... But I should also say that we are, we're also, this is going to sound -- make sure you don't edit this! -- we're also, I know this is going to sound like we're full of ourselves, but I know we're also quite smart...
This is more a transcript of a conversation, and I think I can accept that without thinking Lars was intentionally made to "look like a moron".
So, I'd say that respecting his wishes to forego anything except minor editing shows very decent ethics.
I don't know what's more disturbing, that ZDNet published a steaming pile of dung like that... or that Slashdot is driving traffic, and therefore ad revenue to ZDNet.
Looks like they're duping us left and right with this baiting and FUD.:) Because, notice that they do not ever publish a retraction to something like this unless it is legally inaccurate or slanderous. If its inciteful yet within the bounds of the law, it doesn't matter if it's truth or a blatant lie.
This has come up over and over again, and it's not a good idea.
Say there are about 400 stories in the queue right now. If that queue were made public, you'd see it jump to about 900, I bet, if not more. And the headlines would probably mostly match a search on the words 'hot grits', 'oog', 'portman', 'penis', 'fuck', 'trolls on parade'
Maybe that could be addressed with another layer of moderation. But I think that kinda misses the point-- the owners of this site are the benevolent dictators and gatekeepers. Slashdot is, ultimately, theirs. If you disagree, visit SlashCode.
Umm... Then don't try installing Mandrake on anything other than an Intel machine.:) There are others. But if you *do* have a P5 and above, the optimizations are GREAT.
As for detecting CDROMs, I've installed Mandrake on dozens of machines, some even having the dreaded funky old Creative Labs CDROM connected to the sound card trick. (I have a lot of OLD hardware) And when none of that works, I always have a network card it can detect for a LAN based install.
Actually, if you know a lil about the history of Mandrake, it's KDE heavy because it was first cooked up as a Redhat distro with KDE integrated when Redhat still shipped with FVWM95 as default.
As for servers, Mandrake ends up being my first choice for a Linux server, as it has everything I want to use... including Apache, mod_perl, mod_php, etc. And it comes up all configured, maybe need to uncomment a line here or there, but I usually have a usable server within 15 minutes, given fast drives.:)
I've been telling people this for ages, but since the PDA 'revolution' with these devices is really just starting to catch on widespread, not a lot of people have had their particular device for more than a year or so. Wear & tear? What, it's brand new?
But a few of my co-workers and I have had various incarnations of Palms for years, and had each one for at least a year or more. I had a Palm III for two years, and through dedicated, heavy, extreme use (I used it for EVERYTHING), it has a dime-sized thick patina of wear on the silkscreen part. I am SO glad that that wasn't part of the display.
Yeah yeah, when it wears out, just upgrade... but that's falling for the old PC fallacies-- I mean, do you really need to double the memory and processing power of your PDA every 6 months? These tend (at least in my experience) to be more for the long haul.
And as for writing all over the screen, I really wouldn't trade that dime sized spot of wear for a fog of scratches ALL OVER the screen.
Why do I need all these wireless modems when I can trail a cable behind me? Why do I need natural, non-intrusive mind interface with a device when I can carve up my skull and stick foreign bodies in my brain, possibly prone to infection and dependent upon intrusive brain surgery?
As for it being spooky... I bet you would have loved to burn Gallileo. =P
So you're calling us clueless because we're talking about mainframes? I mean that's great that you are involved with IBM and get to play with their newest stuff.
Now quit, and join a company who spent the big bucks on getting the big iron, decades ago, because they wanted something big, big, big. Now, convince them to toss those big expensive, contract maintained boxen out next to the dumpster.
Go ahead. Try it.
Now, convince them that you can repurpose that decaying beast that does less & less every year, into a modern powerhouse driven by the Latest and Greatest Buzzword Compliant [tm] Open Source [tm] software.
You try that. Then, tell me which of the above two solutions gets you a raise as an IT/IS professional.
Please to not be speakink for me and please to be applying the following replacement expressions to your post:
s/any of us/me/g; s/we/I/; s/the average person/me/;
I don't know about you, but I read Slashdot, and I've had to work with mainframes and their care & feeding. (Not anymore, thankee goodness.) But I think you'd be surprised to find the number of IT/IS nerds around here who're happy to hear about something like this, and want to try it.
The nerds that Slashdot is news for are not just basement Linux hobbyists running MP3's on 133Mhz Intel machines.
