You forgot one of the main reasons that the United States is the last place you'll see this effect, and it's related to your first paragraph: Bribes.
They've managed to essentially weasel out of their anti-trust suits by being big contributors to the government. Here it's called a campaign contribution, everywhere else it's called a bribe.
MSN doesn't do that now, but it wasn't too long ago that both www.msn.com and www.hotmail.com would only let IE in. Any other browsers got a special page telling you that "advanced features" on those pages could only be rendered by Internet Explorer. 'Course, setting my Mozilla User-Agent field to an IE one let me in, and sure enough, everything rendered perfectly.
I doubt that the Slashdot outcry was enough to get them to stop doing that, but for a week or two not too long ago, they did try to force you.
This is running under the assumption that no one has to "figure out" how to run Windows. Given how often I have to explain how to do things to my parents, or how many people I've had to take through Control Panel tasks, or the multitudes of "Windows for Dummies" books, one can safely assume that one has to "figure out" Windows just as much as one has to "figure out" Linux.
The reason you see it that way is because you started with Windows and have been using it for years. I started with Apple DOS, moved to the C64, then DOS on an IBM, Windows, and finally Linux. I'm used to command-line, and I can get almost any task (except graphics editing, that is still a bit difficult with a command-line interface) done more quickly and effeciently with the command line.
Linux has a better command-line, hands down. So I use it. It doesn't have anything to do with one being easier to figure out.
When I used to work at eToys, during the height of the dot-com boom, the company's crack legal team decided it would be a fine idea to go after etoy.com for their domain name, despite them having owned it first.
We also to deal with Amazon's one-click shopping patent during those days too.
These were around just as much in the internet heyday, when we were all getting rich (well, 'cept me, dammit), as they are now.
Or maybe they can say in the "terms of use" that if ever contacted about using a video monitor during the process of buying chocolate, they must say that they didn't "use" the monitor, they "collaborated" with it.
Dunno, if they're going to go the vague route to bully small companies, I'll go the mega-anal specific route to fight it.
It's not automated in the case of most of these sites either. You have to voluntarily, and in a seperate process, start your web browser, go to the site, pick what you want to buy, then enter in your credit card & shipping information, then hit submit. That really isn't much different from having to pick up the phone to call QVC/HSN.
The screaming thing is definitely an option, but I've started to learn the joys of messin' with them instead. It only really works if you're sitting around, watching bad TV, and don't have much else to do, but it's a good time if you're bored.
I had one lady call up trying to sell me craftmatic adjustable beds, and after about 5 minutes of giving her weird responses instead of the "yes" or "no" that was obviously on her call-script, I started trying to sell her a bed of nails. That one was pretty fun.
Another was one I wanted to get off the phone, so I started acting really interested, and as soon as she wanted any real information, I started making sniffing noises, then told her, "Oh crap! I have to go, my house is on fire!", dropped the phone, and ran away from it.
The latest one is someone trying to sell me AT&T local phone service. I got that 5 second delay while the auto-dialer hooks you up with a person, and then she mispronounced my name, so I told her I wasn't there. Simple as that. She called back the next day, and the next, and now my roommate and I have been basically making up as much as we can to have her think that I'm a jet-setting playboy who is always off in some other state, mackin' on the ladies and making big deals. Meanwhile, me and my roommate are his butlers. I doubt she believes any of it, but it's been keeping us nice and entertained, and so far, we've had her going for about 2 weeks now.
It's more fun than screaming, and it gives the telemarketer good stories to tell their friends. And we all know, nothing beats a good, weird story to tell your friends.
Good point, but I think that falls under the same umbrella as the "con" of There's More Than One Way To Do It.
If you've got 600+ coders, I imagine the challenge of a) getting them all to agree not to mix up the Controller and the View (stuffing code in your HTML) and b) getting all of the coders to agree on style guidelines for perl code are very similar.
I've inherited a lot of Mason code that has perl code interspersed throughout the HTML, and it's caused more than its fair share of headaches. It's even uglier in Mason than it is in PHP;)
Re:Dangers of PHP? I think not!
on
Yahoo Moving to PHP
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Mostly valid points, and as far as security is concerned, I think more security problems come from the code written by the engineers themselves, not from the underlying language. I've seen some pretty insecure Perl code in my day.
The only reason I'm replying to you is because of this sentence: "...in my experience PHP is faster, more secure, more feature rich, way easier to compile and maintain, and takes far less code to accomplish the same things as Perl."
