Yeah it's an interesting question. Reading through their twitter etc. they claim they did actually transmit all keys for decoding their transmissions, and the transaction was "demonstration" and "experimental" rather than an actual commercial transaction (whatever that means). So I suppose they are attempting to follow the *spirit* of the laws as best they can while still conducting the proof-of-concept experiment. Whether the folks at ISEC and FCC would agree or not is another question, but I doubt anyone will even notice.
Really the only thing that makes this at all questionable is the fact that they're sending bitcoin, which nominally has some value. If they're transmitting the encryption keys and the protocol is also not secret, they're likely in the clear on the "codes" part of it.
Anyway I think it's a worthwhile experiment, and seems to be exactly the sort of thing the amateur bands should be used for, bitcoin transaction notwithstanding. Now.... should this actually become an actual transaction system, it would obviously have to move off to some other non-amateur band.
I have a gmail account with the first name dot last name set up. As you can imagine I get quite a few messages for people who forget to tell their friends about their middle initial. However from context, I can often tell which of my name-sharing buddies the email was intended for. Over the years I have actually gotten to know a couple of them, which is fun.
I don't bother trying to tell the senders about the mistakes, they usually do nothing, oddly. The recipient, however, tends to get on it effectively.
It's quite interesting do talk to them. What's in a name?
Actually, I'll take that back about the emphasis bit. Boswell pretty well nails it right on the head. Now I'm looking through some of his other articles, and they're excellent.
Well, ok. Though there's not much more that I could have written in that short of a space that can teach the subject.
I linked the Calgary Herald / Postmedia News article because it's an astonishingly well-written bit of science journalism that lays it all out superbly – kudos to Randy Boswell. He didn't put *exactly* the same emphasis on exactly the same things that Proemse (the principal author) would have, but it's minor. That's the "public" piece, and it's full of tons of great information.
I also linked the official research article. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall. However, if that's the kind of thing that really turns your crank you probably already have access to it one way or another (in the worst case: via a physical trip to your local university). If you can't, well, correspondence with an author is a time-honored method for obtaining your own copy.
Seismic processing is about as embarrassingly parallel as it comes. Just about every processing step can be split up into e.g. single shot record steps, taking advantage of assumed linearity in wave equations. Furthermore, most production industrial imaging codes weren't actually using my original example of a full finite difference solution until quite recently, and instead they were using algorithms that have been developed for decades under the limitations of very old computers. Sure, some of the big shops have full blown "proper" HPC, shared-ram setups, etc. However, it's common to see much more simplistic parallelization with very ad-hoc clusters being used.
In short, there are loads of processing shops that run off-the-shelf servers on gigabit ethernet, and they do a good business with it. Heck, there are loads of processing shops out there that do a good business running relatively crude time migrations.
Seismic imaging. Imagine solving a wave equation (acoustic, elastic, or worse) over a 3D grid many kilometers on a side with grid spacing on the order of meters. Imagine you're doing it with a strong high-order finite-difference code. Calculate for tens of thousands of timesteps. Now repeat that entire thing thousands of times for a given full survey.
No matter how much computer you have, it's never nearly enough for seismic imaging.
No, the public won't see these results as a rule, at least not right away (while it's still commercially valuable to protect as a secret), though strictly speaking it depends on the countries involved. Nor would it matter for property value, as the "land owners" usually don't own the mineral rights in most places. Furthermore, this setup will be used probably mostly for marine/offshore seismic imaging, ie not much land involved.
I was at that conference I think (U of C, CUPC?) and I saw the same videos. I also believe they were the same thing. Maybe they've been recreated with more precision or something? I hope so.
It's a balance. This isn't going to be secret forever, only for a short period of time (I guess a month in this case).
This whole deal is a self-regulated thing. There is a publication ban, but as it has been said before, it's not a closed court. People *can* get in there and see what's going on. If something particularly heinous happens, I rest assured that it will surface to the general public, publication ban or not.
As I mentioned early, it's entirely an honour-system thing. Nothing would stop someone from publishing something truly scandalous anonymously and thus avoiding any repercussions at a later date.
