Re: [REVIEW] Graphics Programming With Perl
On Tuesday, June 10, 2003 13:29 +0100 Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Found this mostly finished on my HD. Finished it off and thought I'd post it - I think someone may have already posted a review of this, though. No, we don't have another review, but even if we did, a second opinion wouldn't do any harm. I'll put your review up on the site shortly and remove you from the Naughty List. I will also be walking around with the LARTing stick and hunting down those who still owe reviews. We have several reviews due for books handed out in the last three months of 2002, two from January, three from February, and one from March. I will "name and shame" shortly. And I still have this copy of The XSLT Cookbook that needs a reviewer. Please, someone, take it off my hands! -- David Cantrell
Re: Making perl modules for CPAN
On Monday, June 9, 2003 13:38 +0100 Shevek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: * Any factor up to about 10 times the size/speed/time is always bearable. It is? Wow, I never realised. I thought it was normal to get irritated at how long it takes to download 300 emails but not mind too much when waiting for just 30, but obviously I was wrong. I also thought - apparently wrongly - that just because my colleagues don't mind me maxing out the office interweb connection for a few minutes to download a 200Mb file, they wouldn't necessarily be happy with me doing the same for a 2Gb file. Oh, but wait! I wasn't wrong. Your opinion, it seems, differs from that of reality. * It's cheaper for you to buy say an HSCSD modem, or go into an internet cafe. Cheaper if you provide the modem, maybe, and write and test the drivers for me, and pay any charges that the carrier may impose for using a different service to what I am using now and for needing another SIM. I await my free modem with baited breath. I have yet to come across an inertnet cafe which would allow me to plug my laptop in to their network. But then, I hardly ever have need to use such places so am not an expert in this matter. Is installing CPAN modules something you frequently do over GSM? Not frequently, no, and so even if you factor in the cost of my time it's still not cheaper. In any case, you miss the point. You will notice (if you bothered reading) that I said that in this particular case you were right and that he should upload the whole package again. I was taking issue with your statement that "we are no longer running at 14.4; management overhead costs more than bandwidth" which is just so wrong-headed as to be comical. -- David Cantrell
Re: [Advert] indy hardware for sale
On Monday, June 9, 2003 10:01 + the hatter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: If people are looking to consolidate, I'll quite happily exchange their indys for assorted decent (18-36GB) scsi drives of the appropriate types (I assume they're either SCA or 68 pin micro D) So if anyone wants to buy one of the machines, and buy a disk off me for the price of the other, I'll happily take the other. Indys take plain ol' SCSI-2 disks, so your drives are useless. -- David Cantrell
Re: Making perl modules for CPAN
On Thursday, June 5, 2003 13:14 +0100 Shevek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Upload the lot. It's only 10Kb. We are no longer running at 14.4; management overhead costs more than bandwidth. Yes bandwidth is cheap, so we shouldn't care about efficiency. Same applies to memory and CPU too. I will in future insist that rather than using CVS, we store all previous versions of our code in an Oracle database. To be fair though, in this particular case you're right, he should re-upload the whole package. In the general case though, for those that say "bandwidth is cheap" I give you the counter-example of myself. When not connected via ethernet and DSL or better, I usually use a 9.6kbps modem. It may be cheap in terms of the phone bill (the call is free) but it's bloody irritating when thoughtless people expect me to download more than is necesary. -- David Cantrell
Re: international beer summit
On Thursday, June 5, 2003 10:43 +0100 Paul Mison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 05/06/2003 at 10:22 +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: I smell a trip to the Jerusalem Tavern. Well, yes, it's close to where Perrin is staying, and it's a nice pub. However, for a meeting involving more than about four people, it's too small, unless you're able to nab the large table at the back. (Even then, there's a lot of shuffling about as people go to the bar, and so on). The Yorkshire Grey isn't that far up the road, and is much larger, if you're going to force me to pick a pub around there. I'm sure other people could suggest something better, though. Three Cups, Cowcross St. There's a couple of pubs whose names I forget up at the top end of Cowcross St, opposite Smithfield market. There's an *excellent* curry house on Cowcross St too, right opposite Farringdon tube. -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Re: [OT] Co-location again
On Sunday, June 1, 2003 19:44 +0100 Peter Sergeant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I can highly recommend http://www.bytemark-hosting.co.uk/ - not colocation, but virtual linux machines. Service has been absolutely first class Pity they don't answer their mail. -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Re: The answer to the map and disc problem
On Wednesday, May 28, 2003 14:49 +0100 Simon Wilcox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Possibly they were watching "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" [1] staring Leonardo DeCaprio and Claire Danes. I seem to recall that it was on the other day and does a reasonable job [2] of keeping the text while updating the setting. As does My Own Private Idaho, at least in parts. Although that, from what I remember, veers wildly between original text and merely using the story. Long time since I watched it. -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Re: [ANNOUNCE] Tim O'Reilly in London
On Tuesday, May 27, 2003 10:12 -0700 Dave Cross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Tim O'Reilly will be speaking at The City University, London on June 23rd. The title of the talk is "The Open Source Paradigm Shift: LAMP as the 'Intel inside' of the next generation of computer applications". So is that meant to be a good thing or a bad thing? -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Re: The answer to the map and disc problem
On Tuesday, May 27, 2003 10:47 +0100 Paul Makepeace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I'm an advocate, despite being English & holding a British passport, of the old style spelling (i.e. the one used in the US). -ise is a minority case used by a small island of far fewer than a certain large continent. The disparity is even greater when you consider the relative Interweb use. I too am an advocate of old-style spelling. Unfortunately, this keyboard lacks eth, thorn, etc. -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Palm development
So, what is the Palm development tool of choice these days? I don't really want to use C or Java, but might be persuaded to use Java if I absolutely have to. The application I have in mind only needs to do simple queries against a horking big database (a munged version of the specified numbering scheme from oftel.gov.uk). The perl version of it is trivial, using GDBM. -- David Cantrell
Re: The answer to the map and disc problem
On Tuesday, May 27, 2003 11:43 +0100 Steve Keay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 11:27:52AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: > The yanks will have to adopt metric one of these days. MUHAHA I'd settle for them having the right Imperial units to start with. ...and ISO paper sizes. And sensible date formats. Big endian I can cope with - 2003-05-27. Little endian I can cope with - 27/05/2003. Middle-endian is FUCKED UP and WRONG. -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Re: The answer to the map and disc problem
On Tuesday, May 27, 2003 11:02 +0100 Dominic Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Paul Makepeace wrote: Oh, and isn't it about time the Euro was adopted in the UK? I mean COME ON. We can't possibly adopt the Euro in the UK until my vt220 displays it correctly! -Dom (a paid up member of the unicode-for-everything brigade) Bugger Unicode. The letter E works just fine. And a quick Mac question - on this 'ere keyboard, the numeral three shares a key with the pound symbol and the hash symbol. The numeral 2 shares it with the at symbol and the euro symbol. Why, out of those six characters, are 2, 3, at, euro, and pound printed on the key, but hash isn't? -- David Cantrell Beekeeping is like being a lion tamer, but with smaller lions, and more of them. -- arp
Re: HTML! - JS (like BS but different)
On Saturday, March 29, 2003 23:30 + Robin Szemeti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Saturday 29 March 2003 19:23, Barbie [home] wrote: button.x.wibble.wobble.jelly.on.a.plate for added fun .. wrap your clicky image or submit button in tags .. that way JS enabled browsers get the joy of changing and submitting, non JS enabled browsers (or ones with JS turned off) get a button to click ... N!!! Why is this so complicated! -- David Cantrell What Would Special Circumstances Do?
