Perlmonks is by far the best Perl resource. And in my opinion, it's one of the best of any programming site. For a similar site aimed at Java, try out JavaJunkies.
Uhm, yeah. A cross platform scripting language distributed under an open license? It's called Perl. And if you really want C like syntax, there's always Inline::C and CPR.
Seriously though, do we *really* need another scripting language? We've got perl, python, rebol, scheme, csh, bash, sh, ksh, [insert favorite scripting language here]...
I lived with very bad back pain for about a year. After 5 different doctors (who prescribed progressively stronger pain killers) I went to see a chiropractor. Prior to seeing one, my opinion of chiropractors was that they were about as legit as snake-oil salesmen. However, I'm now a believer. The chiropractor explained what was wrong, why it was wrong, and how he was going to fix it. Something 5 MD's had been unable or unwilling to do. He then proceeded to make good on his word and fix my back. I still see a chiropractor once a month to keep things healthy but the pain is gone. I recommend a good chiropractor and as many other slashdotters have recommended -- lots of exercise! Also, a good cervical style pillow and good mattress can go a long way towards relieving back pain.
Just what the heck is this kind of crap doing on the front page of a slashdot posting purporting to be "news"?
To quote the original story posting: "Anyway these are the films, ladies and gentlemen, the mass-murdering films and TV shows, that John Ashcroft will ban, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition. Anyone standing up for them will be tarred as defending mass murder"
That's a serious bit of opinionated horse-hockey, NOT news. Common' slashdot -- if you're going to pretend to be a news organization then at least try to act like it. Even the Clinton News Network isn't this biased. And would you all get off your soapbox long enough to realize that "ratings" != "censorship" Adult citizens still have a choice what they see/do/hear/read. No one is going to outlaw your smut, pR0n, mass-murder shoot-em-up games/movies/TV or anything else you cherish. And if you don't like what Congress is doing, then VOTE, write them, email them, call them, fax them, or grab a pair and run for Congress/Senate/state legislature/Governer/President/etc yourself! But please quit bitching and moaning!
Get over it folks. Nobody is telling *you* what you can and can't watch (unless you still live at home with mom and dad in which case you can suck it up for a few more years). This isn't about "lazy parents" or "mind control" as so many of you seem to think. The facts of life are that parents can't be around their kids 24/7. The vchip gives the parents *some* control over what their kids watch. IMHO, there's a lot of crap on TV and YES, parents SHOULD have a say over what their kids watch. It IS the responsibility of the PARENTS to pass on morals and values, not the GOVERNMENT. This just gives the parents one tool to help them do their job. The/. attitude that adults should have no control over their kids is disgusting. Any time censorship that affects kids comes up (e.g. video game ratings, vchip, school newspapers, etc. etc.) you all start whining. That leads me to believe that most of you are 1. not parents or 2. still kids or 3. all of the above.
Hmm... now we're posting stuff that's not even two months old... Here's an idea for a study: how does the "slashdot effect" change when we repost a story? How 'bout when we repost it three, four times? How does the "effect" vary with the Time Between Posts (TBP)? This would be an interesting study on the "collective memory" of an online community. Now, where can I find a bored grad student to thrust this on?
Get a grip folks. This is not a ban on free speech or anything else. This says that if you're under 18, you need your parents' permission. I think that is pretty reasonable. Like it or not, parents really should have a say in the upbringing of their kids. Too many parents don't give a damn and that is really sad. But those that do, shouldn't have their hands tied behind their back while the State raises their kids and decides what's good and what's bad. As soon as you turn 18, you can go out and do whateverthehell you want. No questions asked. Total and complete freedom to frag away. But if you're under 18 and living with Mom and Dad (or Mom or Dad or Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad or...you get the picture) your legal guardians (yep, their job is to guard and protect you the best way they see fit -- whether you like it or not) should have a say in what you can and can't do. I'm really sick of the "new slashdot liberalism" that says "Parent's have no rights and kids can do whatever the hell they want." Should a parent let an 8 year old drop out of school and smoke crack because he wants to? Should they let their 12 year old daughter give blow jobs to earn a little extra cash 'cause she thinks it's cool? You've got to draw the line somewhere. The USA is one of the most free societies in the world (I know, I've lived in some of the less free) and when you turn 18 you can do almost anything you want. (Of course, with a Libertarian president, we could do even more...). The good decent moral people of Indianapolis aren't trying to take away *your* freedom but they are defending the freedom of parents! Stop getting bent out of shape every time someone supports the rights of the parents. If you wanna watch pr0n and play Quake IX -- Battle of the Sexbots, then you can -- as soon as you turn 18!
