Re: irrelevant questions for candidates
Simon Batistoni wrote: If they're irrelevant I'll save time and space by not bothering to answer. I don't feel that these questions, or the addenda provided by MBM are in the least bit irrelevant, and I would tend towards reading alex's title as unnecessarily self-depracating. As a potential leader of London.pm, I would have hoped that you would apply a similar lenient reading to such postings, and do your best to accommodate the questioner. Well pardon me for attempting to have a sense of humour. On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 11:13:01PM +, Lusercop wrote: On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 10:57:00PM +, alex wrote: [a] What, in your eyes, is the worst thing that london.pm has ever done? (i) why? Individuals have done some pretty silly things, and I'm no doubt just as guilty as anyone else. As a group though, I'd say that sponsoring the camel for the second time has to be up there. We couldn't afford it, and shouldn't have taken loans from members - who have had to wait far too long to be repayed - to do it. If we couldn't raise the money to do it properly, then we shouldn't have done it at all. It might have been OK if we'd gained anything from so doing, but I don't think we did, sponsoring a camel seems to me to have been nothing more than a bit of collective ego-boosting. There's nowt wrong with ego-boosting per se, but when it's done at someone elses expense it's bad, mmm'kay? [b] What, if anything, would you have done to stop them from carrying out this heinous act, if you were leader? It should be noted that at the time I think I was in favour, it is only subsequent events - namely our spectacular failure to raise the funds in a timely fashion - that changed my mind. There's nothing a leader can do to prevent any subset of london.pm from doing anything they want. However, I would hope that by asking people to not credit such schemes to london.pm my own special brand of sanity* might prevail. [c] What are your leaderly plans for penderel (the computer)? None. It works, so I have little inclination to fix it. (i) who will have root? Same as now. If the sysadmins think someone else should get it for whatever reason, I'm sure they'll do it. (ii) how will you go about making sure that people who aren't supposed to don't have root? I won't, as I don't have root and I don't think I need it. You volunteering? In the grand scheme of things, penderel isn't actually that important. It's nice to have, and I'm grateful to those who look after it, but I won't lose any sleep over failures. So it runs our web site and the mailing list. Big deal, it's not like we're making megabucks from online sales, so the odd bit of downtime doesn't matter. And when was the last time it was rooted? Recent failures have been hardware and the network, not ev1l skr1p7 k1dd13z. [d] What is the best thing that london.pm has done, and what will you do to try and make sure that it, or something similar happens again? YAPC::Europe arose from a conversation on this list, before being taken off and implemented by a smaller cabal, so does that count? But I don't think we need to do something similar again, let's do something new instead. London.pm is too large and too damned difficult to orgynise for london.pm to do such things. It has proven to be a good source of ideas for projects which are then implemented by individual members or by small groups - YAPC::E being just the most visible such. The best way of ensuring that we continue to talk about mad crazy schemes like that is to make sure we keep having lively, well-informed, and friendly discussions on-list and on irc. The role of a leader in that is to make sure things don't get too nasty when the inevitable disagreements show up. Thankfully, we're pretty much self- regulating so I don't think that'll require much effort. [e] How will you try and attract more new faces to london.pm, so that it doesn't just become the same old clique? It's a pity that there's so little active crossover between us and other geekly london groups. I'd like to try to fix that. One solution might be joint tech meets. * - insert mwuhahahahaha as appropriate -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david It doesn't matter to me if someone else's computer is faster because I know my system could smash theirs flat if it fell over on it. -- (with apologies to Brian Chase)
RE: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration
Title: RE: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration Hhhhm, I'm worried by statements like this :- How close is PostgreSQL to Oracle in terms of its SQL capabilities? It's done everything that I've expected it to. Triggers and SPs can be written in several languages with PostgreSQL. Including Perl, assuming you're entirely mad. Actually, it's not _that_ bad, but still not something I'd want to use in production. Is PostgreSQL ever going to be a database you'd bet the company on ? Mark ** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com **
Penderel (Was IQfC)
