Re: nice part of San Francisco and hotel?

2003-09-18 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Thu, Sep 18, 2003 at 03:23:18PM +0100, candace wrote:
 
> too true, seeing as how i lived there for the four years previous to 
> this, and i couldn't really recommend anything past picking something 
> *NOT* in the tenderloin, 

There's a good hotel in the tenderloin, the Pheonix.  Where the rock
stars stay.  Of course it's in the tenderloin, so no matter how nice
the hotel is some people won't want to stay there.  I liked it, my
girlfriend didn't like walking to/from it, but liked the hotel.

> perhaps preferably somewhere around union 
> square 

There's a cheap place on Union Square.  The Ramada is about as
inexpensive as you'll find in San Francisco, but it shows.  I stayed
in the same room that Billie Holiday was arrested in(heroin, 1949),
which was cool.

But not so cool that I didn't move across the street to the Hyatt the
next day (which was nice, but much more expensive.)
 
-- 
mike
"way too squirrely for Karl Rove"



Re: Pub feedback please

2003-09-07 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Sun, Sep 07, 2003 at 04:38:13PM -0400, Chris Devers wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Sep 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> > imagine a world where budwieser is your only choice.
> 
> I've heard that this world is called "St. Louis".
> 
> Fortunately, it's a small place, easy to escape from,
> and more importantly it also gave us Miles Davis.


On Euclid Ave there is(or was when I attended Mizzou) a good pub run
by a Welsh family that had decent beer (Dressel's if you're ever
stuck there for some reason).  It could just be the
exception that proves the rule tho.  I certainly wouldn't call St
Louis small either, after living in Columbia, Missouri.  Columbia does
probably have nearly the same number of cultural attractions as St
Louis, and twice that of KC.


-- 
mike



Re: Fave calendering software?

2003-09-02 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 01:35:46AM +0100, Jody Belka wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > The only challenge was /running/ the damn thing. I have no idea how to
> > launch it from Firebird. It's possible to launch FB from it by clicking
> > on the M logo but the selected profile is ignored (at least bookmarks
> > didn't show up). Anyone?
> 
> Yep, install the QuickTools extension pointed to from the calender page
> and then use the Calender menu item that can now be found under Tools.

Which is one of my big fears with Firebird becoming "Browser" (that
is, the only mozilla browser).  the guys running it are still wedded
to the idea of pushing everything into extensions.  Last I saw they
still weren't going to add a menu item to switch style sheets on the
reasoning that you can download an extention to do it.   I think even
fewer people will want to use Moz if it's nothing but gecko with
plugins.

I like the idea of a slim, quick browser, but I think they may be
getting too religious about it.

-- 
mike



Re: Fave calendering software?

2003-09-02 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 07:00:20AM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> Mike Jarvis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Which is one of my big fears with Firebird becoming "Browser" (that
> > is, the only mozilla browser).  the guys running it are still wedded
> > to the idea of pushing everything into extensions.  Last I saw they
> > still weren't going to add a menu item to switch style sheets on the
> > reasoning that you can download an extention to do it.   I think even
> > fewer people will want to use Moz if it's nothing but gecko with
> > plugins.
> 
> The nightlies of FireBird have a stylesheet switcher icon in the bottom
> left.   No extensions needed.  I presume that this will find its way
> into the next version.

It does have the icon, but it doesn't have the menu items (which sucks
if you hide the status bar, and the menu items take up no more space
if you have menus on).  

There's also no way to use a user defined stylesheet on the fly, since
the icon only appears if alternate stylesheets are available.  I hate
it when UI elements come and go as they please and don't just stay
still.  I also think it's pretty unfreindly to make people dig around
to find the right file to modify to use their own style sheets.

I think the real problem is tunnel vision.  The developers assume that
if they don't use a feature, nobody else does either.  The whole idea
of moving everything off into extensions was fine when Firebird was
just an alternative to Mozilla, but as the base browser I'm afraid it
needs to bloat up some.

-- 
mike



Re: perl and marketing

2003-08-18 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 06:09:31AM -0500, Elaine -HFB- Ashton wrote:
> Well, you know.years ago I suggested that there be a series of Perl
> for kids cartoons with jingles in the vein of School House Rock [
> www.schoolhouserock.com ] which were educational cartoons shown on
> saturday mornings with the regular cartoons. 30 years later I can still
> remember every lyric and every tune [ listen to some of the clips and
> you'll understand...even Jarkko found "lolly,lolly,lolly..." to be
> viciously addictive. Someday someone might even take my idea seriously :)

To this day I cannot recite the preamble to the US constitution
without singing it.   I remember being in school wishing they had done
the Gettysburg address too, since I had to memorize both in the same
grading period in school.

Too bad that not all of the songs they added for the DVD were up to
the same quality.  

I still wish I had the parody from the Simpsons about how a
constitutional amendment is passed.

-- 
mike



Re: OT: Can't declare subtraction

2003-08-14 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 11:00:48PM +0100, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 05:13:25PM -0400, Mike Jarvis wrote:
> > Ok, so I've got an odd problem.  Program compiles and runs just fine
> > on my machine with 5.8, upload it to the ISP's machine (BSD
> > with 5.005.03) and I get a compile error. It's a huge PITA to get
> > the error, since I don't have shell access, but the admins ran perl -c
> 
> 
> 
> Your ISP is:
>   * running 5.005
>   * not providing error logs
>   * not providing shell access
> 
> I'd say the compile error is the least of the problems here :-/

They swear they're upgrading RSN, when BSD (Free? Open? Whichever.)
does.  They only run stable from their distro, and it's hard to fault
an ISP for that.  

They do provide access to the error logs, but compile errors don't
make it in.  Drat.  Now that I think of it I could have done something
clever like have a cgi that runs perl -c on it myself.

As for shell access, it's hard to complain about $7.77/mo for 45GB
xfer.  The old perl is my only complaint, and it's supposed to be
fixed in the next month or two.  

> FWIW, try: my $max = scalar(@name) - 1;
> And make sure there are no "weird" characters in the source file.

That fixed it. I owe you several beers.  Thanks.

-- 
mike
 



OT: Can't declare subtraction

2003-08-14 Thread Mike Jarvis
Ok, so I've got an odd problem.  Program compiles and runs just fine
on my machine with 5.8, upload it to the ISP's machine (BSD
with 5.005.03) and I get a compile error. It's a huge PITA to get
the error, since I don't have shell access, but the admins ran perl -c
on it and sent me this:

quasar# perl -c /cgi-bin/meeting.pl
Can't declare subtraction in my at /www/l/legalsec/cgi-bin/meeting.pl line 413,
near "1;"


  my @name =  $oldq->param('name');
  my $max = scalar @name;   # line 413
  $max--;

Same version of CGI installed (2.93) at home and on their machine.  Am
I missing something stupid here?


-- 
mike



Re: [JOB] Yahoo! News (in California)

2003-07-08 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 05:58:44PM +0100, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> Still, encouraging news for those wishing to get over there. My money's
> on waiting for Dean or Kucinich to demonstrate viable Democratic
> candidacy...

