Nice to see the old myth about the ENIAC being the first computer is still being pepetuated.
Chris Chris Wareham
Some replies (also not supposed to be flamebait)
on
KDE Looks Ahead
·
· Score: 3
Having worked with CORBA for the last eight months, I can say that the KDE 2 direction seems to be the right one. CORBA is a simple, elegant concept seriously let down by its implementation. The language mappings for C++ are horrendous, and the whole thing has that `designed by committee' feel also suffered by Motif.
MICO and the other ORB's that I've used all suffer from being bloated middleware that hinders the development of efficient ditributed applications. In fact, I used a proprietary system that used the same basic concepts as CORBA at my last job. Despite the discomfort I felt using a proprietary system, it did offer a far better API than CORBA.
DCOP looks like it will build on a very efficient foundation, namely RPC and libICE from the X Window system. My only worry is that C++ isn't the best language for implementing such systems, so I hope they are sticking to C for this library.
For some reason when I read the line about PacketStorm being taken under Kroll-O-Gara's wing, I had visions of cybrersleuths and William Gibson plotlines. I know the PacketStrom thing is old news, but I never took an interest in it before. Crackers and security are to me at least like income tax - a pain but something that must be take into account.
However theis JP character sounds like a very dubious character. Regardless of whether he really has employed crackers to breach sites and provide fuel for his crusade, he is still spreading annoying disinformation.
Whether this boils down to personal animosity or not I can't say, but while the RHAD/Gnome team are pulling away from using E, Mandrake and Rasterman are pulling away from GTK+. The Enlightenment configuration utility that complemented E 0.15 will be redundant in E 0.16, as all configuration can be done from E itself. The widgets used for this are native to E, not GTK+. Mandrake and Ratserman are also talking about a file manager utility built into uture versions of E.
Personally I use a mix of the Blackbox WM on my Sparc (small and fast) and E on my laptop (big and baroque). The file manager that may go into E would no doubt be seamless and well designed - but adding any further functionality to the WM has to be questionable.
There was a mid-eighties British band that lifted their name from the film All ABout Eve. Unfortunately they went from being an exciting live band to a dismal studio band - something to do with signing to a major label with big ideas on what they should sound like...
Was he the lunatic American camp commander with the thing about flouridisation? That was a great role, and played hilariously.
On a similar note, what's the name of the actor who played the air force pilot in Dr. Stranglove? The one that ends up sitting on top of his plane's H-bomb. I've seen him in loads of films playing tobacco chewing Louisianans (at least I guess that's what his accent was).
The Electric Ballroom (Camden High Street, near the tube station) is OK on Friday nights. Further up the road during the daytime is Resurrection Records, a record store in the basement of a clothing shop. Pop in there to lay your hands on flyers for clubs and gigs. (And why not treat yourself to a copy of the Killing Miranda album while you're there - feel free to disregard this sentence).
A number of half-decent clubs occur at Gossips in Soho on Wednesday and occasional Fridays. But the best Goth club in London is undoubtedly the Slimelight. Some of the music may be an acquired taste, but the good always outweighs the bad no matter what brand of Goth you like.
It's a members only club, so just turn up at the Angel tube station at 10.00pm on a Saturday night and ask someone to sign you in.
if you by 'official' mean written language, it is used only in TV and by politicians
That's pretty much what I meant. My Finnish tutor used to always tell us that written Finnish did not make good spoken Finnish. She quite often gave us examples of the spoken language that didn't conform to the grammar rules - slang I suppose.
I even have a `Slangisanasto' at home that I bought in Kuopio. It contains loads of great tranlations of English and American slang into Finnish, although whether it's any use or not is another matter entirely!
I know the feeling. I grew up in the 'home of the British army' - Aldershot. And anyone without a buzz cut, blue stonewashed jeans and a white t-shirt sticks out like a sore thumb there.
