This isn't intended as a flame, but I'm curious what you want from some high-fallutin' desktop environment. I suspect I may be missing some important point, because I think I'm probably in a similar user category as you (long-time *nix user, like to configure things as best fit my work habits, and don't mind investing a bit of time to make me more productive in the long term), and I see no benefit to me in environments like KDE or Gnome (or Windows or OSX for that matter).
With a full desktop enviornment, I can drag and drop stuff from one app to another, keep stuff on my desktop and use some kind of file/app manager front end thingy (I'm sure there's a technical name for the likes of Nautilus). But why would I want to? None of those things save me any time. (I especially don't understand the drag'n'drop thing - even when I worked as office admin (gah) I don't think I ever did this once).
What I need is multiple desktops, configurable window placement and focus rules, window shading, menus I can edit to my heart's content and some themability so I can set the colors and sizes and fonts to something easy on the eyes.
On the other hand, for new users, a lot of office types and more visual people (my designer co-worker, computer savvy as she is, would never work from a CLI - it's not how she thinks) full environments are perfect. What's more, they want them simple, and I can understand that. I want more people to use linux (because it means I get asked fewer Windows questions), so I'm happy there's projects to make it more friendly for people who work different than I do. So long as I can have WM or Blackbox or something, I'm happy.
(In a similar context, Peter Wayner and I have acquired the sought-after BuzzwordInstinute.org to enable our issuance of "Buzzword Compliance Certificates" and related offerings. We will capitalize on the humour potential inherent in such a product immediately after the completion of an extensive Research and Development phase. We would be interested in exploring the potential for a mutually beneficial partnership with you. We can discuss a position on the Board if you feel, as do we, that this would enstrengthen our business relationship. Peter has brought to my attention that suitably descriptive titles are an integral part of Buzzword Compliance, and necessary for "Executive Retention Purposes").
I am curious, what does PHP offer that Perl does not? I'm not trying to troll, or start a flame war, I just honestly don't see what PHP gives me.
I've been using perl for web development for some time, and just this spring started using PHP. I'd looked at it as an alternative in the PHP3 days, but the lack of database abstraction turned me off. The language has come a long way since then, but there are a number of things I find awkward about it. The reason I've mostly switched to PHP (for the moment) is because a) a couple of projects that had PHP/MySQL as a requirement came up, and b) by the time those were done, I had a large reusable code base that did pretty much what I'd been planning to do with perl only a few months ago. I've got much more experience with perl, though, so add the appropriate amount of salt.
First, as far as I can tell, PHP doesn't give you any functionality that you don't get in Perl. I frequently find myself doing a lot more typing with PHP than Perl would require to do the same thing.
Second, someone here mentioned that PHP has a more focussed feature set, and is therefore easier for web development. I tend to disagree. PHP is heavily weighted towards database access, HTML manipulation, session management, etc., but at the same time there are a whole lot of functions built into the core language that, frankly, I think are superfluous. Once or twice I've come across something that I thought would be really cool if Perl had it, but my overwhelming impression was: too much in the core language. Syntactically, PHP might look easier, but if you've already mastered Perl syntax, there's no gain here.
Third, PHP is designed to be integrated into HTML. This can become largely a religious issue, but I think that's a Bad Idea, for a whole lot of reasons. I like the HTML::Template module in Perl a whole lot because it minimizes the amount of logic you can mix in with your HTML. The Xtemplate class mentioned in this article looks like it has a similar goal, but PHP as a language encourages the mixing of code and logic. It just doesn't sit right with me.
Fourth, (and some might consider this a non-issue) is that I just don't like using a function call for a regex match. I like Perl's binding operators much better.
Finally, the language is not as mature as Perl. Functions are renamed between point releases (from the array_key_exists() definition: "Note: This name of this function is key_exists() in PHP version 4.06") and major changes in the default configuration between point releases (form variables no longer auto-vivified as of PHP 4.20 (yes, I know the reasons, but I'm savvy enough to initialize my variables before use, thank you very much)). Functions are also frequently named in incosistent ways. Some use underscores in them, others interspersed caps, and functions that do similar things don't always have names constructed in a similar way (key_exists vs. all the other array_x functions isn't the best example, but I don't have any others at my fingertips. I've run into a few of them, though). This isn't confidence inspiring.