Dean is viable, being the frontrunner in the money race right now.  He
stands a good chance of election because even though it's the lefties
that like him right now, his record is much more centrist than most
people acknowledge yet.  The age old strategy is to run left in the
primaries, and center in the general election.

Kucinich is a non-starter.  

I'm still hoping Clark jumps in, but he's still playing coy.  Should
have a real answer form him by September though.

Sorry to inject US politics.  I'll bet Wesley Clark watches Buffy, and
being from Arkansas, there's a good chance he now owns or has sometime
in the past owned a pony.

-- 
mike  



Re: UK money, again (again)

2003-07-02 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 03:17:07PM +0100, Iain Tatch wrote:
> Pick up a handful of Merkin change and you get things that say "Nickel",
> "Dime", "Quarter" with no other clue as to their monetary value. For those
> of us not brought up in the USA, even if you're aware that one's 5c and
> the other 10c, there's no obvious way to get from the names nickel and
> dime to their monetary values.
> 

The quarter says "quarter dollar", which is no more slangy or less
accurate than "25 cents".  The nickle says very plainly just under the
picture of Monticello "five cents" and nowhere on it does the word
"nickle" appear.

The dime says "one dime" and nowhere gives its value in cents.  Of
course those of you up on your middle english will know that "dime"
means one tenth, and therefore isn't really a cutesy name.

Hey, I don't have a Maine quarter yet.
-- 
mike



Re: Perl 6 Apocalypse 6

2003-03-11 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 12:27:00PM +, Shevek wrote:
> 
> The tradeoff for moving things to compile time is coder speed. The extra
> syntax, typing and complexity of source code structures makes it take
> longer to write code. As we all know, machine time is MUCH cheaper than 
> programmer time.

Yes, exactly, and I think that's the fear of most people that still
fear Perl 6. 

The great thing about most of the new stuf to help the compiler is
that it's optional.  perl will continue just DWIM, unless you tell it
you really mean something else. (Which is were the trickiness of
implementation comes in. Will it *really* DWIM if I leave out the
scary new stuff?)

It will be interesting to see how much performance boost you'll get in
the real world by going back and putting in real prototypes for code
that could start life looking much like perl 5 code.

-- 
mike
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky



Re: Bank Of America (was: Re: Natwest module)

2003-03-04 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:10:53PM +, Russell Matbouli wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:05:36PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote:
> > Related by banking, but in no other way, I need to write the code to
> > process CC payments with BoFA.  The interface looks pretty
> > straightforward, but if anybody else has already written it, I'd love
> > to steal from you.
> 
> Putting "bofa" in search.cpan.org returns
> Business::OnlinePayment::BankOfAmerica as the first result...

D'oh!  I swear I checked.  Thanks for correcting my brain damage for
today.
 
-- 
mike



Re: Natwest module

2003-03-04 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:07:48PM +, Peter Sergeant wrote:
> I've today written the first half of a perl script to screen-scrape
> Natwest's Online Banking. All the authentication parts are implemented,
> but now I've lost interest (no pun intended). This should probably exist
> as:
> 
> Finance::Bank::Natwest

Related by banking, but in no other way, I need to write the code to
process CC payments with BoFA.  The interface looks pretty
straightforward, but if anybody else has already written it, I'd love
to steal from you.

http://www.bankofamerica.com/merchantservices/index.cfm?template=merch_ic_estores_developer.cfm


-- 
mike



Re: [Job] Looking for a Sales Guy

2003-02-25 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 03:38:56PM +, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > There would be less Email Viruses if ?
> 
> "There would be fewer Email Viruses if:"
> 
> 'Less' is for singular, 'fewer' is for plural. ('More' can be used
> with both.)
> 
> ,
> Paul

What do you mean for plural, since both have to do with quantities?  I
think of it as 'less' is things you can't count and 'fewer' is for
things you can.  Less sand, fewer grains of sand. Or less email, fewer
messages.  

Oh.  I see what you're saying now.  Same thing I am, but since I'm
dense, my way seems easier to remember, or at least figure out when
you need to.

  

-- 
mike
A whole lotta hoot and just a little bit of nanny



Re: YAPC::Europe & War

2003-02-13 Thread Mike Jarvis
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.
> 
> FWIW my reply was "YAPC is a non-political organisation and run by
> volunteers".
> 
> Subject: [yapc-comm] Meeting Location
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 04:18:44 -0500
> 
> It's a shame that YAPC will exclude many potential attendees by being held 
> in a country that has so soon forgotten how the western allies went to war 
> to free THEM from tyranny and oppression in WW II, and now flaunts itself 
> against those very allies when they are attempting to disarm yet another 
> ruthless tyrant.
[more drivel snipped]

I'm amazed how many USians seem to forget the role that France played
in freeing us from evil and still want to hold WWII over them.
Shouldn't we just call it even?

I'm much more worried about our ruthless tyrant than I am about any
others.

Consider yourself lucky if the moron who wrote the above doesn't show
up. 

-- 
mike
"They had fangs, they were biting people, they had this look in their eyes:
 pure arrogance. I think they were young Republicans."  BtVS - the movie




Re: YAPC::Europe

2003-01-31 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 06:56:58AM +, Piers Cawley wrote:
> Chris Devers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Piers Cawley wrote:
> >
> >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> >>
> >> >> I won't be doing YAPC::Eu this year, I'm doing YAPC::NA -> TPC
> >> >> via the Appalachians, DC, NW, Boston, Vermont, Michigan,
> >> >> Chicago, Minneapolis, North Dakota, the Rockies.
> >> >
> >> > Which section of the Apalachans?  Going anywhere near NC?
> >>
> >> Um... most of them. Where's NC?
> >
> > Southern end of the chain, about halfway down the east coast,
> > between Georgia, Virginia et al. The NC section of the Appalachains
> > is really nice (but then, I grew up there, so I would say that :).
> 
> Well, we're planning on starting at Atlanta so that's a yes. Where's
> good to stop?

A little east of the mountains, but Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill is
fun.  Chapel Hill of course is the only place in North Carolina with a
Sonic Youth song named for it.

Speaking of fun college towns, while in Atlanta, pop over to Athens
and hang out at the 40 Watt club, home of REM.  Sorta anyway.  It's on
its fourth location, but still fun.  Peter Buck's ex still owns it, I
think.  

Most of my US tourism centers around dingy rock clubs.  I can tell you
the best place to see a noisy band in about 35 states, but I'm less
good on campgrounds, etc.
 
-- 
mike
Whatever, I'm still waiting for the Next Grunge...Chris Devers




Re: YAPC::Europe

2003-01-26 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 06:18:55PM +, Piers Cawley wrote:
> I won't be doing YAPC::Eu this year, I'm doing YAPC::NA -> TPC via the
> Appalachians, DC, NW, Boston, Vermont, Michigan, Chicago, Minneapolis, 
> North Dakota, the Rockies.
> 
> Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Yell when you know dates for DC, and let me know live music clubs or
martini/cigar bars. Either way tours can be arranged.  :)
 

-- 
mike
"Obviously, this was a mistake. This hot dog posed no threat to us."
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell 




Re: not ADSL, but NTL

2002-10-19 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 03:13:43PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> There's been various very useful comments about ADSL on the list. However...
> 
> NTL now seem to be offering a 128K cable modem service for only £14.99 a
> month. It's not exactly clear what they supply, or what they expect it to
> work with, but based on this:
> 
> http://www.ntl.com/locales/gb/en/home/broadband/services/need/
> 
> it seems that as you need "USB port (recommended) - if not present Network
> Interface Card (Ethernet Card)" they are supplying some sort of device that
> is can do both USB and Ethernet.