As far as faster goes, according to the benchmarks that are included in the article, YSP, which seems to be their mod_perl solution, was faster (though not by a huge amount) than PHP. The one place where it did worse than PHP was memory footprint, though that seemed to be by the same small margin that it beat PHP by in speed.
Secure: I refer to my previous statements, I think security is a bigger issue with the end code than the underlying language. Either way, both of these languages have been very good about getting fixes for security problems out, and publishing security problems so we can avoid being victims of them.
Feature Rich: CPAN is my only point here. From my experience, CPAN has more modules and more mature feature sets than PHP. I'm sure that will change over time, but I have found it much easier to get new functionality/features from CPAN than any other language.
Easier to compile and maintain: Compilation isn't really all that much of an issue with perl or PHP. If you're talking about compiling in mod_perl vs. mod_php, both of them were easy as could be for me, and both can be done through RPM. If you're talking about your actual application code, I honestly don't think that is an issue for either language, and a moot point. As far as maintenance is concerned, well written perl code is very easy to maintain. PHP code tends to have HTML & code in the same file, which I've found causes no end of headaches when working on a project that has seperate template/HTML coders and PHP/Perl coders. It can be written to seperate those two, and IMHO, should always be written that way, but in my experience, it rarely is. Similarly, I'm not a fan of Mason with mod_perl because I find the same problem crops up there.
far less code: Honestly, I can't comment on this one, so I'll take your word for it. I can generally get a lot of things done with little perl code, however, and I've never sat there for days working on the same function wishing that I had to write fewer lines.
I hope for your sake that Slashdot doesn't change it's IP address any time soon then.
One would assume you still have to check periodically to see if the IP address from DNS is the same as your cached one. Either way, you are not the majority of Internet users, so for most everyone, DNS going dead == Internet going dead.
Determining whether or not kicking the majority of users off the Internet is a bad thing is left as an exercise to the reader.
K-Mart agreed to phase out the selling of at least handgun ammunition after a campaign by Michael Moore and two victims of the shooting at Columbine High School. It's documented in the movie "Bowling for Columbine", released last Friday in New York & Los Angeles.
I realize their website is not the store, but I really don't feel like driving down Pico in lunchtime traffic to go find this out for you. Either way, it's Kay-Bee Toys selling GTA3.
In addition, eToys.com was bought by Kay-Bee toystores after their bankruptcy in January of 2000. Bastards didn't even use the code we wrote either, though they did pay a whole lotta money for it;) They're selling GTA Vice City along with kbtoys.com.
AFAIK, almost nobody pays much, if anything, for just ad banner views. Most of them will only pay out if someone actually clicks through on an ad banner, and even then, some of them will only pay anything if someone clicks through on the banner and actually buys something.
AFAIK, in its initial incarnations, he didn't use free GNU tools to build the Linux kernel. I'm far from an expert, but I believe that all the original development work was done on a Minix OS that was a proprietary, non-free system that he had cheap-o access to through school.
If someone else knows more/can point out where I'm wrong, feel free.
Lets not forget about TV Funhouse either. I know lots of folks didn't like it, but at the very least the Mnemonics bits had me giggling like an idiot.
I still couldn't understand why MST3K was let go from there. I mean, why lose that show (which can't have cost all *that* much to produce) and instead show SNL 5 times a day, and give us not one, but two showings of the Scott Baio classic "Zapped!" every day?
I use rippers (mostly CDEx, in fact) to rip the CDs I've legally paid for onto my MP3 player, and to put more MP3s on my machine at work so I can listen to my CDs without having to have them all there. I would consider this fair use, and I would assume that most everyone else would agree. As is, the MP3s I have downloaded without paying for are almost exclusively live tracks that cannot be purchased. However, I didn't need a CD ripper to get those.
Honestly, utilities to rip and create mp3s are generally used on CDs that you own...if you're looking to get free music, chances are you don't have the original CD to rip from.
Finally, it's a bit foolish to try to stop various tools that people can use fairly just because some people use them illegally. People speed, but we probably shouldn't ban cars. People stab other people with kitchen knives, but it sure would be hell to chop an onion without one...
Sorry to burst your bubble, but eBay is NOT doing fine in Japan.
Maybe I misspoke. My point was that at least one lesson taught to my former employer that I'm sure many other sites have learned is that it's not worth it to focus on international markets right now. I would think that eBay would rather focus on the domestic market for now, so I doubt they have any plan to appease Indian ISPs for that market as well.