The main argument that I've heard in favour of PHP over Perl is that the length of time it takes for someone new to web programming to learn to do the same things Perl as are built in to PHP (session handling, database access, etc) is shorter. I'm not sure that I agree - I've never found it difficult to pick up a new module. But as I said, I've been using Perl for a while.
The only advantage I've personally found to using PHP so far has little to do with the language, and more the way it's deployed. I never know where a web site I develop is going to live. Unfortunately, the vast majority of hosts seem to toss on the default Perl install and call it a day. Not being able to count on, say, DBI, is a real bitch. I could say that the site requires mod_perl, DBI, the libnet bundle, etc., but a) that gets you a lot of blank stares (yes, from hosts), whereas with PHP, I know I'm getting a database, and it's probably MySQL, and various other goodies.
Tangent: One of my big hopes for Perl 6 has nothing to do with the language, but with the way it's deployed. I'm really hoping that a small core language with SDKs (a web development SDK with DBI, libnet, and Mason. yum) will encourage sysadmins to put more stuff I need on their servers. Untill that happens (or we start co-locing all our sites), I'm probably going to be using PHP for the bulk of our development. It makes me sad that I'm using a tool that, while workable, I don't find as powerful as Perl, still has a lot of rough edges, and with a far inferior toolbox (no CPAN) simply because what I often need isn't widely installed.
I've gone on enough, but I hope I've given you a bit of insight into my experiences with the two tools. PHP is servicable, but Perl really helps me. If you have control over hosting environment, stick with Perl. You'll get more mileage out of it.
The biggest problem with all the PHP books out there is that they don't talk about software design or good coding practice.
Agreed. I recently had to jump into the PHP pool, so went search for books on exactly this. I've been doing web development with perl for something like five years, know a couple other languages fairly well, and dabble in another few. So syntax and learning the language weren't an issue - I just wanted to know what the best way to use this tool was.
After spending the better part of a day researching and perusing PHP books I settled on that New Riders title, Advanced Web Development with PHP or something (don't have the book handy, I probably got the title wrong). It was written by a couple of core developers, had some stuff on the back on developing PHP itself, and a sample application or two.
Unfortunately, the book really lacked focus. No best practices were extrapolated from the example code, and only the vaguest nods toward larger architectural issues were given. It wasn't entirely useless, and it did smooth out one or two learning bumps, but it wasn't worth the cover price.
This seems to be a common unfilled niche, at least in web-related development books - titles aimed at the experienced developer who wants to get up to speed on a new tool fast, with a minimum of "this is what a TCP/IP stack is" or "here's how you use a for loop". I don't know, maybe it's because it's harder to write a good book dealing with larger, real word issues, than it is to just reprint the function reference.
Were we to start now I would do things much differently, but I still contend that by the time you've started installing abstraction layers, etc., then you might as well use Perl from the beginning.
My first thought when I saw the Xtemplate class was "hmm...this looks a lot like what I used to do with perl and Sam Tregar's (excellent) HTML::Template module." I say "used to" because there were a couple of projects around here that had PHP/MySQL as a requirement, and by the time those were done we had a large reusable code-base....and here I am, slinging PHP instead of my beloved Perl.
There is one thing that makes PHP more attractive for me. We deploy sites on hosts all over the place - we never know what's going to be installed. When you're using Perl, you never know what you're going to be able to use - is DBI installed, AnyDBM, anything? With PHP, you know you've got a database, and there's a 99% chance it's MySQL.
One thing I'm really looking forward to with Perl 6 (to go on a tangent) is this promise of SDKs...if sysadmins can just grab the "Web Site Development SDK", I may yet get to return to it.
Hofstadter is brilliant. It's rare to find someone with deep knowledge in math/science who is also such a good writer. Godel, Escher, Bach gives me shivers every time I pick it up. There was another book of his that was a collection of essays on AI (Perspectives of Mind, I think) that was great reading. The usual Hofstadter ruminations on what makes thought, what makes intelligence. Mind expanding stuff.
