Please stay as far away from PERL as possible! Perl, on the other hand is a useful programming language. If you're confused, Perl is the language proper, perl is the interpreter, and PERL is that god-forsaken language that Matt writes all his scripts in.
If you want to learn to program, I would suggest starting with something a little more structured like Python or Ruby. Both of those languages are near to my heart.
My band went to a local studio, and it ended up costing around $1200. We paid $300 each for a 10 song EP, and the quality was on par with most of the independent bands that I enjoy. All of the recording was done digitally, and we spent 4 ten hour days hashing it out. The notion that good music has to be expensive to produce is ridiculous. Elliott smith made a couple of his better albums, Roman Candle, and his self titled album in a friend's living room. Of course, this depends on the type of music you like, but if you want to go cheap, it's always a possiblity. I may be wrong, but I believe that Nirvana's first few albums were also ultra-low-budget.
I primarily listen to stuff that falls into the indie genera; however, I don't see why a pop album couldn't be produced in the same fashion. Not that I like pop... Afterall, I'm supposed to be emo-fabulous!
Nah, a default TTL of 60 is perfect for sending packets through space...
Re:...slightly related: text to speech, pitch adju
on
Turn-Key Linux Audio
·
· Score: 5, Informative
IBM has a suite of programs called ViaVoice that allow you to do text to speech or vice versa. It has a full API and is fully programmable. You can emulate an adult male or female voice, and you can also do children's voices. It works remarkably well. Unfortunately, it's not on the IBM site anymore, but you can still get it here . I'm not sure how long it'll stay there, so I'd get it now... It allows you to set the spacing or cadence of the speech, but it has no facility to merge with a base beat. I suppose you could do that by saving a.wav and bringing it into your audio editor. For general TTS, you may just want to check out festival. I've never tried it, but I've heard good things.
I strongly suggest you spend a few months each on Perl, Python, a functional language like Haskell, and several APIs of some sort, like wxWindows or XML parsing.
I agree totally. I just wanted to chime in and say that while you're out checking out new languages, give Ruby a try. It's a beautful language that falls in the same family as Perl and Python but has it's own charm all the same. I use it for all of my development in an environmental lab, and it's served me quite well.
If you want to explore functional programming, you also may want to check out SML. There are several free implementations available, and it's easy to learn. It's very fast and quite powerful for a variety of tasks. Last but not least, check out ANSI Lisp or at least Scheme. Everybody serious programmer should know at least one dialect of Lisp because it's the original hackers language.
I believe ESR did a rant somewhere on how to become a real programmer or something along those lines. Google could probably dig it up rather quickly. It's worth a read as he outlines languages to learn to explore the various development methodologies(functional, OOP, procedural, etc).
A lot of people get too caught up in his philosophy and overlook the fact that he's a coding god. I liked this article that sheds some light on his coding abilities.
I spent much of my childhood playing Star Control 1 with my best friend. We used a single keyboard playing on separate sides long before multiplayer gaming was a standard practice. Those moments stand out as some of the best gaming moments of my childhood, and I can't wait to check out the port of Star Control 2. I've actually never played it, but I'm assuming it's in the same flavor as 1, so it should kick ass. If anybody out there hasn't checked out star control, you should. It rocks!
You misunderstood threading support. It refers to threading messages and not program threads. This way related messages are kept together just like the threading here on slashdot.
And thank god it's not! XS can be a royal PITA. The marriage of Perl and C is a shotgun wedding at best, and it seems that the groom is wasted before the ceremony even starts.
Python makes it much easier to interact with C libraries, and Ruby has the nicest C library support of all. Also, for embedding a program language into an application, why not use Scheme? It was designed to be embedded from the beginning and should impose much less overhead. Since it's a functional language, it's also very well suited for AI, which makes it a good choice for games and such.
I'm not knocking Perl. It has a special place in my heart as the first language I really learned; however, it's best used for what it's really good at, and that's scripting.