Yes, a publication ban on an event open to the public. Not quaint, but rather an indication of the vast differences between Canada and the US.
Here in Canada, a fair amount of the law relies on common sense and good will. The intent of these publication bans is to ensure the accused gets a fair trial. This is essentially the judge saying to the press, "Look, if the whole world hears this testimony before the trial gets fully underway and everything can be put into a proper context, it will be really hard to get a reasonably impartial jury so this person gets a fair trial." They know very well that it's impossible to guarantee it won't come out, but Canadian journalists typically respect it.
What's more important? Having one newspaper scoop another in an attempt to splash the headlines with more sensationalism? Or having an accused person get a fair trial?
Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do). Sometimes conflicting rights have to be balanced, and most Canadians that I know feel that, in this case, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial outweigh the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately.
The "Argument Against" 1. Replication point rings quite true with me, I must admit. In my field (PDEs) I write a lot of code based on papers I read. The papers, however, rarely contain more than an armwaving description of the algorithm used, along with some mathematical theory signposting the highlights. I end up having to start with the theory and, using the armwaving concepts as a guide, I nearly rederive the entire algorithm. I do not ever ask to see source code from the authors.
When I run my code and see exactly the same things as the authors describe in the publication, I feel a lot better about the results than if I had just taken theirs and used it.
Yes, and another benefit of Go: it can be muuuuch cheaper than some of those hideously expensive board games. Check it out.
Speaking of cheap, my other recommendation is for cheap-ass games. You can buy about half a dozen of these games for the price of a single "normal" game. In my experience, we get about as much fun out of one cheap-ass game as we do out of a regular game. So that's six times the total fun! Heck of a deal.
My current favourites: Unexploded Cow and Kill Dr. Lucky. Maybe the C-A games are not six-hour hyper-political intrigue marathons, but they sure are fun.
Yep, this sounds like a similar experience to mine. I returned to grad school after four years of working. I was the slightest bit slower at the very start. However, I also found that I picked the stuff up FAR quicker than most of the fresh grads simply because I had a few years to fully digest and really *understand* it all.
I definitely felt that my undergrad was a bit of a whirlwind. Now that I'm in grad school, however, all the undergrad stuff seems very trivial. I think it's a few years of unconscious digestion of the ideas, plus a bit of wisdom coming in.
About applying: I applied "normally" for one grad program but I was rejected. Then I decided to approach from a different angle. I started talking to professors in my chosen field. I volunteered my services for a brief period (a few weeks) for a small project one of them had. I was totally upfront about my expectations: I was hoping we could work together for a while and I could learn a bit about the department and how it works. I also wanted a good reference letter and possibly some help getting into grad school -- assuming of course that we both get along and work well together etc.
The professor and I got along very well. Not only did he keep me on for the period and offer to write me a great letter, but he also employed me over the summer, and offered to be my graduate supervisor. I don't know if this is universally true, but in my department it seems that if a professor really wants you to be his/her grad student, then you *will* be accepted as long as you meet minimum standards (or can give them a really strong reason to let you in anyhow).
I'm in grad school working on mathematical physics. I read all kinds of popular math and physics books -- like this one, or the Feynman books, or the Erdos book from a few years back, and pretty much anything else. I would be very happy to get this book for Christmas. I'd much rather get this than, say, another textbook on pseudodifferential operators.
It's not about the *math* or the *physics* in the books, it's about the stories behind the people. Sure, Feynman's path integrals play a key role in my research, but I'm far more interested in reading about him playing bongo drums and picking locks during the Manhattan Project. The same thing goes for the rest of the math and physics books I read. Some of the rock-star mathematicians and physicists in history have had pretty interesting lives.
On the other hand, I don't bother reading or recommending "A Brief History of Time", which really is a "Physics for Dummies" book.
If you truly *need* to do it, you will find a way. I'm still relatively young and single, so it's not too hard for me. In my research consortium, however, there is a great variety of grad students. In addition to a few younger/single people like me, we have a single mom, a dad with a stay-home mom and children (4 years and 6 years), a dad with a new baby, a retired grandfather, a mom with a working husband and teenaged kids, and lots more.