This all reminds me a lot of Galatea 2.2 (fiction, Richard Powers, reviews here
and here which was (at least partly) about creating emergent intelligence from a neural net crammed full of common sense. It's the kind of book I point people to when they say that science fiction isn't "real" writing.
Anyway, just rambling, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk up Powers.
Since when did you start thinking you had the right to turn off your television, smart guy? If Quality Culture Providers can't be guaranteed a certain profit margin, soon no one will be making exciting soda pop documentaries, or telling you what you should buy. And then how would you know what you need? Soon everyone would forget to buy cars, fast food and shiny clothes. The economy would collapse and the terrorists would take over all freedom and soda pop loving nations.
It's a good thing we've figured out how to compress all that important information into a few microseconds. Now we can be sure communist sympathizers like yourself won't even have the chance to flip channels. Our corporations are finally safe.
I understand how paradoies of these stereotypes must make moderate christians feel. I know that the majority of christians are sensible people. But it's not entirely true to say that there are no christians like this out there. I was raised by one, in an evangelical church, in moderate (and sometimes not-so-moderate) parts of western Canada. Pastors ranged from strict in their faith, but pragmatic about the world, to sounding an awful lot like the linked article. Received truth was often along the lines of "Gorbachev is the beast, he bears the mark." I was actively discouraged from pursuing (secular) university because being taught by unbelievers was considered dangerous.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying all christians are like this, but there is a large enough minority to be noticed. They vote, they make political noise and their views are equally dangerous to christians with more moderate views, followers of other faiths, and athiests/agnostics. We shouldn't ignore them.
While some of them are certainly going to complain to AOL, others will complain to the webmasters.
I do web development, and I'm inclined to agree. Users (especially the less sophisticated ones) are more likely to blame what they're trying to view than what's allowing them to view it. It's the page that looks wrong, not the browser. Hence, it's the page that's broken.
This has been a damned nuisance on occasion because AOL, with the default client settings, will serve up mangled graphics from their cache, rather than the originals that go with the page. The call that we get isn't "AOL broke your page", it's "your page is broken".
This illustrates another point, that AOL will provide a sub-standard user experience if they feel it's in their best interest to do so. In this case, I really think it is. One wannabe monopoly won't benefit by being beholden to another.
Now, I didn't have time to research this properly, but a quick trip to google turned up this (from a study on alpha particle emissions from radon gas):
"Our observations negate pre-existing assumptions that alpha particles like those emitted by radon and radon progeny exert their genetic changes exclusively through direct traversals of cell nuclei," said project leader Bruce Lehnert of Cell and Molecular Biology (LS-4). "Accordingly, current dosimetry models upon which environmental standards for radon exposure are derived now require serious reconsideration. Our work suggests that even interactions of alpha particles with the fluids that line the lungs may lead to alterations in the DNA of nearby cells."
which sounds to me like alpha particles have their own special way of screwing with your DNA. But this isn't really my field....
(And just so as not to be misunderstood by the idle reader, I've got nothing against nuclear rockets, just rockets with nukes).
i dunno...he predicts people will be effectively incapable of understanding anything by 2050, and then become convinced they can break the laws of physics within 25 years. sounds about right, if slightly conservative.
i'm getting very excited about perl 6. like many others, the previous apocalypses had me wondering if i was going to like it or not. not that i didn't have confidence that larry's a Real Smart Guy, or that you'd be able to do nifty things with perl 6, but i was concerned about how they'd apply to my work.
i'm as fascinated with concise, powerful language structures as the next guy, but i'm a carpenter, not an architect. i don't do cutting edge AI or bioinformatics research. i bang out web apps. so far i'd seen Neat Things, but mostly not features that would really change my work life (ok, i like "everything is an object", and currying looks very interesting...i haven't quite figured it out yet, but i'm anxious to see what i can do with it).
however, with this apocalypse, i'm starting to get a better idea about what the next perl means to me, and i'm starting to like it. first favorite, thing, better error handling. i hate using eval for it. it works, but it's clumsy and always felt like a kludge. so turning every block into an implicit TRY block is very exciting.
