Re: Bad C Source (Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 06:44:25PM +0100, Phil Lanch said: On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 03:40:18PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: It's just this sort of thing that makes me lurve perl. you mistyped C++. Without getting into a flamewar, and whilst appreciating the benefits of compile time generic object type checking, I thought you couldn't rely on a given C++ implementation to do auto-destruction. On the other hand, IIRC, you can rely ona destructor being called. But I think Dave's point was that he loves how Perl just does all that for you (and therefore, I supoose, also likes that feature of Python, PHP, Java and many more). On a tangentially related note, I'm very rapidly starting to come to the opinion that there are far too many applications that are written in C/C++ which don't need to. Simon -- the illusion of knowledge without any of the difficult bits
Re: Bad C Source (Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
Simon Wistow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On a tangentially related note, I'm very rapidly starting to come to the opinion that there are far too many applications that are written in C/C++ which don't need to. I heartily agree. I think that the combination of a scripting language plus some backend libraries in C/C++ can do the job much better. And they're probably easier to test too. -Dom -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: Bad C Source (Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 09:46:47AM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 06:44:25PM +0100, Phil Lanch said: On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 03:40:18PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: It's just this sort of thing that makes me lurve perl. you mistyped C++. Without getting into a flamewar, and whilst appreciating the benefits of compile time generic object type checking, I thought you couldn't rely on a given C++ implementation to do auto-destruction. It's personal preference, of course, but I prefer using C to C++ for a lot of things because well, I know and understand C's edge cases well enough to either use and abuse them a bit or stay away from them. C++ seems to me to have a much larger number of edge cases - which I suppose is almost inevitable given the relative complexity of the languages. I am also probably somewhat jaded by having recently spent a large chunk of time resurrecting a large C++ application that has been slowly being written since the early 90s. It's been interesting in a lot of ways. One of them is how obvious it is that the language has changed in subtle (and not so subtle ways) in the last twelve years. The app was originally written for Sparc Solaris. I'm making it run on Intel Linux. I have neither a Sparc Solaris box, or any kind of Sun compiler. Fun. On the other hand, IIRC, you can rely ona destructor being called. But I think Dave's point was that he loves how Perl just does all that for you (and therefore, I supoose, also likes that feature of Python, PHP, Java and many more). Indeed, although the issue of *when* and *how* a destructor ends up being called depends sensitively on the garbage collection scheme, etc that a given language uses - in perl it's easy - a destructor is called immediately after it goes out of scope, because it is known to no longer have any live references to it, so this timely destruction is a pretty quick win. Java basically skives the issue with a It'll get called. Don't know when, don't ask and you shouldn't worry about how it'll be called. I'm given to understand that this is quite a relevant issue to Parrot, which will be using a GC scheme which is a lot more like Java's On a tangentially related note, I'm very rapidly starting to come to the opinion that there are far too many applications that are written in C/C++ which don't need to. Well, that is true, but I'm also seeing some of the problems caused by not having a (strict | anal | strong | paranoid | batshit ) type system. Certain types of bugs persist for far longer than they should in 10 line Perl applications whereas a less laissez-faire type system would flush them out basically trivially. Whether this occupies more or less programmer time than beating your skull against a timorous typecast or other pointer pedantry will, of course, Depend. Ben
Re: Ob-buffy
On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 05:37:45PM +0100, Nigel Rantor wrote: You may all get your rocks ready for this one, I expect a stoning from the zealots. (and Lusercop because he can't resist a good stoning) :-) I don't tend to reply to buffy threads, not particularly agreeing with the apparent general trend towards liking it. As my current housemate once said in answer to my so what is all the fuss about BtVS and he replied I think the fuss is about two things I've never seen The Prisoner, though I'd like to, from the things I've heard about it. At the moment, though, I'm just too shattered to even try and lift the stone, let alone aiming it and throwing it. ;-) -- Lusercop.net - LARTing Lusers everywhere since 2002
Tech Meet Talkers.
Hello.
I plan to announce the tech meet that's happening a week on Thursday (so,
er 13 days from now) this afternoon. But before then I'm looking for
speakers.
Could people interested in speaking email me please? Even those that I
spoke to in the pub and said they could speak, or those that emailed me
after the last tech meet saying they wanted to speak. This way I'll know
you're still up for it, and we won't have problems.
I'd quite like a few more lightning talks. Lighting talks are easy, and
quick, and you can speak on anything you want (a three minute guide to
someone else's module is considered excellent, as is 'this is a silly
script I wrote, look I can now do this'.)
Hoping to hear from you.
Mark.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};
Re: Ob-buffy
* Jonathan Peterson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Twin Peaks winds me up. I remember being in school when it was on, and the kind of people who were into it suffered from two other co-morbidities: 1. They liked Marillion They liked Twin Peaks and Marillion? They clearly are people of exceptionally good taste, imagination and intellect. Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/ jabber://[EMAIL PROTECTED] msn://[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Limiting process startup
It was nice to meet people at the pub yesterday and play Set! This isn't really Perl-specific, it's Unix specific, but I plan to implement the solution in Perl and you seem like a good crowd to ask. What's the cleanest way to make sure at most N processes are doing X at once, and anyone else wishing to do X blocks until one of those N are finished? Context: I'm writing a new version of the TrustFlow trust metric for LiveJournal ( http://www.gothboffs.co.uk/trustflow/trustflow.pl ). The CGI behind it all forks off a sub-process to do the actual work of calculating your list. However, to prevent the machine getting overloaded, it refuses to do that if 5 such are already running. The existing way of doing this is a hack: I have a directory with five lock files, and it tries to get a lock on each of those five in turn before proceeding. If it can't lock any of them, it returns an error to the user (this machine is overloaded, sorry!). This is a bit hacky but basically works. However, I now want to break part of the work of these calculation processes into sub-processes that can run in parallel, and I want to do something similar with these sub-processes, with one change - if there are already N sub-processes, I don't want to abort as before, I want to block until one of the sub-processes finishes and I can start another. This is hard. I could choose a lock at random and wait for that, but this is suboptimal - I want to wait until *any* process finishes, not until one particular one finishes. Any ideas? -- __ Paul Crowley \/ o\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] /\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/
Re: Bad C Source (Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 10:59:31AM +0100, Ben wrote: Well, that is true, but I'm also seeing some of the problems caused by not having a (strict | anal | strong | paranoid | batshit ) type system. Certain types of bugs persist for far longer than they should in 10 line Perl applications whereas a less laissez-faire type system would flush them out basically trivially. Which is why my subroutines and methods check that they have been called with the right parameters, and that those parameters have sane values. Generally, I don't need to do that much validation, because I'm passing objects around and can rely on their constructors to have already validated the data, so just use isa() to check that my parameters are the right type. If you need to sanity-check values as well as types, you should invite Params::Validate into your life, and it can be your personal and special friend. -- David Cantrell | Reprobate | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david If a job's worth doing, it's worth dieing for
Re: Tech Meet Talkers.
