X-Plane is apparently an eerily accurate-enough flight simulator that plane builders are now using it to model planes to be built, making changes in the simulator before buiilding the real thing. Cool!
"covered" is not "lifted... verbatim". If you can't tell the difference between tutorials and reference material, you're not qualified to make the comment you've made. You still haven't shown any part of PP that was "lifted" to make LP. Put up or shut up.
Large quantities of material, much of it verbatim, was lifted from the PP book for the LP book. There's very little in the way of added value in the LP book, just some reorganization.
As the original author of both PP and LP, I can certify that this is patently not true, and borders on libel.
The Jaguar book is dated. It filled a nice niche at the time, but the world progressed beyond it rather quickly. It describes a deprecated XS interface, an obsolete module packaging scheme, and objects before we really understood everything that was going on in Larry's head.
It's still selling because it still sells. O'Reilly doesn't drop books that still make a profit, even when they're outdated.
I'd consider the Alpaca plus Damian's book to be a complete replacement of everything that the Jaguar had attempted to cover, and the Alpaca presents the material in a tutorial fashion, something the Jaguar lacked.
That code is handling "indirect object" syntax, a syntax that was an interesting experiment but is all but extinct, after discovering that it can lead to some interesting problems. Unfortunately, for backward compatibility, that code still has to DWIM a bit to keep the legacy code working.
Damian's book is great, but a good comparison would be that Learning Perl is to the Camel what Learning Perl Objects, References and Modules is to Damian's book. Both of my tutorial books are tutorial in design, based on years of classroom experience in teaching these subjects. Both of the other books are reference in design.
Also, the OO part of the Alpaca book is only a portion of the text, and is necessarily light in coverage. The point of the Alpaca is to get you to understand most 100 to 10,000 line programs in as few moves as possible, just as the Llama is to get you to understand most 1 to 100 line programs. The design demands that I try to hit only the 80/20 point, covering the 20% of the features that are used in 80% of the programs. For the rest, you'll need to go to the Camel, the perldocs, and Damian's book.
I saw SW2 projected digitally in Seattle. One thing I noticed was that I could see the Matte boundaries in the conference room near the beginning... they sorta jumped around a bit. I didn't notice this in the film version, probably because the high-frequency of the sharp edge was filtered out.
The other meme I want to start is let's just call the next few years: 3, 4, 5. Since we can write the 00's but can't pronounce it sensibily, let's just knock off the whole 200x and call it 3. What year is it? It's Three! Next year, it's Four! Kind of like a new "A.D.", we don't need that old point of reference no more.
Too late. I started that in "0" (aka 2000 to you).
As proof, I always date my autographed books, and if you find someone with an autograph of mine, you'll see that I've been using single digit years since the rollover.
OK, I'll admit. The eye candy and sfx are good. Very good.
But during the first movie, we are actually challenged along with the characters in a near-real world where nearly-real bullets can mess up a good day.
At the very end of the first movie, Neo gets his super-powers. At that point, the first movie started getting uninteresting, because I said to myself "well, now deus ex machina will repeatedly make everything merely a dream". And it's a good thing the movie stopped right there.
But now we've got this problem in the sequels. We can no longer count on sensible risk to any of the characters, because we've already "violated the matrix".
The only risk at any point to any of the characters is completely in the writer's mind, and very capricious and arbitrary at that. There is no consistency to the rules (in fact, some of the rules are later torn down even within the movie), so there's no real "threat" that may or may not be realized, since Neo can "play god" in unpredictable and unexplained ways.
It's a bit like the rules of a Freddy Krueger movie... at any point, the writer can introduce some new piece that just happens to fit. While this might work in a long series, where you get used to the new rules in the alternate world, there's just not enough time in two (or three) movies to come up with the worldview of this meta-Matrix world.
For example, I can perfectly accept a transporter beam and warp drive in the Star Trek world, even though I might not have a clue about how they would actually work. And I might have said "oooh, ahh" in the first episode, but after the second or third usage, I can say "oh, this does that, but it doesn't do that other thing". There were known limitations, and they were close enough to a recognizable world that I could make a few predictions (although deus ex machina runs rampant in that series as well, but usually used only once per episode).
Now, in the Matrix universe, there are no rules. But there are rules. But maybe there's no rules. Maybe Neo is above the law. Maybe he's still subject to the law. Can't tell. Thus, no sympathy for any apparent risk.
So, see this if you like big booms and lots of CPU hours spent creating a virtual world and a little bit of now-unbelievable on-screen romance. But don't see it if you liked the actual plot of the first movie. Such a plot is severely lacking in this one.
My money was wasted. I can't believe I stayed up for this.
When we have accomplished the criminalization of even changing the background colors on the screen of our desktop PC, what actions are left that are not possibly considered to "do the crime"?