It is never "impossible" to complete grad school -- that's just an excuse. If you are driven to do it, you will find a way. If, however, you don't want to be there, and you're just there for the prestige or the opportunity, you're in the wrong place (at least in the fields that I know, which typically revolve around hard science). I'm doing mathematical physics, and I certainly was not mentally prepared to do it immediately after my undergrad degree. The few around me who came to straight to grad school because they had nothing better to do or they wanted a higher paying job are all, to a person, very unhappy. Those of us who sacrificed a lot (in my case, high paying work) are enjoying it immensely nonetheless. Is it hard to live on a grad student's meagre pay? Yeah. But I survive, and I wouldn't change anything.
This may not apply to "other" graduate programs, I really don't know.
I disagree with the "do it now" statement. Do it when you feel like you *need* to do it, and at no other time.
By the sounds of the original poster's question, I would definitely encourage him/her to NOT go into grad school. If you're not sure that you want to go, then you -don't- want to go, period. Grad school is a huge commitment and a lot of work. If you know deep in your heart that it's where you belong and it's what you have to be doing, you can survive and even enjoy it and feel good about it. Otherwise, it's a major drag and you hate every minute of it.
I'm a grad student right now, and I'm *loving* every (atrociously difficult, mind-bending) minute of it. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's worth it. A couple of my friends are here for the career benefit they perceive, not because they truly want to do it. They are miserable, depressed, and they can't wait to just get out of here.
Do not go now just because you think you will never have the chance again and you don't want to miss it. Wait. If there comes a time in your life when you feel driven to go to grad school, THEN do it and forget all the naysayers. If it never comes, then don't look back.
Funny enough, a good two thirds of my fellow grad students are returning to school after anywhere from 2 to 10 to 30 years of working. Most of us are here for the love of it. A few have returned for career boosts, and they're the most miserable.
No, the hammer is still not appalling. The person who chooses to use that hammer is wrong, not the hammer. I still maintain that languages cannot be inherently good or bad, just as any other "thing" cannot be good or bad. It's up to the person making decisions to choose wisely.
Blaming the programmer is the ONLY thing that makes sense! Well, perhaps the programmer and those who make decisions on the programmer's behalf eg. a manager deciding that all programming will be done in brainfuck. Anyone who chooses this language for anything other than an academic exercise should/WILL be shot.
Programmers must take full 100% responsibility for the quality of their own code. I suppose underneath it all, this is what I'm driving at. People who throw up their hands and say "What can I do? I'm programming in [whatever] language!" are weak. Either don't program in that language, or do it right. And if the language is forced upon you, then you'd better figure out how to do it right.
Quite often, programmers don't really get the choice of a language. This is why I feel so strongly about it -- good programmers will be able to adapt to a new language and write good code in it no matter what. For any "real" language (ie not brainfuck) this is possible.
Perl is not an appalling language.... Most programmers are appalling programmers. Languages in themselves have no quality of goodness or badness. They are just tools. Is a hammer an appalling tool?
Perl allows the programmer the freedom to write code just as his/her mind works. Most programmers have very messy minds, and are more interested in looking "slick" and in getting the job done -fast- than in writing good code and in getting the job done -right-.
Most people cannot handle the freedom and power that Perl allows, because, as we all know, "With great power comes great responsibility." Uncle Ben knew a thing or two.
Most people should avoid Perl. If you are afraid of it, you should not go anywhere near it. I don't think Perl should be used for large "industrial" projects, simply because (as I said before) most programmers are bad programmers. Really good perl code is, for many things, some of the best code I've ever seen. Really bad perl code is easily the worst I've ever seen. There is more bad perl than good perl.
Heh. Yeah, that's why I don't write much Python. I feel very trapped when I write Python, because to me at least it really does have a strong "nobody gets hurt" bias to it. It's like I'm programming with training wheels.
Don't get me wrong, I really admire Python. It just doesn't suit me and my style of thinking and programming.
