It does no just have to be search. You can use properly organized metadata to do thigs like associating related content together. This can be done more reliably with author specified metadata. This summer I wrote a perl module called FileMetadata (available from CPAN) that collects metadata from files. I have used it to ease content management headaches on my website. Each HTML (XHTML) file has metadata that is used to advertise it on my site's index pages. I have ideas for more nifty things that can be done with metadata but as always time is finite.
There does not seem to be a slashdot effect on the MS site. Can they use that as an advantage?. Since the site is actually dynamic (ASP + SQLServer + some serious hardware), I was expecting it to atleast blink. But no. I wish the story was posted in the morning when there would be more slashdotters.
A year ago, we were writing a Checkers program for a Software Engineering class and we considered several toolkits before choosing TkInter + Python. Our requirement stated that we use ncurses + C or Python + *. wxWindows was not really stable then. But it is a lot nicer than Tk.
Although our requirement was that we only need to get it working on Linux/KDE we were actually running this program on Solaris, Linux and Windows. We did not have to do any additional work (Except for the path seperator) because Python + TkInter ran on all these platforms. It is nice to see that.
"Write once - Run Anywhere*" *Anywhere A, B, C and D work
On the other hand if I had to distribute this same program to Windows users, I would have to ask them to download and install Python. You want to download something named after a snake?
I do have to ask why one needs a new Chess program when there are multitudes already out there. I do not know of any cross platform ones. So it might be a good thing to make that a requirement - just to differentiate.
Re:Why parse XML in the first place?
on
Perl & XML
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I have spent my Junior and Senior years in college working with XML (as a personal project). I just graduated and I am still working with XML. I will agree that in some places XML is being used in ways it was never intended. That is why they call it extensible. It will fit almost anywhere but is not the best solution for most problems.
One good example of XML use is in Open Office. I believe the Open Office file format will end up being the most important contribution that Sun made in the office application arena.
Another good place to use XML is in cofiguration files. The advantages are obvious.
Parsing XML takes resources, so in most applications you should not do it in real time. An example of this is in a dynamic web environment. Try implementing Slashdot with a XML based backend. But with browsers becoming XML aware, you can offload this parsing to the browser.
The worst place to use XML IMHO is to describe logic. Some people have tried this - like XSP or JSP. There are some advantages to it but I think it ends up being a mess. XSLT got away with being a mess because it was one of few solutions to the problem of XML transformations.
An argument about the evils of XML is akin to saying Perl is a nasty language. A professor who taught Perl actually told me that. It is a nasty language but it solves some problems elegantly. XML on the other hand is quite pretty and it solves several problems elegantly.
It is when you fall to the hype and use XML becaue you want to advertise it as a "feature" that it fails. XML is not a feature - it is a solution to certain problems.
I could care less if your program uses XML in some obscure place that I can't see. If you can give me a way to export my data to XML, I will be happy. I can write a config file as XML, I will be happy. But if you say, I use XML in this application to implement the Help feture which is only accessible through the Help button, I could care less.
P.S: I hate it when interesting stuff gets posted in the middle of the day when I am at work
It might be a contract. For my part I got sick and tired of watching all the commercials and predominantly crass programming. I got my cable disconnected in Jan 2000 and I have been very happy since. I believe that I was actually pissed off that I was paying $35 a month and they were feeding me 3min of commercials every 15min. I think the networks need to find a better business model.
I started learning Java during the great Java hype (1997). Then I went back to school to learn C. My initial impression was, why would anyone want to program in this unweildy language where your executables crash with weird errors like "Segmentation Fault" and "Core Dumped". I did not like all that pointer crap and the fact that you hade to declare your variables before you did anything else.
Four years of college and several programming languages later Java is still my best girl. But I have learned to appreciate the beauty of C and its need to be a control freak in some cases.
To solve the debate, I am going to quote the words of one of my professors. "A programming language is a tool in a tool box". There are several things wrong with that analogy. I tend to think that a programming language is like a woman and learning one is like dating.
