fodder a few times, almost always in a postive light. Few have his in-depth knowledge of the computing experience, and even fewer use it intelligently, to calm irrational fears and point out non-obvious trends. A definte counterpoint to Katz (who I also read, but for different reasons.)
Oh, yes, Tom can be harsh. But, as someone who tries to help on the Perl-Win32 list when I can (which isn't that often, alas), the constant "I haven't read the docs, but you better help me now!" wears on me, and I've only been helping a little for a couple of months. Imagine doing it, as Tom has, for years... And we are all, too, human, I know. I started posting from my new job, and got one of Tom's auto-mails about HTML posting. Took me many more tries to finally convince Outlook to fix the problem. I think Tom's a guy, and forgive me for thinking in his place, who wants to help those who help themselves. And I'd rather he did that, then not help at all. If his attitude grates on some, well, perhaps one should read before one posts, and accept advice from those more in-the-know then oneself. And you must recall, Perl's not like Linux. People know they are doing something big when they attack Linux, and seem to realize that they need to check out some fine reading first. And most folks have a friend to help them. Not so with Perl. At a guess, about once every couple of weeks there is a "I installed Perl on Windows, I double-clicked on the perl.exe, and a DOS box came up for a second, then disappeared! WHAT DO I DO NOW?" Read. Please. They have no idea, no clue, no concept. Luckily, some can be informed. Others, though, seem to want you to fly over to their desk and write the programs for you. And those types are what drive Tom nuts, I suspect.:)
I don't think much thought went into the philosophy of the Matrix either- my main problem is that it suffers from the "Superman effect." I.E.- people are said to have certain powers, but they forget to use them at convienient plot moments. Like when superman can run almost as fast as the flash, and can dodge bullets, but is then too slow to dodge having a chunk of concrete tossed at him. Likewise, we SEE that Neo, Geo, and Trinity can all move really really really fast, and even jump long distances. But when they're running from the agents- they move at normal speed. Hello? Add that to the fact that all the kunfu was extremely slow (at least by Jackie Chan standards!) and you got characters with super powers that don't make any sense.
Trust me, they make more sense than the _average_ comic...a few points to comment on your post, if I may please. Trinity runs fast at the beginning of the movie. And she's running from...an Agent. He keeps up with her, up until she jumps into the window (her second "big jump", by the by) and rolls down the flight of stairs. She uses every trick she has to excape and barely does. And it's laid out well. The reason the Agent doesn't follow her any further? They knew where she was going by that point, and the other Agents simply waited for her. No need for him to waste any more time.
As far as the kung-fu -- yes, it's not up to a full-bore Hong Kong action flick. But, it's still very impressive, to me, esp. from people who trained for only 6 months. I had no problems with the look and feel of that area, esp. if you think that these people likely have never _seen_ Jackie Chan, or any other Martial Art. They are just empty vessles for skills, in that regard.
Tom Christiansen is a zealot so blinded by his Perlcentrism, that he predicted that Java would be too complicated to catch on with "ordinary programmers." [LOL]. More humor at perl.org is a three-year-old rant about how some Perl vaporware is going to squash Java completely.
I was going to leave this alone. That is what Tom said -- only in part, not in the whole. And he's right -- how many people use Java to do their day-to-day automation tasks? Have Java overtaken Perl, or even C, for web-affilated tasks? This is NOT to say that Java is bad. But it's still a load on any browser running today, one that stalls the download of a site. I don't use Java on my site because of that -- studies have shown that the short attention spans of modern people apply all too well to the web, and I prefer a quick download for my site, even if I lack some of the tools I'd like to see. I don't use Flash for the same reason.
Java kicks butt for Intranet sites, where it's relativly easy GUI-building skills come in handy, and your bandwidth is high. For certain focused applications on the Net, it works as well. But I'd not call it the backbone of the Internet in the way that Perl is, or that PHP is becoming.
In that light, Tom's comments make a great deal of sense. Java is _not_ a simple language to learn for the non-programmers out there. Perl is easier, does much of the same work, but lacks a pleasant front end, easy-to-use IDEs, and the marketing push from Sun.
The difference between Unix and Perl is that with unix, it is clear when you see the "fgrep" command, that in order to learn more about it, you must type "man fgrep". What page of "Programming Perl" will explain how to interpret: $@ && ($@ =~ s/\(eval \d+\) $$ (\d+)/0;
You don't need to go buy a book at all. Look in the Perl online docs for perlre, perlvar, and perlop, for starters. But, few would use such a construct. And, I think it unfair to ask a programming language to explain syntax on the same level of a standard UNIX command. Perl is NOT ls, or even sed. But, at the same time, you can build nightmarish constructs using sed, awk, csh, bash, etc., in any combination or alone.