My case involves an arguably overbroad and vague law in the Oregon state code, which can turn even the most trivial act with electrons into a crime if the local constabulary can be convinced (especially by a large employer) and a jury can be snookered by overwhelming technical terms and taking things out of context.
Unfortunately, many states have similar laws. And I won't even go in to what the USA PATRIOT act or the DMCA or other laws do for criminalization of formerly innocent acts.
"Don't do the crime" these days means "don't get out of bed".
I never knowingly harmed anyone or intended to harm anyone. I just wanted to help the people who had paid my bills for five years. My friends. My co-workers. No harm was ever substantially proven, and yet I'm the felon-for-life with about $300K out of my pocket (and who knows how much lost time).
The law does not reflect a fair and just reality. The law has become a tool for selective enforcement, as a means of control far beyond the original intent of the criminal system.
Choose wisely your words. They'll be coming for you next.
I play a lot of driving games (since I'm not into shooting games). And when I do, it's very hard for me to go back into a real car. The more "accurate" the feel of the game, the more likely the automatic responses I acquire while playing the game will come up in the real situation. Usually takes me an hour or so to completely resync.
For example, in some driving games, slipping up onto the shoulder is perfectly acceptable, affecting the performance in calculable ways (usually some speed reduction or difficulty in handling). So then, I'm driving down the highway and I think "I can pass them on the shoulder". No, I don't even think it... it just starts being an option, and I have to consciously override the option.
It doesn't help that I drive a 2002 Camaro Z28 (with a top-speed of 155 mph, I'm told). So my real-life car handles like a lot of the simulated race cars I drive. Except the damage would far exceed the loss of the four quarters I stuck into the game.
And then there's the "run from cops" option of "Need for Speed". For about a half hour, I'm thinking of how to avoid spike scripts as I pull around every corner.
The scary thing is... if it's this easy for me to confuse the two driving realities, what is it like for people who play shooting games? Scary thought.
Sprocket Data Systems seems to be a small but happy group with a couple of decent pipes to the net, and 24/7 coverage (occasionally by pager reach, but still available). I have a dedicated box there at comparably affordable rates. They're always flexible with me about upgrades and additional requirements, and the techsupport is quickly responsive. They also offer hosting and co-lo services as well, although I've not used any of that.
You also don't get the quality of the program guide if you don't buy a TiVo and subscribe to their service. I've seen the public ones. No other guide service comes close to what I get from my TiVo.
The Perl DBI can talk to all of those listed databases and more. It'd be trivial to fetch everything from one database and store it in another, without worrying about local quoting conventions, as long as you use the DBI placeholders.
We will start off the week installing a perl script from Matt Wright's script archive.
Argh. Haven't they heard of the CERT warnings against those scripts? Haven't they heard that Matt himself has denounced his programs in favor of the NMS project?
How do people get so clueless, and yet have such a strong desire to share what they (don't) know?
Slashdot Mirror
See the web archive of the case of Randal Schwartz.
X-Plane is apparently an eerily accurate-enough flight simulator that plane builders are now using it to model planes to be built, making changes in the simulator before buiilding the real thing. Cool!
"covered" is not "lifted... verbatim". If you can't tell the difference between tutorials and reference material, you're not qualified to make the comment you've made. You still haven't shown any part of PP that was "lifted" to make LP. Put up or shut up.
Are you prepared to show evidence?
It's still selling because it still sells. O'Reilly doesn't drop books that still make a profit, even when they're outdated.
I'd consider the Alpaca plus Damian's book to be a complete replacement of everything that the Jaguar had attempted to cover, and the Alpaca presents the material in a tutorial fashion, something the Jaguar lacked.
That code is handling "indirect object" syntax, a syntax that was an interesting experiment but is all but extinct, after discovering that it can lead to some interesting problems. Unfortunately, for backward compatibility, that code still has to DWIM a bit to keep the legacy code working.
Also, the OO part of the Alpaca book is only a portion of the text, and is necessarily light in coverage. The point of the Alpaca is to get you to understand most 100 to 10,000 line programs in as few moves as possible, just as the Llama is to get you to understand most 1 to 100 line programs. The design demands that I try to hit only the 80/20 point, covering the 20% of the features that are used in 80% of the programs. For the rest, you'll need to go to the Camel, the perldocs, and Damian's book.
Perl and Python have different coding philosophies. Some find Perl's flexibility better. Others find Python's rigidity better. Use what you like.
As far as core language support and add-on modules, they both cover similar areas.
I saw SW2 projected digitally in Seattle. One thing I noticed was that I could see the Matte boundaries in the conference room near the beginning... they sorta jumped around a bit. I didn't notice this in the film version, probably because the high-frequency of the sharp edge was filtered out.
It's kinda hard to be an "individual swapper". Isn't that a bit like ftp'ing to 127.0.0.1?