Mark Fowler [EMAIL PROTECTED] said Could people interested in speaking email me please? Even those that I spoke to in the pub and said they could speak, or those that emailed me after the last tech meet saying they wanted to speak. This way I'll know you're still up for it, and we won't have problems. Me Me Me!! Either on a) Audiofile::Info (and the new plugin architecture that we'll be designing for it) or b) writing a book using the template toolkit (assuming that abw doesn't want to do that one). Dave...
Re: Bad C Source (Re: gzipping your websites WINRAR 40 days trial)
Ben was also seeing: ... some of the problems caused by not having a (strict | anal | strong | paranoid | batshit ) type system. Certain types of bugs persist for far longer than they should in 10 line Perl applications whereas a less laissez-faire type system would flush them out basically trivially. Yup. How many OO Perl programmers does it take to change a light bulb? HASH(0x804e054) Whether this occupies more or less programmer time than beating your skull against a timorous typecast or other pointer pedantry will, of course, Depend. soapbox design-by-contract exaggeration really-means=might helpwill solve every conceievable problem/exaggeration. /soapbox Cheers ti'
Re: Limiting process startup
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:28:02AM +0100, Paul Crowley wrote: What's the cleanest way to make sure at most N processes are doing X at once, and anyone else wishing to do X blocks until one of those N are finished? IPC::Semaphore -- Nick
Re: Limiting process startup
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Paul Crowley wrote:
The existing way of doing this is a hack: I have a directory with five
lock files, and it tries to get a lock on each of those five in turn
before proceeding.
Why not have one file with a counter in it saying how many processes are
currently running. Obviously processes will need to lock the file
whenever they write to it, but they will only maintain their lock long
enough to do that. (also once you've checked the file is low enough
you'll need to lock it, recheck it then, then write to it to avoid a race
condition)
if there are already N sub-processes, I don't want to abort as before, I
want to block until one of the sub-processes finishes and I can start
another.
Since the machine is really busy in this case you might simply sleep for
thirty seconds and then see if the counter is free then.
If you're doing this with a webbrowser and someone is waiting for the
results you'll have to keep sending null chars down the connection every
few seconds to avoid things timing out.
In a similar situatation, I have a POE program CGI that's job is simply to
run another process and while it's waiting for the output and to keep
printing data out (normally I print Still processing, been processing for
.duration(time-$starttime).br/\n.) When my child process is done I
print javascript saying document.location='$otherprocessesoutputlocation'
HTH.
Mark.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};
Re: Limiting process startup
Paul == Paul Crowley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Paul What's the cleanest way to make sure at most N processes are Paul doing X at once, and anyone else wishing to do X blocks until one Paul of those N are finished? Some sort of scoreboard in shared mem maybe? I don't doubt there's an IPC::* module that would help here. BTW, trustflow is pretty cool :) Jon
Re: Limiting process startup
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:28:02AM +0100, Paul Crowley wrote: What's the cleanest way to make sure at most N processes are doing X at once, and anyone else wishing to do X blocks until one of those N are finished? Randal did a column on that that I've just pointed out to someone trying to do something similar ... http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/col15.html (Trying to answer before Randal wakes up :-) HTH -- Chris Benson
Re: Limiting process startup
David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:53:13AM +0100, Nick Cleaton wrote: On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:28:02AM +0100, Paul Crowley wrote: What's the cleanest way to make sure at most N processes are doing X at once, and anyone else wishing to do X blocks until one of those N are finished? IPC::Semaphore That's what I was going to say ;-) However, seeing that the aim of this is to not overload the machine and that only spawning N concurrent processes is merely a suggested way of doing this, would it not be better to look at the load on the machine and only spawn your process if it is sufficiently low? This is one of the ways in which exim does rate-limiting, and I find it works very nicely. That's what I tried first, but loadavg is averaged over a minute or so. So you'd get a quiet minute, and the loadavg would drop below the threshhold, the gate would be opened, a million users would arrive and hammer the machine to death. Eventually the loadavg would catch up and climb to something sky-high, locking everyone out, then slowly drop while the machine did nothing. Repeat until dead... -- __ Paul Crowley \/ o\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] /\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/
Dave and Religion
I was reading Mr Cantrell's Free Press and was very amused and impressed by the section on Religion. http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/religion/ It reminded me of a long run of visits I had from some JW's when I was doing my finals in 1997 (a man needs some distraction when studying and I hadn't found Perl then... Oh, and the woman was a babe). They wanted to convert me to Christianity and I wanted to convert them to Atheism. Seemed like a fair deal but neither of us got very far. Don't get me wrong, I think that everyone if entitled to believe whatever makes them happy; for me that is the belief that we (the world) are one incredible chance event! Over about 6 weeks, my visitors told me all sorts of stories from the bible to try and prove that it was the only true religion, all others were evil and if I didn't convert I would be damned at armagedon. I just couldn't swallow it and kept asking questions about all the little holes that seemed be apparent in the stories. They were very patient and always seemed to have a kind of answer to all the questions I could throw at them. Untill... I finally thought of the question that seemed to be somewhere near the root of their belief. I asked them: If God created the universe, who created God? The answer came back: Well you just have to have faith! Ha ha! I felt pretty bad but that basically ended their visits. I understand Larry Wall is a devout Christian. Fair play and good for him. He'd probably still be a decent bloke without Christianity? Uh-oh, is that a massive bolt of... James
Re: Dave and Religion
* James Campbell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: snip well written and interesting email about religion When it comes to religion I think Hitler had some interesting ideas. Note to self - write Acme::Siesta::Plugin::GodwinsLaw Greg -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.org.uk/~gem/ jabber://[EMAIL PROTECTED] msn://[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Limiting process startup
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Paul Crowley wrote: It was nice to meet people at the pub yesterday and play Set! This isn't really Perl-specific, it's Unix specific, but I plan to implement the solution in Perl and you seem like a good crowd to ask. What's the cleanest way to make sure at most N processes are doing X at once, and anyone else wishing to do X blocks until one of those N are finished? Isn't this the kind of thing grid engine and its ilk have been designed to solve? There are many such architectures already written, I'm suprised noone has mentioned it. There's not much point growing your own using IPC. S. -- Shevekhttp://www.anarres.org/ I am the Borg. http://www.gothnicity.org/
Re: Dave and Religion
It reminded me of a long run of visits I had from some JW's when I was doing my finals in 1997 (a man needs some distraction when studying and I hadn't found Perl then... Oh, and the woman was a babe). They wanted to convert me to Christianity and I wanted to convert them to Atheism. Seemed like a fair deal but neither of us got very far. Atheism is just a crutch for people who can't deal with the fact that there's a supreme being. ;-) I finally thought of the question that seemed to be somewhere near the root of their belief. I asked them: If God created the universe, who created God? That's one of the more interesting questions. The medieval theologians charactarised God as the 'prime mover', i.e. the first in a causal chain of events. It's not unreasonable to suppose that there was an initial cause - after all, infinite series can still have beginnings and ends. You quickly end up in a not-at-all religious discussion of what constitutes 'an event', and other metaphysical topics that are very much in the domain of analytical western philosophy and logic and not really much to do with the God of the bible, if you like. None the less, there is more cross-over between the domains than is popularly imagined. In particular the early Christian theologians took a very rigorous and logical approach to their discussions. Jon, who rarely gets to talk about medeival phiosophy any more P.S. The play Jumpers by Stoppard is on at the NT right now. Deals with just this topic in a highly clever and amusing way.
