Re: Character encodings and databases

2014-06-20 Thread Jason Clifford

On 2014-06-20 09:37, Andrew Hill wrote:

my $zurich = "Zürich";
$dbh->do("delete from foo");
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO foo (bar) values (?)");
$sth->execute($zurich);
$dbh->commit;
$sth = $dbh->prepare("select bar from foo");
$sth->execute;
my$foo = ($sth->fetchrow_array)[0];
$sth->finish;
$dbh->disconnect;
print HexDump $foo;
print HexDump $zurich;

This outputs:
  5A FC 72 69 63 68  Z.rich
  5A C3 BC 72 69 63 68   Z..rich


Did you 'use utf8;' in your script?

$zurich contains bytes but should contain characters and that usually 
means you didn't.




Re: Evaluating user-defined conditions

2014-06-09 Thread Jason Clifford

On 2014-06-09 11:36, Andrew Beverley wrote:

Dear all,

I'd like to take a condition specified by a user and use it to 
perform a

set of tests on a data set. Is there a module to do this?

For example, I might have an array of hashes containing "name", 
"price"
and "age". I would like a user to be able to define their own 
condition,
such as "age > 10 && price < (age + 5) * 10", and then to get the 
result

(true or false) for each of the array items.

Is there a nice easy way to do this without trying to parse the
condition myself? Presumably I could do some sort of eval, but that
sounds highly dangerous with user input ;-)

Andy


Take a look at Safe.pm for a way to do a safe eval.

We did something around this recently to provide something rather like 
what you describe and it works very well.




Re: ORMs du jour?

2013-10-21 Thread Jason Clifford

On 2013-10-21 14:37, Dirk Koopman wrote:

Any recommendations for an ORM? I am looking for something simple
rather than lots of bells and whistles.


What is your requirement - ie the use case?



Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers

2013-09-18 Thread Jason Clifford

On 2013-09-18 15:22, gvim wrote:

My question was about what others perceive to be the reasons for the
dearth of Perl books and the lack of range in subject matter compared
with the proliferation of new titles in the Ruby and Python
communities.


I wonder whether part of the answer to this question lies in the fact 
that the things that could be covered in Perl books about frameworks, 
Moose, etc are fairly well documented and that the documentation is 
easily available.


Why should I spend money on books which wont necessarily contain 
anything that I cannot already get more conveniently and at less expense 
by reading the POD?


This is not to say that the above means there is no possible demand for 
such new books but it *may* mean that a large part of the potential 
market (ie those already using Perl) wont be interested.



These considerations also apply to Ruby and Python authors but it
hasn't stopped them pumping them out by the barrel-load.


Is the easily available and free documentation for those languages as 
good as that available for Perl?


Of course there is also the possibility that publishers are generally 
reacting to perceived market demand and they simply perceive more demand 
for python/ruby/...


All of this is not to say there are no new books. There is a new 
edition of Mastering Perl on the way.




Re: Bug in documentation for Encode::decode_utf8 ?

2013-09-05 Thread Jason Clifford

On 2013-09-05 09:31, William Blunn wrote:

It seems that decode_utf8(...) is a no-op if the input string has the
UTF8 flag on, but decode("utf8", ...) will always try to decode
regardless of the state of the UTF8 flag.

But the documentation says that they are equivalent.

So the documentation would appear to be at odds with the behaviour.


Yes. Looking at the code decode_utf8 has "return $_ if is_utf8($_)" as 
it's first line which decode does not.
decode_utf8 also lacks the a check that find_encoding('utf8') succeeded 
before using it however if that causes a problem it's because there are 
far bigger problems. Another difference is that decode_utf8 appends '' 
if $_ is a reference while decode() appends '' without any condition.




Re: Which modules do you "allow" yourself to use for production?

2013-07-22 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2013-07-22 at 19:45 +0100, Pierre M wrote:
> As i was asking for advice in a previous email, Dirk Koopman wrote:
> "Use the lowest impact perl from the beginning (that probably means
> avoiding Moose, Catapole et al)."

Surely you need to have an idea of the scale of the project before
making anything like a decision as to the best approach to take.

If you are building a fairly large project and you exclude things like
Moose on some principle that has nothing to do with the project and it's
requirements you may well find you have bitten off your nose to spite
your face.




Re: WANTED: Speakers for technical talk 2013-07-25

2013-07-08 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2013-07-08 at 19:35 +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
> I'm looking for speakers for a technical talk on 2013-07-25 around
> Liverpool Street. If you're interested in speaking on something vaguely
> Perl-related for around 20 minutes, for example to practice a
> YAPC::Europe talk, please email me offlist.

What is the event?

I may be free and I'd be willing to talk.




Re: [TESTING] Please ignore

2013-07-02 Thread Jason Clifford

On 2013-07-02 15:57, Simon Wistow wrote:
I'm trying to diagnose a potential issue in my mail set up which 
seems
to mostly manifest itself by silencing you rowdy group of 
degenerates,

miscreants and ne'r-do-wells.


Is the bug that every email from you has the subject line set to 
"[TESTING] Please ignore"?




Re: Living with smart match breakage

2013-06-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 2013-06-14 at 19:26 +1000, Kieren Diment wrote:
> Presumably CPAN testing of a blead perl with smartmatch removed/deprecated 
> could pick that up pretty quickly.

Automated CPAN testing occurs on new releases of modules only doesn't it
or is there comprehensive testing of every current release on CPAN when
a new perl is being prepared for release?

Even if you catch everything in CPAN that doesn't address the risk for
in house libraries which is an issue for many of those using perl in
production and doesn't address application code using smart match or
given/when.

My point was more about the difficulty this uncertainty causes in
assessing the risk that it will be necessary to rewrite libraries and
applications.




Re: Living with smart match breakage

2013-06-14 Thread jason

On 2013-06-14 09:11, Smylers wrote:

There isn't such a list -- its "experimental" nature means anything
might change. P5P doesn't have consensus, and no decision has been 
made

on what's going to happen.

There are some on P5P suggesting that smartmatch is so broken it 
should

be removed entirely.


That was the impression I got from the sparse details in the 5.18 
announcement and what worried me more than anything else was precisely 
that uncertainty.


That there is no consensus that at least some of smart match and thus, 
given/when, can be considered non-experimental (and thus safe to use in 
production) means that a lot of application and library code may have to 
be rewritten at some point but nobody is really able to definitively 
determine what the scale of that risk is.


Certainly we can continue to declare use experimental and things will 
continue to work but that is a risky strategy.




Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers

2013-05-13 Thread Jason Clifford

We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
struggling. It's a shame because we've got quite a lot of development work
in the offing, mostly using Catalyst, DBIx::Class, Moose and the like.


Are you certain that the agency or agencies you are using are actually 
talking to perl developers and others who could be perl developers?


Has the job been posted to places like jobs.perl.org?

Jason Clifford 



Re: Billing a client

2013-02-11 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2013-02-11 at 07:56 +, Alex Brelsfoard wrote:
> Here's a slightly off-topic question for you all.
> I'm planning on doing some consulting work and was wondering what I should
> expect as the norm for delay between when I bill my client and when I
> should receive their money.
> Is there such a norm?  Or is it entirely dependent on the client and/or our
> agreement?

It's down to the contract and the client.

Specifically the contract sets out what is expected and forms the basis
on which you should expect to be paid so if the contract states payment
14 or 30 days after invoice then that is when you should be paid.

Some clients will pay on time. Some will delay payment - sometimes for a
long time. Those who delay payment are breaching the terms of the
contract and are offering you free money (well, it's not entirely free
as you have to invoice them for it and may have to use the courts to
actually get it) as you are entitled to charge statutory interest on
late payments.



Re: Proprietary Sybase DBI/DBD module

2012-11-01 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 2012-11-01 at 01:10 +, Anthony Lucas wrote:
> But, why on earth would this go into a "standard perl distribution"? It 
> doesn't sound very standard OR widely distributable.

Had the request genuinely been to get their particularly DBD into the
standard Perl distribution I'd agree but I think it's clear now that
what was really being asked was for details on what is the standard way
to distribute such a module within the Perl ecosystem.

That's a very different proposition.

I'm no fan of non-free software however the fact is that some people
will use this product, and other similarly non-free ones, and those
people will be content with the distribution requirements. 

