You're right, I'm sure. Damn. That's what happens when you have two possible places to work, and only one copy of each of your favorite compuCulture books. Thanks for the correction.
You realize that now I'm going to have to reread both of them this weekend, don't you?
Does nobody here on Slashdot even remember the Mythical Man Month any more? The section on estimation and back of the envelope calculations (which I wouldn't be surprised if this blog pulled from, but I can't tell because its slashdotted already) was quite enlightening. Its main point was that people were way too confident in their estimates, even when they would admit that they had no idea.
To stretch the analogy a bit further than it can really go, just imagine if getting tired of this one supermarket you travelled to the next town and bought a lampshade from a shop there. Bring it all the way back, put it in your house and suddenly your TV explodes.
I agree with your points, and know that you're just kidding around as well, but I have to say that I loved this example. Very cool.
And you didn't even get into buying something from the small stall labeled "Oracle" set up across from the huge supermarket. Hmm. Is it just me or have regular vendors and some OSS vendors just switched sides (in this one case)? Now they're the smaller, unsupported bunch being ignored by the larger zealot group? Werid, but true.
... and guess what?... the moron did it... we silently watched the moron send his entire system (and his mounted windows partition) straight to hell...
I think that next time he RTFM...
No, he probably never installed Linux again, and influenced countless friends and business associates not to try it, because it was unstable and unsupported. Seriously.
That rocks! I grew up in England, where these were hard or impossible to find. Luckily (well, for the purposes of this discussion) my Dad kept going on 4-6 month business trips to the 'states (thanks a bunch, TI). Anyway, he'd always come back with a guilt-offering of the largest, niftiest capsela stuff available. Way fun, and yes, I remember fondly those big yellow floats. And the joys of slowly running out of the hexagonal connectors as they cracked.
That one cracked me up. I was born in England, and we were using Bunsen burners in our chemistry labs in 2nd year (occasionaly, and while being closely monitored) - actually the age equiv. of 1st grade over here in the 'States. I have no idea whatsoever if that was representative by the way. Anyway, I moved to Texas when I was 10 (dad worked for TI) and didn't learn anything new (or fun) for about two years. Literally. Pretty sad, actually.
Grandparent: In 2000 64,000 tons of Uranium were consumed, while 3,600,000,000 tons of coal were produced. Even if Uranium and coal posed the same danger to miners, there'd be about one-fifty-thousandth the deaths.
Paraent: Here in Colorado, the uranium miners from the 60's have suffered a very large amount of lung cancer. On e article that I saw showed that health problems in the miners for coal was at 1/10 of what uranium had. In addition, the tailings here are leading to a large cancer problem over on the western slope....
Fine. 1/5000th instead of 1/50000th.....If we were a Nuke based society, the amount of Uranium would probably be close to that of Coal.
You must be joking, right? 3.6 trillion pounds of Uranium per year? Considering that a representative reactor discharges 350 pellets a day (mit), each containing 9-grams of uranium (wiki) (adding up to approximately 7lbs a day), that would mean that we needed 1,409,001,960 reactors to even your numbers out.
That was the one I started with - changing the routine to sort on the last token was more complex according to the examples I was looking at. And yes, they were worse than similar samples in C. Compare that to looking at examples for custom sort comparators in, say, Java, and I think that you'll see the difference.
It seems that there is alway a segment of the population that knee jerks about Perl poor maintainability but they never really provide good examples or specifics - it is always their "informed opinion".
Probably because any time there's a discussion like this, posts talking about real-life perl issues rapidly get modded -1 Flamebait.
Second - I'm sure that many of you can post the answer. That's not why I'm posted this - I've moved on and its not a huge deal. Just for the record so you don't feel that I'm asking for code help by complaining about something (although that's probably a very effective way to do so...)
Perl's lack of structure is an impediment to other people reusing the code. For a one-off program, or something very well defined and documented, Perl is fine. But it sure ain't pretty.
I'd have to agree with you there. I used Perl a lot several years ago, so I'm familiar with it, but rusty. I happen to need to modify a 500 line script (that someone else wrote) the other day, to sort lines by the last word (numberically). No problem, I'll do a little googling since my Perl books are all in cold storage.
