There is no such thing as unbiased discussion of political issues.
Yes, but imagine the evening news if they couldn't politicize everything. No global warming stories, no adjectives, no excitement.... hrm.. I think I like that idea..
It's like the joke: politics(n): from poly meaning many, and tics meaning biting incects
2. Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
Democracies can be direct or indirect. The epa is not a democracy, and neither is any gov't agency. They are bureaucracies.
First of all, the Acrobat Reader download with search is still significantly smaller than most major browsers, and there's a good chance that most people already have it on their systems.
And If they do not have it on their system, they have to get it. Most systems, you'll agree come with browsers. However, most do NOT come with Acrobat.
One of the major advantages of PDF is that the layout need not be changed much, if at all, for online vs. print publishing. As opposed to HTML, which needs to be almost entirely redone. It is also typically smaller than HTML files, because it is pre-compressed.
I have seen pdf files that are a definite shame to the system then. For example, many brochures are B+W scans instead of conversions of the original version in software. With HTML files you can define an alternate stylesheet for print, without changing the HTML.
Again, you baffle me. Acrobat is made for print, eh? Well, I didn't know you could arbitrarily zoom in on HTML, which (even though it has the same ppi/dpi and "glow" problems as mentioned for PDF) is somehow designed for screens, despite that fact that PDF often shows better detail, more clearly, esp in type.
Yes, it's designed for print. 1) it's a postscript format. Postscript is made for (duh) printing. 2) The zoom function is to make up for a lack of text controls. The reason there are no text controls is because it is set up for the (duh again) printed page. You can zoom in on text in IE, but it can be more difficult under Netscape/Linux. If you are having vision problems, just pull up the text size dialog, and bump it up a notch. Do that in pdf without getting out the hand and scrolling left-right down the page. PDF shows off more detail on larger, higher resolution screens, and on paper without a doubt. However, Problems of glow under HTML can be remidied with text smoothing and font sizes. Why deal with problems of herringbone patterns when you can make your weatherman wear a different tie?
So yeah, zoomable, smaller file sizes that are more easily protected than html is somehow for PRINT while, larger files and less readable type that is more easily pirated is for SCREEN. Ok:-)
There are better formats for the viewable page out there. Whether you like Microsoft or not, they have come up with a system that allows you to READ on screen, cleans up text for different screen sizes, and respects the author's rights with encryption. PDF is too rigid for the job, and zoomability gives it no advantage over HTML. Using ClearType, they have also partially solved the problem of viewability on smaller screens. Sorry, but PDF doesn't stand up to the task in my book.
Unless you expect people to NOT read your book, do not use PDF. PDF was designed so authors could write perfectly portable POSTSCRIPT and make it available online. PDF files have a few major setbacks:
The version of Acrobat viewer that allows search is 2mb more download than the searchless version.
Since Acrobat is made for print, you will not get whole books online in a readable format, unless you assume 1024x768 and a paperback 2 page per pdf page novel.
monitors are only 72-100 dpi currently, where books are 300-750 dpi.
Books don't glow.
people rarely blink while reading online
you will need to repurpose books for simple online formatting because of the above
Like I said PDF is for PRINT! So is postscript and DVI. until devices of high resolution with near zero brightness ratio appear, displays are going to create fatigue and frustration for the reader.
Hi "Bruce Perens.", how are you doing in troll-land?
Besides the name-jacking, you do make a good point. We don't know what will happen 10 years down the road. The fact that the internet gained in popularity in the past ten years has nothing to do with the next ten years. Cellular and WAP will come along, and may spend some time in the limelite, but for the most part computers will continue to exist in the same form plus a few appliances on the horizion.
The web-pad is one example of good tech. It will not be wireless when it comes out, but within a quarter, they should have that capability. And if AOL promotes and backs the tech, you will have massive inroads for vital portable tech.
Of course, the above has nothing to do with politics on the net, but rather politics of the net.
If it contains illegal data, or is capable of containing data, the feds WILL take it. It has happened. They take ALL music CDs in case you burned data to a CD-ROM and placed it in one of the jewel cases. They take answering machines and anything they believe capable of such an act, so it would be advantageous to have a wireless network run from a soup can, or more appropriately, through a large Tomato juice can.
