...is in the eating. I think the same applies to spam. Paul showed, to his satisfaction, that the technique he used worked for his samples. Gary proposes some changes that would improve the filter's accuracy, but does not test these theories.
We will now have many slashdot posts saying "I've not tested this but I think A (or B, or C, or X)"
Here's where the scientific method comes into its own. Anyone who cares enough can actually test and post their results. I'd be interested in seeing what they look like. I don't have a database of spam to test against (and please don't volunteer to sign me up for some:) but it would be interesting to see whether what looks convincing in theory pays off in practice.
They were just waiting till their political contributions came through and they were let off the hook through some special legislation attached to an anti-terrorism bill. But seriously, isn't this the current American business model when you get in trouble, buy off the politicians. What odds would you offer that "Kenny Boy" is going to do any time?
In "The Practice of Management" (1954 but still very relevant) Peter Drucker says that the goal of business is to obtain customers. Profitability follows from correctly managing towards this goal. It's weird but when I first read this it really struck me that he's right. From customers comes profit if the business is correctly managed and it's the customers you need to get if you want the profit.
Yep, and it would look like a piece of crap. If you want to do this go ahead, you certainly aren't the market this product. This is meant to be a hifi component that "just works", not a hacked together pc that "almost works".
Perl 5, the new COBOL, Perl 6, the new ADA
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Perl 6 Synopsis 5
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· Score: 2
Just thought I'd rerun my previous comment producing post. Despite all of the ranting that generated I think I'll stick with my contention that Perl is COBOL for the 21st Century. In this respect perhaps perl 6 is going to be ADA, a wonderful language with lots of nice features that NOBODY USES. Perhaps abandon the backwards compatibility and design a new language with all of the features that modern languages should have. Surely that's less effort, and time better spent, that trying to maintain backwards compat. with perl 5. I mean, what can't you do with perl 5 now? Will perl 6 attract a single non perl user that perl 5 wouldn't have attracted? I'm sure perl 6 will be a great language, and a great monument to something, rather like "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
+4 insightful for a rant? What's your point? Do you think people shouldn't ever propose ambitious schemes cause you think they are impossible? I'm sure if Slashdot was around when Kennedy proposed going to the moon you'd be one of the people saying it couldn't be done, the government shouldn't be involved in space, they'll never make computers small enough.... etc. It's pretty easy to come up with reasons why something that's a good idea can't be done, you've just demonstrated that. Hopefully others will look past the simple naysaying you've indulged in, and if they think the idea is good, will work to make it happen.
I think the quote should be "Government of the People, by the Corporations, for the Corporations must perish from the earth."
Re:This is arguably *the* most critical problem
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Version Fatigue
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Very interesting comment. I'd not thought about this before but you could well be right that this is a contributing factor. Certainly com, com+, what ever was after that, and now.net, mean that people constantly have to relearn how to implement the same concepts using a different layer of software each time. No sooner is it understood then Microsoft churn takes over again.
I'd recommend Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore and The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Crossing the Chasm is especially depressing as you can follow along as your company loses focus and does all the things Geoffrey tells you not to do.
Ant won not because it's better but because it offers users benefits that make doesn't. It is evaluated using different "metrics" than make. It's an example of the Innovators Dilemma in action. If you're interested I have some further thoughts about this at http://www.zanthan.com/itymbi/archives/000037.html (Ant and Innovators Dilemma) if you're interested. I'd welcome any comments about this "analysis" and pointers to flaws etc.
Best introduction to the subject I've seen. Has things for everyone to think about and this was two years ago. I think games coming out now will have at least all these cheat prevention measures in them.
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
"You're not that familiar with Perl culture, are you? "
"Really out of the Perl culture loop, I see. Perl is all about using the right tool for the job."
Don't try to teach you Grandmother to suck eggs. I worked on a little project you may have heard of called DejaNews which used a fair amount of perl and a couple of other commercial perl projects. I believe I know of what I speak:)
Perl's fine for scripting. CPAN is great. Gluing stdout of one prog into stdin of anothers fun and useful. On the other hand perl can not in any reasonable way in embedded into any other language.
