User: helixcode123

Re:Blank in Mozilla

On: Music Industry's Future Foretold in China?

This page comes up with what looks like a framework of a page, but zero actual content in Mozilla.

It's working OK for me (using Moz-based NS7.0/Solaris)

Not much music

On: Garmin Palm Device With GPS

If this unit comes with 32 MB that's room for only seven songs. Gee, why not advertise that it plays movies too. 30 whole seconds worth!
Oh. You want maps and music? Sorry Charlie.

Re: /.'ed

On: Forty-Speed CD-RW Shootout

Since I can't read the story, I'll ask here. I just returned an OptoRite 40x12x40 drive. It had the following problems: hung when reading a CD for duplicating (back off RIAA - it was a Linux disk); hung when writing a CD-RW; and would get a media error about 500MB into writing a CD-R. Does anyone know if this sounds like a bad drive, or is there some Linux (Mandrake 8.2) incompatibility? It said it would work with Linux on the box.

I had a similar problem involving large files that ended up being a security issue (max allowable file size). Have you noticed similar problems, say, downloading ISO's larger than 500 Mb? Check your files in /etc/security.

Re:Can someone translate this?

On: Paul Graham on Fighting Spam

>Unfortunately, I don't grok LISP. Could someone
>please translate the code snippets into Perl or
>C so I can figure out what he's saying there?

Sorry,
my $b = 2 * ($bad{word} || 0);

should be:

my $b = $bad{word} || 0;

Re:Can someone translate this?

On: Paul Graham on Fighting Spam

>Unfortunately, I don't grok LISP. Could someone >please translate the code snippets into Perl or C >so I can figure out what he's saying there?

Lisp2Perl (Please ignore typos :-):

(let ((g (* 2 (or (gethash word good) 0)))
(b (or (gethash word bad) 0)))
(unless (< (+ g b) 5)
(max .01 (min .99 (float (/ (min 1 (/ b nbad))
(+ (min 1 (/ g ngood))
(min 1 (/ b nbad)))))))))

Perl:

my $g = 2 * ($good{word} || 0);
my $b = 2 * ($bad{word} || 0);
my $ngood = keys %good;
my $nbad = keys %bad;

unless (($g + $b) < 5)
{
my $scaled_bad = &min(1, ($b / $nbad));
my $scaled_good = &min(1, ($g / $ngood));

$my $scaled_quotent
= $min(0.99, $scaled_bad / ($scaled_good + $scaled_bad));

return $max(0.1, $scaled_quotent);
}

====
(let ((prod (apply #'* probs)))
(/ prod (+ prod (apply #'* (mapcar #'(lambda (x) (- 1 x)) probs)))))

Perl:

my $prod = 1;
$prod *= $_ foreach (@probs);

my $non_probs = 1;
$non_probs *= (1 - $_) foreach (@probs);

return ($prod / ($prod + $non_probs));

Beware the Software Rot...

On: New Way To Grade Decay of Computer Installations

Isn't this just like a system-wide "software rot"?

Rank alg: Anyone know the name of this one?

On: Deep Algorithms?

I don't know the actual name of this algorithm. It's quite useful if, for example, you want to match items from two lists.

You start with 2 sets of items that are related in some way. Next, you identify possible matching relationships. You then rank each relationship pair with some metric, sort the relationship list, and remove all lower ranking relationships. This leaves you with a list of the highest ranking relationships, with items appearing only once in the relationship list.

This was a trivial exercise in Lisp (where I first implemented it), but I've used it quite a few times in various other languages. Anyone know the name of this?

Re:Now it's time..

On: Netscape 6 is Spyware?

Here's the link for that:
Google Search: Crossdressing Monkey Porno

I like google's helpful hint:

Did you mean to search for: CROSSDRESSING MONKEY PORN

Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

On: Mozilla 0.9.4 Released

Out of curiosity, I downloaded both Netscape 6.1 and Moz 9.3. I found Netscape to be practically glacial, and while Moz was better it still didn't approach the speed of Netscape 4.7X (which came with my RedHat 6.2 installation).

I guess I'm wondering why the new versions are so much slower than the older versions of Netscape. I know this is the M$ approach to application "upgrades", but is it something we really want to emulate?

Script Notifies Infected Code Red Domains

On: Code Red: the Aftermath

I was inspired to write this script after thinking about all those poor folks out there that are clueless about the fact that they're running infected IIS servers.

It basically just sends a message to the abuse@domain.foo to let them know about the infestation.

OK, so it's no SpamCop.org, but hey, I started writing it at 11:00 tonight.

Re:Why learn another language?

On: Programming in the Ruby Language

I appreciate and share your view that by learning multiple languages you enlarge your toolbox, and in the big picture all languages are intertwined. (Jeez. I sound like I'm rambling on about "The Force" or something.)

I've noticed a similarity in my "night job" as a musician, where playing different types music acts in a similar way to programming in different languages. You pick up stuff in one style that can enrich your playing of another style. Well I sure am staying on topic, eh?

One comment I wanted to make regarding Picking up another language in a day. I agree somewhat. There was no question that after programming in (time order) Pascal, C, Fortran, Ada, Lisp, Clips, and Scheme I was able to "pick up" Perl pretty quickly. That said, it took some time to really learn the Perl idioms and to do things in the "Perl Way". I've seen my share of C code that was really Fortran written in C, or Java code that was really C written in Java (procedural vs OO). With appologies to Heinlein, it takes longer than a day to grok a new language.