So long as the companies offering it comply with the license terms of
those whose software they build upon what is the problem?



Re: Proprietary Sybase DBI/DBD module

2012-10-31 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2012-10-31 at 17:21 +, DAVID HODGKINSON wrote:
> > it seems pretty obvious to me. the sybase people have written a new driver 
> > which is being released in binary only form (hence proprietary)
> 
> Talking with Chris last night, that may not be the case.

I also spoke with him last night and today he has posted a link to some
docs for it. 

The DBD will be normal perl however it will require a client lib which
will be a binary only distribution.



Re: Proprietary Sybase DBI/DBD module

2012-10-29 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2012-10-29 at 14:07 +, Chris Jack wrote:
> I'm just back from speaking at the Las Vegas SAP/Sybase conference (on a 
> somewhat Perl related topic too!). One of the (other) interesting talks was 
> about a new proprietary Sybase ASE DBI/DBD module for Perl (to be called 
> DBD::SybaseASE from memory). They were a little short on specifics, but it 
> sounds like it will answer a number of concerns with the current 
> non-proprietary DBD::Sybase - for instance with performance of bulk loading. 
> I asked what was being done about getting it into standard perl 
> distributions, and the presenter didn't know. Hence my question: can anyone 
> send me/post information or a link about how to get a new module into 
> standard Perl distributions (and maybe also a list of the major perl 
> distributions). RegardsChris  

Do you know what the license terms for redistribution of this module
are?

Ideally you simply upload the module to CPAN and, optionally, advise the
producers of Strawberry Perl and ActiveState that it is available so
they can package it up for their users.

So long as it being proprietary does not prevent this model of
distribution that's all you need to do.

Jason Clifford



Re: Home Network Issues

2012-09-10 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 08:26 +0100, Jacqui Caren wrote:
> IMHO the idea of your router doing WAP duty is just plain nuts.

Why do you think that?



Re: Brainbench perl test?

2012-09-05 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2012-09-05 at 09:01 +0200, Richard Foley wrote:
> > And besides, I don't think I'd really want to work with a programmer
> > who didn't know what the Fibonacci sequence is :-)
> >
> I'd rather work with a good programmer who can't answer your question slickly
> in the heat of an interview, (whatever clever question you think up during 
> your
> coffee break while chatting with a group of people about how to think up the
> best interview question), than a bad programmer who impresses you with a
> predictable memory trick during an interview, (aren't we so cool because we
> know the same things as each other?)

That's fair generally however the question isn't particularly clever and
doesn't require you to know any memory trick at all. It's just a very
simple test to see if you can take a simple specification and turn it
into some kind of code with the added bonus of seeing whether the
candidate spots potentials issues with it.

As for not knowing what the Fibonacci sequence is I agree that it's not
a particularly good test but if it is specified as either of the two
questions that were suggested then it's irrelevant whether you recognise
and name the equation so long as you can do as asked surely.

Jason




Re: [OT] Prepaid mobile plans with data, possibly roaming

2012-08-21 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 17:15 +0100, Anthony Lucas wrote:
> 3 can be quite good with the traffic detection if it's obvious. 
> 
> In my experience, 5 or so hours of usage (unauthorised tethering) and they're 
> on to you.
> Pop it back in your phone, reboot or lose the tower, and you're back in 
> business as far as internet access on the phone, but you're now on some kind 
> of watch-list and they're a lot faster to catch on the second time.

There are many ways to do this. If your phone/device supports it I
suspect using the device as a wifi hotspot is among the safest but it's
true that they are perfectly well able to detect it.




Re: [OT] Prepaid mobile plans with data, possibly roaming

2012-08-21 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2012-08-22 at 00:53 +1000, Toby Wintermute wrote:
> Are they likely to even notice if I'm tethering it, sans that fiver?

They *can* detect what you are doing based upon user agent detection and
other traffic signatures if they want to.

My experience is that they cannot be bothered and I suspect they wont be
for anyone who isn't considered to be taking the piss.

> Now to see if I can get a 3 SIM dispatched to where I'll be staying
> first up in London.. :)

Pop into a 3 shop and pick one up. Simples



Re: Better way to mirror CPAN locally?

2012-05-07 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2012-05-07 at 13:21 +0100, gvim wrote:
> I currently use the script listed below, provided by Randall Schwartz, to 
> mirror CPAN locally as I spend a lot of time Perl-ing without an internet 
> connection. With CPAN now totalling around 2GB I'm wondering if there isn't a 
> more efficient method as this script doesn't use any kind of rsync method and 
> I end up just downloading the whole 2GB every time.

Why don't you use rsync?

http://www.cpan.org/misc/how-to-mirror.html#rsync



Re: Beware: NET-A-PORTER

2011-12-13 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:58:29 -, Simon Wistow   
wrote:



My health insurance premiums aren't much more than what I paid in NI
back in the UK - about $100 a month I think.


But in the US you have no cover once you stop paying so you need to factor  
in additional money to cover premiums when you are between jobs and  
consider the cost of premiums as part of your retirement planning.


Re: Beware: NET-A-PORTER

2011-12-09 Thread Jason Tang
On 9 December 2011 15:14, Uri Guttman  wrote:

> On 12/09/2011 09:32 AM, Avleen Vig wrote:
>
>  Not entirely true. Telecommuting doesnt erect barriers, it results in
>> different barriers which need ti be handled differently.
>>
>> I worked for a distributed company for almost to years. Since then I've
>> worked from home for almost 18 months. It's not more barriers, it's
>> different ones.
>>
>> Eg in the office I sometimes hated having to find people, figure out where
>> they are, maybe having to deal with them face to face when they're having
>> a
>> bad day. These things get better with telecommuting ime :)
>>
>
> i totally agree. i tell my clients that all the time when they are not
> into allowing telecommuting. it is a management style issue, not a
> technical one. i placed many in a pure virtual company in the US. they are
> fully set up for telecommute and have the management experience to do so.
> another client is 100% onsite. no exceptions. BUT someone i know left there
> and was allowed to telecommute since he had knowledge and experience they
> needed. and this was a very large powerhouse place paying top salaries.
>
> it is all over the map with rules on allowing telecommuting. some love it
> as it opens up to more qualified employees. others hate it since they don't
> have the management set up for it. some do both, onsite if you can move or
> already live near their offices, telecommute if you have the experience to
> do so. it is also on the employee's head to be able to telecommute. some
> just don't have the discipline to deal with kids, spouse and other
> household distractions.
>
> one placement i made recently explicitly wanted to work onsite because he
> was telecommuting for a while and wanted a solid reason to get out of the
> house!! there are no fixed rules for this on either side. i have seen all
> sorts of variations.
>

I guess when an employer and employee come together to see if there can be
a professional working relationship they set out their own criteria.
Clearly telecommuting high as a priority for you. Great that you know what
you want! The flip side this isn't necessarily the 'norm' in the market
place, so you maybe rather restrictive on your employment opportunities.
This is of course your choice.

Personally I appreciate communication methods that are not intrusive
(someone coming over and interrupting you when you're in your zone is
frustrating at the best of times). But with everything there's a balance to
be struck to aid the social dynamics and progress of the project. Some
things work well over IRC, and some things over email. However there are
definiltely situations I would say getting off your chair and getting
yourself sat with the person and talking about something is the more
effective way to communicate something. What ever your style of
communication it has to work with the peers you're working with.

Jason


Re: Beware: NET-A-PORTER

2011-12-09 Thread Jason Clifford

On 09/12/2011 13:10, James Laver wrote:

You've never dealt with a vulturous recruiter, have you?


Is there any other kind of recruiter?


Re: Beware: NET-A-PORTER

2011-12-09 Thread Jason Tang
Morning.

I should prefix my response that I am currently an employee of NAP and have
been for over 4.5 years.

I'm sorry that your experience with NAP has been far from ideal. I haven't
personally been involved with the hiring over the US but I have forwarded
the details to the people involved so they can clarify situation.