You can view movies of the event taken by instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite here. These are pretty neat to see as you can see the actual coronal mass ejection (CME) as it shoots out from the sun. This is the largest such event of this solar cycle. Another great space weather resource is the NOAA site here.
Heh heh. ATI has an interesting history with benchmarks. I think it was '90 or '91 when ATI got in trouble because they hardcoded the routines for one of the popular Windows benchmarks into their firmware. When the benchmark ran, the card was able to execute highly optimized hardware routines and blew away the competition. SO, when ATI says their cards perform the best on the benchmarks...they might be right. Now real world performance is another story altogether. I do have to give their engineers "you've got balls!" points for that little stunt!
So many of the previous posts are about why this is a Bad Thing because it diverts talent away from other things, why replace something that works, yada yada yada. The same could have been said of Linus' work on linux instead of contributing to BSD, etc. etc. Why are people so hung on "investing in open source (no, I refuse to capitalize open source)" and sticking with something "because that's how we've always done it?"
Here's a company willing to throw money at open source development and they get blasted. Who cares what they do. Does it affect you? NO. It doesn't. You do your thing, let Software Carpentry do theirs. If you love make, then use it. If you don't, that doesn't mean you're dumb or stupid as previous posters seem to imply, it just means that you would like an alternative to "make." Common folks, let's put the FREEDOM back in FREE code.
The open source zealots (and slashdotters in particular) are, ironically, (moderator: that's my own damn observation, not flame bait) among the most UNFREE people in this world. You seem to like any idea as long it jives with what you already believe. Live and let live.
More open source s/w will NEVER be a Bad Thing. After all, it will only result in more FREE code and that means more FREEDOM.
I know most of you are anti-Microsoft, anti-Bill Gates, etc. But Bill G. and Paul Allen did have some good hacks in their day. For starters, getting IBM to sign on by telling them MS had an OS (when in fact, they didn't) and then turning around and buying DOS for $50K and subsequently turning that into a multi-billion company wasn't a half-bad hack. Of course, my favorite MS related hack is how Bill and Paul Allen wrote BASIC for the Altaire using only an emulator (that they had coded from the tech manual with no access to the hardware) and then selling it. According to lore, when Paul Allen was on the plane to New Mexico to demo the new Microsoft BASIC on the Altaire, he realized that since they'd never actually used an Altaire they had never written the tape-loader code to actually load the BASIC tape onto the machine. He wrote that on the plane and when he programmed it in on the actual machine, it worked! The rest, as they say, is history.
Why don't you meander back over to the RH booth and ask Bob Young when RH is going to buy SCO? SCOs market cap is *only* $411M which is much less than Cygnus was apparently worth. That would make Red Hat not only the largest linux distributor but the largest Unix distributor as well. I bet SCO leadership would stop bad mouthing linux then:)
This is not about "open standards." I wonder if Microsoft paid off ESR? This is about access to AOL's servers. The AIM protocol requires access to AOL's server's and anyone using an AIM client does so with the permission of AOL. Why on earth should AOL give free server cycles to Microsoft, a competitor? This has NOTHING to do with open source/standards and everything to do with Microsoft illegally using AOL's computers. If a script-kiddie broke into some bank's computers and illegally used their CPU time, they could and would be prosecuted. Why is Microsoft any different? ESR just went down several notches of respect.
There will surely be secondary offerings of RH stock which will increase the amount shares available to the public. Most of these tech offerings include a small IPO with more shares offered after the price has been driven up. $10x6 million shares is chump change in the internet crazed market. Such a small offering just drives up the price so the insiders at Red Hat can make more money later.