So, in other words, what you're saying is, you realize there's a market there, yet you've failed to grasp the way most of these sites & ISP's have worked so far.
People want to see MSN, Yahoo, and eBay. Take that away from them, and they will find alternative methods to connect to the Internet.
Especially in the case of eBay, this will mean near certain death for the current India ISPs. eBay is doing fine as it is, and if my former company's foray into the international market, www.etoys.co.uk, is any lesson of the past, they will not make any effort to go international on their own. If Indian ISPs block it, some smart entreprenuer will offer some sort of alternative connection that doesn't block those sites.
Also, a statement of population has little to nothing to do with a) how many of those people are on the internet and b) how many of them having spending cash to support your advertisers/sellers. Though I have never been to India, I'm going to assume that given the number of Indian workers who have come to America to find good paying jobs and the tales I've heard of poverty in India, there's not a HUGE money market in India right now that any of the three aforementioned sites are going to care at all about.
Still, I'm very impressed that you found the population.
Tell me about it. I picked up the game back in January, and while I live in a third floor apartment which pretty much prevents me from really playing at home, we've got a DDRMAX2 machine at the arcade near my house.
3 times a week, 30 minutes a day or so, and it's done wonders for my stamina and the like.
At about 2.5 months I was round about the 6 footers as well, starting to move into the 7s. If you're anything like me, you're going to feel like you've plateaued (sp?) for a while, I essentially hit a brick wall for about a month and a half until all of a sudden, I could do 8 foot songs.
I've finally passed 3 nine-footers, so I've finally passed that wall.
Well, there's that, and then there's the fact that he claimed that TV's "tuners" were capable of adjusting to Macrovision's signal, which is completely off the mark. TV's don't have the problem because they don't have a "tuner" or AGC, so they don't get tricked by the false data that Macrovision introduces. It therefore cannot introduce any extra wear and tear on the non-existent TV "tuner".
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot one of the main reasons that the United States is the last place you'll see this effect, and it's related to your first paragraph: Bribes.
They've managed to essentially weasel out of their anti-trust suits by being big contributors to the government. Here it's called a campaign contribution, everywhere else it's called a bribe.
MSN doesn't do that now, but it wasn't too long ago that both www.msn.com and www.hotmail.com would only let IE in. Any other browsers got a special page telling you that "advanced features" on those pages could only be rendered by Internet Explorer. 'Course, setting my Mozilla User-Agent field to an IE one let me in, and sure enough, everything rendered perfectly.
I doubt that the Slashdot outcry was enough to get them to stop doing that, but for a week or two not too long ago, they did try to force you.
This is running under the assumption that no one has to "figure out" how to run Windows. Given how often I have to explain how to do things to my parents, or how many people I've had to take through Control Panel tasks, or the multitudes of "Windows for Dummies" books, one can safely assume that one has to "figure out" Windows just as much as one has to "figure out" Linux.
The reason you see it that way is because you started with Windows and have been using it for years. I started with Apple DOS, moved to the C64, then DOS on an IBM, Windows, and finally Linux. I'm used to command-line, and I can get almost any task (except graphics editing, that is still a bit difficult with a command-line interface) done more quickly and effeciently with the command line.
Linux has a better command-line, hands down. So I use it. It doesn't have anything to do with one being easier to figure out.
When I used to work at eToys, during the height of the dot-com boom, the company's crack legal team decided it would be a fine idea to go after etoy.com for their domain name, despite them having owned it first.
We also to deal with Amazon's one-click shopping patent during those days too.
These were around just as much in the internet heyday, when we were all getting rich (well, 'cept me, dammit), as they are now.
Or maybe they can say in the "terms of use" that if ever contacted about using a video monitor during the process of buying chocolate, they must say that they didn't "use" the monitor, they "collaborated" with it.
Dunno, if they're going to go the vague route to bully small companies, I'll go the mega-anal specific route to fight it.
It's not automated in the case of most of these sites either. You have to voluntarily, and in a seperate process, start your web browser, go to the site, pick what you want to buy, then enter in your credit card & shipping information, then hit submit. That really isn't much different from having to pick up the phone to call QVC/HSN.
Never done this note to mods thing before, but sarcasm != troll.
I cannot:
help myself but question my governments motivations and means
I would make a bad:
patriot, apparently.
The screaming thing is definitely an option, but I've started to learn the joys of messin' with them instead. It only really works if you're sitting around, watching bad TV, and don't have much else to do, but it's a good time if you're bored.
