Re: [paris] Fwd: Re: Perl success stories

[Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni]

Hello,

Philippe Bruhat (BooK) a écrit :


Salut,

Quelqu'un peut répondre à Luis?

- Forwarded message from Luis Motta Campos  
 -


From: Luis Motta Campos 
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:18:46 +0100
Subject: Re: Perl success stories
To: Philippe Bruhat 
Cc: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" 

Robin Berjon wrote:

On Dec 18, 2008, at 14:50 , Luis Motta Campos wrote:
Maybe someone can point me at yet another big perl-based project  
that I

can write about for this week's essay?


IIRC the French taxes run on Perl, and we take taxes seriously :)
Unfortunately I can't seem to recall or find out where I got that
information from. Maybe there's someone from paris.pm here who  
could help.


Stop the printers! That's a story! :) Thanks for the nice tip, Robin.

Philippe, do you know or can point me to someone that knows about the
Perl code used by the Finance Ministry? :) I would love to talk about
the French Tax Office for my next Proud To Use Perl post... :)



Jérôme Quelin took a look at the mail he received from the Tax Office  
in April (we can fill in the form and pay online since only a few  
years), and was pleased to discover this header:


  X-Mailer: MIME::Lite::HTML 1.21

so he asked on the list, and Éric German (project manager at the  
MINEFI) confirmed that the server run on Apache + mod_perl +  
LemonLdap. You may want to ask him for more details, if he can give any.

  » http://search.cpan.org/~egerman/
  » http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Eric_german

The web site of the LemonLdap project indicates that it's also used  
by the National Gendarmerie.



--
Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni

Close the world, txEn eht nepO.

Re: Mobile broadband

[James Laver]

On 2008-12-19 20:29, "Dave Hodgkinson"  wrote:
> 
> *fewest*!
> 
> Least dropped means they don't drop them very far?
> 

Or somehow they're dropped and then temporarily reconnected, with this
network dropping it the fewest times per call?

I *have* had a call been unable to connect because O2's network was at full
capacity, but it only happened once and it was christmas...

--James

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Dave Hodgkinson]

On 19 Dec 2008, at 19:59, Peter Corlett wrote:


On 19 Dec 2008, at 19:08, Greg McCarroll wrote:
[...]
a flickr feed with an agreed tag would be good, as there tends to  
be a fairly selection of flickr using camera geeks at meetings,


That is such an excellent idea that it's worth me finally getting  
round to signing up to Flickr.


Just in time for Yahoo! to start making cuts in one of the few
moneymaking propositions it has.

--
Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com
Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com  UK: +44 7768 490620
Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg

Re: Mobile broadband

[Dave Hodgkinson]

On 19 Dec 2008, at 17:49, Simon Wistow wrote:


On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 07:40:26PM +0900, Simon Cozens said:

Another question: Bloody hell, people, what have your mobile phone
providers been doing for past five years? I'm used to getting 3G
coverage on top of mountains, on the underground, and on an  
uninhabited

island in the middle of a lake. Looking at coverage maps of the
southwest, it looks like it's going to be a coin toss at best to  
get any

kind of fast data connection.


Hell, at least it's better than America where a Motorola Razr is still
seen as a premium phone and services still run giant billboards  
touting

that they have "the least dropped calls"


*fewest*!

Least dropped means they don't drop them very far?


--
Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com
Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com  UK: +44 7768 490620
Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Peter Corlett]

On 19 Dec 2008, at 19:08, Greg McCarroll wrote:
[...]
a flickr feed with an agreed tag would be good, as there tends to be  
a fairly selection of flickr using camera geeks at meetings,


That is such an excellent idea that it's worth me finally getting  
round to signing up to Flickr.

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Greg McCarroll]

On 19 Dec 2008, at 18:22, Avleen Vig wrote:

On Dec 19, 2008, at 17:36, Tony Kennick <0995a06aaeaf6b70e79c3aafd6719...@half.pint.org.uk 
> wrote:



On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:39:30PM +,
the following was promulgated by Andy Wardley:


Behold!

http://london.pm.org/



Now it has rounded corners, is it time for other web_2.0_ness?
Slideshows of appropriately tagged pictures on flicker?
The aggregated twitterings of the faithful?
Bookmarks pulled in from delicious and reddit?

Only half joking...
Tony


I'm not joking at all when I say I think that's a good idea. I'll  
try to think up the best way to integrate such thing into content  
that people will wantto look at.


Just hving a "London.pmers" page would be silly, no-one would look  
at it.


a flickr feed with an agreed tag would be good, as there tends to be a  
fairly selection of flickr using camera geeks at meetings,


Greg

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Avleen Vig]

On Dec 19, 2008, at 17:36, Tony Kennick <0995a06aaeaf6b70e79c3aafd6719...@half.pint.org.uk 
> wrote:



On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:39:30PM +,
the following was promulgated by Andy Wardley:


Behold!

 http://london.pm.org/



Now it has rounded corners, is it time for other web_2.0_ness?
Slideshows of appropriately tagged pictures on flicker?
The aggregated twitterings of the faithful?
Bookmarks pulled in from delicious and reddit?