I guess it isn't all that clear in my first post, but I don't believe that Python has captured this One True Solution. I'm just saying that to me, it feels like this is what it *tries* to achieve. It's a noble goal, and python does accomplish a fair bit in that respect but it certainly isn't anywhere near complete.
Python does have its place. I think python is better suited to the average programmer for the same problem space that most perl code lives in. I am a Perl guy through and through, but I guess that's why it hurts me so much when it is used so poorly. I think people can do less damage with Python.
Perl is a very powerful tool. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Perl, more than any other programming language I've ever used, directly reveals the mind of the programmer.
Most programmers have very messy minds and very poor discipline. Python neatly solves this problem by having the One True Solution approach. Perl embraces the risks of a TIMTOWTDI, and you often get line-noise (especially with too-cute neophyte "hackers" who figure that doing seventeen operations in one line is somehow a good thing), but in allowing this, Perl allows a few nuggets of utter glorious beauty to shine through.
Very few people can properly wield Perl in more than a one-off capacity. But those that can will make magic.
I think you're going too far with what the OS is all about.
The integrated OS concept is more about all the base utilities and such being all part of the release. Your bootscripts are xBSD bootscripts. Your/bin/foo is xBSD's/bin/foo. Your kernel is the xBSD version kernel. The core system is a fully-functioning ready-to-go operating system.
This contrasts with Linux because Linux is just the kernel. You build your own ls, your own tar, your own bootscripts, your own login systems and password checkers, etc.
The ports tree is above and beyond all of that. Any properly (for my particular version of "properly") configured production FreeBSD server will definitely NOT contain the ports tree, for example. It will have the base FreeBSD operating system plus exactly the installed packages that it requires to do its job properly. Nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah it's an interesting question. Reading through their twitter etc. they claim they did actually transmit all keys for decoding their transmissions, and the transaction was "demonstration" and "experimental" rather than an actual commercial transaction (whatever that means). So I suppose they are attempting to follow the *spirit* of the laws as best they can while still conducting the proof-of-concept experiment. Whether the folks at ISEC and FCC would agree or not is another question, but I doubt anyone will even notice.
Really the only thing that makes this at all questionable is the fact that they're sending bitcoin, which nominally has some value. If they're transmitting the encryption keys and the protocol is also not secret, they're likely in the clear on the "codes" part of it.
Anyway I think it's a worthwhile experiment, and seems to be exactly the sort of thing the amateur bands should be used for, bitcoin transaction notwithstanding. Now.... should this actually become an actual transaction system, it would obviously have to move off to some other non-amateur band.
Y'all are missing out on a good time.
I have a gmail account with the first name dot last name set up. As you can imagine I get quite a few messages for people who forget to tell their friends about their middle initial. However from context, I can often tell which of my name-sharing buddies the email was intended for. Over the years I have actually gotten to know a couple of them, which is fun.
I don't bother trying to tell the senders about the mistakes, they usually do nothing, oddly. The recipient, however, tends to get on it effectively.
It's quite interesting do talk to them. What's in a name?
Actually, I'll take that back about the emphasis bit. Boswell pretty well nails it right on the head. Now I'm looking through some of his other articles, and they're excellent.
Well, ok. Though there's not much more that I could have written in that short of a space that can teach the subject.
I linked the Calgary Herald / Postmedia News article because it's an astonishingly well-written bit of science journalism that lays it all out superbly – kudos to Randy Boswell. He didn't put *exactly* the same emphasis on exactly the same things that Proemse (the principal author) would have, but it's minor. That's the "public" piece, and it's full of tons of great information.
I also linked the official research article. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall. However, if that's the kind of thing that really turns your crank you probably already have access to it one way or another (in the worst case: via a physical trip to your local university). If you can't, well, correspondence with an author is a time-honored method for obtaining your own copy.
Nah, he's not wrong. But neither are you.