I don't know about you, but I actually use my Handspring a lot while I'm outside and out & about. I also use it in a lot of highly-lit areas. In fact, I *love* my Handspring's new reflective screen (versus my old Palm III's murky screen), and that it's pretty much readable under the same conditions as a book.
Now... my laptop and the WinCE PDA my boss just took back to Best Buy both have active matrix screens. You can't see either of them in sunlight outside, bright overhead light inside, or anywhere where the ambient light is brighter than that of the screen.
That sucks. Because a PDA is meant for quick, always available use. Not at your desk, but Out There when you get your ideas and make your meetings.
And as far as I'm concerned, and active matrix screen hampers that.
Unfortunately, all of these have the same problem... they tie the interface and the logic together into one big mess. Great for throwing together a quick web page, or even a large, complex web site, but horrible for trying to maintain that website as new technologies come along. Why do you think that most major websites throw everything out and start over fresh every 6 months or so?
This is at the heart of the philosophy behind Iaijutsu-- an open source, object oriented web content and application development framework written in Perl.
Iaijutsu is similar to Zope in that content and application objects are created and maintained online, through folder trees and online forms. Classes can be created to handle various types of content (ie. GIF, PDF, XML, etc) in different ways. Classes can be created to do specific application tasks (ie. weblogs, discussion boards, parse headlines from RSS xml files)
However, where Iaijutsu parts with many other systems is a discipline of separation of content, presentation, and logic. Content is composed in object properties. Presentation is done with a very flexible template language. Logic is done either in Perl object classes, or with a hybrid XML/Perl class definition document where properties, methods, templates used, and template accessors are defined with optional perl implementation blocks.
The separation is a discipline: Content should never be tied to the presentation or logic. Logic should never be contained in the presentation (ie. the application should never be built in the template language!!!). Presentation should never be dictated by the logic.
In this way, you can target the results of a well designed set of content and application classes to just about any presentation device. (ie. layout & graphic 'themes' or 'skins' for 5.0 web browsers, VoXML for telephone access, WAP for handhelds and phones, etc...) Think XSL and XML.
Mind you, I'm only pointing this out to say that Perl is not completely lacking in such a 'killer app', not to start another Python war.
Iaijutsu is an object oriented web content management and application development framework. It has a lot in common with Zope, but diverges in many conceptual areas.
What's magical about Zope is that it looks, to users, like a content-management system with a simple Web interface that anybody can use. A non-programmer can manage a simple website, using Zope, with little training.
Iaijutsu does that now. Although I can't mention the names of very many sites because they are clients for my day job, we have quite a few fairly large name clients using Iaijutsu's content management for their sites, intranets, and business-to-business document stores.
Yeah I know, kinda a weak claim. Just suffice it to say that someone is using Iaijutsunow.
Thanks to Zope's powerful object-oriented framework, it's easy to build such a site in an efficient and economical way, inheriting (or, in Zope-speak, acquiring) common elements from ancestral objects
Acquisition != Inheritance. More of a close cousin.
And you don't need acquisition for efficiency and economy-- on the contrary, I've kept acqusition from permeating the design of Iaijutsu because it seemed to me to be one of the most confusing aspects of Zope. However, acquisition is still possible in Iaijutsu. (There's more than one way to do it!:) )
Thanks to Zope's built-in object database, it's easy to restructure the site -- for example, by cutting a subtree of objects from one location and pasting it into another.
I implemented this about 6 months ago.
Out of the box, in other words, Zope is a useful Web content manager for nonprogrammers.
Iaijutsu is this right now. However, the documentation is even less complete than Zope's.:) Soon...
There's a tag language called DTML (Document Template Markup Language) which, like Cold Fusion Markup Language or Java Server Pages or Active Server Pages, mixes HTML templates with programming instructions that can populate these templates with data drawn from SQL stores or Zope's own object database.
However, unlike Zope, Iaijutsu is designed with the philosophy that content, logic, and presentation should be like oil and water. The templates are for presentation-- you do not build application with template documents. This goes against the concept of DTML, ASP, JSP, LiveWire, PHP, EmbPerl, and all the other code-in-page systems.
You compose content in object properties, applications with object methods, and display content and application results via templates. The only logic in your HTML templates should be only what's required for display. (See XSL for a similar concept.)
When this mid-level programming environment runs out of gas, you can drop down to Python -- Zope's native implementation language -- to write powerful extensions that communicate intimately with Zope's internal machinery.