Re: HTML! - JS (like BS but different)
On Saturday, March 29, 2003 18:34 + Leo Lapworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: roughly, IIRC. for the first form on the page, of course. Another way (this is off the top of my head) would be: ... Thanks chaps! -- David Cantrell What Would Special Circumstances Do?
HTML!
I have a couple of HTML questions ... How do I make a form submit itself when the user changes the value of a drop-down list? Mr. Elthek says Javascript, but a leetle bit more detail would be nice :-) And, seeing that it would be Just Wrong to make that the only way of submitting the form, I'm going to have a submit button too. How do I do that funky thang where you can just hit enter to make that button do its thang? I suppose I'd better explain why I want to do this ... on my web shite I have links to my amazon wishlists. Trouble is, those wishlists are shit - there's no way, for example, to show both my amazon.com and amazon.co.uk lists together, or to only show DVDs, or all sorts of other stuff. So I tried to use the new web services thing to suck all the data out of them. I failed, cos it requires all sorts of SOAP/XML/XSLT/WFAS crap which I don't understand. Muttley's WWW::Amazon::Wishlist screen-scraper did the job though, at least well enough for me to suck enough data out to work with. Anyway, I now have the data in a CSV file, which I am querying using DBD::CSV (yeah, overkill, but I'm lazy). I have it spitting out tables of data, plus the ability to filter by item type and by which species of amazon. But I want the HTML form to do magic. So there. Oh, and for some reason I can't add anything to my wishlist on amazon.co.uk, which is a good reason to host the damned thing myself. -- David Cantrell
Re: crackfuelled idea / nntp / message boards / bl*gs / mailinglists
On Friday, March 28, 2003 11:35 -0500 darren chamberlain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: * Simon Wistow [2003-03-27 20:34]: Write a NNTP plugin for Siesta. Posting mail to Usenet would be easy. Attached. (The preferences stuff isn't in there, though it's obvious where to put it.) So does this work both ways? I've seen mail-to-news systems that work OK, and news-to-mail too, but never managed to get both working together to my satisfaction. -- David Cantrell What Would Special Circumstances Do?
Re: Guy Langley/GB/ABNAMRO/NL is out of the office.
On Friday, March 28, 2003 01:10 + [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I will be out of the office starting 27/03/2003 and will not return until 01/04/2003. I sense much should-unsubscribe-instead-of-sending-autoreplies in you. -- David Cantrell What Would Special Circumstances Do?
Re: rugby
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003 22:17 + Joel Bernstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Maybe I'm silly, or maybe it's hidden upstairs, but I've never noticed a TV in the PoH... That's because, like all sensible landlords, Dan keeps the fucking thing turned off most of the time. But it *will* be showing the match. -- David Cantrell, experimenting with Weird Mac Mail Client
Re: rugby
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003 20:27 + Nicholas Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: There's also an Argentinian guy in our department. He kept a very low profile during a certain football match... Come to think of it, I haven't heard much about the Argentinian rugby team recently either. -- David Cantrell, experimenting with Weird Mac Mail Client
Re: rugby
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003 17:24 + Simon Wilcox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 15:59, Greg McCarroll wrote: Ok, its been talked about in the past, but does anyone have any plans for a london.pm meet up to watch Ireland kick Englands arse on sunday. How about somewhere nice and central as well, what about the pillars of hercules? or does someone have a better suggestion? I'm planning to be in a pub but obviously watching a different game to you as in my game, Ireland get their arse kicked by England :) Yes, I'll be watching the same game as Simon. At the Pillars of Hercules. In my new England shirt. If it arrives in time. -- David Cantrell, experimenting with Weird Mac Mail Client
Re: Wanted: new maintainer for Mail::SpamTest::Bayesian
On Monday, March 24, 2003 13:23 + Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I don't have time to maintain Mail::SpamTest::Bayesian, and it needs some bug fixes (as well as a maintainer who's still interested in using it). Anyone in London.pm fancy taking it over? Not me. However, the latest version of spamassassin does Bayesian Things, so maybe they'd be willing to take it over? -- David Cantrell, experimenting with Weird Mac Mail Client
Re: CPANPLUS and long pathnames
On Saturday, March 22, 2003 22:38 + Nicholas Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: So, still a "bug". Is @LongLink some sort of gnu-ism? The only place I've seen it is on OS X. it's part of the kludge that provides Unix-like filesystem semantics on HFS+ -- David Cantrell, experimenting with Weird Mac Mail Client
Re: c email libraries
On Friday, March 21, 2003 15:51 + "David M. Wilson" wrote: On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 02:37:24PM +, Lusercop wrote: Oh, absolutely, and I'm also well aware in this case that Dave has them. (bloody hell, I'm standing up for Cantrell, what's wrong with me?). That's OK, I won't hold it against you :-) In this case, an end-user (effectively) having trouble installing a library from source is a good indication of a failure on the part of the Linux distribution in use. If you'd been paying attention you would have noticed me say "OS X". If it isn't Linux, then take a look around, there are hundreds of sources of pre-compiled binaries (although maybe only tens of trustable sources). If you'd been paying attention you would have noticed me say "fink". I never implied David was complaining about the lack of the autotools, or the packaging format (he didn't even mention this). My point was that while c-client's build system and build instructions are unorthodox, it is not up to the end user to judge it's quality by these factors. It isn't up to the user to judge the quality of a piece of software by its documentation? What planet do you hail from? On Earth, poorly documented software is generally considered to be bad software. If it lacks "make install" - and this is a fairly new package, from an era when that is the usual thing to do regardless of what you think about GNUisms - then the author really should write "the usual place to put my headers is in directory $FOO." at the bare minimum. You will also not be aware that before ranting here, I asked for help on another mailing list. They were just as stumped about what was going wrong with c-client as I was. If you are a user and you cannot build a package, there's a good chance you shouldn't be trying to in the first place. I know that plenty of us joke about requiring computer licences just like driving licences, but ... [on compress] To provide the most hassle for any sysadmin who has to install it. Try looking for a gzip or bzip2 binary on a SunOS or IRIX default install. There's a whole world outside Linux/perl, Matthew. SunOS? Coo, haven't seen one of those for a LONG time! I'll grant you that gzip is rare on SunOS. SunOS is a rather old platform. On Solaris, on the other hand, gzip has always been available when I've needed it. There are trustworthy sources for all of the most useful GNU tools, and I install many of them myself. Not because I'm a Linux/GNU fanboy, but because they're bloody useful tools and AFAIC, having gzip on a machine is just as essential as having compress, tar and an editor. Don't talk to me. Please don't reply on-list either, a lot of people don't like listening to you. And a whole lot of people DO like him and think that despite the Lusercop's - errm, idiosyncrasies - he's a nice bloke who has plenty of useful things to say. If you don't want to hear from him, use the awesome power of procmail. -- David Cantrell, experimenting with Weird Mac Mail Client
Re: c email libraries
