Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Sat, 28 Apr 2001, you wrote:

> > What is this "off-topic" you speak of?  Is it a custom of your people?
> 
> Yeah... I'm on this mailing list called goats-fans, for fans of Goats:
> the Comic Strip (http://www.goats.com - NOW!), and flaming and off-topic
> posting leads to the moderators kicking your arse severly.

Excellent! ... Men, I believe we have a new mission.  How do we sign up
for htis so-called 'on topic' list ?

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread Alex Page

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 07:47:47PM -0400, David H. Adler wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 06:56:22PM -0400, Alex Page wrote:

> > Hmm, I'm feeling like this is getting waaay too off-topic

> What is this "off-topic" you speak of?  Is it a custom of your people?

Yeah... I'm on this mailing list called goats-fans, for fans of Goats:
the Comic Strip (http://www.goats.com - NOW!), and flaming and off-topic
posting leads to the moderators kicking your arse severly.

Alex
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth



Re: Boozers in Dublin

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> 
> Can any of you boozy reprobates recommend a boozer in Dublin for a geeky
> piss-up?

thinks... umm ..  we sent some of our blokes to Dublin and theres a pub
with a webcam and they used to all go in and wave at as at exactly 12:30
so we could see them when we were in birmingham .. it was sorta nice.

err .. no .. I lied .. it was Belfast ... you could commute?



-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread David H. Adler

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 06:56:22PM -0400, Alex Page wrote:
> 
> Hmm, I'm feeling like this is getting waaay too off-topic

What is this "off-topic" you speak of?  Is it a custom of your people?

:-)

-- 
David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
My theory is that his ignorance clouded his poor judgement.
- Alice, in Dilbert's office



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 12:09:49AM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:16:32PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > Clearly says someone who's hasn't installed Oracle recently!
> 
> You can install Oracle now? Wow, they must have really been fixing it 
> of late.

OK, so I cheated, and copied the arsDigita instructions :-)
http://www.arsdigita.com/ad-training/acs-install/oracle

For those that haven't seen this, worth a read:
http://philip.greenspun.com/arsdigita/litigation-story

Scary stuff.

Paul



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Simon Cozens

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:16:32PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> Clearly says someone who's hasn't installed Oracle recently!

You can install Oracle now? Wow, they must have really been fixing it 
of late.

-- 
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
-- Norm Schryer



Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread Alex Page

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 06:22:50PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:

> I thought it closed down, actually. Is it still bring your own booze? Do
> they still have a silly entrance exam?

Hmm, I'm feeling like this is getting waaay too off-topic, especially while
Dave the Goth is on sabbatical, so...

No, sort of, no.

Alex
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:31:16PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:16:32PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:45:40AM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
> > > It helps a lot (and is also blindingly easy to benchmark yourself ;-).
> > 
> > Clearly says someone who's hasn't installed Oracle recently!
> 
> Does anyone?  Every time I've used Oracle, it's been installed by someone
> else who was supposedly an expert.  Although I remain to be convinced that
> any of them really *was* an expert.

I "installed" it (i.e. clicked about on the nice Java buttons) and
I'm definitely not an expert. I do know not to create stuff in the
SYSTEM tablespace which is more than one "DBA" an ex-employer of mine
once hired...

Paul



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread David Cantrell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:16:32PM -0700, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:45:40AM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
> > It helps a lot (and is also blindingly easy to benchmark yourself ;-).
> 
> Clearly says someone who's hasn't installed Oracle recently!

Does anyone?  Every time I've used Oracle, it's been installed by someone
else who was supposedly an expert.  Although I remain to be convinced that
any of them really *was* an expert.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
 operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread David Cantrell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 02:26:04PM -0400, David H. Adler wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:25:23PM +0100, Barbie wrote:
> > 
> > I always knew Manchester was the centre of the Universe.
> 
> Ahem.
> 
> I suggest you go look at the entry for NY.pm at
> http://www.pm.org/groups/north_america.shtml :-)

Yes yes, that's OK.  We'll permit the colonials to have their little
delusions.

We all know that The Bronze is the centre of the universe.

-- 
David Cantrell | Not particularly a Biffy fan at all | Gimme Willow

Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
  operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete



Re: Boozers in Dublin

2001-04-27 Thread Simon Cozens

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:07:08PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> Can any of you boozy reprobates recommend a boozer in Dublin for a geeky
> piss-up?

My first recommendation would be the Messrs. Maguire on Burgh Key is a
nice place - very *big* pub (it's on three levels) and serves pretty
good food. It reminds me a lot of the place opposite London Bridge tube
station where we had the MJD Meet.

The Oliver St. John Gogarty is a bit smaller, and I'm not sure about the
food, but it's a good place to hang out, drink and listen to Irish folk. 
Possibly a good idea to move there after Messrs. Maguire, because it
Maguire's gets bloody packed.

