Actually, I prefer to run FreeBSD on laptops, for one reason: USB support - the multitude of hot-swappable USB devices can make laptop life much easier.
Unlike x86 linux, FreeBSD has good USB support, including USB mice, printers, USB to parallel adapters, digital camera conduits, zip drives, ethernet dongles, and keyboards
It used to be that many people chose Linux over FreeBSD on intel boxen because Linux had support for a wider range of hardware. It seems to me that FreeBSD is rapidly catching up in most areas, and has surpassed linux in a few. Perhaps FreeBSD hasmore low-level hardware hackers these days?
To be honest, I use the second form more often, and have been known to use it in production code to catch and print exceptions I may not predict without halting the program.
This problem seems to me to not be an issue with "invisible indentation problems" - you could see the problem quite clearly.
If you ever want more help/advise, you can email me directly or send a message to comp.lang.python - I have found this group to be VERY friendly to newbies.
Unlike certain whitespace-sensitive syntaxes (Makefiles), python interprets tabs as being equivalent to 8 spaces, which is how most editors (in default configuration) show them. If the lines look lined up, they are lined up.
True, you can configure any decent editor to show tabs as 4, 2, 12, or seventeen spaces. Personally, I like an indentation level of four spaces. With vim this means I set softtabstop=4. Tabs still show up as 8 spaces (as G--d- intended), but each time I whack the tab key I get four spaces.
I have been watching the python mailing list (gated from comp.lang.python) for a while and code in Python professionally. I have never seen anybody come to the newsgroup with a problem in their code caused by invisible indentation problems, and have never seen it in the code I work with,
I have seen several flame wars in this issue, but have yet to see any evidence that it is a problem in practice.
def foo(thingy):
for attr in ['foo', 'bar']: # raise an Attribute error if these # attributes are not found getattr(thingy, attr) if test_conditions: setVariables() else: raise ValueError, 'Invalid Variables'
1. vim 2. WindowMaker 3. MIT/X11 4. Python 5. FreeBSD 6. GNU/Linux 7. Big-endian 8. Buy 9. Boxers 10. All of the above 11. Doesn't matter 12. Both 13. Tastes like crap, too filling 14. MAybe Mr. Owl knows... 15. Lex 16. Shaken 18. no 19. Neither 20. (thump) Pedestian. Two points 21. Dr. Suess 22. keyboard 23. Deathmatch 24. IMAP 25. Hex 26. Shut up you stupid twit. 27. Doesn't matter, as long as it's -1
I think that the artist sueing are looking at mp3s the wrong way. mp3 is more akin to radio than CD.
Do people who listen to mp3s buy less CDs? I have yet to see any studies that say so. If anything, my music-related spending habits have increased since I became interested in mp3.
mp3 is a cheap, effective way to share music in a medium-quality format. They have three major uses for me
I can listen to my music at work without bringing my CDs with me - instead I simply log in to my home machine via ftp and get the songs I want. THis is just for my convenience, nobody looses any money (unless the RIAA claims I should buy a second copy of the CD for at work - something I wouldn't put past them).
Access to things never released on CD - I find most of the mp3s I download fit in this category. Since nobody is offering to sell this to me, nobody is loosing my money.
When I consider buying a CD, I download most of the tracks off of it to try out. Admitted, this is legally questionable, but it is very useful (and much more comfortable to me than "listening stations" at the store). To me, this is the role of mp3 that parallells radio: avertising/try-before-you-buy. True, based on this test I have avoided becoming a dissatisfied customer a few times (maybe some crapy bands lost out), but overall I think I have bought more CDs than I have otherwise.
This lawyer (Howard King) seems to have convinced Metallica and Dr. Dre that people are exchanging mp3s to get free musing and avoiding the purchase of CDs. He may even believe this himself. I have yet to see any study either way, but my life experience indicates that this is definitely not the case. The only people who lost out in the above scenarios are musicians whse work I considered, but did not find worth the money.