On Wednesday, March 19, 2003 10:36 + Simon Wistow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 10:17:34AM -, Blackwell, Lee [IT] said: http://freshmeat.net/projects/mail_cclient/?topic_id=35%2C809 It's a perl module thing to encapsulate the cclient stuff. I recently had to install c-client on this box so I could install mailsync. The instructions that come with c-client are WOEFULLY incomplete. It tells you how to compile it, but not what it calls the resulting library file, where to put it, or where the usual place for its header files is. And heaven forbid that you could just make install. Unfortunately the interface has a fair to middling suckage factor and, when I was helping with Acmemail it was *the* number one installation problem since you had you had to pop out of the automagic CPAN installation and then get people to do something like 1. Download the latest verison of cclient 2. look in the make file for your architecture code (say slx for linux) 3. make slx Although it could be several other alternatives for Linux, and both nxt and osx work for OS X, both needing different options in addition to the architecture code. Eventually I got fed up with dealing with software packaged by fuckwits, and spent three days installing and compiling fink/unstable, which has a mailsync (and c-client library of course) package which Just Works. -- David Cantrell
Re: Starting Again
On Wednesday, March 19, 2003 09:34 + S Watkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Paul Makepeace wrote: ... is where you keep warez, pr0n and rootkits. Naaah, you keep them in "." Tricky to see and difficult to remove without "tricks". Which reminds me, I really need to create /usr/local/bin/perl^M and /usr/bin/perl^M as symlinks, for users who upload CGIs with broken line-endings. -- David Cantrell
Re: [OT] PDA recommendation, and rants, and IMAP, and MTAconfiguration
On Tuesday, March 18, 2003 21:30 + Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Though be aware that Multimail's IMAP client is not standards-compliant; it falls over whenever it meets a fairly common server extension. And that would be ... what? -- David Cantrell
Re: Learning regular expressions
On Tuesday, March 18, 2003 11:29 + Greg McCarroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: * Mark Fowler ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: You'd be better off with the 2nd Edition. O'Reilly: 0-596-00289-0 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/ Shouldn't someone be reviewing this for the site? *looks down at the ground and shuffles feet nervously* You should have kept quiet, I wasn't going to be naming any names, what with me being the next person on the naughty list :-) If you (and that's you plural, for anyone else who owes a book review) don't have the time to do a thorough review of a book that you've got, then a shorter review of your first impressions, or of a few selected chapters, would still be useful. -- David Cantrell
Re: Starting Again
On Tuesday, March 18, 2003 11:59 + Mark Fowler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: bash$ ls -a # list _all_ files, inc. hidden in current dir bash$ ls -a foo # same for the directory foo ls -A is useful too - it does the same as -a but doesn't list . or ... That last one is .. followed by a full stop. Curse this Unix stuff. -- David Cantrell
Re: [OT] PDA recommendation, and rants, and IMAP, and MTAconfiguration
On Monday, March 17, 2003 12:28 + Paul Mison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 17/03/2003 at 11:45 +, Andy Williams \(IMAP HILLWAY\) wrote: 1) Get at my email using my mobile phone as the modem. I guess Bluetooth is the best way of doing this. 2) Read Word and Excel docs that people keep sending me g!! 3) Read PDF docs 4) Usual calendar type stuff. 5) Games for those boring train journeys :) Palm Tungsten Ts look nice (ie I don't have one), and do the Bluetooth thing. Down to £ 300, and come with a bundle of Documents to Go, I believe. So do some of the Sony handhelds, but they don't come with Bluetooth until they get very expensive indeed. But be aware that their 68k / old PalmOS emujlation is a bit crap, so older applications may not work properly despite it being meant to be sdrawkcab combatible. Personally, I'd say don't bother using a PDA for email, the interface is just crap. If you must, then use Multimail - which I *think* Palm have bought and bundle with new devices, which will send/receive via the hotsync cradle and your desktop machine*. If you're happy using black and white and infrared, you can do all this with pretty much any low end Palm OS machine, but make sure Documents to Go gets bundled. Reading MS documents is not really practical for the same reason that mail isn't practical - the interface simply isn't designed for that sort of document. At an absolute minimum you'll lose ALL the formatting plus any dynamic content such as automagically calculated ToCs. Forget about editing them as the software doesn't support that. Use the right device for the task - that is, a PDA for your calendar, address book, reading books etc. Use a laptop for email and for reading weird proprietary formats. * - on the subject of unusual mail clients, I'm trying out Mulberry. It has many interesting quirks and missing features. Like the ability to sort my mailbox without having to dick around with mouse and menus, and it doesn't seem to like syncing to an IMAP server when there are deleted messages in my inbox. It sees the messages on the server, but just plain refuses to download them. This is irritating. And it does *not* do disconnected IMAP properly like what Multimail and mailsync do. With Mulberry, you can't apply changes to both versions of your mailbox nad have it just Do The Right Thing. It seems to implement disconnected operations by recording what you do and playing it back later. Really Fucking Stupid. Changes are keyed to msgid, so if you ever have two messages in your mailbox with the same msgid (which is legal) I know that it will break horribly. Bah. Grrr. Thankfully, I just finished recompiling the universe on my ibook - needed to get fink unstable, then upgrade about 300 packages so that that worked, and only then could I install the one package - mailsync - that I wanted. Then hopefully I'll be able to wrap real IMAP around mutt. Just one more thing to do, I need to figger out MTA-fu so that I can transparently send mail but have it queued locally until I get a network connection. It works for immediate sending, but deferred sending just drops messages on the floor. Which is irritating. -- David Cantrell
Re: User-mode Linux (was: Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6)
On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 10:58:10AM +, Peter Sergeant wrote: > 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... I mailed them after your previous post, asking about things like their backups, CPU quotas, VMs' memory being swapped out and stuff, and never heard anything back. -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | 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: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6
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: Learning regular expressions
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
Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6
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: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 09:19:01AM +1100, Damian Conway wrote: > Piers Cawley wrote: > >Oi!**2 Yeah, I know it's in quote marks, but even so. Especially > >coming from someone who's perpetrated Perl in Klingon. > Well, if you're going to ignore significant quotations marks, I thought > you'd be *delighted*. Now you can cite me as having publicly stated: > ...Piers is perfectly capable of coding equally cleverly > in Python, or Java, or Pascal or any other language. Speaking as someone who is taking over a bunch of code written by someone else, I am thankful from the top of my funky hat to the bottom of my little cotton socks (and that's a good 6'5" of thankfulness which I think you'll agree adds up to a whole lot of "thankyou very much") that the original programmer didn't try to do anything clever. In fact, it's nigh-on readable. No doubt I've missed some pramga near the beginning which swaps all the letters and punctuation characters, or sumfink. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" -- H. L. Mencken
BOOK: XSLT Cookbook
If anyone - not on the naughty list - wants to review the XSLT Cookbook they can grab it off me at the tech meet. -- Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Nuke a disabled unborn gay baby whale for JESUS!
Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6
On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 01:49:09PM +, Simon Wistow wrote: > "Apocalypse 7: Formats > > Gone from the core. See Damian." That's a pity. I used one for the first time a couple of weeks ago :-) -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Pressure was growing last night for the global "war on terror" to be broadened to take in a wide range of other 'rogue emotions' including horror, shock and a general feeling of bewilderment about the state of the world.-- The Brains Trust
Re: Anyone have a spare Sun Keyboard ?