Sure perl 6 will probably have many cool features such as continuations that are already available in other languages. Perl will continue to be used, and be useful, but I think the days when it dominated its space are over.
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
I agree, little to choose between perl/python/ruby, but maybe learning a cleaner language first would help some people.
On common lisp and scheme I prefer the simplicity of scheme "syntax". otoh I've not done commercial lisp or scheme and in that situation availability of libraries may be the deciding factor.
Hey, are you dissing emacs, emacs rules, I love emacs/elisp:) I'll have to download and try squeak again. I did a few months ago and couldn't get "into" it, it's been a few years since I've done semi-serious smalltalk.
Yep, Lisp and scheme are different. The three things I'd say make them stand out are
1. Macros: especially in scheme. Fantastic way to extend the language and meta program
2. Tail call elimination in scheme: Using recursion instead of looping can often make the intent clearer and tail call elimination makes it cost the same as looping.
3. Closures: call/cc is amazing
I agree that unmaintainability is mostly a design issue (otoh you say lisp/scheme is unmaintainable, isn't that the same situation) but some languages help it and some hinder it. I feel that perl hinders it by providing different syntax for things with insignificant semantic difference.
Lisp/scheme readability is also a design issue but is greatly helped by auto indenting editors.
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
Smalltalk is good too. Personally I'd like to use scheme, or maybe goo but that's very new at the moment. There are things about Haskell that are fantastic and the static typing in ML is great. There's lots of stuff out there with different mindsets but for a scripting task I'd choose a scripting language hence python or ruby.
I won't though:) Just had to agree. Moderation can be weird. I'd love to see some sort of graph showing when various moderations were applied. The original rapidly became 4 interesting and then decline to 2 troll (perhaps because it had now got noticed) climbed back to 3 interesting and no down to 2 again through application of a flamebait. Wacky.
I agree. In defense I'd like to say that it was pretty early in the morning for me:)
I used to use perl a lot but even with the best of intentions I ended up with code that I found hard to maintain. My bias is now towards more verbose languages where there is only one way to do things, certainly for "mixed ability team corporate projects". Btw that's one of the things I dislike about.NET, the choice of languages. For some projects I've worked on the fewer choices people had the less trouble they managed to get themselves into.
For perl alternatives I'd probably pick python these days for simple and not so simple scripting, java for corporate programming or open source where you want lots of contributers, scheme/lisp for fun, and standard ML or Haskell for new perspectives.
Re:Most languages stick around through inertia
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
The meta point is to discuss the issues. Sure you may think it was a troll but it wasn't and at least people are taking about perl, what it's good for, what it's not good for and why it's still used. When I originally posted everything else at 2 or above was rated "Funny". I was hoping for a bit more thought and discussion than that so I posted something that I hoped would get people thinking. Apparently though a position that doesn't fit in or is not expressed in a bland way currently gets rated as troll or flamebait. The initial post has now got 10 moderations (some just seem to be slashdot groupthink but that's to be expected) so it seems to be generating some interest.
Re:Perl's had it's day - It's become like COBOL
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Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
It's meant to provoke thought and discussion, which is it doing, well discussion anyway. Do you have any suggestions? Perhaps you like perl, why? perhaps you don't, why?, which language would you choose and why? I did actually suggest python or ruby as possibilities.
So far I've not seem a flamewar. I've seen some thoughtful, more or less, discussion. I didn't say "Perl sucks, let's find a new language" I said "perhaps perl's time has passed, what do you think of that", and some people thought about it. Others got hung up over the difference between provocative and flame, but that's their perogative.
Also, to get any attention for a posting on slashdot it helps to have a "provocative" title and just saying "I think language X better serves the purposes Perl addresses" is as likely to provoke a flamewar as anything. With your user number you should know that. People here have their itchy trigger fingers on their flamethrowers all the time. The only advantage over kuro5hin is the larger audience (perhaps you'll take that as a flame also:).
