> 1. Python. It took me a while to get past the indentation-as-block-structure > thing (I still think it was a mistake)
Your comment got to 5, so somebody's got to say it. Significative indentation is nothing less than a stroke of genius. You indent your code anyway, right? So why is everybody forced to keep track of *two* kinds of block delimiters at the same time? Get rid of the stinkin' parentheses, and be done with it!
The rest of #1 is spot on, however.
> 2. If you are doing any sort of web work, you will probably have to do a > little (a lot?) PHP.
Why on earth should he *have* to use such an inferior language? Python has lots of fine tools for web work. I advise using Twisted (http://twistedmatrix.com/). Its asynchronous event-based concurrency model may look peculiar at first, but being able to avoid the evil preemptive multithreading is priceless. And there's *lots* of Internet protocols in there for the taking!
> 3. AJAX. It's worth a look if you want to stay within the browser's window. > And that means you should get good Javascript/CSS/XML/HTML books.
Javascript can get messy: AJAX needs all the hiding it can get. Nevow (http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow) has great support for it in the Athena package, based on Mochikit. See the other Divmod tools, there's great stuff in there.
> 5. If you are picking up a DBMS, the obvious choices are MySQL and Postgres.
Do yourself a favor and use PostgreSQL, or SQLite. MySQL has a dubios history, and is often used together with PHP, which is similarly quirky.
It bears repeating: you wanna have fun, and at the same time learn a powerful language? Use Python, there's nothing quite like it around. I've been working with it for six years now, and it's been fun almost every day.:-)
Don't be fooled by the unadorned web site: Quotient is a multiprotocol server plus client plus repository, supporting POP, IMAP, SIP, IRC and IM, and based on Twisted, an event-based, multiprotocol networking framework. Quotient comes from the Twisted guys themselves.
It's a remarkable architecture, and implemented in a very nice programming language.:^)
Of course, there are many of them...
on
Live CD for PC Games?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Great for writers, not so good for graphic artists. I sysadmined for a few years in a graphics/video shop that had tens of thousands of images on the various fileservers.
The equivalent of full-text search for images would be the ability to draw a sketch, and have an indexing and search system rank images based on their similarity to the sketch.
It seems an idea whose time has come, thanks to wavelet technology. A Free Software implementation is imgSeek, not fully optimized yet, but definitely showing potential.
The peculiar thing is the lack of any similar feature in the Google image search engine: it uses words in the accompanying text as metadata. Such lack may be due to the heavy computations required for each indexed image, and also to the difficulty of drawing a sketch in an HTML form.:^)
Yes, the monitoring approach is laudable, but it's not enough. I managed to lose a few kilos, but regained those in a while, and then some. Main points are, counting calories only is definitely not enough, and the exercise program, apparently detailed, comes too short of cardiofitness.
I've done two things.
First, I bought an elliptical trainer, wonderful machine, almost like swimming, and now I actually look forward to exercising. Supplement that with a heartbeat rate meter (or what it's called) and voila, real cardiofitness for under 500$, and without overcrowded gyms nor pools!
Second, I've been following Dr. Sears' Zone for three weeks now, which is not much, but I already lost two kilos (what's that, five pounds?), and don't fell those "hunger bites" anymore.
Main thing is, the stuff he talks about in his books makes lots of sense. I am Italian, but abolished most consumption of bread, pasta and pizza quite gladly. I really like fish, and fruit and vegetables too, so don't have much problems with this approach.
I've got still seven or eight kilos to go, I'll let you know next autumn.:^)
The stuff about the specialized receptors is true, but your whole statement is inaccurate.
There are two kinds of hearing damages: physical and psychological. The second one may occur at low sound levels, but for a physical damage to occur, the sound has to cross a threshold that is situated at about 85 dB SPL. Furthermore, it takes time to damage those receptors, the time needed being inversely proportional to the SPL level.
While it is true that the hearing habits of new generations are probably causing a partially deaf population in twenty years from now, if you have a computer emitting more than 85 dB SPL at short distance, you have other problems in addition to those hearing-related.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that PHP and MySQL are the most deployed tools for web development is a rather sorry situation, given the deep shortcomings of both tools.
See these articles about the many PHP warts:
Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites
Why PHP sucks
The PHP Ghetto
You will be happier with a more mature and complete dynamic language like Python, or even (gasp ;-) ) Ruby.
Similarly, see these other articles about the many MySQL warts:
MySQL Hate
MySQL Gotchas
Compare the last one with the one for PostgreSQL:
PostgreSQL Gotchas
Finally, an in-depth comparison between MySQL and PostgreSQL on Slashdot itself:
Comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL 2
Finally, recall that both MySQL's transactional backends are now controlled by Oracle:
Oracle Acquires Sleepycat
Avoid both PHP and MySQL as much as you can, I say. There's better stuff out there.
> As for me, I'm cutting out the middleman and jumping right to Web 3.0.
> Why wait?