As a last resort, anywhere in Temple Bar is worth looking at.

-- 
In this talk, I would like to speculate a little, on ... the development
of intelligent life. I shall take this to include the human race, even
though much of its behaviour throughout history has been pretty
stupid... - Stephen Hawking

 PGP signature


Boozers in Dublin

2001-04-27 Thread David Cantrell

Can any of you boozy reprobates recommend a boozer in Dublin for a geeky
piss-up?

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
 operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete

 PGP signature


Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread David Cantrell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 05:50:50PM +0100, Lucy McWilliam wrote:

> "Long dark hair, ankhs and beer - the Egyptions were the original goths."

Hmmph.  Goths wouldn't know good beer if it grabbed them by the goolies
and swung them round over its head whilst shouting "I'm good beer, I'm
good beer, and if you disagree I'll cut your head off and shit down your
neck"

Anyway, what the Egyptians brewed was barely recognisable as beer.

-- 
David Cantrell, Drunk, and blaming Earle off of (void).



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Simon Cozens

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:00:40PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 05:55:06PM -0400, Alex Page wrote:
> > Blimey, there's an Oxford perl mongers! You mean I'm not the
> > only perl coder in this city?!?
> No.

By which I mean, yes, you're not. And, of course, we've got Malcolm
Beattie, who ranks as one of Perl's minor dieties.

-- 
Will your long-winded speeches never end?
What ails you that you keep on arguing?
-- Job 16:3



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Simon Cozens

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 05:55:06PM -0400, Alex Page wrote:
> Blimey, there's an Oxford perl mongers! You mean I'm not the
> only perl coder in this city?!?

No.

-- 
"I find that anthropomorphism really doesn't help me with a place full 
of bugs." -- Megahal (trained on asr), 1998-11-06



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Alex Page

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 02:26:04PM -0400, David H. Adler wrote:

> I suggest you go look at the entry for NY.pm at
> http://www.pm.org/groups/north_america.shtml :-)

*peers round site*

Blimey, there's an Oxford perl mongers! You mean I'm not the
only perl coder in this city?!?

Alex
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth



Re: Good Accountants (?)

2001-04-27 Thread Alex Page

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 05:50:15PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:

> How can you fall over doing one step forward one step backward with your
> arms out for balance?
> Or was it the one where you hold you arms over your head in an
> impression of someone trying to get out of a too-tight jumper in slow
> motion?

Actually, in Manchester, one traditionally dances to the Sisters either
with a four-way country reel, or the Can-Can. Sobriety is not an option :-)

Alex
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Simon Cozens

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 06:50:18PM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
> OK, I give you Perl, the Perl debugger, and B::Generate. First one to
> optimise Perl code (maybe replacing bits of Perl with XS on the fly?)
> gets a pat on the back.

I think NI-S is working on it; see recent perl6-language discussion about
tying.

-- 
> I never thought I'd say this, but you're getting very strange.
Thank God: I thought it was everybody else.
- J-P Stacey



Re: Review of Data munging with Perl on Slashdot

2001-04-27 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

"Dave Cross" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Too late!
> 
> Dave...
> [feeling smug]

Enjoy it while it lasts...

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Paul Makepeace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:33:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > well .. it *does* handle them .. but ,,, errr .. sort of non cascading
> > IYSWIM ...
> 
> No it doesn't. It has almost no clue about stylesheets at all. Have you
> ever developed a CSS site for Netscape? And got it to work in anything
> like a sensible timeframe?

Yes, I did. It needs tuning but it's pretty much there.

*snip*

> Hmm, IE does stop almost immediately. THe Mac version in OS X requires
> a couple of presses but it's pretty well behaved otherwise (when it's
> not crashing or preventing me from copying the address line to the
> clipboard, bah). I've actually had more trouble getting Netscape to
> stop, YMMV, etc.

NS's DNS handling is the suckiest. Blocks bloody everything.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Yeah, but only testing it on one browser, ignoring the - what, 30%? - that
> don't use IE - that's kinda silly.

On a random band's site that number is more like, per hits:

3959719 IE
 662895 Netscape
<10 the rest

It's a pity, but it's life.

(And Barclays lets you use NS)

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



A couple more bite the dust

2001-04-27 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


Blueberry and Madge.web bit the dust in the last couple of days. If
you know any good graphics people, HTML slaves, coders and so on with
the right attitude, and Lord knows many of you are now acquainted with
Reading Room's attitute, would y'all be so kind as to let me (or them
directly ;-) know...

Ta,

Dave



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, April 27, 2001, 2:20:21 PM, Paul Makepeace wrote:

PM> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:51:38PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote:
>> Sounds much more like a function of the compiler to me.  A
>> really good Fortran compiler would turn out faster code than a bad c
>> compiler.