Im my 5 year 'dating' life I dated more languages than girls. Perl, Python, Tcl, C... each have their own attractions and turn offs. C# is something I haven't approached yet. But like dating, it just broadens your outlook (not to mention the fact that it is fun).
There should be not be fear of a new programming language. It is the new girl in town. It is true that one has to be wary that C# is a Microsoft baby. If it turns out that you cannot use C# without paying MS big bucks and the returns are not justifiable there are always other alternatives to look to.
When I was a sophomore, I was scared when some senior started talking about C++. I thought, another language. Oh no. But once you have mastered the basics of what I referer to as the dating game, you can romance almost any girl. Even if it was the girl with red hair and pierced ears (Perl) or the one that you can't take your eyes off of (Scheme).
I have used some high end CAD software like
Mentor Graphics that uses gestures extensively.
It is more productive than using a mouse when
you get used to it.
If MS is broken up, I am willing to bet that the
Corel shares will go to the OS part of MS. That
way they will might still be able to exert
a great deal of influence on the Office Suite
market. With Corel's puny market share in the Office App market, it might look like a
minor investment now. But I think it would be very good for M$ in the post break up years.
Then we could have two competing Office Suites
with significant developer strength. Office and
MS - Corel Wordperfect Suite.
My apologies for not being very specific in my reply to the original story. But IMHO, I really don't think the fuss is about a month's service fees. I really believe that the device was bought with intent to modify. "This" referred to my belief that the device was bought with an intent to modify. Is twenty something really worth the fuss? And why did Netpliance start charging service fees? Think before you get angry with Netpliance.
Trying to rip off the company isn't right. They developed a good product and they are trying to sell the product and the service at a decent price. I think it is not right to take advantage of a flaw in the design (the fact that the device could be modified) and try to rip the company off. I know that you guys did not sign anything on paper but everyone knew that the reason the product was selling so cheap was because the company expected to make up the difference through the access fee. Think before you get angry with Netappliance.
Sun is doing what MS does. This is bas news for developers. Soon, IBM and HP will develop their own versions and maybe then Sun will sit down and talk.
Historically AMDs management have put their sel interest before anything else. Atiq Raza was an exception. My guess is that he quit because of frustration with the others.
AMD can design good chips but it takes solid management to ship a successful product. I would never buy an AMD chip. I don't believe in their ideology(or the lack of it).
I get my news from a lot of places. News.com, Zdnet and mnay other site./. happens to be just one of them. I would never base a report of just the opinions of/. audience. It is too biased.
Really? What you find on Slashdot is new and opinions. Which is fine by me. But if I remember right, the reason why they ask us to do research is not to present opinions but to form them. I don't believe that message boards are any way to do your homework. On/. you are going to get a huge dose of pro open source, pro Linux voices. What about the other side?
There has been so much on this stuff in the news lately. Do a search on News.com and form your own opinion. After all, your paper should be what you think, not what slashdotters think. I remember all the hours I sweated in the library and on the web to write a paper on free speech and the internet.
Looks like Mindcraft is serious aout a neutral benchmark. Finally we can actually have a solid understanding of Linux capabilities. Right now most of Linux credibility comes from experience and Word of mouth. The Mindcraft test will show how much of a lead Linux has. If it so happens that Linux doesnot have a lead, it can always be improved. The third benchmark is a Win-Win situation for Linux. A lot is at stake for MS though. THey must e biting their nails wishing Linus and Redhat wouldn't accept the offer. Wish more benchmarks were like this. Especially Apple's. No one seems to take the honest approach to benchmarking. Remember the Sun/Solaris/Java fiasco?
Find a first class ecommerce package for linux and then talk. Linux doesn't have one now. Any way, people have to quit this "No MS" stuff. Use the best technology availabe to solve a problem. If MS has that Technology, fine. Very much like KDE used Qt. Would you throw away all the inventions of Nazi Germany? Would you vacate your apartment because your landlord is convicted of murder? Get real people.
http://www.linux-support.net/cdoffer.shtml The cost for either CD is $12.95 per CD plus $3.55 shipping (USPS Priority Mail, Delivery Confirmed) per order.