I'll be honest. I couldn't understand most of the *examples*. I'm used to maintaining large programs - millions of LOC, thousands of database tables. I'm familiar with multiple languages. This experience - the ability to write 4 lines of code as a sample in such a way as to be confusing - reminded me of the reason that I don't use Perl any more.
I'm sure the solution is simple. I just decided that I didn't care enough to wade through it and pick out the pieces of example code - already written for me - that I needed to use instead of my little { $a $b } snippet. So I didn't bother. That's sad. But hey, I'm not doing this because I enjoy Perl, but because I had a problem to solve. The last thing I want to do is spend 30 minutes deciphering the language to do that.
Somehow, even normal perl code - when not written with great discipline - seems to approach entries from an obfuscated C contest.
Excuse me from jumping to conclusions, but your use of "sheesh" may indicate that you are not from the UK.
Ironically enough, I am from the UK - born in Leicester, grew up outside of Bedford. I'm currently in Texas, US. Rather than language analysis, I would point to the inclusion of "Austin" (might be missed) and "Dallas" (pretty obvious) in my post, along with the fact that I blithely disregarded the fact that anyone wouldn't know (or care) in which country those were in. That's much better evidence that I'm not from the UK than the use of the word "sheesh". Even though, as I said, I am. Which just goes to show, its a rum old world.
Are you seriously suggesting that the practice of making fun of movies is something they own?
Not at all. I was merely explaining what a "parody of MST3K" would be, which would be making fun of people making fun of movies. Funny, I thought that I made that pretty clear.
I just realized that out of those twenty songs, I recognized exactly... none of them. Sheesh. And I even listen to the radio (Jack FM in Dallas, KGSR in Austin) - I guess my musical tastes aren't anywhere close to mainstream any more.
Ever seen the amazing resemblance between Richard Pryor and Eddy Murphy's stand up bits? Ever seen the similarities between Dennis Leary and Bill Hicks? Ever really looked at Lenny Bruce and seen the groundwork for everything that came after that?
Yeah, and BB agrees. However, what if Eddie had used the stage name "Reach-Hard Prior"? Don't you think that Pryor would have had something (probably obscene) to say about that?
Don't you think that he would have been justified, too?
Seeing as how Mr. Sinus is local to Austin, most people here will never have seen it. However, the comments here are relaly harsh. Did they rip off the concept? Yes. Did they rip off the name? Yes. But to claim that MST3K should have exclusive rights to poking fun at a movie is absurd.
You're right. Its a good thing that that's not at all what Best Brains is doing. They just want them to use a name that isn't a homynym of "Mystery Science." That's all.
I don't see what about "Mister Sinus" is NOT parodic.
Their name may be parodic. Their act (I live in Austin) is damn near identical. If it was a true parody, they would be doing a send-up of people who made fun of movies. They're not. They're making fun of movices themselves, just like the MST3K people do. That's the difference.
Look at it this way. Creating a mock product called Queen-ex that proported to be a way to remove makeup from people in drag with amusing side effects like automatically applying facial hair? That's a parody. Creating a product called Queenex that's a facial tissue? That's trademark infringement, plain and simple.
Besides, say out loud, "I'm going to go and see the Mr. Sinus Theatre guys as they make fun of Top Gun." If someone heard you say that, and wasn't a regular Alamo Drafthouse attendee, they'd think that you were talking about MST3K. Worse, what about, "I went to see the Mr. Sinus Theatre people do Top Gun, and it sucked balls." Same problem, but now with a negative connetation that's not Best Brains' fault. That's what the Best Brains folks don't want happening.
For the record, the Mr. Sinus sendup of Top Gun rocks. It was just an example.
Imagine a state where all the stupid and ridiculous laws are suddenly enforced because "we've got to follow orders." It's not a place you'd want to live.
Actually, I'd love that. That's the only thing that would actually cause these stupid laws to get off the books. That also gives police officers much less reason to arrest you.
Sometimes good law enforcement means not following the rules, ie. not arresting a 90 year old woman for too many parking tickets.