Jason

On 9 December 2011 03:13, Rudolf Lippan  wrote:

> Good morning, Perl Mongers,
>
> This is a followup to my post to the Perl jobs-discuss mailing list.
>  Terrence picked it up here:
> http://livingcosmos.posterous.com/beware-of-net-a-porter-perl-jobs and
> the original can be found here:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/jobs-discuss@perl.org/msg01469.html
>
>
> About six weeks ago, I was contacted by a recruiter and asked if I was
> interested in a team lead position in New Jersey, and so begins my story.
>
> I was wanting to get back into the community after a limiting contract,
> but this wasn't really the sort of splash I hoped to make.  I've never been
> moved to do something like this in the 10+ years I've been programming
> professionally.  I've experienced some less than honest recruiting
> techniques and companies that had no issue jerking people around, but I was
> made aware this morning that there were at least two other Perl programmers
> affected, including junior candidates that probably had more hanging on
> this than I did.
>
> I sent the following list of events to both NET-A-PORTER and the
> recruiting agency 7 Dec.  Earlier today (8 Dec.), the recruiter called me
> and confirmed this, point by point.  NET-A-PORTER has, as of yet, not
> replied.
>
> 1) That NET-A-PORTER was fully aware of the contract rate during the
> interview
>   process.
>
> 2) That NET-A-PORTER selected me to lead their US team and I was asked to
> wait
>   for final sign off.
>
> 3) That NET-A-PORTER was aware that I let another opportunity go based on
> my
>   understanding that my employment was pending a 'final signature'.
>
> 4) That as a condition of final sign off NET-A-PORTER asked that, at the
> end
>   of the 6 month contract period, I would be willing to accept $30K less
> than
>   the original budgeted salary with the proviso that the salary would be
> open
>   to renegotiation based on the market conditions at that time.
>  Furthermore
>   that I agreed to this.
>
> 5) That NET-A-PORTER decided to withdraw the position at this point and no
>   longer build out a US-based Perl development team. The reason given is
> that
>   it would cost 1/2 as much to build out a team in the UK.
>
> For a company that espouses their programming culture and community
> support, I can't understand how they could think this was even remotely
> acceptable.  If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me.
>  The recruiter gave permission to share contact information with any
> interested parties regarding this situation.
>
> I know I'm not in the UK but, short of trying for slashdot, I thought this
> was the most appropriate venue for informing those who should be most aware
> of their actions.
>
> -r
>


Re: london.pm Digest, Vol 73, Issue 15

2011-11-22 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 21:15 +0800, Shantanu Bhadoria wrote:
> I am controlling a couple of devices via a  process that runs continuously
> and wait for tasks to be performed on those devices, 

Is that device able to multitask? Could you run multiple processes on
that device to run the jobs as and when they arrive?



Re: Implementing a Queue in a process

2011-11-22 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 08:23 +0100, Abigail wrote:
> My first idea is "named piped", but the devil is in the details. 

A named pipe is a good solution. I've been using one for a specific task
for almost 11 years without any particular problems. There is a serious
drawback to this approach however - once you take something off the pipe
it is gone forever. If the process reading from it fails for whatever
reason you cannot replay the entries unless you have them logged
elsewhere. It's never been a problem for me as my purpose for using this
isn't too critical but for something important you either need a queuing
method that logs or another solution.

> You don't even write which "best" you are looking for.

Presumably the universal "best" - one in which someone else provides the
solution and it's already implemented in an easy to use manner at little
or no cost.



Re: Perl-friendly message queue-like system

2011-09-22 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 2011-09-22 at 09:15 +0100, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> I have a bunch of servers doing mail ilftering.  I would like them to send 
> tiny messages about the results of said filtering to a central point.  I 
> would then like something at the central point to pop messages off the queue 
> and update a database.  Think of it as sort of a centralised collection point 
> for statistical data.  If the odd message gets eaten, it really doesn't 
> matter.

Would a simple syslog based solution do the job? I still have a simple
system in place that uses syslog to distribute messages as necessary
with the target server throwing them into a pipe and a very simple perl
script taking messages from the pipe and updating an authentication
database.

It is very simple and works very well.



Re: Writing About Perl

2011-08-23 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 11:39 +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
> So, purely hypothetically...
> 
> If a popular Linux magazine had given you the opportunity to write a  
> 3000 word article giving a practical project-based demonstration of  
> how Perl had moved on in the last ten years, what would you do? What  
> would you write about?

10 years ago the popular view was the perl always ended up with an
unmaintainable code base and that it was not very easy to implement.

I'd suggest something to show how the use of CPAN makes it easy to
produce big projects without writing lots of code and that the code
produced is easy to maintain. I'd also consider doing something on top
of Plack and a popular web framework.



Re: Git Config

2011-08-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Sat, 2011-08-20 at 11:32 +0100, Smylers wrote:
> Hello. How can I make the git diff command use the -b flag (aka
> --ignore-space-change) by default?

Have you tried: git config --global apply.whitespace nowarn





Re: [ANNOUNCE] London Perl M[ou]ngers August Social - 2011-08-05 - The Victoria, Bayswater W2 2NH

2011-07-27 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 18:54 +0200, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker wrote:
> The London.pm August social will be on Thursday 5th August 

Do you mean Thursday 4th August or Friday 5th August?





Re: Cool/useful short examples of Perl?

2011-05-31 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2011-05-31 at 15:06 +0100, Mark Fowler wrote:
> Depends if you're looking semi-technical or not.  How about my hostify
> script that puts DNS entries into /etc/hosts?
> 
> http://blog.twoshortplanks.com/2011/01/30/hostify/

Am I alone in finding the code elements of that page very hard to read -
the deeper the grey gets the harder it is to read against a black
background.



Re: Cool/useful short examples of Perl?

2011-05-30 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2011-05-30 at 16:27 +0100, Denny wrote:
> > if (! Email::Valid->address($email_address) ) {
> 
> Something wrong with 'unless'?

No but lots of people appear to find "if" to be more readable

If you're not worried about readability then why bother with either the
if or unless. Just do:

use Email::Valid;
Email::Valid->address($email_address) || print "Not valid";








Re: Someone needs to take jwz aside...

2011-04-21 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 23:06 -0400, Jesse Vincent wrote:
> > He's embarrassed that didn't think to run "apt-get install 
> > libnet-twitter-perl"?
> 
> That doesn't work so well on a vanilla OS X box. Whcih is what his
> workstation is.

That's not a perl fail but rather a fail on the part of those who
package (or don't package) perl modules for that platform.

In fairness it's also a fail on the various Linux platforms I've
encountered too as nobody has, so far, produced a comprehensive cpan to
$whatever_distro repository 

> There is a toolchain bug. Perl's toolchain can't find XCode.

Is it really the responsibility of the perl toolchain to do that?

Surely it's a platform responsibility to provide a reliable dependency
chain whether the platform is an OS distro or something else.



Re: Someone needs to take jwz aside...

2011-04-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 12:27 +0100, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> Short answer: we're writing most of our new services in Java with a toolchain 
> that makes a lot of dependency management problems go away :)

Does that mean your java team will have to re-invent lots of wheels or
will they be using established (and proven) code libraries?




Re: Someone needs to take jwz aside...

2011-04-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 11:48 +0100, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> Yup - completely agree. This is one of the reasons I like the ::Tiny 
> namespace so much.
> 
> And the transient dependency explosion - and subsequent burden of updating 
> those dependencies - i.e. the TCO of a Perl app - is the main reason we're 
> not favouring Perl for new applications at the Beeb.

So how are you handling the requirement to maintain the code doing what
those many modules do?

If you are not using a modular approach does that have any impact upon
the TCO of maintaining the systems you are deploying?




Re: Emergency Dim Sum and lathosmeet

2011-04-12 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 12:38 +0100, Simon Cozens wrote:
>   I have a spare afternoon in London. I'll be at Jen Cafe in Newport 
> Place from
> 1pm with Joel and anyone else who turns up. I may be able to metabolise
> alcohol afterwards. I'll be picking up email, thanks to this need free 3G
> access point and Linux tablet that's masquerading as an Amazon e-reader.

Any idea where you will be after dim sum?

I'm unexpectedly free later this afternoon and I owe you a beer.



Re: Perl on a smartphone?

2011-03-23 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2011-03-23 at 00:42 +, Anatolie Mazur wrote:
> I have Perl on my Android and Shell too

Are there any special considerations with regard to perl under Android?