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 12:42:25PM +, the hatter wrote: > On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Leo Lapworth wrote: > > Does anyone have a spare Sun Keyboard I can > > borrow for a month (I'd like to pick it up at > > the tech meet and give it back the social after). > If I'm not organised enough on thursday, that'll be where this one is > coming from. Might be worth blowing 40 quid (or thereabouts) on a new > country kit, when you're in less of a hurry. And getting over your > aversion of using serial consoles. I have a spare Sun keyboard I can sell you. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 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
Re: regrouping lines of STDIN - Outlook does what it wants
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 11:42:51AM -, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Still, it's Lent, humility and no alchohol the order of the 40 days. Are you sure you're on the right list? -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david There are many different types of sausages. The best are from the north of England. The wurst are from Germany. -- seen in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Emergency pub meet, NOW
I need to have beer. If anyone else has a similar craving, ring me on 07979 866 975 to find out what pub I'll be in. -- Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david It requires zero configuration once you're configured properly -- pudge, talking about Rendezvous (zeroconf) in Jagwyre
Re: A sad announcement
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 09:24:48AM +, Lusercop wrote: > On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 04:26:11PM +0000, David Cantrell wrote: > > It is with regret that I have to announce the passing of my Copious Free > > Time, as I have imminent unrecovery. I shall shortly be back doing > > programming with a side-order of adminning. > Where? As a fairy programmer? Yup, look, I have the little wings and everything! -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Us Germans take our humour very seriously -- German cultural attache talking to the Today Programme, about the German supposed lack of a sense of humour, 29 Aug 2001
Re: [ANNOUNCE] Linuxbierwanderung date and venue
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 04:35:06PM +, Dirk Koopman wrote: > On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 00:32, David Cantrell sigged: > > David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv > Isn't this .sig now out of date, or have you been having us on? I think > we should all be told... It was correct when I sent the mail, it just took ages to get approved. [glares at appropriate people] (apologies if this mail looks like crap, I'm using a shitty PC and the terminal emulation is bokrked so i'm typing this partially blind) -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Willing to accept a lower economic "standard of living" in return for higher quality of life
[ANNOUNCE] Linuxbierwanderung date and venue
This year's LBW will be held from the 9th to the 17th of August, in the village of Tajov, near Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. Details linked from http://www.linuxbierwanderung.org/ -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv " Norton Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal values. " -- from the manual of Norton Systemworks 2002, pg 160
A sad announcement
It is with regret that I have to announce the passing of my Copious Free Time, as I have imminent unrecovery. I shall shortly be back doing programming with a side-order of adminning. Commiseration drinks will happen shortly. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv There are many different types of sausages. The best are from the north of England. The wurst are from Germany. -- seen in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Re: mailsewer etiquette
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 09:27:34AM +, Jason Clifford wrote: > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, David Cantrell wrote: > > especially as he sends a 450, which is SO wrong, as I damned well know that > > the destination address exists. > It's not the recipient address his server is bitching about but rather the > sender address. According to RFC 821, a 450 status means "mailbox unavailable". > Are you really seeing so many messags that it has become a serious issue > for you? No, it's just a bit irritating. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. -- Richard Dawkins
mailsewer etiquette
I run a secondary MX for an ex-colleague's domain, in exchange for him doing the same for me. I have noticed recently that particular messages get stuck in my queue for him, despite his server being up. Judging from the sender addresses, they're spam. Question is - is it polite for him to reject messages coming from his MX secondaries, for reasons such as ... 2003-03-03 18:05:00 18ptde-0002y1-00 == [EMAIL PROTECTED] T=remote_smtp defer (0): SMTP error from remote mailer after MAIL FROM:<27155_12766_200303031042~2602e1f [EMAIL PROTECTED]> SIZE=3673: host mailroute r.latency.net [209.123.200.18]: 450 <27155_12766_200303031042~2602e1fd06ada994ea [EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Sender address rejected: Domain not found especially as he sends a 450, which is SO wrong, as I damned well know that the destination address exists. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv This is nice. Any idea what body-part it is?
Re: spamassassin
On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 08:09:27PM +, Steve Keay wrote: > On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 06:55:51PM +, Paul Makepeace wrote: > > Why? You're going to get mail, so it'll get started. And it doesn't > > spontaneously exit of its own accord so why not just start it by a > > known, standard mechanism? > These mostly assume you have root. My favorite is to run daemons out > of inittab so they automatically start if they exit. Well, it's my box so I do have root, but even so it's a pain to have to do it, cos that would first require noticing that spam wasn't getting filtered. Which means getting spam in my mailbox. Which is bad. I'd forgotten about running stuff out of inittab though - I don't often go delving in there. It's a bit of a nasty hack though. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv " We must get users past their misunderstandings of uptime. A reboot doesn't mean that anything broke, there is no hardware or software corrective action taken, so there wasn't any real downtime. " -- overheard in an MS strategy meeting
Re: spamassassin
On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 06:55:51PM +, Paul Makepeace wrote: > Why? You're going to get mail, so it'll get started. And it doesn't > spontaneously exit of its own accord so why not just start it by a > known, standard mechanism? So you've never had a daemon randomly quit on you? -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems.-- jwz
Re: spamassassin
On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 06:01:32PM +, Steve Keay wrote: > On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 05:41:43PM +0000, David Cantrell wrote: > > Hooray, spamc/spamd compiled successfully this time - in previous releases > > they wouldn't compile on this machine and I couldn't be arsed to work out > > why. So I'm gonna use 'em. Is it as simple a matter as running spamd in > > the background, and s/spamassassin/spamc/ in my .procmailrc? > Yup, although you probably want to find a way to start spamd after a > reboot. Better would be to have the procmail recipe that fires off spamc first check that spamd is running and start it if necessary, methinks. Urgh, shell programming is nasty enough at the best of times, but mix it with procmail and . -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced
spamassassin
Hooray, spamc/spamd compiled successfully this time - in previous releases they wouldn't compile on this machine and I couldn't be arsed to work out why. So I'm gonna use 'em. Is it as simple a matter as running spamd in the background, and s/spamassassin/spamc/ in my .procmailrc? -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv emacs: for a brave GNU Word -- cdevers, in #london.pm
Re: [PUB] Report on The Windmill
On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 02:59:09PM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: > Food: the evening menu is not large, but of good quality. There is only > one vegetarian option - grilled halloumi sandwich (GBP4.95) and no vegan > options other than chips, though you might be able to convince them to > give you some (rather nice) side salad with it. They have a restaurant upstairs which - presumably - has a wider selection, and I'd be surprised if they refused to serve that stuff to us in the function room. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv o/~ we wish you a merry currency and a happy new euro o/~
Re: London.pm Aptitude Test
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 04:27:59PM +0100, Philip Newton wrote: > On 27 Feb 2003 at 14:25, CyberTiger wrote: > > Do you like pie ? > > Do you like kittens ? > > Do you like Buffy ? > > Do you like beer ? > > I'm sure I missed a few things, feel free to add some more :) > Do you like ponys? Do you prefer Willow? -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv Wow, my first sigquoting! I feel so special now! -- Dan Sugalski
Re: London.pm Aptitude Test
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 06:47:41AM -0800, Dave Cross wrote: > From: CyberTiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Do you like pie ? > > Do you like kittens ? > > Do you like Buffy ? > > Do you like beer ? > Hmmm. 2 out of 4. That's not very good. I'm sure I'm more than > 50% suited to be in london.pm. Your test must be broken. Perhaps he should use Test::FlavourOfTheMonth. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv It would be reasonable to judge cannabis less of a threat to health than alcohol or tobacco ... this should be borne in mind by social legislators who, disapproving of other people's indulgences, seek to make them illegal. -- The Lancet, Volume 352, Number 9140, 14 November 1998
Re: Perl jobs in London?