Actually, you've just made it arbitrary. Maybe one cop will give you a break, and one won't - based on how well their day has been going. If you don't want 90 year old women to be arrested for misdemenor bench warrants, then by all means make a law about it! That is also what prevents all (to use a random example) old black 90 year old women for being arrested (hey, its the law) and all white 90 year old women from being ignored (hey, we're giving this one a break).
Equal, predictable enforcement of reasonable laws is a Good Thing.
Well, if you pay with a check or credit card, you'll be charged the $35 for not returning your chip after the race. Very few people actually pay cash, so its not a huge deal - besides, you've given your name, address, phone number, etc. Sure, you could pay cash and lie, but then you'd end up with a chip that you couldn't use again (after all, they know what chips have been stolen) in a useful fashion...
Besides, for most races with chips, if you're not using your own chip (I do, its easier) you've got it plastic-tied onto your shoe. Once you're in the finish chute after the line, there are volunteers waiting to snip it off for you. So its really not that big a deal.
Oh, and one more thing. Don't be fooled into using a so called "object-relational" database--RDBMS is not an object store, never has been and never will be. Please read about the set theory and predicate logic before you do anything serious with relational databases. Good luck.
Or, for this application, stick with FileMaker and don't waste your organizations time (and money) by reading about set theory and predicate logic. And IRL I happen to be a DBA, so I'm not exactly predjudiced against RDBMSs. But really, that's quite a remarkable suggestion.
Absolutely. At some point you have to decide whether you're in the education business, or in the software design and support business. I would stick with the solution that everybody already knows - even going through an upgrade, you'll be so much further ahead faster than you would be by throwing it all out and starting over. You know FileMaker's quirks, after all - and believe me, everything has 'em, so knowing one set well is a good place to be.
Slashdot Mirror
So - does that example have anything to do with your linked picture?
On second thoughts, I really don't want to know.
You're right, I'm sure. Damn. That's what happens when you have two possible places to work, and only one copy of each of your favorite compuCulture books. Thanks for the correction.
You realize that now I'm going to have to reread both of them this weekend, don't you?
Does nobody here on Slashdot even remember the Mythical Man Month any more? The section on estimation and back of the envelope calculations (which I wouldn't be surprised if this blog pulled from, but I can't tell because its slashdotted already) was quite enlightening. Its main point was that people were way too confident in their estimates, even when they would admit that they had no idea.
To stretch the analogy a bit further than it can really go, just imagine if getting tired of this one supermarket you travelled to the next town and bought a lampshade from a shop there. Bring it all the way back, put it in your house and suddenly your TV explodes.
I agree with your points, and know that you're just kidding around as well, but I have to say that I loved this example. Very cool.
And you didn't even get into buying something from the small stall labeled "Oracle" set up across from the huge supermarket. Hmm. Is it just me or have regular vendors and some OSS vendors just switched sides (in this one case)? Now they're the smaller, unsupported bunch being ignored by the larger zealot group? Werid, but true.
... and guess what? ... the moron did it ... we silently watched the moron send his entire system (and his mounted windows partition) straight to hell ...
...
I think that next time he RTFM
No, he probably never installed Linux again, and influenced countless friends and business associates not to try it, because it was unstable and unsupported. Seriously.
That rocks! I grew up in England, where these were hard or impossible to find. Luckily (well, for the purposes of this discussion) my Dad kept going on 4-6 month business trips to the 'states (thanks a bunch, TI). Anyway, he'd always come back with a guilt-offering of the largest, niftiest capsela stuff available. Way fun, and yes, I remember fondly those big yellow floats. And the joys of slowly running out of the hexagonal connectors as they cracked.
Gauntlet II? Gauntlet II? Heretic. Er, you are, that is - the infidel-type, not the game ...
<Muttering>Shots don't hurt other players... yet...</Muttering>
i.e. using a bunsen burner constitutes dangerous
That one cracked me up. I was born in England, and we were using Bunsen burners in our chemistry labs in 2nd year (occasionaly, and while being closely monitored) - actually the age equiv. of 1st grade over here in the 'States. I have no idea whatsoever if that was representative by the way. Anyway, I moved to Texas when I was 10 (dad worked for TI) and didn't learn anything new (or fun) for about two years. Literally. Pretty sad, actually.