I think that the check box should be used to get your' +1, i.e. the default is the normal posting level and, furthermore, that your karma should go down by 1 for each +1 bonus you give yourself.
Wow! You hit the nail right on the head! That would be a perfect solution! you'd have to spend your karma to get a bonus. That way everyone over 2 can get a +1 message, but it will cost them. Now to go about diffing it... It would include changes to the global config, the posting system and some user display (to finally tell you what you got +1 on) for this to work.
Keep the number of daemons/threads BELOW OR EQUAL to the number of CPUs.
I suppose by this you mean that the number of daemons/threads SPAWNED from a single user request keeps at n-1 in relationship to the processor. At my Concentric-hosted site, I have to keep it under 1 thread per script or it will kproc me. That isn't so bad, since it keeps me from doing stupid things like globbing massive directories and the like when I can just do an opendir/readdir and run the results through grep. I take up one read that way.
Given these, let's look at PHP/MySQL. You've got the web server, PHP, Zend, the Zend Optimizer, the PHP application, the database driver, the database server and the database itself.
Actually, on one server I work with PHP and Apache are compiled against each other, we don't use Zend, and the MySQL can't be helped. However, it is nice in the fact that our editors don't need to worry about setting up the ODBC every time, or even writing out headers every time, as php does a lot of this for you. It already knows where mysql is and so on.
On my personal site, I use perl. I use it because:
it's on almost every server out there.
It's mostly backend stuff, and
It is a programmer's language, and not just a programming language. Larry thinks about how hard it would be to progrom something, and adds functions accordingly.
IMHO, the only conclusion I can reach is that, if I were to write a Slash-like system, I would start by throwing out the web server.
If you wanted to get really technical, you don't even need a webserver. You could do the whole thing through text in a telnet session like a mud or a old-fashioned bbs. You can even write your own caching and load-balancing software to keep it up. But you don't have to. There is already a framework in place to do this. In fact the next Linux kernel will have khttpd, and you won't even need a webserver unless you want to do dynamic content. Then the program you mentioned above would be quite nice. As above so below.
(In practice, I doubt anyone'd ever want to write such an app. The Unix practice of reusable components has proven good enough, to the point that everything is done that way, now, even if for any given task, it's horribly inefficient and very prone to errors.)
In essence, a lot of the programs mentioned in your post already are quite debugged, and checked for security by the "thousands of eyes" looking over the code. Your proposition would only be safe if you followed in their footsteps and copied their code. However, You could just use their software and save yourself the trouble. Why build the cow when you can run the milk for free? <ducks>
Be not ashamed. The DB Libraries in most *nicies use esentially flat files to store one key/value pair. So does tie in perl. I don't think this is much of a programming sin. A programming sin would be to Write a complex structure for something that is simple in real life. It may not be too "organized" in a plain format file, but at least it is usually human-readable. Pack and unpack are elegant for this particular use as well.
Aargh! That little green gif is the main reason I run in lite mode! The image server should have this, the most popular image on/. cached by now. Then again, it doesn't add to the visual style one iota, so I even question the need for its existence.
ps. it is better with the new servers, I can now use regular mode again.
People who get the +1 can post a comment without the +1 by checking a box. This is a good thing to do if the message is not particularly informative, insightful, interesting, funny, etc. People who post mediocre comments at a score of 2 deserve to get an "overrated" moderation.
This is most certainly true in most respects. If I respond to a tier 1 message or lower, the +1 comes off. I only use +2 if I make a big post, write about a subject I like, or post at the top level after 100+ posts have been made. Something could be said for selective use of this feature. I think, however, that it should read "Score +1 bonus" and the check specifically turns it on. That may help curb the problem.
Edit Comments -- do not display scores. Check it. Don't worry about karma, unless you go negative. Then create a new account.
