Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Seems like we've made a reasonable start on this project. We already have a few scripts written - anyone want to report progress on any of the others? I have Guestbook, FFA and simple search all ready to for testing elsewhere - I'll package and upload them somewhere this evening. I looked at wwwboard as well and discovered that I had got as far as making it strict and use CGI.pm so whover is working on that can have my work in progress if they want :) What we need now is to start to impose some structure on the project. Here are a few ideas: * CVS Repository (on Penderel?) * Testing both our versions and the originals on as many platforms as possible. Ensuring that our scripts do the same thing as Matt's. * Licensing. Matt has a huge great license on all of his scripts. We should replace it with the standard "under the same tersm as Perl itself" statement. * Copyright. All the scripts (and the HTML pages) have Matt's copyright. We should change that to ours. * HTML. Most of the scripts have associated HTML pages. I've not looked at them yet, but judging by the HTML I've seen in the scripts I've looked at, Matt's HTML isn't much better than his Perl. I'd recommend changing all the HTML to XHTML. I have run tidy over all of it and converted it to HTML 4 Transitional but XHTML would be just as easy. I can download the rest of the scripts and then fix the associated HTML too. * Bundling. Need to build gzipped tarballs of our new versions (I guess this should be built on top of the CVS stuff). Matt makes pkzipped versions avaiable as well - so should we. This should probably done on the CVS server. * Web page. Need somewhere to point potential users at. Probably two versions - one for the developers and one for the users. This can be a subdirectory on london.pm.org. Unfortunately because I am without laptop at the moment things are a bit difficult - I have had to press my very old machine into service. Oh BTW are we allowing POSIX in ? I had used that in the Guestbook for strftime ... /J\ -- I'm obviously challenged at the moment give me a break.
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
- Original Message - From: "Jonathan Stowe" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Snip * Bundling. Need to build gzipped tarballs of our new versions (I guess this should be built on top of the CVS stuff). Matt makes pkzipped versions avaiable as well - so should we. This should probably done on the CVS server. Winzip (what most windows users these days use to unzip) handlers tar.gz by default so that may not be neccesary. On a completely off topic note I'm appealing to the contractors among you here. Those of you who have yor own company. Did you set yourselves up as a Limited Company, or as a Sole Trader. If you set yourself up as a limited company did/do you have liability insurance etc. Thanks Gareth Harper
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On the subject of having zip archives as well as tarballs on the server,
Gareth Harper said:
Winzip (what most windows users these days use to unzip) handlers tar.gz by
default so that may not be neccesary.
Not neccesary from a techical point of view. Neccesary from a social
point of view (What's this extension! I don't understand! What's going
on! What are all these weird charges from AOL? etc)
Later.
Mark.
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name = 'Mark Fowler',Title = 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm = 'Profero Ltd',Web = 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email = '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone = '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
- Original Message - From: "Robert Shiels" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 12:12 PM Subject: Re: Matt's Scripts Projects - Original Message - From: "Jonathan Stowe" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: * Bundling. Need to build gzipped tarballs of our new versions (I guess this should be built on top of the CVS stuff). Matt makes pkzipped versions avaiable as well - so should we. Winzip (what most windows users these days use to unzip) handlers tar.gz by default so that may not be neccesary. If all the files are created in unix, they may well not have \n\r at the end of the lines, which make them a bugger to edit in notepad (wordpad and even edit handle them OK though.) So I think the archive should have windows versions of the text files that work in notepad. CVS (I use GNU winCVS in windows) handles all these conversions for you, but if someone wants to download a zip (whatever format) or a certain script (or doesn't care about CVS) then the zip will need to contain the \n\r.