Only half joking...
Tony


I'm not joking at all when I say I think that's a good idea. I'll try  
to think up the best way to integrate such thing into content that  
people will wantto look at.


Just hving a "London.pmers" page would be silly, no-one would look at  
it.

Re: Mobile broadband

[Simon Wistow]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 07:40:26PM +0900, Simon Cozens said:
> Another question: Bloody hell, people, what have your mobile phone
> providers been doing for past five years? I'm used to getting 3G
> coverage on top of mountains, on the underground, and on an uninhabited
> island in the middle of a lake. Looking at coverage maps of the
> southwest, it looks like it's going to be a coin toss at best to get any
> kind of fast data connection.

Hell, at least it's better than America where a Motorola Razr is still 
seen as a premium phone and services still run giant billboards touting 
that they have "the least dropped calls"

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Tony Kennick]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:39:30PM +,
the following was promulgated by Andy Wardley:

> Behold!
> 
>   http://london.pm.org/
> 

Now it has rounded corners, is it time for other web_2.0_ness?
Slideshows of appropriately tagged pictures on flicker?
The aggregated twitterings of the faithful?
Bookmarks pulled in from delicious and reddit?

Only half joking...
Tony

-- 
Tony Kennick
Web: http://www.pint.org.uk/ Blog: http://blog.pint.org.uk/ 
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thegreatgonzo/

Re: Mobile broadband

[Sam Smith]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Simon Cozens wrote:

Denny wrote:

You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
mobile websites.


If they're going to meter my connection per byte, I want the most
bang-per-byte I can get.


t-mobile are pretty good at not caring unless you do insane
amounts of traffic. A friend borrowed my t-mobile modem as
her main internet connection at home for a few months, and
they never batted an eyelid. They also don't print out the
data usage reports they make available online, as I think
one of them hit 1000 pages.


If you're looking to buy a house in the SW, keep an eye out
for where the mobile phone towers are, and consider a house
with a line of sight. A friend has bad ADSL coverage living
by a field in the hills a long way from civilisation/the
exchange, but the local 3G mast is on the other side of the
field, giving fast transfer rates from that.




Sam

--
Risks: If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of
life's great disappointments

Re: Perl success stories

[Luis Motta Campos]

Robin Berjon wrote:
> On Dec 18, 2008, at 14:50 , Luis Motta Campos wrote:
>> Maybe someone can point me at yet another big perl-based project that I
>> can write about for this week's essay?
> 
> IIRC the French taxes run on Perl, and we take taxes seriously :)
> Unfortunately I can't seem to recall or find out where I got that
> information from. Maybe there's someone from paris.pm here who could help.

Stop the printers! That's a story! :) Thanks for the nice tip, Robin.

Philippe, do you know or can point me to someone that knows about the
Perl code used by the Finance Ministry? :) I would love to talk about
the French Tax Office for my next Proud To Use Perl post... :)

Thanks in advance.
Cheers!
-- 
Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer,
Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.

Re: Mobile broadband

[Simon Cozens]

Denny wrote:
> You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
> mobile websites.

If they're going to meter my connection per byte, I want the most
bang-per-byte I can get.


-- 
"The elder gods went to Suggoth and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

Re: Sharding, and all that

[Paul Makepeace]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Richard Huxton  wrote:
>
> Andy Wardley wrote:
> > Richard Huxton wrote:
> >> Yep - that's what "sharding" is all about - separate disconnected silos
> >> of data.
> >
> > I thought sharding specifically related to horizontal partitioning.  i.e.
> > splitting one table across several databases,  e.g. records with even row
> > ids in one DB, odd in another.  Apologies if my terminology is wrong.
> >
> > I was thinking more specifically about vertical partitioning along the
> > functional boundaries which wouldn't be sharding by my (possibly incorrect)
> > definition.  Apologies for being off-topic, too  :-)
>
> If "sharding" means anything at all, then it has to be something other
> than partitioning or partial replication, otherwise we could say
> "partitioning" or "partial replication". Of course it's entirely
> possible it *doesn't* mean anything at all, and is just partitioning2.0

Sharding is horizontal partitioning: splitting your data by a primary
key, for example having a few hundred million email boxes spread over
thousands of machines keyed by email address.

Having your user accounts data in a separate database from say those
users' preferences is a form of vertical partitioning. Both in a big
system are very likely to be sharded by some kind of internal key.

P

Re: Mobile broadband

[Dave Hodgkinson]

On 19 Dec 2008, at 12:33, Robert Shiels wrote:


Denny wrote:

On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 11:53 +, Jonathan Stowe wrote:

2008/12/19 Simon Wilcox :
I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans- 
proxy on
the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript  
into the

page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.


You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
mobile websites.  They're generally aimed at people browsing directly
from mobile devices, rather than people using a mobile connection  
with a

full-fat device.


I'm probably going to have to do some on-call work, and will likely  
get a dongle thing so that I can connect from my laptop to the  
office VPN when I'm out and about. Is this javascript thing  
something that might screw up my chances of a working connection?