This site has become such a troll pit, if you even think about posting something without a score bonus (which is usually useless on the second tier of comments) some ac will waste/.'s resources to tell you that you are a karma whore. I usually check no +1 because I don't think my comment needs to be above another's. If that's whoring then I am a whore.
oh wait. no, you didn't. I don't care about karma, I usually post with no score bonus unless I post a top-level message, and my response had a point. And as to the "ad" -- banner ads don't work, and if you log in you can turn sigs off.
Of course, somebody will need to re-write the templates for/. and some of the validators. One problem: all of the templates use upper-case elements, and suffer from a severe "quote-lack", since even numbers need to be quoted. Most of the empty elements do not have a trailing/>. A lot of the code validates out any element with a/> ending.
These things do not make it impossible to redo Slashdot, just darnde difficult.
Correct, but the problem with XSL is that it is somewhat of a proc hog when run server-side, as you have to re-purpose your pages for each user. While you have to do this anyway for custom pages on/., they don't usually do this by browser.
I like XSL, but it would appear to be a zero sum gain over HTML4.1Transitional(or XHTML) and CSS.
Certainly, you can use IE5 to develop full apps, but compared to the fully-documented, full-source-code mozilla, designing for IE5 becomes inordinately difficult and expensive, relitively speaking. The hooks to NS6 are both in modular format (real re-use, not just re-use the renderer like IE5) and through the XUL engine (who's your gatekeeper?) which makes the platform very accessable. I really want to see this IDE in action too! I would love a perl ide, as I wasted a lot of resources on my concentric site because I called a sub-shell, and it bonked me on the head for 256 user seconds each time! It would be nice to profile things before they go into production. Then again, I should have read the vde manual online at cnchost.com, but I didn't. This project would likely have saved me a lot of time!
The consumer release? I suppose you mean MacOSX workstations by that. If you mean the OSX server, you wouldn't be doing much DTP on there just yet. 1) The OS is still in DP release 2) The workstation is still a ways off
btw, i know a few folks running the DP3 release with no problems. This isn't your standard legacy MacOS release. The features may not yet be solid, but the under the hood stuff is.
::but if you were to jump up in the air, you would find the station would spin out from under your feet, and you would not land in the same place you jumped from:: Try doing so on a train. you have the same forward momentium as the train. If the station were to STOP you'd fly into something.
But I have to say this: ASP is the communication layer between information and presentation in general. The html it generates is the communication between server and browser. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea out there that it can be malicious.
oh no, don't take it the wrong way. We are not FORCED to use it at all, but the only thing the server runs is asp. I use it to build tables, which is a great help to those who have to update the data on our pages. They just call tr_build( 'value1', 'value2', 'value3') This sort of syntax is quite valuable. It allows people to get away from html code entirely, and our maintainers of information (in this case, secretaries) can put forth information, and not worry about structure. Win-win, if you ask me. No, I don't hate ASP at all, it has great uses.
If you are running IIS: ASP If you are looking for something easy: Python or PHP If you are looking for speed: PHP4/Zend Optimizer If you are looking for flexible: Perl If you are looking for good XML compatibility: Perl/Java applets/PHP+expat If you just want to make headers/footers for a common theme: SSI/XSSI
Now, I don't know about most webmasters, but the three I see most often are Perl, PHP, and ASP. I have to admit, ASP is great for connecting to databases, as long as you grab someone else's code. PHP has built-in ODBC connections, and Perl has modules for it.
Perl seems to have the most free scripts written for it, followed by PHP. ASP seems to show a strong commercial following, which is not a surprise.
If you know C, PHP is easy, and Perl is as well. PHP is a bit more strict than Perl. Perl has more than one way to do things down to an art.
ASP is OK, but if you have a choice, stick to plain HTML. We have a phrase when it comes to ASP in our office. The phrase is "what were they thinking?" and it applies to anything from the choice of VBasic, to Management's deciscion to implement it in the first place.
I prefer PHP, for its flexibility, it's portability (moreso under version 4) and its ease of use.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no such thing as unbiased discussion of political issues.
Yes, but imagine the evening news if they couldn't politicize everything. No global warming stories, no adjectives, no excitement.... hrm.. I think I like that idea..