For the most part, the only changes will be enhancements to the standard library. There are a few major changes that have been discussed on the list:
Strings now have methods. This brings most of the functions from the string library (split, join, istitle, upper, lower, find, index, etc.) into the core language. The old string library is still exists, this just provides a new way for accessing the same functionality.
An undocumented holdover from the early days of python is being cleared up. Once upon a time, if a function expected one argument and you passed it multiple arguments, the function would recieve those arguments in a tuple. For example:
l = ['a', 'b', 'c']
l.append('d', 'e')
would be equivalent to
l = ['a', 'b', 'c']
l.append(('d', 'e'))
(the latter is the correct form). This was changed a while ago (Python 1.4?) and the documentation has not desribed this feature for a long time. Some methods, however (such as list.append or socket.connect) still allowed the old usage, even though it was undocumented (the above example with list.append is currently allowed, even though it does not write to the documented API.
This does break some code of people who failed to write to the documented interface. The one problem that seems to be causing the most complaints on comp.lang.python is the fact that
import socket
HOST, PORT = 'www.slashdot.org', 80 s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) s.connect(HOST, PORT)
is, and long has been, illigal. The correct usage is
import socket
HOST, PORT = 'www.slashdot.org', 80 s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) s.connect((HOST, PORT))
I never claimed that ASP is all about VB, or even that all VB programmers are on the level of trained monkeys. It is possible to do serious work with ASP, and I am sure some people do this. However, this is the norm, not the rule.
Most ASP development is done by cheap, marginally skilled VBScript developers glueing together technology that is beyond their true comperehension. It is possible for a skilled programmer to use VB as one of the tools in his toolbox, but such a programmer would be very exceptional in the VB crowd.
The main facts of my original statement remain.
The average ASP developer is significantly cheaper thn the average developer for most other web development technologies.
Regardless of other merits of various web technologies, this difference alone is enough to make the price taq of something like Chili!ASP insignificant.
I said nothing in my original post about, and I do not personally believe that, MS technologies are inferior to all linux has to offer.
I never even claimed that all linux options are superior to ASP. I did mention Zope, but that is not a linux-only technology (Zope works on windows just fine). You shouldn't be so quick to make harsh accusations and call names, unless your purpose was to troll (I choose to assume you aren't a troll, just unbelievably thin-skinned, self-rightous, immature, and paranoid enough to invent attacks that I never made.)
If you had actually read as far as my sig, you would have noticed that VB developers aren't the only ones I piss off.
IIS may be popular, but GUI based configuration should be an option, not the sole choice.
The Apache/CGI/PHP platform may not appeal to business folks, but it does appeal to techies and sysadmins who love it's simple text based structure. Encapsulation of business logic in text files, easily accessible by ASP/Perl/Python/tcl/C/C++/Java/Pascal/PHP/Pike/Obj ective C/Javascript, turns them on. This is where IIS/ASP really drags the rear.
When I worked for ChiliSoft (just an internship in QA) I spent a lot of time thinking about this.
Chili!Soft's primary target has been corporations who want to use VB/VBScript monkeys to churn out pages, then serve up set pages on rock-solid unix servers. The cost difference between good developers that know things like PHP, Perl, or Python and dime-a-dozen VB junkies is enough to make the cost of Chili!ASP negligable.
Chili!Soft is not claiming that ASP is the best technology, they only recognize that
VB developers are dirt-cheap
and
people have good reasons for not wanting to run MS Servers in production.
Would I buy Chili!ASP for a home machine? No. Would I choose to use Chili!ASP if I was starting a web project from scratch? No - I would probably use zope. Would I encourage a company with web aps in ASP (or a large exisiting VB team) to switch from Windows+IIS to *nix+Apache+Chili!ASP? Definitely!