Unfortunaltely, the story doesnot have a message board where we could enlighten the author. I went through the their staff index and did not find a James Coates. But I did find a Jim Coates - Computer Technology reporter. JCoates@tribune.com I believe it is the same guy. Is it appropriate for us to email him and express our views. Should we just direct him to/.? I really don't have the time to do it. I am too busy wasting my time writing useless lines of code. I have an addiction. I can't help it. Should I go into rehab? Is there any purpose to my life?
I don't see any reason for the anti-intel mood on/. Intel is a great company. It has great founders and great managers. Their chips can out do any other's any day. Want to use AMD? Go ahead. There is choice there. But the reason why AMD sells so cheap is because their chips lag Intel by a wide margin. And AMD's management sucks. Alternatives? Digital Alpha was an RISC processor which if adopted could wipe out all the investment put into X86. IBM? Motorola? Apple has is more closed than Intel is. No I don't work for or intend to work for Intel
All things evolve. Life grew from simple organisms to complex life forms. If we didn't add 'features' , we would be itsy bitsy cells. It is not about complexity. Even complex systems can be built with simplicity and beauty.
Central Testing Point huh? We all know how buggy windows is and how long it takes to get fixes. If Microsoft's testing works so good, how do you explain all those bugs? What will ultimately make Linux superior is the fact that the testing environment is far larger than anything that can be commercially developed. Linux has thousands of developers who are using, fixing and updating the OS on a everyday basis. And Linux is not actually free! You are paying the developer in something that is much more important and valuable than $$.
Anyway what does Bill Gates know about software and QC? He had to buy DOS. He is a darn good CEO. He shouldn't don the image of Tech guru. Let someone at MS Research do that.
If Linux is going to invade the consumer/home user space, there need to be more consumer oriented applications. They need to be better than the Windows shit and they need to be free.
Slashdot Mirror
It does no just have to be search. You can use properly organized metadata to do thigs like associating related content together. This can be done more reliably with author specified metadata.
This summer I wrote a perl module called FileMetadata (available from CPAN) that collects metadata from files. I have used it to ease content management headaches on my website. Each HTML (XHTML) file has metadata that is used to advertise it on my site's index pages. I have ideas for more nifty things that can be done with metadata but as always time is finite.
There does not seem to be a slashdot effect on the MS site. Can they use that as an advantage?. Since the site is actually dynamic (ASP + SQLServer + some serious hardware), I was expecting it to atleast blink. But no. I wish the story was posted in the morning when there would be more slashdotters.
A year ago, we were writing a Checkers program for a Software Engineering class and we considered several toolkits before choosing TkInter + Python. Our requirement stated that we use ncurses + C or Python + *. wxWindows was not really stable then. But it is a lot nicer than Tk.
Although our requirement was that we only need to get it working on Linux/KDE we were actually running this program on Solaris, Linux and Windows. We did not have to do any additional work (Except for the path seperator) because Python + TkInter ran on all these platforms. It is nice to see that.
"Write once - Run Anywhere*"
*Anywhere A, B, C and D work
On the other hand if I had to distribute this same program to Windows users, I would have to ask them to download and install Python. You
want to download something named after a snake?
I do have to ask why one needs a new Chess program when there are multitudes already out there. I do not know of any cross platform ones. So it might be a good thing to make that a requirement - just to differentiate.
I have spent my Junior and Senior years in college working with XML (as a personal project). I just graduated and I am still working with XML. I will agree that in some places XML is being used in ways it was never intended. That is why they call it extensible. It will fit almost anywhere but is not the best solution for most problems.
One good example of XML use is in Open Office. I believe the Open Office file format will end up being the most important contribution that Sun made in the office application arena.
Another good place to use XML is in cofiguration files. The advantages are obvious.