It's like the joke: politics(n): from poly meaning many, and tics meaning biting incects
a democracy is a republic:
2. Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
Democracies can be direct or indirect. The epa is not a democracy, and neither is any gov't agency. They are bureaucracies.
I use:
CCYYMMDDHHMMSS when I write a date, with HH being in 24hr format, and HH MM and SS being optional.
Good idea, I'd hate to see you waste all of that Anonymous Coward karma you've racked up. Bzzzzzzzzzzt. Wrong, dumbass.
[]Post Anonymously
Stupid fucker.
First of all, the Acrobat Reader download with search is still significantly smaller than most major browsers, and there's a good chance that most people already have it on their systems.
And If they do not have it on their system, they have to get it. Most systems, you'll agree come with browsers. However, most do NOT come with Acrobat.
One of the major advantages of PDF is that the layout need not be changed much, if at all, for online vs. print publishing. As opposed to HTML, which needs to be almost entirely redone. It is also typically smaller than HTML files, because it is pre-compressed.
I have seen pdf files that are a definite shame to the system then. For example, many brochures are B+W scans instead of conversions of the original version in software. With HTML files you can define an alternate stylesheet for print, without changing the HTML.
Again, you baffle me. Acrobat is made for print, eh? Well, I didn't know you could arbitrarily zoom in on HTML, which (even though it has the same ppi/dpi and "glow" problems as mentioned for PDF) is somehow designed for screens, despite that fact that PDF often shows better detail, more clearly, esp in type.
Yes, it's designed for print. 1) it's a postscript format. Postscript is made for (duh) printing. 2) The zoom function is to make up for a lack of text controls. The reason there are no text controls is because it is set up for the (duh again) printed page. You can zoom in on text in IE, but it can be more difficult under Netscape/Linux. If you are having vision problems, just pull up the text size dialog, and bump it up a notch. Do that in pdf without getting out the hand and scrolling left-right down the page. PDF shows off more detail on larger, higher resolution screens, and on paper without a doubt. However, Problems of glow under HTML can be remidied with text smoothing and font sizes. Why deal with problems of herringbone patterns when you can make your weatherman wear a different tie?
So yeah, zoomable, smaller file sizes that are more easily protected than html is somehow for PRINT while, larger files and less readable type that is more easily pirated is for SCREEN. Ok :-)
There are better formats for the viewable page out there. Whether you like Microsoft or not, they have come up with a system that allows you to READ on screen, cleans up text for different screen sizes, and respects the author's rights with encryption. PDF is too rigid for the job, and zoomability gives it no advantage over HTML. Using ClearType, they have also partially solved the problem of viewability on smaller screens. Sorry, but PDF doesn't stand up to the task in my book.
Unless you expect people to NOT read your book, do not use PDF. PDF was designed so authors could write perfectly portable POSTSCRIPT and make it available online. PDF files have a few major setbacks:
Like I said PDF is for PRINT! So is postscript and DVI. until devices of high resolution with near zero brightness ratio appear, displays are going to create fatigue and frustration for the reader.
Tip o' th' hat to Jakob Nielsen: useit.com
Hi "Bruce Perens.", how are you doing in troll-land?
Besides the name-jacking, you do make a good point. We don't know what will happen 10 years down the road. The fact that the internet gained in popularity in the past ten years has nothing to do with the next ten years. Cellular and WAP will come along, and may spend some time in the limelite, but for the most part computers will continue to exist in the same form plus a few appliances on the horizion.
The web-pad is one example of good tech. It will not be wireless when it comes out, but within a quarter, they should have that capability. And if AOL promotes and backs the tech, you will have massive inroads for vital portable tech.
Of course, the above has nothing to do with politics on the net, but rather politics of the net.
If it contains illegal data, or is capable of containing data, the feds WILL take it. It has happened. They take ALL music CDs in case you burned data to a CD-ROM and placed it in one of the jewel cases. They take answering machines and anything they believe capable of such an act, so it would be advantageous to have a wireless network run from a soup can, or more appropriately, through a large Tomato juice can.