In fact, the newspapers were suprised when the locals weren't upset about the Paratroop regiment being barracked elsewhere. After years of fights, vandalism and falling house prices I wonder why.
The finnish geeks have an edge on you guys when it comes to getting jobs here, because you'll never be able to learn our language
I spent four years studying Finnish and Finnish history, and have to admit that for many Western Europeans it is a weird language to learn. The grammar is quite strict though, so once you know the rules it isn't too bad.
Personally, I love Finland as a country - sparsely populated, and covered in forests and lakes. The people are friendly to foriegners (except on occasion to the Russians), but really like their drink.
I haven't been to Finland for four years now, but used to go regularily. Hopefully I can go back some point next year for a couple of weeks.
nothing like holding a nice blonde Finn in your arms at night
Funnily enough, the Finns aren't a Scandinavian people, or inherently blond haired. Their origin is shrouded in mystery, but they basically settled in Finland after the great migration of the tribes. One bunch of Finno-Ugrian people headed West from the Urals, and became the Hungarians. Another big bunch headed North until they hit the Gulf of Finland. Some stayed South of where St. Petersburg now stands and became Estonians (Virolainen). The remainder headed further North, met the Lapps and became Finns (Suomalainen) or Karelians.
Other small Finno-Ugrian groups are scattered throughout the North West of the former Soviet Union.
The reason many Finns are blond is most commonly because of Swedish ancestry. In the South of Finland there is a large Swedish speaking minority - the result of Swedish colonialism and the dominance of Swedish as the ruling elite's language of choice in the eighteenth century.
As for language, Finnish was codified in the mid-nineteenth century. 'Official' Finnish is the dialect spoken in the South West of the country. The further East you go the more archaic the dialect - especially in Karelia. Other dialects like Ingrian are pretty much extinct, while in the far North, Lapp is a sadly disappearing language.
tell me again how your... gun-grabbing mentality... is going to help us get to the heart of the real problem
It wont solve the problem. There are always going to be determined sociopaths who will go to any ends to cause mayhem. The examples you state are proof of this. What removal of guns would accomplish is bringing to an end the spur of the moment killings - the sacked employee who quickly resorts to shooting colleauges for instance.
The examples of non-gun related killings you give are dwarfed by the *total* numbers killed by guns every year in the US. Don't use a small number of isolated non-gun incidents to justify the right to bear arms.
Anyway, as we're starting to go around in circles, and I know full well that some parts of American society will *never* part with their personal arsenals, I'm going to do some work.
Following the Columbine shootings, and the comments made in many media organs, `outsiders' were branded potential murderers. This included goths like myself, and stereotypical computer nerds. Basically anyone who didn't play a lot of sport, wear ordinary clothes or listen to pop music were labelled `ousiders'.
This is why an article like this has some relevance to Slashdot. I try hard to disprove the `nerd' myth. I am a self taught computer programmer who earns a good salary. Simply because I don't meet the society norms in terms of appearance, people whho meet me outside of work assume I'm a drug addled drop-out who exists on welfare.
Regarding guns having no place in a modern society, I strongly disagree with you. Guns equalize people so that people can't use superior physical prowess to overpower victims.
So rather than look at the reasons why someone wants to attack you, just blow them away? The police are there to stop the kind of abuse you describe, when individuals use your excuse it simply becomes vigilante tactics.
Charlton Heston, the mouthpiece of the NRA, argued that the way to prevent Columbine like tragedies was to post armed guards in schools. What the hell does this teach children? That it's OK to bear arms, because if you abuse them you'll get shot?
I'm sorry but that's an insane notion. Remove the guns, and you don't have a problem. As someone else has commented, in the UK we don't have a problem with stabbings in schools (one incident this decade), so people arent going to make a switch to alternative weapons.
With regard to the bombs, I will agree that Klebold and Harris were determined to cause mayhem. However, in the vast majority of cases where someone goes `postal' they simply use a gun. I am sure it is a bogus notion to insist that anyone considering a killing spree will automatically use pipebombs if guns are unavailable. In the UK and Europe I cannot recall a single incident involving non-politically motivated killers and pipebombs.