The same ability exists in Iaijutsu. Content and application classes can be written in Object Oriented Perl.
However, there is also a hybrid Perl/XML format for writing classes online in web forms. And you need not write any perl at all in these class definitions.
Anyway, I've babbled enough. Just trying to set the record straight, that Zope is not without competition soon.:)
I've worked anywhere from 100 hours to 40 hours in a work week, and I think if I were to take all of my work weeks since leaving university, it would average to around 50-55 hours average.
Now, if I added in the time I spend THINKING and working in my head (which I contend is something like 75-90% of all good hacking) I think that figure would jump up to a steady 80 hours a week.
You know, I don't think there's much time when I just leave the office at the office and am completely free to go do something else. Maybe I'm one of those obsessive personalities challenged by the work place, but then so are most of my co-workers. Hell we work out algorithms on fricken bar napkins sometimes.
Granted, part of it is the love of the game-- er I mean craft. But still, a little realism is needed here.
I have *never* worked 32.5 hours in a week-- except when the company I was working at close the office and laid everyone off before the week was done in order to avoid a full final paycheck.
And although there's love, that doesn't mean my employer should get to bask in my loving rays for free or for the price of a pizza delivery boy. No joke. On one project, I worked 100 hours a week for 3 weeks. I figured out my theoretical hourly rate from my salary and worked out that I'd make more around the corner delivering pizza.
As Linux is embraced by more organizations, and used in more ways that are crucial, the demands upon you will increase. New feature ideas and bug reports will no longer go onto a "wish list"; they will go onto a "hot list." You will face pressure to add 50 new items to the next release, when it really ought to have 10. Wealthy organizations, accustomed to getting their way, will demand impossible schedules from you, and then complain if the quality is not perfect.
Here's one point I take issue with. While I don't take issue with its clairvoyant validity, I do take issue with the idea that this should be accepted practice.
The idea that anyone should say yes to an impossible schedule, over-promise, kill themselves to work inhumanly sustainable hours is just ludicrous. But we've been doing it.
It's time to stop it.
Just got this in my mailbox, and I think it says just about everything I want to:
Think about it, if you're 20-30 something now, and working 90 hours a week, do you want to be doing that into your 40's? Should you even be doing that now? Why do you accept it?
If we're so valuable, and in such short supply, it's time to start maybe from the grunt programmer on up to put a stop to the acceptable practice of demanding the impossible and change it into delivering the sane.
As Linux is embraced by more organizations, and used in more ways that are crucial, the demands upon you will increase. New feature ideas and bug reports will no longer go onto a "wish list"; they will go onto a "hot list." You will face pressure to add 50 new items to the next release, when it really ought to have 10. Wealthy organizations, accustomed to getting their way, will demand impossible schedules from you, and then complain if the quality is not perfect.
Here's one point I take issue with. While I don't take issue with its clairvoyant validity, I do take issue with the idea that this should be accepted practice.
The idea that anyone should say yes to an impossible schedule, over-promise, kill themselves to work inhumanly sustainable hours is just ludicrous. But we've been doing it.
It's time to stop it.
Just got this in my mailbox, and I think it says just about everything I want to:
Think about it, if you're 20-30 something now, and working 90 hours a week, do you want to be doing that into your 40's? Should you even be doing that now? Why do you accept it?
If we're so valuable, and in such short supply, it's time to start maybe from the grunt programmer on up to put a stop to the acceptable practice of demanding the impossible and change it into delivering the sane.
I remember back when you could suggest that something be changed or mention something you didn't like without someone throwing a fit at you from the parent company to go read something else.
<RANT>
And I remember back when you could come to Slashdot without the posters throwing a fit about the integrity and honesty of the people running the place after every little thing they did.
These complaints are neither suggestions to change or even just mentions of things disliked... they're full out attacks on the guys at Slashdot because they decided to sign on to a larger mothership so that the wouldn't have to stand in line at the unemployment office or bag groceries.
I mean, I see all manner of conspiracies and garbage about how Slashdot is under mindcontrol now, but I don't see the evidence. "Watch and see what stories *don't* get published," I'm told. Well, what the hell kind of evidence is that? There are hundreds of stories the mainstream press miss every day. Blah blah blah...