Re: Dave and Religion
On 05/09/2003 at 12:54 +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: snip well written and interesting email about religion When it comes to religion I think Hitler had some interesting ideas. Love it :-) What a nice generic way to end arguments before they've started :-) It would be if he understood what Godwin's Law actually said. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/ One of the most famous pieces of Usenet trivia out there is if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in. Known as Godwin's Law, this rule of Usenet has a long and sordid history on the network - and is absolutely wrong. I suppose you can make an argument that because noobdy understands the original sense of the law, that the new sense should take precendence. Of course if thats you're vue then u can allow alot of things to go horribly rong. I would of thort that was silly. :-) -- :: paul :: historic light cone
Re: Limiting process startup
Shevek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Isn't this the kind of thing grid engine and its ilk have been designed to solve? There are many such architectures already written, I'm suprised noone has mentioned it. There's not much point growing your own using IPC. Do you mean http://gridengine.sunsource.net/ - if so doesn't it seem overkill for such a small application? -- __ Paul Crowley \/ o\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] /\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/
Re: Ob-buffy
Curiously, the original article (http://www.reason.com/0308/cr.vp.why.shtml) explains some of why I'm uneasy about buffy: the extent to which it carries Standardized American Memes (good and bad). American tolerance/demand for Moral Closure seems to be very high, cf. all those films where the guy who has been tempted by the dark side dies heroically, etc, etc, etc ... I'll stop here, before this ends up knee-deep in sex, religion, politics, or all three. [Pauses on bridge] [tempts ducks over with stale bread] [fattens ducks] [feeds ducks to trolls] WHAT?! WTF do you mean, best TV series ever? FFS, if I mailed the list and asked what the best way was to sort alphanumerics, find fish, harvest raspberries, or add one, there would be about fifteen different recommendations, two of which would involve Befunge. By the same toucan, best TV series is not a sensible thing to look for. And that's quite apart from being imprisoned in the Cult Zone of Prisoner, Buffy, Dr$Who, Twin Peaks, etc Still, at least it's not Eastenders. /rant ti'
Re: Dave and Religion
Jonathan Peterson wrote: P.S. The play Jumpers by Stoppard is on at the NT right now. Deals with just this topic in a highly clever and amusing way. Natch clever and amusing (and probably incomprehensible without several degrees and as-yet-undeveloped hypermedia technology), it's Tom Stoppard. However, Jumpers seems to contain many assumptions about religion making people behave themselves, and that without belief in a supreme being, or at least a local[1] set of mores, none of that would work at all. At which point I want to throw the following at Mr Stoppard, but I don't have a time machine: (a) Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Musing on holocausts, nuclear, prevention of, Sagan finds some cross-cultural study which finds very strong positive correlations between strongly religious behaviour, and several factors currently often considered to be bad (violence, sexual repression, inequality, neglect of children, ...), which was presumably greeted by howls from anthropologists of GET THESE BLOODY ATOMIC SCIENTISTS AND THEIR GUILTY CONSCIENCES THE FUCK OFF OUR TURF. (b) Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, sections on naturalizing ethics. Where ethics come from; Kantian imperatives (don't kill, don't lie) as best practices or heuristics, because if you had to work out what would give the best outcome you'd be trying to work out what to do forever. Kantian heuristics mean you can do approximately the right thing. In constant time. /damien (c) http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/ WE LIKE THE MOON. cheers ti
Re: Ob-buffy
Tim Sweetman wrote: be about fifteen different recommendations, two of which would involve Befunge. By the same toucan, best TV series is not a sensible thing to Befunge the Vampire Slayer. That's the best TV series. Ever. -- Robin Berjon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Research Scientist, Expway http://expway.com/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
[JOB] C/C++ Unix Developer
Sorry it's not a strictly perl job - there might be some involved... We've just had a job pop-up in our London office, looking from someone with a fair chunk of c/c++ programming experience. http://www.jobserve.com/IT/Jobserve/JobDetail.asp?jobid=18D8ACB782C0A454 and http://www.factset.com if you want to know more about the company. CVs + cover note to the address in the article or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ta billy -- When you say things like that, do you actually believe other people know what you mean? Billy Abbott billy at cowfish dot org dot uk
Audiofile::Info
I've waffled previously about Audiofile::Info and the problems I was having coming up with a good way to allow people to use whatever MP3/Ogg library that they like. See list and use.perl journal passim for a description of the problem. I had a discussion with Mark last night where a lot of things became clearer to me. Having filtered those thoughts through a fine meal and a night's kip I now think I'm able to solicite further opinions. Here's what we think we'll do. Currently A::I bundles all (well, both) of its subclasses with it. We're going to change that so that A::I becomes a separate (tho' useless on its own) distribution and there are separate distributions for each of the driver modules (a bit like the DBI/DBD distinction). If you install Some::MP3::Module and you want to use it with A::I then you'll also need to install A::I::Plugin::Some::MP3::Module. Installing one of these plugin modules will also maintain a small database of installed plugins and their capabilities (where a capability is osmething like reads oggs or writes ID3 tags). This is a bit like how XML::SAX works. When using A::I you have a number of options. 1/ Leave A::I to figure out the best plugin to use (/me waves hands in the air). Or maybe it just uses a default plugin. Or something. 2/ Ask for a specific plugin. 3/ Ask for certain capabilities. A::I will then find the plugin that best meets your request. I'm keen that in the simplest case (number 1 above) it Just Works as that's how I suspect that most people will use it most of the time. So the problem becomes one of maintaining and querying the capability database. This is (probably) largely a SMOP but there are no doubt many hairy corner cases that complicate matters. Last night we thought of the problems of PAR installation (I know nothing about PAR but apparently it does scary things with @INC) and also of people wanting to keep personal configuration files (or, indeed, personal module libraries with other, better, audiofile handlers). Anyway, that's approximately where we are (Mark, have I forgotten anything?) Any ideas or suggestions that anyone had would be appreciated. Cheers, Dave...