Re: [ot] NetBSD
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 01:20:19PM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote: Resetting the root password is not too difficult, I think (I'm more used to FreeBSD, this will /probably/ work. Once booted into single user mode, do: # mount -u / # ed /etc/master.passwd 1s/:[^:]*/:/ p w q # pwd_mkdb /etc/master.passwd That should probably be (according to the vipw source): # pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd # exit -Dom
Re: [ot] NetBSD
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 01:20:19PM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote: I'm not totally certain things are the same on NetBSD, but you should be able to get going, by looking at this and the man pages on www.netbsd.org. You may also want to use the source code: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-1-5/src/ -Dom
Re: [ot] NetBSD
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 01:08:22PM +, David Cantrell wrote: A quick question for all the BSD people. How do I boot NetBSD into single-user mode? In case it matters, this is on Sparc. A pint for whoever helps me reset the root password :-) ok boot -s You may need variations on this to boot from the correct device (eg: "boot cdrom -s". This assumes you have a v2 prom or newer, which you probably do (my old sparc 2 has one). Resetting the root password is not too difficult, I think (I'm more used to FreeBSD, this will /probably/ work. Once booted into single user mode, do: # mount -u / # ed /etc/master.passwd 1s/:[^:]*/:/ p w q # pwd_mkdb /etc/master.passwd # exit And it should come back up in multi-user mode, with root having no password. The pwd_mkdb command recreates the /etc/pwd.db and /etc/spwd.db databases, which is just used for quick lookup. Normally, you'd use vipw(8) and get this done automatically. I'm not totally certain things are the same on NetBSD, but you should be able to get going, by looking at this and the man pages on www.netbsd.org. -Dom
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue Mar 20 11:46:25 2001, Gareth Harper wrote: On a completely off topic note I'm appealing to the contractors among you here. Those of you who have yor own company. Did you set yourselves up as a Limited Company, or as a Sole Trader. If you set yourself up as a limited company did/do you have liability insurance etc. Limited Company. Clients and agents all seem happier when dealing with a Limtied Company. Many just assume you have one and you could have a few problems getting paid if you don't. I don't have liability insurance, but don't look at me as a good example: I paid my tax a year late, and keep forgetting to send in my VAT returns! -- Marty
Fwd: [lmug-talk] Apple comes to town !
For those that might be interested. To: lmug-talk [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Corgan Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:38:58 + Subject: [lmug-talk] Apple comes to town ! You might like to get in on the OS X act with LMUG. Apple UK are sending their man to our April Forum meeting, at the Crown and Two Chairmen in Dean Street W1. Not only will he be demoing OS X, but we understand that a copy will be given by Apple as a raffle prize ! So it will be well worth the 3 that non-members have to pay to get in ! Just be sure to be early if you don't want to stand all the evening. Any more details that are required can be had via the LMUG web site. -- Michael Corgan Chairman London Macintosh User Group See us on www.lmug.org.uk -- Neil C. Ford Managing Director, Yet Another Computer Solutions Company [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: On Tue Mar 20 11:46:25 2001, Gareth Harper wrote: On a completely off topic note I'm appealing to the contractors among you here. Those of you who have yor own company. Did you set yourselves up as a Limited Company, or as a Sole Trader. If you set yourself up as a limited company did/do you have liability insurance etc. Limited Company. Clients and agents all seem happier when dealing with a Limtied Company. Many just assume you have one and you could have a few problems getting paid if you don't. apart from that the benfits of running as a Limited Company are large (ish) assuming you can escape from the clutches of IR35. by careful handling of the way you do things your overall tax and NIC burden can be 'effectivley managed' and you should see 80~85% of what you earn actually ending up in your pocket. If the money was paid to you as a salary you'd be lucky to see 50% of it. It also reduces the NIC burden on the employer... by removing the 12.2% employers contribution, so they can afford to pay you even more :)) So Limited Company everytime if you can .. works best for both sides. The costs of setup are small, the costs (in terms of time to admin it) is small (1 hour a week max, plus a couple of days at some poin tduring hte year to get it all together and hassle the accountant) but the benfits, financially are significant. -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
- Original Message - From: "Robin Szemeti" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 3:06 PM Subject: Re: Matt's Scripts Projects On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: apart from that the benfits of running as a Limited Company are large (ish) assuming you can escape from the clutches of IR35. by careful handling of the way you do things your overall tax and NIC burden can be 'effectivley managed' and you should see 80~85% of what you earn actually ending up in your pocket. but iosn;t the same true when acting as a Sole Trader ? You still invoice people as you would as a Limited Company (I asked an accountant friend of mine for advice and he suggested I go with Sole Trader which is why I'm asking) Thanks Gareth Harper
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
At 15:40 20/03/2001 +, Gareth Harper wrote: - Original Message - From: "Robin Szemeti" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 3:06 PM Subject: Re: Matt's Scripts Projects On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: apart from that the benfits of running as a Limited Company are large (ish) assuming you can escape from the clutches of IR35. by careful handling of the way you do things your overall tax and NIC burden can be 'effectivley managed' and you should see 80~85% of what you earn actually ending up in your pocket. but iosn;t the same true when acting as a Sole Trader ? You still invoice people as you would as a Limited Company (I asked an accountant friend of mine for advice and he suggested I go with Sole Trader which is why I'm asking) IANAL but I think that clients become liable for paying certain dues, NI IIRC, if you, as a sole trader or casual worker, are based on a client site, directed by the client, for a long period of time (for some value, unknown to me, of "long"). By retaining a limited company, the client is absolved of this obligation. There could be other reasons or this reason could be completely false. It's been several years since I looked at this. Simon.