About 6 months ago I got cable broadband access (although not in the
UK).  My cable company said all the same stupid things yours does.
Hogwash. 

I've got a Toshiba cable modem I picked up at Best Buy for $79 that
works with USB or a NIC.  All of the documentation from my cable
company tells about configuring it with USB on windows, and I simply
ignored them.  

It looks as if you don't have the choice of getting your own modem,
but I'd consider giving the service a shot.  Worst case, set up a windows
machine, let the installer set it up, then move the modem to your real
computer.

So to answer your specific questions with my experience:

1)The modem will run with any machine.  No device drivers or anything,
it just talks over the network.  Just set up for DHCP and you're fine.

2) I didn't need any software.  The software they did give me included
a browser, a mail program, and a dohickey to reset network stuff under
windows.  

3) My service is locked to the MAC of the modem.  Cox has no idea what
the MAC on any of my computers is.

4) Make them run the cable to another room, just as they would have to
do for a TV.

-- 
mike
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky




Re: Next Thursday; was: small hairy Belfast.pm geek...

2002-10-18 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 03:02:45PM +0100, Marty Pauley wrote:
> > Um. I can't think of any others round there,
> 
> There was an Irish pub across the street from the Goose...

The one in the hotel? Bleh. Having spent a month in that hotel, I
would reccomend against the pub.  But I doubt I'll make a meeting
anytime soon, so do as you will.

-- 
mike
Love will get you like a case of anthrax
And that's something that I don't want to catch




Re: Next Thursday; was: small hairy Belfast.pm geek...

2002-10-18 Thread Mike Jarvis
On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 10:46:30AM +0100, Natalie S. Ford wrote:
> Also, if you say it is in a slightly dodgy area, I am even less inclined
> to try to come along...
> 

I believe Greg can point you towards a charming little place in the
back of a mini-cab stand in Soho.  It would be an, errr, interesting
meeting.

-- 
mike
A whole lotta hoot and just a little bit of nanny




Re: similarity detection

2002-10-09 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 07:48:32AM -0400, Chris Devers wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Tim Sweetman wrote:
> 
> > Well, sort of - search engines find documents to fit certain criteria;
> > this tries to find documents similar to other documents.
> 
> Aeguably part of the same problem space though. I don't know where you can
> find them anymore [ironically], but when it was just a Stanford research
> project, Google had white papers on, among other things, their techniques
> for finding & filtering out similar documents from search results.

Here's a wacky idea.  Let Google index them.  Search google for
similar items, restricting the search to your web site.

Of course it depends on how google defines similar.  It could say
*every* joke is similar, since even differnt jokes would have many
things in common. 

-- 
mike
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky




Re: Perlidex Comment

2002-10-07 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 02:05:06PM -0700, Adam Goldstein wrote:
> Dear Mr. Mison,

I know nothing about the software in question, but I know that if the
developers are incapable of putting line breaks in email it probably
isn't worth bothering with.

This level of disregard for community standards means I can ignore
anyting perl related from them.

-- 
mike




Re: [JOB] mod_perl engineer

2002-10-02 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 10:18:16PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
> Am I the only one who has recently found agencies and companies in
> general remarkably apathetic at contacting applicants?

Grr.  I interviewed for my dream job a few weeks ago.  Working for the
Democratic National Committee.  I'd rather work for a liberal party,
but I'd like to have a chance of winning too.  Anyway, seemed to go
really well (he closed the interview with, "I wanted to do the second
round interviews next week, but my boss will be out of town.  I'll
email and tell you when it is.")

The only thing I didn't have was a political reference, and he asked
me to dig one up. So I got Abbe Lowell, the attorney who represented
the party during the Clinton impeachment.  Since he already seemed to
like me, I thought I'd be a shoo-in with a reference like that. 

Oh, he also asked for some sample code.  I built an app using
XML::Comma, which I had never seen before (but is pretty k3wl, btw) up
on a server.  He never even looked at it.  Pretty damned rude.

Never heard a thing.  Nothing, not even a fuck you.  Bastards. Sadly,
I still have to vote for them.  A vote for the Greens is a vote for Bush.

-- 
mike
"Isn't it funny how people say they'll never grow up to be their parents, 
then one day they look in the mirror and they're moving aircraft carriers 
into the Gulf region?"




Re: [ANNOUNCE] Meetings in July

2002-06-21 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 02:10:18PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
 
> [1]The hell that is welwyn garden city

You know you loved it.  What were the names of the rooms at the inn?
The chipmonk suite or something?  And we did manage to do serious
expense account damage too.

Of course the most interesting part was the train ride as the Arsenal
game got out. 


-- 
mike
We shoulda kept it every Thursday in the afternoon.




Re: the muppets

2002-06-20 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, Jun 20, 2002 at 09:12:24PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> 
> so what muppet (muppet show, new muppets, sesame street, etc.) do
> people on london.pm remind you of, heres my list
> 
> (big smileys attached to all this, its meant to be gentle fun)
> 
> Leon- Kermit  - he chose it
> mstevens- Beaker  - he chose it
> John Stowe  - Animal  - fairly obvious
> Paul / blech- Oscar the grouch- fairly obvious
> Myself  - Fonzi
> Piers   - Waldorf - heckling

I think you mean Fozzie (the bear), not Fonzi (the greaser from Happy
Days).

Do you remember on Sesame Street the two martians who came to earth
and tried to talk to everything they met?  I particular, I remember
them having a fascinating conversation with a phone (Bng!
Bng!)

As a consultant I've spent much time mindlessly making pleasing noises
back to people, even though I can't understand wtf they're talking
about (even on the rare occasion they're speaking english).

-- 
mike
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky




Re: newbie question

2002-06-13 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 06:24:00PM +0100, Antonio Fortin wrote:
 
> i'm using windoze and AS Perl, so i don't think i can use locale. or
> can i?

AS perl has locale support, I've used it before.  I'm not sure it will
help you though.


-- 
mike
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky




Re: Buffy S6E21-22

2002-05-22 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 11:27:15AM +0100, Simon Batistoni wrote:
 
> Well, according to my "media headlines roundup", provided by the kind
> folks at the Guardian, the Daily Star is today reporting that Britney
> Spears might be drafted in to play a vampire.

I'd heard that had already fallen through.  Britney was too busy.  It
was first discussed in the fall of '00.  I suppose they could try
again next season though.

Maybe there's a Britney-bot somewhere out there.

-- 
mike
A whole lotta hoot and just a little bit of nanny





Re: Buffy S6E21-22

2002-05-21 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 01:11:46AM -0400, David H. Adler wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2002 at 10:06:11PM -0400, Mike Jarvis wrote:
> > When do you guys get it? I won't spoil, I'll just say I have real hope
> > for next season.  It could be really good.
> 
> Or not.  Lots of potential, but it really depends on where they go with
> it.  It could still be fairly mediocre without too much trouble.

