[OT] List reply-to (was [OT] Magazines)

[Roger Burton West]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 11:49:02PM -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>Yeah, doesn't it suck when a list sets a reply-to?
>... http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
>Please fix this.

That argument has been done. However, there is a middle way which
doesn't generally get proposed: the list sets a Reply-To: if and only if
there is no Reply-To: already present in the mail. That way, most
messages are automatically reply-to-list, but anyone who wants private
follow-ups can set them; it's the equivalent of being able to set
Followup-To: poster.

Of course, some people have broken email software which puts Reply-To:
in all their messages, but that's their problem.

Roger

Re: [OT] List reply-to (was [OT] Magazines)

[alex]

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 09:09, Roger Burton West wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 11:49:02PM -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> >Yeah, doesn't it suck when a list sets a reply-to?
> >... http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
> >Please fix this.
> 
> That argument has been done. However, there is a middle way which
> doesn't generally get proposed: the list sets a Reply-To: if and only if
> there is no Reply-To: already present in the mail. That way, most
> messages are automatically reply-to-list, but anyone who wants private
> follow-ups can set them; it's the equivalent of being able to set
> Followup-To: poster.

I think the latest versions of mailman do this.

Also they fix Paul Makepeace's bugbear of not mailing those who are
already CC'd.

Mailman has some excellent, progressive features now.  Of course both
these features can be switched on or off per list.

What it still doesn't do is to make reply-to munging a per-user option,
that would be nice.

alex
-- 
alex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
state51

Re: [OT] Magazines

[Dave Cross]

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Randal L. Schwartz)
Date: 3/14/03 7:49:02 AM

> "Greg" == Greg McCarroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> Greg> (sorry folks that should have been a private email)
>
> Yeah, doesn't it suck when a list sets a reply-to?
>
>  http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
>
> Please fix this.

Please don't lets go thru this flamewar again. Yes, mailing lists
that set the "reply-to" header are bad and wrong. But it's the
behaviour that most people seem to expect these days, so I think
that we confuse less people by doing it the wrong way.

Sucks, I know, but then that's what you get for living in a world
where 95% of the inhabitants are stupid.

Dave...

-- 


"Let me see you make decisions, without your television"
   - Depeche Mode (Stripped)

Re: [OT] List reply-to (was [OT] Magazines)

[Mark Fowler]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, alex wrote:

> What it still doesn't do is to make reply-to munging a per-user option,
> that would be nice.

I have great hope in the siesta project being completed and allowing us
all such wonderfully user configuration options.  Until this point the
subject is officially closed, and people can take it up with me offlist if
they feel a need to do so.

Mark.

(Putting his foot down for once)

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Simon Wistow]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 06:38:48PM +, Alex McLintock said:
> It seems like you can now access Amazon.co.uk with a webservices interface 
> similar to amazon.com
> 
> I will probably be investigating this next week. If anyone wants to work 
> with me on this, or just wants to find out how to do it after I investigate 
> then give me a shout.


I've been thinking of providing a web services version of
WWW::Amazon::Wishlist which would return Amazon::Item objewcts (with
lazy details [0]) which could be inserted into a wishlist or added to a
shopping basket or somesuch.

Simon

[0] When you retrieve an item from a wishlist not all details are filled
in (image, reviews etc etc) so I'd use the trick of having the missing
elements be all references to a sub that goes and fills in the missing
details and then replaces the routines with proper get_$foo routines.

Re: [OT] Magazines

[Kris Boulez]

Quoting Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> 
> Sucks, I know, but then that's what you get for living in a world
> where 95% of the inhabitants are stupid.
> 

I have the impression it's more like 99% these days :(

Kris,

Re: Undergraduate Decay (was Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6)

[Aaron Trevena]

On 13 Mar 2003, Ian Brayshaw wrote:

> I do, however, agree with you Mr Shevek (despite my comments above).
> I've seen too many "point'n'click" graduates who couldn't write
> structured code to save their lives, and (more depressingly) can't see
> why you'd want to ("What do you mean 'you write your code by
> hand'?!?!"). I guess it's our (i.e. those who know about such things) to
> help them out and show them basic principles. It's in our interest to
> protect and develop our profession/passion/hobby/whatever. It's also in
> our interest to start demanding (through work place requirements)
> certain skills from our graduates. The universities/institutions usually
> catch on.

Nah, the universities follow the money - which is M$ certification :
Plymouth university offers *ONLY* Microsoft certification to under/post
grad students despite approaches from Cisco and complaints from students.
Plymouth CSN degree was one of Cisco's first choices for recruiting new
graduates for network stuff and provided several industry placements,
despite this the uni dropped the ball and so you had to travel 60 miles
east or west to local colleges which DID provide cisco or novell
training.