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
Marty Pauley writes: On Tue Mar 20 11:46:25 2001, Gareth Harper wrote: On a completely off topic note I'm appealing to the contractors among you here. Those of you who have yor own company. Did you set yourselves up as a Limited Company, or as a Sole Trader. If you set yourself up as a limited company did/do you have liability insurance etc. Limited Company. Clients and agents all seem happier when dealing with a Limtied Company. Many just assume you have one and you could have a few problems getting paid if you don't. I don't have liability insurance, but don't look at me as a good example: I paid my tax a year late, and keep forgetting to send in my VAT returns! That pretty much describes me too. Regarding insurance, the PCG (http://www.pcgroup.org.uk) have arranged deals on professional indemnity and medical insurance which may be worth a butchers. -- Brian Raven My arthritic pinkies are already starting to ache just thinking about =. -- Larry Wall in [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Take a look at this http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-MMDDYY. Now give me: a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and b) as many flaws as possible in the implementation. Dave... [with his nasty, bitchy head on]
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 11:18:47AM -0500, Dave Cross wrote: Take a look at this http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-MMDDYY. Now give me: a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and b) as many flaws as possible in the implementation. Submit a patch for conversion to DDMMYY and see if it gets incorporated :) Dean -- Profanity is the one language all programmers understand --- Anon
RE: Matt's Scripts Projects
Not neccesary from a techical point of view. Neccesary from a social point of view (What's this extension! I don't understand! What's going on! Excewpt that windows machines tend not to even show the extension by default, and so the file will just have a little WinZip icon[0], which means they should be happy. Oh no, wait a minute, I think it uncompresses the .gz bit then prompts for what to do with the .tar bit, which might scare them off. Just shut up, matt. -- matt "'scuse me trooper, will you be needing any packets today? hey, baby, don't be pulling on my socket, okay?" [0] Or whatever handles .tar.gz on their machine.
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: - Original Message - From: "Robin Szemeti" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 3:06 PM Subject: Re: Matt's Scripts Projects On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: apart from that the benfits of running as a Limited Company are large (ish) assuming you can escape from the clutches of IR35. by careful handling of the way you do things your overall tax and NIC burden can be 'effectivley managed' and you should see 80~85% of what you earn actually ending up in your pocket. but iosn;t the same true when acting as a Sole Trader ? You still invoice people as you would as a Limited Company (I asked an accountant friend of mine for advice and he suggested I go with Sole Trader which is why I'm asking) nope nothing like. as sole trader all monies received (- expenses) are treated as income .. thus you pay NIC on the whole lot .. tax at 23% or whatever up to 30K and then tax at 40% above 30k(ish). as a employee of a limited company you would be paid national minimum wage (4 quid an hour) .. you pay NIC and tax on that ... (minimal) .. you claim expenses off the (ie your own) company for all the driving around you do and having to buy things and accomodation whilst away from home etc ... and whats left in the company coffers is profit. This has advance corporation tax paid at 20% and ends up in the pockets of the shareholders as tax free income upto 30K each a year .. and if the share holders happen to be say, you and your wife then thats a cute way of getting 70K from a contract into your pockets and only paying ~ 15% tax overall on it ... now do you see why they introduced IR35 as a way of trying to stop it .. ;))) -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
RE: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and 1. It's redundant, other modules do this already. 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. b) as many flaws as possible in the implementation. No use strict Only requires 5.000 but makes use of 'our' keyword, which requires, err, 5.006? Doesn't localise variables in subs Appallingly long string of elsifs Doesn't use localtime when he should does $foo = $array[4]; without commenting what @array might contain In case of error, returns an error string consisting of the helpful message 'Error'. Oh it's dreadful. We need quality control on CPAN before more of this gets through. Dave... [with his nasty, bitchy head on]
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
Take a look at this http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-MMDDYY.