It is far more difficult to go on an indiscriminate killing spree with a knife than it is with a gun. The actual physical act of stabbing someone is also far more difficult than pulling a trigger - films give the impression tha stabbing someone is quite easy, but in most cases it takes a lot of exertion to push a knife into a body.
At the end of the day a gun has one purpose - killing. Knives have a domestic purpose, and to outlaw them is obviously ludicrous. Please don't defend firearms by comapring them to potentially dangerous objects that *do* have a place in civilised, modern society.
I had the pleasure of working in the States for a month, just after the Columbine shootings. This would have been great, except for the fact that I have long black hair and wear black clothes - yup, I'm a goth, and have been for ten years.
The downside to this was that every day I had passers by crossing the road to avoid me, and verbal abuse from jerks in muscle cars or pickups. Even some of the people where I was working were a little bit aprehensive about talking to me...
Meanwhile on CNN and other stations, much was being made of the alleged musical and fashion tastes of the Columbine gunmen. I decided to read up on the incident, and was struck by the fact that the killers looked nothing like goths, didn't appear to like what Americans consider to be goth bands, and nor did their friends (the so called `Trenchcoat Mafia').
I started to watch the TV shows, and was struck by the warped logic displayed by many of the commentators. While the actions of the killers was indefensible, the arguments being put forward as to why they acted the way they did was disturbing. Clean cut, rent a quote, god fearing teens were stating that the killers and their friends were outcasts. The conclusion that was drawn was that anyone that looked different or didn't listen to pop music was a potential menace to society.
At no point did anyone ask whether the avaliablility of guns was a factor. The fact is that most teens have felt like killing someone on the spur of the moment, but the availability of such effective means to do it is the key. I'm sure there are as many messed up kids (and adults) in the UK as there are in the US, but incidents like Columbine simply cannot happen with such alarming regularity because access to firearms is so limited.
So, please don't attack a music scene or fashion that you don't like or don't understand. Look further and ask whether it's time to stop the dubious right to bear arms. This isn't the wild west anymore, there aren't any bears, Indians or bandits waiting to ambush your wagon train. Guns simply don't have a place in a modern society.
Both Apple and Sun have powerfull Unix based operating systems marketed as proprietary products. Both make a considerable part of their income from hardware - high performance desktop machines, and in Suns case *really* high performance servers.
One area in which they differ is in their attitude towards Linux. While Apple did have a Linux-like project under their wings, they have abandoned it for their own Mach based OS. Sun meanwhile seem to be on course to make Linux support part of their OS, while encouraging users of older Sun hardware to make the switch to SparcLinux.
Obviously Suns attitude make good business sense - shunt users of old hardware onto a similar platform and get rid of the support headaches. but Sun do seem to have a more supportive attitude all round than Apple. They are far more keen to get people using their hardware, even if it means losing software revenue.
What would be great is if Apple could recognise that they can make much more revenue from hardware than from software. Their support costs would plummet had less software to be rsponsible for. So, until such a time when Apple see the light, they are destined to keep Linux 'at arms length'.
I tend to be doing database driven stuff, mostly with MySQL, but occasionally with Oracle, Informix, etc. Apart from this it's information stored in memory mapped files, which are updates from live feeds.
The actual web pages tend to be HTML hardcoded into C and C++ programs, with the dynamic stuff coming from the database or memmapped files. For instance, I am currently writing a reporting system. This is a C++ database load program that uploads the tables once every 24 hours. The searching is done by several C programs tailored to the individual search being performed - in other words one program for editors, another for authors. The nearest thing to 'templates' that it uses is a static library that has output routines for various headers, footers and standard menus.
This is a little bit more laborious than using say PHP3, or mod_perl. However, it is blisteringly fast and efficient.