The "." is needed because 5 is an object of type Fixnum. times is a method available to Fixnum objects. I used that example to demonstrate that EVERYTHING in Ruby is an object. For instance, you can do the following:
"hello world".upcase "HELLO WORLD"
Not to mention method cascading
"hello world".upcase.reverse "DLROW OLLEH"
Once you get used to having these features, it's hard to go back(to Perl that is...). There are a number of other very nice features as well. Iterators for example(which Perl 6 is going to include).
list = ["foo", "bar", "car"] list.each do |elem|
# do something with elem end
For a quick walkthrough of the languages features, go here: http://rubycentral.com/book/intro.html
I do know when I see a language which does not have an intuitive syntax or grammar.
And what language does? Any new language requires an adjustment period. The important thing is consistency once you get over the initial learning curve. Lisp doesn't necessarily have an intuitive syntax either; however, few would argue that it's not a powerful language. The consistency of having everything represented as a list makes it's syntax extremely simple.
I used to code in Python, and now I use Ruby in it's place. I've found it to be just as readable but more terse. It's also extremely consistent in the way that everything is an object. You can say things like
5.times {|n| puts n}
and all kinds of other crazy things. I'm not saying it's better than Python(not trying to start a flame war). I'm just saying to try it and see if you like it.
Terrific\Ter*rif"ic\, a. [L. terrificus; fr. terrere to frighten + facere to make. See {Terror}, and {Fact}.] Causing terror; adapted to excite great fear or dread; terrible; as, a terrific form; a terrific sight.
Does the current 2.4.x series kernel scale to 64 procs effectively, or are they using some "enterprise patch" to fine tune for this particular hardware? I was under the impression that since most kernel developers don't have access to this kind of ultra-high end hardware that Linux isn't really optimized for it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
For those wondering, PVR stands for personal video recorder. It's like a VCR, but it's digital. Now on to my question.
How will the new FCC copy-protection regulations being passed effect TiVo and other PVR devices? Are they going to be rendered completely useless, or is there going to be some loophole?
I would suggest checking out eruby/modruby in place of PHP. I know that PHP is very popular and somewhat industry standard these days; however, that doesn't make it the cream of the crop. Ruby is a VERY clean language in the same vein as Python but more consistent throughout. The Eruby/Modruby combo allows you to embed ruby into your html in the exact same fashion as PHP but with all the power of ruby. While PHP is a decent web programming languge, Ruby is a great all purpose language with a fantastic standard library. Now that I'm using it, I'll never go back to PHP, Perl 5, or any other comparable technology. There's also an entire book online.
I know that everyone has their opinion, but this one is mine.
I've been using mysql for four years, and I've recently began migrating to Postgresql. I've found Posgtgresql to have all of the features that I've wished MySql had, and they don't feel "tacked on" like InnoDB and Berkeley DB support do in MySql. I would highly reccomend Postgresql over MySql for any serious application due to its native support for transactions and sub-selects. It also has wonderful features like views and stored procedures that are still in the planning phase for MySql.
Seeing as how both are free, the only winning factor for MySql at this point seems to be speed. If you're planning on using a system that doesn't have to deal with the possibility of simultanous writes to a particular table then MySql probably makes more since due to it's superiour speed; however, if you're handling a high number of concurrent writes then Postgresql is the way to go due to it's improved reliability and ACID compliance. MySql only supports table-level locking by default, which seems silly for any application where a lot of inserts are happening at the same time. I know that there are 3rd party libraries which provide a solution for this, but I'd rather use a database where these features have been planned for from the beginning.
MySql is catching up in the areas in which it's lacking, but it's still going to be a bit longer before it has a comparable feature set to some of the more industrial strength databases. On the upside, I'm glad to see free software solutions in the database market making their mark because the acceptance of these technologies will only further Linux's success in the long run.
Disagree completely. Since getting NWN, I haven't even played online yet because I've been having so much fun playing the single player game. I also agree that for some strange reason NWN has some of the same feel as the old Final Fantasy games, but not in the sense that it's trying to copy Final Fantasy. It simply has a very distinct and unique feel that's extremely refreshing when compared to many of the more generic games that have been released in the same genera(i.e., dungeon siege).