second favorite thing, every block is a closure.. i haven't really grokked the implications of that yet, but, man, it sounds like a good idea. (a question to any lisp coders out there - is this idea anything like the whole s-expression thing? i thought it looked sorta similar, but all i know about lisp is what i've seen in emacs).
switch statments. who doesn't want switch statements.
it's been fascinating, getting a look at the process of designing a language through the Apocalypses and accompanying Exegesises...(how the hell do you pluralize Exegesis?). It's been a bit like watching Iron Chef. Larry grabs a whole basketful of king crabs, hacks them into ugly bits, grabs a screwy handful of ingredients, but fifteen minutes into the show, you start to get a glimmer of what's coming out of kitchen stadium. personally, i can't wait for tasting and judgement.
when it moved to the states. i was a devoted fan up until that point, but that was the year that they lost the wonderful moodiness of the vancouver area locations (sorry, the LA shoots just didn't have that feel - too much sun and a crew too used to shooting drama-of-the-weeks). that was also the year we found out everything important about the consipracy. everything after that felt simply tacked on, one more twist to keep the corpse ambulating.
what i found even sadder than the x-files walking death, though, was the axing of carter's three other (far superior) shows. millenium was too dark at a politically wrong moment (damn, i miss frank black), harsh realm wasn't given a chance, so we'll never even know how good it was (but if you've seen the episodes beyond the first three that were aired, you've had a glimpse of where it was going. a lot of promise there). and the lone gunmen wasn't on long enough to break away from the x-files fan base. it seemed like that ravening horde had a difficult time with something that poked fun at the whole conspiracy gig. something x-files did well in the beginning...
ah, well. maybe they'll give carter another chance, and maybe by some miracle they'll keep it around long enough for people to actually start watching it...
this is something that i found interesting when i made the switch from Q2 to UT - what was considered acceptable behaviour seemed much different. Q2 had a kind of Broughton's rules and if you deviated from those, abuse was heaped upon you, but in UT, any kind of slimy behaviour was ok. i liked that. maybe this was in part because of the thought that went into the gameplay. you simply couldn't do things like spawn camp
...until you can provide me with an alternative. Mandrake, StarOffice and KMail meet my needs quite well; I tried MS Word about a year ago, and based on that experience I'm not going to try again very soon.
Rant and rave all you like about "you get what you pay for", "company's rights to make a profit" and "the next version of Windows will be really good, honest", I've worked daily in Linux for the last two years, and I'm never going back.
We may be able to give "don't send Word format" the status of netiquette, if we start systematically raising the issue with everyone who sends us Word files.
i agree about ease-of-use, but not most-features. i've used various incarnations and combinations of gnome/enlightenment/sawfish/kde and liked them just fine, but always found myself coming back to afterstep/windowmaker/blackbox (the latter has been my wm of choice for about six months) no matter what machine i was running. i suspect it's because most-features and ease-of-use tend to work against each other.
it's also probably related to how i work - the only thing i need is a window manager. i work in multiple terminal windows most times, and don't really care if i can create a link to a file on my desktop. most features like that i don't find useful, and they only offend my aesthetic sensibilities. i want root menus, window shading and multiple workspaces. anything else just gets in my way.
so, i don't agree that the only thing keeping so many of us in wms (as opposed to environments) is how buff our machine is. good thing we've got choices.
too true...i didn't mean to imply that i think of zdnet as unbiased, just boring as hell.
although i have lately been wondering if their reporting is getting marginally better. they seem to even be willing to point out the occasional MS flaw...something i don't ever remember them doing not so long ago. but i don't really spend much time there.
I simply assumed that people on Slashdot are above those biases.
and i simply assume most people have a sense of humour, but we don't all get what we want, do we?
sure, i know that windows isn't complete crap - hell, i can admit it's gotten pretty useful in the last couple revisions. i've even been known to use it to play the occasional game. but i don't come to/. for flat, ZDNET style reporting. i come to it for useful links and snide comments.
nobody bloody reads anything anymore. if you can't be bothered to more than skim the summaries, how can you bother posting (or moderating. yes, i mean you, who modded this up insightful). if you had, you would have seen the bit that referred to the work she did that was pivotal in the creation of these things called compilers. you know, things that turns code into more things computers understand.
granted, it was a the end of the article, and "generator" and "compilation" have four syllables apiece, so i should probably cut you some slack...