I'm particularly interested to know if there are any restrictions beyond
simply "it can only be perl" for modules.



Re: Webcasting the tech meets?

2011-03-11 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 2011-03-11 at 08:17 +, Leo Lapworth wrote:
> If you wish to get the presenters written permission, and check if the
> venu is ok for each technical meeting, then actually video the talks
> and upload them I'm sure http://www.presentingperl.org/ would
> host them.
> 
> But a live webcast would be asking too much of the venues.

How about a single stream webcast from the venue which is then proxied
by an external host which doesn't have the same bandwidth or other
resource limits?

Of course this would only be possible if the venue can provide at least
500kb/s of upload bandwidth and isn't affected by bandwidth usage
limits.



Re: Jobs in London

2011-03-03 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 20:54 +, Peter Corlett wrote:
> Some employers offer roles that they call contracts but are really just 
> time-limited permanent roles that need renewing. This seems to be mainly a 
> way to avoid the employee protection kicking in after a year.

In that case they are very stupid as those protections come into force
as soon as you have been with an employee for a year on whatever basis
even if the contract is not specifically a "permanent" one. The only
difference with a fixed term contract is that it can end without further
notice upon expiration of the fixed term except that if it has been
renewed and there would be a reasonable expectation that it will be
further renewed notice would be required to end it.



Re: Bulk domain registrar recommendations

2011-02-09 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2011-02-09 at 17:03 +, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> Which registrars have a decent features/price for someone with a few
> dozen domains?

I use Resellerclub, OpenSRS, GoDaddy (I wish I didn't!) and Enom for
domain registration, etc services.

Resellerclub is probably the best of them for my purposes. They don't
charge a membership fee and their prices are OK. They provide a reseller
front end so you can pimp the services as well as using them and they
also have an API which you can use if you don't like their front end.



Re: Server side chart/graph library?

2011-01-06 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 2011-01-06 at 13:10 +, Jérôme Etévé wrote:
> Yep, charting is what I need (as I don't really feel rolling my own
> charting lib on top of any low level one :) ).

I find GD::Graph works well for me.



Re: Any Kernel wizards out there?

2010-12-16 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 08:17 +0100, Stefan Scheytt wrote:
> There are some oddball machines here running on HP
> server hardware with openSUSE 2.6.22 kernels that like
> crashing randomly. My feeble attempts to switch them
> over to a different, freshly built kernel with kexec/kdump
> slappen on it have so far been in vain.. mainly because
> the storage doesn't want to play ball.

Have you already checked to ensure the problems are not caused by
hardware issues? If the crashes really are random it usually points to
hardware.



Re: Any of the sysadmins here fancy a bit of freelance work?

2010-12-15 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2010-12-15 at 01:27 +, David Cantrell wrote:
> I have a hideously out-of-date Debian 3.1 machine that needs upgrading
> to latest-stable.  Any of you lovely people fancy doing it in exchange
> for copious beer tokens and my eternal love?

It's probably worth giving an indication of the services running on it
as that will determine how easily the upgrade can be done.




Re: Need a CRUD thing

2010-08-28 Thread Jason Clifford
On Sat, 2010-08-28 at 09:22 +0100, Simon Cozens wrote:
> If only there were a web application framework in Perl that's really simple to
> use and comes with a nice set of built-in CRUD templates.
> 
> Nope, can't think of anything.

Wow, you should write one of those. There may even be people out there
who would use it to do things like tracking their drinking experiences.



Re: Nice traffic RSS feed

2010-03-05 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 10:15 +, Michael Lush wrote:
> I've been writing a little traffic warning script for my nslu2 (nothing 
> special it plays traffic jam noises if there is a problem on the road to 
> work:-)
> 
> Anyway I started out scraping the BBC traffic page, however I had cause to 
> look for a better source and came across this rss feed from the Highways 
> agency on this page (http://www.highways.gov.uk/traffic/11253.aspx)
> 
> http://www.highways.gov.uk/rssfeed/rss.xml
> 
> Thought someone else may find it useful (I like it, it even has the 
> lat/lon of the incident so I can limit the search to bits of the A14 I 
> actually use)

Thanks. That looks very useful although it's a shame it only includes
unplanned events so most causes of serious traffic problems (roadworks)
wont be covered by it.



Re: Fun Friday afternoon topic: domain name disputes

2010-02-09 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2010-02-09 at 14:46 +, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> > If it would be a co.uk domain, she could probably go to a UK court.  Since 
> > this is a .com domain, I think any UK judge will quickly dismiss on the 
> > grounds that it is an American domain,
> > so that she should go to court in the U.S. of A.  And *that* will prove to 
> > become very costly very quickly indeed.
> 
> no .co.us would be an american domain, .com is a global TLD, so it's 
> anybodies.

That's true but only to a limited extent as .COM domains are registered
subject to the terms and conditions of the ICANN approved registries
which pretty much all state that legal disputes regarding the domain
registration must be settled in the courts of that registries home
country or, more commonly, in the USA.

Certainly a judge in an English (and Welsh) or Scots court would not
refuse to hear a case arising from a dispute but if the other party
responds to the case pointing out that the domain is registered subject
to the laws of some other jurisdiction the judge may decide that it's
appropriate to direct the plaintiff to bring the case there. That said
the court is just as likely to hear the case and make an order on the
basis that the order should be enforceable through the courts of the
other jurisdiction.

> OTOH, national businesses using an global TLD is hateful.

Why? The global TLDs are not reserved to multinationals. They are,
rightly, first come first served subject to reasonable restrictions in
law - ie trademark, etc.



Re: Fun Friday afternoon topic: domain name disputes

2010-02-05 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 14:29 +0100, mirod wrote:
> My friend owns the trademark for the name in Europe, the US and Asia. It is a
> very distinct name and a Google search on the name returns only hits related 
> to
> her product.
>
> So it looks like a clear case of cyber-squatting to me.

It might be. It depends upon whether the domain name was registered in
bad faith (see http://www.icann.org/en/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm for
details) or not.

Do bear in mind that Trademark protects a name in relation to a specific
market segment and is not universal so if the current registrant was
using the name in connection with some other market segment or not
commercially and specifically in a manner not likely to cause confusion
as to who was using it your friend might not have a right to try and
take the domain via a DRP.

> I am not sure what she can do about it though. It seems like the only solution
> is to go to court, and there have been very few cases that went to trial.

Perhaps the registry operator the domain was registered through (as
shown in the whois record) operates a dispute resolution service
although many of them effectively don't.

WIPO is an option for a dispute on a .com domain but it will be
expensive and slow. It's really designed to accommodate the needs and
desires of larger companies.

If the person who has registered the domain is based in the UK taking
them to court over the matter should not be too hard. If they are
elsewhere you might well have to bring action in a US court which will
be expensive.





Catalyst::Engine::Stomp and ErrorCatcher

2010-02-05 Thread Jason Tang
Hi all

Here at work we've got a Catalyst::Engine::Stomp based consumer talking to
ActiveMQ and there's has been some issues of instability. So have been
looking into how we can at least catch some of the obvious ones and
hopefully provide some way of logging what's going on.

Anyway I've been looking at C::E::Stomp and tried to add a try/catch
block to capture that something has gone wrong and email it off to
someone with the error using ErrorCatcher.

Here's what I'm trying in C::E::Stomp in the run method..

# enter loop...
while (1) {
try {
my $frame = $self->connection->receive_frame();
$self->handle_stomp_frame($app, $frame);
} catch ($e) {
$app->error("we are in trouble: $e");
}

last if $ENV{ENGINE_ONESHOT};
}

..I'm abit puzzled as to why this isn't being passed over to ErrorCatcher.
It is dumping something in the logs..

010/02/05 06:42:42 we are in trouble: Error reading command:  at 
/opt/xt/xt-perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.8/Catalyst.pm line 497
Catalyst::error('XT::ActiveMQ::DC', 'FSSB: Error reading command:  at 
/opt/xt/xt-perl/lib/site_per...') called at 
/opt/xt/xt-perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.8/Catalyst/Engine/Stomp.pm line 111

Catalyst::Engine::Stomp::run('Catalyst::Engine::Stomp=HASH(0x1dc34d80)', 
'XT::ActiveMQ::DC', 'i dont matter', 'neither do i', 'HASH(0x1d8de350)') called 
at /opt/xt/xt-perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.8/Catalyst.pm line 2163
Catalyst::run('XT::ActiveMQ::DC', 'i dont matter', 'neither do i', 
'HASH(0x1d8de350)') called at 
/opt/xt/deploy/xtracker/script/xt_activemq_dc_daemon.pl line 101

I don't really know how the internals of Catalyst works so would appreciate
any helpful suggestions.