University Chancellors and even heads of computing schools in universities
are often very far removed from the industry and follow a mix of 30 year
old technology that huge dinosaur corporations expect everybody to know
but are obselete (like x.500, kermit, etc) or
obselete-before-it-hits-the-shelves vapourware from microsoft.

At least 75% of what I learnt at uni and still use wasn't in the syllabus
but was learnt from the computing society and the open source community.

Oddly, even in 3 year space between starting college and starting
university a lot of Computing principles had been dropped for drag-n-drop
rubbish.

I mean in college I used UNIX and SQL, but in the first year at university
we used rubbish like Access (later we obviously used Oracle and decent
databases). Even now I hear of undergrads at my old uni doing projects
with access on iis, etc - that isn't learning about web development that
is memorising a series of points and clicks and copying and pasting from
4guysfromrolla.

regards,

A.

-- 
Aaron J Trevena - Perl Hacker, Kung Fu Geek, Internet Consultant
AutoDia --- Automatic UML and HTML Specifications from Perl, C++
and Any Datasource with a Handler. http://droogs.org/autodia

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Mark Fowler]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Simon Wistow wrote:

> When you retrieve an item from a wishlist not all details are filled
> in (image, reviews etc etc) so I'd use the trick of having the missing
> elements be all references to a sub that goes and fills in the missing
> details and then replaces the routines with proper get_$foo routines.

You'd be better off reblessing the object into another class, one that has
accessor subroutines instead of "go fill in details" subroutines.  Or even
better, using Object::Realize::Later.

  http://www.perladvent.org/2002/12th/

Mark.

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};

Re: [OT] Magazines

[Dave Cross]

From: Kris Boulez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 3/14/03 9:47:16 AM

> Quoting Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
>> 
>> 
>> Sucks, I know, but then that's what you get for living in
a
>> world where 95% of the inhabitants are stupid.
>
> I have the impression it's more like 99% these days :(

You may have a point, but I am feeling unusually optimistic this
morning so I currently only hate 95% of the world.

Dave...

-- 


"Let me see you make decisions, without your television"
   - Depeche Mode (Stripped)

Re: Learning regular expressions

[Mark Fowler]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Adam C Auden wrote:

> Not sure you can give a complete answer to this one, however I for one
> find regular expressions tricky due to the lack of decent docs available
> for them - particularly lack of examples to work from.

The "perlre" the traditional documentation came with Perl isn't really a
beginers guide or a tutorial.  For that you need to see the "perlrequick"
guide that ships with perl 5.8.0.

  http://search.cpan.org/author/JHI/perl-5.8.0/pod/perlrequick.pod

Then you need to go onto the full blown tutorial that is "perlretut"

  http://search.cpan.org/author/JHI/perl-5.8.0/pod/perlretut.pod

All praise Mark Kvale for his hard work here.

Mark.

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};

Obsolete software

[Dominic Mitchell]

Aaron Trevena wrote:
University Chancellors and even heads of computing schools in universities
are often very far removed from the industry and follow a mix of 30 year
old technology that huge dinosaur corporations expect everybody to know
but are obselete (like x.500, kermit, etc) or
obselete-before-it-hits-the-shelves vapourware from microsoft.
Ummm, kermit is still actively maintained.  It's certainly not obsolete



I mean in college I used UNIX and SQL, but in the first year at university
we used rubbish like Access (later we obviously used Oracle and decent
databases).
Oracle?  Decent Database?  That's a whole other thread.  ;-)

-Dom

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Simon Wistow]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 09:50:12AM +, Mark Fowler said:
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Simon Wistow wrote:
> 
> > When you retrieve an item from a wishlist not all details are filled
> > in (image, reviews etc etc) so I'd use the trick of having the missing
> > elements be all references to a sub that goes and fills in the missing
> > details and then replaces the routines with proper get_$foo routines.
> 
> You'd be better off reblessing the object into another class, one that has
> accessor subroutines instead of "go fill in details" subroutines.  Or even
> better, using Object::Realize::Later.
> 
>   http://www.perladvent.org/2002/12th/

That was the basic plan. I am nothing if not lazy. And a drunkard. A
lazy drunkard. With chronic kleptomania. So a lazy, drunken thief. And a
liar. So a good looking, pulitizer prize winning novelist.

.


I need more sleep.

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Paul Mison]

On 13/03/2003 at 18:38 +, Alex McLintock wrote:
It seems like you can now access Amazon.co.uk with a webservices
interface similar to amazon.com
It's exactly the same interface. If you have code that accesses 
amazon.com, all you need to do to access amazon.co.uk instead is pass 
in locale=uk as an appended parameter.

