Seriously. Everytime I have to write for(int i; i<a.length;i++) dosomething(a[i]); I find it so unnatural.
Note that this is not exactly a "Perl" functionality, it was avaible in ksh and Lisp languages before that.
Java (and C# as well it seems) are sooooo fucking verbose, I understand not everybody likes this feature in Perl, but there's something to learn from Perl's popularity, isn't it?
There are common idioms (such as the "for" I listed above that's equivalent to foreach) that are much more readable if they are easily told apart from more complex things.
For instance, the for(;;) statement of C/C++/Java/Perl/C# might be much more flexible than Basic's FOR var=N TO M, but the latter makes it clear what you're doing; while the former might have a subtle difference (such as <= instead of <) that's not immediately obivous.
Perl offers some very interesting shortcuts that increase readability: foreach (1..100) { dosomething } *is* more readable than the java equivalent.
And when you need greater flexibility, the more complex form is available as well.
You'll worry about performance when it's working, silly.
Besides even with a low-end processor by today's standards, the "crawling" will be like below 10% CPU usage.
Oh, and if it's still too slow, someone may just optimize the code with MMX kind of stuff. But you can't optimize what does'nt exist. And you should'nt obsess about optimizing before you have something actually working.
I was contracting at company X a few years ago. I needed to use some piece of software for my project, and the demo site for said software ran on port 8081.
Which was blocked by the company firewall.
So I go ask the admin why it's blocked. I mean, WTF, blocking random _incoming_ ports I can understand, but outgoing ports? When there's already port 80 and 21 wide open? Not to mention DNS[1].
"We don't open it because it's more secure that way", he said. "But it's not more secure!" "YES it is!" "Why?" ".... BECAUSE!"
"Ok but look I could just make an SSH tunnel on port 80 with pppd and I can bypass all that stuff..."
He replied: "well if you do that, you'll get in a LOT of trouble, and the company is going to sue you! And I warn you because I have logs of everything!"
Now what's really interesting is that I had been running this particular setup (pppd through ssh on port 80) for a couple months already, and nobody noticed.
[1] You think you've secured everything and that no info can get through your highly secure firewall? But have you thought about the DNS?
Well if most people are like me, they have downloaded your app, installed it, maybe even managed to run it, and then realized that they had no use for it, or that it didn't do what they wanted at all... so why would they contribute?
I looked at your page, it looks interesting, however there's no shortage of good newsreaders out there, so it's not like you're fulfilling a dire need.
OTOH if your app was cross platform and could run through Apache, it could serve as a groupware tool.
Their decision? Well it might be that they underestimated the cost of X-platform support ("let's just use Qt"), and therefore their customer took that decision.
Writing cross platform GUI applications is hard. Writing cross platform GUI applications with multithreading and network stuff is very hard, but most of all hard to get right.
Hard = difficult = long = costly.
The question is, is the cost worth it? This application, from what you're telling us, is going to run on a few dozen computers at most. It's not a general purpose app, there is no added value in providing cross platform support.
Why switch platforms in the end? It doesn't make any sense.
But to answer your question, if Windows is really a transitional system, I would just develop on *nix, and run it on Windows with Cygwin. Might be even simpler to use XFree/Cygwin.
Banned and Challenged Books
In Texas Public Schools
Title: Puppies (Baby Animals)
Author: Petty, Kate
Synopsis: The book discusses how puppies are born and fed, and how they grow and communicate. Photographs are used to enhance the descriptions.
School District: Columbia-Brazoria ISD, West Columbia
Use: Library, Curriculumn, Wild Peach Elem.
Reason: Profanity/Inappropriate language
Result: Alternative book allowed
Notes: Parent said text referred to female dog as "bitch" ======
We need some kind of device to insert before the eyes of those vulnerable children, that would remove all curse words so that they are not exposed to the abomination of referring to a female dog as a "bitch".
"hen, we watched Mel Brook's "Spaceballs". I found that I wasn't nearly as quick on the "mute" button as I needed to be...same thing with "Blazing Saddles", by the way. "
So what's the problem? Don't you think your kid will hear those words anyway?
What are you, a taliban or something?
Bottom line: what is the problem with bad words? Why is it such a big deal?
Hey you know what: I don't swear as much in any language I speak as in English. You know why? 'Cuz I learnt english by watching USian movies.
THEY SWEAR ALL THE TIME IN THOSE.
All the damn fucking time.
Go anywhere in the world -- nowhere do people swear that much. And nowhere do you see people complaining about "bad" words. Except maybe in southern Afghanistan, Iran and the USA.