Parsing XML takes resources, so in most applications you should not do it in real time. An example of this is in a dynamic web environment. Try implementing Slashdot with a XML based backend. But with browsers becoming XML aware, you can offload this parsing to the browser.
The worst place to use XML IMHO is to describe logic. Some people have tried this - like XSP or JSP. There are some advantages to it but I think it ends up being a mess. XSLT got away with being a mess because it was one of few solutions to the problem of XML transformations.
An argument about the evils of XML is akin to saying Perl is a nasty language. A professor who taught Perl actually told me that. It is a nasty language but it solves some problems elegantly.
XML on the other hand is quite pretty and it solves several problems elegantly.
It is when you fall to the hype and use XML becaue you want to advertise it as a "feature" that it fails. XML is not a feature - it is a solution to certain problems.
I could care less if your program uses XML in some obscure place that I can't see. If you can give me a way to export my data to XML, I will be happy. I can write a config file as XML, I will be happy. But if you say, I use XML in this application to implement the Help feture which is only accessible through the Help button, I could care less.
P.S: I hate it when interesting stuff gets posted in the middle of the day when I am at work
It might be a contract. For my part I got sick and tired of watching all the commercials and predominantly crass programming. I got my cable disconnected in Jan 2000 and I have been very happy since. I believe that I was actually pissed off that I was paying $35 a month and they were feeding me 3min of commercials every 15min. I think the networks need to find a better business model.
I started learning Java during the great Java hype (1997). Then I went back to school to learn C. My initial impression was, why would anyone want to program in this unweildy language where your executables crash with weird errors like "Segmentation Fault" and "Core Dumped". I did not like all that pointer crap and the fact that you hade to declare your variables before you did anything else.
... each have their own attractions and turn offs. C# is something I haven't approached yet. But like dating, it just broadens your outlook (not to mention the fact that it is fun).
Four years of college and several programming languages later Java is still my best girl. But I have learned to appreciate the beauty of C and its need to be a control freak in some cases.
To solve the debate, I am going to quote the words of one of my professors. "A programming language is a tool in a tool box". There are several things wrong with that analogy. I tend to think that a programming language is like a woman and learning one is like dating.
Im my 5 year 'dating' life I dated more languages than girls. Perl, Python, Tcl, C
There should be not be fear of a new programming language. It is the new girl in town. It is true that one has to be wary that C# is a Microsoft baby. If it turns out that you cannot use C# without paying MS big bucks and the returns are not justifiable there are always other alternatives to look to.
When I was a sophomore, I was scared when some senior started talking about C++. I thought, another language. Oh no. But once you have mastered the basics of what I referer to as the dating game, you can romance almost any girl. Even if it was the girl with red hair and pierced ears (Perl) or the one that you can't take your eyes off of (Scheme).
I have used some high end CAD software like Mentor Graphics that uses gestures extensively. It is more productive than using a mouse when you get used to it.
If MS is broken up, I am willing to bet that the
Corel shares will go to the OS part of MS. That
way they will might still be able to exert
a great deal of influence on the Office Suite
market. With Corel's puny market share in the Office App market, it might look like a
minor investment now. But I think it would be very good for M$ in the post break up years.
Then we could have two competing Office Suites
with significant developer strength. Office and
MS - Corel Wordperfect Suite.
My apologies for not being very specific in my reply to the original story. But IMHO, I really don't think the fuss is about a month's service fees. I really believe that the device was bought with intent to modify. "This" referred to my belief that the device was bought with an intent to modify. Is twenty something really worth the fuss? And why did Netpliance start charging service fees? Think before you get angry with Netpliance.
Trying to rip off the company isn't right. They developed a good product and they are trying to sell the product and the service at a decent price. I think it is not right to take advantage of a flaw in the design (the fact that the device could be modified) and try to rip the company off. I know that you guys did not sign anything on paper but everyone knew that the reason the product was selling so cheap was because the company expected to make up the difference through the access fee. Think before you get angry with Netappliance.
Sun is doing what MS does. This is bas news for developers. Soon, IBM and HP will develop their own versions and maybe then Sun will sit down and talk.