No. VPN works fine. I also have a sneaking suspicion it might not count
towards your quote but this hypothesis needs better testing.
--
Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com
Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com  UK: +44 7768 490620
Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg

Re: Sharding, and all that

[Richard Huxton]

Andy Wardley wrote:
> Richard Huxton wrote:
>> Yep - that's what "sharding" is all about - separate disconnected silos
>> of data. 
> 
> I thought sharding specifically related to horizontal partitioning.  i.e.
> splitting one table across several databases,  e.g. records with even row
> ids in one DB, odd in another.  Apologies if my terminology is wrong.
> 
> I was thinking more specifically about vertical partitioning along the
> functional boundaries which wouldn't be sharding by my (possibly incorrect)
> definition.  Apologies for being off-topic, too  :-)

If "sharding" means anything at all, then it has to be something other
than partitioning or partial replication, otherwise we could say
"partitioning" or "partial replication". Of course it's entirely
possible it *doesn't* mean anything at all, and is just partitioning2.0

>> Then you're not maintaining referential integrity. There's no point in
>> having a user-id that doesn't *mean* anything. 
> 
> I'm not suggesting that the user id doesn't mean anything.  It means
> exactly the same thing as it does in any other database - a unique
> identifier to a user record.
> 
> I'm saying that the user record in the message DB doesn't need to
> store email address, username, password, favourite colour, challenge
> question/response, and all the other cruft that goes with user
> administration.
> All it needs is a unique id, an authentication realm (identifying the
> authentication service) and authentication token (identifying the user
> at that service).  And perhaps any message-board specific niceties such
> as your local nick and display preferences.
> 
> Similarly in the authentication DB there's no need to store information
> in the users table relating to message board preferences.

Having one 300-column user_details table is probably a bad idea anyway.
However, if you can't say uid=123456 on your message is the same as
uid=123456 in your user-login table then I'd say it doesn't mean
anything. You can't even say two messages posted by uid=123456 are the
same user without providing guarantees about the security of your uid
transfer code (which is back to providing your own relational integrity).

> I can see that trivially splitting one user table into two leads to all
> sorts of integrity problem.  But I'm thinking of them as two separate
> user databases from the outset and accepting that they're potentially
> disjoint.
> 
> The best (but poor) example I can think of right now is how my gravatar
> popped up automatically when I signed up at github.  Not because the github
> user database is referentially at one with the gravatar database, but
> because
> I used the same public identifier (my email address) on both systems.
> 
> So it could be argued that there is *a* point in having a user id (such
> as email address) that doesn't *mean* anything to the *current* database,
> because it might have meaning to *other* databases.  It's the closest
> thing we've got to referential integrity in a distributed world.

Yep, but that's option #1 - "don't care". If your gravatar didn't work,
or you got the wrong one, well whatever.

Option #2 would be something like OpenID where you can't (and dont' want
to) have a single large database accessed by everyone. So - you have to
build in trust mechanisms. Or GPG key-signing say.

>> Primary keys, foreign
>> keys and all the other bits and pieces of RI in a SQL database are there
>> to maintain the *meaning* of your data.
> 
> Sure, I recognise the fact that you lose referential integrity at the
> boundary between your db and the "outside world".  But internally,
> the DB remains referentially intact.  The message board still has its
> own user records for messages to reference.  The fact that the
> authentication
> realm/token may at some point in the future become invalid is really no
> different to the current situation where a user's email address changes
> and they can no longer login or get a password reminder/reset.

No, there's a vital difference. If I want to I can track every change a
user makes to their account, so long as I can trust the uid. Barring
errors in the RDBMS code it's a relatively simple task for me to
guarantee that. If the police come knocking because someones posted
threatening messages or whatever then once they've got their warrant
they can have their data. Of course maybe it doesn't matter, but that's
putting you back in #1 - "don't care".

>> Before that though, make sure you do have a problem. Pick the right tool
>> for the job - if high concurrency/complex queries/procedural code for
>> constraints is a requirement then it's probably not MySQL. Always
>> consider what an extra couple of grand on hardware will gain you.
> 
> For this particular project we don't really have a database problem that
> can't be solved with a bit of replication and a whack of the hardware
> hammer.
> The majority of the load will be searches that we're reading from a single
> read-only table.  So we can 

Re: Mobile broadband

[Jonathan Stowe]

2008/12/19 Martin Robertson :

>
> any views on when 'wireless interwebs' will become considered
> 'core' infrastructure alongside refuse/roads/libraries?
>

Never.  There are too many tinfoil-hat wearing nut jobs and too many
politicians concerned about the Daily Mail says.

/J\

Re: Mobile broadband

[Martin Robertson]

2008/12/19 Robert Shiels :
> Denny wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 11:53 +, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
>>>
>>> 2008/12/19 Simon Wilcox :

 I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans-proxy
 on
 the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript into
 the
 page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.