Regardless, even if M$ could only buy 10% of the stock - they would have a seat on the board and they could make life hell for Red Hat.
I think the open source/linux community needs to be very careful of what it means to be a "public" company. I think Linus, A.C. and all the other cool people that have poured their lives into linux deserve to get rich but it will come with a cost (to linux, open source, and freedom (as in speech)).
I can see the headlines now. "Microsoft launches hostile take over of Red Hat Software..." Let's see, 6 million shares, let's say that after a few weeks they settle at $30/share, that's a market capitalization of $180 million. Microsoft has $14 Billion in cash (from their FY98 Annual Report) and last year alone, they spent $2.5 Billion on R&D. I'd say a small $180 million "investment" in Linux R&D would fit nicely into the Microsoft budget.
I aggree! Longitude was a fun book. Definitely worth reading. It's a small book and a quick read but well worth it. I read the book right before going to visit the [REAL] Prime Meridian at Greenwhich and it really made me appreciate it all the more. Computing longitude is not as easy as one may think and if it weren't for some incredibly cool clock-maker hacks, it would have been impossible. John Harrison, who the book is about, was a genius clock maker. For example, in order to get his mechanical clocks to run consistently in different temperatures, he chose materials for the gears that would expand and contract in a complimentary manner. This way, he could keep the speed of the gears constant. This guy knew how to optimize!
I am one of Corel's biggest fans and I think that by refocusing their efforts away from Microsoft, they will have the best chance of providing a powerful office suite for linux. The biggest danger with the KDE/Gnome war is that developers of commercial products (which, IMHO, are necessary for linux to gain desktop marketshare) will use one or the other and users will get stuck with some apps on KDE and some that only run on Gnome. I hope that Red Hat can help the KDE/Gnome developer's standardize on an API/object model/whatever to make apps run on either desktop. Maybe something like wxwindows or some other high level wrapper. (just an idea, not an endorsement) I prefer Gnome to KDE but I will use whatever lets me be productive. I hope that my desktop choice is decided by personal prefs and not by what apps I can run!
Slashdot Mirror
Perlmonks is by far the best Perl resource. And in my opinion, it's one of the best of any programming site. For a similar site aimed at Java, try out JavaJunkies.
Seriously though, do we *really* need another scripting language? We've got perl, python, rebol, scheme, csh, bash, sh, ksh, [insert favorite scripting language here]...
I lived with very bad back pain for about a year. After 5 different doctors (who prescribed progressively stronger pain killers) I went to see a chiropractor. Prior to seeing one, my opinion of chiropractors was that they were about as legit as snake-oil salesmen. However, I'm now a believer. The chiropractor explained what was wrong, why it was wrong, and how he was going to fix it. Something 5 MD's had been unable or unwilling to do. He then proceeded to make good on his word and fix my back. I still see a chiropractor once a month to keep things healthy but the pain is gone. I recommend a good chiropractor and as many other slashdotters have recommended -- lots of exercise! Also, a good cervical style pillow and good mattress can go a long way towards relieving back pain.
To quote the original story posting: "Anyway these are the films, ladies and gentlemen, the mass-murdering films and TV shows, that John Ashcroft will ban, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition. Anyone standing up for them will be tarred as defending mass murder"
That's a serious bit of opinionated horse-hockey, NOT news. Common' slashdot -- if you're going to pretend to be a news organization then at least try to act like it. Even the Clinton News Network isn't this biased. And would you all get off your soapbox long enough to realize that "ratings" != "censorship" Adult citizens still have a choice what they see/do/hear/read. No one is going to outlaw your smut, pR0n, mass-murder shoot-em-up games/movies/TV or anything else you cherish. And if you don't like what Congress is doing, then VOTE, write them, email them, call them, fax them, or grab a pair and run for Congress/Senate/state legislature/Governer/President/etc yourself! But please quit bitching and moaning!