One reason I tend to shy away from Perl besides the performance or resources issue, is the question of maintainability. It is very easy to get the job done quickly in Perl. It's also easy to write terribly unreadable code. One of the systems that I am replacing is simply line noise and a bunch of cron jobs. The other does absolutely no error checking, and has been missing many errors in the data feed for the last two years.
You may argue that the issue of Perl code maintainability is down to the authors of the original systems, but Perl encourages quick hacks. When these hacks go into production they end up being a nightmare to maintain or enhance.
Aqualung's post was not a troll - he has a point in that mod_perl is a slippery beast. If it's not used *just right* it leaks memory like a string vest.
Perl is also a no-no (in mod_perl or straightforward standalone guise) for very heavily loaded sites. At Yahoo!, Perl is considered too resource hungry for use on the frontline webservers.
This leaves you in the unenviable situation of writing leakless, bugless C or C++ code. Catch 22 time...
One thing that I never understood about the US crypto laws was this:
Is it OK for a US citizen to *import* strong encryption?
If the US laws state ony that crypto shouldn't be exported, then the law is becoming a bit of a non-issue. There arc plenty of good encryption algorithms and sopftware coming from outside the US, from places like Israel, etc.
Perhaps this change of heart is to prevent other countries adopting draconian export licenses which would hinder US software houses. Of course, export laws will never hinder covert organisations who will use the best available crypto code regardless of laws...
The Yahoo! founders are reputed to have had a look at Linux around the time of the 1.x.x kernels, but FreeBSD was a far more suitable option at the time.
This far down the line, FreeBSD is pretty much entrenched at Yahoo! - they have people there who can hack the kernel for specialised requirements, and a huge codebase that would be a nightmare to port.
For better or for worse, I have no formal computer qualifications, so I cannot comment on the numbers of women undergraduates coming through the system. The only course I did attend was an evening HNC (somewhere between A-Level and BSc), this had a very healthy ratio of women to men. More of the women dropped out early on, but by the end of the first year more men had dropped out overall.
As for my optimism - after the week I've had I'm trying my best to look on the bright side of things at the moment. Normal (grumpy) service will resume next week when I find out if I will ever get full use of my left hand back...
One thing that I have noticed about women computer programmers as compared to their male colleagues, is that they tend to view programming as a job and an interest - not a lifestyle. Many male computer people, and especially wannabe ones live and breath computers, from hardware to software. For the average male geek it's reflected in the books that they read and the clothes they wear - typically cyberpunk and sloppy casualwear.
Obviously this is still a generalisation, but walk around any IT office, and the female staff will be less distinguishable from their counterparts in say accounts or human resources, than the males.
Maybe that's why women are a less vocal, but rapidly growing part of the IT workforce. As men tend to be more openly and loudly competitive than women in most walks of life, they leave the impression that they dominate the field.
On the eve of the twent-first century men do still dominate most walks of life. But given the massive advances in attaining equality for women in this century, I don't think it will be long before the issue of women in computing becomes a non-issue.
Earlier this year I reviewed a book entitled `Advanced C Programming by Example' on Slashdot. It's a concise little book with a number of useful examples. It's also the only book that provides usable examples of realloc() that I've come across.
To read a variable length string, give this a whirl:
Slashdot Mirror
Nice to see the old myth about the ENIAC being the first computer is still being pepetuated.
Chris
Chris Wareham
Having worked with CORBA for the last eight months, I can say that the KDE 2 direction seems to be the right one. CORBA is a simple, elegant concept seriously let down by its implementation. The language mappings for C++ are horrendous, and the whole thing has that `designed by committee' feel also suffered by Motif.
MICO and the other ORB's that I've used all suffer from being bloated middleware that hinders the development of efficient ditributed applications. In fact, I used a proprietary system that used the same basic concepts as CORBA at my last job. Despite the discomfort I felt using a proprietary system, it did offer a far better API than CORBA.