So answer this question: what the FUCK is wrong with saying bad words? Why can't I say "bitch" (even to refer to a female dog), "cunt", "shit", "dick", and stuff like that? What's wrong with it?
It's just as stupid as Talibans banning kytes and rasors.
"The problem is, the companies that currently dominate broadband come from industries that are used to having government imposed monopoly status: cable and telephone."
Thanks for the laugh. Remember AT&T? Well they were a monopoly, and they were certainly NOT a government monopoly.
In fact... it's the government that took their monopoly away.
Strange, eh?
But don't let the truth get in the way of some good libertarian propaganda.
I mean, some of that stuff was already obvious 2 years ago, before the big crash, now there's no audacity anymore in saying that "eToys sucked" and "Boo.com was bound to fail".
"When in Rome, do as the Romans. Use #flood for pasting code."
Sigh. What a stupid bitch. Can't you just fucking read what you're replying to? The guy I'm talking about kicked people for pasting a single line of perl code. Capicce?
"I've never had a problem with the ops in the channels I frequent, and I've never seen you in any of those channels. Hardly surprising."
How could you tell? You don't know which nicks I use.
Looks to me that you're taking this personally. I don't give much of a fuck, I'm just noticing a trend. I've stayed away from IRC altogether because of this "op" bullshit, I used to frequent #perl on (if I remember properly) Undernet or something, and there was one episode that drew me away: that op who had decided that you could'nt post code. Ok, I can understand not posting 12s of lines of code, but the guy would kick for posting a single line. So I gave up on IRC.
Then I came to openprojects since I saw it featured on slashdot, used it a bit, and noticed the same kind of bullshit, again. Admittedly, it's not that frequent, but I've seen it happen. Not just to me. You're in a conversation on a technical topic, and then you see that the person you're talking to has been kicked for such a stupid reason as "gay nick" or "offensive nick" or some other ridiculous and subjective "offense".
Ops have that tendency to find a lot of things "offensive". Nobody with half a brain gives a damn fuck when you're there to talk about graphic cards, but that sensible, nazi op. And that bugs me.
So yeah, "you" have not witnessed this, maybe "you" are an op and you share that "holier than thou" attitude, maybe you enjoy the moralizing bullshit, I don't know, it's still a fact of life: "op" priviledges tend to make some people behave like dickheads.
I was disappointed to witness that some ops, even on OPN, unfortunately experience the power trip that comes with the ability to "kick" and "ban" people.
It could be your choice of nick they don't like, it could be that you argue with them and they don't like your opinion,... face it, most kick/bans on IRC are not happening because of Spamming, warezing or harassment, but just because some kid was given "op" priviledge, and wants to experience that "god" feeling.
"How are "intelligent people" persecuted by religions as we speak? "
Go say "I'm an atheist!" in Iran, and see what happens.
Go say "I'm an atheist!" at work in many places in the US, and be amazed at how people start avoiding you.
How about those kids who don't believe in gods who are forced to "pray" to some stupid nonsense or face being ostracized in US schools? I know I was such a kid.
How about the few non-religious USian politician, such as M. Ventura, who get ridiculed, ostracized, for stating their lack of belief? Had he received the same treatment for being "black" or "gay", his opponents would have been called prejudiced, racist or some such.
"Where globalism, capitalism, and "Big Business" get ugly is when the government (any government) intervenes in any way"
Typical libertarian short-sightedness. What's the difference between a government and a very rich non-governmental entity? Not much. They both potentially have an immense power over the individuals.
"But the corporations have to face the free market!" Well that's right, to a certain extent. Just like it is true that most governments have to face democratic polls.
There are many cases where the "free market" is just not sufficient to prevent abuse. It's often less costly to just dump your waste in the open for everyone to share than pay for it's processing. "But the people will stop buying product from polluting corporations!" Not when said corporations can buy the medias, advertising agencies, bully their opponents to have them shut up.
Libertarianism is also implicitly based on one flawed assumption -- that every economic entity (individuals and corporations alike) will act rationally. Newsflash: it's wrong. Corporations often do stupid stuff, because they're after all just a bunch of people, some of them can be stupid or act stupid at times. And more specifically, individuals can do stupid thing.
And if it happens that said stupid individuals goes irrational, while being extremely rich, he can do a lot of harm, if there's no governmental / democratic institution to safeguard against him. What's to prevent a billion-dollar mogul from buying lots of land and burn it down or spread nuclear waste all over it? In a libertarian world, it's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it, and nobody's here to stop him.
You don't have money? You ain't got no right. That's libertarianism.
That said, I'm pretty close to libertarian views myself, I can agree to most of their program. But there blind faith in the regulatory values of the free market is irrational. And "money" should not be allowed to buy anything.