(Actually, Andy McFarland, who looked at this on Wednesday when I 
heard about this change, reports that at the moment it appears to be 
merely looking to see if locale is set. This makes sense, as uk is 
the only supported one, but I expect this will change if and when 
other non-US sites get web services support.)

I hope Andy can be persuaded to put a snippet of sample code here.

--
:: paul
:: we're like crystal

Re: Learning regular expressions

[Work]

> >   I think that Regexps are hard to learn because the most part of the
folks
> > that aren't too much scared to learn it just lack the essential and
> > unavoidable compiler theory where regexp lays its foundations. IMHO, its
> > simply impossible learn good quality regexp use unless you have good
regular
> > grammars theory before.
>
> No, that's WRONG. Again, I can only give myself as an example, but, I
> had no compiler theory or regular grammars theory. Regular expressions
> MAKE SENSE - in (again) my humble experience, it tends to be people who
> started with C or somesuch language who have the most difficulty with
> them. Go figure.

I agree that regexps seem to 'click' quite rapidly with some people, and
simply remain opaque for a long time with other people. I'm not sure why
this is. The owl book is excellent, but it also tends to make people think
"These regexps are really powerful, but really complex - I'll live without
them".

I currently spend a lot of time trying to get Java programmers to use more
regexps. They all love the power and ability they have, but find them hard
to debug and so tend not to use them, or get frustrated easily. Java's poor
implementation* doesn't help.

However, I disagree that you need to understand the magic bahind regexps to
use them. The main strengths of regexps, esp. in their Perl implementation
is easy of use:

if($userinput eq 'y') ## yucky
{
...
}

if($userinput =~ /^\s*y|(ok)/i) # nice
{
...
}

Later, the expert user can start to learn more about how the engine works,
in order to craft more complex regexps.

*Using the various add on libraries for Java 1.2, which are either feature
poor (apache) or just really annoying in a stupid java-y way(gnu).

User-mode Linux (was: Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6)

[Peter Sergeant]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 12:03:24AM +, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> What, you're running on physical hardware? D'oh :-)
> 
> I'm quite rapidly becoming a fan of User Mode Linux especially now that
> the Separate Kernel Address Space patch is out.
> 
> Toys:
>   http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/uses.html
>   http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/skas.html
>   http://uml.openconsultancy.com/paper.php
> 
> Apart from some of the wacky network bridging business it's much simpler
> than I'd irrationally feared.

I'm afraid I'm going to use this opportunity to re-pimp Bytemark
hosting, who offer user-mode Linux machines hosted remotely, for £15 a
month, as I'm a very happy customer indeed - perfect for backup mail
servers and DNS...

http://www.bytemark-hosting.co.uk/hosting/vms.php

+Pete

-- 
Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
 -- Samuel Johnson

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Andy McFarland]

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 10:35, Paul Mison wrote:
> On 13/03/2003 at 18:38 +, Alex McLintock wrote:
> >It seems like you can now access Amazon.co.uk with a webservices
> >interface similar to amazon.com
> 
> It's exactly the same interface. If you have code that accesses 
> amazon.com, all you need to do to access amazon.co.uk instead is pass 
> in locale=uk as an appended parameter.

that'll work for music "mode", for the other search "modes" (like
"software") there's a uk specific one (like "software-uk"). All in the
very nice developer kit.

> I hope Andy can be persuaded to put a snippet of sample code here.

http://soapenv.org/cookbook/02/07/18/1926233.shtml

With soap tracing on and the "heavy" xml back from amazon you can see
the wealth of info returned. Packshots, Customer reviews, Release dates
and track listings for cd's, etc, etc.

There's restrictions on what you can do with the data though. No caching
it for more than 24 hours and no putting it on a website without a link
to amazon. Fair enough really.

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Tim Sweetman]

Andy McFarland wrote:
> 
> http://soapenv.org/cookbook/02/07/18/1926233.shtml
> 
> With soap tracing on and the "heavy" xml back from amazon you can see
> the wealth of info returned. Packshots, Customer reviews, Release dates
> and track listings for cd's, etc, etc.

No "strict", no "-w", ... *tsk*

ti'

looking for a place to rent a server

[Christof Damian]

hi,
I thought you guys probably have an opinion/ideas on this. 

I want to rent a redhat server, with raid disks, full root access and
some kind of managed backup. 