I had one lady call up trying to sell me craftmatic adjustable beds, and after about 5 minutes of giving her weird responses instead of the "yes" or "no" that was obviously on her call-script, I started trying to sell her a bed of nails. That one was pretty fun.
Another was one I wanted to get off the phone, so I started acting really interested, and as soon as she wanted any real information, I started making sniffing noises, then told her, "Oh crap! I have to go, my house is on fire!", dropped the phone, and ran away from it.
The latest one is someone trying to sell me AT&T local phone service. I got that 5 second delay while the auto-dialer hooks you up with a person, and then she mispronounced my name, so I told her I wasn't there. Simple as that. She called back the next day, and the next, and now my roommate and I have been basically making up as much as we can to have her think that I'm a jet-setting playboy who is always off in some other state, mackin' on the ladies and making big deals. Meanwhile, me and my roommate are his butlers. I doubt she believes any of it, but it's been keeping us nice and entertained, and so far, we've had her going for about 2 weeks now.
It's more fun than screaming, and it gives the telemarketer good stories to tell their friends. And we all know, nothing beats a good, weird story to tell your friends.
Good point, but I think that falls under the same umbrella as the "con" of There's More Than One Way To Do It.
;)
If you've got 600+ coders, I imagine the challenge of a) getting them all to agree not to mix up the Controller and the View (stuffing code in your HTML) and b) getting all of the coders to agree on style guidelines for perl code are very similar.
I've inherited a lot of Mason code that has perl code interspersed throughout the HTML, and it's caused more than its fair share of headaches. It's even uglier in Mason than it is in PHP
Mostly valid points, and as far as security is concerned, I think more security problems come from the code written by the engineers themselves, not from the underlying language. I've seen some pretty insecure Perl code in my day.
The only reason I'm replying to you is because of this sentence: "...in my experience PHP is faster, more secure, more feature rich, way easier to compile and maintain, and takes far less code to accomplish the same things as Perl."
As far as faster goes, according to the benchmarks that are included in the article, YSP, which seems to be their mod_perl solution, was faster (though not by a huge amount) than PHP. The one place where it did worse than PHP was memory footprint, though that seemed to be by the same small margin that it beat PHP by in speed.
Secure: I refer to my previous statements, I think security is a bigger issue with the end code than the underlying language. Either way, both of these languages have been very good about getting fixes for security problems out, and publishing security problems so we can avoid being victims of them.
Feature Rich: CPAN is my only point here. From my experience, CPAN has more modules and more mature feature sets than PHP. I'm sure that will change over time, but I have found it much easier to get new functionality/features from CPAN than any other language.
Easier to compile and maintain: Compilation isn't really all that much of an issue with perl or PHP. If you're talking about compiling in mod_perl vs. mod_php, both of them were easy as could be for me, and both can be done through RPM. If you're talking about your actual application code, I honestly don't think that is an issue for either language, and a moot point. As far as maintenance is concerned, well written perl code is very easy to maintain. PHP code tends to have HTML & code in the same file, which I've found causes no end of headaches when working on a project that has seperate template/HTML coders and PHP/Perl coders. It can be written to seperate those two, and IMHO, should always be written that way, but in my experience, it rarely is. Similarly, I'm not a fan of Mason with mod_perl because I find the same problem crops up there.
far less code: Honestly, I can't comment on this one, so I'll take your word for it. I can generally get a lot of things done with little perl code, however, and I've never sat there for days working on the same function wishing that I had to write fewer lines.
I hope for your sake that Slashdot doesn't change it's IP address any time soon then.
One would assume you still have to check periodically to see if the IP address from DNS is the same as your cached one. Either way, you are not the majority of Internet users, so for most everyone, DNS going dead == Internet going dead.
Determining whether or not kicking the majority of users off the Internet is a bad thing is left as an exercise to the reader.
K-Mart agreed to phase out the selling of at least handgun ammunition after a campaign by Michael Moore and two victims of the shooting at Columbine High School. It's documented in the movie "Bowling for Columbine", released last Friday in New York & Los Angeles.
I'm an idiot that should use the preview button.
KB Toys - GTA3
eToys.com - GTA Vice City
http://www.kbtoys.com/genProduct.html?PID=1051868& ctid=19&ls=default
;) They're selling GTA Vice City along with kbtoys.com.