Perl is good because of the flexability. Perl, for me, is GREAT because of the huge number of modules that allow you to do things that normally would take C/C++ API calls. It's slower that the API call, obviously, but you can't beat it for prototyping and problem-solving. Don't believe me? Check out http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ and scroll through the vast listing. The strength of Perl in the number of appplications it's been applied to is, indeed, a strenght of the language. For example, I recently had need of a dirt-simple SMTP server. I could have written it in Perl, C, any number of languages that allow socket programming. But Perl had an easy to use, OO-based module that allowed me to setup and accept messages from clients in less than 10 lines of code. Nothing fancy, but I didn't need fancy. If I had wanted a "real" SMTP server, I would have found/built it in C, or used an external program. But Perl has, so far as I can tell, the greatest number of easy-to-use modules for a variety of tasks I've ever seen.
As for OO, Perl got it because it helps solve certain problems well, and it's a cool buzzword.:) Seriously, a lot of modules use it exclusivly now, and I personally prefer OO syntax to "standard" Perl syntax in many cases (using CGI.pm, for instance). And, save for those modules and the tie functionalty, you don't have to use OO if you don't want to. There's more than one what to do it!
Why though? Why return the year minus 1900 if the intent is NOT to get a 2 digit year? And if the intent is to get a 2 digit year then clearly the code has a Y2K issue as it no longer does so.
As noted, the code itself returns exactly what it says it will upon them turn to the year 2000. The assumption of others that the code must, for some reason, generate a 2-digit number is odd, at best. Think this way; given that you have a eventual rollover to 2000, or even, say, 1900, or 1800, or any 4-digit time, what would _you_ do to solve the problem? This solution gives a small number (>255), is highly flexable, and did not break when the century changes. Code that makes assumptions based upon not reading documentation is, sometimes, asking for failure.
Alt. solutions? You could have it return seperate times for pre and post 2K, or even have two seperate functions. This is similar to what is occuring now, and some would say is no different, after all, people are changing code left and right. The 1900 + solution, however, gives one set of numbers that will work indefinitly, given that you add correctly.
Or, you could have the function simply return the 4 digit year. Actually, localtime, when called in scalar context, does exactly that. They could have simply said, "We'll find a better soluation later", and gave out the last two digits. But, that solution also goes aganist the other date/time code in Unix, which is based upon a running count of time. Instead, they found a solution that would work over a longer span of time, if the programmer looked to his code properly at the beginning.
If the intent is NOT to get a 2 digit year, what is the intent? The function returns 'the year minus 1900' then we have to 'add 1900' to get the correct year.. how does this make sense? Given all of that information, I think it would be a reasonable mistake, and as such not treated so.. hrm.. arrogantly?
It is a reasonable mistake -- if you have not read the localtime information. You list the page http://language.perl.com/news/y2k.html -- did you read it before you coded? Or the man page for localtime? Or the listing for localtime in _Programming Perl_, _Perl in a Nutshell_, etc? All of these mention the 1900 + issue. And that page tells you how to fix the very problem you refer to. If you refer to Usenet/Mailing list messages, then you might have a point. But I find it hard to believe that the localtime issue was not mentioned. There's even a contest about it!
In short, Y2K issues in Perl come from assuming, and not reading the basic info about the functions in use -- information that comes with the program, and is not hidden away in a dark corner of the documentation. In fact, you must read this info in order to use the function at all! Adding numbers to 1900 makes sense in the context of the majority of uses for such a function, does not break upon transition to a new century, and can be easily switch from 1900 to 2000 and back, used in 2 digit or 4 digit mode without loss of information, while you work with less data all the while. What could be better?
From what I've been led to understand, it's even more than than. A friend in the Finance Dept. at a company I used to work for once told me that they regularly delayed payments as a matter of normal business operations. Apperantly, on top of any bookeeping juggling you can do, there's a great deal of interest to be made on keeping your money in the bank until the last possible moment. More than the late fee, at that. Just what I heard -- He could have been pulling my chain...
I respectfully disagree. For one, you get a good overview of a book that, quite frankly, I've heard much about, seen ads for, but haven't the foggiest about what's inside. This is the first review I've seen. And more importantly, it's not a "Rah-Rah" review, nor is it dismissive. Based upon the other information discussed in the review (of which, more later), and the tone of the article in general, it's well worth a once-over, at the least.