Potential is all I need for hope.  It could be worse than mediocre, it
could be downright awful.  I can think of two plot developments that
could come that would be painful to think about.  

[1]
Anyway, they have many ways they could go. And since Buffy gave birth
to full grown demon children, think of the madcap hilarity that awaits
us next year! 


[1] No, nothing like what I described happened on the show.  It was a 
joke, but somebody bitched at me last year for the giving away the
ending with the same joke, so I felt obliged to repeat it.

-- 
mike
A whole lotta hoot and just a little bit of nanny





Buffy S6E21-22

2002-05-21 Thread Mike Jarvis

When do you guys get it? I won't spoil, I'll just say I have real hope
for next season.  It could be really good.

Details gladly discussed soon, I hope.

-- 
mike
A whole loota hoot and just a little bit of nanny




Re: Formatting currencies

2002-05-02 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 04:16:01PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> perl -lpe '$_ = sprintf "%.2f",$_; 1 while s/(?<=[\d])((?:\d{3})+)(?=[.,])/,$1/'
> 
> 123.1
> 123.10
> 
> 5679.123
> 5,679.12
> 
> 1289053234.20852
> 1,289,053,234.21
> 
> Is there an easier way to do this? London.pm meeting taken its toll?

I'd use locale, but it's still ugly.  From perllocale:

# Get some of locale's numeric formatting parameters
my ($thousands_sep, $grouping) =
   @{localeconv()}{'thousands_sep', 'grouping'};
# Apply defaults if values are missing
$thousands_sep = ',' unless $thousands_sep;


if ($grouping) {
   @grouping = unpack("C*", $grouping);
} else {
  @grouping = (3);
}

# Format command line params for current locale
for (@ARGV) {
$_ = int;# Chop non-integer part
1 while
s/(\d)(\d{$grouping[0]}($|$thousands_sep))/$1$thousands_sep$2/;
print "$_";
}
print "\n";



-- 
mike
I got Nirvana in my head, I'm so glad I'm not dead




Re: I'm bored

2002-04-29 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 05:16:58PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> 
> So who fancies writing a sitcom/comedy show with me?

Is there a scene where the office employees play Star Wars trash
compactor with the rolling file cabinets?

I still have some notes, I think. 

-- 
mike
A whole loota hoot and just a little bit of nanny




Re: OT: Mailing list software

2002-04-24 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:43:07PM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
> Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 05:57:17PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> > >In fact, I don't see how it would help spammers, although I can see how
> > >it is/was used by pranksters, but that's different.
> > 
> > If you operate a mailing list which does not require confirmation of
> > subscription, you are deemed to be a spammer by at least some black-hole
> > services. It's a much easier and more objective test than many of the
> > others.
> 
> Not an answer to the question. How does it help _spammers_?

It holds everybody to the same level of responsibility that we insist
on from marketers.  Spammers will always say "but you asked for
information on penis mortgage weight loss bread." Insisting that
everybody use confirmed opt in pretty much does away with that excuse.


-- 
mike
A whole loota hoot and just a little bit of nanny




Re: penderel

2002-04-03 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 12:10:24PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> 
> Ok, so it may be hearsay but i believe Penderel has had more problems,
> so I have a proposal, but lets start with the assumptions i am making
> 
> Thoughts?

Will the new box be named Yorke?

-- 
mike
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky






Re: Fwd: [Boston.pm] MD5 hash

2002-03-22 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 08:34:27PM +, David Cantrell wrote:
> Forwarded from the boston.pm list
> I found that an MD5 has does not change at all even if the input changes. In
> the following example code.. The results are shown after the __END_.
> 
> Is my expectation wrong?
> 
> __END__
> Data was abcffdgfdgfdg vdefdfjdfjds lkfjdfjsd
> digest is = o?AO?Co6}UoP@
> digest is = A?


Re: rsync and mutt woes

2002-02-25 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, 2002-02-25 at 17:05, Chris Devers wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Natalie Ford wrote:

> > So, I need to be running X on my client end?  I run ssh from windoze...

> Last time I checked, there weren't any good freeware ports of Win32/X, but
> maybe someone has managed to compile Xfree86 under Cygwin or something. 

Yep, Xfree86 does run under cygwin.  Binaries are available.
 http://www.cygwin.com/xfree/

KDE runs pretty well too.  Has anybody tried gnome?  

As for the performance issues Chris brings up, it depends on what you're
doing.  If you have a reasonably modern computer, you should be able to
get it to run.  Gimp over the network is pokey, but you would expect
that.  Xemacs is fine, and even web browsing is ok (I'd rather use
galeon than IE, and my network is faster than my phone line, so it
works  ok.)



-- 
mike
'''Roger Waters had issues'. -- Robert Jones' -- Todd Larason'
 -- Barry Yarbrough





Re: How to optimise slow perl scripts?

2002-02-22 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, 2002-02-22 at 16:42, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2002 at 09:20:56PM +, Chris Benson wrote:
> > phone numbers, CC numbers, ... all the time :-(
> 
> Ahh, so *you're* the one who rejects one of my credit cards* cos it has the
> "wrong" number of digits :-)

In the US you can never have any idea of the length of a CC number
(except maybe on amex, but I'd never bet on them not changing).  Just
check for greater than 10 digits and mod10 compliant. 

Ick.  I just saw that Matt's Archive has as credit card verifier. I may
have to go look (much as I would have to go look at a train wreck).

 
-- 
mike
"Tact is just not saying true stuff" - Cordelia on BtVS





Re: Developing Perl based products for windows.

2002-02-20 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, 2002-02-20 at 11:23, Tommie M. Jones wrote:
> 
> I am a Perl developer who mostly works with Unix.  I have a perl program
> that I would like to sell to windows users.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has any experience creating easy to install CD's
> for perl based product.  I assume that I will have to include perl itself
> and all the basic modules.  Also I will need a GUI IFC.  Does anyone have
> any suggestions for a Gui on Windows?  TK maybe.  Any input would be
> appreciated.

If you're selling to unclued end users, you might look at ActiveState's
Perl Dev Kit.  It includes a perl2exe type thingee so your users won't
need a perl install.  I have no idea what this does to speed.  I've used
it (once) and it does seem to pick up all the modules you need too.

TK works ok for the gui, but you might also check out Wx, which I
haven't used, but have heard good things about.

-- 
mike





Re: Bolloxia

2002-02-18 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, 2002-02-18 at 16:51, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 04:37:42PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote:
> > Theoretically decreasing overhead means decreased prices for consumers,
> > but we all know that never happens in the real world.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I'm paying less for an 80GB of harddrive storage now
> than I would've paid two years ago. And so on.
> 
> If decreased overhead didn't equate to decreased price for consumers
> then,
>   * there is a monopoly situation (see: rules & regs)
>   * someone else will decrease *their* price and reap the rewards

What about the case of the previously mentioned Levis?  If their
production costs dropped to 0, do you think the price would drop?

How about sodas? I doubt production *could* get cheaper, yet neither
Coke or Pepsi ever drop prices.  