DCOP looks like it will build on a very efficient foundation, namely RPC and libICE from the X Window system. My only worry is that C++ isn't the best language for implementing such systems, so I hope they are sticking to C for this library.
Chris
Chris Wareham
This should have appeared under the Forbes/AntiOnline article.
Chris Wareham
For some reason when I read the line about PacketStorm being taken under Kroll-O-Gara's wing, I had visions of cybrersleuths and William Gibson plotlines. I know the PacketStrom thing is old news, but I never took an interest in it before. Crackers and security are to me at least like income tax - a pain but something that must be take into account.
...
However theis JP character sounds like a very dubious character. Regardless of whether he really has employed crackers to breach sites and provide fuel for his crusade, he is still spreading annoying disinformation.
I wonder if he'll sue me for saying that
Chris Wareham
Whether this boils down to personal animosity or not I can't say, but while the RHAD/Gnome team are pulling away from using E, Mandrake and Rasterman are pulling away from GTK+. The Enlightenment configuration utility that complemented E 0.15 will be redundant in E 0.16, as all configuration can be done from E itself. The widgets used for this are native to E, not GTK+. Mandrake and Ratserman are also talking about a file manager utility built into uture versions of E.
Personally I use a mix of the Blackbox WM on my Sparc (small and fast) and E on my laptop (big and baroque). The file manager that may go into E would no doubt be seamless and well designed - but adding any further functionality to the WM has to be questionable.
Chris Wareham
There was a mid-eighties British band that lifted their name from the film All ABout Eve. Unfortunately they went from being an exciting live band to a dismal studio band - something to do with signing to a major label with big ideas on what they should sound like ...
Chris Wareham
Was he the lunatic American camp commander with the thing about flouridisation? That was a great role, and played hilariously.
On a similar note, what's the name of the actor who played the air force pilot in Dr. Stranglove? The one that ends up sitting on top of his plane's H-bomb. I've seen him in loads of films playing tobacco chewing Louisianans (at least I guess that's what his accent was).
Chris Wareham
The Electric Ballroom (Camden High Street, near the tube station) is OK on Friday nights. Further up the road during the daytime is Resurrection Records, a record store in the basement of a clothing shop. Pop in there to lay your hands on flyers for clubs and gigs. (And why not treat yourself to a copy of the Killing Miranda album while you're there - feel free to disregard this sentence).
A number of half-decent clubs occur at Gossips in Soho on Wednesday and occasional Fridays. But the best Goth club in London is undoubtedly the Slimelight. Some of the music may be an acquired taste, but the good always outweighs the bad no matter what brand of Goth you like.
It's a members only club, so just turn up at the Angel tube station at 10.00pm on a Saturday night and ask someone to sign you in.
Chris Wareham
if you by 'official' mean written language, it is used only in TV and by politicians
That's pretty much what I meant. My Finnish tutor used to always tell us that written Finnish did not make good spoken Finnish. She quite often gave us examples of the spoken language that didn't conform to the grammar rules - slang I suppose.
I even have a `Slangisanasto' at home that I bought in Kuopio. It contains loads of great tranlations of English and American slang into Finnish, although whether it's any use or not is another matter entirely!
Chris Wareham
I know the feeling. I grew up in the 'home of the British army' - Aldershot. And anyone without a buzz cut, blue stonewashed jeans and a white t-shirt sticks out like a sore thumb there.
In fact, the newspapers were suprised when the locals weren't upset about the Paratroop regiment being barracked elsewhere. After years of fights, vandalism and falling house prices I wonder why.
Chris Wareham
The finnish geeks have an edge on you guys when it comes to getting jobs here, because you'll never be able to learn our language
I spent four years studying Finnish and Finnish history, and have to admit that for many Western Europeans it is a weird language to learn. The grammar is quite strict though, so once you know the rules it isn't too bad.
Personally, I love Finland as a country - sparsely populated, and covered in forests and lakes. The people are friendly to foriegners (except on occasion to the Russians), but really like their drink.
