I have to say that I am annoyed by this whole "Christianity is swell, it's just these right-wingers that have messed it up" bullshit that is popular to spout these days. That's the same mistake as not blaming the last 80 years of communism on Marx. Both are fundamentally flawed and it is dangerously naive not to expect them to lead people exactly to the coercion, oppression and disaster that we have seen. It's not a coincidence. They didn't take some unseen wrong turn. They are designed (unintentionally perhaps) to break exactly as the have.
Katz says, "When I think of Christianity, I think of a faith that at its core, promotes charity, tolerance, generosity, love and peace", and I think that is a decent characterization of the better aspects of the New Testament. But essentially, he is describing half of the teachings of a confused second revision of a very confused religion. I have often said that the Bible is a Rorschach test, and people will find whatever they want in it. If people find a rigid, angry god full of terrible philosophies soul-crushing edicts, he is in there just the same as the loving god Katz describes.
There is a lot of garbage in the Bible. And there is also a lot of moralizing that might have been helpful for a 2000 year old laborers, or for that matter, 5000 year old sheep herders, but does it have any bearing on our lives? Are these the sexual mores I should subscribe too? Is turning the other cheek the way to inspire good behavior? Should we strive toward being sheep? No to all of those I would have to say. Are there reasonable, useful, even beautiful ideas in the bible? To be sure. In fact the same could be said to a less or greater degree of just about every religion. Just don't be surprized that it became Organized Religion, and that became just another power structure. It is inevitable. </RANT>
*Laz` (jeremy@209.224.118.250) has joined channel #humanism Laz`: so I'm at the colo Laz`: someone just HAD to go and post the screenshots page to/. RevDigger: haha RevDigger: aw, did you get slashdotted again? Laz`: so I up mbufs...set maxclients to 500 Laz`: bamn Laz`: sustaining 400 maxclients now..about to reboot with another new kernel Laz`: yeah..this time is worse keichii: what screenshots? Laz`: we turned off uunet, to force more traffic out of Uu.Net RevDigger: damn Laz, you know what they call people who spend too much time at a consol at a colo, don't you? Laz`: Jeff said we're spitting out 9Mbps keichii: laz: where are you on/.? Laz`: kei: mosfet.jorsm.com (might want to wait, since I'm rebooting) RevDigger: "NT Admins" IceCold: What is humanism? Laz`: kei: duno now.. Laz`: Dig: hahah Laz`: well..wish me luck Laz`: Dig: go defend my honor:) Laz`: bbl RevDigger: k *Signoff: Laz` (ircII EPIC4pre2.003 -- Accept no limitations)
I think you've done a good job of hitting all of the relevant points here. Writing CGIs in Perl is Quick, Easy, and Good Enough. But I seem to be doing less and less real CGI work in favor of SSI-type scripting.
Embedded scripting languages like PHP for instance tend to one-up Perl on most of the points you make:
Rapid Development - Perl was designed as a text processing language. That makes it great for CGIs. But PHP was designed...for scripting web pages, so most of the stuff you are gonna do in a web page, is therefore quite easy. I find it much easier to add code to a web page, than to add HTML to a perl script. Particulary as web pages get more complicated. And editing stuff is MUCH easier than in Perl.
Performance - Perl is fast enough for most things. If you run mod_perl, performance is good for higher loads. But PHP is fast out of the box. mod_perl is quick, but you have to be anal about your code and there all sorts of gotchas.
Text Processing - well, ok, PHP is not quite even with perl here, but it's acceptably close.
Really, embedded languages are the way to go for most things.
PBS actually had a cool special on this recently. There were a couple hundred brit cows shipped over here before the US banned their export. Apperantly the FDA (or whoever's lame job this is) has been tracking them down, buyin them up, and incinerating them. No BSE possitive cows have turned up yet tho.
The other cool think I learned is that BSE isn't a virus, it's a funky self-replicating protien. Yes, self replication without DNA. Totally unlike any other communicable disease...
It is well known that Lazarus can't HTML his way out of a wet paper bag, so it was a few minutes before he had the redirect working.
The nice thing to note is that most ISPs I know would rue a user who's freebe web page got them slashdotted. What most ISPs wouldn't do is take time out of a sysadmin's day to build a mirror on a higher powered and better connected box, and arrange more bandwidth with the telco until the wave subsided.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say that I am annoyed by this whole "Christianity is swell, it's just these right-wingers that have messed it up" bullshit that is popular to spout these days. That's the same mistake as not blaming the last 80 years of communism on Marx. Both are fundamentally flawed and it is dangerously naive not to expect them to lead people exactly to the coercion, oppression and disaster that we have seen. It's not a coincidence. They didn't take some unseen wrong turn. They are designed (unintentionally perhaps) to break exactly as the have.