The entire system is predicated on point 2) (someone else will decrease
*their* price and reap the rewards) and the public buying the best
product for the best price.  They don't. Added price adds perceived
value (it costs more, it must be better). If the world worked as it does
in textbooks, you would be absolutly correct. And no, I don't have an
answer or a better system. 
 
-- 
mike





Re: Bolloxia

2002-02-18 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, 2002-02-18 at 16:13, Struan Donald wrote:
> on the whole though i think globalisation does not favour the consumer
> as it's all about increasing profit and decreasing overhead and
> generally i'd say that's not something that dovetails all that well
> with the needs of either the consumer or, for that matter, the
> employee.

Theoretically decreasing overhead means decreased prices for consumers,
but we all know that never happens in the real world.

To quote Adam Smith:

"Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects
of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of
their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad
effects of high profits."
 
-- 
mike





Re: Buffy... Wow

2002-02-15 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 06:52, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> * Simon Wistow ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 09:47:47AM +, Paul Mison said:
> > > On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 09:20:18AM +, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> > > > * Leo Lapworth ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > > > > Sky Buffy... don't scroll if you didn't see
> > > > > it last night.
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > spoiler...
> > > > > 
> > > 
> > preserving...
> > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > 
> > > Oh, I have a theory about this. But it's not original. All I'll point
> > > out is that we've seen the three nerds (oh, Simon Wistow posted about
> > > these somewhere- IRC, maybe- and I can see his point about them
> > > completely, but he should probably reiterate it if he cares) 
> > 
> > a load of stereotype nerdlings straight from an 80's movie. Christ, I'm
> > suprised he doesn't make them wear thick black glasses, pocket
> > protectors and propellor beanies.
> > 
> > He better have a fucking good reason for this.
> 
> to distract people from the real seasion big baddy ... Willow
> 
> and no, i don't know this for sure yet

I don't think it's Willow either.  Amy is much more likely, but I won't
say more here, since I can't keep up with what you do and don't already
know.

But Amy is also just a guess.  This isn't the first time they've waited
so long to tell us.  Series 3 and 4 both waited until more than halfway
through to let you know.  


-- 
mike
Asked why the right wing despises him so, the former president answered
simply, "Because I won."






Re: london.pm digest, Vol 1 #611 - 24 msgs

2002-02-14 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, 2002-02-14 at 17:04, Tim Noll wrote:

> And, as far as the london.pm meetings go, I'm off to the States for two
> weeks starting tomorrow. But when I return, if I can manage to drag some
> of my hapless colleagues along, I might just try to avoid that teaspoon
> mauling.

They've gotten worse.  When I was there the game was "slap the yank".
Seems like they've escalated.
 
-- 
mike
Asked why the right wing despises him so, the former president answered
simply, "Because I won."






RE: User Input at speed

2002-02-14 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, 2002-02-14 at 06:42, Ivor Williams wrote:

> That must make writing perl quite painful. !-)
> I suppose you would get used to it though. AltGr becomes just another shift
> key.

I was at a client site in Rome, using my fifth keyoboard layout for the
month, trying to write a little perl.  It took a half hour to track down
somebody in the office who knew how to make a tilde. ~.  Or it may have
been another symbol.  Ten different people were asked, none knew. grrr.

Of course part of the problem was my lack of Italian, and many humourous
hand signals trying to explain what bit of weird punctuation I needed. 

The weirdest thing about the office was seeing an ashtray on top of a
Sun 4500.  The espresso was great too.

-- 
mike
Asked why the right wing despises him so, the former president answered
simply, "Because I won."






Re: User Input at speed

2002-02-13 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, 2002-02-13 at 08:54, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> I've been sitting here watching random TV and watching with vauge facination
> a stenographer at work.  A stenographer transcribes word for word the
> proceedings of courts, meetings etc...
> 
> Made me wonder - what is the fastest method of user input into a computer.

Do you mean into human readable, non translated english? Court reporters
don't actually transcribe full words.  Kinda like mechanical gregg
shorthand.  They input phonetic equivilents, not real words.  And it can
be a bitch for them to read somebody else's tapes. Possible, just a pain
in the ass, and much slower.

To actually produce english transcripts, the court reporter goes
somewhere quiet, reads the transcripts into a recorder, and sends the
audio tapes to a typist. So it turns out to be a *really* slow way to
make transcripts, but the most reliable way to caputure the info in real
time.  

Actually, everything I just told you is wrong these days.  I'm fairly
sure technology has marched on and a lot of the retyping has been
computerized away.  But until fairly recently this was all acurate.  

> We all know that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow us down

I could swear I read somewhere that this was a UL, but I can't find a
reference.
 
-- 
mike
Asked why the right wing despises him so, the former president answered
simply, "Because I won."






Re: NMS

2002-02-11 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, 2002-02-11 at 06:11, Simon Wilcox wrote:

> I shall, I'm interested to make sure that NMS has closed whatever hole is
> being probed for.

Perhaps some of us (and I'm happy to help here) should poke around on
more newsfroups, find places where people discuss matt's scripts, and as
conversation arises, make sure people know that an alternative exists. 

Mom bought a book to learn dreamweaver over the weekend.  I would
wholeheartedly suggest "Dreamweaver 4 Weekend Crash Course" to
beginners, with the warning to ignore the pointer to MSA on page 217. 
I've already fied off an email to the author. 
 
Hmm.  A little more googling reveals
http://www.monkeys.com/anti-spam/filtering/formmail.html
a blacklist that lists sites running formmail.pl.  Says they're trying
to come up with a replacement.  I'll leave this contact to somebody who
has actually done something for the project, and re-volunteer my help
ferreting out people promoting MSA and/or as team mascot (this all ties
in to grep wondering about people not volunteering for projects. I may
be inept at perl, but I'm great at finding stuff and being annoying, so
either job fits).  


Perhaps I should post to the proper list about this in the future too. 

-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





NMS

2002-02-11 Thread Mike Jarvis

Anybody know somebody actually using the formmail.pl from NMS?  I read
on news.admin.net-abuse.email this morning that people are noticing a
surge in probes for formmail.pl, for use by spammers.

Might be nice to get a success story or two up on the page.  Hell,
success stories from users for any of the programs, telling how easy,
powerful, etc, but I thought this shows *why* NMS is the better
alternative.

groups.google for "Gozilla and formmail probing"


-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: Columbia is Lilliput

2002-02-08 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, 2002-02-08 at 12:20, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> Or alternatively, just drink loads more coffee. As I understand it, it grows
> in the same climatic conditions, so increasing coffee demand considerably
> would price out the alternatives that might want to be grown.
> 
> [and likewise eat many many more bananas, particularly from the Caribbean.

Ha! All Americans know banannas come from Canada.  At least since Reagan
was president. When we started the embargo against Nicaragua, we started
buying our banannas from Canada.

 
-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: [plug] grubstreet

2002-02-07 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 04:50, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> * Natalie Ford ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 06:15:27PM +, Earle Martin wrote:
> > > You're free to comment on anything London-related
> > 
> > So, I can'r post anything about outside of London?  Pity. :)
> > 
> 
> I've seen The League of Gentlemen, i know what things you lot outside
> of the M25 protection system eat. No we don't want any of your type
> poluting the database, this is a London database, for London people.