Now give me:
a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and
1) I'm English. MMDDYY makes not sense. Maybe that's just a gripe about
the name.
2) Time::Object rocks.
b) as many flaws as possible in the implementation.
no 'use strict'
should use prototypes to force scalar context on the string passed (but
see below for gripe)
Spliting up the string representation of a time is a bad thing and why not
just use the array format of gmtime/localtime.
no 'my @format'
no 'my $delem'
no 'my @time_array'
The whole string with delimeters thing is silly and just let people pass
each formating thing in @_ directly.
no 'my @final_date' # but with an undef!
does not die, or return undef, or do anything sensible with an error, just
returns 'Error'.
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name = 'Mark Fowler',Title = 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm = 'Profero Ltd',Web = 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email = '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone = '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
RE: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Oh it's dreadful. We need quality control on CPAN before more of this gets
through.
Hmm. Karma would workOr sponsorship. 'Larry Wall uses $modulename,
you should too'
Later.
Mark.
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name = 'Mark Fowler',Title = 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm = 'Profero Ltd',Web = 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email = '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone = '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
All this is pre-ir35: as a employee of a limited company you would be paid national minimum wage (4 quid an hour) .. you pay NIC and tax on that ... (minimal) .. you claim expenses off the (ie your own) company for all the driving around you do and having to buy things and accomodation whilst away from home etc ... and whats left in the company coffers is profit. This has advance corporation tax paid at 20% and ends up in the pockets of the shareholders as tax free income upto 30K each a year Rubbish ;) its NIC free, not tax free. .. and if the share holders happen to be say, you and your wife then thats a cute way of getting 70K from a contract into your pockets and only paying ~ 15% tax overall on it ... now do you see why they introduced IR35 as a way of trying to stop it .. ;))) No, thats what the self-assessment form is for at the end of the year.
RE: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At 16:29 20/03/2001 +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and 1. It's redundant, other modules do this already. 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion. Simon.
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 04:40:29PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion. Or even better still, -MM-DD :-) Alex
RE: Matt's Scripts Projects
At 04:07 PM 20.3.2001 +, you wrote: Not neccesary from a techical point of view. Neccesary from a social point of view (What's this extension! I don't understand! What's going on! Except that windows machines tend not to even show the extension by default, and so the file will just have a little WinZip icon[0], which means they should be happy. ...except that the Windows extension hiding feature only applies to files seen through the normal filesystem tools (Windows Explorer, various dialog boxes, etc), and not Internetty stuff. People might still be scared off by seeing a web or ftp site that doesn't have any .zip files... Oh no, wait a minute, I think it uncompresses the .gz bit then prompts for what to do with the .tar bit, which might scare them off. That too -- that's a pain in the arse: it ends up adding a seemingly superfluous step to the process that could be off-putting to Win-natives. -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 04:40:29PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: At 16:29 20/03/2001 +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion. And sorts more nicely too. and is a dessert topping *and* a floor wax. Am I allowed to mention -MM-DD, which actually sorts best of all... Do we really not learn from Y2K? MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) Science is built up of facts, as a house with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. -- Poincare
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On or about Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 11:40:18AM -0500, Dave Cross typed: I really think I should drop the author a polite note offering him a patch or three. s/entire_file/strftime/ ? Roger
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:40:35 -0500, Alex Page [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 04:40:29PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion. Or even better still, -MM-DD :-) Which is the ISO standard (number 8601) for dates for a very good reason. Dave... [who actually prefers MMDD because it sorts numerically]