But it's not just a piece of the book. He's using it as a jumping-off point to discuss the Red Hat relationship with Linux, and Linux in General. No, it's not new, but it's a fresh approach. In it's timleyness, the reviewer/reporter is able to bring in recent developments with Debian, VA Linux, and Turbo Linux, and shows how their actions may affect Red Hat. Important stuff, for Salon's non-techie audience. After all, someone out there cares about making money with Linux, and who is and isn't this minute?
In this world of "me-too!" articles and bland press releases that we find outselves swamped with, not to forget FUD, it's good to see old-fashioned reporting sometimes about this new-fangled stuff.:)
Correct. There has been mention in TOS (The Original Series) of a race called the Precursers, who seeded a number of planets. It's not at all made clear in this ep. if these people are them, though -- they are the ones who seeded Miri's planet, for instance, which implies a much later time frame than the people of the TNG ep. The ulimate goal, as I recall, was to see the various intelliegences of the galaxy live in peace. Needless to to say, they missed a ittle on that one.:)
Thanks for the info -- it makes the hack (and the relative ease of it) much clearer. It's interesting to note that this hack only came about after the Microsoft Passport system was added, so far as I can tell. Sounds like the guys who developed it may not have paid close attention to that CGI 101 class they took .:)
I _just_ got an account with Linuxbox...
on
R.I.P. Linuxbox
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· Score: 1
..partially because of the prices, but really because of his support of Open Source projects. Although my site has nothng directly to do with it, I do use almost all Open Source tools to create the site (I do have a weakness for Dreamweaver...). I saw it as my chance to put my money where my mouth was. And so I did -- I paid for my first month as soon as I got the bill. And, for what it's worth, I was right -- There are damn few ISP's who are willing to work with you like these guys did when I moved over. Their docs wern't the best, but the guy helping me fixed me right up, which counts for a hell of a lot in my book. I'm willing to pay twice as much for this kind of service -- and will, if given the chance. Tell'm to pull the plug on the grifters, and let's keep going!:)
Stan Lee is not an artist (except for some doodles...) He writes. Just so you know. He's been doing the Spiderman comic in the newspapers for a number of years (with a hiatus, I believe, some years back.) He can't have said to have done a GREAT comic...but it's readable. It's better than the Clone Saga!
Yes, Kirby came up with many, if not all of the ideas that Stan put to paper. Maybe Stan Lee is just a hack who was surrounded by highly intelligent and creative people, and then helped to stab them in the back. Maybe Marvel bosses for the last X years (pun intended) should be shot for gross negilgance of the icons they were handed by these men. On the other hand...would we know Kirby without Stan's work in building comics today? Would there be a _Sandman_ without _Silver Surfer_ (Stan is known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have developed the Silver Surfer all on his own from one of Jack's drawings) Give the man the devil for hanging artists out to dry (which was Stnd procedure back then -- plenty of artists and writers at DC/NP, Fawcett, and others were run over as well) and for shameless self-promotion, in the style of P.T. Bartum. Stan's just really good at it, and VERY good in person, from what I hear, at being fun and animable. Again, note -- much of the modern comic struction, for good AND ill, comes directly from the Marvel era. And Stan is directly responsible for pulling that stable of people together. His actions in doing so are not to be ignored, but to be noted in the light of all that he has done. He may not be the "Father" per se (and I'd like to see the place where he claims that distinction, for I have never read such), but his actions and ideas did lead to the massive change in comics we see in the late 60's and early 70's. Kirby did things that no other writer could do, because he was able to see, in his mind, the combination of art and dialogue to an extent that is still emulated and copied today. The breath and scope of his vision is equally unmatched by today's writers and artists. I suspect that, if Stan has/had a gift it was the humanization of that art, the ability to write to the average human's condition and put it on paper (although I would wager that Jack could do the same, judging from his romance comic work), reflected in the superhumans he was involved with. Wheather allied with Ditko or Kirby, all of Stan's characters were humans first and heroes second, usually trapped by conscious or circomstance into their roles, and constantly struggling with them. Even Thor, the Mighty god, was saddled with human concerns and needs (a conceit the current Thor writer has returned to, with excellent effect) In doing so, Marvel began to approach something like the standard ideal of most modern writing, rather than the previous Olympian heights most of the DC characters that survived into the 60's were at (although, PLEASE don't get me wrong -- DC was closing in on the idea, they had not just gotten there yet.)
*SIGH* Let me stop before this note turns into a essay. Feel free to correct me -- but can the loose flammage.