If you've played through even the first chapter of the campaign, it's very clear that a LOT of thought went into making the single player game extremely dynamic and immersive. There are a good number of subplots that make it clear that the game was designed to be explored rather than played in the linear "forced march" style that is all too common these days. The NPCs react to you completely differently depending on your class / race / alignment combination, and you have a good enough degree of control over the conversation that you can avoid certain confrontations diplomatically if you wish to do so.
So, don't listen to people who disregard the campaigns as trivial add-ons when most of them haven't even played the game all the way through. IMHO, the game is worth it for the campaigns in and of themselves, and all the other stuff is just gravy!
BTW, if you really want to enjoy the game(single or multiplayer), I would suggest getting the camera angle hack, which allows you to zoom in and out to any degree you see fit. The default camera configuration really limits what you can see, and the artists have done a superb job on the details.
It seems like the latest trend is to prefix Open on anything that's proprietary and evil to try and trick "Open Source" hackers into thinking it's not so bad.
Reasons for lack of GUI innovation
on
GUIs for Everyone
·
· Score: 2
Linux has traditionally been designed, developed, and maintained by engineers. Engineers tend to be more concerned with function than form, and thus we are all sitting here using a highly functional, amorphous operating system. The introduction of a "standards body" will require people to actually follow the standards. If the standards are widely adopted, we will have a highly functional kernel with a very well formed interface. The current desktop model has been innovated upon long enough. We need desktop pioneers to come forth and INVENT rather than follow the lead of a product we consider inferior. A major paradigm shift on the desktop could be exactly what Linux needs to take it from the point of being "fragmented on the desktop" to being "seemless from the bottom up". I sincerely hope that people get off their asses and make it happen.
Great advice! I never realized how easy it was to voice my opinion. I'd like to add that if you don't have the time or inclination to call, or you can't get through(i.e., busy signals) then there are forms for comments on all of the senator's website where you can simply type in whatever you were planning on saying. Granted, this probably isn't quite as effective as a phone conversation as you can't guarantee anyone is actually reading what you write; however, it's still better than nothing, and if you like being a lazy activist, it might be right for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious if anybody has experienced dramatic performance increases running X when switching from 2.4 to the 2.6 testing branch of the kernel.
Please stay as far away from PERL as possible! Perl, on the other hand is a useful programming language. If you're confused, Perl is the language proper, perl is the interpreter, and PERL is that god-forsaken language that Matt writes all his scripts in.
If you want to learn to program, I would suggest starting with something a little more structured like Python or Ruby. Both of those languages are near to my heart.
Dare I ask? What is a GPA?
My band went to a local studio, and it ended up costing around $1200. We paid $300 each for a 10 song EP, and the quality was on par with most of the independent bands that I enjoy. All of the recording was done digitally, and we spent 4 ten hour days hashing it out. The notion that good music has to be expensive to produce is ridiculous. Elliott smith made a couple of his better albums, Roman Candle, and his self titled album in a friend's living room. Of course, this depends on the type of music you like, but if you want to go cheap, it's always a possiblity. I may be wrong, but I believe that Nirvana's first few albums were also ultra-low-budget.
I primarily listen to stuff that falls into the indie genera; however, I don't see why a pop album couldn't be produced in the same fashion. Not that I like pop... Afterall, I'm supposed to be emo-fabulous!
> It's the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Nah, a default TTL of 60 is perfect for sending packets through space...
IBM has a suite of programs called ViaVoice that allow you to do text to speech or vice versa. It has a full API and is fully programmable. You can emulate an adult male or female voice, and you can also do children's voices. It works remarkably well. Unfortunately, it's not on the IBM site anymore, but you can still get it here . I'm not sure how long it'll stay there, so I'd get it now... It allows you to set the spacing or cadence of the speech, but it has no facility to merge with a base beat. I suppose you could do that by saving a .wav and bringing it into your audio editor. For general TTS, you may just want to check out festival. I've never tried it, but I've heard good things.
I strongly suggest you spend a few months each on Perl, Python, a functional language like Haskell, and several APIs of some sort, like wxWindows or XML parsing.
I agree totally. I just wanted to chime in and say that while you're out checking out new languages, give Ruby a try. It's a beautful language that falls in the same family as Perl and Python but has it's own charm all the same. I use it for all of my development in an environmental lab, and it's served me quite well.