I haven't been to Finland for four years now, but used to go regularily. Hopefully I can go back some point next year for a couple of weeks.
Chris Wareham
nothing like holding a nice blonde Finn in your arms at night
Funnily enough, the Finns aren't a Scandinavian people, or inherently blond haired. Their origin is shrouded in mystery, but they basically settled in Finland after the great migration of the tribes. One bunch of Finno-Ugrian people headed West from the Urals, and became the Hungarians. Another big bunch headed North until they hit the Gulf of Finland. Some stayed South of where St. Petersburg now stands and became Estonians (Virolainen). The remainder headed further North, met the Lapps and became Finns (Suomalainen) or Karelians.
Other small Finno-Ugrian groups are scattered throughout the North West of the former Soviet Union.
The reason many Finns are blond is most commonly because of Swedish ancestry. In the South of Finland there is a large Swedish speaking minority - the result of Swedish colonialism and the dominance of Swedish as the ruling elite's language of choice in the eighteenth century.
As for language, Finnish was codified in the mid-nineteenth century. 'Official' Finnish is the dialect spoken in the South West of the country. The further East you go the more archaic the dialect - especially in Karelia. Other dialects like Ingrian are pretty much extinct, while in the far North, Lapp is a sadly disappearing language.
Chris Wareham
tell me again how your ... gun-grabbing mentality ... is going to help us get to the heart of the real problem
It wont solve the problem. There are always going to be determined sociopaths who will go to any ends to cause mayhem. The examples you state are proof of this. What removal of guns would accomplish is bringing to an end the spur of the moment killings - the sacked employee who quickly resorts to shooting colleauges for instance.
The examples of non-gun related killings you give are dwarfed by the *total* numbers killed by guns every year in the US. Don't use a small number of isolated non-gun incidents to justify the right to bear arms.
Anyway, as we're starting to go around in circles, and I know full well that some parts of American society will *never* part with their personal arsenals, I'm going to do some work.
Yours, without animosity,
Chris Wareham
Following the Columbine shootings, and the comments made in many media organs, `outsiders' were branded potential murderers. This included goths like myself, and stereotypical computer nerds. Basically anyone who didn't play a lot of sport, wear ordinary clothes or listen to pop music were labelled `ousiders'.
This is why an article like this has some relevance to Slashdot. I try hard to disprove the `nerd' myth. I am a self taught computer programmer who earns a good salary. Simply because I don't meet the society norms in terms of appearance, people whho meet me outside of work assume I'm a drug addled drop-out who exists on welfare.
Chris Wareham
Regarding guns having no place in a modern society, I strongly disagree with you. Guns equalize people so that people can't use superior physical prowess to overpower victims.
So rather than look at the reasons why someone wants to attack you, just blow them away? The police are there to stop the kind of abuse you describe, when individuals use your excuse it simply becomes vigilante tactics.
Charlton Heston, the mouthpiece of the NRA, argued that the way to prevent Columbine like tragedies was to post armed guards in schools. What the hell does this teach children? That it's OK to bear arms, because if you abuse them you'll get shot?
I'm sorry but that's an insane notion. Remove the guns, and you don't have a problem. As someone else has commented, in the UK we don't have a problem with stabbings in schools (one incident this decade), so people arent going to make a switch to alternative weapons.
With regard to the bombs, I will agree that Klebold and Harris were determined to cause mayhem. However, in the vast majority of cases where someone goes `postal' they simply use a gun. I am sure it is a bogus notion to insist that anyone considering a killing spree will automatically use pipebombs if guns are unavailable. In the UK and Europe I cannot recall a single incident involving non-politically motivated killers and pipebombs.
Chris Wareham
It is far more difficult to go on an indiscriminate killing spree with a knife than it is with a gun. The actual physical act of stabbing someone is also far more difficult than pulling a trigger - films give the impression tha stabbing someone is quite easy, but in most cases it takes a lot of exertion to push a knife into a body.