Seismic processing is about as embarrassingly parallel as it comes. Just about every processing step can be split up into e.g. single shot record steps, taking advantage of assumed linearity in wave equations. Furthermore, most production industrial imaging codes weren't actually using my original example of a full finite difference solution until quite recently, and instead they were using algorithms that have been developed for decades under the limitations of very old computers. Sure, some of the big shops have full blown "proper" HPC, shared-ram setups, etc. However, it's common to see much more simplistic parallelization with very ad-hoc clusters being used.
In short, there are loads of processing shops that run off-the-shelf servers on gigabit ethernet, and they do a good business with it. Heck, there are loads of processing shops out there that do a good business running relatively crude time migrations.
Seismic imaging. Imagine solving a wave equation (acoustic, elastic, or worse) over a 3D grid many kilometers on a side with grid spacing on the order of meters. Imagine you're doing it with a strong high-order finite-difference code. Calculate for tens of thousands of timesteps. Now repeat that entire thing thousands of times for a given full survey.
No matter how much computer you have, it's never nearly enough for seismic imaging.
No, the public won't see these results as a rule, at least not right away (while it's still commercially valuable to protect as a secret), though strictly speaking it depends on the countries involved. Nor would it matter for property value, as the "land owners" usually don't own the mineral rights in most places. Furthermore, this setup will be used probably mostly for marine/offshore seismic imaging, ie not much land involved.
Thanks!
It's sort of amazing that this site has consistently been my browser home page for sooooo many years.
I was at that conference I think (U of C, CUPC?) and I saw the same videos. I also believe they were the same thing. Maybe they've been recreated with more precision or something? I hope so.
It's a balance. This isn't going to be secret forever, only for a short period of time (I guess a month in this case).
This whole deal is a self-regulated thing. There is a publication ban, but as it has been said before, it's not a closed court. People *can* get in there and see what's going on. If something particularly heinous happens, I rest assured that it will surface to the general public, publication ban or not.
As I mentioned early, it's entirely an honour-system thing. Nothing would stop someone from publishing something truly scandalous anonymously and thus avoiding any repercussions at a later date.
Sure, ok, maybe I wrote too quickly. It's a form of censorship then.
Yes, a publication ban on an event open to the public. Not quaint, but rather an indication of the vast differences between Canada and the US.
Here in Canada, a fair amount of the law relies on common sense and good will. The intent of these publication bans is to ensure the accused gets a fair trial. This is essentially the judge saying to the press, "Look, if the whole world hears this testimony before the trial gets fully underway and everything can be put into a proper context, it will be really hard to get a reasonably impartial jury so this person gets a fair trial." They know very well that it's impossible to guarantee it won't come out, but Canadian journalists typically respect it.
What's more important? Having one newspaper scoop another in an attempt to splash the headlines with more sensationalism? Or having an accused person get a fair trial?
Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do). Sometimes conflicting rights have to be balanced, and most Canadians that I know feel that, in this case, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial outweigh the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately.
The "Argument Against" 1. Replication point rings quite true with me, I must admit. In my field (PDEs) I write a lot of code based on papers I read. The papers, however, rarely contain more than an armwaving description of the algorithm used, along with some mathematical theory signposting the highlights. I end up having to start with the theory and, using the armwaving concepts as a guide, I nearly rederive the entire algorithm. I do not ever ask to see source code from the authors.
When I run my code and see exactly the same things as the authors describe in the publication, I feel a lot better about the results than if I had just taken theirs and used it.
Yes, and another benefit of Go: it can be muuuuch cheaper than some of those hideously expensive board games. Check it out.
Speaking of cheap, my other recommendation is for cheap-ass games. You can buy about half a dozen of these games for the price of a single "normal" game. In my experience, we get about as much fun out of one cheap-ass game as we do out of a regular game. So that's six times the total fun! Heck of a deal.
My current favourites: Unexploded Cow and Kill Dr. Lucky. Maybe the C-A games are not six-hour hyper-political intrigue marathons, but they sure are fun.
Yep, this sounds like a similar experience to mine. I returned to grad school after four years of working. I was the slightest bit slower at the very start. However, I also found that I picked the stuff up FAR quicker than most of the fresh grads simply because I had a few years to fully digest and really *understand* it all.