If you want to explore functional programming, you also may want to check out SML.
There are several free implementations available, and it's easy to learn. It's very fast and quite powerful for a variety of tasks. Last but not least, check out ANSI Lisp or at least Scheme. Everybody serious programmer should know at least one dialect of Lisp because it's the original hackers language.
I believe ESR did a rant somewhere on how to become a real programmer or something along those lines. Google could probably dig it up rather quickly. It's worth a read as he outlines languages to learn to explore the various development methodologies(functional, OOP, procedural, etc).
A lot of people get too caught up in his philosophy and overlook the fact that he's a coding god. I liked this article that sheds some light on his coding abilities.
I spent much of my childhood playing Star Control 1 with my best friend. We used a single keyboard playing on separate sides long before multiplayer gaming was a standard practice. Those moments stand out as some of the best gaming moments of my childhood, and I can't wait to check out the port of Star Control 2. I've actually never played it, but I'm assuming it's in the same flavor as 1, so it should kick ass. If anybody out there hasn't checked out star control, you should. It rocks!
You misunderstood threading support. It refers to threading messages and not program threads. This way related messages are kept together just like the threading here on slashdot.
And thank god it's not! XS can be a royal PITA. The marriage of Perl and C is a shotgun wedding at best, and it seems that the groom is wasted before the ceremony even starts.
Python makes it much easier to interact with C libraries, and Ruby has the nicest C library support of all. Also, for embedding a program language into an application, why not use Scheme? It was designed to be embedded from the beginning and should impose much less overhead. Since it's a functional language, it's also very well suited for AI, which makes it a good choice for games and such.
I'm not knocking Perl. It has a special place in my heart as the first language I really learned; however, it's best used for what it's really good at, and that's scripting.
Good one! Kinda reminds me of this.
The "." is needed because 5 is an object of type Fixnum. times is a method available to Fixnum objects. I used that example to demonstrate that EVERYTHING in Ruby is an object. For instance, you can do the following:
"hello world".upcase
"HELLO WORLD"
Not to mention method cascading
"hello world".upcase.reverse
"DLROW OLLEH"
Once you get used to having these features, it's hard to go back(to Perl that is...). There are a number of other very nice features as well. Iterators for example(which Perl 6 is going to include).
list = ["foo", "bar", "car"]
list.each do |elem|
# do something with elem
end
For a quick walkthrough of the languages features, go here: http://rubycentral.com/book/intro.html
I do know when I see a language which does not have an intuitive syntax or grammar.
And what language does? Any new language requires an adjustment period. The important thing is consistency once you get over the initial learning curve. Lisp doesn't necessarily have an intuitive syntax either; however, few would argue that it's not a powerful language. The consistency of having everything represented as a list makes it's syntax extremely simple.
I used to code in Python, and now I use Ruby in it's place. I've found it to be just as readable but more terse. It's also extremely consistent in the way that everything is an object. You can say things like
5.times {|n| puts n}
and all kinds of other crazy things. I'm not saying it's better than Python(not trying to start a flame war). I'm just saying to try it and see if you like it.
Terrific? For Microsoft maybe...
Terrific \Ter*rif"ic\, a. [L. terrificus; fr. terrere to frighten + facere to make. See {Terror}, and {Fact}.]
Causing terror; adapted to excite great fear or dread;
terrible; as, a terrific form; a terrific sight.
Does the current 2.4.x series kernel scale to 64 procs effectively, or are they using some "enterprise patch" to fine tune for this particular hardware? I was under the impression that since most kernel developers don't have access to this kind of ultra-high end hardware that Linux isn't really optimized for it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
For those wondering, PVR stands for personal video recorder. It's like a VCR, but it's digital. Now on to my question.
How will the new FCC copy-protection regulations being passed effect TiVo and other PVR devices? Are they going to be rendered completely useless, or is there going to be some loophole?
I would suggest checking out eruby/modruby in place of PHP. I know that PHP is very popular and somewhat industry standard these days; however, that doesn't make it the cream of the crop. Ruby is a VERY clean language in the same vein as Python but more consistent throughout. The Eruby/Modruby combo allows you to embed ruby into your html in the exact same fashion as PHP but with all the power of ruby. While PHP is a decent web programming languge, Ruby is a great all purpose language with a fantastic standard library. Now that I'm using it, I'll never go back to PHP, Perl 5, or any other comparable technology. There's also an entire book online.