What it comes down to, I often think, is that these guys are making money and you're not. What's wrong with making money at something you've done right. Yeah, yeah, you were here in the beginning and where's your check. Well, sorry, you didn't start the site, you didn't maintain the site, you didn't have the idea, and you didn't take all the flack. I think these guys deserve what they got.
And as for Slashdot getting warped by the mothership-- don't you think that if that happened in any real noticeable way, that it would sink in a week's time, if not sooner? Live by the open community sword, die by it.
And if you can agree with that, don't you think that *possibly* someone at Andover and now VA might realize that? And if you can agree with *that*, don't you think that the people who bought the site might want its value to continue to be valuable, even if they're greedy bastards (not saying they are)? And if you can, finally, agree with that, why should Slashdot change for any other reason than that the guys in Holland, MI want it to?
I'm a little bit confused about the questioning of Slashdot as a "trusted" news forum. This come especially after Andover has purchased them, and now again as VA purchases Andover...
In my mind, Slashdot is still one of the most trusted news forums for me-- because someone can post a message openly criticising their journalistic integrity. There really isn't that much journalism going on by the Slashdot guys, relatively speaking. The ratio of content on this site between what the guys in the Geek Compound here in Michigan post, versus the content posted by YOU worldwide is incredibly large. And the fact that YOU can moderate and score that content is amazingly bold too. If you can, list for me the number of news sites which get as much or more traffic as Slashdot that have a similar tradition of openness.
And as you reply to my message to tell me I'm full of dung, just think about it. You're posting to tell me I'm full of dung. You can do that. And if one of the Slashdot guys posts a story that's completely wrong, you can tell the world that he's full of dung too! In fact, you can go even further and do a bit of corrective journalism and post links and resources which tell a fuller or more correct story.
RMS explains the relationship between the Hurd and Linux in The Hurd and Linux, where he mentions that the FSF started developing the Hurd in 1990. As of [Gnusletter, Nov. 1991], the Hurd (running on Mach) is GNU's official kernel. "
Well, that's at least 10 years.:)
This Open Source thing, the artist formerly known as Free Software (yeah I know, there's a bigger difference than that), is a lot older than 1999.
I carry 6 books with me on Perl, along with the whole bundle of Perl docs that come with Perl itself, on my Handspring Visor with a memory expansion module. It's nice, fairly readable and usable, and searchable. I even read the XS tutorial while in the can. It took some ponderance and reflection, and what a better place to do it?:)
As for the search engine on the CD-- it's in Java, and I've gotten it working under Linux. IIRC, there are directions in the kit on how to get it working.
As for books in general, I'm working on getting more and more of them into my Visor, but I still tend to need a physical papery copy of it lying around. Electronic books (at least on the Visor) still haven't gotten the correct user interface details down to replace paper.
My current companion is DocBook: The Definitive Guide, so that I can be a DocBook XML expert while composing the massive body of documentation for my Open Source project. Try learning a new set of XML tags without flipping rapidly back and forth to see what's valid within what, what attributes are legal where, and what the hell is this?
Yeah, I know, you needed a quick hack to parse #1, but eventually someone will export an Excel file to what *it* calls CSV and get something like #2. Then, that little hack gets a lot bigger.
#!/usr/bin/perl $parser = new XML::Parser(Style => 'Tree'); $tree = $parser->parsefile('coolstuff.xml');
And you get a pretty simple tree data structure of your XML, ready for quick hacks to walk through it and pluck out your data. It's not that hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, what the difference? He was one of their main developers. Not a programmer, but he was a member of the game development team nonetheless.
As an animation/modeler, he had as much a hand in shaping the Quake legacy as JC, IMHO.
Perl Window Manager
OKay, so I know it's mostly dead, but there is one.
Lars' own words (emphasis mine):
... But I should also say that we are, we're also, this is going to sound -- make sure you don't edit this! -- we're also, I know this is going to sound like we're full of ourselves, but I know we're also quite smart ...
This is more a transcript of a conversation, and I think I can accept that without thinking Lars was intentionally made to "look like a moron".
So, I'd say that respecting his wishes to forego anything except minor editing shows very decent ethics.
I don't know what's more disturbing, that ZDNet published a steaming pile of dung like that... or that Slashdot is driving traffic, and therefore ad revenue to ZDNet.
:) Because, notice that they do not ever publish a retraction to something like this unless it is legally inaccurate or slanderous. If its inciteful yet within the bounds of the law, it doesn't matter if it's truth or a blatant lie.