He has done some good movies, but only by branching out from the comedies. Bicentenial man was good, but my absolute favorite of his movies was What Dreams May Come. Don't assume that crap like Mrs. Doubtfire or Jumanji are all that he is capable of.
I may get tired of him as a comedian, but at least he's better than Jim Carrey.
You are almost right about Delphi. Delphi is not a language. Delphi is an IDE for Object Pascal, Borland's mutilated child of Pascal. There are open-source Pascal environments that support many of Delphi's features.
GNU pascal starts from a POSIX standard pascal base and tacks on some OO features from Borland Pascal, the ancestor of Object Pascal.
free pascal aims to be a replacement for Object Pascal, supporting exceptions, Objects, ansistrings, etc. When I have had to use Delphi at work, I have often used FreePascal at home to hammer out the algorithm. Delphi is a nice tool for slapping together a UI, but it really gets in the way for designing deeply involved programs.
Mozilla looks VERY nice on win32 (I'm at work right now). The dailybuilds have been getting MUCh fatser, and that debug window has finally been hidden.
I really like the looks of that Mozilla splash screen. Anybody know where I can get that image (aside from taking a screen shot when moz is starting)?
You are correct. Web pages with ActiveX controls are precisely as (in)secure as any software package installed on your computer.
I do not trust the average software package (even one listed on freshmeat.net) enough to istall it without checking up on it first. I do NOT want this done for me just because I visit a website.
To somebody with a Unixish point of view, allowing webpages to automatically install and run undocumented software on a machine which you are running in single user mode feels like a game of Russian Roulette.
Of course, most windows users are used to this kind of thing.
If a library does not buy a copy of Brave New World, then you cannot check it out. The library is under no obligation to buy PlayBoy either and put it on the magazine rack./
This is technically correct, but a very backwards way of looking at it. The library has no obligation NOT to buy brave new world just because it might offend some people inthe community. Libraries usualy carry much material that would be considered "smut" or "subversive" by many people in the community.
Libraries usually decide that they DO have an obligation to their clients to carry Playboy simply because some of their clients will want to read it. True, in the vast majority of libraries Playboy and similar materials are kept under controls difficult to paralell with web access. But by this (slippery) analogy it becomes obvious that the library has an obligation to provide access to ALL internet content. Be careful with crappy analogies, they WILL bite you.
The core issue seems to be the liability of allowing children near un uncensored internet. Anti-censorchip people CANNOT win this without offering a viable alternative; the urge to "protect the children" yuns too deep (for example, look at the restrictions on tobacco advertising (free speech) near schools in most states.
Here's my suggestion. Feel free to poke at all the flaws. Computer access should require a login (perhaps by swiping a library card). Whenever somebody who is underage (already treated as a quasi-citizen under law) wants to obtain a library card, they will need a signed consent form from their parents. This form, like the "permission slips" schools have been using for decades, would explicitly state that the library's internet access is uncensored and the library refuses all liability for online content. This consent form would also allow the parent/guardien to choose for their chils
Unberdened access - full unmonitered access to the computers and any information accessable thereby.
Monitored access - web access logs will be kept in the system, to be accessed by the parents as desired (perhaps by logging in at the library, perhaps mailed to the parents).
Access denied - the youth would be unable to log in to network-connected computers with this card.
Check out LyX - basically a WYSIWYM GUI front end for LaTeX. Once you wrap your mind around a few powerful concepts, it is MUCH easier to use than Word.
From the Lyx.org page:
LyX is an advanced open source document processor running on many Unix platforms. It is called a "document processor", because unlike standard word processors, LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. LyX automates formatting according to predefined rule sets, yielding consistency throughout even the most complex documents. LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an open source, industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background.
If you can't tell yet, I like LyX. Powerful, open-source, and easy to use. What more do you want?
I'm sorry I suggested you might be trolling (on the other hand, I'm glad I posted instead of vaugely moderating.