I definitely felt that my undergrad was a bit of a whirlwind. Now that I'm in grad school, however, all the undergrad stuff seems very trivial. I think it's a few years of unconscious digestion of the ideas, plus a bit of wisdom coming in.
About applying: I applied "normally" for one grad program but I was rejected. Then I decided to approach from a different angle. I started talking to professors in my chosen field. I volunteered my services for a brief period (a few weeks) for a small project one of them had. I was totally upfront about my expectations: I was hoping we could work together for a while and I could learn a bit about the department and how it works. I also wanted a good reference letter and possibly some help getting into grad school -- assuming of course that we both get along and work well together etc.
The professor and I got along very well. Not only did he keep me on for the period and offer to write me a great letter, but he also employed me over the summer, and offered to be my graduate supervisor. I don't know if this is universally true, but in my department it seems that if a professor really wants you to be his/her grad student, then you *will* be accepted as long as you meet minimum standards (or can give them a really strong reason to let you in anyhow).
I'm in grad school working on mathematical physics. I read all kinds of popular math and physics books -- like this one, or the Feynman books, or the Erdos book from a few years back, and pretty much anything else. I would be very happy to get this book for Christmas. I'd much rather get this than, say, another textbook on pseudodifferential operators.
It's not about the *math* or the *physics* in the books, it's about the stories behind the people. Sure, Feynman's path integrals play a key role in my research, but I'm far more interested in reading about him playing bongo drums and picking locks during the Manhattan Project. The same thing goes for the rest of the math and physics books I read. Some of the rock-star mathematicians and physicists in history have had pretty interesting lives.
On the other hand, I don't bother reading or recommending "A Brief History of Time", which really is a "Physics for Dummies" book.
If you truly *need* to do it, you will find a way. I'm still relatively young and single, so it's not too hard for me. In my research consortium, however, there is a great variety of grad students. In addition to a few younger/single people like me, we have a single mom, a dad with a stay-home mom and children (4 years and 6 years), a dad with a new baby, a retired grandfather, a mom with a working husband and teenaged kids, and lots more.
It is never "impossible" to complete grad school -- that's just an excuse. If you are driven to do it, you will find a way. If, however, you don't want to be there, and you're just there for the prestige or the opportunity, you're in the wrong place (at least in the fields that I know, which typically revolve around hard science). I'm doing mathematical physics, and I certainly was not mentally prepared to do it immediately after my undergrad degree. The few around me who came to straight to grad school because they had nothing better to do or they wanted a higher paying job are all, to a person, very unhappy. Those of us who sacrificed a lot (in my case, high paying work) are enjoying it immensely nonetheless. Is it hard to live on a grad student's meagre pay? Yeah. But I survive, and I wouldn't change anything.
This may not apply to "other" graduate programs, I really don't know.
I disagree with the "do it now" statement. Do it when you feel like you *need* to do it, and at no other time.
By the sounds of the original poster's question, I would definitely encourage him/her to NOT go into grad school. If you're not sure that you want to go, then you -don't- want to go, period. Grad school is a huge commitment and a lot of work. If you know deep in your heart that it's where you belong and it's what you have to be doing, you can survive and even enjoy it and feel good about it. Otherwise, it's a major drag and you hate every minute of it.
I'm a grad student right now, and I'm *loving* every (atrociously difficult, mind-bending) minute of it. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's worth it. A couple of my friends are here for the career benefit they perceive, not because they truly want to do it. They are miserable, depressed, and they can't wait to just get out of here.
Do not go now just because you think you will never have the chance again and you don't want to miss it. Wait. If there comes a time in your life when you feel driven to go to grad school, THEN do it and forget all the naysayers. If it never comes, then don't look back.
Funny enough, a good two thirds of my fellow grad students are returning to school after anywhere from 2 to 10 to 30 years of working. Most of us are here for the love of it. A few have returned for career boosts, and they're the most miserable.
No, the hammer is still not appalling. The person who chooses to use that hammer is wrong, not the hammer. I still maintain that languages cannot be inherently good or bad, just as any other "thing" cannot be good or bad. It's up to the person making decisions to choose wisely.