Slashdot Mirror
Just out of interest what's your code written in and would you consider posting it?
...is in the eating. I think the same applies to spam. Paul showed, to his satisfaction, that the technique he used worked for his samples. Gary proposes some changes that would improve the filter's accuracy, but does not test these theories.
:) but it would be interesting to see whether what looks convincing in theory pays off in practice.
We will now have many slashdot posts saying "I've not tested this but I think A (or B, or C, or X)"
Here's where the scientific method comes into its own. Anyone who cares enough can actually test and post their results. I'd be interested in seeing what they look like. I don't have a database of spam to test against (and please don't volunteer to sign me up for some
I think it's a bot.
ArsDigita, ah yes, wasn't that a great success story :)
Which companies provided the planes used by the Republicans during the Florida recount?
Answer: Enron and Haliburton
They were just waiting till their political contributions came through and they were let off the hook through some special legislation attached to an anti-terrorism bill. But seriously, isn't this the current American business model when you get in trouble, buy off the politicians. What odds would you offer that "Kenny Boy" is going to do any time?
In "The Practice of Management" (1954 but still very relevant) Peter Drucker says that the goal of business is to obtain customers. Profitability follows from correctly managing towards this goal. It's weird but when I first read this it really struck me that he's right. From customers comes profit if the business is correctly managed and it's the customers you need to get if you want the profit.
Yep, and it would look like a piece of crap. If you want to do this go ahead, you certainly aren't the market this product. This is meant to be a hifi component that "just works", not a hacked together pc that "almost works".
Just thought I'd rerun my previous comment producing post. Despite all of the ranting that generated I think I'll stick with my contention that Perl is COBOL for the 21st Century. In this respect perhaps perl 6 is going to be ADA, a wonderful language with lots of nice features that NOBODY USES. Perhaps abandon the backwards compatibility and design a new language with all of the features that modern languages should have. Surely that's less effort, and time better spent, that trying to maintain backwards compat. with perl 5. I mean, what can't you do with perl 5 now? Will perl 6 attract a single non perl user that perl 5 wouldn't have attracted? I'm sure perl 6 will be a great language, and a great monument to something, rather like
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Slick signature line. Now that's what I call gaming the system.
+4 insightful for a rant? What's your point? Do you think people shouldn't ever propose ambitious schemes cause you think they are impossible? I'm sure if Slashdot was around when Kennedy proposed going to the moon you'd be one of the people saying it couldn't be done, the government shouldn't be involved in space, they'll never make computers small enough .... etc. It's pretty easy to come up with reasons why something that's a good idea can't be done, you've just demonstrated that. Hopefully others will look past the simple naysaying you've indulged in, and if they think the idea is good, will work to make it happen.
I think the quote should be "Government of the People, by the Corporations, for the Corporations must perish from the earth."
Very interesting comment. I'd not thought about this before but you could well be right that this is a contributing factor. Certainly com, com+, what ever was after that, and now .net, mean that people constantly have to relearn how to implement the same concepts using a different layer of software each time. No sooner is it understood then Microsoft churn takes over again.
I'd recommend Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore and The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Crossing the Chasm is especially depressing as you can follow along as your company loses focus and does all the things Geoffrey tells you not to do.
Ant won not because it's better but because it offers users benefits that make doesn't. It is evaluated using different "metrics" than make. It's an example of the Innovators Dilemma in action. If you're interested I have some further thoughts about this at http://www.zanthan.com/itymbi/archives/000037.html (Ant and Innovators Dilemma) if you're interested. I'd welcome any comments about this "analysis" and pointers to flaws etc.
Best introduction to the subject I've seen. Has things for everyone to think about and this was two years ago. I think games coming out now will have at least all these cheat prevention measures in them.
"You're not that familiar with Perl culture, are you? "
:)
"Really out of the Perl culture loop, I see. Perl is all about using the right tool for the job."