As proof, I always date my autographed books, and if you find someone with an autograph of mine, you'll see that I've been using single digit years since the rollover.
But during the first movie, we are actually challenged along with the characters in a near-real world where nearly-real bullets can mess up a good day.
At the very end of the first movie, Neo gets his super-powers. At that point, the first movie started getting uninteresting, because I said to myself "well, now deus ex machina will repeatedly make everything merely a dream". And it's a good thing the movie stopped right there.
But now we've got this problem in the sequels. We can no longer count on sensible risk to any of the characters, because we've already "violated the matrix".
The only risk at any point to any of the characters is completely in the writer's mind, and very capricious and arbitrary at that. There is no consistency to the rules (in fact, some of the rules are later torn down even within the movie), so there's no real "threat" that may or may not be realized, since Neo can "play god" in unpredictable and unexplained ways.
It's a bit like the rules of a Freddy Krueger movie... at any point, the writer can introduce some new piece that just happens to fit. While this might work in a long series, where you get used to the new rules in the alternate world, there's just not enough time in two (or three) movies to come up with the worldview of this meta-Matrix world.
For example, I can perfectly accept a transporter beam and warp drive in the Star Trek world, even though I might not have a clue about how they would actually work. And I might have said "oooh, ahh" in the first episode, but after the second or third usage, I can say "oh, this does that, but it doesn't do that other thing". There were known limitations, and they were close enough to a recognizable world that I could make a few predictions (although deus ex machina runs rampant in that series as well, but usually used only once per episode).
Now, in the Matrix universe, there are no rules. But there are rules. But maybe there's no rules. Maybe Neo is above the law. Maybe he's still subject to the law. Can't tell. Thus, no sympathy for any apparent risk.
So, see this if you like big booms and lots of CPU hours spent creating a virtual world and a little bit of now-unbelievable on-screen romance. But don't see it if you liked the actual plot of the first movie. Such a plot is severely lacking in this one.
My money was wasted. I can't believe I stayed up for this.
My case involves an arguably overbroad and vague law in the Oregon state code, which can turn even the most trivial act with electrons into a crime if the local constabulary can be convinced (especially by a large employer) and a jury can be snookered by overwhelming technical terms and taking things out of context.
Unfortunately, many states have similar laws. And I won't even go in to what the USA PATRIOT act or the DMCA or other laws do for criminalization of formerly innocent acts.
"Don't do the crime" these days means "don't get out of bed".
I never knowingly harmed anyone or intended to harm anyone. I just wanted to help the people who had paid my bills for five years. My friends. My co-workers. No harm was ever substantially proven, and yet I'm the felon-for-life with about $300K out of my pocket (and who knows how much lost time).
The law does not reflect a fair and just reality. The law has become a tool for selective enforcement, as a means of control far beyond the original intent of the criminal system.
Choose wisely your words. They'll be coming for you next.
Would you hire me?
Or would you merely stop at the apparent conviction as if that's the only ruling authority?
TMA-1 was the name of the obelisk found on the moon in the novel 2001. Tycho Magnetic Anomoly 1, if I recall correctly.
For example, in some driving games, slipping up onto the shoulder is perfectly acceptable, affecting the performance in calculable ways (usually some speed reduction or difficulty in handling). So then, I'm driving down the highway and I think "I can pass them on the shoulder". No, I don't even think it... it just starts being an option, and I have to consciously override the option.
It doesn't help that I drive a 2002 Camaro Z28 (with a top-speed of 155 mph, I'm told). So my real-life car handles like a lot of the simulated race cars I drive. Except the damage would far exceed the loss of the four quarters I stuck into the game.
And then there's the "run from cops" option of "Need for Speed". For about a half hour, I'm thinking of how to avoid spike scripts as I pull around every corner.
The scary thing is... if it's this easy for me to confuse the two driving realities, what is it like for people who play shooting games? Scary thought.
I'd say we do.
Sprocket Data Systems seems to be a small but happy group with a couple of decent pipes to the net, and 24/7 coverage (occasionally by pager reach, but still available). I have a dedicated box there at comparably affordable rates. They're always flexible with me about upgrades and additional requirements, and the techsupport is quickly responsive. They also offer hosting and co-lo services as well, although I've not used any of that.
Do we really need life imitating art here?
You also don't get the quality of the program guide if you don't buy a TiVo and subscribe to their service. I've seen the public ones. No other guide service comes close to what I get from my TiVo.
Is France a member?
Do they take requests? ("I'd like an extra long sunset this Friday night... I have a date!")
The Perl DBI can talk to all of those listed databases and more. It'd be trivial to fetch everything from one database and store it in another, without worrying about local quoting conventions, as long as you use the DBI placeholders.
In retrospect, it was glue, using glue, talking to glue, using glue, talking to real data. Cute.
How do people get so clueless, and yet have such a strong desire to share what they (don't) know?