I've been to St. John's, that snout to tail place Leon's so fond of.  I
know what you Londoners eat. 

The marrow *was* tasty, just a pain in the ass to eat.   

-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: Something for the CFT brigade

2002-02-05 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Tue, 2002-02-05 at 17:08, Chris Devers wrote:
> real cynicism: pretzel shmetzel, the guy was drunk :)

Not believing everything that comes out of the White House and the right
wing controlled media (ie, all of it) isn't cynicism, it's good sense.

-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: JOB: wanted (all serioues offers considered)

2002-02-05 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Tue, 2002-02-05 at 10:44, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> I realise that currently it is. *Why* do they do it?
> The only valid reason I could see was that they wished to place their
> company logo on the top of the CV, so that if it gets copied or passed around
> it becomes obvious who provided it.

They've done it to mine, trying to make me more buzzword compliant. 
Yes, I do know a lot (too much) about IIS.  No, I won't take a job using
nothing but IIS.  

Headhunters don't care about what jobs you want.  They care about having
enough buzzwords in your cv that you match any job that pops up.

-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: .NOT! (was: OSX)

2002-02-01 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, 2002-02-01 at 08:00, Andy Wardley wrote:

> uhm, 3 good reasons I can't rant about off the top of my head:
> 
>   * No-one really knows how to do the component thing properly.  
> COM isn't it, DCOM isn't it, .NOT?  .NOT!  Talking about the
> fine granularity of software components in the future will be
> great just as soon as someone figures out how to do it without
> the whole thing becoming a great sluggish, bloated and bloody
> tangled mess.

Moore will save us.  We're at what, 2Ghz Intel chips now? When it hits
16Ghz many of today's apps will run properly. Of course MS will have
built 5 more layers on top of everything by then, making sure
application responsivness stays constant at best.

>   * Microsoft software is shit.  Not just in terms of performance, 
> reliability or anything else like that, but because they keep
> pushing a proprietary Microsoft-wins-all model that real developers
> just aren't interested in.

The scary thing is that the people who *pay* programmers like it when
somebody tells them, "look! pointy clicky! no thinking!"


>   * Solving the "software crisis" (of which this is just the latest
> silver bullet after structured programming, OOP, 4GLs, CASE Tools,
> UML, XML, Open Source, etc.) will most likely require several huge
> paradigm shifts.  That's not going to happen under Microsoft's 
> near-monopoly on personal computing because they're followers, 
> not leaders.  It'll probably require a new world order.  In others
> words, Microsoft will have to topple before software engineering 
> and personal computing really evolve to the "next level".  And 
> by that time, I'll be too busy partying... :-)

I doubt you'll be partying when MS is toppled.  Whatever comes next is
sure to be worse.  Think government issued licenses for programmers.
Register with the police if you own a compiler.  You will be protected
from evil hacker d00ds, whether you want it or not.

Our society depends on quality software.  Can't have amateurs messing
with things like that.
 

-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: (OT) Forwarded : Stuff about the lack of hygiene on the tube

2002-01-31 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Thu, 2002-01-31 at 05:47, Simon Wistow wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 09:05:18PM +, Dave Hodgkinson said:
> > Not on snopes and not on google.
> 
> http://www.thetube.com/content/pressreleases/0201/30.asp#email
> 
> Disseminate. Please.

 "Arthur Andersen Consulting were employed by LUL to advise on change
management when the present organisational structure of the company was
designed.

Change managment?  I suppose you could call what they did for Enron
change management.  Changing sheets of paper into little shreds.


-- 
mike
Pretzel schmetzel, the guy was drunk





Re: OT perl question

2002-01-16 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, 2002-01-16 at 07:03, Newton, Philip wrote:

> AFAIK, Apache manages to pass content along to the client as soon as it
> receives it from the CGI program, even on Win32.

Nope, at least not yet.  It's been going to be fixed in the next release
for quite a while.  

2.0 though.  Yep, it'll be fixed then,
 
-- 
mike





Re: Buffy series 6 first episode video

2002-01-11 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Fri, 2002-01-11 at 08:51, Robert Shiels wrote:

Season 5 spoilers below:








> Is this just a soap opera now, there was one undead guy near the end that
> Buffy killed with a medical hacksaw, but apart from that it was all long
> meaningful silences and people crying. Bored now!

This ep is important in buffydom because it's the first time that
anybody cared about somebody dying in 5 years of carnage.  There was a
lot about this one that was great (Buffy seeing/hearing things, Santa
isn't a myth, Anya doesn't get it).

I really do like this episode, but I also understand why some people
won't.  For the most part I prefer the first two or three seasons.  They
were much sillier, and the skirts were shorter.  But of course season
2/3 is more soap opera-ey than anything since.  All that crap about
Buffy falling for a vampire that acts more like a art student. Bleh. 


-- 
mike





Re: black hat hackers

2002-01-09 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, 2002-01-09 at 17:38, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> 
> >
> > It's a BT openworld IP which I am also a member of, so i've already
> > contacted [EMAIL PROTECTED] , however they suggest I contact the
> > cops.
> 
> 
> That's lame - point them to their AUP and tell them to sort it out ...
> 
> ... Alternatively we can take the offender down from here ;-}

Great, I've got a whole slew of these from Korean and Chinese machines. 
We know from the spamwars how well abuse departments work in these
places, evem if you can manage to make yourself understood.

-- 
mike





Re: high fidelity

2002-01-07 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Mon, 2002-01-07 at 13:05, Chris Devers wrote:

> :) Actually I was debating White Album over Abbey Road, just because I
> like the way those two hang together as albums rather than just
> collections of really good songs (in fact, I suppose the songs are weaker
> individually on the later albums, but as a whole they work well). in the
> end I picked Abbey Road just because I love the way side two flows ogether
> as one big song,

I like Revolver and Rubber Soul because they don't seem to have quite
figured everything out yet.  They're the transition between pop band and
art band, and are a little rougher around the edges.  It sounds like
they're taking more chances than on the later albums.
 
> Massive Attack's Mezzanine almost made the list, 

very clever, one modern album to show that you're still hip. ;)
 
> But Lucy's right, these top @favorites lists are more fun with a bit of
> autobiographical context. Top five $foo songs/albums/etc. Context can make
> it easier to think of great second choices, and pick between tossups. 

My autobiographical snippit has to do with my as yet unnamed Big
Star/Alex Chilton album (ok, I'll stand with "Like Flies on Sherbert").
Between '82 and '88 I probably saw Alex 50 times. I always stood right
up front by the stage, and Alex would always bum cigarettes off me. And
of course it wasn't just Alex solo shows, but Panther Burns and the
Hellcats (and Lorette Velvette solo) shows.  Memphis has a very
incestous music scene, and if you were into one band you wound up seeing
a lot of spin offs and side bands too. 

If you like the Cramps first album (which Alex produced) you might like
"Like Flies.."
 
> So, to pick a random theme, what would be your top five theme songs for a
> hypothetical Lpm haxxor movie?

One Borboun, One Scotch, One Beer - George Thorogood
Why Don't We Get Drunk - Jimmy Buffet
Hymn for the Alcohol  - Hefner
etc, etc.
 