Looks like they're duping us left and right with this baiting and FUD.
It draws the eyeballs. Thank you, Yellow Journalism!
This has come up over and over again, and it's not a good idea.
Say there are about 400 stories in the queue right now. If that queue were made public, you'd see it jump to about 900, I bet, if not more. And the headlines would probably mostly match a search on the words 'hot grits', 'oog', 'portman', 'penis', 'fuck', 'trolls on parade'
Maybe that could be addressed with another layer of moderation. But I think that kinda misses the point-- the owners of this site are the benevolent dictators and gatekeepers. Slashdot is, ultimately, theirs. If you disagree, visit SlashCode.
Umm... Then don't try installing Mandrake on anything other than an Intel machine. :) There are others. But if you *do* have a P5 and above, the optimizations are GREAT.
As for detecting CDROMs, I've installed Mandrake on dozens of machines, some even having the dreaded funky old Creative Labs CDROM connected to the sound card trick. (I have a lot of OLD hardware) And when none of that works, I always have a network card it can detect for a LAN based install.
Actually, if you know a lil about the history of Mandrake, it's KDE heavy because it was first cooked up as a Redhat distro with KDE integrated when Redhat still shipped with FVWM95 as default.
:)
As for servers, Mandrake ends up being my first choice for a Linux server, as it has everything I want to use... including Apache, mod_perl, mod_php, etc. And it comes up all configured, maybe need to uncomment a line here or there, but I usually have a usable server within 15 minutes, given fast drives.
THANK YOU!
I've been telling people this for ages, but since the PDA 'revolution' with these devices is really just starting to catch on widespread, not a lot of people have had their particular device for more than a year or so. Wear & tear? What, it's brand new?
But a few of my co-workers and I have had various incarnations of Palms for years, and had each one for at least a year or more. I had a Palm III for two years, and through dedicated, heavy, extreme use (I used it for EVERYTHING), it has a dime-sized thick patina of wear on the silkscreen part. I am SO glad that that wasn't part of the display.
Yeah yeah, when it wears out, just upgrade... but that's falling for the old PC fallacies-- I mean, do you really need to double the memory and processing power of your PDA every 6 months? These tend (at least in my experience) to be more for the long haul.
And as for writing all over the screen, I really wouldn't trade that dime sized spot of wear for a fog of scratches ALL OVER the screen.
Why do I need all these wireless modems when I can trail a cable behind me? Why do I need natural, non-intrusive mind interface with a device when I can carve up my skull and stick foreign bodies in my brain, possibly prone to infection and dependent upon intrusive brain surgery?
As for it being spooky... I bet you would have loved to burn Gallileo. =P
So you're calling us clueless because we're talking about mainframes? I mean that's great that you are involved with IBM and get to play with their newest stuff.
Now quit, and join a company who spent the big bucks on getting the big iron, decades ago, because they wanted something big, big, big. Now, convince them to toss those big expensive, contract maintained boxen out next to the dumpster.
Go ahead. Try it.
Now, convince them that you can repurpose that decaying beast that does less & less every year, into a modern powerhouse driven by the Latest and Greatest Buzzword Compliant [tm] Open Source [tm] software.
You try that. Then, tell me which of the above two solutions gets you a raise as an IT/IS professional.
Who's this us?
Please to not be speakink for me and please to be applying the following replacement expressions to your post:
s/any of us/me/g;
s/we/I/;
s/the average person/me/;
I don't know about you, but I read Slashdot, and I've had to work with mainframes and their care & feeding. (Not anymore, thankee goodness.) But I think you'd be surprised to find the number of IT/IS nerds around here who're happy to hear about something like this, and want to try it.
The nerds that Slashdot is news for are not just basement Linux hobbyists running MP3's on 133Mhz Intel machines.
I don't know about you, but I actually use my Handspring a lot while I'm outside and out & about. I also use it in a lot of highly-lit areas. In fact, I *love* my Handspring's new reflective screen (versus my old Palm III's murky screen), and that it's pretty much readable under the same conditions as a book.
Now... my laptop and the WinCE PDA my boss just took back to Best Buy both have active matrix screens. You can't see either of them in sunlight outside, bright overhead light inside, or anywhere where the ambient light is brighter than that of the screen.
That sucks. Because a PDA is meant for quick, always available use. Not at your desk, but Out There when you get your ideas and make your meetings.