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't intended as a flame, but I'm curious what you want from some high-fallutin' desktop environment. I suspect I may be missing some important point, because I think I'm probably in a similar user category as you (long-time *nix user, like to configure things as best fit my work habits, and don't mind investing a bit of time to make me more productive in the long term), and I see no benefit to me in environments like KDE or Gnome (or Windows or OSX for that matter).
With a full desktop enviornment, I can drag and drop stuff from one app to another, keep stuff on my desktop and use some kind of file/app manager front end thingy (I'm sure there's a technical name for the likes of Nautilus). But why would I want to? None of those things save me any time. (I especially don't understand the drag'n'drop thing - even when I worked as office admin (gah) I don't think I ever did this once).
What I need is multiple desktops, configurable window placement and focus rules, window shading, menus I can edit to my heart's content and some themability so I can set the colors and sizes and fonts to something easy on the eyes.
On the other hand, for new users, a lot of office types and more visual people (my designer co-worker, computer savvy as she is, would never work from a CLI - it's not how she thinks) full environments are perfect. What's more, they want them simple, and I can understand that. I want more people to use linux (because it means I get asked fewer Windows questions), so I'm happy there's projects to make it more friendly for people who work different than I do. So long as I can have WM or Blackbox or something, I'm happy.
Or am I really missing something?
(In a similar context, Peter Wayner and I have acquired the sought-after BuzzwordInstinute.org to enable our issuance of "Buzzword Compliance Certificates" and related offerings. We will capitalize on the humour potential inherent in such a product immediately after the completion of an extensive Research and Development phase. We would be interested in exploring the potential for a mutually beneficial partnership with you. We can discuss a position on the Board if you feel, as do we, that this would enstrengthen our business relationship. Peter has brought to my attention that suitably descriptive titles are an integral part of Buzzword Compliance, and necessary for "Executive Retention Purposes").
I've been using perl for web development for some time, and just this spring started using PHP. I'd looked at it as an alternative in the PHP3 days, but the lack of database abstraction turned me off. The language has come a long way since then, but there are a number of things I find awkward about it. The reason I've mostly switched to PHP (for the moment) is because a) a couple of projects that had PHP/MySQL as a requirement came up, and b) by the time those were done, I had a large reusable code base that did pretty much what I'd been planning to do with perl only a few months ago. I've got much more experience with perl, though, so add the appropriate amount of salt.
First, as far as I can tell, PHP doesn't give you any functionality that you don't get in Perl. I frequently find myself doing a lot more typing with PHP than Perl would require to do the same thing.
Second, someone here mentioned that PHP has a more focussed feature set, and is therefore easier for web development. I tend to disagree. PHP is heavily weighted towards database access, HTML manipulation, session management, etc., but at the same time there are a whole lot of functions built into the core language that, frankly, I think are superfluous. Once or twice I've come across something that I thought would be really cool if Perl had it, but my overwhelming impression was: too much in the core language. Syntactically, PHP might look easier, but if you've already mastered Perl syntax, there's no gain here.
Third, PHP is designed to be integrated into HTML. This can become largely a religious issue, but I think that's a Bad Idea, for a whole lot of reasons. I like the HTML::Template module in Perl a whole lot because it minimizes the amount of logic you can mix in with your HTML. The Xtemplate class mentioned in this article looks like it has a similar goal, but PHP as a language encourages the mixing of code and logic. It just doesn't sit right with me.
Fourth, (and some might consider this a non-issue) is that I just don't like using a function call for a regex match. I like Perl's binding operators much better.
Finally, the language is not as mature as Perl. Functions are renamed between point releases (from the array_key_exists() definition: "Note: This name of this function is key_exists() in PHP version 4.06") and major changes in the default configuration between point releases (form variables no longer auto-vivified as of PHP 4.20 (yes, I know the reasons, but I'm savvy enough to initialize my variables before use, thank you very much)). Functions are also frequently named in incosistent ways. Some use underscores in them, others interspersed caps, and functions that do similar things don't always have names constructed in a similar way (key_exists vs. all the other array_x functions isn't the best example, but I don't have any others at my fingertips. I've run into a few of them, though). This isn't confidence inspiring.