Katz says, "When I think of Christianity, I think of a faith that at its core, promotes charity, tolerance, generosity, love and peace", and I think that is a decent characterization of the better aspects of the New Testament. But essentially, he is describing half of the teachings of a confused second revision of a very confused religion. I have often said that the Bible is a Rorschach test, and people will find whatever they want in it. If people find a rigid, angry god full of terrible philosophies soul-crushing edicts, he is in there just the same as the loving god Katz describes.
There is a lot of garbage in the Bible. And there is also a lot of moralizing that might have been helpful for a 2000 year old laborers, or for that matter, 5000 year old sheep herders, but does it have any bearing on our lives? Are these the sexual mores I should subscribe too? Is turning the other cheek the way to inspire good behavior? Should we strive toward being sheep? No to all of those I would have to say. Are there reasonable, useful, even beautiful ideas in the bible? To be sure. In fact the same could be said to a less or greater degree of just about every religion. Just don't be surprized that it became Organized Religion, and that became just another power structure. It is inevitable.
</RANT>
*Laz` (jeremy@209.224.118.250) has joined channel #humanism /. ...set maxclients to 500 /.? :)
Laz`: so I'm at the colo
Laz`: someone just HAD to go and post the screenshots page to
RevDigger: haha
RevDigger: aw, did you get slashdotted again?
Laz`: so I up mbufs
Laz`: bamn
Laz`: sustaining 400 maxclients now..about to reboot with another new kernel
Laz`: yeah..this time is worse
keichii: what screenshots?
Laz`: we turned off uunet, to force more traffic out of Uu.Net
RevDigger: damn Laz, you know what they call people who spend too much time at a consol at a colo, don't you?
Laz`: Jeff said we're spitting out 9Mbps
keichii: laz: where are you on
Laz`: kei: mosfet.jorsm.com (might want to wait, since I'm rebooting)
RevDigger: "NT Admins"
IceCold: What is humanism?
Laz`: kei: duno now..
Laz`: Dig: hahah
Laz`: well..wish me luck
Laz`: Dig: go defend my honor
Laz`: bbl
RevDigger: k
*Signoff: Laz` (ircII EPIC4pre2.003 -- Accept no limitations)
Embedded scripting languages like PHP for instance tend to one-up Perl on most of the points you make:
- Rapid Development - Perl was designed as a text processing language. That makes it great for CGIs. But PHP was designed...for scripting web pages, so most of the stuff you are gonna do in a web page, is therefore quite easy. I find it much easier to add code to a web page, than to add HTML to a perl script. Particulary as web pages get more complicated. And editing stuff is MUCH easier than in Perl.
- Performance - Perl is fast enough for most things. If you run mod_perl, performance is good for higher loads. But PHP is fast out of the box. mod_perl is quick, but you have to be anal about your code and there all sorts of gotchas.
- Text Processing - well, ok, PHP is not quite even with perl here, but it's acceptably close.
Really, embedded languages are the way to go for most things.- Yes, they are indeed very fast
- G4s are designed with SMP in mind, and future revisions are looking at just putting multiple cores on one chip
- They are cool...as in, you don't need cryogenic cooling to keep em from melting. A heat sink covers it.
- they are tiny, so you don't need a sledge hammer to squish them into a 1 or 2 U rack case
- They are low power
- The archetecture actually still has a future, it's not crammed with legacy BS
- Real RISC
- They are not Intel
And as a bonus for developing open boards, the BSDs already have ports, and linux already has a port. I am so ready for this.- H
The other cool think I learned is that BSE isn't a virus, it's a funky self-replicating protien. Yes, self replication without DNA. Totally unlike any other communicable disease...
Here's the link. It's worth your time
Click me
moo.
- Digger
The nice thing to note is that most ISPs I know would rue a user who's freebe web page got them slashdotted. What most ISPs wouldn't do is take time out of a sysadmin's day to build a mirror on a higher powered and better connected box, and arrange more bandwidth with the telco until the wave subsided.
- H
But I understand that MS is moving WebTV into the same building, so they may move to Magnavox and and Curtis Mathis any day now...