Archive: June 13, 2003
Read this article to see exactly what I've been talking about. I gotta run because I'm meeting a friend somewhere in a few minutes, but the gist of it is this...
The inclusion of iteration as a core concept represents Perl design at its finest. Instead of providing a clumsy mechanism in non-core code, as Java and C++ (through its standard template library) do, Perl incorporates this pattern into the core of the language.
So the iterator pattern from GoF is a core part of Perl we hardly think about. The next pattern might actually require us to do some work.
This is such huge BS. With the Java version he gives code for, you could be iterating over a database record, the lines in a file, stuff coming over a socket, user events, who knows. The Perl version isn't using a design pattern. It's not abstracting anything. It's just having everything return lists! Big deal. The java version is much more powerful.
He highlights that the Perl 6 version will be able to have lists built lazily, and I think that might be able to match the power of iterators in general in languages like Java or C++, or Ruby (which actually does let you abstract different things to use the same loop syntax), which is why I'm hopeful about Perl 6.
Lots of interesting news about. I'm seeing all over the place, from Matt, from LtU, and from PHP Everywhere.
Here's a press release from Zend, the JSR from the Java community process, and, well. I'll leave it at that. I'm not quite sure what it all means yet.
Man...
probably the most mysterious species on our planet
A mystery of unanswered questions.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?
How do we know what we think we know?
Why do we believe anything at all?
Countless questions in search of an answer...
an answer that will give rise to a new question...
and the next answer will give rise to the next question, and so on.
But, in the end, isn't it always the same question?
And always the same answer?
The ball is round. The game last 90 minutes. That's a fact.
Everything else is pure theory.
Here we go!
Why is dealing with Java classpaths always a fucking problem? I've used Java on and off for years and can never get it to work right.
I have a source file called FOO.java with a class named FOO in it. At the top of FOO.java is a package declaration of org.foo. So, FOO.java is in /work/org/foo because of what package it's in. Then in foo_driver.java, which is just in /work, I do an import org.foo at the beginning of the file. Javac's complaining it can't find the package. What's wrong?
Hmm... Mastering the Java Classpath
My dad just had a problem logging in to Fleet's banking service online. He talked to their tech support for a while and they pinned the problem on the MTU, or Maximum Transmission Unit, setting on our router.
It turns out the setting didn't have anything to do with the router, but could be changed on an individual machine. SpeedGuide.net was extremely helpful. They have a detailed article explaining what MTU is, instructions on how to tweak your machine to change the setting, and best of all, TCP Optimizer, a free program that lets you tweak all kinds of settings.
I just used TCP Optimizer, clicked "optimal settings" and rebooted, and after rebooting the site worked. Thank you SpeedGuide.net 
Via 0xDECAFBAD, an amazing article from The Guardian: Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth
When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. No fewer than 170,000 items had, it was universally reported, been stolen or destroyed, representing a large proportion of Iraq's tangible culture. And it had all happened as some US troops stood by and watched, and others had guarded the oil ministry.
So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.
George is now quoted as saying that that items lost could represent "a small percentage" of the collection and blamed shoddy reporting for the exaggeration.
This indictment of world journalism has caused some surprise to those who listened to George and others speak at the British Museum meeting. One art historian, Dr Tom Flynn, now speaks of his "great bewilderment". "Donny George himself had ample opportunity to clarify to the best of [his] knowledge the extent of the looting and the likely number of missing objects," says Flynn. "Is it not a little strange that quite so many journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr George made little or not attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that meeting." To Flynn it is also odd that George didn't seem to know that pieces had been taken into hiding or evacuated. "There is a queasy subtext here if you bother to seek it out," he suggests.
Overall, he concluded, most of the serious looting "was an inside job".
The Americans had said that the museum was a substantial point of Iraqi resistance, and this explained their reticence in occupying it. Not true, said George, a few militia-men had fired from the grounds and that was all. This, as Cruikshank heavily implied, was a lie. Not only were there firing positions in the grounds, but at the back of the museum there was a room that seemed to have been used as a military command post.
Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.
Kick ass. Fuck everyone who made such a big deal out of this. You were wrong.
Kudos to David Aaronovitch at the Guardian for such a candid article.
|
Generated in about 0.057s. (Used 7 db queries) |
Friday, June 13, 2003
Permalink
new⇒I hate PHP
Elliot Anderson,
Dude!! You theman! The reverse replacement forarray_u...
Alex Ndungu: Oct 11, 1:35am