RE: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and 1. It's redundant, other modules do this already. 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Not to mention the fact that YY in itself is also bad from a medium to long-term perspective. , anyone? And YY(YY) MM DD is arguably an even more sensible date format than DD MM YY, in cases where you want to be able to efficiently sort data on the date. DD MM YY leads to 01-01-01 being sorted next to 01-02-01, with 02-01-01 appearing further down the list. MMDDYY is about as backwards and illogical as you can possibly get[0]. [0] - Although I wouldn't be surprised if the author of this module hasn't also got an MDYMDY date sort in the pipeline :)
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On 20/03/2001 at 16:40 +, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 04:40:29PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: At 16:29 20/03/2001 +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion. And sorts more nicely too. and is a dessert topping *and* a floor wax. Or -MM-DD, for those who've forgotten the media panic 18 months ago. ISO dates all the way, baby! -- :: paul :: this world's crazy, give me the gun
Re: [ot] NetBSD
Summary: pwd_mkdb didn't work, so I tried re-installing (it was a fresh install I'd broken anyway). I then proceded to get very annoyed with the NetBSD installer, because it doesn't let you go back and correct your stupid mistakes. And then installed Debian. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: All this is pre-ir35: as a employee of a limited company you would be paid national minimum wage (4 quid an hour) .. you pay NIC and tax on that ... (minimal) .. you claim expenses off the (ie your own) company for all the driving around you do and having to buy things and accomodation whilst away from home etc ... and whats left in the company coffers is profit. This has advance corporation tax paid at 20% and ends up in the pockets of the shareholders as tax free income upto 30K each a year Rubbish ;) its NIC free, not tax free. true, technically its not tax free .. as the company has paid 20% on it which is only 2% less (or is it 3%) less than basic rate. the big saving is if you are able to split it across 2 shareholders eg you and your wife, thus avoiding the 40% thing. for reasons less than clear to me this money is treated as being +10% gross (ie for every 1000 pounds you get it counts as 1100 pounds of tax-paid income .. but hey, thats what I pay the accountant for, to understand this sort of nonsense. .. and if the share holders happen to be say, you and your wife then thats a cute way of getting 70K from a contract into your pockets and only paying ~ 15% tax overall on it ... now do you see why they introduced IR35 as a way of trying to stop it .. ;))) No, thats what the self-assessment form is for at the end of the year. so long as you have paid your NIC and PAYE throughout the year and kept a careful eye on how much the divvies come to then there should be little else to pay ... 80~85% in your pocket is quite achievable... this is of course when you suddenly reallise that youve been giving out divvies far too frequently and you had an effective income of 60K each .. and that you;ve already spent it all and owe the taxman $LOTS. ;) the other big advantage of a limited company is that it allows you to decide when to release the money .. as a sole trader if you earn shed loads one year it all counts as income for that year .. with a limited company you might decide that the dividend would not be paid until say .. the end of April, thus it would count towards your income for next year and avoid the 40% thing .. which if you take a lot of holidays or find it difficult to get a contract could be advantageous to be able to do that sort of thing from time to time. -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: [ot] NetBSD
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:53:32PM +, David Cantrell wrote: Summary: pwd_mkdb didn't work, so I tried re-installing (it was a fresh install I'd broken anyway). I then proceded to get very annoyed with the NetBSD installer, because it doesn't let you go back and correct your stupid mistakes. And then installed Debian. Wuss. ;-) Actually, you might want to try OpenBSD. I don't think its as stable on sparc as NetBSD, but the installer is loads nicer. I always preferred the NetBSD 1.1 installer, which basically dumped you in a shell and gave you "disklabel", "newfs", "tar" and a couple of others. Very effective. -Dom
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 11:40:18AM -0500, Dave Cross wrote:
I really think I should drop the author a polite note offering him a
patch or three.
A patch? It needs taking outside and shooting!
package Date::MMDDYY;
use strict;
use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT_OK);
require Exporter;
@ISA = qw(Exporter);
@EXPORT_OK='datecon';
use POSIX 'strftime';
sub datecon {
my ($time, $format, $delim) = @_;
$time = time() if !defined $time;
$format = 'MM,DD,YY' if !defined $format;
$delim = '-'if !defined $delim;
for ($format) {
s:,:$delim:g;
s:(MM|DD|YY):"%".lc(substr($1,0,1)):eg;
}
return strftime($format, localtime($time));
}
Should we also do a series of drop-in replacements for
crappy CPAN modules? ;-)
.robin.