TIA
Jason
-- 
Jason Tang  - email: ja...@dragor.net - msn: jason-...@dragor.net


Re: No more IP for you

2010-01-21 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 15:51 +, Roger Burton West wrote:
> That's OK, TCP timeouts aren't long enough for the lightspeed delay.

IP != TCP ;)



Re: No more IP for you

2010-01-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 09:07 +, Mike Whitaker wrote:
> So, there's still nearly half a billion addresses unallocated?
> 
> Do I /really/ need to worry /just/ yet?

Absolutely yes. You need to be terrified or you wont go our and spend
oodles on new routers and switches which have a half arsed
implementation of IPv6. How else do you expect Cisco, et al to meet
their sales targets?

Seriously though the issue of IPv4 exhaustion is a real one that we
either face up to now or accept serious consequences later. Excessively
large allocations made years ago waste vast ranges of IPv4 and it's not
likely that those will be recovered so Luis is right that early entrants
to the market (and those who have bought them up) will have significant
business opportunities soon while new entrants will be screwed.



Re: Domain acquisition

2009-12-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 08:52 -0800, Ask Bjørn Hansen wrote:
> > But what is the etiquette in these situations? I'd rather not reveal to them
> > to what extent my friend is interested in the domains. To hide that I have
> > to go through aliases or proxies. Which feels just a bit sordid, somehow...
> 
> 1) Offer more money.  No reason to reveal who the real buyer is or what the 
> domain is for.
> 
> 2) Consider if the recipient is actually getting your message (assuming 
> they're not responding).  There was an unused domain we wanted where we 
> offered $1000 (or something like that) but never got a response.   Some time 
> later the domain expired and we could get it for $70 or some such from the 
> registrar that controlled the almost-deleted domain.


There is also the possibility that they know that replying to any
expressions of interest at all may result in the an increased risk of
the domain being snatched through whatever systems the registry has in
place to deal with abusive registrations (a process that can be and is
abused to steal domain registrations).

I occasionally receive emails asking about one of my domains and I never
reply to them in any way whatsoever. I do, however, renew them to keep
them.



Re: Online payment providers

2003-09-18 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Sam Vilain wrote:

>   > For new businesses though other banks tend not to offer the service
>   > without very large bonds, if at all.
>   > I didn't have £5,000 to £10,000 to give to the bank for this.
> 
> I know of a company who were charged a £500,000 deposit for their
> merchant account.  Probably to do with their turnover and market
> though.  From what I understand that's the rough price of a payment
> gateway where you only get charged 2.5%.

Online transactions always attract premium charges even though there 
seems to be little or not evidence to support claims that there is a 
higher risk of fraud.

Internet merchants also seem to be required to pay higher deposits. 

> But you still get stung £25 for chargebacks.

I cannot remember what worldpay charge for them. I avoid them by the 
simple expedient of checking all transactions and refunding those that 
seem dodgy - two in the past 18 months of trading with a total value of 
about £4.00.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Online payment providers

2003-09-18 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, nemesis wrote:

> > I am using Worldpay and their service works really well for me.
> 
> Ouch.  Unless i am reading their near impossible to navigate site 
> incorrectly, they want to charge 4.5% per transaction.  Might have a 
> look at some of their other options.

Yes that is a downside and a fairly serious one.

For new businesses though other banks tend not to offer the service
without very large bonds, if at all.

I didn't have £5,000 to £10,000 to give to the bank for this.

I suppose I'm in a stronger position to negotiate again so once I have 
time I'll see about getting them to drop my charges.

In truth the 4.5% charge isn't so bad. The difficult thing is that they 
hold the money for 4 weeks before paying it to us. That's the one thing 
that may eventually push me to move.

All that said however I'm still staying with them as it's convenient and 
works very well. I don't ever have to see a customer's card details.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: back to the 80's

2003-09-16 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Steve Keay wrote:

> Does anyone happen to have a collection of old computers like BBC
> micros, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, ZX 81, etc?  My g/f wants to
> photograph them for a book being published for the Reader's Digest as
> well as an annual price guide for lunatics that collect things.

The British Computer Museum at Bletchley Park have quite a good collection 
of old personal computer equipment including, I think, all of the above.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Online payment providers

2003-09-15 Thread Jason Clifford
On Sun, 14 Sep 2003, nemesis wrote:

> Netbanx: http://www.netinvest.co.uk/ncr/netbanx/

Of the ones listed these are the only ones I would specifically avoid. 
On the few occassions I've had to pay via their service it's been 
impossible as their site only seemed to work with a browser from a certain 
company in Redmond.

> Worldpay: http://www.worldpay.co.uk/

I am using Worldpay and their service works really well for me.

If you subscribe to their Select Junior service you can use the perl 
module I've written to handle the transactions and callbacks from 
WorldPay.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Exim and HELO

2003-09-10 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, Paul Makepeace wrote:

> Thanks for this! I implemented the rejecting plain IP and non-FQDN
> suggestions rejecting rfc-breaching [EH]LO strings, and now it's cheaply
> 550'ing hundreds every day here.
> 
> I wonder what the long-term falsepos rate is... I've had one definite
> falsepos from a server announcing itself with an IP address so you
> really need a whitelist to go with it and occasional scans of logs and/or
> some reporting mechanism.

I'd strongly recommend against blocking sites because they announce with 
an IP unless they are offering an IP other than the one they connect from.

Lots of servers are poorly configured and a facist configuration will 
prevent genuine email as well as spam.

A whitelist is only going to help you after you've already permanently 
rejected a message. Maybe you can modify the rule so that you check 
$sender_helo_name against the client IP.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now





Re: Exim and HELO

2003-09-08 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, David Landgren wrote:

> I hope you succeed in doing in your MTA of choice. If you can drop the 
> connection before DATA, you can save a lot of bandwidth.
> 
> You may safely reject any SMTP connection that announces itself this 
> way (HELO compuserve.com)

Just be sure you only match on "compuserve.com" as if you match subdomains 
you'll be blocking email from a lot of people.

>  yahoo.com is another one to look for. Their 
> servers announce themselves using FQDNs. Hotmail doesn't, may they 
> roast in hell.

It's that a given?

> If you get this to work there are two other easy ones to block: HELO 
> 1.2.3.4 (where 1.2.3.4 is the public IP address of your MTA) and HELO 
> example.com (where example.com is your domain name).

And HELO localhost as well as HELO [ any unqualified hostname ]

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Exim and HELO

2003-09-08 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Rafael Garcia-Suarez wrote:

> > No, it's definitely Willow - particularly in leather. 
> 
> What do you guys have about this leather thing ?

It's the great British passion - leather on willow.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Exim and HELO

2003-09-08 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Robin Berjon wrote:

> > It's Willow.
> 
> My oh my. To say I had been putting such an absurd notion on the back of the 
> fact that they were rosbifs. You're making me doubt if building that tunnel was 
> a good idea, maybe it was better off as an island.
> 
> Faith Faith Faith Faith Faith.

No, it's definitely Willow - particularly in leather. 

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Dave and Religion

2003-09-06 Thread Jason Clifford
On Sat, 6 Sep 2003, Earle Martin wrote:

> More than I ever knew about the subject:
> 
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism
> 
> I count myself as a Unitarian Universalist.
> 
> http://www.uua.org/aboutuu/uufaq.html

Of the two urls the second seemed to contain more answers whereas the 
first seems to be more about people and what they didn't beleive. .

What you believe is your choice.

I've looked at lots of other faiths and none of them seem to satisfy my 
own experiences of life and the "supernatural".

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Dave and Religion

2003-09-06 Thread Jason Clifford
On Sat, 6 Sep 2003, Earle Martin wrote:

> > > For a start there's the three they get into enough trouble with just by
> > > admitting their existence: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit (whatever that is).
> > 
> > One being - three persons.
> 
> It's funny how everyone forgets that there are actually branches of
> Christianity that *don't* believe in the trinitarian doctrine.