Ok, that was the easy bit, but I also want to configure and pay the
whole thing online with credit card. The company shouldn't have too
many points with fuckedcompany and I would prefer it to be in the UK
too.

so far I only found rackspace.co.uk, but I am sure there have to be
more around. hosteurope.com looked really good too, but they are all
german and want a german bank account.

thanks for any help,
christof
-- 
Christof Damian 
Technischer Direktor, guideguide ltd.   

Re: Perl6 vs Ocaml (was Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6)

[Marty Pauley]

On Tue Mar 11 15:45:12 2003, Nick Woolley wrote:
> So, judging by this reccomendation and others I've seen, if I were going to 
> learn a new language, it might be Ocaml.

I arrived at the same conclusion a while ago.

> Can anyone compare and contrast Perl6 and Ocaml?

I'm not able to do so in detail as I'm still an Ocaml newbie, but I have
noticed some apparent philosophical similarities.  The Ocaml designers,
like the Perl designers, seem to have a good pragmatic approach.  For
example, they've included imperitive features in an otherwise pure
functional language, so you don't have to learn what a monad is to print
"Hello World".

-- 
Marty

Re: looking for a place to rent a server

[Earle Martin]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 11:38:11AM +, Christof Damian wrote:
> so far I only found rackspace.co.uk, but I am sure there have to be
> more around. hosteurope.com looked really good too, but they are all
> german and want a german bank account.

Host Europe are clueless. I had some really bad experiences with them (think
along the lines of tech support restarting a machine by power-cycling it).
Avoid them at all costs.



-- 
$x='4a75737420616e6f74686572205065726c'#Earle Martin
.'206861636b65720d0a';for(0..26){print #http://downlode.org/
chr(hex(substr($x,$y,2)));$y=$y+2;}#   http://grault.net/grubstreet/

Re: looking for a place to rent a server

[the hatter]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Christof Damian wrote:

> hosteurope.com looked really good too, but they are all
> german and want a german bank account.

No we're not, and we don't.  Try .com rather than .de


the hatter

Re: [OT] Magazines

[Lusercop]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 01:33:40AM -0800, Dave Cross wrote:
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Randal L. Schwartz)
> > "Greg" == Greg McCarroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Greg> (sorry folks that should have been a private email)
> > Yeah, doesn't it suck when a list sets a reply-to?

Just like it sucks when people use supershite.

> >  http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
> > Please fix this.

Please stop using supershite. Same thing, really. I mean, I can't see
why anyone would want to get at least 2 copies of any reply to a message
they post to a mailing list, but maybe that's just me. Very few posters
on non reply-to munged lists seem to be able to trim their replylists.

> Please don't lets go thru this flamewar again. Yes, mailing lists
> that set the "reply-to" header are bad and wrong. But it's the
> behaviour that most people seem to expect these days, so I think
> that we confuse less people by doing it the wrong way.

I don't think that's the reason. And of course, there is also the
standard corollary to Randal's URL which is what you get if you google
for "Reply-To considered useful". If you don't like it, randal, you can
always unsubscribe.

> Sucks, I know, but then that's what you get for living in a world
> where 95% of the inhabitants are stupid.

No. See Rule 1. 100% of the inhabitants are stupid.

-- 
Lusercop.net - LARTing Lusers everywhere since 2002

Re: Obsolete software

[Simon Dick]

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 10:02, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> Aaron Trevena wrote:
> > I mean in college I used UNIX and SQL, but in the first year at university
> > we used rubbish like Access (later we obviously used Oracle and decent
> > databases).
> 
> Oracle?  Decent Database?  That's a whole other thread.  ;-)

Compared to Ingress which almost put me off databases for life when in
uni? :)

-- 
Simon Dick  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [OT] Magazines

[Mark Fowler]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Lusercop wrote:

> Stuff.

This subject is closed.  These _subjects_ are closed.

If you have any comments to make regarding the policy of the list with
regard to Reply-To munging, people using quoting tactics, various email
behaviours, etc, please take it up with the list admins off list.  I
repeat OFF LIST.

The list admins can be reached at:

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

That is all.

Mark.

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};

Re: [OT] Magazines

[Dave Hodgkinson]

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 13:26, Mark Fowler wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Lusercop wrote:
> 
> > Stuff.
> 
> This subject is closed.  These _subjects_ are closed.

And who appointed you list Nazi?

Oh, we did.