You're not the first, man. Here's Web 3.0 description by Twisted's architect extraordinaire Glyph Lefkowitz:
"Web 3.0", or Why Mantissa is What the Web is Missing
http://www.livejournal.com/users/glyf/47582.html
> 1. Python. It took me a while to get past the indentation-as-block-structure
:-)
> thing (I still think it was a mistake)
Your comment got to 5, so somebody's got to say it. Significative indentation is nothing less than a stroke of genius. You indent your code anyway, right? So why is everybody forced to keep track of *two* kinds of block delimiters at the same time? Get rid of the stinkin' parentheses, and be done with it!
The rest of #1 is spot on, however.
> 2. If you are doing any sort of web work, you will probably have to do a
> little (a lot?) PHP.
Why on earth should he *have* to use such an inferior language? Python has lots of fine tools for web work. I advise using Twisted (http://twistedmatrix.com/). Its asynchronous event-based concurrency model may look peculiar at first, but being able to avoid the evil preemptive multithreading is priceless. And there's *lots* of Internet protocols in there for the taking!
> 3. AJAX. It's worth a look if you want to stay within the browser's window.
> And that means you should get good Javascript/CSS/XML/HTML books.
Javascript can get messy: AJAX needs all the hiding it can get. Nevow (http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow) has great support for it in the Athena package, based on Mochikit. See the other Divmod tools, there's great stuff in there.
> 5. If you are picking up a DBMS, the obvious choices are MySQL and Postgres.
Do yourself a favor and use PostgreSQL, or SQLite. MySQL has a dubios history, and is often used together with PHP, which is similarly quirky.
It bears repeating: you wanna have fun, and at the same time learn a powerful language? Use Python, there's nothing quite like it around. I've been working with it for six years now, and it's been fun almost every day.
...for your hearing ability's sake, also listen to what this guy recently had to say about hearing loss, weep, and pump down the volume.
Here is a presentation, with PDF article, about integrating the two approaches, straight from recent PyCon:
Literate Testing: Automated Testing with doctest
[Ehi, there is a haiku in there, after all. :^) ]
Tell us why you love Perl.
Do you love Perl as much as we do?
Then prove it with your passion, creativity, and wit!
I cannot do so.
I really, really hate it.
Go away. Get lost.
> Tell us why you love Perl.
I can't.
> Do you love Perl as much as we do?
I hate it.
> Then prove it with your passion, creativity, and wit!
Go away.
I hereby declare that everyone's PI number is 31415.
Alas, it is unfortunate that most AT machines do not support an infinite number of digits.
Even now that they are all ATX.
5 Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages - they should all go into a single app.
His wish is their command: Quotient.
Don't be fooled by the unadorned web site: Quotient is a multiprotocol server plus client plus repository, supporting POP, IMAP, SIP, IRC and IM, and based on Twisted, an event-based, multiprotocol networking framework. Quotient comes from the Twisted guys themselves.
It's a remarkable architecture, and implemented in a very nice programming language. :^)
...here is one about MAME:
http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.htmlThere are links to other similar projects at the end of the page.
You sure? What about this:
"This thing must have been programmed in Python!"The equivalent of full-text search for images would be the ability to draw a sketch, and have an indexing and search system rank images based on their similarity to the sketch.
It seems an idea whose time has come, thanks to wavelet technology. A Free Software implementation is imgSeek , not fully optimized yet, but definitely showing potential.
The peculiar thing is the lack of any similar feature in the Google image search engine: it uses words in the accompanying text as metadata. Such lack may be due to the heavy computations required for each indexed image, and also to the difficulty of drawing a sketch in an HTML form. :^)
Been there, done that, didn't work.
Yes, the monitoring approach is laudable, but it's not enough. I managed to lose a few kilos, but regained those in a while, and then some. Main points are, counting calories only is definitely not enough, and the exercise program, apparently detailed, comes too short of cardiofitness.
I've done two things.
First, I bought an elliptical trainer, wonderful machine, almost like swimming, and now I actually look forward to exercising. Supplement that with a heartbeat rate meter (or what it's called) and voila, real cardiofitness for under 500$, and without overcrowded gyms nor pools!
Second, I've been following Dr. Sears' Zone for three weeks now, which is not much, but I already lost two kilos (what's that, five pounds?), and don't fell those "hunger bites" anymore.
Main thing is, the stuff he talks about in his books makes lots of sense. I am Italian, but abolished most consumption of bread, pasta and pizza quite gladly. I really like fish, and fruit and vegetables too, so don't have much problems with this approach.
I've got still seven or eight kilos to go, I'll let you know next autumn. :^)
A relevant resource in this field is the Alliance For Childhood, sponsored by Steve Talbott of NetFuture fame.
I've been following NetFuture for years now, it's a very interesting newsletter about the relationship between technology and human society.
The stuff about the specialized receptors is true, but your whole statement is inaccurate.
There are two kinds of hearing damages: physical and psychological. The second one may occur at low sound levels, but for a physical damage to occur, the sound has to cross a threshold that is situated at about 85 dB SPL. Furthermore, it takes time to damage those receptors, the time needed being inversely proportional to the SPL level.
While it is true that the hearing habits of new generations are probably causing a partially deaf population in twenty years from now, if you have a computer emitting more than 85 dB SPL at short distance, you have other problems in addition to those hearing-related.