Earle Martin wrote:
>
> Wouldn't hacking perl be more of a lowest common denominator here? You
> also missed out the crucial IRC bit. I'd rearrange the bits to:
>
> owns a pony
> | lives or works in the London area
> | | actively subscribed to mailing list
> | | | regularly attends London.pm technical meetings
> | | | | regularly attends London.pm social meetings
> | | | | | is a regular on #london.pm
> | | | | | | has written an Acme module
> | | | | | | | hacks perl
> | | | | | | | |
> ---------------
> 1 6 3 1 8 4 2 1
> 2 4 2
> 8
>
> I had to drop the Buffy bit.
That's a first design flaw : "eight parameters will be enough for all
purposes".
> On your original scale, my NIPL is bigger than yours, but not by much, at
> 250 to 160. On this modified scale, my NIPL towers over yours by 125 to 33,
> which is clearly a much more reasonable result. ;)
That's a second design flaw : the mandatory ordering of bits, and the
temptation to score people according to their NIPL's weight.
I'd like to propose an alternative implementation, the London.pm Indice
of Purity String. Instead of using bits, it uses characters that may or
not be present in a string.
# is a regular on #london.pm
L lives or works in the London area
P hacks perl
a has written an Acme module
b watches Buffy
m actively subscribed to mailing list
p owns a pony
s regularly attends London.pm social meetings
t regularly attends London.pm technical meetings
Then, we could use the Levenshtein distance (did I got the spelling
right?) to "#LPabmpst" to calculate the degree of purity. For free, by
calculating the L-distance between two members' LIPSs, we could have a
rational measure of their affinity. For example, the company of someone
who doesn't watch Buffy won't be very appealing to me.
Aren't LIPSs better than NIPLs ?
--
RGS : my $LIPS = q/Pbm/;