And as far as I'm concerned, and active matrix screen hampers that.
Unfortunately, all of these have the same problem... they tie the interface and the logic together into one big mess. Great for throwing together a quick web page, or even a large, complex web site, but horrible for trying to maintain that website as new technologies come along. Why do you think that most major websites throw everything out and start over fresh every 6 months or so?
This is at the heart of the philosophy behind Iaijutsu-- an open source, object oriented web content and application development framework written in Perl.
Iaijutsu is similar to Zope in that content and application objects are created and maintained online, through folder trees and online forms. Classes can be created to handle various types of content (ie. GIF, PDF, XML, etc) in different ways. Classes can be created to do specific application tasks (ie. weblogs, discussion boards, parse headlines from RSS xml files)
However, where Iaijutsu parts with many other systems is a discipline of separation of content, presentation, and logic. Content is composed in object properties. Presentation is done with a very flexible template language. Logic is done either in Perl object classes, or with a hybrid XML/Perl class definition document where properties, methods, templates used, and template accessors are defined with optional perl implementation blocks.
The separation is a discipline: Content should never be tied to the presentation or logic. Logic should never be contained in the presentation (ie. the application should never be built in the template language!!!). Presentation should never be dictated by the logic.
In this way, you can target the results of a well designed set of content and application classes to just about any presentation device. (ie. layout & graphic 'themes' or 'skins' for 5.0 web browsers, VoXML for telephone access, WAP for handhelds and phones, etc...) Think XSL and XML.
For another Zope-like server environment in Perl, named Iaijutsu, see this comment and this website.
Perl does have an app like Zope.
:) )
:) Soon...
:)
Mind you, I'm only pointing this out to say that Perl is not completely lacking in such a 'killer app', not to start another Python war.
Iaijutsu is an object oriented web content management and application development framework. It has a lot in common with Zope, but diverges in many conceptual areas.
What's magical about Zope is that it looks, to users, like a content-management system with a simple Web interface that anybody can use. A non-programmer can manage a simple website, using Zope, with little training.
Iaijutsu does that now. Although I can't mention the names of very many sites because they are clients for my day job, we have quite a few fairly large name clients using Iaijutsu's content management for their sites, intranets, and business-to-business document stores.
Yeah I know, kinda a weak claim. Just suffice it to say that someone is using Iaijutsu now.
Thanks to Zope's powerful object-oriented framework, it's easy to build such a site in an efficient and economical way, inheriting (or, in Zope-speak, acquiring) common elements from ancestral objects
Acquisition != Inheritance. More of a close cousin.
And you don't need acquisition for efficiency and economy-- on the contrary, I've kept acqusition from permeating the design of Iaijutsu because it seemed to me to be one of the most confusing aspects of Zope. However, acquisition is still possible in Iaijutsu. (There's more than one way to do it!
Thanks to Zope's built-in object database, it's easy to restructure the site -- for example, by cutting a subtree of objects from one location and pasting it into another.
I implemented this about 6 months ago.
Out of the box, in other words, Zope is a useful Web content manager for nonprogrammers.
Iaijutsu is this right now. However, the documentation is even less complete than Zope's.
There's a tag language called DTML (Document Template Markup Language) which, like Cold Fusion Markup Language or Java Server Pages or Active Server Pages, mixes HTML templates with programming instructions that can populate these templates with data drawn from SQL stores or Zope's own object database.
Iaijutsu has this, via Andy Wardley's awesome Template Toolkit.
However, unlike Zope, Iaijutsu is designed with the philosophy that content, logic, and presentation should be like oil and water. The templates are for presentation-- you do not build application with template documents. This goes against the concept of DTML, ASP, JSP, LiveWire, PHP, EmbPerl, and all the other code-in-page systems.
You compose content in object properties, applications with object methods, and display content and application results via templates. The only logic in your HTML templates should be only what's required for display. (See XSL for a similar concept.)
When this mid-level programming environment runs out of gas, you can drop down to Python -- Zope's native implementation language -- to write powerful extensions that communicate intimately with Zope's internal machinery.
The same ability exists in Iaijutsu. Content and application classes can be written in Object Oriented Perl.
However, there is also a hybrid Perl/XML format for writing classes online in web forms. And you need not write any perl at all in these class definitions.
Anyway, I've babbled enough. Just trying to set the record straight, that Zope is not without competition soon.