Never mind.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

[OT] One trick pony

[alex]

Hi guys, um, not sure if any of you even care but i've just finished
these:


print"\ec";@a=qw{aaA cAaAa ea hd ib jaC laAb nAa oC raAa sc tA ubA yAaB}
;for(split//,"5cabf078b329fb21374106fd0388"){($f=$a[hex$_]||$"x5)=~s#.#
$r.=$&;($_=$'.$"x3)=~s*\w*($& ne uc$&?". ":"___ ")x(-64+ord uc$&)*eg#e ;
select$q,$q,$q,(print"\e[H$_$/$r$/")/10for split//}

$_="a06c42e12h84i24j28l0cn05oc0r88s81t60u50y48";[EMAIL PROTECTED],$&#eg;for(
split//,"5cabf078b329fb21374106fd0388f"){$_=$a[hex$_]||$"."0"x8;s#.#$r.=
$&;""#e;print"\ec";@b=qw{_ \ | / _ / | \ };$c=0;$_=unpack B8,pack v,hex;
s#.#printf"%s%s",($&?$b[$c]:$"),$c++==4?$/.$":""#eg;sleep print"$/$r$/"}

sorry for coporate pimping in them, but hey.

enjoy.
a

-- 
for(split/%/,'0aFn%2fLMdi%2eQ`%3aK%6e/:]%6c>[f%6f0CDTWb%6b^%6a)%6dc%20-'
.'5?%21E%61.=A\e%638

Re: Learning regular expressions

[Jasper McCrea]

Work wrote:
> 
> if($userinput =~ /^\s*y|(ok)/i) # nice
> {
> ...
> }
 
Going some way to prove that regexps are complicated (for me, anyway), this does
not do what I thought it would.

/foo|bar/ matches foo or bar, obviously.

/foo|(bar)/ (as in the yes/ok case above) matches totally different stuff.

Although I've only been using regexps for 4+ years, and don't remember seeing
this behaviour before. If I have seen it, I must have spurned it, thinking "I
must use parentheses better than that".

Jasper
-- 
We got Deathstar (Deathstar),
We got Deathstar (Deathstar),
We got Deathstar (Deathstar),
And you know that we got it.

Re: Learning regular expressions

[Jasper McCrea]

Jasper McCrea wrote:
> 
> Work wrote:
> >
> > if($userinput =~ /^\s*y|(ok)/i) # nice
> > {
> > ...
> > }
> 
> Going some way to prove that regexps are complicated (for me, anyway), this does
> not do what I thought it would.
> 
> /foo|bar/ matches foo or bar, obviously.
> 
> /foo|(bar)/ (as in the yes/ok case above) matches totally different stuff.
> 

Never mind, I was confused, as usual. I didn't think it could possibly be
working as (I thought it was) intended.

But it sort of proves the point, anyway, in that Mr Peterson wrote his regexp
wrong.

If he didn't mean

/^\s*(y|ok)/i

I apologise.

Jasper
-- 
$"='';{split//,"ajpsa onhtrep re lahkcre"}foreach(0..$#_){
unless($_%2){$_[$_]^=$_[++$_]^=$_[--$_]^=$_[++$_]}}print"@_\n"

Re: Learning regular expressions

[Luis Campos de Carvalho]

- Original Message -
From: "Work" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 8:02 AM


> > > [...] its foundations. IMHO, its simply impossible
> > > learn good quality regexp use unless you have
> > > good regular grammars theory before.
> >
> > No, that's WRONG. Again, I can only give myself
> > [...] Regular expressions MAKE SENSE - in (again)
> > my humble experience, it tends to be people who
> > started with C [...]
>
> I agree that regexps seem to 'click' quite rapidly with
> some people, and simply remain opaque for a long time
> with other people. I'm not sure why this is. The owl
> book is excellent, but it also tends to make people think
> "These regexps are really powerful, but really complex -
> I'll live without them".

  Well, you're right: I have seen folks that just can't use regexp because
they don't have clicked yet... pretty sad, I think.

> I currently spend a lot of time trying to get Java
> programmers to use more regexps. They all love the
> power and ability they have, but find them hard
> to debug and so tend not to use them, or get
> frustrated easily. Java's poor implementation* doesn't help.

  Maybe the frustration can be avoided with a little quick'n'dirty compiler
theory. This will make regexps easyer to debug, too, because you will start
to understand the internals. Try the Aho, Sethi & Ullman's "Dragon Book"
("Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools"), chapters one, two and
three.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201100886/qid=1047649342/sr=1-1/re
f=sr_1_3_1/026-0411912-1523638

> However, I disagree that you need to understand
> the magic bahind regexps to use them. The main
> strengths of regexps, esp. in their Perl implementation
> is easy of use[...]

  Ok, ok. =-] You're right.
  "What you don't know don't hurts you"

> Later, the expert user can start to learn more
> about how the engine works, in order to craft
> more complex regexps.