--
Straw? No, too stupid a fad! I put soot on warts.
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At 16:49 20/03/01 +, you wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 04:44:55PM -, Simon Batistoni wrote: MMDDYY is about as backwards and illogical as you can possibly get[0]. Our cousins across the ocean appear to like it for some reason. I suspect this was the motivation for the module. The irony being that our cousins across the pond will always get a beautifully formatted, Y2K bug ridden, date in _GMT_ :) Anyone know how he managed to create a Makefile.pl that won't run on Win32 even though it is a pure perl module. Also the test scripts are good, they go to a lot of trouble to test the module thoroughly. Matt
RE: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
From: Michael Stevens [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] MMDDYY is about as backwards and illogical as you can possibly get[0]. Our cousins across the ocean appear to like it for some reason. I suspect this was the motivation for the module. Along with a few other quirks, such as: - copper plate handwriting; - combined brake and indicator lights; - crap television shows with adverts interspersed between programme and credits; - insisting on forms that *everyone* has zip code and a state; Without mentioning their notion of spelling or their curious insistence on independence from Britain ;-) Bizarre indeed! Andrew.
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:01:30 +, Robin Houston [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 11:40:18AM -0500, Dave Cross wrote:
I really think I should drop the author a polite note offering him a
patch or three.
A patch? It needs taking outside and shooting!
package Date::MMDDYY;
use strict;
use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT_OK);
require Exporter;
@ISA = qw(Exporter);
@EXPORT_OK='datecon';
use POSIX 'strftime';
sub datecon {
my ($time, $format, $delim) = @_;
$time = time() if !defined $time;
$format = 'MM,DD,YY' if !defined $format;
$delim = '-'if !defined $delim;
for ($format) {
s:,:$delim:g;
s:(MM|DD|YY):"%".lc(substr($1,0,1)):eg;
}
return strftime($format, localtime($time));
}
Cool patch. robin++
Perhaps a number of us should send him patches - just so he gets the
point :)
Should we also do a series of drop-in replacements for
crappy CPAN modules? ;-)
One thing at a time :)
Dave...
Re: Module of the Year contender...
From ny.pm. The meme is spreading :) Dave At Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:01:19 +, Michael G Schwern [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the shoulders of such giants as Date::Christmas, Date::Discordian and Date::Tolkien::Shire stands Date::MMDDYY! http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-MMDDYY Reason #120398 why I need to get CPANTS off the ground.
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:07:28PM +, Leon Brocard wrote:
This isn't such a crazy idea. People keep on complaining about the
quality of modules on CPAN. So pick a random one and make it better
;-P
Well, with a module like Date::MMDDYY the implementation
_is_ broken - it uses gmtime() instead of localtime() for
example;
but worse than that, the design and conception are flawed.
Any drop-in replacement would inevitably suffer from the
same flaws of conception and interface.
There's no reason at all for anybody to use this module.
Compare:
use Date::MMDDYY 'datecon';
print "The date is ", datecon(time()), "\n";
to
use POSIX 'strftime';
print "The date is ", strftime("%m-%d-%y", localtime()), "\n";
The module is redundant, not just poorly implemented.
.robin.
--
A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
Re: Module of the Year contender...
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 12:14:44PM -0500, Dave Cross wrote: From ny.pm. The meme is spreading :) At Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:01:19 +, Michael G Schwern [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the shoulders of such giants as Date::Christmas, Date::Discordian and Date::Tolkien::Shire stands Date::MMDDYY! http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-MMDDYY Reason #120398 why I need to get CPANTS off the ground. This is what happens when I forward London.pm mail internally ... Tony -- -- Tony Bowden | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.tmtm.com/ make me laugh make me cry enrage me don't try to disengage me --
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 03:44:04PM +, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 04:40:29PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: At 16:29 20/03/2001 +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: a) a two reasons why this module should never have been written, and 2. MM DD YY is an evil date format, and should be abolished in favour of DD MM YY which is more sensible. Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion. And sorts more nicely too. and is a dessert topping *and* a floor wax. Am I allowed to mention -MM-DD, which actually sorts best of all... Do we really not learn from Y2K? And it's even an ISO standard! -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Hows this for a patch:
package Date::MMDDYY;
use strict;
use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT);
use Carp;
use Exporter;
@ISA = qw(Exporter);
@EXPORT = qw(datecon);
sub datecon {
croak "Date::MMDDYY has been deprecated in favour of POSIX::strftime";
}
1;
Matt
At 17:16 20/03/01 +, you wrote:
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:07:28PM +, Leon Brocard wrote:
This isn't such a crazy idea. People keep on complaining about the
quality of modules on CPAN. So pick a random one and make it better
;-P
Well, with a module like Date::MMDDYY the implementation
_is_ broken - it uses gmtime() instead of localtime() for
example;
but worse than that, the design and conception are flawed.
Any drop-in replacement would inevitably suffer from the
same flaws of conception and interface.
There's no reason at all for anybody to use this module.
Compare:
use Date::MMDDYY 'datecon';
print "The date is ", datecon(time()), "\n";
to
use POSIX 'strftime';
print "The date is ", strftime("%m-%d-%y", localtime()), "\n";
The module is redundant, not just poorly implemented.
.robin.
--
A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On or about Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 12:24:38PM -0500, Chris Devers typed: Would a CPAN replacement have to be "drop-in"? I can see the argument behind making replacements for MSA code be functionally identical in most visible ways, but when you're dealing with CPAN code, presumably, you're dealing with somewhat more savvy programmers that could handle having to tweak a few things to get a replacement up running. When you're dealing with the sort of programmers who would choose to use this module in the first place...? Roger
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 11:43:08AM -0500, Chris Devers wrote: ...except that the Windows extension hiding feature only applies to files seen through the normal filesystem tools (Windows Explorer, various dialog boxes, etc), and not Internetty stuff. People might still be scared off by seeing a web or ftp site that doesn't have any .zip files... Then they deserve to be hurt. Really. We can't possibly support dribbling idiots, and frankly, I have no wish to do so. If someone is scared by a .tar.gz extension then they have no business installing software. Even if just for their own use. /rant -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:48:25PM +, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:38:09PM +, David Cantrell wrote: Then they deserve to be hurt. Really. We can't possibly support dribbling idiots, and frankly, I have no wish to do so. If someone is scared by a .tar.gz extension then they have no business installing software. Even if just for their own use. I thought one of the goals of this project was to support "dribbling idiots"? Idiots maybe, but not those who are sooo lacking in necessary skills that they are scared by gzipped tarballs. Don't forget, these morons are going to have to know how to get the files to their server, do the appropriate chmodding, tweak config variables in the script - if you're clueless enough to be scared off by .tar.gz then you're guaranteed to fail anyway. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, David Cantrell wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:48:25PM +, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:38:09PM +, David Cantrell wrote: Then they deserve to be hurt. Really. We can't possibly support dribbling idiots, and frankly, I have no wish to do so. If someone is scared by a .tar.gz extension then they have no business installing software. Even if just for their own use. I thought one of the goals of this project was to support "dribbling idiots"? Idiots maybe, but not those who are sooo lacking in necessary skills that they are scared by gzipped tarballs. Don't forget, these morons are going to have to know how to get the files to their server, do the appropriate chmodding, tweak config variables in the script - if you're clueless enough to be scared off by .tar.gz then you're guaranteed to fail anyway. I don't know - maybe in your inexperience you have a windowsy perl book (there are some out there) or a poor cgi book to work from that never mentions tgz or .tar.gz - its an additional obstacle - they'd only go an use MSA. A. -- A HREF = "http://termisoc.org/~betty" Betty @ termisoc.org /A "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, David Cantrell wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:48:25PM +, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:38:09PM +, David Cantrell wrote: Then they deserve to be hurt. Really. We can't possibly support dribbling idiots, and frankly, I have no wish to do so. If someone is scared by a .tar.gz extension then they have no business installing software. Even if just for their own use. I thought one of the goals of this project was to support "dribbling idiots"? Idiots maybe, but not those who are sooo lacking in necessary skills that they are scared by gzipped tarballs. Don't forget, these morons are going to have to know how to get the files to their server, do the appropriate chmodding, tweak config variables in the script - if you're clueless enough to be scared off by .tar.gz then you're guaranteed to fail anyway. Seems to me you don't really understand windows very well :-) ws-ftp/ ftp explorer - drag and drop files onto your server chmod - who needs that, the directory is executable already, all files are too. tweak config files - notepad will allow the user to either add or remove a # from the appropriate lines in the file - these will be marked. .tar.gz - wtf is that, why isn't there a zip file. People keep misunderstanding this point: just because someone is using windows/mac doesn't make them a moron. They may well be, but I know quite a few unix morons too. It is a different skillset. If a Mac user is trying to set up some perl scripts on a windows machine, he may well have had no exposure to .tar.gz files (hqx, sit, zip, pak, arc maybe). Files should be available in the format that is most commonly used for the OS. /rant /Robert BTW - I've just had some fun trying to uncompress a .zip file on Linux! tar gzip and gunzip don't seem to want to know. Guess that makes me a luser!
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
- Original Message - From: "Robert Shiels" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 6:47 PM Subject: Re: Matt's Scripts Projects .tar.gz - wtf is that, why isn't there a zip file. People keep misunderstanding this point: just because someone is using windows/mac doesn't make them a moron. They may well be, but I know quite a few unix morons too. It is a different skillset. True and also winzip makes the tar.gz file have a nice little zip icon, just like a .zip file, so they won't actually know the difference. Gareth
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, you wrote: BTW - I've just had some fun trying to uncompress a .zip file on Linux! tar gzip and gunzip don't seem to want to know. Guess that makes me a luser! you need the unzip(1) NAMEunzip - list, test and extract compressed files in a ZI archive DESCRIPTIONunzip will list, test, or extract files from a ZIP archive, commonly found on MS-DOS systems.The default behavior (with no options) is to extract into the current directory (and subdirectories below it) all files from the specified ZIP archive. A companion program, zip(1), creates ZIP archives; both programs are compatible with archives created by PKWARE's PKZIP and PKUNZIP for MS-DOS, but in many cases the program options or default behaviors differ. -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 03:44:04PM +, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: Am I allowed to mention -MM-DD, which actually sorts best of all... Do we really not learn from Y2K? You have a Y10K problem. -- For me, UNIX is a way of being. -Armando P. Stettner
Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:34:06PM +, David Cantrell wrote: You are Michael Schwern, and I claim your m4d h41rkut skillz. Oh, get real. Schwern has *no* relation to haircuts *at all*... dha -- David H. Adler - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ We went on holiday by mistake - Withnail
Re: Matt's Scripts Projects
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, David Cantrell wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:48:25PM +, Michael Stevens wrote: On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 05:38:09PM +, David Cantrell wrote: Then they deserve to be hurt. Really. We can't possibly support dribbling idiots, and frankly, I have no wish to do so. If someone is scared by a .tar.gz extension then they have no business installing software. Even if just for their own use. I thought one of the goals of this project was to support "dribbling idiots"? Idiots maybe, but not those who are sooo lacking in necessary skills that they are scared by gzipped tarballs. Don't forget, these morons are going to have to know how to get the files to their server, do the appropriate chmodding, tweak config variables in the script - if you're clueless enough to be scared off by .tar.gz then you're guaranteed to fail anyway. So then they go and download the buggy, insecure, crap script from MSA and when they fail they decide that Perl is crap /J\ -- Jonathan Stowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gellyfish.com
Re: Module of the Year contender...
At Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:01:19 +, Michael G Schwern [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrot e: On the shoulders of such giants as Date::Christmas, Date::Discordian and Date::Tolkien::Shire stands Date::MMDDYY! http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-MMDDYY Reason #120398 why I need to get CPANTS off the ground. Or IPAN, the Incomprehensible Perl Archive Network. Marcel -- We are Perl. Your table will be assimilated. Your waiter will adapt to service us. Surrender your beer. Resistance is futile. -- London.pm strategy aka "embrace and extend" aka "mark and sweep"
