Your money is likely better spent buying Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions Second Edition for example, which just came out, and then being able to apply that knowledge to many situations. Screen-scraping sounds indeed like parsing HTML, in which case it should be a breeze to use regexes and CPAN modules dedicated to HTML and even modified XML parsers to do the job...after all the power of XML is user-defined tags, there's nothing stopping the user from specifying html tag events...
I think it is a worthy pursuit for a developer or sysadmin. Interestingly, at least as far as the bioinformatics side of things goes, folks like Tim O'Reilly agree with me. This from the June 2002 issue of Linux Magazine, page 24: "People don't want to do the same old same old...and bioinformatics is a field where people can really prove their chops...This is about status. What better way to get status than to show off that you're a real hard ass." As for myself, I am a biology undergraduate about to complete my degree, working as a Perl programmer and database analyst for a salmon genome project and while the biological background can only be an asset, the transition to the Gateway of computational biological sciences can be easy...DNA and protein can be reduced [at least for simple applications] to finite alphabets forming strings. Sequences can be defined as objects with methods for mutating them, aligning them with other sequence objects, and so forth. The more science you learn, the more your programs make sense to you, and the better you can interface with the people asking for applications that you have the computer savvy to provide. I say go for it. You will have to do some hardcore science reading and self-education sooner or later but that comes in time.
Best regards.
I find it interesting that all the [apparent] linux zealots post under "Anonymous Coward" (see my post below, the one where Anonymous Coward accepts the brand "fanatic" and then single-handedly makes it equivalent to spineless, but not before some other Coward script-kiddy wannabe adds a cute remark). Wake up. I love UNIX-based OS but I seriously doubt it will EVER support gaming to the extent that Win does. I'm all about questioning, and using anything for what it is best at (which is why I advocate a dual boot system). Companies should offer games for more OS than Win, I TOTALLY agree, and I think THAT is where the pressure should be, at the level of the company policy. But if a company decides to make a game for Win, that is THEIR decision, and what moral right does anyone have to crack it or develop a bypass? That's called getting what you haven't paid for, otherwise known as theft, and if I invested serious money into software development as opposed to doing it pro bono, that would really piss me off. So, currently and for all foreseeable future, companies are deciding to tailor their games to Win, hence Win is best for gaming, so that if gaming is a hobby and you like the sweet games out there for Win, you adopt Win for gaming until the company in question makes a 'nix offering. I fail to see what the problem is in asserting this. Anecdote: I spend 9 hours per day at 2 dedicated Red Hat terminals.
I posted earlier on this topic, and checked back just now. Good gravy what a bunch of self-righteous ZEALOTS live here! It's like if it isn't freeware a company doesn't have a right to make it! And how about those insults; someone here called the author of the article a "scum-sucking pig" just because said author sounds like he/she will purchase Wc3 even if Blizz doesn't leave bnetd alone. If you don't like something fine don't get/use it but then you'd better not be developing the crack for it and you'd better not slam other people for adopting the path the rest of us affectionately call the middle ground. Yeah I hate Microsoft for their marketting and all those other companies who take intellectual property to extremes but fanatics in anything (that includes open source and freeware) just plain SUCK. out.
Frankly, I never really understood why everyone cares so much about Blizz leaving bnetd alone. I mean, I understand that bnet is a free service for the most part, and that people who use bnetd still have to buy the game so Blizz isn't losing money. But bnet is one of their trademarks and legal precedence is absolutely replete with people being nailed for marketting products with names and qualities too close to some other make. Consider also that the upcoming World of Warcraft will not be free bnet, so of course Blizz wants to cap non-Blizz bnet services now. Yes yes it would be nice if Blizz made *nix game offerings but hey, if you are smart enough to set up and run a dedicated *nix box, you are smart enough to be able to set up and use dual boot to Win32 for gaming purposes only. I fully confess that I have not read up a lot on the whole bnetd issue, but frankly I am a bit tired of little comments like the one about bnetd in above article featured on this site.