On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 10:35:38AM +, Nigel Hamilton wrote: > Unfortunately some agents do a naive acronym match, between job spec and > your CV. > > Because they often can't discriminate between the important acronyms and > the less important ... they often wait until they find a CV that is fully > 'acronym compliant.' Which is why I *always* phone the pimp before sending in my CV, ostensibly to find out whether I've already applied for that job through another agency, but really so that I can explain to them just how well my skills fit even if I don't mention all the right buzzwords. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv See the creativity that comes from misery! Without misery people who would otherwise relax at home with a drink are spurred to great heights of expression. Art thrives on constraint and unhappiness. -- Arp
Re: repeating dates
On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 01:17:27PM +, Simon Wistow wrote: > On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 12:26:14PM +, alex said: > > I wonder if it's possible to store the crontabs in an SQL table (with > > columns for seconds, hours, days, months and day of week) and construct > > an SQL statement that would match events within a certain date range? > # pseudo code to make an sql statement > # that will find all events that match on 24 feb 2003 > > where (day=24 or day=* or day='/1' or day='/2' >or day='/3 or day='/4' > or day='/6' or day='/8' > or day='/12' or day='/24') > and (month='2' or month='*' or month='/1' or month='/2') > and (year=2003 or year='*' or year like '/%') Of course, crontab entries have no year field. But you're stuffed if the month (for instance) looks like 1-4,8,10-12. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Re: Stokers Required
On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 09:19:56AM +, Mark Fowler wrote: > On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, Leon Brocard wrote: > > I wonder if more people are interested in this kind of thing. Is > > anyone interested in a weekly learning Perl evening? Perhaps something > > like reading through Learning Perl a chapter a week with assignments, > > a mailing list, and a real life meet every week. > The problem I foresee with this is picking a night of the week that is the > impracticality of the cat herding. Simply picking a night of the week > where everyone who wants to be involved is free and doesn't have > faimly/work/social commitments is always a problem. Then do what I do with sinema trips - pick a date and if a few people can't make it, tough. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv Perl may be the best solution for processing a text file, but asking a group of Perl Mongers clearly isn't -- aef, in #london.pm
Re: get/put or read/write
On Sun, Feb 23, 2003 at 12:06:53PM +, Simon Wistow wrote: > 2. Should I provide legacy get_word and get_dword (or read_(d)word) > which give back 32 ints. Or should give back a native word size and give > method to force an n-bit architecture (there's already a set_endian > method) Why not supply both - both legacy methods *and* a method to set the word length for all other methods. How, BTW, are you detecting the native word size? This is hard to even DEFINE on some systems - for example, it's fairly common on SGI and Sun systems to run a mixture of 32- and 64-bit software. Even if you have a 32-bit perl, you might be using File::Binary to work with a file generated by a 64-bit program, or vice versa. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv There are many different types of sausages. The best are from the north of England. The wurst are from Germany. -- seen in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Re: YAPC::Europe & War
On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 10:40:47AM -0500, Mark Rogaski wrote: > An entity claiming to be David H. Adler ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > : On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 10:21:16AM +, Leon Brocard wrote: > : > This email got sent to the YAPC::Europe committee mailing list. I > : > thought I'd share it all with you. It's slightly worrying that USians > : > are taking it personally. > : I *really* hope he's not representative. > Sadly, I fear he is. Who cares, if it keeps the excessively stupid out of *my* continent, I'm happy. And it means more fine food and fine beer (oh, no, wait, we're talking about france - mediocre overpriced wine then) for sane people. -- David Cantrell | Looking for work | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/cv Willing to accept a lower economic "standard of living" in return for higher quality of life
[ANNOUNCE] Croydon.pm drinks
Just a quick reminder, you're all invited to have some beer in Croydon this evening, at the Dog n Bull on Surrey St from 6pm-ish onwards. http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=532230&Y=165527&A=Y&Z=1 Nearest station is East Croydon. Nearest tram stops are George St and Church St. Or get the 250 bus from Brixton and walk from West Croydon. -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david I hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year ... -- Linus Torvalds, in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Re: Simple cryto script
On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 03:01:35PM -, Neil Fryer wrote: > I found this script on the net, and I am still learning, Perl, but I was > wondering, just to play around with, if this script encrypts, how would I > decrypt? > > http://www.ca-osi.com/print.php?sid=127 It doesn't encrypt, and so you can't decrypt. The crypt() function is one- way, and is intended to let you store sensitive information like passwords in a non-readable form. Then, when someone provides a password for their login, you encrypt (hash, more accurately) what they provided and compare it with the hashed version you have stored. If they match, then it is assumed that the password provided matches and you allow login. Use of crypt() for this is deprecated, nowadays you should be using MD5 or - preferably - SHA1 for your password-hashing needs. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Pressure was growing last night for the global "war on terror" to be broadened to take in a wide range of other 'rogue emotions' including horror, shock and a general feeling of bewilderment about the state of the world.-- The Brains Trust
Re: YAPC::Europe & War
On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 11:58:28AM +, Lusercop wrote: > I doubt it will have been melted down, more likely instantly vapourised, > I suspect. And it will probably be friendly-fire that bombs london by the > USAF, because they got their maps upside-down, too. I dreamt last night of WW2-stylee landing craft sailing up Regent St. -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Usenet is a co-operative venture, backed by nasty people. Follow the standards. -- Chris Rovers, in the Monastery
books 7015b70ef5c6b8d88f27ffd6d063425e
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 04:23:24PM +, Mark Fowler wrote: > On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Simon Wistow wrote: > > His 5th step is "If any two members of the root set have the same > > subject, merge them. This is so that messages which don't have > > References headers at all still get threaded (to the extent possible, at > > least.)" > I actually got bit by this last month, as Mr Cantrell had started more > than one thread with the subject "books" and pine's very immature > threading couldn't cope. My apologies for lack of imagination. In future I shall take an md5 hash of the message body and append that to the subject. Like this. Hello spam filters. -- David Cantrell | Sysadmin/programmer for hire | [EMAIL PROTECTED] I hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year ... -- Linus Torvalds, in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Re: Language Gentlemen and Ladies
On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 08:28:14PM +, the hatter wrote: > They might allow other 'common' web ports, such as 8000 and 8080 on other > servers, maybe give that a go. If they do, you can run your own sshd on > any machine you happen to have non-root access. If they allow packets straight out to those ports then yes. But normally they'll use an http proxy, which will nto pass your ssh packets. Hence me recommending http tunnel. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david For every vengeance, there is an equal and opposite revengeance. -- Cartoon Law X
Re: Perl / UTF-8 (Was Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe)
On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 08:56:01PM +, Nicholas Clark wrote: > Given the feedback on suggestions about perl debugger tutorials, I > don't think many perl *users* use the debugger, so to me that explains why > no-one in the world noticed it sooner. To most perl users, the debugger is > not fundamental. I'd use it if I knew how . -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Considering the number of wheels Microsoft has found reason to invent, one never ceases to be baffled by the minuscule number whose shape even vaguely resembles a circle. -- anon, on Usenet