I misparsed your statement I'm missing IE and Outlook Express to mean that you expected IE and Outlook Express to be included with RedHat linux. Given the tone and content of the rest of your message (and the other messages claimed by you), I should not have made this mistake.
I agree, Outlook and IE are much better than NS. At work, IE is my second browser (after Mozilla, of course). IE5 is definitely superior to the Netscape 4.x series.
I'm sorry to hear that you had problems with the LILO prompt coming up. When I was setting up my machine with NT and linux, I didn;t have that problem (then again, no ez-drive). The only times I've had trouble with the LILO prompt is when I used partition magik to move my boot partition, then rebooted. Glad I had my rescue disk!
Again, sorry about the troll comment. Completely my fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I've been spoiled by VHLLs (Haskell, Python, Java, etc.), but I don't understand your last question.
Why do you need forward declarations to define recursive data structures?
Just define an object (call it a Node, if you want), that has two properties, left and right. Each of these properties is a (reference to a) node.
On laptops and such it makes sense to run Linux;
Actually, I prefer to run FreeBSD on laptops, for one reason: USB support - the multitude of hot-swappable USB devices can make laptop life much easier.
Unlike x86 linux, FreeBSD has good USB support, including USB mice, printers, USB to parallel adapters, digital camera conduits, zip drives, ethernet dongles, and keyboards
It used to be that many people chose Linux over FreeBSD on intel boxen because Linux had support for a wider range of hardware. It seems to me that FreeBSD is rapidly catching up in most areas, and has surpassed linux in a few. Perhaps FreeBSD hasmore low-level hardware hackers these days?
Probably the easiest way to "turn the exception handling off" for this kind of thing is to only catch a kind of exception that will never be thrown.
For example:
Another alternative is to just catch the exception, and print out what it is:
To be honest, I use the second form more often, and have been known to use it in production code to catch and print exceptions I may not predict without halting the program.
This problem seems to me to not be an issue with "invisible indentation problems" - you could see the problem quite clearly.
If you ever want more help/advise, you can email me directly or send a message to comp.lang.python - I have found this group to be VERY friendly to newbies.
Unlike certain whitespace-sensitive syntaxes (Makefiles), python interprets tabs as being equivalent to 8 spaces, which is how most editors (in default configuration) show them. If the lines look lined up, they are lined up.
True, you can configure any decent editor to show tabs as 4, 2, 12, or seventeen spaces. Personally, I like an indentation level of four spaces. With vim this means I set softtabstop=4. Tabs still show up as 8 spaces (as G--d- intended), but each time I whack the tab key I get four spaces.
I have been watching the python mailing list (gated from comp.lang.python) for a while and code in Python professionally. I have never seen anybody come to the newsgroup with a problem in their code caused by invisible indentation problems, and have never seen it in the code I work with,
I have seen several flame wars in this issue, but have yet to see any evidence that it is a problem in practice.
How much cleaner with python? This much cleaner:
Well-written perl is very rare, and an uphill battle to write. Still, there's nothing better for text processing.
Why do you say that Perl's object model is stronger than Python's?
1. vim
2. WindowMaker
3. MIT/X11
4. Python
5. FreeBSD
6. GNU/Linux
7. Big-endian
8. Buy
9. Boxers
10. All of the above
11. Doesn't matter
12. Both
13. Tastes like crap, too filling
14. MAybe Mr. Owl knows...
15. Lex
16. Shaken
18. no
19. Neither
20. (thump) Pedestian. Two points
21. Dr. Suess
22. keyboard
23. Deathmatch
24. IMAP
25. Hex
26. Shut up you stupid twit.
27. Doesn't matter, as long as it's -1
I think that the artist sueing are looking at mp3s the wrong way. mp3 is more akin to radio than CD.