The main argument that I've heard in favour of PHP over Perl is that the length of time it takes for someone new to web programming to learn to do the same things Perl as are built in to PHP (session handling, database access, etc) is shorter. I'm not sure that I agree - I've never found it difficult to pick up a new module. But as I said, I've been using Perl for a while.
The only advantage I've personally found to using PHP so far has little to do with the language, and more the way it's deployed. I never know where a web site I develop is going to live. Unfortunately, the vast majority of hosts seem to toss on the default Perl install and call it a day. Not being able to count on, say, DBI, is a real bitch. I could say that the site requires mod_perl, DBI, the libnet bundle, etc., but a) that gets you a lot of blank stares (yes, from hosts), whereas with PHP, I know I'm getting a database, and it's probably MySQL, and various other goodies.
Tangent: One of my big hopes for Perl 6 has nothing to do with the language, but with the way it's deployed. I'm really hoping that a small core language with SDKs (a web development SDK with DBI, libnet, and Mason. yum) will encourage sysadmins to put more stuff I need on their servers. Untill that happens (or we start co-locing all our sites), I'm probably going to be using PHP for the bulk of our development. It makes me sad that I'm using a tool that, while workable, I don't find as powerful as Perl, still has a lot of rough edges, and with a far inferior toolbox (no CPAN) simply because what I often need isn't widely installed.
I've gone on enough, but I hope I've given you a bit of insight into my experiences with the two tools. PHP is servicable, but Perl really helps me. If you have control over hosting environment, stick with Perl. You'll get more mileage out of it.
Agreed. I recently had to jump into the PHP pool, so went search for books on exactly this. I've been doing web development with perl for something like five years, know a couple other languages fairly well, and dabble in another few. So syntax and learning the language weren't an issue - I just wanted to know what the best way to use this tool was.
After spending the better part of a day researching and perusing PHP books I settled on that New Riders title, Advanced Web Development with PHP or something (don't have the book handy, I probably got the title wrong). It was written by a couple of core developers, had some stuff on the back on developing PHP itself, and a sample application or two.
Unfortunately, the book really lacked focus. No best practices were extrapolated from the example code, and only the vaguest nods toward larger architectural issues were given. It wasn't entirely useless, and it did smooth out one or two learning bumps, but it wasn't worth the cover price.
This seems to be a common unfilled niche, at least in web-related development books - titles aimed at the experienced developer who wants to get up to speed on a new tool fast, with a minimum of "this is what a TCP/IP stack is" or "here's how you use a for loop". I don't know, maybe it's because it's harder to write a good book dealing with larger, real word issues, than it is to just reprint the function reference.
My first thought when I saw the Xtemplate class was "hmm...this looks a lot like what I used to do with perl and Sam Tregar's (excellent) HTML::Template module." I say "used to" because there were a couple of projects around here that had PHP/MySQL as a requirement, and by the time those were done we had a large reusable code-base....and here I am, slinging PHP instead of my beloved Perl.
There is one thing that makes PHP more attractive for me. We deploy sites on hosts all over the place - we never know what's going to be installed. When you're using Perl, you never know what you're going to be able to use - is DBI installed, AnyDBM, anything? With PHP, you know you've got a database, and there's a 99% chance it's MySQL.
One thing I'm really looking forward to with Perl 6 (to go on a tangent) is this promise of SDKs...if sysadmins can just grab the "Web Site Development SDK", I may yet get to return to it.
Hofstadter is brilliant. It's rare to find someone with deep knowledge in math/science who is also such a good writer. Godel, Escher, Bach gives me shivers every time I pick it up. There was another book of his that was a collection of essays on AI (Perspectives of Mind, I think) that was great reading. The usual Hofstadter ruminations on what makes thought, what makes intelligence. Mind expanding stuff.
This all reminds me a lot of Galatea 2.2 (fiction, Richard Powers, reviews here and here which was (at least partly) about creating emergent intelligence from a neural net crammed full of common sense. It's the kind of book I point people to when they say that science fiction isn't "real" writing.