PM> But that isn't saying much. People tend not to use really bad things if
PM> they can help it.

You haven't been to the same client sites I have if you believe that
statement.  It always amazes me what moronic things businesses will
insist that you work with.

>> Now if you're just comparing any fully compiled language with java,
>> you're absolutely right.

PM> Hmm.
PM> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-dev/2001-April/013885.html

Must you always drag facts into the argument?

-- 
mike





Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:51:38PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote:
> Sounds much more like a function of the compiler to me.  A
> really good Fortran compiler would turn out faster code than a bad c
> compiler.

But that isn't saying much. People tend not to use really bad things if
they can help it. FWIW, the best Mac Fortran compiler is slower than
the best C one. This presumably says something about its Fortran
compiler though..

> Now if you're just comparing any fully compiled language with java,
> you're absolutely right.

Hmm.
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-dev/2001-April/013885.html

Paul



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:45:40AM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote:
> It helps a lot (and is also blindingly easy to benchmark yourself ;-).

Clearly says someone who's hasn't installed Oracle recently!

[This is after all the point of community lists is to ask questions
of others who've already done it rather than rejig the wheel...]

> Using bind_columns also helps to speed up DBI, see:
> http://www.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/msg/perl-DBI-dev%3A503109

Ah ha, great. Hmm, doesn't show bind_columns to be wildly better
(although a bit). Hashref is obviously to be avoided in speed critical
things. It seems as though the DBI layer is the rate limiting factor,
looking at those figures. Oracle really is smokin'ly fast.

Paul



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 02:30:20PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> I blame majordomo, when's that mailman thing getting here?

Actually that's my fault I said I'd look into it about a year ago (or
so it feels). I'll do it this weekend. As to whether penderel gets used
for this mailing list is something someone else would decide...

Paul



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Mike Jarvis

Friday, April 27, 2001, 1:09:05 PM, Robin Szemeti wrote:
RS> but in the end (assuming that both
RS> codesets use similar basic principles) you will not beat the speed of C
RS> with anything other than hand optimised assembler. Now that is a fact.

Sounds much more like a function of the compiler to me.  A
really good Fortran compiler would turn out faster code than a bad c
compiler.

Granted, it is a *lot* easier to write a fast c compiler, since you're
already halfway to assembler anyway.

Now if you're just comparing any fully compiled language with java,
you're absolutely right.

-- 
mike





Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, someone who Robin's attrib to fscked up wrote:
> >
> > > [side note: I did just see a bizarre thread in macosx-dev where
> > > one guy claimed his FFT code was executing faster in Java than C
> > > because its interpreter used runtime info to optimize it. Search on
> > > 'informal benchmarks']
> >
> > uh huh .. but he's a Java programmer .. his C could be *REALLY* bad ;) ..
> > favourite Java quote 'If javas garbage collector is damn good, how come
> > the whole thing doesn't delete itself upon execution?'
> 
> Don't see why this isn't possible.  The idea is that you factor out *all*
> really unlikely cases (how you know this is based on past performance) and
> catch them all with some simple test.  Then you (more expensively, but who
> cares since this happens only once in a blue moon) deal with it and work
> out exactly what was the problem.

my basic point was: that given that the FFT code uses similar technicques
in both its C and Java variants the C variant will win hands down.  if
you're going to throw in completley new techniques then sure you could
skew it the other way around .. but in the end (assuming that both
codesets use similar basic principles) you will not beat the speed of C
with anything other than hand optimised assembler. Now that is a fact.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread David H. Adler

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:25:23PM +0100, Barbie wrote:
> 
> I always knew Manchester was the centre of the Universe.

Ahem.

I suggest you go look at the entry for NY.pm at
http://www.pm.org/groups/north_america.shtml :-)

dha

-- 
David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
Oh, the irony.
- Abigail



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Leon Brocard

Mark Fowler sent the following bits through the ether:

> Don't see why this isn't possible

Indeed. All you need to do this is:

  o bytecode and a virtual machine
  o some way of instrumenting said VM to save interesting info
  o ability to rewrite bytecode on fly

OK, I give you Perl, the Perl debugger, and B::Generate. First one to
optimise Perl code (maybe replacing bits of Perl with XS on the fly?)
gets a pat on the back.

Leon, sleeep
-- 
Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/
Iterative Software..http://yapc.org/Europe/

... I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it



Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread Jonathan Peterson

 
> Slimelight: Been a member for the last 3 or 4 years. The club venue is good,
> the music on the downstairs floor is OK, and the top venue is hard tecnho crap.
> I basically go there to see my friends rather than for any other reason. Going
> there tomorrow, actually - I'll be the one in black *g*

I thought it closed down, actually. Is it still bring your own booze? Do
they still have a silly entrance exam?