Re: Language Gentlemen and Ladies
On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 04:10:20PM +, Shevek wrote: > On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Newton, Philip wrote: > > As in our lovely firewall which doesn't allow *any* outside access except by > > proxy (which basically reduces it to HTTP and HTTPS). > Can you cheat via an https proxy? https proxy? yay for man-in-the-middle fun! http tunnel might be more useful. I used to operate one end of such a tunnel for one of the fine gents in this august forum, and could set it up again. It works just fine through http proxies. The usual way of working is to run ssh through the http tunnel, and then whatever the hell you want through ssh. Of course, it's *not* fool-proof, as the large number of HTTP POSTs coming from your workstation will be, errm, noteworthy, to your local security wookie. -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david When a woman has a man on a string, controlling his every thought and motion, backbone in said man is not a requirement. -- Ken, in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Re: Language optimality (was WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap)
I suggest people read this paper by Brother Kernighan: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/bwk/interps/pap.html (IIRC there's something similar in The Practice of Programming too) Which shows that for certain tasks, perl is as fast as *or faster than* C. Although it does use rather old versions of perl. If you're going to argue about speed, I want to see meaningful benchmarks, otherwise you're just engaging in idle speculation. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david For every vengeance, there is an equal and opposite revengeance. -- Cartoon Law X
Re: C irritations
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 08:51:56PM +, David Cantrell wrote: > Now, I've run into another problem... OK, so I forgot to restart the daemon. BLAM BLAM BLAM -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david I guess that, if you're in Microsoft's shoes, it makes sense. If you can't write software or protocols that can stably walk and chew gum, program in a limit that prevents the user from telling it to do so. -- Jonathan Patschke, talking about limitations in Active Directory
Re: C irritations
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 08:13:55PM +, Paul Makepeace wrote: > Taken directly from Chris Lightfoot's tpop3d's source, ... Heh. I found so many other little annoyances that would need fixing in the C code I was trying to get working that I'm now re-writing it in perl. Now, I've run into another problem. AFAICT from RingTFM, if I have a line in inetd.conf like ... $port blah blah blah $user /path/foo wibble cluck bark then when someone tickles $port, /path/foo should get run (which it does) with arguments wibble cluck and bark (which it doesn't seem to be). /me growls -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life -- Samuel Johnson
C irritations
I have this 'ere code:
int do_auth(char *user, char *pass) {
struct passwd *pwnam;
pwnam = getpwnam(user);
if(pwnam == NULL)
return FALSE;
if(strcmp(crypt(pass, pwnam->pw_passwd), pwnam->pw_passwd) == 0)
return TRUE;
return FALSE;
}
which AFAICT should work correctl for an ordinary passwd file. Except
that I'm using shadow passwords, and pwnam->pw_passwd contains the ever-
so-useful string 'x'. What do I need to do to get it wurking?
--
Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
I guess that, if you're in Microsoft's shoes, it makes sense. If you
can't write software or protocols that can stably walk and chew gum,
program in a limit that prevents the user from telling it to do so.
-- Jonathan Patschke, talking about limitations in Active Directory
connection pooling (was: Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe)
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 01:46:20PM +, Joel Bernstein wrote: > On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 01:35:37PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: > > If you really want the integration with Apache, then fine, but if you > > are just trying to avoid recompiling CGI scripts with every hit, and > > maybe pooling a DB connectino or two then there are simpler ways of > > doing it. > I don't know of any way to pool 2 or 3 db connections between half a > dozen C CGI programs, for example. DBI::ProxyServer would be a good place to start if you're using perl. If you're using C, well that's nothing to do with mod_perl anyway. -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david It would be reasonable to judge cannabis less of a threat to health than alcohol or tobacco ... this should be borne in mind by social legislators who, disapproving of other people's indulgences, seek to make them illegal. -- The Lancet, Volume 352, Number 9140, 14 November 1998
scaling (was: Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe)
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 01:35:37PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: > Also, I would guess that well written C++ is faster than well written > perl for some tasks. For nigh-on all tasks! But remember, programmer time costs a lot more than run time. >And I would guess based on guessing that IIS scales > better over multiple CPUs than Linux/apache Not really. Linux (on x86) scales well to two processors, and pretty well to four. Above four it's a bit uurgh. Apache likewise, as the OS will Do The Right Thing and run different apache processes on different processors. NT (and therefore I assume Win2K) scales pretty similarly. Above four CPUs, you need a custom version of NT, and you don't get a great deal of benefit anyway. IIRC IIS runs multi-threaded instead of as multiple processes, but again, the OS tends to distribute threads across all the available processors in a fairly sane way. As you stated (in the bit I've snipped out) it's more common to parallelise across many small machines than to have a small number of honking great big ones*, so the point is rather moot. And please remember, Linux is not the only Apache platform. * - those multiple small machines might be partitions of a single big machine of course, like a Sun Ebignum or some IBM behemoth. -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Educating this luser would be something to frustrate even the unflappable Yoda and make him jam a lightsaber up his arse while screaming "praise evil, the Dark Side is your friend!". -- Derek Balling, in the Monastery
Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 01:22:10PM +, robin szemeti wrote: > On Monday 10 February 2003 12:36, David Cantrell wrote: > > Issues like excessive memory use, and problems with database connections > > being able to hang the whole web server. > [yes, but @ways_around_it] There are ways to mitigate the problems, but you can't make them entirely go away. Consequently you end up limiting your mod_perl use and go back to using CGI for a load of stuff instead, saving mod_perl for a few carefully chosen tasks. -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" -- H. L. Mencken
Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 11:43:45AM +, Joel Bernstein wrote: > On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 11:35:45AM +0000, David Cantrell wrote: > > Mod_perl also has other, errm, "problems" which can preclude using it in > > very busy or very large environments, or at least limit its use. > Apart from the standard win32 limitations? Are you referring to mod_perl > on win32 or mod_perl in general? I wasn't aware of any major performance > issues related to large-scale use of mod_perl on (say) solaris... mod_perl in general. Issues like excessive memory use, and problems with database connections being able to hang the whole web server. -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david With ... the fact that Linux has become so easy to install that certain species of bacteria are now being hired by MIS departments, what was once the domain of rigorously trained, highly specialized professionals has devolved into the Dark Land of the Monkeys. -- Greg Knauss
Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe
On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 11:12:00AM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: > Mod_perl provides distinctly poor performance under load on windoze boxes > because it runs as a single thread instead of multi-threaded, which means > that you can only ever serve one request at a time. Mod_perl also has other, errm, "problems" which can preclude using it in very busy or very large environments, or at least limit its use. -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it-- Agatha Christie
Re: Anyone for a pub meet? South of the Thames?