Anyway, just rambling, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk up Powers.
Since when did you start thinking you had the right to turn off your television, smart guy? If Quality Culture Providers can't be guaranteed a certain profit margin, soon no one will be making exciting soda pop documentaries, or telling you what you should buy. And then how would you know what you need? Soon everyone would forget to buy cars, fast food and shiny clothes. The economy would collapse and the terrorists would take over all freedom and soda pop loving nations.
It's a good thing we've figured out how to compress all that important information into a few microseconds. Now we can be sure communist sympathizers like yourself won't even have the chance to flip channels. Our corporations are finally safe.
I understand how paradoies of these stereotypes must make moderate christians feel. I know that the majority of christians are sensible people. But it's not entirely true to say that there are no christians like this out there. I was raised by one, in an evangelical church, in moderate (and sometimes not-so-moderate) parts of western Canada. Pastors ranged from strict in their faith, but pragmatic about the world, to sounding an awful lot like the linked article. Received truth was often along the lines of "Gorbachev is the beast, he bears the mark." I was actively discouraged from pursuing (secular) university because being taught by unbelievers was considered dangerous.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying all christians are like this, but there is a large enough minority to be noticed. They vote, they make political noise and their views are equally dangerous to christians with more moderate views, followers of other faiths, and athiests/agnostics. We shouldn't ignore them.
No, no, he did mean rephase. As in "Ensign! Adjust the English modulation! Rephase the Grammar Drive!"
I do web development, and I'm inclined to agree. Users (especially the less sophisticated ones) are more likely to blame what they're trying to view than what's allowing them to view it. It's the page that looks wrong, not the browser. Hence, it's the page that's broken.
This has been a damned nuisance on occasion because AOL, with the default client settings, will serve up mangled graphics from their cache, rather than the originals that go with the page. The call that we get isn't "AOL broke your page", it's "your page is broken".
This illustrates another point, that AOL will provide a sub-standard user experience if they feel it's in their best interest to do so. In this case, I really think it is. One wannabe monopoly won't benefit by being beholden to another.
Ah, that all makes good sense...thanks for the info...
Fine - you keep it in your bedroom ;)
Now, I didn't have time to research this properly, but a quick trip to google turned up this (from a study on alpha particle emissions from radon gas):
which sounds to me like alpha particles have their own special way of screwing with your DNA. But this isn't really my field....(And just so as not to be misunderstood by the idle reader, I've got nothing against nuclear rockets, just rockets with nukes).
Nah, you just need to make sure you get the word "tactical" stuffed in there. It's safe if it's only tactical.
i dunno...he predicts people will be effectively incapable of understanding anything by 2050, and then become convinced they can break the laws of physics within 25 years. sounds about right, if slightly conservative.
i'm getting very excited about perl 6. like many others, the previous apocalypses had me wondering if i was going to like it or not. not that i didn't have confidence that larry's a Real Smart Guy, or that you'd be able to do nifty things with perl 6, but i was concerned about how they'd apply to my work.
i'm as fascinated with concise, powerful language structures as the next guy, but i'm a carpenter, not an architect. i don't do cutting edge AI or bioinformatics research. i bang out web apps. so far i'd seen Neat Things, but mostly not features that would really change my work life (ok, i like "everything is an object", and currying looks very interesting...i haven't quite figured it out yet, but i'm anxious to see what i can do with it).
however, with this apocalypse, i'm starting to get a better idea about what the next perl means to me, and i'm starting to like it. first favorite, thing, better error handling. i hate using eval for it. it works, but it's clumsy and always felt like a kludge. so turning every block into an implicit TRY block is very exciting.
second favorite thing, every block is a closure.. i haven't really grokked the implications of that yet, but, man, it sounds like a good idea. (a question to any lisp coders out there - is this idea anything like the whole s-expression thing? i thought it looked sorta similar, but all i know about lisp is what i've seen in emacs).
switch statments. who doesn't want switch statements.