9 &c tid=19&ls=vgames
I realize their website is not the store, but I really don't feel like driving down Pico in lunchtime traffic to go find this out for you. Either way, it's Kay-Bee Toys selling GTA3.
In addition, eToys.com was bought by Kay-Bee toystores after their bankruptcy in January of 2000. Bastards didn't even use the code we wrote either, though they did pay a whole lotta money for it
http://www.etoys.com/genProduct.html?PID=189183
Profit!!!
I got nothing...
AFAIK, almost nobody pays much, if anything, for just ad banner views. Most of them will only pay out if someone actually clicks through on an ad banner, and even then, some of them will only pay anything if someone clicks through on the banner and actually buys something.
Shouldn't be a big issue...
AFAIK, in its initial incarnations, he didn't use free GNU tools to build the Linux kernel. I'm far from an expert, but I believe that all the original development work was done on a Minix OS that was a proprietary, non-free system that he had cheap-o access to through school.
If someone else knows more/can point out where I'm wrong, feel free.
Lets not forget about TV Funhouse either. I know lots of folks didn't like it, but at the very least the Mnemonics bits had me giggling like an idiot.
I still couldn't understand why MST3K was let go from there. I mean, why lose that show (which can't have cost all *that* much to produce) and instead show SNL 5 times a day, and give us not one, but two showings of the Scott Baio classic "Zapped!" every day?
I use rippers (mostly CDEx, in fact) to rip the CDs I've legally paid for onto my MP3 player, and to put more MP3s on my machine at work so I can listen to my CDs without having to have them all there. I would consider this fair use, and I would assume that most everyone else would agree. As is, the MP3s I have downloaded without paying for are almost exclusively live tracks that cannot be purchased. However, I didn't need a CD ripper to get those.
Honestly, utilities to rip and create mp3s are generally used on CDs that you own...if you're looking to get free music, chances are you don't have the original CD to rip from.
Finally, it's a bit foolish to try to stop various tools that people can use fairly just because some people use them illegally. People speed, but we probably shouldn't ban cars. People stab other people with kitchen knives, but it sure would be hell to chop an onion without one...
Sorry to burst your bubble, but eBay is NOT doing fine in Japan.
Maybe I misspoke. My point was that at least one lesson taught to my former employer that I'm sure many other sites have learned is that it's not worth it to focus on international markets right now. I would think that eBay would rather focus on the domestic market for now, so I doubt they have any plan to appease Indian ISPs for that market as well.
So, in other words, what you're saying is, you realize there's a market there, yet you've failed to grasp the way most of these sites & ISP's have worked so far.
People want to see MSN, Yahoo, and eBay. Take that away from them, and they will find alternative methods to connect to the Internet.
Especially in the case of eBay, this will mean near certain death for the current India ISPs. eBay is doing fine as it is, and if my former company's foray into the international market, www.etoys.co.uk, is any lesson of the past, they will not make any effort to go international on their own. If Indian ISPs block it, some smart entreprenuer will offer some sort of alternative connection that doesn't block those sites.
Also, a statement of population has little to nothing to do with a) how many of those people are on the internet and b) how many of them having spending cash to support your advertisers/sellers. Though I have never been to India, I'm going to assume that given the number of Indian workers who have come to America to find good paying jobs and the tales I've heard of poverty in India, there's not a HUGE money market in India right now that any of the three aforementioned sites are going to care at all about.
Still, I'm very impressed that you found the population.
Yeah, I'll be impressed when the above poster can do Dead End Maniac for a half hour straight without a rest...
Not that that song is the hardest in the game or anything, but it sure can drain your stamina with the best of 'em...
Tell me about it. I picked up the game back in January, and while I live in a third floor apartment which pretty much prevents me from really playing at home, we've got a DDRMAX2 machine at the arcade near my house.
3 times a week, 30 minutes a day or so, and it's done wonders for my stamina and the like.
At about 2.5 months I was round about the 6 footers as well, starting to move into the 7s. If you're anything like me, you're going to feel like you've plateaued (sp?) for a while, I essentially hit a brick wall for about a month and a half until all of a sudden, I could do 8 foot songs.
I've finally passed 3 nine-footers, so I've finally passed that wall.
Well, there's that, and then there's the fact that he claimed that TV's "tuners" were capable of adjusting to Macrovision's signal, which is completely off the mark. TV's don't have the problem because they don't have a "tuner" or AGC, so they don't get tricked by the false data that Macrovision introduces. It therefore cannot introduce any extra wear and tear on the non-existent TV "tuner".