>>
>> You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
>> mobile websites.  They're generally aimed at people browsing directly
>> from mobile devices, rather than people using a mobile connection with a
>> full-fat device.
>
> I'm probably going to have to do some on-call work, and will likely get a
> dongle thing so that I can connect from my laptop to the office VPN when I'm
> out and about. Is this javascript thing something that might screw up my
> chances of a working connection?
>
> I too seriously wonder about the crapness of our internet - I only get 1.5
> megabit download at my house with the wired broadband, and that's not likely
> to change anytime soon. Can I have wimax or whatever now please?

here, here - speaking for the heelans of Scottieland; wouldnt it be nice if
the local authority offered wifi as part of your council tax bills & had a nice
fat aerial running from the local exchange?!

any views on when 'wireless interwebs' will become considered
'core' infrastructure alongside refuse/roads/libraries?

cheers, mart.

Re: Mobile broadband

[Robert Shiels]

Denny wrote:

On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 11:53 +, Jonathan Stowe wrote:

2008/12/19 Simon Wilcox :

I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans-proxy on
the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript into the
page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.



You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
mobile websites.  They're generally aimed at people browsing directly
from mobile devices, rather than people using a mobile connection with a
full-fat device.


I'm probably going to have to do some on-call work, and will likely get 
a dongle thing so that I can connect from my laptop to the office VPN 
when I'm out and about. Is this javascript thing something that might 
screw up my chances of a working connection?


I too seriously wonder about the crapness of our internet - I only get 
1.5 megabit download at my house with the wired broadband, and that's 
not likely to change anytime soon. Can I have wimax or whatever now please?


/R

Re: Mobile broadband

[Jonathan Stowe]

2008/12/19 Denny :
> On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 11:53 +, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
>> 2008/12/19 Simon Wilcox :
>> > I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans-proxy on
>> > the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript into the
>> > page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.
>> >
>> > Unfortunately this f**ks up a good proportion of sites that make anything
>> > more than cursory use of javascript.
>>
>> I seem to recall it fucks up a whole bunch of other things that makes
>> mobile content providers very unhappy. Like device detection and GeoIP
>> and stuff ...
>
> You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
> mobile websites.  They're generally aimed at people browsing directly
> from mobile devices, rather than people using a mobile connection with a
> full-fat device.

Yeah but t-mobile use the same mechanism for dongles and phones

Re: Mobile broadband

[Simon Wilcox]

Jonathan Stowe wrote:


I seem to recall it fucks up a whole bunch of other things that makes
mobile content providers very unhappy. Like device detection and GeoIP
and stuff ...


Don't get me started on mobile transcoders. Bane of my f'ing life they are.

Bastards the lot of 'em.

S.

Re: Mobile broadband

[Denny]

On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 11:53 +, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> 2008/12/19 Simon Wilcox :
> > I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans-proxy on
> > the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript into the
> > page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.
> >
> > Unfortunately this f**ks up a good proportion of sites that make anything
> > more than cursory use of javascript.
> 
> I seem to recall it fucks up a whole bunch of other things that makes
> mobile content providers very unhappy. Like device detection and GeoIP
> and stuff ...

You wouldn't normally be using a mobile broadband dongle to access
mobile websites.  They're generally aimed at people browsing directly
from mobile devices, rather than people using a mobile connection with a
full-fat device.

(Yes, I'm sure people can think of a half a dozen edge cases where this
isn't true.  It's still mostly true.)

Mobile networks all tend to screw GeoIP anyway, with or without nasty
javascript, as they NAT down to a fairly small range of real IPs.

Re: Mobile broadband

[Jonathan Stowe]

2008/12/19 Simon Wilcox :
> Simon Cozens wrote:
>
>> Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good ones,
>> good deals, horror stories, don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories,
>> etc.?
>
> I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans-proxy on
> the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript into the
> page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.
>
> Unfortunately this f**ks up a good proportion of sites that make anything
> more than cursory use of javascript.

I seem to recall it fucks up a whole bunch of other things that makes
mobile content providers very unhappy. Like device detection and GeoIP
and stuff ...

Re: Sharding, and all that

[Andy Wardley]

Richard Huxton wrote:

Yep - that's what "sharding" is all about - separate disconnected silos
of data. 


I thought sharding specifically related to horizontal partitioning.  i.e.
splitting one table across several databases,  e.g. records with even row
ids in one DB, odd in another.  Apologies if my terminology is wrong.

I was thinking more specifically about vertical partitioning along the
functional boundaries which wouldn't be sharding by my (possibly incorrect)
definition.  Apologies for being off-topic, too  :-)


Then you're not maintaining referential integrity. There's no point in
having a user-id that doesn't *mean* anything. 


I'm not suggesting that the user id doesn't mean anything.  It means
exactly the same thing as it does in any other database - a unique
identifier to a user record.

I'm saying that the user record in the message DB doesn't need to
store email address, username, password, favourite colour, challenge
question/response, and all the other cruft that goes with user administration.
All it needs is a unique id, an authentication realm (identifying the
authentication service) and authentication token (identifying the user
at that service).  And perhaps any message-board specific niceties such
as your local nick and display preferences.

Similarly in the authentication DB there's no need to store information
in the users table relating to message board preferences.