I run and manage a web site in my *COUGH* spare time, whose purpore is to categorize other sites with Middle Eastern dance (better known as belly dance) content. Having started up a coupe of years back, I can say I've seen some of what this article is talking about. More and more, I see sites listed and mentioned by work of mouth than I had not found via any of the major search engines. Even with date restrains, a search of the majors (Altavista and HotBot in my case) can eat up days, literally. The reviews I write tend to note this fact -- although I have a few "big" Middle Eastern Dance sites, my focus and goal is noting all the little sites that are being left behind. Most of them still come from the search engines, but it's just too much. Even with 100 workers, I'd still not get them all, could not. I can't say I know of a realistic way of overcoming this. What would be good is to have a strong effort to have all the major ISP's offer an easy way to register with all the search engines any pages their users create. It's easy to create a web site, but so many people get left behind in actually promoting it, and when they do, they do so very poorly. (For the moment, let's ignore those who just don't do HTML well) Without the promotion, it's just for a few families and friends, unles the content is really interesting, and is promptly drowned out by the chaos of the web. Also, I think projects like Google and the push towards XML are imperative to the health of the web. We need to more away from the free-form nature of _everything_ on the WWW, and towards some more structure, more focus. Peple simply need to be able to find stuff, and they cannot right now. I'm going to do my part -- my site is being converted to an XML for the far future, and, for the near future, the perl scripts that build it have already been rewritten to be moved to an server with CGI, so that people can search my site, specifically. Just my two cents.
Already been done -- but not in as much detail. The Perl boys have CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network), which will seen you to the closest mirror when you use the URL http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ (last slash _is_ important!). It doesn't always work the smoothest path, and it doesn't pre-check to see if the mirror is avaiable, or any of that cool stuff. From http://www.perl.com/CPAN (without the slash):
Welcome to the CPAN multiplexer. Whenever you ask for a path from this site that begins http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ you will automatically get a site close to you. Since you're reading this now, you must have called it without a slash, which gives you the chance to pick which site you prefer. Please select your nearest CPAN site. Preferences are now sticky! That means that whoever you pick will persist via cookies. This choice will remain in effect until you return to this page and select a different mirror, even if that server becomes nonfunctional.
Also note that the source code is avaiable at the bottom of that page. Sounds like something to tinker with...
It does apply, in my mind as well. To me, "intutive" and "intelligent" are not that far apart, esp. as the latter describes everything from raw knowledge capacity to the ability to generate new concepts from old -- and I think the two are quite different. It is different to be able to come up with somthing new from older data, something different to be able to remember and apply old dataa, and something else to simply memorize old data. And then there are those who come up with new concepts from limited data! Holmes is actually the perfect example. Despite his early distase from "unncessary information" he seems to have soon come to realize that almost _all_ information is vauable, and we find him involved with everything from violin playing to a knoweldge of the races. Some applies to cases, some is mearly recreation, but he never turns his nose up at proffered data again (the story you quote is from one of the first written.) And, despite Holmes' fictional status, there are real men capable of similar leaps of intuition, based upon sound reasoning. Holmes himself is based upon a real person.
Very true, my friend. And inportant to point out, as any person new to Unix will no doubt miss the man pages initially. People need to know about all sources of information, and how to evaluate them for their own uses. And that is the point of this book, IMHO -- that the man pages are not always the most efficent way to find information on commands. A short list of the basic commands can be, in some situations, better to use that having the entire mass of documentation at hand. If one is a relative newbie to intermediate, who knows what s/he wants to do, but not where to find it, it can be more helpful to look in a book than to look in man pages. For example, I use 4 books when creating Perl programs here at work; _Programming Perl_, Dave Roth's WinNT Perl book, _Perl in a Nutshell_, and _Perl Cookbook_. Of those, I'd say I use _Perl in a Nutshell_ more than the others. Although all of the infomation is in my online docs, it's simpler and quicker for me to look in the book than to trample through the online docs _if_ it is a simple and direct question. I use more in-depth information when I need to know details. And, best of all, you can read it on the toliet, and learn yourelf something there.:) Open Source, in general, is about choices. And this book is simply another choice.