  This is essential to use the full power of regular expression.
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Luis Campos de Carvalho
  Computer Science Student
  OCP DBA Oracle & Unix Sys Admin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Re: Obsolete software

[Frank Booth]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 01:31:29PM +, Simon wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 10:02, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> > Aaron Trevena wrote:
> > > I mean in college I used UNIX and SQL, but in the first year at university
> > > we used rubbish like Access (later we obviously used Oracle and decent
> > > databases).
> > 
> > Oracle?  Decent Database?  That's a whole other thread.  ;-)
> 
> Compared to Ingress which almost put me off databases for life when in
> uni? :)

Which has a far more powerful optimizer than Oracle or Sybase and is the
origins of Postgres, which can use Perl for it's stored procedures IIRC.

An Oracle query will perform with varying degrees of efficiency,
recognising useful indexes etc, based entirely on the sequence of the
query, not good. Ingres queries can be phrased in numerous ways and the
parse still finds the best way.

In Sybase you need to generate temporary tables for complicated queries
and recompile all the stored procedures when you rebuild tables.

They all have their quirks, but at Uni, you're not supposed to pick up
much more than the concept of Relational Database, some SQL and DML and
enough Normalisation to make a fool of yourself as you critique a
database that's demormalised.


--
Frank

Re: Amazon.co.uk

[Alex McLintock]

On 13/03/2003 at 18:38 +, Alex McLintock wrote:
It seems like you can now access Amazon.co.uk with a webservices
interface similar to amazon.com
Someone replied:
It's exactly the same interface. If you have code that accesses 
amazon.com, all you need to do to access amazon.co.uk instead is pass in 
locale=uk as an appended parameter.
Ok folks, that is cool. Then I can implement this very very quickly - 
except that it will look rather strange on my site

Does anyone have a data store which can easily cache the results of these 
queries? I don't and I really ought to.

Alex

Available for java/perl/C++/web development in London, UK or nearby.
Apache FOP, Cocoon, Turbine, Struts,XSL:FO, XML, Tomcat, JSP
http://www.OWAL.co.uk/

Re: Perl6 vs Ocaml (was Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6)

[Nick Woolley]

On Tuesday 11 Mar 2003 5:37 pm, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> however I can say that ML[1] is very rewarding until you try and
> do anything involving interactive user input in it, then there is a
> hurdle which you must cross and after that follows blind devotion and
> madness.

Apparently OCaml has GTK and MySQL bindings, would that ameliorate this 
barrier?  Could it be used as a CGI language perhaps?

One of the problems I've had with perl (don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of 
perl), and a problem which especially used to waste a lot of my time when I 
started, was that it sometimes Just Doesn't Work and because it just Doesn't 
Do What You Mean and you can't see why until you trace it down to not quite 
understanding the subtleties of something such as dereferencing a reference 
in a hash of hashes, or passing a sub the wrong number or type of arguments 
(a problem which still crops up frequently).

I suspect a lot of these issue would be cleared up by more pedantic 
typechecking in certain cases, and maybe perl 6 new features will help to 
address them.  (Oh god oh god how I hate languages like javascript and other 
ECMAscripts which are so fragile with respect to variable name changes as to 
be barely maintainable.)  

Anyway, being free and easy with autovivification and its friends has its 
places, but one of the potential appeals of OCaml is its stated strong typing 
which (advocates claim) reduces the number of silly hidden bugs in your code 
to almost nil.  I wonder if there is any truth to this?

Nick
__
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Re: Perl6 vs Ocaml (was Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6)

[Greg McCarroll]

* Nick Woolley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 Mar 2003 5:37 pm, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> > however I can say that ML[1] is very rewarding until you try and
> > do anything involving interactive user input in it, then there is a
> > hurdle which you must cross and after that follows blind devotion and
> > madness.
> 
> Apparently OCaml has GTK and MySQL bindings, would that ameliorate this 
> barrier?  Could it be used as a CGI language perhaps?
> 

i used ML and motif once to create a multiuser diary and thats what i
was thinking of at the time i wrote the above, just having the
bindings would not make the mind trip you need to do
easier. functional languages are really cool for maths etc, but it
takes another leap of faith to move to interactive stuff, i'm not
saying interactive programming is bad in them i'm just saying it takes
a little bit of a head shift to feel happy doing it, at least for me.

Greg

-- 
*** ***
***   Email address has changed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Please   ***
***   update your email address book.   ***
*** ***
Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/
   jabber://[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Obsolete software

[hipps]

Pulled from Frank Booth's mail (Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 02:44:07PM +):
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 01:31:29PM +, Simon wrote:
> > On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 10:02, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> > > Aaron Trevena wrote:
> > > > I mean in college I used UNIX and SQL, but in the first year at university
> > > > we used rubbish like Access (later we obviously used Oracle and decent
> > > > databases).
> > > 
> > > Oracle?  Decent Database?  That's a whole other thread.  ;-)
> > 
> > Compared to Ingress which almost put me off databases for life when in
> > uni? :)
> 
> Which has a far more powerful optimizer than Oracle or Sybase and is the
> origins of Postgres, which can use Perl for it's stored procedures IIRC.
> 
> An Oracle query will perform with varying degrees of efficiency,
> recognising useful indexes etc, based entirely on the sequence of the
> query, not good. 