The article is very bad; I don't know who wrote it, but it looks like someone oversimplified the issue to make it look unacceptable. Commonly used fallacy. The overemphasis on "lost jobs" and shit like that is giving it out. Besides, I haven't heard of that stuff anywhere else. Kinda doubtful. And if it's just a proposal from a single member of parliament, there's really nothing to bitch and whine about; it's their job, after all, to come up with issues and propositions, and it's also their jobs, as members of parliament, to weed it out and come up with sensible laws.
Ban cookies? I doubt it. I could, however, see the european authorities requiring companies to inform users when they're collecting such information; which is, all considered, not a Bad Thing.
I just discovered this site you're referring to (Joel's site), and it's interesting to say the least. Here you have a Window$ programmer who has apparently *NEVER* heard of free / open source software.
And he keeps ranting about software. His main gripe? "Man there's so much buggy canned software out there, including Microsoft's, it's like I spend my life as a developper working around bugs!"
Use the source, Luke. Really, read the site and appreciate how much free/OS software makes our life easier.
"Creates two new crimes prohibiting certain persons from possessing a listed biological agent or toxin and prohibiting all persons from possessing a biological agent, toxin or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that is not reasonably justified by a peaceful purpose "
Isn't this a violation of the 4th (or 3rd?) amendment? Remember, if Biological agents are outlawed, only criminals will have biological toxins! Write to the NRA, now!
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. Everytime I have to write for(int i; i<a.length;i++) dosomething(a[i]); I find it so unnatural.
Note that this is not exactly a "Perl" functionality, it was avaible in ksh and Lisp languages before that.
Java (and C# as well it seems) are sooooo fucking verbose, I understand not everybody likes this feature in Perl, but there's something to learn from Perl's popularity, isn't it?
There are common idioms (such as the "for" I listed above that's equivalent to foreach) that are much more readable if they are easily told apart from more complex things.
For instance, the for(;;) statement of C/C++/Java/Perl/C# might be much more flexible than Basic's FOR var=N TO M, but the latter makes it clear what you're doing; while the former might have a subtle difference (such as <= instead of <) that's not immediately obivous.
Perl offers some very interesting shortcuts that increase readability: foreach (1..100) { dosomething } *is* more readable than the java equivalent.
And when you need greater flexibility, the more complex form is available as well.
You'll worry about performance when it's working, silly.
Besides even with a low-end processor by today's standards, the "crawling" will be like below 10% CPU usage.
Oh, and if it's still too slow, someone may just optimize the code with MMX kind of stuff. But you can't optimize what does'nt exist. And you should'nt obsess about optimizing before you have something actually working.
VivendiUniversalSucksALot.comw .c om
VivendiUniversalPue.com
VivendiUniversalPueGrave.com
VivendiUniversalSucksRocksThroughAThinCurlyStra
VivendiUniveraslCanSuckMyBollocks.com
VivendiUniversal-sucks.com
VivendiSuckniversal.com
FuckVivendiUniversal.com
I was contracting at company X a few years ago. I needed to use some piece of software for my project, and the demo site for said software ran on port 8081.
..."
Which was blocked by the company firewall.
So I go ask the admin why it's blocked. I mean, WTF, blocking random _incoming_ ports I can understand, but outgoing ports? When there's already port 80 and 21 wide open? Not to mention DNS[1].
"We don't open it because it's more secure that way", he said. "But it's not more secure!" "YES it is!" "Why?" ".... BECAUSE!"
"Ok but look I could just make an SSH tunnel on port 80 with pppd and I can bypass all that stuff
He replied: "well if you do that, you'll get in a LOT of trouble, and the company is going to sue you! And I warn you because I have logs of everything!"
Now what's really interesting is that I had been running this particular setup (pppd through ssh on port 80) for a couple months already, and nobody noticed.
[1] You think you've secured everything and that no info can get through your highly secure firewall? But have you thought about the DNS?
$ host the.root.password.is.iluvmom.crackersite.net
Well if most people are like me, they have downloaded your app, installed it, maybe even managed to run it, and then realized that they had no use for it, or that it didn't do what they wanted at all ... so why would they contribute?
I looked at your page, it looks interesting, however there's no shortage of good newsreaders out there, so it's not like you're fulfilling a dire need.
OTOH if your app was cross platform and could run through Apache, it could serve as a groupware tool.
I can't play the movie.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
=====
Select your operating system:
( ) Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
( ) Macintosh
=====
Where is the "GNU/Linux" checkbox?