Historically AMDs management have put their sel interest before anything else. Atiq Raza was an exception. My guess is that he quit because of frustration with the others.
AMD can design good chips but it takes solid management to ship a successful product. I would never buy an AMD chip. I don't believe in their ideology(or the lack of it).
I get my news from a lot of places. News.com, Zdnet and mnay other site. /. happens to be just one of them. I would never base a report of just the opinions of /. audience. It is too biased.
Really? What you find on Slashdot is new and opinions. Which is fine by me. But if I remember right, the reason why they ask us to do research is not to present opinions but to form them. I don't believe that message boards are any way to do your homework. On /. you are going to get a huge dose of pro open source, pro Linux voices. What about the other side?
There has been so much on this stuff in the news lately. Do a search on News.com and form your own opinion. After all, your paper should be what you think, not what slashdotters think. I remember all the hours I sweated in the library and on the web to write a paper on free speech and the internet.
Looks like Mindcraft is serious aout a neutral benchmark. Finally we can actually have a solid understanding of Linux capabilities. Right now most of Linux credibility comes from experience and Word of mouth. The Mindcraft test will show how much of a lead Linux has. If it so happens that Linux doesnot have a lead, it can always be improved. The third benchmark is a Win-Win situation for Linux. A lot is at stake for MS though. THey must e biting their nails wishing Linus and Redhat wouldn't accept the offer. Wish more benchmarks were like this. Especially Apple's. No one seems to take the honest approach to benchmarking. Remember the Sun/Solaris/Java fiasco?
Find a first class ecommerce package for linux and then talk. Linux doesn't have one now. Any way, people have to quit this "No MS" stuff. Use the best technology availabe to solve a problem. If MS has that Technology, fine. Very much like KDE used Qt. Would you throw away all the inventions of Nazi Germany? Would you vacate your apartment because your landlord is convicted of murder? Get real people.
http://www.linux-support.net/cdoffer.shtml
The cost for either CD is $12.95 per CD plus $3.55 shipping (USPS Priority Mail, Delivery Confirmed) per order.
Unfortunaltely, the story doesnot have a message board where we could enlighten the author. I went through the their staff index and did not find a James Coates. But I did find a Jim Coates - Computer Technology reporter. JCoates@tribune.com /.? I really don't have the time to do it. I am too busy wasting my time writing useless lines of code. I have an addiction. I can't help it. Should I go into rehab? Is there any purpose to my life?
I believe it is the same guy. Is it appropriate for us to email him and express our views. Should we just direct him to
I don't see any reason for the anti-intel mood on /. Intel is a great company. It has great founders and great managers. Their chips can out do any other's any day. Want to use AMD? Go ahead. There is choice there. But the reason why AMD sells so cheap is because their chips lag Intel by a wide margin. And AMD's management sucks. Alternatives? Digital Alpha was an RISC processor which if adopted could wipe out all the investment put into X86. IBM? Motorola? Apple has is more closed than Intel is. No I don't work for or intend to work for Intel
I have seen Sun Sparc 5 optical mice work with ordinary mouse pads.
All things evolve. Life grew from simple organisms to complex life forms. If we didn't add 'features' , we would be itsy bitsy cells. It is not about complexity. Even complex systems can be built with simplicity and beauty.
Central Testing Point huh? We all know how buggy windows is and how long it takes to get fixes. If Microsoft's testing works so good, how do you explain all those bugs? What will ultimately make Linux superior is the fact that the testing environment is far larger than anything that can be commercially developed. Linux has thousands of developers who are using, fixing and updating the OS on a everyday basis. And Linux is not actually free! You are paying the developer in something that is much more important and valuable than $$.
Anyway what does Bill Gates know about software and QC? He had to buy DOS. He is a darn good CEO. He shouldn't don the image of Tech guru. Let someone at MS Research do that.
If Linux is going to invade the consumer/home user space, there need to be more consumer oriented applications. They need to be better than the Windows shit and they need to be free.