This has not necessarily been the case since the cost-based optimizer was
introduced with Oracle7; this bases its execution plan on (previously
derived) analyses of the structures involved.
-- 
Alex Hooper

Re: looking for a place to rent a server

[Chris Bannister]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 11:38:11AM +, Christof Damian wrote:

> so far I only found rackspace.co.uk, but I am sure there have to be
> more around. hosteurope.com looked really good too, but they are all
> german and want a german bank account.

Try www.dedicated-servers.co.uk it's Host Europe' UK hopsting/colo site.

However, if you do go with them ensure that your stuff ISN'T in the
London hosting centre, we have half a rack there and we've had
numerous connectivty problems, and some fairly major electrical suppy
problems.  Have friends who have kit in there Nottingham centre and
they haven't had any such problems.

Several people speak well of http://www.legend.net.uk/, but never used
them myself.

-- 
Chris Bannister
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: looking for a place to rent a server

[Simon Batistoni]

On 14/03/03 16:55 +, Chris Bannister wrote:
> Try www.dedicated-servers.co.uk it's Host Europe' UK hopsting/colo site.

Having used them in the past, and known various others who have, I'd
trust Host Europe less far than I could throw both their hosting
centres combined.

I had no end of problems with unsecured machines going nuts within
their hosting centres, unavailable support staff, dead switches that
caused problems for weeks on end...

...it was a nightmare.

I had kit in the Nottingham hosting centre. It may be better than
their London one, but even if you get no problems, it's stuck on a
backwater branchline of the UK's net infrastructure, and accessing
boxen there from outside the UK is slw.

My personal co-lo (shared with some other london.pmers) is run by UK
Solutions in Birmingham (http://www.uksolutions.net/). We did have
some problems with connectivity a few months ago which were down to
their peering arrangement with Clueless & Witless, but now they've
been cut out of the loop, all is sweetness and light.

Nildram (http://www.nildram.co.uk/) impart a fair amount of clue to
anything they touch.

And Mailbox (http://www.mailbox.net.uk) are also used by various
London.pmers (in fact, the london IRC server is hosted there). They
had a power problem when someone browned out most of Fulham a few
months back, but generally seem pretty reliable.

Re: Obsolete software

[Chris Benson]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 02:44:07PM +, Frank Booth wrote:
> 
> An Oracle query will perform with varying degrees of efficiency,
> recognising useful indexes etc, based entirely on the sequence of the

Bzzzt! in 8i and 9i, Oracle defaults to the Cost Based Optimizer.
Unfortunately it needs a (manual)

SQL> exec dbms_utilities.gather_schema_statistics('APPS');

(or something like that) to work reasonably well. Viz last week a
4-table query on out of date statistics -> 15min to use 500MB of temp
space then fail.  With current statistics: -> correct results in 0.08 
seconds :-}  (And if you think Oracle DBMS is high maintenance you
should see Oracle Financials ...).

> [other dbms]

I liked Solid RDBMS: fast, modern, standards compliant, cross-platform
(with data compatible between plaforms) and (after installation)
zero-administration.  (Except to add new storage to it's ~10-line .ini
format config file).  They originally did cheap retail sales over
the internet but have moved into embedded market and OEM deals ...

-- 
Chris Benson

Re: looking for a place to rent a server

[Roger Burton West]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 05:11:55PM +, Simon Batistoni wrote:

>And Mailbox (http://www.mailbox.net.uk) are also used by various
>London.pmers (in fact, the london IRC server is hosted there). They
>had a power problem when someone browned out most of Fulham a few
>months back, but generally seem pretty reliable.

If we were just after co-lo, I'd recommend Black Cat Networks
(http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/), to whom I moved firedrake.org when
Mailbox suffered a sudden clue drain about 18 months ago. But the OP
wanted server rental as well.

Roger

Re: Learning regular expressions

[Jonathan Peterson]

> But it sort of proves the point, anyway, in that Mr Peterson wrote his
regexp
> wrong.

Yup.

> If he didn't mean
>
> /^\s*(y|ok)/i
>

Yeah, that's what I wanted to write. Stupid precedence rules - Perl didn't
do what I meant! :-P

However, I suggest that the debug cycle incurred by mis-use of regexps as I
just did is still preferable to the mis-funcationality that would have been
implemented otherwise.