Don't try to teach you Grandmother to suck eggs. I worked on a little project you may have heard of called DejaNews which used a fair amount of perl and a couple of other commercial perl projects. I believe I know of what I speak
Perl's fine for scripting. CPAN is great. Gluing stdout of one prog into stdin of anothers fun and useful. On the other hand perl can not in any reasonable way in embedded into any other language.
Sure perl 6 will probably have many cool features such as continuations that are already available in other languages. Perl will continue to be used, and be useful, but I think the days when it dominated its space are over.
I agree, little to choose between perl/python/ruby, but maybe learning a cleaner language first would help some people.
:) I'll have to download and try squeak again. I did a few months ago and couldn't get "into" it, it's been a few years since I've done semi-serious smalltalk.
On common lisp and scheme I prefer the simplicity of scheme "syntax". otoh I've not done commercial lisp or scheme and in that situation availability of libraries may be the deciding factor.
Hey, are you dissing emacs, emacs rules, I love emacs/elisp
Yep, Lisp and scheme are different. The three things I'd say make them stand out are
1. Macros: especially in scheme. Fantastic way to extend the language and meta program
2. Tail call elimination in scheme: Using recursion instead of looping can often make the intent clearer and tail call elimination makes it cost the same as looping.
3. Closures: call/cc is amazing
I agree that unmaintainability is mostly a design issue (otoh you say lisp/scheme is unmaintainable, isn't that the same situation) but some languages help it and some hinder it. I feel that perl hinders it by providing different syntax for things with insignificant semantic difference.
Lisp/scheme readability is also a design issue but is greatly helped by auto indenting editors.
Smalltalk is good too. Personally I'd like to use scheme, or maybe goo but that's very new at the moment. There are things about Haskell that are fantastic and the static typing in ML is great. There's lots of stuff out there with different mindsets but for a scripting task I'd choose a scripting language hence python or ruby.
I won't though :) Just had to agree. Moderation can be weird. I'd love to see some sort of graph showing when various moderations were applied. The original rapidly became 4 interesting and then decline to 2 troll (perhaps because it had now got noticed) climbed back to 3 interesting and no down to 2 again through application of a flamebait. Wacky.
I agree. In defense I'd like to say that it was pretty early in the morning for me :)
.NET, the choice of languages. For some projects I've worked on the fewer choices people had the less trouble they managed to get themselves into.
I used to use perl a lot but even with the best of intentions I ended up with code that I found hard to maintain. My bias is now towards more verbose languages where there is only one way to do things, certainly for "mixed ability team corporate projects". Btw that's one of the things I dislike about
For perl alternatives I'd probably pick python these days for simple and not so simple scripting, java for corporate programming or open source where you want lots of contributers, scheme/lisp for fun, and standard ML or Haskell for new perspectives.
The meta point is to discuss the issues. Sure you may think it was a troll but it wasn't and at least people are taking about perl, what it's good for, what it's not good for and why it's still used. When I originally posted everything else at 2 or above was rated "Funny". I was hoping for a bit more thought and discussion than that so I posted something that I hoped would get people thinking. Apparently though a position that doesn't fit in or is not expressed in a bland way currently gets rated as troll or flamebait. The initial post has now got 10 moderations (some just seem to be slashdot groupthink but that's to be expected) so it seems to be generating some interest.
It's meant to provoke thought and discussion, which is it doing, well discussion anyway. Do you have any suggestions? Perhaps you like perl, why? perhaps you don't, why?, which language would you choose and why? I did actually suggest python or ruby as possibilities.
So far I've not seem a flamewar. I've seen some thoughtful, more or less, discussion. I didn't say "Perl sucks, let's find a new language" I said "perhaps perl's time has passed, what do you think of that", and some people thought about it. Others got hung up over the difference between provocative and flame, but that's their perogative.
:).
Also, to get any attention for a posting on slashdot it helps to have a "provocative" title and just saying "I think language X better serves the purposes Perl addresses" is as likely to provoke a flamewar as anything. With your user number you should know that. People here have their itchy trigger fingers on their flamethrowers all the time. The only advantage over kuro5hin is the larger audience (perhaps you'll take that as a flame also