Havn't seen any problems...I ran a Feb. binary on my Win95 box here at work (HP Vectra, PII233, 32 megs), and it was _slightly_ faster than the final IE 5 that I downloaded. Picked up the new one today, so I havn't done any speed tests, formal or informal, yet. I have noticed that the interface seems to be more busy, but it's also highly configurable, so I'm not sweating that too much! For those having speed troubles -- are you running Win98? Just an innocent guess...(pulls on abestos undies) For the crashing guy -- it's warned that this is, indeed, not even a beta release. No promises. Heck, you should read the warnings that come with the nightly builds if you want a scare.... For those who prefer and support IE5 -- variety is wonderful. That's what all the Mozilla and Linux stuff is, for some people, really about, the freedom of choice. I personally use IE just to render the MS site, and when Netscape is showing it's buggy side -- maybe twice a week. I personally think it's going to rock, but I'm also aware of how much is aganist it. It's not the moon, just a piece of software.
Slashdot Mirror
Even better....go to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/. There's a whole tracking system for reporting bugs on the browser, built with Open Source tools!
I've used it myself -- it's not easy easy (like the Talkback for the Windows browsers) but it's complete, and you can not just report, but also track the bug as it gets fixed.
They don't just want you to use it, the developers ENCOURAGE you to reports bugs. That's what the nightly, M-series, and Preview releases are for...to do something proactive about bugs before the final version is out.
Everyone grips about bugs. With Bugzilla, you can DO something about them. Isn't that the Open source way?
It's not bloated if you want! :)
Choose Custom install. You can choose to install anything from just the browser to the whole shebang. It's good to see that, esp. since it was nigh-impossible to turn off in the 4.x series...
One of the nice things about the small "kick-off" program is that you can choose to install just what you want w/o having to download it at all. I'm not really a fan of these types of programs, personally, but I have to admit that feature comes in handy.
Check it out before you crap on it, friend!
Yes, I do -- Robert X. Cringely. Sharp, precise writing -- his columns have been Slashdot fodder a few times, almost always in a postive light. Few have his in-depth knowledge of the computing experience, and even fewer use it intelligently, to calm irrational fears and point out non-obvious trends. A definte counterpoint to Katz (who I also read, but for different reasons.)
Here's the URL:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/
Oh, yes, Tom can be harsh. But, as someone who tries to help on the Perl-Win32 list when I can (which isn't that often, alas), the constant "I haven't read the docs, but you better help me now!" wears on me, and I've only been helping a little for a couple of months. Imagine doing it, as Tom has, for years... :)
And we are all, too, human, I know. I started posting from my new job, and got one of Tom's auto-mails about HTML posting. Took me many more tries to finally convince Outlook to fix the problem. I think Tom's a guy, and forgive me for thinking in his place, who wants to help those who help themselves. And I'd rather he did that, then not help at all. If his attitude grates on some, well, perhaps one should read before one posts, and accept advice from those more in-the-know then oneself.
And you must recall, Perl's not like Linux. People know they are doing something big when they attack Linux, and seem to realize that they need to check out some fine reading first. And most folks have a friend to help them.
Not so with Perl. At a guess, about once every couple of weeks there is a "I installed Perl on Windows, I double-clicked on the perl.exe, and a DOS box came up for a second, then disappeared! WHAT DO I DO NOW?"
Read. Please. They have no idea, no clue, no concept. Luckily, some can be informed. Others, though, seem to want you to fly over to their desk and write the programs for you. And those types are what drive Tom nuts, I suspect.
Trust me, they make more sense than the _average_ comic...a few points to comment on your post, if I may please. Trinity runs fast at the beginning of the movie. And she's running from...an Agent. He keeps up with her, up until she jumps into the window (her second "big jump", by the by) and rolls down the flight of stairs. She uses every trick she has to excape and barely does. And it's laid out well. The reason the Agent doesn't follow her any further? They knew where she was going by that point, and the other Agents simply waited for her. No need for him to waste any more time.
As far as the kung-fu -- yes, it's not up to a full-bore Hong Kong action flick. But, it's still very impressive, to me, esp. from people who trained for only 6 months. I had no problems with the look and feel of that area, esp. if you think that these people likely have never _seen_ Jackie Chan, or any other Martial Art. They are just empty vessles for skills, in that regard.
I was going to leave this alone. That is what Tom said -- only in part, not in the whole. And he's right -- how many people use Java to do their day-to-day automation tasks? Have Java overtaken Perl, or even C, for web-affilated tasks? This is NOT to say that Java is bad. But it's still a load on any browser running today, one that stalls the download of a site. I don't use Java on my site because of that -- studies have shown that the short attention spans of modern people apply all too well to the web, and I prefer a quick download for my site, even if I lack some of the tools I'd like to see. I don't use Flash for the same reason.
Java kicks butt for Intranet sites, where it's relativly easy GUI-building skills come in handy, and your bandwidth is high. For certain focused applications on the Net, it works as well. But I'd not call it the backbone of the Internet in the way that Perl is, or that PHP is becoming.