I can see that trivially splitting one user table into two leads to all
sorts of integrity problem.  But I'm thinking of them as two separate
user databases from the outset and accepting that they're potentially
disjoint.

The best (but poor) example I can think of right now is how my gravatar
popped up automatically when I signed up at github.  Not because the github
user database is referentially at one with the gravatar database, but because
I used the same public identifier (my email address) on both systems.

So it could be argued that there is *a* point in having a user id (such
as email address) that doesn't *mean* anything to the *current* database,
because it might have meaning to *other* databases.  It's the closest
thing we've got to referential integrity in a distributed world.


Primary keys, foreign
keys and all the other bits and pieces of RI in a SQL database are there
to maintain the *meaning* of your data.


Sure, I recognise the fact that you lose referential integrity at the
boundary between your db and the "outside world".  But internally,
the DB remains referentially intact.  The message board still has its
own user records for messages to reference.  The fact that the authentication
realm/token may at some point in the future become invalid is really no
different to the current situation where a user's email address changes
and they can no longer login or get a password reminder/reset.


Before that though, make sure you do have a problem. Pick the right tool
for the job - if high concurrency/complex queries/procedural code for
constraints is a requirement then it's probably not MySQL. Always
consider what an extra couple of grand on hardware will gain you.


For this particular project we don't really have a database problem that
can't be solved with a bit of replication and a whack of the hardware hammer.
The majority of the load will be searches that we're reading from a single
read-only table.  So we can replicate that easily across as many web heads as
required for performance and it gives us simple redundancy in case of machine
failure, etc.

All the read/write functionality (mostly CMS-like stuff) will happen
(initially) on a single server with master read/write database.  It'll
be fairly low-load and it's not mission critical (in the sense that having
the CMS offline for a few hours is an inconvenience not a hanging offence).

The impetus was more about turning one large and tangled CMS-like system into
several smaller, simpler systems.  90% of the tables fall neatly into one
sub-system or the other (front-end search and content delivery, back-end
content management, image management, accounting and billing, and so on).
It's the last few  tables (mostly relating to users, unsurprisingly) that
straddle spread-eagled across the database dangling their tools in the works.

So I'm really coming at this from the perspective of someone thinking about
building distributed apps and wondering how the database is going to work
behind the scenes, rather than someone with a database performance problem
considering partitioning.

Cheers
A

Re: Mobile broadband

[Simon Wilcox]

Simon Cozens wrote:


Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good ones,
good deals, horror stories, don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories,
etc.?


I have a t-mobile dongle thing which is OK but they have a trans-proxy 
on the web interface which compresses images and inserts javascript into 
the page to allow you to click them for the full resolution.


Unfortunately this f**ks up a good proportion of sites that make 
anything more than cursory use of javascript.


The solution seems to be to tunnel your web browsing across a vpn to 
your server and out from there.


S.

Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?

[James Laver]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Luis Motta Campos
 wrote:
> Coming from you it sounds like a serious recommendation. I wonder why
> you're recommending me to go there... is is this beautiful?

Yes.

English countryside is very beautiful. Lots of poetry talking about
it. "green and pleasant land" and all that.

And countryside pubs are bloody brilliant if where I grew up is
anything to go by ;)

Cheers,
--James

Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?

[Luis Motta Campos]

Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
> 
> On 18 Dec 2008, at 23:24, Luis Motta Campos wrote:
>>
>> If I may have a say about that, can we have something closer, and
>> maybe more traditional? It might be quite a while until I have a good
>> opportunity to attend a social meeting, and being this far away from
>> London sounds a bit lame... :)
> 
> 
> srsly, do Sussex if you have the energy.

Coming from you it sounds like a serious recommendation. I wonder why
you're recommending me to go there... is is this beautiful?

I will consider that and talk to Camila about it. :) Thanks.

Cheers!
-- 
Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer,
Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.

Re: Mobile broadband

[Jonathan Stowe]

2008/12/19 Simon Cozens :
> Sam Smith wrote:
>> Or use a different one so you have different
>> coverage chances; depending on how far into the middle of
>> nowhere you'll be.
>
> Another question: Bloody hell, people, what have your mobile phone
> providers been doing for past five years? I'm used to getting 3G
> coverage on top of mountains, on the underground, and on an uninhabited
> island in the middle of a lake. Looking at coverage maps of the
> southwest, it looks like it's going to be a coin toss at best to get any
> kind of fast data connection.
>

They blew all their money on the spectrum auctions and  had to scale
back their coverage ambitions.

Re: Sharding, and all that

[James Laver]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Richard Huxton  wrote:
>
> Yep - that's what "sharding" is all about - separate disconnected silos
> of data. You know, like the ones that were all the rage in the 60s that
> drove people to invent RDBMS. The good thing is, if your application is
> successful and is still in use a couple of years from now you get to
> either spend all your time fire-fighting or re-implementing integrity
> constraints.
>
> Then you're not maintaining referential integrity. There's no point in
> having a user-id that doesn't *mean* anything. Primary keys, foreign
> keys and all the other bits and pieces of RI in a SQL database are there
> to maintain the *meaning* of your data.
>

It depends on what you're using a database for.