Please don't overdo your bad jokes about the following topics
But the massive overuse of sad Star Trek lines is perfectly acceptable to you? Odd choice there...
Grandparent: In 2000 64,000 tons of Uranium were consumed, while 3,600,000,000 tons of coal were produced. Even if Uranium and coal posed the same danger to miners, there'd be about one-fifty-thousandth the deaths.
....If we were a Nuke based society, the amount of Uranium would probably be close to that of Coal.
Paraent: Here in Colorado, the uranium miners from the 60's have suffered a very large amount of lung cancer. On e article that I saw showed that health problems in the miners for coal was at 1/10 of what uranium had. In addition, the tailings here are leading to a large cancer problem over on the western slope....
Fine. 1/5000th instead of 1/50000th.
You must be joking, right? 3.6 trillion pounds of Uranium per year? Considering that a representative reactor discharges 350 pellets a day (mit), each containing 9-grams of uranium (wiki) (adding up to approximately 7lbs a day), that would mean that we needed 1,409,001,960 reactors to even your numbers out.
That was the one I started with - changing the routine to sort on the last token was more complex according to the examples I was looking at. And yes, they were worse than similar samples in C. Compare that to looking at examples for custom sort comparators in, say, Java, and I think that you'll see the difference.
It seems that there is alway a segment of the population that knee jerks about Perl poor maintainability but they never really provide good examples or specifics - it is always their "informed opinion".
Probably because any time there's a discussion like this, posts talking about real-life perl issues rapidly get modded -1 Flamebait.
First - that should be { $a <=> $b }.
Second - I'm sure that many of you can post the answer. That's not why I'm posted this - I've moved on and its not a huge deal. Just for the record so you don't feel that I'm asking for code help by complaining about something (although that's probably a very effective way to do so...)
Perl's lack of structure is an impediment to other people reusing the code. For a one-off program, or something very well defined and documented, Perl is fine. But it sure ain't pretty.
I'd have to agree with you there. I used Perl a lot several years ago, so I'm familiar with it, but rusty. I happen to need to modify a 500 line script (that someone else wrote) the other day, to sort lines by the last word (numberically). No problem, I'll do a little googling since my Perl books are all in cold storage.
I'll be honest. I couldn't understand most of the *examples*. I'm used to maintaining large programs - millions of LOC, thousands of database tables. I'm familiar with multiple languages. This experience - the ability to write 4 lines of code as a sample in such a way as to be confusing - reminded me of the reason that I don't use Perl any more.
I'm sure the solution is simple. I just decided that I didn't care enough to wade through it and pick out the pieces of example code - already written for me - that I needed to use instead of my little { $a $b } snippet. So I didn't bother. That's sad. But hey, I'm not doing this because I enjoy Perl, but because I had a problem to solve. The last thing I want to do is spend 30 minutes deciphering the language to do that.
Somehow, even normal perl code - when not written with great discipline - seems to approach entries from an obfuscated C contest.
Excuse me from jumping to conclusions, but your use of "sheesh" may indicate that you are not from the UK.
Ironically enough, I am from the UK - born in Leicester, grew up outside of Bedford. I'm currently in Texas, US. Rather than language analysis, I would point to the inclusion of "Austin" (might be missed) and "Dallas" (pretty obvious) in my post, along with the fact that I blithely disregarded the fact that anyone wouldn't know (or care) in which country those were in. That's much better evidence that I'm not from the UK than the use of the word "sheesh". Even though, as I said, I am. Which just goes to show, its a rum old world.
Are you seriously suggesting that the practice of making fun of movies is something they own?
Not at all. I was merely explaining what a "parody of MST3K" would be, which would be making fun of people making fun of movies. Funny, I thought that I made that pretty clear.
I just realized that out of those twenty songs, I recognized exactly ... none of them. Sheesh. And I even listen to the radio (Jack FM in Dallas, KGSR in Austin) - I guess my musical tastes aren't anywhere close to mainstream any more.