On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 12:54:36AM +, Natalie S. Ford wrote: > So, is it just going to be the two of you? I may be able to make it > - Croydon is a bit easier than London for me... Yeah, looks like just the two (or three) of us. A small, select gathering, without the hoi-polloi from up north :-) -- Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david emacs: for a brave GNU Word -- cdevers, in #london.pm
Re: stat
On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 10:21:31AM +, Lusercop wrote: > stat(1) would be useful to be in the SUS, > possibly as a shell builtin. (I suppose it could also be an extension to > test(1), given that that's where all the file mode operations are). It's > difficult to see how you'd present the output in a nice way suitable for > doing shell-scripting, however. My version will, if just given a filename, report the desired value for that file: 502$ stat -size Linux 1871128575 If given a value to compare to, it is silent but sets the exit status to 0 or 1 depending on whether the file matches or not: 503$ stat -size Linux 1871128575 504$ echo $? 0 505$ stat -size Linux 1234 506$ echo $? 1 The latter is jolly useful in a script. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david WARNING! People in front of screen are stupider than they appear -- Tanuki the Raccoon-dog, in the Monastery
Mailing list archaeology
I'm running folderstat over all the messages in my archive. The results will be in the same place as the mboxes once it's finished crunching through 100Mb of messages. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david o/~ we wish you a merry currency and a happy new euro o/~
Books
Tomorrow, I will have with me the following books: Practical C++ Programming XSLT Cookbook Programming Webservices in Perl 802.11 Security Oracle in a Nutshell They are earmarked for the following people: Adrian Scottow Pete Sergeant Dean Wilson Leo Lapworth Richard Clamp If any of you won't be there, please let me know so that I don't have to hump your book across town. If you are there, please collect the book from me, if you do not, I'll give it to someone else for review. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david I often reflect that if "privileges" had been called "responsibilities" or "duties", I would have saved thousands of hours explaining to people why they were only gonna get them over my dead body. -- Lee K. Gleason in comp.org.decus
stat
Today, I needed to stat() in a shell script. After solving my immediate problem with a perl one-liner, I went on to write a proper command-line tool to do the job. http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/tech/stat -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Gehyrst þu, sælida, hwæt þis folc segeð? Hi willað eow to gafole garas syllan, ættrynne ord and ealde swurd, þa heregeatu þe eow æt hilde ne deah. -- Brithnoth
Re: WWW::Map::UK::Streetmap - A tale of woe
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 06:12:26PM +, Dave Cross wrote: > This really is ancient history. I think it was very soon after the mailing > list started up (so well over four years ago). > > My copy of that mailbox has long since gone awol, but some of the other > pioneers might well have a copy. http://www.barnyard.co.uk/list-archives/london.pm/ user/passwd: pony/pie You want the 1998 mailbox. Isn't it a Good Thing that I asked Dave for a copy of his archives from the list's early days a couple of years ago. It looks like $streetmap_person didn't contact the list originally, it started with one of us moaning on-list about it being slow. After a few posts, Dave mailed streetmap offering our services. They certainly seemed interested, judging by the reply which you forwarded to the list. Penny Bamborough from streetmap joined the list a few days later. Oh how naive we were at the time. Here's a few choice snippets, with names removed to protect the guilty. " I'm pretty sure that as London.pm we could knock out a pretty good solution for them. If it were to extended into TPI and related folks it could become a pretty credible OpenSource project. " " > FYI, http://uk.multimap.com/map/places.cgi is faster... Hah! It won't be once we've rewritten streetmap.co.uk in Perl. " " > I gues what we need is a 'streetmap tsar' who can co-ordinate us and liase > with StreetMap. I might be able to shoe horn in some to time for that. " " Seriously, The SQL solution seems more sensible to me. " " The site currently serves >35,000 hits per day and runs on a UUNET Windows NT 4.0 server with a 10Mb link to their Internet backbone. Because of the technology, we have to rent the whole box for ourselves (15k pa) " (coo, what a HUGE load :-) " For a perl beginner, cgi-lib is probably better than CGI.pm as the syntax is simpler. " " he proclaims that 'all CGI programs should run under ... -Tw ... use strict' [...] Hmph. Could'a fooled me. " -- David Cantrell | Data Archaeologist | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david I hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year ... -- Linus Torvalds, in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Re: Anyone for a pub meet? South of the Thames?
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 08:42:03PM +, Phil Pereira wrote: > David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Slightly more seriously - how about the Dog n Bull on Surrey St? > Just to confirm, this is the pub location: > http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?client=&pc=CR01RG Yup. > I'm pre-booked for next Monday, however, Thursday (13th Feb) is good with me! Just >say the time and I'll meet you there ... as well as anyone else who'd like to come :) 6pm onwards. -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david " We must get users past their misunderstandings of uptime. A reboot doesn't mean that anything broke, there is no hardware or software corrective action taken, so there wasn't any real downtime. " -- overheard in an MS strategy meeting
Re: Anyone for a pub meet? South of the Thames?
On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 11:02:57PM +, Phil Pereira wrote: > David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The next meet is next Thursday - not that far away. But sure, I'd not mind > > meeting up for a few geeky drinks. Maybe we could call it Croydon.pm :-) > Croydon.pm it is! Now for a venue - any ideas which pub? Railway Tavern, Thornton Heath. Why no, it being a coupla hundred yards from my flat has nothing to do with that :-) Slightly more seriously - how about the Dog n Bull on Surrey St? > I'm thinking Monday / Tuesday, leaving Thursday for the "official" meet? Tuesdays are awkward for me. I could do next Monday, or Thursday week. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems.-- jwz
Re: Anyone for a pub meet? South of the Thames?
On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 03:03:57PM +, Phil Pereira wrote: > Seeing as I have yet to meet you all - and the next official meeting is a few weeks >away; anyone for a pub meet more towards "my area"? The next meet is next Thursday - not that far away. But sure, I'd not mind meeting up for a few geeky drinks. Maybe we could call it Croydon.pm :-) -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Vegetables are what food eats
Re: REVIEW: XML and Perl
I've posted this on the web site. -- David Cantrell|Degenerate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Do not be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave -- Fergus Henderson
Re: Book Press Releases
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:44:35AM +, Alex McLintock wrote: > I'm looking for one or more people to help me out with the computer book > review section on my website. In particular I want some people I can email > press releases too so that they can cut and paste bits onto the > DiverseBooks.com website if they are interesting. I'm puzzled, why would you want to put press releases on there? I thouhgt divrsebooks was book reviews. -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david With ... the fact that Linux has become so easy to install that certain species of bacteria are now being hired by MIS departments, what was once the domain of rigorously trained, highly specialized professionals has devolved into the Dark Land of the Monkeys. -- Greg Knauss
Re: dragons
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 02:19:44PM +, the hatter wrote: > On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Ben wrote: > > Is anyone thinking of going to this tonight? > > http://www.tateandegglive.com/event1_cai.html > Mmm, fire, fireworks, explosions. I might be tempted. Sounds like fun. -- Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david WARNING! People in front of screen are stupider than they appear -- Tanuki the Raccoon-dog, in the Monastery
Re: $host->ip_address
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 11:34:02AM +, Joel Bernstein wrote: > Um, perhaps I'm missing something, but by definition a hostname is a name > which translates directly (via A, or A6) records to an IP address, or > indirectly (via a CNAME to another hostname which then resolves to an > IP). How could a hostname /not/ have an IP address? It could be a host name in some other networking system, such as DECNET or Appletalk. Or it could be a purely local hostname - this machine what I'm typing on right now is ibook.local, which doesn't resolve to 10.0.2.2 (the machine's IP address) which in turn doesn't resolve to anything. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david While researching this email, I was forced to carry out some investigative work which unfortunately involved a bucket of puppies and a belt sander -- after JoeB, in the Monastery
Fwd: London Sci-Fi film festival
> http://www.sci-fi-london.com/programme.htm > > Some interesting stuff here: > > * 'Solaris' on the big screen on Saturday > * A PKD documentary > * Westworld/Soylent Green double bill on Sunday -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david There is no sigmonster
Re: SQL switcheroo
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 02:16:58AM +, Paul Makepeace wrote: > I'd like to switch the values of a field in two rows. > 1->2 while 2->1, say. > > I have a table containing: > > => select * from pageplans order by rank; > id | parent | child | rank | loopable | required > ++---+--+--+-- > 3 | 2 | 5 |1 | f| t > 5 | 2 | 7 |2 | f| t > 14 | 2 | 3 |3 | t| f > 2 | 2 | 4 |4 | f| t > > [etc] > > So there are a bunch of things "order by rank". I'd like to implement a > move up/down in SQL. So say the target was id=20 moving up, I'd like its > rank to become 1, and id=10's rank to become 2. > > Basically I need a simultaneous update, set rank=rank+1, set rank=rank-1 > What I'd like to avoid is having to perform a select to pull out the ids > of the two rows (where rank=? or rank=?+1) BEGIN TRANSACTION UPDATE pageplans SET rank=(SELECT rank+1 FROM pageplans WHERE id=20) WHERE id=20 UPDATE pageplans SET rank=(SELECT rank-1 FROM pageplans WHERE id=10) WHERE id=10 COMMIT Or summat like that, haven't written any SQL for ages. Or use a stored procedure. -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david May your blessings always outweigh your blotches! -- Dianne van Dulken, in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Re: How to split 6 digits into 3 lots of 2
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:49:40AM +0100, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 11:35:29PM +, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 11:22:48PM +, Phil Pereira wrote:
> > > Is there an easy way to split "123456" into "12-34-56"?