I've worked anywhere from 100 hours to 40 hours in a work week, and I think if I were to take all of my work weeks since leaving university, it would average to around 50-55 hours average.
Now, if I added in the time I spend THINKING and working in my head (which I contend is something like 75-90% of all good hacking) I think that figure would jump up to a steady 80 hours a week.
You know, I don't think there's much time when I just leave the office at the office and am completely free to go do something else. Maybe I'm one of those obsessive personalities challenged by the work place, but then so are most of my co-workers. Hell we work out algorithms on fricken bar napkins sometimes.
Granted, part of it is the love of the game-- er I mean craft. But still, a little realism is needed here.
I have *never* worked 32.5 hours in a week-- except when the company I was working at close the office and laid everyone off before the week was done in order to avoid a full final paycheck.
And although there's love, that doesn't mean my employer should get to bask in my loving rays for free or for the price of a pizza delivery boy. No joke. On one project, I worked 100 hours a week for 3 weeks. I figured out my theoretical hourly rate from my salary and worked out that I'd make more around the corner delivering pizza.
As Linux is embraced by more organizations, and used in more ways that are crucial, the demands upon you will increase. New feature ideas and bug reports will no longer go onto a "wish list"; they will go onto a "hot list." You will face pressure to add 50 new items to the next release, when it really ought to have 10. Wealthy organizations, accustomed to getting their way, will demand impossible schedules from you, and then complain if the quality is not perfect.
Here's one point I take issue with. While I don't take issue with its clairvoyant validity, I do take issue with the idea that this should be accepted practice.
The idea that anyone should say yes to an impossible schedule, over-promise, kill themselves to work inhumanly sustainable hours is just ludicrous. But we've been doing it.
It's time to stop it.
Just got this in my mailbox, and I think it says just about everything I want to:
Gold Rush Mindset Undermining Programming Field
Think about it, if you're 20-30 something now, and working 90 hours a week, do you want to be doing that into your 40's? Should you even be doing that now? Why do you accept it?
If we're so valuable, and in such short supply, it's time to start maybe from the grunt programmer on up to put a stop to the acceptable practice of demanding the impossible and change it into delivering the sane.
As Linux is embraced by more organizations, and used in more ways that are crucial, the demands upon you will increase. New feature ideas and bug reports will no longer go onto a "wish list"; they will go onto a "hot list." You will face pressure to add 50 new items to the next release, when it really ought to have 10. Wealthy organizations, accustomed to getting their way, will demand impossible schedules from you, and then complain if the quality is not perfect.
Here's one point I take issue with. While I don't take issue with its clairvoyant validity, I do take issue with the idea that this should be accepted practice.
The idea that anyone should say yes to an impossible schedule, over-promise, kill themselves to work inhumanly sustainable hours is just ludicrous. But we've been doing it.
It's time to stop it.
Just got this in my mailbox, and I think it says just about everything I want to:
Gold Rush Mindset Undermining Programming Field
Think about it, if you're 20-30 something now, and working 90 hours a week, do you want to be doing that into your 40's? Should you even be doing that now? Why do you accept it?
If we're so valuable, and in such short supply, it's time to start maybe from the grunt programmer on up to put a stop to the acceptable practice of demanding the impossible and change it into delivering the sane.
I remember back when you could suggest that something be changed or mention something you didn't like without someone throwing a fit at you from the parent company to go read something else.
<RANT>
And I remember back when you could come to Slashdot without the posters throwing a fit about the integrity and honesty of the people running the place after every little thing they did.
These complaints are neither suggestions to change or even just mentions of things disliked... they're full out attacks on the guys at Slashdot because they decided to sign on to a larger mothership so that the wouldn't have to stand in line at the unemployment office or bag groceries.
I mean, I see all manner of conspiracies and garbage about how Slashdot is under mindcontrol now, but I don't see the evidence. "Watch and see what stories *don't* get published," I'm told. Well, what the hell kind of evidence is that? There are hundreds of stories the mainstream press miss every day. Blah blah blah...
What it comes down to, I often think, is that these guys are making money and you're not. What's wrong with making money at something you've done right. Yeah, yeah, you were here in the beginning and where's your check. Well, sorry, you didn't start the site, you didn't maintain the site, you didn't have the idea, and you didn't take all the flack. I think these guys deserve what they got.
And as for Slashdot getting warped by the mothership-- don't you think that if that happened in any real noticeable way, that it would sink in a week's time, if not sooner? Live by the open community sword, die by it.