I know that everyone has their opinion, but this one is mine.
Just my 2c.
doh, that's what I get for replying during the 5 o'clock rush at work... I agree that double parenthesis are ugly as well. oh well.
select SUM((p.price * o.quantity)) from orders o, parts p where o.item_id = p.item_id;
Can I get a job?
I've been using mysql for four years, and I've recently began migrating to Postgresql. I've found Posgtgresql to have all of the features that I've wished MySql had, and they don't feel "tacked on" like InnoDB and Berkeley DB support do in MySql. I would highly reccomend Postgresql over MySql for any serious application due to its native support for transactions and sub-selects. It also has wonderful features like views and stored procedures that are still in the planning phase for MySql.
Seeing as how both are free, the only winning factor for MySql at this point seems to be speed. If you're planning on using a system that doesn't have to deal with the possibility of simultanous writes to a particular table then MySql probably makes more since due to it's superiour speed; however, if you're handling a high number of concurrent writes then Postgresql is the way to go due to it's improved reliability and ACID compliance. MySql only supports table-level locking by default, which seems silly for any application where a lot of inserts are happening at the same time. I know that there are 3rd party libraries which provide a solution for this, but I'd rather use a database where these features have been planned for from the beginning.
MySql is catching up in the areas in which it's lacking, but it's still going to be a bit longer before it has a comparable feature set to some of the more industrial strength databases. On the upside, I'm glad to see free software solutions in the database market making their mark because the acceptance of these technologies will only further Linux's success in the long run.
Disagree completely. Since getting NWN, I haven't even played online yet because I've been having so much fun playing the single player game. I also agree that for some strange reason NWN has some of the same feel as the old Final Fantasy games, but not in the sense that it's trying to copy Final Fantasy. It simply has a very distinct and unique feel that's extremely refreshing when compared to many of the more generic games that have been released in the same genera(i.e., dungeon siege).
If you've played through even the first chapter of the campaign, it's very clear that a LOT of thought went into making the single player game extremely dynamic and immersive. There are a good number of subplots that make it clear that the game was designed to be explored rather than played in the linear "forced march" style that is all too common these days. The NPCs react to you completely differently depending on your class / race / alignment combination, and you have a good enough degree of control over the conversation that you can avoid certain confrontations diplomatically if you wish to do so.
So, don't listen to people who disregard the campaigns as trivial add-ons when most of them haven't even played the game all the way through. IMHO, the game is worth it for the campaigns in and of themselves, and all the other stuff is just gravy!
BTW, if you really want to enjoy the game(single or multiplayer), I would suggest getting the camera angle hack, which allows you to zoom in and out to any degree you see fit. The default camera configuration really limits what you can see, and the artists have done a superb job on the details.
It seems like the latest trend is to prefix Open on anything that's proprietary and evil to try and trick "Open Source" hackers into thinking it's not so bad.
Linux has traditionally been designed, developed, and maintained by engineers. Engineers tend to be more concerned with function than form, and thus we are all sitting here using a highly functional, amorphous operating system. The introduction of a "standards body" will require people to actually follow the standards. If the standards are widely adopted, we will have a highly functional kernel with a very well formed interface. The current desktop model has been innovated upon long enough. We need desktop pioneers to come forth and INVENT rather than follow the lead of a product we consider inferior. A major paradigm shift on the desktop could be exactly what Linux needs to take it from the point of being "fragmented on the desktop" to being "seemless from the bottom up". I sincerely hope that people get off their asses and make it happen.
Great advice! I never realized how easy it was to voice my opinion. I'd like to add that if you don't have the time or inclination to call, or you can't get through(i.e., busy signals) then there are forms for comments on all of the senator's website where you can simply type in whatever you were planning on saying. Granted, this probably isn't quite as effective as a phone conversation as you can't guarantee anyone is actually reading what you write; however, it's still better than nothing, and if you like being a lazy activist, it might be right for you.