Re: Ob-buffy
T'was written... WTF do you mean, best TV series ever? Busty was great but what about the Avengers??? Gaz _ Hotmail messages direct to your mobile phone http://www.msn.co.uk/msnmobile
Re: Dave and Religion
Er, who was it who said If you educate people without religion you create clever little devils? I don't think I dreamt it. James =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= James Campbell Research Bioinformatician Proteome Sciences Institute of Psychiatry South Wing Lab PO BOX P045 16 De Crespigny Park London SE5 8AF Tel:+44-(0)20-7848-5111 Fax:+44-(0)20-7848-5114 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web 1: www.proteome.co.uk Web 2: www.proteinworks.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Re: Dave and Religion
Je 2003-09-05 14:37:02 +0100, James Campbell skribis: Er, who was it who said If you educate people without religion you create clever little devils? Perhaps the world's scriptures are lacking in advocating basic search engine usage. http://www.princeton.edu/~gcu/quotes.htm (Arthur Wellesley was the Duke of Wellington) How can devils exist without religion? QED. Paul -- Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/ What is anthracite? The softness in your voice, the echo of your hair in the wind. -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
Re: Dave and Religion
Je 2003-09-05 14:37:02 +0100, James Campbell skribis: Er, who was it who said If you educate people without religion you create clever little devils? I was going to say that it was first on the list of google results but Paul beat me to it. How can devils exist without religion? Ob buffy. I don't see that devils or demons require religion. They are supernatural monsters but Buffy teaches us they are not necessarily created by the Christian or other organised religion. Alex
Re: Limiting process startup
Dean == Dean Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dean Randal L. Schwartz wrote: Damn. You made it, too. I also did a similar thing with POE as well, which might make more sense here... http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/col41.html Dean Is it just me or does anybody else have trouble reading the dark Dean purple on almost as dark purple in the top right corner of that Dean page? The text is black on #9797FF. If you can't read text with that contrast, maybe you oughta check the gamma on your screen. :) -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/ Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!
Re: Dave and Religion
James Campbell wrote: If God created the universe, who created God? God didn't create the universe. God is the universe. That's about the only thing that all the religious texts can agree on - that God, or whatever name you chose for the concept, is omniprescient and omnipotent. This implies that God is everywhere and in everything and there can be nothing that is outside of God. This neatly coincides with our definition of Universe - all energy and matter. So if the Universe is God (or at least the part of it that we can experience in these 4 dimensions) then a proof that God exists is simple - all you have to do is prove that the Universe exists. For the purpose of this experiment, reaching out and touching it should be enough to convince you that it, and therefore God, is quite real. Now that we have proved the undeniable existence of God (for my definition of God), it is clear that each and every one of us, being part of the Universe, is also part of God. God is not something that exists elsewhere, looking down on us, or sending bolts of lightning to Zot us. God is right here and right now. I am God, you are God, we are all God. Hello God. So there's no need to invoke religion, spirituality, or the supernatural to understand and appreciate what God is. Just define the term to mean something more familiar like Universe. It is every bit as magical, mystical and awe-inspiring, but a lot easier to get your head around (figurately speaking - not even God could get his head around the Universe). Hmm... I think I may start a religion. I hear there's money in it... :-) A
Re: Limiting process startup
Randal L. Schwartz wrote: Dean Is it just me Yes :) The text is black on #9797FF. If you can't read text with that contrast, maybe you oughta check the gamma on your screen. :) Just tried it on a laptop and i could read it. I've got the brightness cranked up so it might be time for a new monitor, i've been having problems playing Half-life (Well i'm going to blame the monitor for it!) Dean -- Profanity is the one language all programmers understand --- Anon
Re: Limiting process startup
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Paul Crowley wrote: Shevek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Isn't this the kind of thing grid engine and its ilk have been designed to solve? There are many such architectures already written, I'm suprised noone has mentioned it. There's not much point growing your own using IPC. Do you mean http://gridengine.sunsource.net/ - if so doesn't it seem overkill for such a small application? I don't know, I tend to work with slightly larger things. However, before grid engine, there were smaller and lesser equivalents. I'm out of touch. I'll go away now. S. -- Shevekhttp://www.anarres.org/ I am the Borg. http://www.gothnicity.org/
Template::Extract
Template::Extract is really very shiny. For people who haven't seen
it yet - it's kind of like Template Toolkit backwards. You can use it
to make screenscraping code less ugly.
For people who *have* played with it, I have a question. Here is my code:
--
use strict;
use Template::Extract;
my $extractor = Template::Extract-new;
my $template = '.';
[% FOREACH entry %]
[% ... %]
div[% FOREACH title %]i[% title_text %]/i[% END %]br[% content %]/div
([% FOREACH comment %]b[% comment_text %]/b |[% END %]Comment on this)
[% END %]
.
my $document = '.';
diviTitle 1/ibrxxx/div
(b1 Comment/b |Comment on this)
diviTitle 2/ibrfoo/div
(Comment on this)
.
my $data = $extractor-extract( $template, $document );
use Data::Dumper; print Dumper $data;
--
and here is my output:
--
$VAR1 = {
'entry' = [
{
'comment' = [
{
'comment_text' = '1 Comment'
}
],
'title' = [
{
'title_text' = 'Title 1'
},
{
'title_text' = 'Title 2'
}
],
'content' = 'xxx'
},
{
'content' = 'foo'
}
]
};
--
Now, why is it putting both my titles into the first entry? If I
change the template to remove the *third* FOREACH (ie, not the one
that's iterating over titles) like so:
--
my $template = '.';
[% FOREACH entry %]
[% ... %]
div[% FOREACH title %]i[% title_text %]/i[% END %]br[% content %]/div
(Comment on this)
[% END %]
.
my $document = '.';
diviTitle 1/ibrxxx/div
(Comment on this)
diviTitle 2/ibrfoo/div
(Comment on this)
.