In that light, Tom's comments make a great deal of sense. Java is _not_ a simple language to learn for the non-programmers out there. Perl is easier, does much of the same work, but lacks a pleasant front end, easy-to-use IDEs, and the marketing push from Sun.
You don't need to go buy a book at all. Look in the Perl online docs for perlre, perlvar, and perlop, for starters. But, few would use such a construct. And, I think it unfair to ask a programming language to explain syntax on the same level of a standard UNIX command. Perl is NOT ls, or even sed. But, at the same time, you can build nightmarish constructs using sed, awk, csh, bash, etc., in any combination or alone.
Perl is good because of the flexability. Perl, for me, is GREAT because of the huge number of modules that allow you to do things that normally would take C/C++ API calls. It's slower that the API call, obviously, but you can't beat it for prototyping and problem-solving.
:) Seriously, a lot of modules use it exclusivly now, and I personally prefer OO syntax to "standard" Perl syntax in many cases (using CGI.pm, for instance). And, save for those modules and the tie functionalty, you don't have to use OO if you don't want to. There's more than one what to do it!
Don't believe me? Check out http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ and scroll through the vast listing. The strength of Perl in the number of appplications it's been applied to is, indeed, a strenght of the language. For example, I recently had need of a dirt-simple SMTP server. I could have written it in Perl, C, any number of languages that allow socket programming. But Perl had an easy to use, OO-based module that allowed me to setup and accept messages from clients in less than 10 lines of code.
Nothing fancy, but I didn't need fancy. If I had wanted a "real" SMTP server, I would have found/built it in C, or used an external program. But Perl has, so far as I can tell, the greatest number of easy-to-use modules for a variety of tasks I've ever seen.
As for OO, Perl got it because it helps solve certain problems well, and it's a cool buzzword.
As noted, the code itself returns exactly what it says it will upon them turn to the year 2000. The assumption of others that the code must, for some reason, generate a 2-digit number is odd, at best. Think this way; given that you have a eventual rollover to 2000, or even, say, 1900, or 1800, or any 4-digit time, what would _you_ do to solve the problem? This solution gives a small number (>255), is highly flexable, and did not break when the century changes. Code that makes assumptions based upon not reading documentation is, sometimes, asking for failure.
Alt. solutions? You could have it return seperate times for pre and post 2K, or even have two seperate functions. This is similar to what is occuring now, and some would say is no different, after all, people are changing code left and right. The 1900 + solution, however, gives one set of numbers that will work indefinitly, given that you add correctly.
Or, you could have the function simply return the 4 digit year. Actually, localtime, when called in scalar context, does exactly that. They could have simply said, "We'll find a better soluation later", and gave out the last two digits. But, that solution also goes aganist the other date/time code in Unix, which is based upon a running count of time. Instead, they found a solution that would work over a longer span of time, if the programmer looked to his code properly at the beginning.
It is a reasonable mistake -- if you have not read the localtime information. You list the page http://language.perl.com/news/y2k.html -- did you read it before you coded? Or the man page for localtime? Or the listing for localtime in _Programming Perl_, _Perl in a Nutshell_, etc? All of these mention the 1900 + issue. And that page tells you how to fix the very problem you refer to. If you refer to Usenet/Mailing list messages, then you might have a point. But I find it hard to believe that the localtime issue was not mentioned. There's even a contest about it!
In short, Y2K issues in Perl come from assuming, and not reading the basic info about the functions in use -- information that comes with the program, and is not hidden away in a dark corner of the documentation. In fact, you must read this info in order to use the function at all! Adding numbers to 1900 makes sense in the context of the majority of uses for such a function, does not break upon transition to a new century, and can be easily switch from 1900 to 2000 and back, used in 2 digit or 4 digit mode without loss of information, while you work with less data all the while. What could be better?
From what I've been led to understand, it's even more than than. A friend in the Finance Dept. at a company I used to work for once told me that they regularly delayed payments as a matter of normal business operations. Apperantly, on top of any bookeeping juggling you can do, there's a great deal of interest to be made on keeping your money in the bank until the last possible moment. More than the late fee, at that.
Just what I heard -- He could have been pulling my chain...
I respectfully disagree. For one, you get a good overview of a book that, quite frankly, I've heard much about, seen ads for, but haven't the foggiest about what's inside. This is the first review I've seen. And more importantly, it's not a "Rah-Rah" review, nor is it dismissive. Based upon the other information discussed in the review (of which, more later), and the tone of the article in general, it's well worth a once-over, at the least.