-- 
mike





Re: high fidelity

2002-01-07 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Sun, 2002-01-06 at 19:24, Chris Devers wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 06, 2002 at 09:49:11PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> >
> > Ack, I mean't to say top 5 songs (damn)
> 
> Cheating, but I think more in terms of albums than songs...
> 
>   %top_five_albums = {
> "Miles Davis"=> "Kind of Blue",
> "The Beatles"=> "Abbey Road",
> "Fugazi" => "Repeater",
> "Morphine"   => "Cure for Pain",
> "Public Enemy"   => "Fear of a Black Planet"
>   };  

Remarkably close to my list, but we're both USians, so that may not be
so surprising.  I like Rubber Soul or Revolver better than Abbey Road,
and prefer to have Coltrane lead the band rather than just play in it.

I have no idea why Morphine wasn't the biggest band in the world.

While I can't decide which one to remove, my list has to include
something by Alex Chilton/Big Star.

-- 
mike





Re: Next meetings

2001-12-19 Thread Mike Jarvis

On Wed, 2001-12-19 at 05:58, Paul Mison wrote:

> Ooh, this decreeing stuff might actually work...

I'd seen london.pm'ers drunk on everything except power, up til now.

Decree away, it's the only way to herd them.

-- 
mike





Re: warning

2001-12-02 Thread Mike Jarvis

Saturday, December 01, 2001, 3:54:14 PM, Greg McCarroll wrote:

GM> Well, it seems good fun at the start, then you get all the way through
GM> to future tech. and realise very little has actually changed, sure
GM> culture is a nice addission and the interface is a little more MacOS
GM> X/Win XP -ish, but apart from that it really isn't worth buying.

Have to disagree here.  Resources completely change the game,
particularly if your style has military as a low priority.

Nothing sucks more than being the first to discover all of the cool
advances and not having coal or iron or uranium.  You can still play a
quiet game in this situation, but you're much more likely to do like
real life and go take your neighbor's resources.

The tech tree could use some tweaking though.  I hate the
corporation->steel->refining bit in industrial age where you get *no*
new units or improvements.  Just a chunk of stuff to wade through
before things get more interesting.

The small wonders are nice, but not earth shattering.  Anybody ever
get to build the iron works?  I don't think I've ever had a city that
had both iron and coal within its radius(after about a dozen complete
games), so I've never had a chance to build it.



-- 
mike





Re: warning

2001-11-25 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, November 23, 2001, 8:32:46 PM, Greg McCarroll wrote:

GM> [3] If anyone who does go down this narrow path wants to start a
GM> London.pm MP game let me know, it will probably be more popular
GM> than 5-aside ;-)

Is MP working in yours?  In my (US) copy, there is no MP option.
Poking around shows that they meant to put it in, but my guess is
there wasn't time to get it right before release.


-- 
mike





Re: XML::LibXML - character encoding - help

2001-11-14 Thread Mike Jarvis

Tuesday, November 13, 2001, 11:02:52 AM, Leo Lapworth wrote:


LL> ## RESULTS:
LL> # V:  â
LL> # V:  â
LL> # Entity: line 3: error: Entity 'rsquo' not defined
LL> # ’ 
LL> #  ^
LL> #  at t.pl line 24


LL> # I'm expecting a Right single quote not an 'a' with a hat!
LL> # My feed has ’ (not the other values) how can I
LL> # get it to just pass through or convert it - thanks

I'd say that a with a hat *is* a right single quote, but your terminal
can't display it.

Output it to html with

in the  section and check it out in a browser.

As for the entity reference not working, my guess is LibXML doesn't
recognize it.  Under the html specs there are only what, like four
entities?  Most browsers support more, and maybe the xhtml spec
defines more.  libXML is probably doing the right thing here.


-- 
mike





Re: (void) Iraq, Biowar, Afghanistan, books, etc. (was: Plane Crash (only a little, mostly incoherent rant))

2001-11-14 Thread Mike Jarvis

Tuesday, November 13, 2001, 8:53:55 PM, Andrew Bowman wrote:

AB> b) Saddam would be finished off, either by his fellow Iraqi leaders or by
AB> his beloved citizens. Sadly Saddam appears to have been well prepared (as
AB> well as lucky too) to have avoided this fate (so far at least).

His beloved citizens did rise up right after the war.  He used the
helicopters we let him keep to slaughter them.  We didn't stop him
because we wanted a coup, not a revolution.  Actually having the
people in charge rather than a friendly puppet wasn't in the cards,
and we can always use a bogeyman.

-- 
mike





Re: contracts -> transport

2001-11-09 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, November 09, 2001, 2:34:23 PM, Chris Benson wrote:

>> Trains are great for hauling stuff from point A to point B, but they

CB> s/ian/am/; s/\bbut\b/and/;

It's nice that we're all geeks here, but it sure would be easier to
read:

Trams are good at X.

and doesn't take many more bytes.  When the static string is close to
the same size as the code to replace it, the overhead saved by not computing the
answer more than makes up for the difference.

Sorry, not attacking you personally, just something I find annoying in
our entire tribe.

-- 
mike





Re: contracts

2001-11-09 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, November 09, 2001, 12:41:42 PM, robin szemeti wrote:

>> Our supply chains are, in the majority, run by cars and trucks and other
>> road transport and without them the cities start to starve (both
>> metaphorically and literally.)

rs> indeed. theres another thing that needs changing then.

That will be an interesting trick.  Many kinds of business only work
well (or work more efficiently) in high population densities.  Farming
is not one of those things.

Trains are great for hauling stuff from point A to point B, but they
really suck at negotiating all of those twisty little streets in the
city.

Trucks are the most efficient way of getting stuff into the shops.  At
least until they bring back and expand the old pneumatic tube system.
Which would be a lot more fun to watch.


-- 
mike





[off-topic] Multibyte perl on win32

2001-10-25 Thread Mike Jarvis

If people are actually going to discuss perl, I throw one out.

I've got a vendor's version of perl (uhm, my company's so replacing it
isn't an option) that I believe was compiled with some odd way of
handling multibyte characters.  And the guy who built it isn't around
right now. Grr.

Getting garbage back from Win32::NetAdmin (I know, I know, again, not
an option).  Sample script:

use Win32::NetAdmin;

my @mbrs;
my $status = Win32::NetAdmin::LocalGroupGetMembers("","Guests",\@mbrs);

print "Status= $status\n";
print scalar(@mbrs)," members in group\n";

foreach my $result (@mbrs) {
  print "line=$result\n";
}

And the output:

C:\shared>/vendor/bin/perl blah.pl
Status= 1
5 members in group
line=xn?
line=xn?
line=xn?
line=xn?
line=xn?

ActiveState perl does this:
C:\shared>/perl/bin/perl blah.pl
Status= 1
5 members in group
line=Guest
line=IUSR_MACHINE-NT
line=IWAM_MACHINE-NT
line=TsInternetUser
line=ILS_ANONYMOUS_USER

Ideas?  Suggestions? WAGs?