--
then I get the output I expect:
--
$VAR1 = {
'entry' = [
{
'title' = [
{
'title_text' = 'Title 1'
}
],
'content' = 'xxx'
},
{
'title' = [
{
'title_text' = 'Title 2'
}
],
'content' = 'foo'
}
]
};
--
Any ideas? I need to iterate over title and comments since some entries
don't have one or the other or both.
Kake
Re: Dave and Religion
On Friday, September 5, 2003, 3:50:07 PM, Andy Wardley wrote:
AW James Campbell wrote:
If God created the universe, who created God?
AW God didn't create the universe. God is the universe.
AW That's about the only thing that all the religious texts can agree on -
AW that God, or whatever name you chose for the concept, is omniprescient
AW and omnipotent. This implies that God is everywhere and in everything and
AW there can be nothing that is outside of God.
Only in Monotheistic religions, and the only one of those that's got any
substantial following in this country is Judaism. One of my favourite
Christian-baiting tactics (when I'm in that sort of mood) is to put
forward my proposition that they have a pantheon of gods.
For a start there's the three they get into enough trouble with just by
admitting their existence: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit (whatever that is).
Then you've got a couple of other major deities such as the Virgin Mary
(especially revered in Catholicism) and Satan, and a host of minor gods
who they usually name saints.
[ .. snippety .. ]
AW So there's no need to invoke religion, spirituality, or the supernatural
AW to understand and appreciate what God is. Just define the term to mean
AW something more familiar like Universe. It is every bit as magical,
AW mystical and awe-inspiring, but a lot easier to get your head around
AW (figurately speaking - not even God could get his head around the Universe).
AW Hmm... I think I may start a religion. I hear there's money in it... :-)
Too late: http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/
--
Iain | PGP mail preferred: pubkey @ www.deepsea.f9.co.uk/misc/iain.asc
($=,$,)=split m$13/$,qq;1313/tl\.rnh r HITtahkPctacriAneeeusaoJ;;
for(@[EMAIL PROTECTED] m,,,$,){$..=$$[$=];$$=$=[$=];[EMAIL PROTECTED];[EMAIL PROTECTED]
]eq$$$==$?;$==$?;for(@$)[EMAIL PROTECTED] eq$_;;last if!$@;$=++}}print$..$/
Re: Audiofile::Info
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Installing one of these plugin modules will also maintain a small
database of installed plugins and their capabilities (where a capability
is osmething like reads oggs or writes ID3 tags). This is a bit like
how XML::SAX works.
For comparison XML::SAX's interface looks like this (stolen directly from
the synopsis)
# get a list of known parsers
my $parsers = XML::SAX-parsers();
# add/update a parser
XML::SAX-add_parser(q(XML::SAX::PurePerl));
# remove parser
XML::SAX-remove_parser(q(XML::SAX::Foodelberry));
# save parsers
XML::SAX-save_parsers();
It does it's magic by storing a ParserDetails.ini file in the same
directory as SAX.pm is located. They look like this:
[XML::SAX::PurePerl]
http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces = 1
http://xml.org/sax/features/validation = 0
# a comment
# blank lines ignored
[XML::SAX::AnotherParser]
http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces = 0
http://xml.org/sax/features/validation = 1
So that's fairly straight forward. As Dave pointed out the problems I
identified are:
1) How does this work with PAR?
Internally XML::SAX's doing something like this to get at the file:
# get directory XML::SAX is in.
$dir = dirname($INC{'XML/SAX.pm'});
# get the ParserDetails.ini file
open($fh, File::Spec-catfile($dir, SAX, ParserDetails.ini);
This of course works terribly with PAR. PAR (the module that allows you
to create ZIP files of distributions and then use them directly without
having to unzip their contents) works by putting a magic coderef in @INC.
Normally when you load a module perl looks though each of the directories
in @INC until it finds the file. However, if rather than putting a
directory in @INC you put in a coderef, perl will execute the code and
expect it to return the source of the module you were looking for. This
is how PAR works - the subroutine gets the module out of the zip file and
presents it to perl. The problem is, it doesn't set the %INC to be the
right thing for our uses. For example:
lib/Foo/Bar.pm
--
package Foo::Bar;
use File::Slurp;
use File::Spec::Functions;
use File::Basename qw(dirname);
sub get_contents {
read_file(catfile(dirname($INC{'Foo/Bar.pm'}),'details'))
}
1;
lib/Foo/details
---
these are the details
Running this normally works fine:
bash-2.05b$ perl -Ilib -MFoo::Bar -e 'print Foo::Bar-get_contents'
these are the details
bash-2.05b$
However, if we make this a PAR file, it all goes horribly wrong:
bash-2.05b$ rm lib.par
bash-2.05b$ zip -r lib lib
adding: lib/ (stored 0%)
adding: lib/Foo/ (stored 0%)
adding: lib/Foo/details (stored 0%)
adding: lib/Foo/Bar.pm (deflated 21%)
bash-2.05b$ perl -MPAR=./lib.zip -MFoo::Bar -e 'print Foo::Bar-get_contents'
open ./details: No such file or directory at /loader/0x81a984c/Foo/Bar.pm
line 6
Darn!
One possibility around this is that rather than have a ini file, we
actually use a simple perl module to hold the file, somewhat like
Config.pm does, and when you add things you rewrite the perl module. This
wouldn't allow you to add things when you're working from a PAR file, but
it would allow you to bundle up extensions.
Does this make sense? Can anyone spot a flaw in this strategy?
2) More than one place
The big problem I see is where you have local plugins. Imagine that you
have global plugins installed in /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.0 and you
want to install some local plugins in /home/mark/perllib. This is a
problem as you can't write to the global plugin registry.
I guess you could have two versions of the module, a local one that is
attempted to be loaded that adds it's data to the global one. This is
only one layer of kludge though. What happens if I have global, an
application level, and a truly local set of plugins? Where do you draw
the line?