Blaming the programmer is the ONLY thing that makes sense! Well, perhaps the programmer and those who make decisions on the programmer's behalf eg. a manager deciding that all programming will be done in brainfuck. Anyone who chooses this language for anything other than an academic exercise should/WILL be shot.
Programmers must take full 100% responsibility for the quality of their own code. I suppose underneath it all, this is what I'm driving at. People who throw up their hands and say "What can I do? I'm programming in [whatever] language!" are weak. Either don't program in that language, or do it right. And if the language is forced upon you, then you'd better figure out how to do it right.
Quite often, programmers don't really get the choice of a language. This is why I feel so strongly about it -- good programmers will be able to adapt to a new language and write good code in it no matter what. For any "real" language (ie not brainfuck) this is possible.
Perl is not an appalling language.... Most programmers are appalling programmers. Languages in themselves have no quality of goodness or badness. They are just tools. Is a hammer an appalling tool?
Perl allows the programmer the freedom to write code just as his/her mind works. Most programmers have very messy minds, and are more interested in looking "slick" and in getting the job done -fast- than in writing good code and in getting the job done -right-.
Most people cannot handle the freedom and power that Perl allows, because, as we all know, "With great power comes great responsibility." Uncle Ben knew a thing or two.
Most people should avoid Perl. If you are afraid of it, you should not go anywhere near it. I don't think Perl should be used for large "industrial" projects, simply because (as I said before) most programmers are bad programmers. Really good perl code is, for many things, some of the best code I've ever seen. Really bad perl code is easily the worst I've ever seen. There is more bad perl than good perl.
Heh. Yeah, that's why I don't write much Python. I feel very trapped when I write Python, because to me at least it really does have a strong "nobody gets hurt" bias to it. It's like I'm programming with training wheels.
Don't get me wrong, I really admire Python. It just doesn't suit me and my style of thinking and programming.
I guess it isn't all that clear in my first post, but I don't believe that Python has captured this One True Solution. I'm just saying that to me, it feels like this is what it *tries* to achieve. It's a noble goal, and python does accomplish a fair bit in that respect but it certainly isn't anywhere near complete.
Python does have its place. I think python is better suited to the average programmer for the same problem space that most perl code lives in. I am a Perl guy through and through, but I guess that's why it hurts me so much when it is used so poorly. I think people can do less damage with Python.
The right tool for the right job, as always.
Perl is a very powerful tool. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Perl, more than any other programming language I've ever used, directly reveals the mind of the programmer.
Most programmers have very messy minds and very poor discipline. Python neatly solves this problem by having the One True Solution approach. Perl embraces the risks of a TIMTOWTDI, and you often get line-noise (especially with too-cute neophyte "hackers" who figure that doing seventeen operations in one line is somehow a good thing), but in allowing this, Perl allows a few nuggets of utter glorious beauty to shine through.
Very few people can properly wield Perl in more than a one-off capacity. But those that can will make magic.
I think you're going too far with what the OS is all about.
/bin/foo is xBSD's /bin/foo. Your kernel is the xBSD version kernel. The core system is a fully-functioning ready-to-go operating system.
The integrated OS concept is more about all the base utilities and such being all part of the release. Your bootscripts are xBSD bootscripts. Your
This contrasts with Linux because Linux is just the kernel. You build your own ls, your own tar, your own bootscripts, your own login systems and password checkers, etc.
The ports tree is above and beyond all of that. Any properly (for my particular version of "properly") configured production FreeBSD server will definitely NOT contain the ports tree, for example. It will have the base FreeBSD operating system plus exactly the installed packages that it requires to do its job properly. Nothing more.
NICE! Man, when did they do that? After I made mine, I guess. I never bothered to check if they had them after I set mine up.
That was quite a while ago, now that I think about it.
Those fine folks who subscribe to my arXiv.org RSS feeds probably have already read the full paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0406045
My RSS feeds can be found at:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~cmhogan/arXivRDF/