Get over it folks. Nobody is telling *you* what you can and can't watch (unless you still live at home with mom and dad in which case you can suck it up for a few more years). This isn't about "lazy parents" or "mind control" as so many of you seem to think. The facts of life are that parents can't be around their kids 24/7. The vchip gives the parents *some* control over what their kids watch. IMHO, there's a lot of crap on TV and YES, parents SHOULD have a say over what their kids watch. It IS the responsibility of the PARENTS to pass on morals and values, not the GOVERNMENT. This just gives the parents one tool to help them do their job. The /. attitude that adults should have no control over their kids is disgusting. Any time censorship that affects kids comes up (e.g. video game ratings, vchip, school newspapers, etc. etc.) you all start whining. That leads me to believe that most of you are 1. not parents or 2. still kids or 3. all of the above.
Hmm... now we're posting stuff that's not even two months old... Here's an idea for a study: how does the "slashdot effect" change when we repost a story? How 'bout when we repost it three, four times? How does the "effect" vary with the Time Between Posts (TBP)? This would be an interesting study on the "collective memory" of an online community. Now, where can I find a bored grad student to thrust this on?
Get a grip folks. This is not a ban on free speech or anything else. This says that if you're under 18, you need your parents' permission. I think that is pretty reasonable. Like it or not, parents really should have a say in the upbringing of their kids. Too many parents don't give a damn and that is really sad. But those that do, shouldn't have their hands tied behind their back while the State raises their kids and decides what's good and what's bad. As soon as you turn 18, you can go out and do whateverthehell you want. No questions asked. Total and complete freedom to frag away. But if you're under 18 and living with Mom and Dad (or Mom or Dad or Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad or...you get the picture) your legal guardians (yep, their job is to guard and protect you the best way they see fit -- whether you like it or not) should have a say in what you can and can't do. I'm really sick of the "new slashdot liberalism" that says "Parent's have no rights and kids can do whatever the hell they want." Should a parent let an 8 year old drop out of school and smoke crack because he wants to? Should they let their 12 year old daughter give blow jobs to earn a little extra cash 'cause she thinks it's cool? You've got to draw the line somewhere. The USA is one of the most free societies in the world (I know, I've lived in some of the less free) and when you turn 18 you can do almost anything you want. (Of course, with a Libertarian president, we could do even more...). The good decent moral people of Indianapolis aren't trying to take away *your* freedom but they are defending the freedom of parents! Stop getting bent out of shape every time someone supports the rights of the parents. If you wanna watch pr0n and play Quake IX -- Battle of the Sexbots, then you can -- as soon as you turn 18!
You can view movies of the event taken by instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite here. These are pretty neat to see as you can see the actual coronal mass ejection (CME) as it shoots out from the sun. This is the largest such event of this solar cycle. Another great space weather resource is the NOAA site here.
Heh heh. ATI has an interesting history with benchmarks. I think it was '90 or '91 when ATI got in trouble because they hardcoded the routines for one of the popular Windows benchmarks into their firmware. When the benchmark ran, the card was able to execute highly optimized hardware routines and blew away the competition. SO, when ATI says their cards perform the best on the benchmarks...they might be right. Now real world performance is another story altogether. I do have to give their engineers "you've got balls!" points for that little stunt!
So many of the previous posts are about why this is a Bad Thing because it diverts talent away from other things, why replace something that works, yada yada yada. The same could have been said of Linus' work on linux instead of contributing to BSD, etc. etc. Why are people so hung on "investing in open source (no, I refuse to capitalize open source)" and sticking with something "because that's how we've always done it?"
Here's a company willing to throw money at open source development and they get blasted. Who cares what they do. Does it affect you? NO. It doesn't. You do your thing, let Software Carpentry do theirs. If you love make, then use it. If you don't, that doesn't mean you're dumb or stupid as previous posters seem to imply, it just means that you would like an alternative to "make." Common folks, let's put the FREEDOM back in FREE code.
The open source zealots (and slashdotters in particular) are, ironically, (moderator: that's my own damn observation, not flame bait) among the most UNFREE people in this world. You seem to like any idea as long it jives with what you already believe. Live and let live.
More open source s/w will NEVER be a Bad Thing. After all, it will only result in more FREE code and that means more FREEDOM.