I had a long, drawn-out discussion with my boss a couple of weeks ago
regarding the purpose of a database. I argued it was there to store
data reliably (eg. maintaining integrity, cascading deletes or
ensuring you can't delete something being referenced in another
relation etc.), he argued it was to improve the performance of the
application that was using it (I'm talking in the context of web-apps
since it's what pays the bills).

At my previous job we used a MySQL database. I chose the InnoDB engine
because I wanted to make sure the site data was going to stay as
unbroken as MySQL can enforce. The important thing was actual foreign
key checks. The site workflow naturally suited this since it was
updated overnight into these tables with real referential integrity
(MyISAM will not enforce foreign keys). After the synchronisation, you
can then regenerate cache tables which don't have to be perfect,
they're there to be faster.

On the other hand, it's more work to generate cache tables.

Really it depends what you want. I fall strongly on the side of good
data and then put in place other measures if it's not fast enough.
Other people are purely concerned with performance, Just wanting to
use database indexes to make things fast and easy. As a result you're
often implementing data security in your code which I don't feel is
the right place for it.

Cheers,
--James

Re: Mobile broadband

[Simon Cozens]

Sam Smith wrote:
> Or use a different one so you have different
> coverage chances; depending on how far into the middle of
> nowhere you'll be.

Another question: Bloody hell, people, what have your mobile phone
providers been doing for past five years? I'm used to getting 3G
coverage on top of mountains, on the underground, and on an uninhabited
island in the middle of a lake. Looking at coverage maps of the
southwest, it looks like it's going to be a coin toss at best to get any
kind of fast data connection.

-- 
Putting a square peg into a round hole can be worthwhile if you don't
mind a few shavings. -- Larry Wall

Re: Mobile broadband

[Denny]

On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 14:57 +0900, Simon Cozens wrote:
> Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good ones,
> good deals, horror stories, don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories,
> etc.?

My girlfriend has a Vodafone contract, with a 5GB cap (I think the only
people who offer higher than that are 3, who have a 7GB deal).  The
modem was free with the contract, I think the monthly fee is £30 but
pricing tends to shift around a lot anyway.  She says it's very fast,
and up until this month she found the cap adequate if not brilliant.

(This month she blew through it in the first 8 days, but I suspect
Windows Update might be responsible for that, having re-enabled itself
without permission.)

Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?

[ben]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:33:23PM +, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
>
>On 18 Dec 2008, at 16:45, Dave Cross wrote:
>>
>>The heretics meeting will be on January 1st.
>
>For those without a passport and thus unable to attend the 1st Jan
>meeting abroad, if there are sufficient numbers (more than one) I
>shall host something in the north-western corner of Zone 1
>with an amble round Primrose Hill, attending any or all of the fine
>hostelries in the vicinity (6 at the last count).

I'm up for Primrose Hill.

Why anyone would want to sign up for a meet which involves getting on a train 
to Sussex the day after we've seen off this particular year is beyond me.

Holiday season British Rail with a high probability of hangover? No, thanks.

Ben

Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?

[Martin Robertson]

2008/12/19 James Laver :

> In any case there's a rather nice pub just east of Bank*, so I question the
> truths in what you are saying.
>
> --James
>
> * Or was I so drunk after visiting it that I thought it was east of bank?
>

hurrah for Balvennie & the barmaids nip!

Re: Mobile broadband

[Sam Smith]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Simon Cozens wrote:

Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good ones,
good deals, horror stories, don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories,
etc.?


get one of the "new" (about 6 months old) memory stick style
modems which plug straight into your mac's USB port - they
come with mac drivers on them (rather than the oval ones
with a usb cable where they come on a CD).


As for network, figure out which mobile phone company you'll
go with (or currently use), and it's usually cheaper to use
the same one. Or use a different one so you have different
coverage chances; depending on how far into the middle of
nowhere you'll be.


perl -M 'use HolyWar::Network::Mobile;'





cheers
Sam


--
It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world,
that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth.
- A. J. Balfour

Re: Sharding, and all that

[Richard Huxton]

Andy Wardley wrote:
> My take on this is that you would have to (re-)build your application and
> underlying DB to be distributed from the start.  Your user DB/app would
> provide an authentication service, perhaps something similar to OpenID,
> that
> your message board would use to authenticate users.

Yep - that's what "sharding" is all about - separate disconnected silos
of data. You know, like the ones that were all the rage in the 60s that
drove people to invent RDBMS. The good thing is, if your application is
successful and is still in use a couple of years from now you get to
either spend all your time fire-fighting or re-implementing integrity
constraints.

> The problem you mention is that the message.user foreign key then goes out
> the window.
> 
> One approach would be to have a local users table in the messaging DB which
> maps internal user IDs to some kind of external user identifier.  That
> could
> be their email address (in the simplest case), a URL that identifies the
> user
> at your authentication app (e.g. http://auth.your-app.com/joe90) or perhaps
> a GUUID.