* David Cantrell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: In the grand scheme of things, penderel isn't actually that important. It's nice to have, and I'm grateful to those who look after it, but I won't lose any sleep over failures. So it runs our web site and the mailing list. Ok, splitting off partially from the leadership question thread. I think Penderel is one of london.pm's most underused assets. Its got a reasonable processor (AMD-K6/350), 1/2gig of memory and 25gig of free disk, which by my standards makes it a useful little machine. We probably can't use too much bandwidth on it, but is there not some other ways we can use it? It is probably just me, but I hate to see a computer not used to its full potential and penderel is sitting unloaded for much of the day. G. -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/ jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 10:20:17AM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: It is probably just me, but I hate to see a computer not used to its full potential and penderel is sitting unloaded for much of the day. You could do what I do with the unused CPU time on colon, and donate it to one Nicholas Clark and his bleadperl smoketests. (obviously you wouldn't necessarily want to do those, but something similar may be possible). -- Lusercop.net - LARTing Lusers everywhere since 2002
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
At 18/11/2002 10:20 [], Greg McCarroll wrote: I think Penderel is one of london.pm's most underused assets. Its got a reasonable processor (AMD-K6/350), 1/2gig of memory and 25gig of free disk, which by my standards makes it a useful little machine. We probably can't use too much bandwidth on it, but is there not some other ways we can use it? It is probably just me, but I hate to see a computer not used to its full potential and penderel is sitting unloaded for much of the day. It could sit and chug on SETI units... ;-) But I agree, there must be something the box could be doing... /joel -- S. Joel Bernstein :: joel at fysh dot org :: t: 020 8458 2323 Nobody is going to claim that Perl 6's OO is bolted on. Well, except maybe for certain Slashdotters who don't know the difference between rational discussion and cheerleading... -- Larry Wall
Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 09:28:49AM -, Mark Buckle wrote: Is PostgreSQL ever going to be a database you'd bet the company on ? I have. I won. I wouldn't use the Perl-embedded-statements in Postgres in a production server, because there's no equivalent of mod_perl, so you're stuck with interpretation overheads. But Postgres itself? No problem. Roger
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Greg McCarroll wrote:
It is probably just me, but I hate to see a computer not used to its
full potential and penderel is sitting unloaded for much of the day.
Personally, I think that this is the wrong way to look at this. I prefer
instead to think that we have the extra resources should we need it to do
anything. There's no law that say we have to consume all of our
resources. I'd prefer for someone to come up with an interesting project
and then that they had the resources to do it on penderel, rather than the
other way round, where someone goes out looking for things to simply
consume the resources.
Don't think that I'm saying that you shouldn't do something with
penderel (infact I think that if you can come up with a great project it
would be wonderful) but I'm just saying I think you're coming at it from a
point of a problem that I think doesn't exist. Extra capability is good.
If memory serves, in the past running distributed.net clients and their
ilk caused instability in the box (I believe at the time this was
attributed to heating issues.) Given that our website and mailing list
run on this box (which, as Dave Cantrell points out don't need to be up
all the time, but do require someone to get back up every time they fall
over) I'd rather see the sacrifice machine stability without providing
some tangible benefit.
Just my two pence worth.
Mark.
--
s'' Mark Fowler London.pm Bath.pm
http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
';use Term'Cap;$t=Tgetent Term'Cap{};print$t-Tputs(cl);for$w(split/ +/
){for(0..30){$|=print$t-Tgoto(cm,$_,$y). $w;select$k,$k,$k,.03}$y+=2}
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 10:20:17AM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: I think Penderel is one of london.pm's most underused assets. Its got a reasonable processor (AMD-K6/350), 1/2gig of memory and 25gig of One of the more recent possible, and certainly very real older reasons it is/was unused is that its hardware was tolerant of heavy use. A mailing list and website might not be a big deal but oh boy do people make a noise when they disappear. A useful duty penderel does is providing shell accounts for travelling mongers and I've tried to be quick helpful setting these up with a punt to Alex to collect some kind of donation to the hardware. It is probably just me, but I hate to see a computer not used to its full potential and penderel is sitting unloaded for much of the day. I'll install a distributed.net client immediately! :-) At the end of the day, the box has been around for ages, people know it's there, and they can email root for an account if they want it. I wouldn't personally lament that its disk or CPU wait states aren't begging for mercy 24x7. I'm curious why Alex asked the question and what kind of answer he'd like to see, or what thoughts he has on it... Paul -- Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/ If you exploded into a thousand tiny pieces, then don't bend over in the Monastery. -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
RE: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration
Title: RE: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration Good, is there any real commercial benefit to an individual acquiring a good knowledge of PostgreSQL rather than Oracle SQLServer ? I'm just looking at my next private own-time project ? Cheers, Mark. -Original Message- From: Roger Burton West [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 18 November 2002 10:27 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 09:28:49AM -, Mark Buckle wrote: Is PostgreSQL ever going to be a database you'd bet the company on ? I have. I won. I wouldn't use the Perl-embedded-statements in Postgres in a production server, because there's no equivalent of mod_perl, so you're stuck with interpretation overheads. But Postgres itself? No problem. Roger ** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com **
[ANNOUNCE] Voting open; tech meet reminder
Firstly, a reminder that there is a technical meeting this Thursday, 21st November, at Profero, Liverpool Road, Islington. The meeting starts at 7pm with the venue open from 6.30pm. Mark Fowler posted fuller details a week or so ago: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm-announce/2002-November/26.html Now we have all four manifestos from candidates, voting is open for the London.pm leadership election. Voting closes at 21:00 GMT on Wednesday, December 4th. Voters are reminded that votes cast before now are NOT valid. Please resubmit your vote in order for it to count! Full rules are here: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm-announce/2002-November/27.html Manifestos are here: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm-announce/2002-November/28.html http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-2002/015011.html http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm-announce/2002-November/29.html http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm-announce/2002-November/30.html To vote, please mark your choices with '1', '2' and '3' in the following form, and send it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Form Starts David Cantrell[ ] Richard Clamp [ ] Mark Fowler [ ] Re-Open Nominations [ ] Form Ends -- -- :: paul :: we're like crystal
Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 11:39:45AM -, Mark Buckle wrote: Good, is there any real commercial benefit to an individual acquiring a good knowledge of PostgreSQL rather than Oracle SQLServer ? PostgreSQL doesn't go out of its way to make things difficult for the programmer. Therefore there isn't as much of a price premium on PostgreSQL as there is on Oracle; more people can do it. Roger
Re: irrelevant questions for candidates
On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, David Cantrell wrote: In the grand scheme of things, penderel isn't actually that important. As my only way of communicating with London.pm as a entity, I'd rather disagree with that. Maybe people who use irc lots, and the list very little, disagree. If penedrel goes down for a week, and that week coincides with the venue for a meet being announced, and the meet happening, its importance might be reconsidered. It's a pity that there's so little active crossover between us and other geekly london groups. I'd like to try to fix that. One solution might be joint tech meets. I suspect it's the 'programmers' core that doesn't have much overlap. Plenty of systems and network folk use perl, and co-mingle (though it's not helped by every group on the planet choosing to meet on thursdays). I've found that quite a few programmers can live their life just programming, whereas systems and network bods tend to have at least a vague idea about all 3 disciplines. Without a language-neutral group in london (that I'm aware of) I can see how there might not be a forum for them to socialise with related geeks. When I was new to the list, I quickly found people I know from work-related socialising, sysadmin-related groupings, and college/uni things, all of whom I see other places. I've yet to see the appeal of the OS advocacy, and have been put off the likes of GLLUG, the BSD groups, and similar by my limited experience with them. But if it was suggested that various groups who meet regularly clubbed together to fill a bigger venue, then I'd be in favour of that. I think it's the social aspect that helps glue people together - much as I value the tech meets, I think without the socials and the list, where you learn more about people that their perl skills, you don't get the sense of community. the hatter
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
* Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 10:20:17AM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: I think Penderel is one of london.pm's most underused assets. Its got a reasonable processor (AMD-K6/350), 1/2gig of memory and 25gig of One of the more recent possible, and certainly very real older reasons it is/was unused is that its hardware was tolerant of heavy use. A mailing list and website might not be a big deal but oh boy do people make a noise when they disappear. Well if we do not want to put more load on the box, should we be appealing for hardware cash in exchange for accounts. Why not get t-shirt cash in exchange for accounts. Hell, you could even do a deal where you get a free account if you buy 5 shirts and sign the AUP (which we should have). Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/ jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 01:51:44PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 10:20:17AM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: I think Penderel is one of london.pm's most underused assets. Its got a reasonable processor (AMD-K6/350), 1/2gig of memory and 25gig of One of the more recent possible, and certainly very real older reasons it is/was unused is that its hardware was tolerant of heavy use. A mailing list and website might not be a big deal but oh boy do people make a noise when they disappear. Well if we do not want to put more load on the box, should we be I think the issue is simply that there isn't a demand for it. Hardly surprising considering that most people probably have their own computers and network connections. appealing for hardware cash in exchange for accounts. Why not get t-shirt cash in exchange for accounts. Hell, you could even do a deal This is already in effect in fact. You can dig thru' the archives if you like, or persuade Alex to re-post it :-) Heck it may be on the site even. I'd do all this myself if I could persuade galeon to stay up for more than about three nanoseconds *grumble* where you get a free account if you buy 5 shirts and sign the AUP (which we should have). Don't be bad, thanks. If you don't know what bad probably means you probably shouldn't have an account. Paul -- Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/ What is the color yellow? Tappa, tappa, tappa! -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
Penderel is stable now, since putting in bits donated kindly by (oops, can't remember, sorry, kind person). There's a pending hardware upgrade too, which I paid for in advance of receiving suggested 20 quid donation for some extra accounts (5 quid for the unwaged/otherwise poor). I'll drop in the new motherboard and chip Real Soon Now. An AMD 1700+ I believe. I bought it a long time ago but the motherboard was faulty. I have long since returned to the tcr computer fayre, and replaced it for a working one. It's just not inside the computer... I offer a vague feeling that I won't get all my money back, in return for not having to document the process. If someone else wants to manage it more professionally they should feel free. There are some limits on bandwidth but the deal was that we (state51) give you (london.pm) some bandwidth and you do some interesting community things with it. The reason for my question is that I think it could be used more but don't have many good ideas myself. An installation of subversion would be a very good thing, which was mentioned on IRC earlier. alex
DiverseBooks books received for review
Posting in my guise as DiverseBooks.com editor. I have receivd a couple of books aimed at Red Hat Linux users. One is the Red Hat Linux 8 for Dummies and the other is the official Red Hat Users Guide from Redhat Press itself. DiverseBooks Reviewers give me a shout. I still have a book on Blogging (who was I sending that too?), Java Security Solutions, PHP4 Databases, Sybex book about Cocoon. I hope to make it to the perl technical meeting. Alex McLintock Openweb Analysts Ltd, London. Software For Complex Websites http://www.OWAL.co.uk/ Open Source Software Companies please register here http://www.OWAL.co.uk/oss_support/
Re: Penderel (Was IQfC)
* alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: An installation of subversion would be a very good thing, which was mentioned on IRC earlier. Well I'd like to see someone take ownership of this task, which may provide the foundation of a project i'd like to see happen. The project is stolen almost entirely from gnat and its the idea of mentoring within the Perl community. Basically I'd like to see people in London.pm who are or feel they are less experienced with Perl get teamed up with people who have more experience to work on small open source works. I'd like this to happen on a 1 to 1 basis and I'd like it to use subversion on Penderel as the repository as opposed to yet another doomed SF project. Thoughts? G. -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/ jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 09:28:49AM -, Mark Buckle wrote: Hhhhm, I'm worried by statements like this :- How close is PostgreSQL to Oracle in terms of its SQL capabilities? It's done everything that I've expected it to. Triggers and SPs can be written in several languages with PostgreSQL. Including Perl, assuming you're entirely mad. Actually, it's not _that_ bad, but still not something I'd want to use in production. Is PostgreSQL ever going to be a database you'd bet the company on ? Mark Actually, it worked better for us than the commercial database previously used (Informix), when I worked for Pracom. At Netcraft Australia, Postgresql *is* the database they bet the company on, as you put -- and Postgresql and Netcraft Australia won, bigtime. I wouldn't use anything else these days - I have heard that Oracle is better in some undefineable way when used with very large datasets or in some circumstances, but I'm yet to encounter any of these situations while working for nationwide companies. I'd be very interested to hear if anyone has actually had real life situations where Postgresql just 'wasn't good enough'. -- and where the Postgresql DB was implemented well. TJC
perl gtk2 bindings?
Hi, I wonder if anyone knows the state of perl bindings for gtk-2? ta, tjc