Cheers,
jacquio
Slashdot Mirror
Your money is likely better spent buying Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions Second Edition for example, which just came out, and then being able to apply that knowledge to many situations. Screen-scraping sounds indeed like parsing HTML, in which case it should be a breeze to use regexes and CPAN modules dedicated to HTML and even modified XML parsers to do the job...after all the power of XML is user-defined tags, there's nothing stopping the user from specifying html tag events...
I think it is a worthy pursuit for a developer or sysadmin. Interestingly, at least as far as the bioinformatics side of things goes, folks like Tim O'Reilly agree with me. This from the June 2002 issue of Linux Magazine, page 24: "People don't want to do the same old same old...and bioinformatics is a field where people can really prove their chops...This is about status. What better way to get status than to show off that you're a real hard ass." As for myself, I am a biology undergraduate about to complete my degree, working as a Perl programmer and database analyst for a salmon genome project and while the biological background can only be an asset, the transition to the Gateway of computational biological sciences can be easy...DNA and protein can be reduced [at least for simple applications] to finite alphabets forming strings. Sequences can be defined as objects with methods for mutating them, aligning them with other sequence objects, and so forth. The more science you learn, the more your programs make sense to you, and the better you can interface with the people asking for applications that you have the computer savvy to provide. I say go for it. You will have to do some hardcore science reading and self-education sooner or later but that comes in time. Best regards.
I find it interesting that all the [apparent] linux zealots post under "Anonymous Coward" (see my post below, the one where Anonymous Coward accepts the brand "fanatic" and then single-handedly makes it equivalent to spineless, but not before some other Coward script-kiddy wannabe adds a cute remark). Wake up. I love UNIX-based OS but I seriously doubt it will EVER support gaming to the extent that Win does. I'm all about questioning, and using anything for what it is best at (which is why I advocate a dual boot system). Companies should offer games for more OS than Win, I TOTALLY agree, and I think THAT is where the pressure should be, at the level of the company policy. But if a company decides to make a game for Win, that is THEIR decision, and what moral right does anyone have to crack it or develop a bypass? That's called getting what you haven't paid for, otherwise known as theft, and if I invested serious money into software development as opposed to doing it pro bono, that would really piss me off. So, currently and for all foreseeable future, companies are deciding to tailor their games to Win, hence Win is best for gaming, so that if gaming is a hobby and you like the sweet games out there for Win, you adopt Win for gaming until the company in question makes a 'nix offering. I fail to see what the problem is in asserting this. Anecdote: I spend 9 hours per day at 2 dedicated Red Hat terminals.
I posted earlier on this topic, and checked back just now. Good gravy what a bunch of self-righteous ZEALOTS live here! It's like if it isn't freeware a company doesn't have a right to make it! And how about those insults; someone here called the author of the article a "scum-sucking pig" just because said author sounds like he/she will purchase Wc3 even if Blizz doesn't leave bnetd alone. If you don't like something fine don't get/use it but then you'd better not be developing the crack for it and you'd better not slam other people for adopting the path the rest of us affectionately call the middle ground. Yeah I hate Microsoft for their marketting and all those other companies who take intellectual property to extremes but fanatics in anything (that includes open source and freeware) just plain SUCK. out.
Frankly, I never really understood why everyone cares so much about Blizz leaving bnetd alone. I mean, I understand that bnet is a free service for the most part, and that people who use bnetd still have to buy the game so Blizz isn't losing money. But bnet is one of their trademarks and legal precedence is absolutely replete with people being nailed for marketting products with names and qualities too close to some other make. Consider also that the upcoming World of Warcraft will not be free bnet, so of course Blizz wants to cap non-Blizz bnet services now. Yes yes it would be nice if Blizz made *nix game offerings but hey, if you are smart enough to set up and run a dedicated *nix box, you are smart enough to be able to set up and use dual boot to Win32 for gaming purposes only. I fully confess that I have not read up a lot on the whole bnetd issue, but frankly I am a bit tired of little comments like the one about bnetd in above article featured on this site. Cheers, jacquio