it's been fascinating, getting a look at the process of designing a language through the Apocalypses and accompanying Exegesises...(how the hell do you pluralize Exegesis?). It's been a bit like watching Iron Chef. Larry grabs a whole basketful of king crabs, hacks them into ugly bits, grabs a screwy handful of ingredients, but fifteen minutes into the show, you start to get a glimmer of what's coming out of kitchen stadium. personally, i can't wait for tasting and judgement.
when it moved to the states. i was a devoted fan up until that point, but that was the year that they lost the wonderful moodiness of the vancouver area locations (sorry, the LA shoots just didn't have that feel - too much sun and a crew too used to shooting drama-of-the-weeks). that was also the year we found out everything important about the consipracy. everything after that felt simply tacked on, one more twist to keep the corpse ambulating.
what i found even sadder than the x-files walking death, though, was the axing of carter's three other (far superior) shows. millenium was too dark at a politically wrong moment (damn, i miss frank black), harsh realm wasn't given a chance, so we'll never even know how good it was (but if you've seen the episodes beyond the first three that were aired, you've had a glimpse of where it was going. a lot of promise there). and the lone gunmen wasn't on long enough to break away from the x-files fan base. it seemed like that ravening horde had a difficult time with something that poked fun at the whole conspiracy gig. something x-files did well in the beginning...
ah, well. maybe they'll give carter another chance, and maybe by some miracle they'll keep it around long enough for people to actually start watching it...
this is something that i found interesting when i made the switch from Q2 to UT - what was considered acceptable behaviour seemed much different. Q2 had a kind of Broughton's rules and if you deviated from those, abuse was heaped upon you, but in UT, any kind of slimy behaviour was ok. i liked that. maybe this was in part because of the thought that went into the gameplay. you simply couldn't do things like spawn camp
but, damn, i am going to miss the sniper rifle...
...until you can provide me with an alternative. Mandrake, StarOffice and KMail meet my needs quite well; I tried MS Word about a year ago, and based on that experience I'm not going to try again very soon.
Rant and rave all you like about "you get what you pay for", "company's rights to make a profit" and "the next version of Windows will be really good, honest", I've worked daily in Linux for the last two years, and I'm never going back.
nope, it's a published standard, just proprietary. there are (enormously thick) books published by adobe detailing it.
What, you mean completely ignored?
i agree about ease-of-use, but not most-features. i've used various incarnations and combinations of gnome/enlightenment/sawfish/kde and liked them just fine, but always found myself coming back to afterstep/windowmaker/blackbox (the latter has been my wm of choice for about six months) no matter what machine i was running. i suspect it's because most-features and ease-of-use tend to work against each other.
it's also probably related to how i work - the only thing i need is a window manager. i work in multiple terminal windows most times, and don't really care if i can create a link to a file on my desktop. most features like that i don't find useful, and they only offend my aesthetic sensibilities. i want root menus, window shading and multiple workspaces. anything else just gets in my way.
so, i don't agree that the only thing keeping so many of us in wms (as opposed to environments) is how buff our machine is. good thing we've got choices.
too true...i didn't mean to imply that i think of zdnet as unbiased, just boring as hell.
although i have lately been wondering if their reporting is getting marginally better. they seem to even be willing to point out the occasional MS flaw...something i don't ever remember them doing not so long ago. but i don't really spend much time there.
and i simply assume most people have a sense of humour, but we don't all get what we want, do we?
sure, i know that windows isn't complete crap - hell, i can admit it's gotten pretty useful in the last couple revisions. i've even been known to use it to play the occasional game. but i don't come to /. for flat, ZDNET style reporting. i come to it for useful links and snide comments.
i also come here to do this once in a while:
for some reason, the wired print version has more info, including this bit:
i have to say, i'm very impressed with ElComSoft's generally enlightened attitude.wouldn't it be ironic if a russian company played a role in freeing america from an unjust law?
nobody bloody reads anything anymore. if you can't be bothered to more than skim the summaries, how can you bother posting (or moderating. yes, i mean you, who modded this up insightful). if you had, you would have seen the bit that referred to the work she did that was pivotal in the creation of these things called compilers. you know, things that turns code into more things computers understand.
granted, it was a the end of the article, and "generator" and "compilation" have four syllables apiece, so i should probably cut you some slack...