And if you can agree with that, don't you think that *possibly* someone at Andover and now VA might realize that? And if you can agree with *that*, don't you think that the people who bought the site might want its value to continue to be valuable, even if they're greedy bastards (not saying they are)? And if you can, finally, agree with that, why should Slashdot change for any other reason than that the guys in Holland, MI want it to?
</RANT>
I'm a little bit confused about the questioning of Slashdot as a "trusted" news forum. This come especially after Andover has purchased them, and now again as VA purchases Andover...
In my mind, Slashdot is still one of the most trusted news forums for me-- because someone can post a message openly criticising their journalistic integrity. There really isn't that much journalism going on by the Slashdot guys, relatively speaking. The ratio of content on this site between what the guys in the Geek Compound here in Michigan post, versus the content posted by YOU worldwide is incredibly large. And the fact that YOU can moderate and score that content is amazingly bold too. If you can, list for me the number of news sites which get as much or more traffic as Slashdot that have a similar tradition of openness.
And as you reply to my message to tell me I'm full of dung, just think about it. You're posting to tell me I'm full of dung. You can do that. And if one of the Slashdot guys posts a story that's completely wrong, you can tell the world that he's full of dung too! In fact, you can go even further and do a bit of corrective journalism and post links and resources which tell a fuller or more correct story.
And what other news medium showed a public figure recant a statement in realtime?
I'd really like to know just what it is that Andover has changed about Slashdot, because maybe I'm actually full of dung, but I haven't seen it.
Try Bookmarkets.com, because believe it or not, this has all been done before and it's actully pretty useful.
Note-- Javascript laden links ahead: (None are malicious)
You can do things like this executive dice roller.
Or, read your cookie that was set for this site. How about seeing when this page was last modified?
See a word over 2 syllables you don't know on Slashdot? Search at Dictionary.com.
Do a reverse lookup on someone's phone number.
RMS explains the relationship between the Hurd and Linux in The Hurd and Linux, where he mentions that the FSF started developing the Hurd in 1990. As of [Gnusletter, Nov. 1991], the Hurd (running on Mach) is GNU's official kernel. "
:)
Well, that's at least 10 years.
This Open Source thing, the artist formerly known as Free Software (yeah I know, there's a bigger difference than that), is a lot older than 1999.
I'm not sure that "Object Oriented" is the correct term to apply to the Hurd's microkernel architecture. I may be wrong.
As for why Linux is not like Hurd, read The Torvalds / Tanenbaum debates or do a random search on "Linus," "Tanenbaum", and "Microkernel". Linus details all of the reasons why Linux is monolithic versus being broken up into micro modules. Very historic, in Linux terms.
Handspring Visor (TM) + iSilo (TM) + The Perl CD Bookshelf = Perl Hacker's Reference Nirvana
:)
I carry 6 books with me on Perl, along with the whole bundle of Perl docs that come with Perl itself, on my Handspring Visor with a memory expansion module. It's nice, fairly readable and usable, and searchable. I even read the XS tutorial while in the can. It took some ponderance and reflection, and what a better place to do it?
As for the search engine on the CD-- it's in Java, and I've gotten it working under Linux. IIRC, there are directions in the kit on how to get it working.
As for books in general, I'm working on getting more and more of them into my Visor, but I still tend to need a physical papery copy of it lying around. Electronic books (at least on the Visor) still haven't gotten the correct user interface details down to replace paper.
My current companion is DocBook: The Definitive Guide, so that I can be a DocBook XML expert while composing the massive body of documentation for my Open Source project. Try learning a new set of XML tags without flipping rapidly back and forth to see what's valid within what, what attributes are legal where, and what the hell is this?
A csv parser?
Okay, that's a good quick hack to parse: foo,bar,baz
How about: "John Malkovich", "John \"Blah\" Doe", "Steven Wright", Cher, "Larry Wall"?
Yeah, I know, you needed a quick hack to parse #1, but eventually someone will export an Excel file to what *it* calls CSV and get something like #2. Then, that little hack gets a lot bigger.
#!/usr/bin/perl
$parser = new XML::Parser(Style => 'Tree');
$tree = $parser->parsefile('coolstuff.xml');
And you get a pretty simple tree data structure of your XML, ready for quick hacks to walk through it and pluck out your data. It's not that hard.