Which ones and what do they believe?

I know that some faiths call themselves Christian but don't seem to have a 
clear view on who Jesus is and who he meant by the Father and the Spirit.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Dave and Religion

2003-09-05 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Robin Berjon wrote:

> You are being presented an external view yet answer with theology -- theology is 
> of little importance to the external eye. The old Egyptian/Kemetic religion is 
> often called polytheistic, when in fact their theology claims that there is only 
> one Divinity (it just happens to have lots of names).

How often are stereotypes correct?

You are asserting a stereotype about a religious group.

I answered with a couple of facts. I did not state theology other than as 
absolutely necessary.

Between those who believe and those who do not lies a very large gulf. All 
of it is inconsequential in respect to Christianity as everything an 
outsider see is just trappings and fundementally it's worthless stuff.

> > She's no more a God than Madonna is. Do those who adore Madonna generally 
> > do so as a god?
> 
> Dunno. She sure looks good in some of those leather outfits.

A god of slaughtered cows? ;)

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Dave and Religion

2003-09-05 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Iain Tatch wrote:

> If he / she / it is worshipped, then regardless of what name they're
> given, I still maintain it's a god. 

While some people fall into that trap there are not many Catholics who 
worshop Mary at all. Certainly the official position of the Church is that 
doing so is forbidden.

She's no more a God than Madonna is. Do those who adore Madonna generally 
do so as a god?
 
> If a devout christian walks into a
> church and kneels at the foot of a statue of Mary and crosses him/herself,
> then that to me is a worship of that particular god.

There is a whole bunch of teaching regarding this in the Church just as 
with icons. It all comes down to the same thing - focal points while 
considering something too big to be a single point of focus.

It's also a side show of an issue.

> If you send a prayer for salvation to "Jesus, Mary, and all the saints",
> you're hedging your bets -- if one of those gods won't save you, at least
> there's a chance one of the others is will.

I've never heard a catholic send up such a prayer. The only "prayers" I've 
heard addressed to Mary or the saints is "pray for us".

> Viewed from the outside, Christianity is an extremely polytheistic
> religion, regardless of the claims of its followers.

I can see that. It's also poorly understood inside the ranks too. Many 
people have reversed the whole thing to sanitise it.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Dave and Religion

2003-09-05 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Iain Tatch wrote:

> Only in Monotheistic religions, and the only one of those that's got any
> substantial following in this country is Judaism. One of my favourite
> Christian-baiting tactics (when I'm in that sort of mood) is to put
> forward my proposition that they have a pantheon of gods.

Christianity is a derived form of Judaism. It teaches that there is one 
God and that's it. 

> For a start there's the three they get into enough trouble with just by
> admitting their existence: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit (whatever that is).

One being - three persons.

> Then you've got a couple of other major deities such as the Virgin Mary
> (especially revered in Catholicism) and Satan, and a host of minor gods
> who they usually name "saints".

Neither is a God. Mary is human and that's it. She is revered as an 
example (as are the saints).

Satan is just a messanger whose gone "off message". His name, Satan, means 
accuser and that's basically what he does according to Christian teaching 
- he accuses us before ourselves and God.

All very simple. ;)

It's also all very beside the point.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Ob-buffy

2003-09-03 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote:

> >  > Still - it was the best TV ever made ;)
> >You jest surely. Have you never seen "The Prisoner" or "Twin
> >Peaks"?
> 
> Ah, the ignorance of youth... ;-)

I am not that young and I watched both The Prisoner and Twin Peaks. 
Neither is as good in my opinion.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: Ob-buffy

2003-09-03 Thread Jason Clifford
On 3 Sep 2003, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

> <http://www.reason.com/0308/cr.vp.why.shtml>

Sorry for me this "The mere existence of Buffy proves the declinists wrong 
about one thing: Hollywood commercialism can produce great art. Complex 
and evolving characters" turns the whole article into shite.

Hollywood commercialism had it's chance with Buffy and produced the movie 
- truly awful rubbish that nearly frightened any TV network from buying 
the show when Joss finally got complete control to make it himself.

Still - it was the best TV ever made ;)

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: DOS/WIN archivers of the mid 1990s (was Re: gzipping your websitesWINRAR 40 days trial)

2003-09-02 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Roger Burton West wrote:

> Both correct, though I've never seen PAR actually produce a result.

Download a large enough set of rar component files (as in grabbing Buffy 
each week) and you'll soon find how useful par files are.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial

2003-09-02 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, the hatter wrote:

> > > It's certainly not what I'd call anywhere close to being "standard" or
> > > "universal".
> >
> > I'm told it's fairly popular in (some?) Usenet binary newsgroups as a
> > standard way of distributing warez and moviez.
> 
> Certainly a majority of warez that show up on our network are rars (and
> they tend to be single large files, so they're not directly taken from
> multipart usenet posts)

They might have been. The .rar file is what you get after recombining the 
multipart messages.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now




Re: insidious biometrics, identity crises

2003-09-01 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Piers Cawley wrote:

> Cop with gun: Show me your ID, sir!
> Me: I'm terribly sorry, I don't have my wallet about my person.
> CwG: Okay, what's you're name and address?
> Me: Albert Urquhart of 72, Regent Square, Doncaster.
> CwG: Postcode?
> Me: Um... I've just moved in, terribly sorry I can't remember it.
> CwG: Right, you have seven days to produce your ID card at any police
> station -- here's the appropriate bit of paper to bring along with it.
> Me: Right ho. Have a nice day.
> 
> If they require my DNA they are going to have to arrest me to get
> it. 

Refusing to provide it will probably be made an offence and you could then 
find yourself sharing a cell with Big Ron.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now
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Re: gzipping your websites

2003-09-01 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, David Cantrell wrote:

> I don't do the uncompression on the fly, but do people think it's
> reasonable for me to have bzipped files on my site?  Obviously, people
> using sane systems can deal with them, but I have no idea whether those
> stuck in the Microsoftian Dark Ages can.  In fact, can they easily deal
> with gzips?

gzip is not a problem for modern clients as all browsers support it.

I don't think that is the case with bzip though.

Jason Clifford
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Re: insidious biometrics, identity crises

2003-09-01 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Elaine -HFB- Ashton wrote:

> *>How would they know who to arrest if nobody turned up with the ID
> *>card within seven days?
> 
> Well, the car has a vin and registration. I'm sure that taking the car in
> lieu of identification would likely produce a license.

Why assume that someone being required to produce an ID card will be 
driving?

If you are in a car and get pulled they ask for your driving license (and 
other docs).

For an ID card, given the biometric data inclusion which seems likely, all 
they will do is extend existing police powers to allow them to demand a 
suitable biometric sample when you are stopped. Refusal to provide it will 
be an arrestable offence just as refusal to provide a specimen is if you 
are pulled for drunken driving now.

Then they just need to check against the database back at the station to 
know who you (probably) are.

Jason Clifford
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Re: insidious biometrics, identity crises

2003-09-01 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Piers Cawley wrote:

> > *>You only have to be able to produce your driving license when asked, and
> > *>you have up to 7 days to do so. You don't have to be carrying it.
> >
> > Well, I suspect something similar would happen with an ID card.
> 
> How would they know who to arrest if nobody turned up with the ID
> card within seven days?

Given that the proposals call for biometric data to be stored on the card 
and in the system I assume that once cards are compulsory (probably even 
before then) the police will have powers to take a biometric sample from 
anyone they stop as a matter of course.

Then they'd just look up the matching record(s) and thus know who to 
arrest for not showing up.

Organised criminals would just forge ID cards as necessary and always 
carry them thus satisfying the cursory checks likely to be carried out in 
any situation where the person stopped is not arrested on the spot.

Jason Clifford
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Re: insidious biometrics, identity crises

2003-08-29 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, Sam Vilain wrote:

>   He> My s.o. has been ill for years with extreme pain, fatigue, and
>   He> brain troubles.  She's starting to recover after having had her
>   He> fillings exchanged for composite ones last year.  Without doing
>   He> much in the way of detox, some of her symptoms have almost
>   He> completely gone, and the rest about half better.
> 
> /me considers getting all his amalgam fillings changed to composite...