Beside the point. Nothing stopping you running separate services talking
to one big database. Nothing stopping you replicating the user table to
various slaves and having separate message tables on each. That's not
sharding though - sharding (if it means anything) means to have
*disconnected* databases. Which works fine for Google since they
effectively need only one table for web-searching.

> Either way, you're explicitly decoupling the internal requirement that a
> message must have a "valid" user id (i.e. a record in the users table) from
> the assumption that you actually know anything valuable about that user
> that
> doesn't relate explicitly to the message board.
> 
> You can then maintain referential integrity in your message DB
> regardless of
> what happens in the user DB.  It would be possible to delete a user from
> the
> user system, for example, without having any *internal* effect on the
> message
> board DB (no more cascading delete woes).

Then you're not maintaining referential integrity. There's no point in
having a user-id that doesn't *mean* anything. Primary keys, foreign
keys and all the other bits and pieces of RI in a SQL database are there
to maintain the *meaning* of your data.

> I appreciate that "decoupling" is a fancy way of saying "broken", but I'm
> beginning to see it as a feature rather than a liability in this context.

I can only think of two contexts:
  1. Don't care
  2. Last resort - the project is pushing the boundaries of what is
 possible.
Now Google were lucky in that they scored on both.

> I should point out that I haven't implemented anything like this yet so I
> could be way off course. But I'm about to implement something like it for a
> $work project so any pointers on this would be welcome if I'm sailing in
> the
> wrong direction.

It's not uncommon to find a project with one very large table (sensor
readings, apache log lines, messages, text from documents). It's a lot
less common to have several very large tables. If you're in the first
camp then you can replicate all the (comparatively) small tables and
partition the single large one. That lets you maintain the view of a
single database from the outside.

Before that though, make sure you do have a problem. Pick the right tool
for the job - if high concurrency/complex queries/procedural code for
constraints is a requirement then it's probably not MySQL. Always
consider what an extra couple of grand on hardware will gain you.

The article you linked to and the one Nigel Hamilton mentions further
down the thread are both being "clever". In neither case (from the small
amount of detail available) does it look justified.

-- 
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Jonathan Stowe]

2008/12/19 Robin Berjon :
> On Dec 18, 2008, at 13:39 , Andy Wardley wrote:
>>
>> Behold!
>>
>>  http://london.pm.org/
>>
>> There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now.
>
> It is the embodiment of sexiness itself. Which is good because disembodied
> sexiness is a whole lot less interesting.
>
> A few tiny snags (all of these noted in Opera 9.62 Mac but not necessarily
> limited to it):
>
>  - the lines on either side of the darker background behind the content area
> stop about 2-3 em short of the bottom of the viewport.
>  - the view source page doesn't wrap its content (maybe that's deliberate)
>  - the style switcher is triggered on page load, which means that pages that
> may take a while to load are in the wrong colour or screen width for a while
> before switching. Since the style switching it based on elements that are
> really early in the tree, there is no need to wait for onload.
>
> I can make patches if you're busy but it might have to wait a couple days.

Even better I can arrange for you to have commit on the SVN  if you want ;-)

Re: Reminder: the Perl Reddit

[Leo Lapworth]

2008/12/19 Andy Wardley 

> Can I take this opportunity to remind people about the Perl Reddit.
>  


It's also worth checking out:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/perl

There are already several people making sure Perl questions are answered,
but the more the merrier! - I've also found it a useful place to look up
answers.

Leo

Re: It Shines! It Shines!

[Robin Berjon]

On Dec 18, 2008, at 13:39 , Andy Wardley wrote:

Behold!

 http://london.pm.org/

There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now.


It is the embodiment of sexiness itself. Which is good because  
disembodied sexiness is a whole lot less interesting.


A few tiny snags (all of these noted in Opera 9.62 Mac but not  
necessarily limited to it):


 - the lines on either side of the darker background behind the  
content area stop about 2-3 em short of the bottom of the viewport.
 - the view source page doesn't wrap its content (maybe that's  
deliberate)
 - the style switcher is triggered on page load, which means that  
pages that may take a while to load are in the wrong colour or screen  
width for a while before switching. Since the style switching it based  
on elements that are really early in the tree, there is no need to  
wait for onload.


I can make patches if you're busy but it might have to wait a couple  
days.


--
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/
Feel like hiring me? Go to http://robineko.com/

Re: Perl success stories

[Robin Berjon]

On Dec 18, 2008, at 14:50 , Luis Motta Campos wrote:
Maybe someone can point me at yet another big perl-based project  
that I

can write about for this week's essay?


IIRC the French taxes run on Perl, and we take taxes seriously :)  
Unfortunately I can't seem to recall or find out where I got that  
information from. Maybe there's someone from paris.pm here who could  
help.


--
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/
Feel like hiring me? Go to http://robineko.com/

Re: Mobile broadband

[Hakim Cassimally]

On 19/12/2008, Dave Hodgkinson  wrote:
>  On 19 Dec 2008, at 05:57, Simon Cozens wrote:>
> > Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good ones,
> > good deals, horror stories,
> don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories,
> > etc.?
>
>  I have the Huwawei E220 dongle on Vodafone on a Mac. It works.