But it's not just a piece of the book. He's using it as a jumping-off point to discuss the Red Hat relationship with Linux, and Linux in General. No, it's not new, but it's a fresh approach. In it's timleyness, the reviewer/reporter is able to bring in recent developments with Debian, VA Linux, and Turbo Linux, and shows how their actions may affect Red Hat. Important stuff, for Salon's non-techie audience. After all, someone out there cares about making money with Linux, and who is and isn't this minute?
In this world of "me-too!" articles and bland press releases that we find outselves swamped with, not to forget FUD, it's good to see old-fashioned reporting sometimes about this new-fangled stuff. :)
Correct. There has been mention in TOS (The Original Series) of a race called the Precursers, who seeded a number of planets. It's not at all made clear in this ep. if these people are them, though -- they are the ones who seeded Miri's planet, for instance, which implies a much later time frame than the people of the TNG ep. :)
The ulimate goal, as I recall, was to see the various intelliegences of the galaxy live in peace. Needless to to say, they missed a ittle on that one.
Thanks for the info -- it makes the hack (and the relative ease of it) much clearer. :)
It's interesting to note that this hack only came about after the Microsoft Passport system was added, so far as I can tell. Sounds like the guys who developed it may not have paid close attention to that CGI 101 class they took .
..partially because of the prices, but really because of his support of Open Source projects. Although my site has nothng directly to do with it, I do use almost all Open Source tools to create the site (I do have a weakness for Dreamweaver...). I saw it as my chance to put my money where my mouth was. And so I did -- I paid for my first month as soon as I got the bill. And, for what it's worth, I was right -- There are damn few ISP's who are willing to work with you like these guys did when I moved over. Their docs wern't the best, but the guy helping me fixed me right up, which counts for a hell of a lot in my book. I'm willing to pay twice as much for this kind of service -- and will, if given the chance. Tell'm to pull the plug on the grifters, and let's keep going! :)
Stan Lee is not an artist (except for some doodles...) He writes. Just so you know.
He's been doing the Spiderman comic in the newspapers for a number of years (with a hiatus, I believe, some years back.) He can't have said to have done a GREAT comic...but it's readable. It's better than the Clone Saga!
Yes, Kirby came up with many, if not all of the ideas that Stan put to paper. Maybe Stan Lee is just a hack who was surrounded by highly intelligent and creative people, and then helped to stab them in the back. Maybe Marvel bosses for the last X years (pun intended) should be shot for gross negilgance of the icons they were handed by these men.
On the other hand...would we know Kirby without Stan's work in building comics today? Would there be a _Sandman_ without _Silver Surfer_ (Stan is known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have developed the Silver Surfer all on his own from one of Jack's drawings)
Give the man the devil for hanging artists out to dry (which was Stnd procedure back then -- plenty of artists and writers at DC/NP, Fawcett, and others were run over as well) and for shameless self-promotion, in the style of P.T. Bartum. Stan's just really good at it, and VERY good in person, from what I hear, at being fun and animable.
Again, note -- much of the modern comic struction, for good AND ill, comes directly from the Marvel era. And Stan is directly responsible for pulling that stable of people together. His actions in doing so are not to be ignored, but to be noted in the light of all that he has done. He may not be the "Father" per se (and I'd like to see the place where he claims that distinction, for I have never read such), but his actions and ideas did lead to the massive change in comics we see in the late 60's and early 70's.
Kirby did things that no other writer could do, because he was able to see, in his mind, the combination of art and dialogue to an extent that is still emulated and copied today. The breath and scope of his vision is equally unmatched by today's writers and artists.
I suspect that, if Stan has/had a gift it was the humanization of that art, the ability to write to the average human's condition and put it on paper (although I would wager that Jack could do the same, judging from his romance comic work), reflected in the superhumans he was involved with. Wheather allied with Ditko or Kirby, all of Stan's characters were humans first and heroes second, usually trapped by conscious or circomstance into their roles, and constantly struggling with them. Even Thor, the Mighty god, was saddled with human concerns and needs (a conceit the current Thor writer has returned to, with excellent effect)
In doing so, Marvel began to approach something like the standard ideal of most modern writing, rather than the previous Olympian heights most of the DC characters that survived into the 60's were at (although, PLEASE don't get me wrong -- DC was closing in on the idea, they had not just gotten there yet.)
*SIGH* Let me stop before this note turns into a essay. Feel free to correct me -- but can the loose flammage.
I run and manage a web site in my *COUGH* spare time, whose purpore is to categorize other sites with Middle Eastern dance (better known as belly dance) content.