Everything I've seen on that issue indicates that it's a danger only 
for those who have an allergic reaction to the mercury traces.

That said I am not confident that sufficient (any?) real research has been 
carried out on the long term effects.

It's not possible to composite for all filings either which is a problem 
for those of us who have needed root canal filing work.

Jason Clifford
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RE: [OT] SQL woes

2003-08-23 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Colin Magee wrote:

> >What Linux distro are you running?
> 
> SuSE 8.1.  As I say, I can see the files installed in usr/bin, as root, but
> when I try running it I get all sorts of error messages:
> 1."Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket
> /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock".  Try checking mysqld is running and that the
> socket exists"
> 2.When I try to run mysqld independently, or add it to my .bashrc it
> doesn't work either.

That's not what you need to do.

First check that you have the mysql server package installed:

rpm -qa | grep mysql

will give you a list of all of the mysql packages installed. Like many 
others SuSE provide several packages and the server may not have been 
installed by default.

Once you have the server package installed make sure it is started at 
boot:

chkconfig --add [package]
chkconfig --level [level] [package] on

Where [package] is the name of the server package and level is the 
runlevel you start your system at.

> 3.Even if the above did work, I understand there are a number of other
> setup and admin tasks with MySQL.  ie. you need to run mysql_install_db, set
> permissions, passwords and so forth.

The rpm will initialist MySQL for you. The frist task will to set the root 
password as by default there isn't one.

> The database is only for my use, so (1 + 2 + 3) = not straightforward in my
> book.

That's why the rpm does it for you.

As I said previously PostgreSQL is pretty much the same.

Jason Clifford
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RE: [OT] SQL woes

2003-08-23 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Colin Magee wrote:

> As a Perl beginner who has realised I need to set up a database, I have to
> add that I immediately went for MySQL due to all the attention it seems to
> have, and bought a few books to get me started.  The whole thing - using
> installing etc etc looks hellish complicated AND I haven't even been able to
> install it.

What Linux distro are you running?

Pretty much all of them offer binary packages of MySQL so you should be 
able to use rpm or apt-get to install it.

>  All I can see is where the files are installed in my copy of
> Linux.  So it looks as if you already have to know what you're doing in
> order to use it which is useless for a beginner and teh antithesis it seems
> to me of what Perl is all about - because you don't already have to know
> what you're doing to get started/ use it.

I disagree. Installing MySQL is very simple. Using it with perl is as 
simple as:

perldoc DBI

read and learn.

The same is true for PostgreSQL.

Jason Clifford
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Re: [OT] SQL woes

2003-08-22 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Simon Wistow wrote:

> So, to sum up this thread :
> 
> 1. PostGres has some advantages
> 2. MySql has some advantages
> 3. Oracle has some advantages
> 4. SQLite has some advantages
> 5. All of the above have disadvantages.
> 6. There will be a film. At 11.

Which will be delayed for a new advertising campaign promoting MS-SQL.

Jason Clifford
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Re: [OT] SQL woes

2003-08-22 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Nigel Hamilton wrote:

> And one day when I can afford a cluster I'm hoping to implement the MySQL
> DB replication Hack (outlined in Linux Server Hacks) to distribute parts
> of the database onto the nodes.

I'm using that and it works beautifully.

It'd also very easy to recover when you do something stupid resulting in 
the database getting out of sync (on a test box - I try to keep away from 
production systems when I am on the stupid).

Jason Clifford
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Re: Bra

2003-08-15 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Ali Young wrote:

> and the number of people who try to ping his bra strap

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~> ping bra-strap.leon
ping: unknown host bra-strap.leon

Jason
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Re: Bra

2003-08-15 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> This counts as "art" rather than debauchery? On the basis that debauchery
> is frowned on at social meetings?
> 
> Anyway, this seems unlikely, given Leon's previous insistence that he
> won't be wearing it.

Count the number of people who pat him on the back at the meeting just to 
check ;)

Jason Clifford
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Re: Messing with spammers

2003-08-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Chris Benson wrote:

> I got one with an 0800 number in it last night ... -> any evening of
> server-fans and typing on their answering machine :-)

Pampers still send spam to one of my catch-all addresses here including an 
0800 number to call them on.

I've called several times to request/require that they remove the address 
however they dont do so.

A while back I asked on several newsgroups for people to call the number 
and explain to them why spam is a bad thing.

All of the recent attempts to send the messages to me have been caught by 
my spam filters.

Jason Clifford
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Re: Exporting from .mdb Access files

2003-08-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Chris Devers wrote:

> For that matter, if you can run Access then I'm pretty sure you can avoid
> ODBC by saving the tables into Excel format (I'm pretty sure there's an
> option for this; at least, there used to be an option...) and then using
> Spreadsheet::ParseExcel to extract the data fro the resulting .xls file.
> 
> Of course, running Access itself might be a pain under Wine... :-/

If you can bear to run access you get download Access Visual Basic scripts
to convert the database to a MySQL or PgSQL dump format file.

I've done this in the past and it worked well.

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Re: Exporting from .mdb Access files

2003-08-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Paul Makepeace wrote:

> > It seems like if you can get an instance of Access running with the file,
> > you should be able to use ODBC to extract the data.
> 
> Indeed, but that would require running Windows, obtaining a copy &
> license for Access, not to mention all the faffing with DSN and connect
> permissions, AFAIK. In all, it would add to the number of my problems,
> rather than reduce them :-)

Isn't there a system that does have a license to run Access somewhere - ie 
where the mdb file came from?

I agree that it's not ideal however neither is it ideal to be making the 
conversions on a platform without full access to the data.

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Re: License question

2003-07-15 Thread Jason Clifford
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Nigel Wetters wrote:

> I guess some of you have thought about licensing issues, so might be able to help me.
> 
> I have some code that can't be included in the Debian project because 
> it doesn't work without some bundled data. The bundled data is free (as 
> in beer), but has a non-Debian-compliant license (it cannot be used to 
> spam people).

I can only assume that the data includes personal identifying data such as 
email addresses if it can be used in such a manner.

Why not simply remove the data altogether and release the application with 
notes on how to build the required data.

Then the application can stand on it's own.

So long as it does not depend upon the specific data you provide that 
should work and you could still include details in the readme file of the 
data you have available and where it can be obtained.

I would comment however that if you are publishing such identifying data 
you probably require the explicit consent of those identified in it.

Jason Clifford
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Re: Eurocracy sucks.

2003-07-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Earle Martin wrote:

> VISA ISSUING PROCEDURE Please note that all persons wishing to apply for
> visas to visit France MUST make an APPOINTMENT BY TELEPHONE before
> attending and submitting their documents in person at the Consulate.
> 
> THE PHONE NUMBER IS : 09065 540 700
> 
> Applicants MUST NOT attend at the Consulate without first making an
> appointment using the AUTOMATED TELEPHONE APPOINTMENTS BOOKINGS SERVICE.
> 
> The AUTOMATED TELEPHONE APPOINTMENTS BOOKINGS SERVICE is the ONLY way by
> which you can make an appointment.
> 
> People without appointments will NOT be admitted at the Consulate.

Well my wife didn't need one. I cannot imagine how they expect to deal 
with people who are not online and will simply turn up at the Consulate - 
ie the majority of people - as they wont have that information prior to 
arriving at the Consulate and will expect to be seen.

I'd try just turning up.

Jason Clifford
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Re: Eurocracy sucks.

2003-07-14 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Earle Martin wrote:

> My wife, who is not from within the EU, requires a Schengen Visa[0] to come
> with me to YAPC::EU. So, I just called the French consulate's visa
> appointment booking line (which costs a fucking outrageous pound a minute)
> to try and get her one.
> 
> They haven't got any appointments free until the 4th of August.

My wife, and some of her friends, have the same issue.

The solution is to completely ignore all this nonsense about making 
appointments and just show up at the Embassy. You will have to wait most 
(all?) of the day but you should get seen.

So long as she has all the required documentation she should be able to 
get the VISA sorted out in time.

It's usual for the VISA to be posted out to arrive after about a week.

Note the amount of time you have to wait will be dependant upon how busy 
it is, whether there's anything good on the lunch menu, etc.