The problem is compounded by it'd be really nice to do something like
perl -MPAR=./pluginone.par,./plugintwo.par script.pl
And have it get all the plugins in there that are registered inside those
modules.
Shucks, this is getting complicated. Ideas?
Mark.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};
Re: Audiofile::Info
Mark Fowler wrote: It does it's magic by storing a ParserDetails.ini file in the same directory as SAX.pm is located. They look like this: [XML::SAX::PurePerl] http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces = 1 http://xml.org/sax/features/validation = 0 It also gets those features from metadata in the modules themselves (@FEATURES). This is useful for modules that support a common interface, but may require some slight variations. 1) How does this work with PAR? Internally XML::SAX's doing something like this to get at the file: [snip many reasons why it doesn't] Does this make sense? Can anyone spot a flaw in this strategy? Yeah, it still doesn't fully work with PAR :) Could we not simply define a Module::FileInINC module that would make all that transparent (with saveFileInINC(Foo::Bar.ini)) and work with PAR if PAR is installed? It's not the end of the world writing a file back into a zip. SMOP. 2) More than one place The big problem I see is where you have local plugins. Imagine that you have global plugins installed in /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.0 and you want to install some local plugins in /home/mark/perllib. This is a problem as you can't write to the global plugin registry. IIRC XML::SAX allows you to have another config file be picked up and override the base one if you want to. Not sure if that's enough for what you need. -- Robin Berjon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Research Scientist, Expway http://expway.com/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
Re: Dave and Religion
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:02:52PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: If God created the universe, who created God? That's one of the more interesting questions. The medieval theologians charactarised God as the 'prime mover', i.e. the first in a causal chain of events. It's not unreasonable to suppose that there was an initial cause - after all, infinite series can still have beginnings and ends. You quickly end up in a not-at-all religious discussion of what constitutes 'an event', and other metaphysical topics that are very much in the domain of analytical western philosophy and logic and not really much to do with the God of the bible, if you like. yes, the question is a problem if you've been saying that everything must have an (external) cause, or that anything as wonderful/intricate/... as $WONDERFUL_THING must have an (external) cause; but not a problem for a 'prime mover' theory. i'm suspicious of a 'prime mover' concept, because it seems to bear very little resemblance to a cause in the everyday sense of the word, which leaves a lot of work that needs doing to show that the concept is explanatory, or even meaningful. None the less, there is more cross-over between the domains than is popularly imagined. In particular the early Christian theologians took a very rigorous and logical approach to their discussions. semantics is everything. Jon, who rarely gets to talk about medeival phiosophy any more -- Phil Lanch0xD78D598DA6635CF32AB24593C98994B7D95B33E3 http://www.subtle.clara.co.uk/rephrase/ I have an answer. It's not the right answer, but it makes me feel good.
Re: Dave and Religion
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: Audiofile::Info
I'm not sure if this of any help, but it's a function I'm using in Filter::Simple to
locate modules much like 'require' or 'use' might.
use vars '%INC';
sub find_module_file {
my $pkg = $_[0];
my($file, @dirs) = reverse split '::' = $pkg;
my $path = catfile reverse(@dirs), $file.pm;
return $INC{$path}
if exists $INC{$path} and defined $INC{$path};
my $lib;
for(@INC) {
## do references in @INC magic here ...
if(ref $_) {
my $ret = ( ref($_) eq 'CODE' ?
$_-( $_, $path )
:
ref($_) eq 'ARRAY' ?
$_-[0]-( $_, $path )
:
UNIVERSAL::can($_, 'INC') ?
$_-INC( $path )
:
croak(Filter::Include - invalid reference $_)
) ;
next
unless defined $ret;
croak(Filter::Handle - invalid [EMAIL PROTECTED] subroutine return $ret)
unless _isfh($ret);
return $ret;
}
$lib = $_ and last
if -f catfile($_, $path);
}
croak(Filter::Include - Can't locate $path in [EMAIL PROTECTED]
. ([EMAIL PROTECTED] contains: @INC)
unless defined $lib;
$INC{$path} = catfile $lib, $path;
}
sub _isfh {
no strict 'refs';
return !!( ref $_[0] and (
( ref $_[0] eq 'GLOB' and defined *{$_[0]}{IO} )
or ( UNIVERSAL::isa($_[0] = 'IO::Handle'))
or ( UNIVERSAL::can($_[0] = 'getlines') )
) );
}
The only there thing that probably would need to be tweaked '_isfh()' which is just
sufficient for my needs.
So that should solve any problems with coderefs in @INC.
Dan
Re: Dave and Religion
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 04:31:37PM +0100, Paul Makepeace wrote: Je 2003-09-05 16:06:15 +0100, Iain Tatch skribis: Only in Monotheistic religions, and the only one of those that's got any substantial following in this country is Judaism. i don't know what modern Judaism says about it, but in the old testament Yahweh is the god of 1 particular people: yes, he is their only god, but other peoples have their own gods. What country? Perhaps you were misled into thinking this list is populated entirely by Brits... 'Fraid not, the Empire has been diluted. the empire is stronger than ever, it's just that the mother country has swapped roles with 1 of the colonies. Islam is quite a popular monotheistic religion in the UK, six times more so than Judaism in England. you could argue that Islam as polytheistic as Christianity - start with the 7 prophets. i'm not trying to offend as many groups of people as possible in 1 email, it just looks that way! -- Phil Lanch0xD78D598DA6635CF32AB24593C98994B7D95B33E3 http://www.subtle.clara.co.uk/rephrase/ The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. -- Robert R. Coveyou
Re: Dave and Religion
Oh Christ! What have I done... James
Re: Dave and Religion
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:29:02PM +0100, Tim Sweetman wrote: all. At which point I want to throw the following at Mr Stoppard, but I don't have a time machine: Mr Stoppard is alive and well. -- Phil Lanch0xD78D598DA6635CF32AB24593C98994B7D95B33E3 http://www.subtle.clara.co.uk/rephrase/ The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. -- Robert R. Coveyou
Re: Dave and Religion
Je 2003-09-05 16:54:30 +0100, Iain Tatch skribis: On Friday, September 5, 2003, 4:31:37 PM, Paul Makepeace wrote: PM Islam is quite a popular monotheistic religion in the UK, six times more PM so than Judaism in England. Islam, monotheistic? You really think so? Jeez, come on Iain, I posted a link to a Beginner's Guide to Islam in the same message you're replying to. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/beginner/index.shtml ``You have to believe that there is only one God, Allah, who created the entire universe, and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is his final messenger on earth.'' I thought this was common knowledge? Perhaps I'm biased living working in East London for a few years. Paul -- Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/ What is below space? More bratwurst! -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
Re: Dave and Religion
Andy Wardley wrote: God didn't create the universe. God is the universe. Yeah, but what created God? James (who is definately going to hell for this)
Re: Dave and Religion
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
Phil Lanch wrote: On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:29:02PM +0100, Tim Sweetman wrote: all. At which point I want to throw the following at Mr Stoppard, but I don't have a time machine: Mr Stoppard is alive and well. I know that, but the sources in question postdate Jumpers. Talented as Mr Stoppard is, it is a bit much to expect him to read stuff before it has been written. Cheers ti
Re: Dave and Religion
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 05/09/2003 16:06:15: On Friday, September 5, 2003, 3:50:07 PM, Andy Wardley wrote: AW James Campbell wrote: If God created the universe, who created God? AW God didn't create the universe. God is the universe. Only in Monotheistic religions, and the only one of those that's got any substantial following in this country is Judaism. Err... Islam?? Islam is ultra-monotheistic. It takes it to extremes, hence the whole 'no pictorial representation of living things allowed' trait in the stricter schools of thought. Hence also the central tenet 'There is no God but God'. 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. They would have to be rather touchy to be baited by that. Most of the ones I know readily accept that Christianity includes more than a passing nod to various multi-theistic beliefs. It's worth remembering that most of the saints were created in Christianity's early days, when there were many recent converts who remembered the old ways. The trinity I dimly recall may have come from Isis worship, although I rather forget how or why. (especially revered in Catholicism) and Satan, and a host of minor gods who they usually name saints. Catholicism has always been more pagan than the more severe protestant branches in this regard. Much dressing up, lighting candles, making smoke, invoking saints, and general revelry. Try telling a Presbyterian that he's multi-theistic :-) AW Hmm... I think I may start a religion. I hear there's money in it... :-) Too late: http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/ Oh there's always room for another. Unless you've signed up to one already in which case there's NO ROOM FOR ANYTHING BUT THE TRUE RELIGION, DIE INFIDELS. :) J
Re: Audiofile::Info
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 04:11:19PM +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: Shucks, this is getting complicated. Ideas? Provide a base version to which you pass a list of the plugins to try at 'use' time or at object creation time, and don't have it do any detection of available plugins. Implement subclasses for none, some or more of the autodetection schemes that have been suggested in this thread. Personally, I hate it when things like this try to be too clever and insist on autodetecting stuff. The behavior of my script shouldn't change because somebody installed a new module, unless I want it to. -- Nick
Re: Dave and Religion
Jason Clifford wrote: 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. 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). 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. -- Robin Berjon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Research Scientist, Expway http://expway.com/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
Re: Dave and Religion
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
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Jason Clifford wrote: She's no more a God than Madonna is. Do those who adore Madonna generally do so as a god? I dunno. Is Guy Richie subbed to the list ? S.
Re: Dave and Religion
On 05/09/2003 at 18:29 +0200, Robin Berjon wrote: Jason Clifford wrote: 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. On the other hand, in the latest video she really manages to look her age. This wouldn't be so bad if she was wearing any clothes, but sadly she's prancing about in a negligee and a couple of really terrifying sundresses. Come to think of it, most of her recent videos have been utter rubbish. Ray of Light was a terrible bluescreen+timelapse horrorshow, and the one in front of the bluescreen prairie was equally bad. As for the Ali G half-animated one; please. Not in front of the children. Let's not even start on the sub-Tatu girls-kissing stunt at the VMA last week. Please, start acting your age. Not that Mick Jagger is any better. At least he doesn't pop up on the music TV channels so often, though. -- :: paul :: historic light cone
Re: Dave and Religion
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 12:35:47PM +0100, James Campbell wrote: I was reading Mr Cantrell's Free Press and was very amused and impressed by the section on Religion. . . . Uh-oh, is that a massive bolt of... What has this got to do with Ben's message on Bad C Source? Just curious. Nicholas Clark
Re: Dave and Religion
James Campbell wrote: I was reading Mr Cantrell's Free Press and was very amused and impressed by the section on Religion. http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/religion/ And it's due for a re-write. It's been due for a re-write for ages, but I just can't be bothered. Most of the content there is something like four years old, the only changes have been a couple of minor corrections (which are noted at the bottom of the page) and the ongoing battle to stop retarded neo-nazis from linking to the image and using my bandwidth for their own moronic amusement. -- Grand Inquisitor David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Considering the number of wheels Microsoft has found reason to invent, one never ceases to be baffled by the minuscule number whose shape even vaguely resembles a circle. -- anon, on Usenet
Re: Dave and Religion
On Friday, September 5, 2003, 5:08:00 PM, Paul Makepeace wrote:
PM http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/beginner/index.shtml
PM ``You have to believe that there is only one God, Allah, who created the
PM entire universe, and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is his final
PM messenger on earth.''
I know what Muslims believe, and what the Koran teaches. However just
because someone utters a statement such as There is no God but Allah. The
Prophets merely carry his word doesn't mean that they aren't treating the
Prophets in a near-identical fashion to the way in which Allah is
worshipped.
Self-proclamations of belief are generally fairly worthless: eg Stalin
spent decades proclaiming that the Soviet Union's socio-political system
was the pinnacle of human achievement and a near-Utopian society. Just
because he said it was so, didn't make it so.
PM I thought this was common knowledge? Perhaps I'm biased living working
PM in East London for a few years.
I was brought up in East London and went to a school which had more
practising muslims than christians, so I consider myself reasonably aware
of what religions profess. My point is that as a militant atheist trying
to observe the religions objectively, I believe that of the three main
self-proclaimed monotheistic religions, Judaism seems to be the only one
that treats its minor deities more as superhumans rather than out-and-out
gods.
Anyway, I started this whole thing by saying that this was one of my
favourite wind up the Christians tactics. Perhaps I've trolled too
successfully.
Let's talk about Buffy. Or Ponies.
--
Iain | PGP mail preferred: pubkey @ www.deepsea.f9.co.uk/misc/iain.asc
($=,$,)=split m$13/$,qq;1313/tl\.rnh r HITtahkPctacriAneeeusaoJ;;
for(@[EMAIL PROTECTED] m,,,$,){$..=$$[$=];$$=$=[$=];[EMAIL PROTECTED];[EMAIL PROTECTED]
]eq$$$==$?;$==$?;for(@$)[EMAIL PROTECTED] eq$_;;last if!$@;$=++}}print$..$/
Re: Dave and Religion
Nicholas Clark wrote: On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 12:35:47PM +0100, James Campbell wrote: I was reading Mr Cantrell's Free Press and was very amused and impressed by the section on Religion. . . . Uh-oh, is that a massive bolt of... What has this got to do with Ben's message on Bad C Source? Just curious. Gods too considered harmful? paul -- Paul Sharpe Tel: 619 523 0100 Fax: 619 523 0101 Russell Sharpe, Inc mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 4993 Niagara Avenue, Suite 209 http://www.russellsharpe.com/ San Diego, CA 92107-3185
Re: Dave and Religion
Paul Mison wrote: On 05/09/2003 at 18:29 +0200, Robin Berjon wrote: Jason Clifford wrote: 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. On the other hand, in the latest video she really manages to look her age. This wouldn't be so bad if she was wearing any clothes, but sadly she's prancing about in a negligee and a couple of really terrifying sundresses. I was referring to that book from the early 90s, I think it was simply called Sex. The rest I don't really mind or care about, I don't have TV. Not in front of the children. But then, I don't have any. Let's not even start on the sub-Tatu girls-kissing stunt at the VMA last week. Please, start acting your age. I heard of that. But what's the issue? Is there an age for kissing girls? -- Robin Berjon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Research Scientist, Expway http://expway.com/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
Re: Ob-buffy
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:29:12AM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Jonathan Peterson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Twin Peaks winds me up. I remember being in school when it was on, and the kind of people who were into it suffered from two other co-morbidities: 1. They liked Marillion They liked Twin Peaks and Marillion? They clearly are people of exceptionally good taste, imagination and intellect. Uh... we've learned to ignore grep, right? :-) dha, who has actually seen Marillion live, but can't remember for whom they were opening... -- David H. Adler - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ A picture is worth several hundred thousand words... in the right haiku - Damian Conway
Re: Dave and Religion
Andy Wardley wrote: That's about the only thing that all the religious texts can agree on - that God, or whatever name you chose for the concept, is omniprescient and omnipotent. This implies that God is everywhere and in everything and there can be nothing that is outside of God. Iain Tatch wrote: Only in Monotheistic religions... I'm sure you're right. I don't really know much about religion at all. In fact, I wasn't being entirely serious. Well, half-serious. I like my definition of God == Universe because it works for me. But the whole point of religion/spirituality/belief is that it is entirely personal. It should be based on your own beliefs, not on what anyone else tells you to believe. I don't want my karma to run over anyone's dogma. :-) Too late: http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/ May the force be with you. A
Re: Dave and Religion
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 04:34:16PM +0100, Jason Clifford wrote: Christianity is a derived form of Judaism. It teaches that there is one God and that's it. Not quite. It teaches that YHWH is the only *true* God, but the Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories of other gods. Tony
Re: Dave and Religion
Jason Clifford wrote: On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Robin Berjon wrote: Dunno. She sure looks good in some of those leather outfits. A god of slaughtered cows? ;) Nah, radiocative decay. A cowium atom decays into several steakiums and some leatherium, plus a handful of neutrinos, a loud moo and some blood. While they do this naturally anyway, we can speed the process up by bombarding the cowium atom with a stunner and high-speed knives. Furrfu, why do people have to keep inventing deities for perfectly simple natural processes? And why isn't there a God Of Having A Really Big Dump, You Know, The Ones Where You Just Have To Get It Out But Strain And Strain As Much As You Like It Just Doesn't Want To Move? -- David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't -- Marge Simpson
Re: Dave and Religion
Andy Wardley wrote: In fact, I wasn't being entirely serious. Well, half-serious. I like my definition of God == Universe because it works for me. But the whole point of religion/spirituality/belief is that it is entirely personal. It should be based on your own beliefs, not on what anyone else tells you to believe. S, now. Your starting to make me wonder which part of his body did Leibniz use to pen his many, many letters. -- Robin Berjon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Research Scientist, Expway http://expway.com/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
Re: Dave and Religion
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, David Cantrell wrote: Furrfu, why do people have to keep inventing deities for perfectly simple natural processes? And why isn't there a God Of Having A Really Big Dump, You Know, The Ones Where You Just Have To Get It Out But Strain And Strain As Much As You Like It Just Doesn't Want To Move? That's how Terry Pratchett's Discworld Gods work: they feed on people's beliefs. If more people believe in them, then they grow more powerful, if no-one believes in them, they die. I have always thought it made sense. But no god is going to get much power from me anyway, so why should they care... -- Michel Rodriguez Perl amp; XML http://www.xmltwig.com
Re: Dave and Religion
On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 11:39 AM, Jonathan Peterson wrote: Hence also the central tenet 'There is no God but God'. and here all this time i thought it went the tao that can be named is not the true tao. /me ducks It's worth remembering that most of the saints were created in Christianity's early days, when there were many recent converts who remembered the old ways. so it's cruft? thus, protestantism is a result of refactoring and should be a good thing?
Re: Dave and Religion
On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 12:42 PM, Jason Clifford wrote: How often are stereotypes correct? rather often. it's how they become stereotypes, you know. ;-)
Re: Dave and Religion - Inventing Deities
Furrfu, why do people have to keep inventing deities for perfectly simple natural processes? And why isn't there a God Of Having A Really Big Dump, You Know, The Ones Where You Just Have To Get It Out But Strain And Strain As Much As You Like It Just Doesn't Want To Move? Talking about inventing deities ... was anyone around when the GOD 'Kibo' was invented on Usenet? I may have this wrong, but as I understand it a guy grepped Usenet for all instances of the word 'Kibo'. If you happened to mention the Great Lord's Name, 'Kibo', in your Usenet post, you might be blessed with a reply from the Great Lord himself! Soon young acolytes we're pleading for Kibo's divine attention. This omnipotent, grep-wielding, digital deity soon had a religon on his hands: Kibology. If I'm lucky he may even reply to this ... ;-) Nige p.s. I wonder if Kibo has now upgraded to Perl 5.8? -- Nigel Hamilton Turbo10 Metasearch Engine email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel:+44 (0) 207 987 5460 fax:+44 (0) 207 987 5468 http://turbo10.com Search Deeper. Browse Faster.