Kosovar: Citizen of Kosovo
Kosova: No Idea.
risk-adverse: opposed or opposite of risk
risk-averse: disinclined from risk
I almost typed "disinclined toward risk" then realized that this would not make sense. You even have to be careful in that respect.
I think that the check box should be used to get your' +1, i.e. the default is the normal posting level and, furthermore, that your karma should go down by 1 for each +1 bonus you give yourself.
Wow! You hit the nail right on the head! That would be a perfect solution! you'd have to spend your karma to get a bonus. That way everyone over 2 can get a +1 message, but it will cost them. Now to go about diffing it... It would include changes to the global config, the posting system and some user display (to finally tell you what you got +1 on) for this to work.
Keep the number of daemons/threads BELOW OR EQUAL to the number of CPUs.
I suppose by this you mean that the number of daemons/threads SPAWNED from a single user request keeps at n-1 in relationship to the processor. At my Concentric-hosted site, I have to keep it under 1 thread per script or it will kproc me. That isn't so bad, since it keeps me from doing stupid things like globbing massive directories and the like when I can just do an opendir/readdir and run the results through grep. I take up one read that way.
Given these, let's look at PHP/MySQL. You've got the web server, PHP, Zend, the Zend Optimizer, the PHP application, the database driver, the database server and the database itself.
Actually, on one server I work with PHP and Apache are compiled against each other, we don't use Zend, and the MySQL can't be helped. However, it is nice in the fact that our editors don't need to worry about setting up the ODBC every time, or even writing out headers every time, as php does a lot of this for you. It already knows where mysql is and so on.
On my personal site, I use perl. I use it because:
it's on almost every server out there.
It's mostly backend stuff, and
It is a programmer's language, and not just a programming language. Larry thinks about how hard it would be to progrom something, and adds functions accordingly.
IMHO, the only conclusion I can reach is that, if I were to write a Slash-like system, I would start by throwing out the web server.
If you wanted to get really technical, you don't even need a webserver. You could do the whole thing through text in a telnet session like a mud or a old-fashioned bbs. You can even write your own caching and load-balancing software to keep it up. But you don't have to. There is already a framework in place to do this. In fact the next Linux kernel will have khttpd, and you won't even need a webserver unless you want to do dynamic content. Then the program you mentioned above would be quite nice. As above so below.
(In practice, I doubt anyone'd ever want to write such an app. The Unix practice of reusable components has proven good enough, to the point that everything is done that way, now, even if for any given task, it's horribly inefficient and very prone to errors.)
In essence, a lot of the programs mentioned in your post already are quite debugged, and checked for security by the "thousands of eyes" looking over the code. Your proposition would only be safe if you followed in their footsteps and copied their code. However, You could just use their software and save yourself the trouble. Why build the cow when you can run the milk for free? <ducks>
Be not ashamed. The DB Libraries in most *nicies use esentially flat files to store one key/value pair. So does tie in perl. I don't think this is much of a programming sin. A programming sin would be to Write a complex structure for something that is simple in real life. It may not be too "organized" in a plain format file, but at least it is usually human-readable. Pack and unpack are elegant for this particular use as well.
Aargh! That little green gif is the main reason I run in lite mode! The image server should have this, the most popular image on /. cached by now. Then again, it doesn't add to the visual style one iota, so I even question the need for its existence.
ps. it is better with the new servers, I can now use regular mode again.
People who get the +1 can post a comment without the +1 by checking a box. This is a good thing to do if the message is not particularly informative, insightful, interesting, funny, etc. People who post mediocre comments at a score of 2 deserve to get an "overrated" moderation.
This is most certainly true in most respects. If I respond to a tier 1 message or lower, the +1 comes off. I only use +2 if I make a big post, write about a subject I like, or post at the top level after 100+ posts have been made. Something could be said for selective use of this feature. I think, however, that it should read "Score +1 bonus" and the check specifically turns it on. That may help curb the problem.
Edit Comments -- do not display scores. Check it. Don't worry about karma, unless you go negative. Then create a new account.