I know most of you are anti-Microsoft, anti-Bill Gates, etc. But Bill G. and Paul Allen did have some good hacks in their day. For starters, getting IBM to sign on by telling them MS had an OS (when in fact, they didn't) and then turning around and buying DOS for $50K and subsequently turning that into a multi-billion company wasn't a half-bad hack. Of course, my favorite MS related hack is how Bill and Paul Allen wrote BASIC for the Altaire using only an emulator (that they had coded from the tech manual with no access to the hardware) and then selling it. According to lore, when Paul Allen was on the plane to New Mexico to demo the new Microsoft BASIC on the Altaire, he realized that since they'd never actually used an Altaire they had never written the tape-loader code to actually load the BASIC tape onto the machine. He wrote that on the plane and when he programmed it in on the actual machine, it worked! The rest, as they say, is history.
Why don't you meander back over to the RH booth and ask Bob Young when RH is going to buy SCO? SCOs market cap is *only* $411M which is much less than Cygnus was apparently worth. That would make Red Hat not only the largest linux distributor but the largest Unix distributor as well. I bet SCO leadership would stop bad mouthing linux then :)
Just because you _can_ look at the source doesn't mean people do. I think it would be easier than you think to "slip" something in linux.
This is not about "open standards." I wonder if Microsoft paid off ESR? This is about access to AOL's servers. The AIM protocol requires access to AOL's server's and anyone using an AIM client does so with the permission of AOL. Why on earth should AOL give free server cycles to Microsoft, a competitor? This has NOTHING to do with open source/standards and everything to do with Microsoft illegally using AOL's computers. If a script-kiddie broke into some bank's computers and illegally used their CPU time, they could and would be prosecuted. Why is Microsoft any different? ESR just went down several notches of respect.
There will surely be secondary offerings of RH stock which will increase the amount shares available to the public. Most of these tech offerings include a small IPO with more shares offered after the price has been driven up. $10x6 million shares is chump change in the internet crazed market. Such a small offering just drives up the price so the insiders at Red Hat can make more money later.
/linux community needs to be very careful of what it means to be a "public" company. I think Linus, A.C. and all the other cool people that have poured their lives into linux deserve to get rich but it will come with a cost (to linux, open source, and freedom (as in speech)).
Regardless, even if M$ could only buy 10% of the stock - they would have a seat on the board and they could make life hell for Red Hat.
I think the open source
I can see the headlines now. "Microsoft launches hostile take over of Red Hat Software..." Let's see, 6 million shares, let's say that after a few weeks they settle at $30/share, that's a market capitalization of $180 million. Microsoft has $14 Billion in cash (from their FY98 Annual Report) and last year alone, they spent $2.5 Billion on R&D. I'd say a small $180 million "investment" in Linux R&D would fit nicely into the Microsoft budget.
I aggree! Longitude was a fun book. Definitely worth reading. It's a small book and a quick read but well worth it. I read the book right before going to visit the [REAL] Prime Meridian at Greenwhich and it really made me appreciate it all the more. Computing longitude is not as easy as one may think and if it weren't for some incredibly cool clock-maker hacks, it would have been impossible. John Harrison, who the book is about, was a genius clock maker. For example, in order to get his mechanical clocks to run consistently in different temperatures, he chose materials for the gears that would expand and contract in a complimentary manner. This way, he could keep the speed of the gears constant. This guy knew how to optimize!
Hey, why don't we all let SCO know what we think of their whining?
http://www.sco.com/feedback/index.html
I can write Fortran in any language
I am one of Corel's biggest fans and I think that by refocusing their efforts away from Microsoft, they will have the best chance of providing a powerful office suite for linux. The biggest danger with the KDE/Gnome war is that developers of commercial products (which, IMHO, are necessary for linux to gain desktop marketshare) will use one or the other and users will get stuck with some apps on KDE and some that only run on Gnome. I hope that Red Hat can help the KDE/Gnome developer's standardize on an API/object model/whatever to make apps run on either desktop. Maybe something like wxwindows or some other high level wrapper. (just an idea, not an endorsement) I prefer Gnome to KDE but I will use whatever lets me be productive. I hope that my desktop choice is decided by personal prefs and not by what apps I can run!