At the end of the day a gun has one purpose - killing. Knives have a domestic purpose, and to outlaw them is obviously ludicrous. Please don't defend firearms by comapring them to potentially dangerous objects that *do* have a place in civilised, modern society.
Chris Wareham
I had the pleasure of working in the States for a month, just after the Columbine shootings. This would have been great, except for the fact that I have long black hair and wear black clothes - yup, I'm a goth, and have been for ten years.
...
The downside to this was that every day I had passers by crossing the road to avoid me, and verbal abuse from jerks in muscle cars or pickups. Even some of the people where I was working were a little bit aprehensive about talking to me
Meanwhile on CNN and other stations, much was being made of the alleged musical and fashion tastes of the Columbine gunmen. I decided to read up on the incident, and was struck by the fact that the killers looked nothing like goths, didn't appear to like what Americans consider to be goth bands, and nor did their friends (the so called `Trenchcoat Mafia').
I started to watch the TV shows, and was struck by the warped logic displayed by many of the commentators. While the actions of the killers was indefensible, the arguments being put forward as to why they acted the way they did was disturbing. Clean cut, rent a quote, god fearing teens were stating that the killers and their friends were outcasts. The conclusion that was drawn was that anyone that looked different or didn't listen to pop music was a potential menace to society.
At no point did anyone ask whether the avaliablility of guns was a factor. The fact is that most teens have felt like killing someone on the spur of the moment, but the availability of such effective means to do it is the key. I'm sure there are as many messed up kids (and adults) in the UK as there are in the US, but incidents like Columbine simply cannot happen with such alarming regularity because access to firearms is so limited.
So, please don't attack a music scene or fashion that you don't like or don't understand. Look further and ask whether it's time to stop the dubious right to bear arms. This isn't the wild west anymore, there aren't any bears, Indians or bandits waiting to ambush your wagon train. Guns simply don't have a place in a modern society.
Chris Wareham
Both Apple and Sun have powerfull Unix based operating systems marketed as proprietary products. Both make a considerable part of their income from hardware - high performance desktop machines, and in Suns case *really* high performance servers.
One area in which they differ is in their attitude towards Linux. While Apple did have a Linux-like project under their wings, they have abandoned it for their own Mach based OS. Sun meanwhile seem to be on course to make Linux support part of their OS, while encouraging users of older Sun hardware to make the switch to SparcLinux.
Obviously Suns attitude make good business sense - shunt users of old hardware onto a similar platform and get rid of the support headaches. but Sun do seem to have a more supportive attitude all round than Apple. They are far more keen to get people using their hardware, even if it means losing software revenue.
What would be great is if Apple could recognise that they can make much more revenue from hardware than from software. Their support costs would plummet had less software to be rsponsible for. So, until such a time when Apple see the light, they are destined to keep Linux 'at arms length'.
Chris Wareham
I tend to be doing database driven stuff, mostly with MySQL, but occasionally with Oracle, Informix, etc. Apart from this it's information stored in memory mapped files, which are updates from live feeds.
The actual web pages tend to be HTML hardcoded into C and C++ programs, with the dynamic stuff coming from the database or memmapped files. For instance, I am currently writing a reporting system. This is a C++ database load program that uploads the tables once every 24 hours. The searching is done by several C programs tailored to the individual search being performed - in other words one program for editors, another for authors. The nearest thing to 'templates' that it uses is a static library that has output routines for various headers, footers and standard menus.
This is a little bit more laborious than using say PHP3, or mod_perl. However, it is blisteringly fast and efficient.
One reason I tend to shy away from Perl besides the performance or resources issue, is the question of maintainability. It is very easy to get the job done quickly in Perl. It's also easy to write terribly unreadable code. One of the systems that I am replacing is simply line noise and a bunch of cron jobs. The other does absolutely no error checking, and has been missing many errors in the data feed for the last two years.