This site has become such a troll pit, if you even think about posting something without a score bonus (which is usually useless on the second tier of comments) some ac will waste /.'s resources to tell you that you are a karma whore. I usually check no +1 because I don't think my comment needs to be above another's. If that's whoring then I am a whore.
Gee you got me.
oh wait. no, you didn't. I don't care about karma, I usually post with no score bonus unless I post a top-level message, and my response had a point. And as to the "ad" -- banner ads don't work, and if you log in you can turn sigs off.
Of course, somebody will need to re-write the templates for /. and some of the validators. One problem: all of the templates use upper-case elements, and suffer from a severe "quote-lack", since even numbers need to be quoted. Most of the empty elements do not have a trailing />. A lot of the code validates out any element with a /> ending.
These things do not make it impossible to redo Slashdot, just darnde difficult.
Correct, but the problem with XSL is that it is somewhat of a proc hog when run server-side, as you have to re-purpose your pages for each user. While you have to do this anyway for custom pages on /., they don't usually do this by browser.
I like XSL, but it would appear to be a zero sum gain over HTML4.1Transitional(or XHTML) and CSS.
And thus is the beauty of open source!
Certainly, you can use IE5 to develop full apps, but compared to the fully-documented, full-source-code mozilla, designing for IE5 becomes inordinately difficult and expensive, relitively speaking. The hooks to NS6 are both in modular format (real re-use, not just re-use the renderer like IE5) and through the XUL engine (who's your gatekeeper?) which makes the platform very accessable. I really want to see this IDE in action too! I would love a perl ide, as I wasted a lot of resources on my concentric site because I called a sub-shell, and it bonked me on the head for 256 user seconds each time! It would be nice to profile things before they go into production. Then again, I should have read the vde manual online at cnchost.com, but I didn't. This project would likely have saved me a lot of time!
The consumer release? I suppose you mean MacOSX workstations by that. If you mean the OSX server, you wouldn't be doing much DTP on there just yet. 1) The OS is still in DP release
2) The workstation is still a ways off
btw, i know a few folks running the DP3 release with no problems. This isn't your standard legacy MacOS release. The features may not yet be solid, but the under the hood stuff is.
::but if you were to jump up in the air, you would find the station would spin out from under your feet, and you would not land in the same place you jumped from:: Try doing so on a train. you have the same forward momentium as the train. If the station were to STOP you'd fly into something.
Oh, I haven't written it off, simply because I haven't used it. It does a great job in Blender for plugins, but I haven't the time to play with it.
But I have to say this: ASP is the communication layer between information and presentation in general. The html it generates is the communication between server and browser. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea out there that it can be malicious.
oh no, don't take it the wrong way. We are not FORCED to use it at all, but the only thing the server runs is asp. I use it to build tables, which is a great help to those who have to update the data on our pages. They just call tr_build( 'value1', 'value2', 'value3') This sort of syntax is quite valuable. It allows people to get away from html code entirely, and our maintainers of information (in this case, secretaries) can put forth information, and not worry about structure. Win-win, if you ask me. No, I don't hate ASP at all, it has great uses.
If you are running IIS: ASP
If you are looking for something easy: Python or PHP
If you are looking for speed: PHP4/Zend Optimizer
If you are looking for flexible: Perl
If you are looking for good XML compatibility: Perl/Java applets/PHP+expat
If you just want to make headers/footers for a common theme: SSI/XSSI
Now, I don't know about most webmasters, but the three I see most often are Perl, PHP, and ASP. I have to admit, ASP is great for connecting to databases, as long as you grab someone else's code. PHP has built-in ODBC connections, and Perl has modules for it.
Perl seems to have the most free scripts written for it, followed by PHP. ASP seems to show a strong commercial following, which is not a surprise.
If you know C, PHP is easy, and Perl is as well. PHP is a bit more strict than Perl. Perl has more than one way to do things down to an art.
ASP is OK, but if you have a choice, stick to plain HTML. We have a phrase when it comes to ASP in our office. The phrase is "what were they thinking?" and it applies to anything from the choice of VBasic, to Management's deciscion to implement it in the first place.
I prefer PHP, for its flexibility, it's portability (moreso under version 4) and its ease of use.