-- 
mike





Re: tube stations

2001-10-23 Thread Mike Jarvis

Tuesday, October 23, 2001, 8:52:26 PM, Redvers Davies wrote:

>> BA is running a half price special.  Only $5k for now.  I'm sure it
>> will go back up when people forget that for deaths/hours flown it's
>> the deadliest plane in the air.

RD> Unfair accusation.

Perfectly fair.  737s log more hours per day (or is it week?  I
honestly can't remember, so we'll go with week) than the concorde did
in its lifetime.

In other words, if 737s crashed as often as concordes, there would be
a crash per week/day/whatever it is.

I believe that if you calculated deaths/miles flown vs any other
airliner, it would come out much the same.

I suppose when the harrier was new, and had as few hours as the
concorde does, it came close to killing as many people.  Once they
fixed it/learned how to fly them they got much safer.


-- 
mike





Re: tube stations

2001-10-23 Thread Mike Jarvis

Tuesday, October 23, 2001, 10:16:33 AM, Chris Devers wrote:

CD> As it is, I'm quite sure
CD> that I wouldn't like to commute there for work (unless the newly active
CD> Concorde has gotten remarkably cheaper this time around...).

BA is running a half price special.  Only $5k for now.  I'm sure it
will go back up when people forget that for deaths/hours flown it's
the deadliest plane in the air.


-- 
mike





Re: Obnoxious spam: News from NuSphere -- #10

2001-10-22 Thread Mike Jarvis

Monday, October 22, 2001, 9:12:30 AM, anathema wrote:

a> It's a lot harder to read it with HipCrime's floods.  He's now posting in other
a> NGs and setting the Follow-Up To:  to nanae.  So:  always check the
a> Followup-To:  before you hit "send", kids!

Ultimately, I think he's just recruiting new spam fighters.  I did
think his newest new attack was clever though.  Rather than spewing
nonsense text as he usually does, he's posting pictures of Bush being,
erm, had by bin Laden, and then setting follow ups to nanae.

The responses to the nonsense were mostly bewilderment.  It's sort of
fun to read these though.  It supports my theory that cluelessness and
ease of offense go hand in hand.

Several dozen people from other groups have been told what's up, but
obviously that's not enough.  Please help educate the clueless in your
own favorite groups.


-- 
mike





Re: Obnoxious spam: News from NuSphere -- #10

2001-10-19 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, October 19, 2001, 9:28:41 PM, anathema wrote:

a> Mike Jarvis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>I love nanae too.  That's why I'd suggest posting it in sightings
>>instead.  Maybe an article *about it* in nanae, but the spam itself,
>>with headers, to sightings.

a> Well, Ye-es, but I tend to prefer having the headers right there in nanae
a> myself, regardless of the fact that that's not what it's there for.

So a compromise.  Headers and description to nanae, full text of spam
to sightings.  Everybody's happy, and no "proper quoting style" flame
war.

-- 
mike





Re: Obnoxious spam: News from NuSphere -- #10

2001-10-19 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, October 19, 2001, 8:30:50 PM, anathema wrote:

a> Paul Makepeace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>*plonk*

a> Nooo, you don't *plonk*, you LART.

a> Go on.  They'll thank you for it in the long run.

a> (that, or post it to n.a.n-a.e and we'll do the larting for you,  i love
a> nanae.)

I love nanae too.  That's why I'd suggest posting it in sightings
instead.  Maybe an article *about it* in nanae, but the spam itself,
with headers, to sightings.


-- 
mike





Re: Film Recommendatio : A Knight's Tale

2001-09-26 Thread Mike Jarvis

Wednesday, September 26, 2001, 12:04:40 PM, Lucy McWilliam wrote:


LM> On Mon, 24 Sep 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote:

>> American High School Drama

LM> 10 Things, yay!  Buffy?
LM> Anything but American beer or chocolate.

There are good american beers and chocolates.  You're just not very
likely to get either one over there.

Ghirardelli makes decent chocolate.

Anchor Steam from San Francisco and Shiner Bock from
Shiner, Texas are both very good beers.

Besides, you shouldn't drink beer more than 100 miles from where it's
made.


-- 
mike





Re: The best film of all time?

2001-09-21 Thread Mike Jarvis

Saturday, September 22, 2001, 12:23:13 AM, David H. Adler wrote:

DHA> Because of a certain sterility (IMO), Touch of Evil edges out Citizen
DHA> Kane as what I think is Welles' best film, but to say that Kane is
DHA> anything other than one of the masterpieces of cinema shows (again IMO)
DHA> a rather limited view of the history of cinema.

I had forgotten about the rerelease of Touch Of Evil. Excellent film,
but I'd still give the nod to Kane.



-- 
mike





Re: (time_t)1E9 (was Re: Stuff)

2001-09-17 Thread Mike Jarvis

Monday, September 17, 2001, 4:52:13 PM, David H. Adler wrote:

DHA> Night After Night was a *great* show.  I remember the night Dennis
DHA> Potter was the guest.  One of the best interviews I've seen on a talk
DHA> show.

Wow.  You are the first person I've ever met who has heard of this
show.  I thought that the only three viewers were my old roommate, my
gfriend, and me.

Is there some sort of Nick Bakai underground movement I hadn't heard
about?

The "Giant Wheel of Shag" has a whole different meaning when discussed
on london.pm.


-- 
mike





Re: The best film of all time?

2001-09-17 Thread Mike Jarvis

Monday, September 17, 2001, 1:31:13 PM, Jasper McCrea wrote:

JM> Worst movie of all time:

JM> Citizen Kane or the Piano. It's a toss up between these two.

Bah!  Citizen Kane changed filmmaking forever.  Not just from a
technical standpoint (although it did that...check out the low shot of
Kane returning to the office) but more importantly, from a narrative
standpoint.  Kane changed everything.

At University of Missouri (home of the world's first and finest school
of journalism) the students recite the lines along with the movie
every year during j-school week.

I was already thinking about Kane this week.  Spanish-American war
anybody?


-- 
mike





Re: The best film of all time?

2001-09-17 Thread Mike Jarvis

Monday, September 17, 2001, 11:41:42 AM, Greg McCarroll wrote:

GM> but what are your top films? I ask because I feel the need to buy
GM> some more DVDs soon.

Citizen Kane


-- 
mike





Re: (time_t)1E9 (was Re: Stuff)

2001-09-11 Thread Mike Jarvis

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, 4:50:54 AM, Jonathan Stowe wrote:

>> >My guess is "Sabrina the Teenage Witch".
>>
>> D'oh! Of course. Should have worked that out. Now there's a _quality_
>> TV show :)
>>

JS> I only watch for it the funky cat ,...


Nick Bakai(sp?) was the best talk show second bannana ever.  He was
Dennis Miller's sidekick during his short lived run in late night, and
before that he was on a show on The Comedy Channel[1] with Alan Havey.

The Havey show was my all time favorite late night talk show.  They
had no budget, and much of the time couldn't convince guests to come
on.  So Havey and Bakai would just bullshit for an hour, desperatly
trying to kill time, Night After Night[2].  They were genuinly funny
guys in a horrible situation, and it was a joy to watch.

I'm also glad to see I'm not the only perv who watches StTW.


[1] Pre-merger with Comedy Central, which also ran it briefly.
[2] Which was also the name of the show.

-- 
mike