I had the same dongle with voda for a bit: I suspect my dongle may
have been faulty, as it only worked intermittently on Windows
(sometimes didn't mount the auto-connect application correctly),
barely worked on Linux with the hackish unsupported connect script
voda semi-officially supply (I was too stupid to work out the wvdial
incantations on my own). Also, it barely had any reception in the
hills just above Gatwick airport.

I did try it briefly on Mac (it didn't work, but tbh I didn't try very
hard, sent it back to voda, and changed to a B&B that did free wifi
instead).

> I pay  *mumble* a month for 5G.

Sadly _Dave confirms that this isn't Yet Another mobile broadband
standard but a data transfer limit.  Er, unlimit.  Or whatever.

--
osf'

Reminder: the Perl Reddit

[Andy Wardley]

I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't know about http://proudtouseperl.com
until the recent thread, and it looks like I wasn't the only one.  But
visibility aside, it's great to see more Perl site/blogs springing up
around the place.

Can I take this opportunity to remind people about the Perl Reddit.
If you know of any good Perl sites, or find any good Perl articles
then please consider submitting links to them here:

  http://www.reddit.com/r/perl/

You'll notice that the latest proudtouseperl.com article is currently
at #1 in the hit parade so hopefully that'll help to give it a bit more
limelight.

Cheers
A

Re: Sample answers to Christmas Quiz

[Simon Cozens]

David Alban wrote:
>> 4) How many different variable types are there in Perl? Be as sensibly 
>> voluminous in your answer as you are > able.
> i would have said only two:  scalar and list, since arrays and hashes
> are both lists.

The question was about variable types, not value types. (The horror.)

In terms of variables, you can start very simply just by looking at the
sigils: $ and @ and % makes three without much effort, and then you can
get a bit more complex and add * and & (what do you mean a subroutine's
not a variable?) for at least another two, then you've got the
invisible-sigil variable types - file handles and directory handles -
and I think by then the interviewer will have got the point.

Simon

Re: Sharding, and all that

[Andy Wardley]

Richard Huxton wrote:

Hmm - skimming these articles, I'm not hugely impressed. The chap(ess?)
behind them is clearly a developer rather than a DBA.


You're right.  I perhaps should have quantified that better as a good
*introduction* to the subject.  It was a bit hand-wavy on the detail,
but it got me thinking about the subject (speaking as more of a developer
than a DBA).

He said:

"Split the database into smaller, specialized db’s. Use a DB for users,
one for messanging functionalities, one for product orders, etc. Each of
these databases must exist independently, 


You said:

Brilliant! So now your messages don't necessarily have a valid user
associated with them.


It's a shame he didn't go into the details of how you were supposed to
make the "must exist independently" bit happen.  Key management is clearly
going to be a critical part of this.

My take on this is that you would have to (re-)build your application and
underlying DB to be distributed from the start.  Your user DB/app would
provide an authentication service, perhaps something similar to OpenID, that
your message board would use to authenticate users.

The problem you mention is that the message.user foreign key then goes out
the window.

One approach would be to have a local users table in the messaging DB which
maps internal user IDs to some kind of external user identifier.  That could
be their email address (in the simplest case), a URL that identifies the user
at your authentication app (e.g. http://auth.your-app.com/joe90) or perhaps
a GUUID.

Either way, you're explicitly decoupling the internal requirement that a
message must have a "valid" user id (i.e. a record in the users table) from
the assumption that you actually know anything valuable about that user that
doesn't relate explicitly to the message board.

You can then maintain referential integrity in your message DB regardless of
what happens in the user DB.  It would be possible to delete a user from the
user system, for example, without having any *internal* effect on the message
board DB (no more cascading delete woes).

Of course, there is still an *external* effect, namely a "broken link" from
the user in your message board to the one in your auth app.  For example,
your message board may have messages written by user 42 who was identified at
the time as jo...@example.com, but there's no guarantee that the user still
has login access, or even exists.  You'll have to go and ask the user
application for further information on that *and* accept the implicit
assumption that you may get back the SaaS equivalent of a blank stare.

I appreciate that "decoupling" is a fancy way of saying "broken", but I'm
beginning to see it as a feature rather than a liability in this context.

I should point out that I haven't implemented anything like this yet so I
could be way off course. But I'm about to implement something like it for a
$work project so any pointers on this would be welcome if I'm sailing in the
wrong direction.

This sort of stuff is very easy to get wrong. 


Agreed.  I don't think there's any easy substitute for proper data design.
Scalability doesn't work as an afterthought.


A

Re: Mobile broadband

[Dave Hodgkinson]

On 19 Dec 2008, at 05:57, Simon Cozens wrote:


Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good  
ones,

good deals, horror stories, don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories,
etc.?



I have the Huwawei E220 dongle on Vodafone on a Mac. It works. I pay
*mumble* a month for 5G.

You might consider something like a Nokia with Wifi that can be
converted to an AP. Eats the phone battery though.

--
Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com
Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com  UK: +44 7768 490620
Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg