(second attempt, first attempt lost due to 2.4.0 memhog-killer)
At last night's meeting of Kansas City Perl Mongers were:
Garrett Goebel
David Nicol
Richard Spearman
Jared Friesen
Discussed were:
* the perl 6 Switch statement
Apparently, <<ENDEXAMPLE
given $y -> $x {
when /foo/ { bar };
when /baz/ { blurfl }
}
ENDEXAMPLE
could be rewritten into perl 5 something like <<ENDEX2
{
local *x = $y;
local *_ = $y;
/foo/ and do { bar };
/baz/ and do { blurfl }
}
ENDEX2
The exact details of the scope, and the renaming of the "default
variable" into the "topicalizer" are currently in discussion on
perl 6 lists and in apocalypse four.
It is assumed that the motivation for the more complex syntax is
to satisfy the demand for a declarative syntax, since it is a
change from Wall's previous opposition to explicit switch syntaces
in a language that has, in the opinions of many, already got
more ways to write a conditional than is good for it.
* Wireless
Unfortunately our review/sample copies of Building Wireless Community
Networks by Rob Flickenger did not arrive until today, or we would
have had them to look at. It is a very straightforward book that
does not waste time defining "meme" or explaining why the phrase
"cable DSL" makes network engineers wince. It starts by explaining
why setting up a commercial WISP is not as simple as it sounds at
first and then goes into practical detail on all points. Use the
club discount code as seen in any of the forwarded ORA newsletters
or order yours from
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596002041/tipjartransactioA
or contact me to get one of our two review copies.
According to Garrett's research, sputnik.com has the most ready-to-go
of the various competing ready-to-go roaming sharing frameworks.
I suggested that it might be possible to set up a metered model built
either on firewall logs (pay for each socket) or on time (put in another
quarter every five minutes) by using dotGNU cashbox some how, and
that is what kcwireless.org might eventually have available for download.
* pay2send
the pay2send project is still waiting for me to implement the design
which has developed a little in the half year since it was first
discussed. The idea of denying service to people who have not paid
their bills is identical to the same idea applied to a metered wireless
node.
I was asked to find an authoritative definition for "casbah" and
here is what m-w.com has:
Main Entry: Cas�bah
Pronunciation: 'kaz-"b�, 'k�z-
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Arabic dialect qasbah
Date: 1944
1 : a No. African castle or fortress
2 : the native section of a No. African city
A consensus was reached that it would make more sense to present
a working dotgnu cashbox system to sputnik.com and suggest they
build metering on top of it than to try to duplicate their work
in its entirety just to demonstrate a metering tool.
Maybe kcwireless.org could have available for download a client or
client suite that would allow roaming near sputnik-member or per-use
metered nodes, transparently.
--
David L Nicol, humble system administrator (816) 235 1187
Nuclear fission gives off heat, which we use to boil water, which
we use to make steam, to spin turbines, to generate
electricity, so we can make toast.