And why does
Their decision? Well it might be that they underestimated the cost of X-platform support ("let's just use Qt"), and therefore their customer took that decision.
Writing cross platform GUI applications is hard. Writing cross platform GUI applications with multithreading and network stuff is very hard, but most of all hard to get right.
Hard = difficult = long = costly.
The question is, is the cost worth it? This application, from what you're telling us, is going to run on a few dozen computers at most. It's not a general purpose app, there is no added value in providing cross platform support.
Why switch platforms in the end? It doesn't make any sense.
But to answer your question, if Windows is really a transitional system, I would just develop on *nix, and run it on Windows with Cygwin. Might be even simpler to use XFree/Cygwin.
Source: ACLU Texas in file report.doc (Word doc)
=========
Banned and Challenged Books
In Texas Public Schools
Title: Puppies (Baby Animals)
Author: Petty, Kate
Synopsis: The book discusses how puppies are born and fed, and how they grow and communicate. Photographs are used to enhance the descriptions.
School District: Columbia-Brazoria ISD, West Columbia
Use: Library, Curriculumn, Wild Peach Elem.
Reason: Profanity/Inappropriate language
Result: Alternative book allowed
Notes: Parent said text referred to female dog as "bitch"
======
We need some kind of device to insert before the eyes of those vulnerable children, that would remove all curse words so that they are not exposed to the abomination of referring to a female dog as a "bitch".
"hen, we watched Mel Brook's "Spaceballs". I found that I wasn't nearly as quick on the "mute" button as I needed to be...same thing with "Blazing Saddles", by the way. "
So what's the problem? Don't you think your kid will hear those words anyway?
What are you, a taliban or something?
Bottom line: what is the problem with bad words? Why is it such a big deal?
Hey you know what: I don't swear as much in any language I speak as in English. You know why? 'Cuz I learnt english by watching USian movies.
THEY SWEAR ALL THE TIME IN THOSE.
All the damn fucking time.
Go anywhere in the world -- nowhere do people swear that much. And nowhere do you see people complaining about "bad" words. Except maybe in southern Afghanistan, Iran and the USA.
So answer this question: what the FUCK is wrong with saying bad words? Why can't I say "bitch" (even to refer to a female dog), "cunt", "shit", "dick", and stuff like that? What's wrong with it?
It's just as stupid as Talibans banning kytes and rasors.
s/politicians/US politicians/g
Thank you.
"The problem is, the companies that currently dominate broadband come from industries that are used to having government imposed monopoly status: cable and telephone."
... it's the government that took their monopoly away.
Thanks for the laugh. Remember AT&T? Well they were a monopoly, and they were certainly NOT a government monopoly.
In fact
Strange, eh?
But don't let the truth get in the way of some good libertarian propaganda.
I mean, some of that stuff was already obvious 2 years ago, before the big crash, now there's no audacity anymore in saying that "eToys sucked" and "Boo.com was bound to fail".
"When in Rome, do as the Romans. Use #flood for pasting code."
Sigh. What a stupid bitch. Can't you just fucking read what you're replying to? The guy I'm talking about kicked people for pasting a single line of perl code. Capicce?
"I've never had a problem with the ops in the channels I frequent, and I've never seen you in any of those channels. Hardly surprising."
How could you tell? You don't know which nicks I use.
Looks to me that you're taking this personally. I don't give much of a fuck, I'm just noticing a trend. I've stayed away from IRC altogether because of this "op" bullshit, I used to frequent #perl on (if I remember properly) Undernet or something, and there was one episode that drew me away: that op who had decided that you could'nt post code. Ok, I can understand not posting 12s of lines of code, but the guy would kick for posting a single line. So I gave up on IRC.
Then I came to openprojects since I saw it featured on slashdot, used it a bit, and noticed the same kind of bullshit, again. Admittedly, it's not that frequent, but I've seen it happen. Not just to me. You're in a conversation on a technical topic, and then you see that the person you're talking to has been kicked for such a stupid reason as "gay nick" or "offensive nick" or some other ridiculous and subjective "offense".
Ops have that tendency to find a lot of things "offensive". Nobody with half a brain gives a damn fuck when you're there to talk about graphic cards, but that sensible, nazi op. And that bugs me.
So yeah, "you" have not witnessed this, maybe "you" are an op and you share that "holier than thou" attitude, maybe you enjoy the moralizing bullshit, I don't know, it's still a fact of life: "op" priviledges tend to make some people behave like dickheads.
I was disappointed to witness that some ops, even on OPN, unfortunately experience the power trip that comes with the ability to "kick" and "ban" people.