> > $ perl -lne 'print "$1-$2-$3" if /(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)/'
> > This should start a good TIMTOWTDI thread :)
> If you insist:
> echo 123456 | perl -lne 'print join "-", /../g'
Harrumph. Back in my day we didn't have perl, we had to chisel our
programs into lumps of coal in just the right way that the patterns
in the smoke would display the right result. We used incantations
like this:
echo 123456 | awk 'BEGIN {FS=""} {print $1$2"-"$3$4"-"$5$6}'
--
David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
Usenet is a co-operative venture, backed by nasty people.
Follow the standards.
-- Chris Rovers, in the Monastery
Re: Drink for Peace? [[was: [PUB] Spread Eagle, NW1]]
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:26:50AM +, alex wrote: > how about we meet up for drinks after attending the "Stop the > War" rally [1] on February 15th. who would like to propose some venues > (after 5:30 in the hyde park vicinity)? What a jolly good idea. I've always wanted to turn up to something like that with a "Fascists for Peace" or suchlike banner ;-) -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david While researching this email, I was forced to carry out some investigative work which unfortunately involved a bucket of puppies and a belt sander -- after JoeB, in the Monastery
Re: [PUB] The Windmill, Mayfair
On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 12:13:37PM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: > Spotted this on grubstreet and just phoned them up. > > http://grault.net/cgi-bin/grubstreet.pl?Windmill,_W1S_2AT > http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=529001&Y=180921&A=Y&Z=1 It's a jolly good pub. -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david It's my experience that neither users nor customers can articulate what it is they want, nor can they evaluate it when they see it -- Alan Cooper
Re: YAPC::Europe
On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 01:53:38PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: > So - who's going and how long do people want to stay ? > > Right now I'm thinking travel on the 22nd and return on the 26th. I suggest returning on the 27th, so we have a full day outside the conference for debuachery. -- Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david If you're doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit, not with the Good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal -- W.S.Burroughs, "Words of Advice for Young People"
Re: [PUB] Rising Sun, Ebury Bridge Road, Victoria
On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:25:54AM +, Simon Wistow wrote: > This is the pub we went to last night after the tech meet. > It's located here : > http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=528497&Y=178425&A=Y&Z=1 > > A Young's pub which *is* currently selling Winter Warmer and Double > Chocolate stout. About 2.40 UKP for a pint of excellent Winter Warmer. The Special was jolly good earlier in the evening, but a little ropey later - perhaps it was just the end of the barrel or sumfink. The bar staff seemed a bit overwhelmed when we all turned up, so if we do use this for socials we'd better warn the manglement. > Downsides, I suspect, are that people may think it's too far to walk > (being a whole 10 minutes from either Victoria or Sloane Square, > although there are buses that run near) and the no vege pub food. As for it being too far south, we've used pubs that some people have considered to be too far north so I don't see what the problem is. -- Grand Inquisitor Reverend David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david o/~ I want my SMTP o/~
Re: [REVIEW] Test Driven Development by Example
On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 02:26:28AM -, Dean Wilson wrote: > Test Driven Development by Example > > [snip review] I have posted this on the website, as well as Dave Cross's review of the Red Hat Linux 8 Bible. -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Nuke a disabled unborn gay baby whale for JESUS!
Re: [OT] Oldest machine still running perl
On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 03:35:06PM +, Alex McLintock wrote: > Just had a friendly argument with a hitchhikers fan as to whether or not an > abacus was > a digital or analogue computer. Digital, clearly, as it can not represent values over a continuous range, only discrete values across that range. It just doesn't use base two. -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david It's my experience that neither users nor customers can articulate what it is they want, nor can they evaluate it when they see it -- Alan Cooper
Re: doc management
On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:56:35AM +, martin bower wrote: > Im writing a document management site, and am looking for pointers on how > to index html,pdf (maybe word) docs, and then search against them. For HTML ... strip out all the tags, index as plain text PDF ... use pdf2txt, index as plain text Word ... use antiword, index as plain text If you want to index headers differently from body text or something like that, you're pretty much stuffed. It's not possible to divine what's a header in PDF, in Word you're unlikely to be able to extract anything useful, and in HTML most people seem to use the header tags to get bigger fonts and not for the purpose of marking up headers. -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david o/~ I want my SMTP o/~
Re: rackmount question
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 05:44:43PM -, Jody Belka wrote: > ok, i'm trying to decide what exactly to put into my 1U rackmount case and > thought i'd ask for some advice as i just can't make a decision. Start with a Sparc ATX mobo, or pull a board out of an iMac. > firstly, > for reference purposes, this box is going to be to running several vmware > virtual machines, so whatever i end up with needs to be able to cope with > that. Oh damn. > my main problem is trying to decide what processor to use. The fastest you can afford *after* putting in as much RAM as you can afford, a decent disk controller, and decent disks. If you have room in the case, throw in a PC Weasel too before you consider the processor. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david There are many different types of sausages. The best are from the north of England. The wurst are from Germany. -- seen in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Re: Tech meeting note
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 12:03:20AM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: > On Mon 13 Jan 2003, David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > LBW probably last two weeks of August > Location? Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Do not be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave -- Fergus Henderson
Re: Tech meeting note
On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 02:26:03PM +, Mark Fowler wrote: > Though I'm not sure about all this yet, Lot's of conferences we may > need to work around this year. Eight of them. Eight! > > German Perl Workshop 5th-17th March > YAPC::Israel 12th May > YAPC::Canada 15th-16th May > The Perl Whirl1st-9th June > OSCON (Feat. TPC) 7th-11th July > YAPC::NA 16th-18th July (unconfirmed dates) > YAPC::Europe > YAPC::Asia::Taiwan FosdemFeb 8/9 LBW probably last two weeks of August -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Oh look a non-McQ sig naughty sigmonster
Re: copyright and NFS
On Sat, Jan 11, 2003 at 05:36:29PM +, Nicholas Clark wrote: > On Sat, Jan 11, 2003 at 05:04:31PM -0600, Nigel Hamilton wrote: > > Copyright covers 'electronic' works, so even though there may be only one > > copy on the NFS partition each client has a copy in its display buffer. > > > > So I think the court would find there was a 'copy' in this case. > I think the answer is "no court would care about that" for my running > program copy. Wanna bet? That, IIRC, is the argument the .auian courts used to ban PS2 modchips. -- David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Googling for 'Swedish lizard overlord' gives no results. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU, EH? EH?