Do people who listen to mp3s buy less CDs? I have yet to see any studies that say so. If anything, my music-related spending habits have increased since I became interested in mp3.
mp3 is a cheap, effective way to share music in a medium-quality format. They have three major uses for me
This lawyer (Howard King) seems to have convinced Metallica and Dr. Dre that people are exchanging mp3s to get free musing and avoiding the purchase of CDs. He may even believe this himself. I have yet to see any study either way, but my life experience indicates that this is definitely not the case. The only people who lost out in the above scenarios are musicians whse work I considered, but did not find worth the money.
For the most part, the only changes will be enhancements to the standard library. There are a few major changes that have been discussed on the list:
This does break some code of people who failed to write to the documented interface. The one problem that seems to be causing the most complaints on comp.lang.python is the fact that
is, and long has been, illigal. The correct usage isI never claimed that ASP is all about VB, or even that all VB programmers are on the level of trained monkeys. It is possible to do serious work with ASP, and I am sure some people do this. However, this is the norm, not the rule.
Most ASP development is done by cheap, marginally skilled VBScript developers glueing together technology that is beyond their true comperehension. It is possible for a skilled programmer to use VB as one of the tools in his toolbox, but such a programmer would be very exceptional in the VB crowd.
The main facts of my original statement remain.
I said nothing in my original post about, and I do not personally believe that, MS technologies are inferior to all linux has to offer.
I never even claimed that all linux options are superior to ASP. I did mention Zope, but that is not a linux-only technology (Zope works on windows just fine). You shouldn't be so quick to make harsh accusations and call names, unless your purpose was to troll (I choose to assume you aren't a troll, just unbelievably thin-skinned, self-rightous, immature, and paranoid enough to invent attacks that I never made.)
If you had actually read as far as my sig, you would have noticed that VB developers aren't the only ones I piss off.
IIS may be popular, but GUI based configuration should be an option, not the sole choice.
The Apache/CGI/PHP platform may not appeal to business folks, but it does appeal to techies and sysadmins who love it's simple text based structure. Encapsulation of business logic in text files, easily accessible by ASP/Perl/Python/tcl/C/C++/Java/Pascal/PHP/Pike/Obj ective C/Javascript, turns them on. This is where IIS/ASP really drags the rear.
Chili!ASP has been on unix systems for a while. Solaris and AIX were first, back in 98./p?
When I worked for ChiliSoft (just an internship in QA) I spent a lot of time thinking about this.
Chili!Soft's primary target has been corporations who want to use VB/VBScript monkeys to churn out pages, then serve up set pages on rock-solid unix servers. The cost difference between good developers that know things like PHP, Perl, or Python and dime-a-dozen VB junkies is enough to make the cost of Chili!ASP negligable.
Chili!Soft is not claiming that ASP is the best technology, they only recognize that
Would I buy Chili!ASP for a home machine? No. Would I choose to use Chili!ASP if I was starting a web project from scratch? No - I would probably use zope. Would I encourage a company with web aps in ASP (or a large exisiting VB team) to switch from Windows+IIS to *nix+Apache+Chili!ASP? Definitely!
He has done some good movies, but only by branching out from the comedies. Bicentenial man was good, but my absolute favorite of his movies was What Dreams May Come. Don't assume that crap like Mrs. Doubtfire or Jumanji are all that he is capable of.
I may get tired of him as a comedian, but at least he's better than Jim Carrey.
You are almost right about Delphi. Delphi is not a language. Delphi is an IDE for Object Pascal, Borland's mutilated child of Pascal. There are open-source Pascal environments that support many of Delphi's features.
GNU pascal starts from a POSIX standard pascal base and tacks on some OO features from Borland Pascal, the ancestor of Object Pascal.
free pascal aims to be a replacement for Object Pascal, supporting exceptions, Objects, ansistrings, etc. When I have had to use Delphi at work, I have often used FreePascal at home to hammer out the algorithm. Delphi is a nice tool for slapping together a UI, but it really gets in the way for designing deeply involved programs.
No, but that is an interesting link. I was able t find it in the mozilla source. I put up a jpg version here
Mozilla looks VERY nice on win32 (I'm at work right now). The dailybuilds have been getting MUCh fatser, and that debug window has finally been hidden.
I really like the looks of that Mozilla splash screen. Anybody know where I can get that image (aside from taking a screen shot when moz is starting)?
You are correct. Web pages with ActiveX controls are precisely as (in)secure as any software package installed on your computer.
I do not trust the average software package (even one listed on freshmeat.net) enough to istall it without checking up on it first. I do NOT want this done for me just because I visit a website.
To somebody with a Unixish point of view, allowing webpages to automatically install and run undocumented software on a machine which you are running in single user mode feels like a game of Russian Roulette.
Of course, most windows users are used to this kind of thing.
I am enough of a masochist that I *enjoy* watching my program malfunction because I indented a line incorrectly
I don't see that this is any more painful than watching your program malfuction because you forgot an end-brace.
In all honesty, I had completely forgotten about the "shop" button. A peek at my .Xdefaults:
This is not a 100% solution because of government employees who run porn and mp3 sites but it is much more effective than blocking software.
If a library does not buy a copy of Brave New World, then you cannot check it out. The library is under no obligation to buy PlayBoy either and put it on the magazine rack./
This is technically correct, but a very backwards way of looking at it. The library has no obligation NOT to buy brave new world just because it might offend some people inthe community. Libraries usualy carry much material that would be considered "smut" or "subversive" by many people in the community.
Libraries usually decide that they DO have an obligation to their clients to carry Playboy simply because some of their clients will want to read it. True, in the vast majority of libraries Playboy and similar materials are kept under controls difficult to paralell with web access. But by this (slippery) analogy it becomes obvious that the library has an obligation to provide access to ALL internet content. Be careful with crappy analogies, they WILL bite you.
The core issue seems to be the liability of allowing children near un uncensored internet. Anti-censorchip people CANNOT win this without offering a viable alternative; the urge to "protect the children" yuns too deep (for example, look at the restrictions on tobacco advertising (free speech) near schools in most states.
Here's my suggestion. Feel free to poke at all the flaws. Computer access should require a login (perhaps by swiping a library card). Whenever somebody who is underage (already treated as a quasi-citizen under law) wants to obtain a library card, they will need a signed consent form from their parents. This form, like the "permission slips" schools have been using for decades, would explicitly state that the library's internet access is uncensored and the library refuses all liability for online content. This consent form would also allow the parent/guardien to choose for their chils
- Unberdened access - full unmonitered access to the computers and any information accessable thereby.
- Monitored access - web access logs will be kept in the system, to be accessed by the parents as desired (perhaps by logging in at the library, perhaps mailed to the parents).
- Access denied - the youth would be unable to log in to network-connected computers with this card.
How many problems can you find with this scheme?Check out LyX - basically a WYSIWYM GUI front end for LaTeX. Once you wrap your mind around a few powerful concepts, it is MUCH easier to use than Word.
From the Lyx.org page:
If you can't tell yet, I like LyX. Powerful, open-source, and easy to use. What more do you want?
I still say we need a (-1, Pedantic) moderation option.
I'm sorry I suggested you might be trolling (on the other hand, I'm glad I posted instead of vaugely moderating.
I misparsed your statement I'm missing IE and Outlook Express to mean that you expected IE and Outlook Express to be included with RedHat linux. Given the tone and content of the rest of your message (and the other messages claimed by you), I should not have made this mistake.
I agree, Outlook and IE are much better than NS. At work, IE is my second browser (after Mozilla, of course). IE5 is definitely superior to the Netscape 4.x series.
I'm sorry to hear that you had problems with the LILO prompt coming up. When I was setting up my machine with NT and linux, I didn;t have that problem (then again, no ez-drive). The only times I've had trouble with the LILO prompt is when I used partition magik to move my boot partition, then rebooted. Glad I had my rescue disk!
Again, sorry about the troll comment. Completely my fault.