Inadequate user input checking still plagues computer applications, and good
use of regexps would go some way to helping this.

Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 03:43:50PM +, Shevek wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> > ha! I have java in a nutshell and you certainly couldn't pick up java from
> > it, if you want to learn java buy 'learning java', if you want to learn
> > perl buy 'learning perl'.
> I learned Java from nutshell and I have no computing qualifications 
> whatsoever...

Me likewise.  However, I learnt Java from the first edition of the book.
When Java was updated and I bought the new edition, I found that the
tutorial section had been almost entirely removed to make room for the
much expanded class library reference.  I believe that Learning Java was
created from that removed tutorial.

> I don't remember how I learned Perl.

I picked up perl - grudgingly - when awk and sed ran out of steam.  So I
already had a grounding in those bits of perl, and also in C.  That was
shortly after I'd posted to comp.lang.perl.misc saying that perl was
pointless cos I had awk and sed.  Mr. Christiansen took great exception
to that post, and it was my first flame-war.  I'm quite proud of it.

I would point out that there *are* more painful things than doing C and
perl in DOS.  Such as awk and sed :-)

-- 
David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  World War 2: the best sequel ever

Re: regrouping lines of STDIN

[Nicholas Clark]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:34:39PM +, Jasper McCrea wrote:
> Nicholas Clark wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 04:04:54PM +, Jasper McCrea wrote:

> > > If $_ isn't too big, the latter is probably more efficient. I said probably.
> > 
> > use Benchmark;  # Recent experience with writing test programs for the

> Something tells me you think I didn't use Benchmark here. I don't know why.

No, I wasn't clear. Sorry - my fault - and I didn't mean to cause offence.

I did suspect that you'd used Benchmark, or some other quantitative timing
tool, given that you were careful to stress "probably". But I wasn't
confident that it was clear to other people who'd not tried this sort of
thing that much that it was important.

The timings tools aren't great - they generate "statistics"
(lies, damn lies, ) but they are better than guessing, where one
usually gets it wrong.

> However I did use Benchmark, and while what I said seemed to be borne out, there
> was bugger all difference in real terms. Anyone who wrote any code thinking
> about whether one would be faster would already have wasted more time thinking
> about it than would have been saved if the program ran until the end of time.

That's usually what I found too. Unless I got lucky, and found something that
turned out to be refactorable into something conceptually dissimilar that
worked much more efficiently.

Nicholas Clark

Re: Learning regular expressions

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 04:24:16PM +, Peter Sergeant wrote:
> I wonder why it is some people find regexes such a mind-twister.

Trying to run before they can walk?  Some of the new stuff confuses the
hell out of me still, but then almost all my regex needs could be fulfilled
even by perl4.  I mostly use 'em as a glorified index().  Because I'm lazy.

-- 
Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

[OS X] appeals to me as a monk, a user, a compiler-of-apps, a
sometime coder, and an easily amused primate with a penchant
for those that are pretty, colorful, and make nice noises.
-- Dan Birchall, in The Monastery

[OT] Mailing list archivers

[Adam Spiers]

alex ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Mailman has some excellent, progressive features now.

Like being able to do basic searches on the archives by default.  Oh,
my mistake.  *fume*

The lack of decent mailing list archivers is one of my pet peeves.  I
find it nothing less than mind-boggling that after all these years of
mailing lists, a decent list archive interface still eludes the
community.  I mean, FFS, it's not rocket science!  For instance,
anyone tried to find information on a sourceforge list recently?  It
can be /very/ awkward.

Praying someone (e.g. siesta guys) will cite a counter-example,

Adam

Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 11:44:11PM +, Chris Benson wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 03:43:50PM +, Shevek wrote:
> >   Among them the whirl as you realise that rm -rf
> > shouldn't be taking this long...
> Ah, that time-stopping, stomach-dropping, splicter-clenching moment :-)

You mean that moment of ineffable smugness as you casually restore from
your recent, tested backup?

-- 
Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

Oh look
a non-McQ sig
naughty sigmonster

Re: [OT] Mailing list archivers

[Paul Makepeace]

On Sat, Mar 15, 2003 at 01:28:52AM +, Adam Spiers wrote:
> The lack of decent mailing list archivers is one of my pet peeves.  I

A lot could be helped if folks linked to the archives properly. Last
time I checked, and that was a while ago, even the main site didn't.
It oughta.

Try this for perl London.pm google goodness:

http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/";>London.pm perl
monger mail archives

TIA :)
Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

"What is your mom doing? May 8th."
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/