Having started up a coupe of years back, I can say I've seen some of what this article is talking about. More and more, I see sites listed and mentioned by work of mouth than I had not found via any of the major search engines. Even with date restrains, a search of the majors (Altavista and HotBot in my case) can eat up days, literally.
The reviews I write tend to note this fact -- although I have a few "big" Middle Eastern Dance sites, my focus and goal is noting all the little sites that are being left behind. Most of them still come from the search engines, but it's just too much. Even with 100 workers, I'd still not get them all, could not.
I can't say I know of a realistic way of overcoming this. What would be good is to have a strong effort to have all the major ISP's offer an easy way to register with all the search engines any pages their users create. It's easy to create a web site, but so many people get left behind in actually promoting it, and when they do, they do so very poorly. (For the moment, let's ignore those who just don't do HTML well) Without the promotion, it's just for a few families and friends, unles the content is really interesting, and is promptly drowned out by the chaos of the web.
Also, I think projects like Google and the push towards XML are imperative to the health of the web. We need to more away from the free-form nature of _everything_ on the WWW, and towards some more structure, more focus. Peple simply need to be able to find stuff, and they cannot right now. I'm going to do my part -- my site is being converted to an XML for the far future, and, for the near future, the perl scripts that build it have already been rewritten to be moved to an server with CGI, so that people can search my site, specifically.
Just my two cents.
It does apply, in my mind as well. To me, "intutive" and "intelligent" are not that far apart, esp. as the latter describes everything from raw knowledge capacity to the ability to generate new concepts from old -- and I think the two are quite different.
It is different to be able to come up with somthing new from older data, something different to be able to remember and apply old dataa, and something else to simply memorize old data. And then there are those who come up with new concepts from limited data!
Holmes is actually the perfect example. Despite his early distase from "unncessary information" he seems to have soon come to realize that almost _all_ information is vauable, and we find him involved with everything from violin playing to a knoweldge of the races. Some applies to cases, some is mearly recreation, but he never turns his nose up at proffered data again (the story you quote is from one of the first written.)
And, despite Holmes' fictional status, there are real men capable of similar leaps of intuition, based upon sound reasoning. Holmes himself is based upon a real person.
Very true, my friend. And inportant to point out, as any person new to Unix will no doubt miss the man pages initially. People need to know about all sources of information, and how to evaluate them for their own uses. :)
And that is the point of this book, IMHO -- that the man pages are not always the most efficent way to find information on commands. A short list of the basic commands can be, in some situations, better to use that having the entire mass of documentation at hand. If one is a relative newbie to intermediate, who knows what s/he wants to do, but not where to find it, it can be more helpful to look in a book than to look in man pages.
For example, I use 4 books when creating Perl programs here at work; _Programming Perl_, Dave Roth's WinNT Perl book, _Perl in a Nutshell_, and _Perl Cookbook_. Of those, I'd say I use _Perl in a Nutshell_ more than the others. Although all of the infomation is in my online docs, it's simpler and quicker for me to look in the book than to trample through the online docs _if_ it is a simple and direct question. I use more in-depth information when I need to know details.
And, best of all, you can read it on the toliet, and learn yourelf something there.
Open Source, in general, is about choices. And this book is simply another choice.
The fixed version is apperantly on the ftp site. I recommed ftp'ing directly to the site, as the links from the http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/release- notes/ page don't seem to work. Try ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/m3/mozi lla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-Se aMonkey_M3_BRANCH.tar.gz to get the Linux version. Of course, it's a little tough to get to, right now...
Havn't seen any problems...I ran a Feb. binary on my Win95 box here at work (HP Vectra, PII233, 32 megs), and it was _slightly_ faster than the final IE 5 that I downloaded.
Picked up the new one today, so I havn't done any speed tests, formal or informal, yet. I have noticed that the interface seems to be more busy, but it's also highly configurable, so I'm not sweating that too much!
For those having speed troubles -- are you running Win98? Just an innocent guess...(pulls on abestos undies)
For the crashing guy -- it's warned that this is, indeed, not even a beta release. No promises. Heck, you should read the warnings that come with the nightly builds if you want a scare....
For those who prefer and support IE5 -- variety is wonderful. That's what all the Mozilla and Linux stuff is, for some people, really about, the freedom of choice. I personally use IE just to render the MS site, and when Netscape is showing it's buggy side -- maybe twice a week.
I personally think it's going to rock, but I'm also aware of how much is aganist it. It's not the moon, just a piece of software.