Ever seen the amazing resemblance between Richard Pryor and Eddy Murphy's stand up bits? Ever seen the similarities between Dennis Leary and Bill Hicks? Ever really looked at Lenny Bruce and seen the groundwork for everything that came after that?
Yeah, and BB agrees. However, what if Eddie had used the stage name "Reach-Hard Prior"? Don't you think that Pryor would have had something (probably obscene) to say about that?
Don't you think that he would have been justified, too?
Seeing as how Mr. Sinus is local to Austin, most people here will never have seen it. However, the comments here are relaly harsh. Did they rip off the concept? Yes. Did they rip off the name? Yes. But to claim that MST3K should have exclusive rights to poking fun at a movie is absurd.
You're right. Its a good thing that that's not at all what Best Brains is doing. They just want them to use a name that isn't a homynym of "Mystery Science." That's all.
Sheesh. RTFA already.
I don't see what about "Mister Sinus" is NOT parodic.
Their name may be parodic. Their act (I live in Austin) is damn near identical. If it was a true parody, they would be doing a send-up of people who made fun of movies. They're not. They're making fun of movices themselves, just like the MST3K people do. That's the difference.
Look at it this way. Creating a mock product called Queen-ex that proported to be a way to remove makeup from people in drag with amusing side effects like automatically applying facial hair? That's a parody. Creating a product called Queenex that's a facial tissue? That's trademark infringement, plain and simple.
Besides, say out loud, "I'm going to go and see the Mr. Sinus Theatre guys as they make fun of Top Gun." If someone heard you say that, and wasn't a regular Alamo Drafthouse attendee, they'd think that you were talking about MST3K. Worse, what about, "I went to see the Mr. Sinus Theatre people do Top Gun, and it sucked balls." Same problem, but now with a negative connetation that's not Best Brains' fault. That's what the Best Brains folks don't want happening.
For the record, the Mr. Sinus sendup of Top Gun rocks. It was just an example.
Imagine a state where all the stupid and ridiculous laws are suddenly enforced because "we've got to follow orders." It's not a place you'd want to live.
Actually, I'd love that. That's the only thing that would actually cause these stupid laws to get off the books. That also gives police officers much less reason to arrest you.
Sometimes good law enforcement means not following the rules, ie. not arresting a 90 year old woman for too many parking tickets.
Actually, you've just made it arbitrary. Maybe one cop will give you a break, and one won't - based on how well their day has been going. If you don't want 90 year old women to be arrested for misdemenor bench warrants, then by all means make a law about it! That is also what prevents all (to use a random example) old black 90 year old women for being arrested (hey, its the law) and all white 90 year old women from being ignored (hey, we're giving this one a break).
Equal, predictable enforcement of reasonable laws is a Good Thing.
Well, if you pay with a check or credit card, you'll be charged the $35 for not returning your chip after the race. Very few people actually pay cash, so its not a huge deal - besides, you've given your name, address, phone number, etc. Sure, you could pay cash and lie, but then you'd end up with a chip that you couldn't use again (after all, they know what chips have been stolen) in a useful fashion...
Besides, for most races with chips, if you're not using your own chip (I do, its easier) you've got it plastic-tied onto your shoe. Once you're in the finish chute after the line, there are volunteers waiting to snip it off for you. So its really not that big a deal.
Oh, and one more thing. Don't be fooled into using a so called "object-relational" database--RDBMS is not an object store, never has been and never will be. Please read about the set theory and predicate logic before you do anything serious with relational databases. Good luck.
Or, for this application, stick with FileMaker and don't waste your organizations time (and money) by reading about set theory and predicate logic. And IRL I happen to be a DBA, so I'm not exactly predjudiced against RDBMSs. But really, that's quite a remarkable suggestion.
From the website:
This is not stable or tested. It might completely destroy your data. I offer no guarantees and accept no responsibility.
Not quite ready for a prime time production solution.
Absolutely. At some point you have to decide whether you're in the education business, or in the software design and support business. I would stick with the solution that everybody already knows - even going through an upgrade, you'll be so much further ahead faster than you would be by throwing it all out and starting over. You know FileMaker's quirks, after all - and believe me, everything has 'em, so knowing one set well is a good place to be.