... face it, most kick/bans on IRC are not happening because of Spamming, warezing or harassment, but just because some kid was given "op" priviledge, and wants to experience that "god" feeling.
It could be your choice of nick they don't like, it could be that you argue with them and they don't like your opinion,
"How are "intelligent people" persecuted by religions as we speak? "
Go say "I'm an atheist!" in Iran, and see what happens.
Go say "I'm an atheist!" at work in many places in the US, and be amazed at how people start avoiding you.
How about those kids who don't believe in gods who are forced to "pray" to some stupid nonsense or face being ostracized in US schools? I know I was such a kid.
How about the few non-religious USian politician, such as M. Ventura, who get ridiculed, ostracized, for stating their lack of belief? Had he received the same treatment for being "black" or "gay", his opponents would have been called prejudiced, racist or some such.
But when it's against freethinkers, it's ok.
So, persecution is still there those days.
Could it be because those you call "intelligent people" have been persecuted for centuries by established religions, and still are as we speak?
Besides, if something's not proven, why do you believe it? "Intelligent" people might simply dislike taking idiocies for granted.
I use Evolution along with IMAP, it's the best IMAP client I've seen so far, along with Netscape 4.74. Don't laugh.
Anyway, with IMAP I can read my mail with Evo on my PC, and thanks to IMP anywhere with a web browser.
I used to use Pine for the same purpose, but you just can't expect to find SSH clients anywhere. And you just can't always install one.
"Where globalism, capitalism, and "Big Business" get ugly is when the government (any government) intervenes in any way"
Typical libertarian short-sightedness. What's the difference between a government and a very rich non-governmental entity? Not much. They both potentially have an immense power over the individuals.
"But the corporations have to face the free market!" Well that's right, to a certain extent. Just like it is true that most governments have to face democratic polls.
There are many cases where the "free market" is just not sufficient to prevent abuse. It's often less costly to just dump your waste in the open for everyone to share than pay for it's processing. "But the people will stop buying product from polluting corporations!" Not when said corporations can buy the medias, advertising agencies, bully their opponents to have them shut up.
Libertarianism is also implicitly based on one flawed assumption -- that every economic entity (individuals and corporations alike) will act rationally. Newsflash: it's wrong. Corporations often do stupid stuff, because they're after all just a bunch of people, some of them can be stupid or act stupid at times. And more specifically, individuals can do stupid thing.
And if it happens that said stupid individuals goes irrational, while being extremely rich, he can do a lot of harm, if there's no governmental / democratic institution to safeguard against him. What's to prevent a billion-dollar mogul from buying lots of land and burn it down or spread nuclear waste all over it? In a libertarian world, it's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it, and nobody's here to stop him.
You don't have money? You ain't got no right. That's libertarianism.
That said, I'm pretty close to libertarian views myself, I can agree to most of their program. But there blind faith in the regulatory values of the free market is irrational. And "money" should not be allowed to buy anything.
The article is very bad; I don't know who wrote it, but it looks like someone oversimplified the issue to make it look unacceptable. Commonly used fallacy. The overemphasis on "lost jobs" and shit like that is giving it out. Besides, I haven't heard of that stuff anywhere else. Kinda doubtful. And if it's just a proposal from a single member of parliament, there's really nothing to bitch and whine about; it's their job, after all, to come up with issues and propositions, and it's also their jobs, as members of parliament, to weed it out and come up with sensible laws.
Ban cookies? I doubt it. I could, however, see the european authorities requiring companies to inform users when they're collecting such information; which is, all considered, not a Bad Thing.
I just discovered this site you're referring to (Joel's site), and it's interesting to say the least. Here you have a Window$ programmer who has apparently *NEVER* heard of free / open source software.
And he keeps ranting about software. His main gripe? "Man there's so much buggy canned software out there, including Microsoft's, it's like I spend my life as a developper working around bugs!"
Use the source, Luke. Really, read the site and appreciate how much free/OS software makes our life easier.
Sorry, the OP is still right.
....
... the patent office would indeed make less money.
If the USPTO (and, in the same way, the EPO) was stricter on patent applications, and rejected all the bogus shit we see derided here on slashdot,
... the con artists would stop submitting those bogus patents.
And
It's well known that Boeing downloads their flight control system's software off Tucows. As for Airbus, they use trained monkeys.
"Creates two new crimes prohibiting certain persons from possessing a listed biological agent or toxin and prohibiting all persons from possessing a biological agent, toxin or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that is not reasonably justified by a peaceful purpose "
Isn't this a violation of the 4th (or 3rd?) amendment? Remember, if Biological agents are outlawed, only criminals will have biological toxins! Write to the NRA, now!