You may argue that the issue of Perl code maintainability is down to the authors of the original systems, but Perl encourages quick hacks. When these hacks go into production they end up being a nightmare to maintain or enhance.
Chris Wareham
Aqualung's post was not a troll - he has a point in that mod_perl is a slippery beast. If it's not used *just right* it leaks memory like a string vest.
...
Perl is also a no-no (in mod_perl or straightforward standalone guise) for very heavily loaded sites. At Yahoo!, Perl is considered too resource hungry for use on the frontline webservers.
This leaves you in the unenviable situation of writing leakless, bugless C or C++ code. Catch 22 time
Chris Wareham
One thing that I never understood about the US crypto laws was this:
...
Is it OK for a US citizen to *import* strong encryption?
If the US laws state ony that crypto shouldn't be exported, then the law is becoming a bit of a non-issue. There arc plenty of good encryption algorithms and sopftware coming from outside the US, from places like Israel, etc.
Perhaps this change of heart is to prevent other countries adopting draconian export licenses which would hinder US software houses. Of course, export laws will never hinder covert organisations who will use the best available crypto code regardless of laws
Chris Wareham
The Yahoo! founders are reputed to have had a look at Linux around the time of the 1.x.x kernels, but FreeBSD was a far more suitable option at the time.
This far down the line, FreeBSD is pretty much entrenched at Yahoo! - they have people there who can hack the kernel for specialised requirements, and a huge codebase that would be a nightmare to port.
Chris Wareham
For better or for worse, I have no formal computer qualifications, so I cannot comment on the numbers of women undergraduates coming through the system. The only course I did attend was an evening HNC (somewhere between A-Level and BSc), this had a very healthy ratio of women to men. More of the women dropped out early on, but by the end of the first year more men had dropped out overall.
...
As for my optimism - after the week I've had I'm trying my best to look on the bright side of things at the moment. Normal (grumpy) service will resume next week when I find out if I will ever get full use of my left hand back
Chris Wareham
One thing that I have noticed about women computer programmers as compared to their male colleagues, is that they tend to view programming as a job and an interest - not a lifestyle. Many male computer people, and especially wannabe ones live and breath computers, from hardware to software. For the average male geek it's reflected in the books that they read and the clothes they wear - typically cyberpunk and sloppy casualwear.
Obviously this is still a generalisation, but walk around any IT office, and the female staff will be less distinguishable from their counterparts in say accounts or human resources, than the males.
Maybe that's why women are a less vocal, but rapidly growing part of the IT workforce. As men tend to be more openly and loudly competitive than women in most walks of life, they leave the impression that they dominate the field.
On the eve of the twent-first century men do still dominate most walks of life. But given the massive advances in attaining equality for women in this century, I don't think it will be long before the issue of women in computing becomes a non-issue.
Chris Wareham
Earlier this year I reviewed a book entitled `Advanced C Programming by Example' on Slashdot. It's a concise little book with a number of useful examples. It's also the only book that provides usable examples of realloc() that I've come across.
...
To read a variable length string, give this a whirl:
char *get_line(FILE *fp) {
char *line;
if((line = (char *)malloc(BUFSIZ)) == NULL)
exit(1);
if((fgets(line, BUFSIZ, fp)) == NULL) {
if(feof(fp))
return NULL;
exit(1);
}
if(line[strlen(line) - 1] != '\n') {
char *line_ptr, get_buf[BUFSIZ];
while(line[strlen(line) - 1] != '\n') {
fgets(get_buf, BUFSIZ, fp);
if((line = (char *)realloc(line, strlen(line) + BUFSIZ)) == NULL)
exit(1);
line_ptr = line + strlen(line);
strcpy(line_ptr, get_buf);
}
}
line[strlen(line) - 1] = '\0';
return line;
}
Bear in mind that a malicious user could slurp up large amounts of memory with this function
Chris Wareham