Jason Clifford
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Re: [gear] Spare 1U?

2003-07-09 Thread Jason Clifford
On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Andrew Beattie wrote:

> Builtin NIC, VGA (as mentioned elsewhere)
> A 1U PSU - they are expensive!
> Low profile fan.
> 
> A motherboard that has the spare footprint for a low profile CPU fan
> (they are wider, so you need more empty real estate round the CPU)
> 
> You should use a large-die CPU because it offers a larger contact
> area with the heatsink - heat can be a problem in 1U.

You also need a motherboard that supports memory being installed at an
angle that has been designed to provide for decent airflow through the
case.

The case should similarly be designed for good airflow with additional 
fans as necessary.

Jason Clifford
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Re: Linux firewall / web server

2003-06-30 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 30 Jun 2003, Martin Bower wrote:

> I'm going to build a Linux firewall & web server at home (not necessarily 
> the same box) and wondered if anyone can advise of the best route to go.
> 
> I've seen smoothwall,  but would I be better hardening a linux install ?  if 
> so, which flavour ?
> I'll be installing Apache, mod_perl, + db on the same box, so maybe this 
> will influence your recommendation ?

As far as I know none of the pre-cooked firewall distros are suitable if 
you want to install a fully functioning webserver on the box - certainly 
Smoothwall/IPCop are not.

What the best approach will be depends, as ever, upon what you really want 
to do with it, what you want to protect and the level of protection you 
want.

I suspect you'll need to roll your own.

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Re: Class::DBI

2003-06-28 Thread Jason Clifford
On Sat, 28 Jun 2003, Alex McLintock wrote:

> The problem I have is that I can't see how to build up more complicated 
> queries such as
> 
> give me the first one hundred book titles
> 
> Now I am using MySQL which I don't think can limit the number of records 
> returned... but I do have a title number so I could try to do something like

Yes it can. From the manual:

SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 100;  # Retrieve first 100 rows

or

SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 5,10 # Rows 6-15

The syntax is LIMIT offset, max_rows_to_return

The MySQL manual is very good.

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Re: DBD::Pg - insert_id

2003-06-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Luis Campos de Carvalho wrote:

>AFAIK, this is the safest method of updating the same table using 
> different processes. The sequence never offers the same value for two 
> different requests, even when they're parallel.

Unless you have multiple servers accepting inserts to the same database 
with a unique record id (a terrible idea, I know) parallel isn't a problem 
as the database should handle that (MySQL certainly does).

> > With the MySQL insert_id method you get the result of a completed 
> > insertion so you know for certain what it is.
> 
>MySQL don't implement transactions.

Yes it does. As others keep pointing out it's just a matter of table type 
with current version of MySQL.

>When you "commit" your transaction, you're sure that everything is 
> fine. And then you could get the current value from the sequence using
> 
>SELECT sequence_name.currval (...)
> 
>or something like this. I don't remember exactly the attribute name, 
> please take a look at your manual.

I know it just seems an expensive way of doing it.

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Re: Number Indicating Participation in London.pm (NIPL) (was:assimilating CPAN)

2003-06-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, the hatter wrote:

> You think the majority of l.pm'ers get buffy on their TV ?  I suspect more
> of them download it.  Though we might get a better idea now the season is
> finished again, and see how many more people come out on thursday nights.

That was never a problem for me as Tuesday was my Buffy night (yes, I 
downloaded it when it was shown in the US).

Thursday however is the night my wife goes to college so I am invited over 
to her place in order to look after our kids.

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Re: DBD::Pg - insert_id

2003-06-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Jason Clifford wrote:

> In the case where an application is written poorly so that it grabs the
> sequence number and spends time on $OTHER_TASK before performing the 
> actual insert other database clients will suffer delays wont they or does 
> the method used allow breaks in the sequence?

I'll get my coat - a quick check of the FAQ informs me that sequence 
breaks are indeed the solution used for this.

For some applications that would be a bad thing but not that many I 
suppose.

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Re: DBD::Pg - insert_id

2003-06-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Roger Burton West wrote:

> >How safe is this in environments where lots of separate processes, using 
> >separate connections to the database, are updating the same table?
> 
> That's the point of sequences. They are guaranteed to work. The
> procedore of getting a new number and incrementing the counter for the
> next process tha wants a new number is atomic.


Wouldn't that result is latency serving application database requests in a
busy environment?

In the case where an application is written poorly so that it grabs the
sequence number and spends time on $OTHER_TASK before performing the 
actual insert other database clients will suffer delays wont they or does 
the method used allow breaks in the sequence?

> >If you grab the number in advance isn't there a risk that another process 
> >will insert a record first and get the sequence number you're expecting?
> 
> Not if the program has been written by someone vaguely competent.

There is a little voice in my head shouting about how many programs I see 
are written by the incompetent.

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Re: DBD::Pg - insert_id

2003-06-20 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Raf wrote:

> I haven't used postgres for a while, but I used to use something like
> select(next_val(my_sequence)) and then insert this in or something along
> those lines.  If you find the sp I mean, which grabs the next id in the
> sequence id, it'll work for you..

How safe is this in environments where lots of separate processes, using 
separate connections to the database, are updating the same table?

With the MySQL insert_id method you get the result of a completed 
insertion so you know for certain what it is.

If you grab the number in advance isn't there a risk that another process 
will insert a record first and get the sequence number you're expecting?

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Re: Making perl modules for CPAN

2003-06-09 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> cheaper than free?
> 
> I think you've missed an important point of the case he's describing
> With existing hardware and "free" minutes that would otherwise go to waste
> at the end of the month, there's no cost in using the 9.6 modem.
> The other options you describe, although faster, involve spending money.

Then it comes down to the usual "how valuable is your time" question.

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Re: [JOB] Tech Start-up Seeks Perl Developer

2003-06-09 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Lusercop wrote:

> [snip]
> > Required skills include: Perl5, UNIX (FreeBSD/or Linux), Web, CGI, DBI &
> > DBD, MySQL and LDAP (LDAP experience is not essential.)
> 
> I find it interesting that there is no mention of (E)SMTP or any MTAs
> listed as "Required skills", given the above paragraph.

I get the impression he's not looking for MTA specialists but rather 
someone to code a CGI front end for account registration/management 
services rather than anything to do with actual MTA management.

Setting up and running the MTA is generally simple enough and if you are 
using something like MySQL for the account details with virtual accounts 
the front end management scripts will be all that you need.

I've done something like that for UKPOST and UKFSN.

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Re: [Advert] indy hardware for sale

2003-06-09 Thread Jason Clifford
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, the hatter 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.

If you have 18GB or 36GB SCI drives for a reasonable price I may well be 
interested in those.

How much?

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Re: The Perl Color?

2003-06-06 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Joshua Keroes wrote:

> Perl is black.

Not so.

It is multicoloured:

shebang is purple;
directives/function calls are orange
variables are light blue
quoted strings are red
comments are navy blue

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Re: Net::Whois::RIPE

2003-05-29 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 29 May 2003, Chris Andrews wrote:

> You'll be lucky. There's a whole bunch of different 'standards' for
> the output of whois servers, but there doesn't seem to be a module
> that understands them all. 

I've had a lot of success with Net::XWhois which seems to address this 
issue.

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Re: [PUB] Green Man, Marylebone, big function room

2003-04-04 Thread Jason Clifford
On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Paul Mison wrote:

> UKBloggers met there in February, so evidently it's doing something 
> right for the 'large groups of people thing'. (Not that I was there, 
> but I didn't see any complaints about it in the subsequent days.)

On occassion when GLLUG has met there we've seen other fairly large groups 
of people too. On one occassion we shared the downstairs with a Pratchett 
fan meeting (we really should have tried a few tortoise sacrifices to wind 
them up ;) )

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Re: [PUB] Green Man, Marylebone, big function room

2003-04-04 Thread Jason Clifford
On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Kate L Pugh wrote:

> On the way home I remembered the Green Man, which is near Great
> Portland Street and Regent's Park tubes, and has a huge function room
> in the basement that they've been quite happy to reserve for even
> quite small groups in the past.

We use the Green Man for beer after GLLUG meetings and it is very good.

I'd recommend giving it a try.

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