-- 
Jonathan Peterson
Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread Alex Page

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 05:50:50PM +0100, Lucy McWilliam wrote:

> On topic - how come all the decent jobs are dahn sarf?

Dunno. A lot of my coursemates ended up working for a Manchester-based IT
company (Lantara?) doing network admin and web coding, but the pay wasn't
great and I'd had a better offer from Nominet, hence my move to Oxfrod.

Another friend ended up working for Oldham council doing C++ coding on
contract, and seems fairly happy with his lot.

Maybe it's because everyone in Manchester and Oop North is a horrible
luddite who doesn't see the point of this new-fangled Interweb doofer...
or, like the lecturers at UMIST, don't see why you need any languages other
than FORTH, LISP and ADA... :-)

> Off topic - have you tried Gossips, Slimelight or the 'Leccy Ballroom?

Gossips: Depends on the night. Tenebrae (once a month IIRC, Fridays) is a
very good, well-populated goth night, more trad than anything else. Club
Noir (every thursday) is a darkwave / synthpop / EBM night with piss-poor
attendance and hence no atmoshphere. Malice (every? Tuesday) is another
tradgoth night with some great playlists. The club itself is nice, but the
bar is HELLISHLY expensive.

Slimelight: Been a member for the last 3 or 4 years. The club venue is good,
the music on the downstairs floor is OK, and the top venue is hard tecnho crap.
I basically go there to see my friends rather than for any other reason. Going
there tomorrow, actually - I'll be the one in black *g*

Electric Ballroom: Only ever been to their Full Tilt night (every Friday).
Far too much skate-punk, nu-metal and dance music for my liking, and the
atmosphere is a lot more on-edge and unfriendly than most of the clubs I
frequent. Still, if you're drunk enough not to care, then there's enough loose
women in tight PVC to make it worth attending...

Alex

ObLondon.pmRef: The Bronze looks like a really good club!
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth



Re: Good Accountants (?)

2001-04-27 Thread Jonathan Peterson


> > Hazy tales of drunken nights in Jilly's drinking too much snakebite
> > and falling over while trying to dance to the Sisters of Mercy
> > probably won't interest most of london.pm

How can you fall over doing one step forward one step backward with your
arms out for balance?
Or was it the one where you hold you arms over your head in an
impression of someone trying to get out of a too-tight jumper in slow
motion?

-- 
Jonathan Peterson
Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

2001-04-27 Thread Lucy McWilliam


On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, will wrote:

Alex page wrote:

> > Hazy tales of drunken nights in Jilly's drinking too much snakebite
> > and falling over while trying to dance to the Sisters of Mercy
> > probably won't interest most of london.pm
>
> Cheap bottles of calsberg and rage against the machine...
> There isn't anywhre quite like it in london - 

Ack - another one.
On topic - how come all the decent jobs are dahn sarf?
Off topic - have you tried Gossips, Slimelight or the 'Leccy Ballroom?


L.
"Long dark hair, ankhs and beer - the Egyptions were the original goths."




Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Mark Fowler

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, someone who Robin's attrib to fscked up wrote:
>
> > [side note: I did just see a bizarre thread in macosx-dev where
> > one guy claimed his FFT code was executing faster in Java than C
> > because its interpreter used runtime info to optimize it. Search on
> > 'informal benchmarks']
>
> uh huh .. but he's a Java programmer .. his C could be *REALLY* bad ;) ..
> favourite Java quote 'If javas garbage collector is damn good, how come
> the whole thing doesn't delete itself upon execution?'

Don't see why this isn't possible.  The idea is that you factor out *all*
really unlikely cases (how you know this is based on past performance) and
catch them all with some simple test.  Then you (more expensively, but who
cares since this happens only once in a blue moon) deal with it and work
out exactly what was the problem.

Another example, you could use a processor level exception to catch those
pesky divide by zero errors (which is very expensive if it fires, but much
much cheaper each time round than explictly checking it.)  The advantage is
that a compiler doesn't have this information lying around - you can't
tell from the code how often cases come up;  You need to profile at run
time as you go.

Sorry if this is all babble.  I haven't had much sleep.

Later.

Mark.

-- 
 who *still* hasn't got round to getting a new .signature




Re: Good Accountants (?)

2001-04-27 Thread will

- Original Message - 
From: Alex Page <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: Good Accountants

> Hazy tales of drunken nights in Jilly's drinking too much snakebite
> and falling over while trying to dance to the Sisters of Mercy
> probably won't interest most of london.pm

Cheap bottles of calsberg and rage against the machine...

There isn't anywhre quite like it in london - 




Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Alex Page

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:03:46AM +0100, Lucy McWilliam wrote:

> Hmmm, would it be bad form to reminisce
> about all things Manc on a London.pm list?!

Given that I didn't learn perl until after I graduated, and Buffy
isn't Manc-specific, then probably :-)

Hazy tales of drunken nights in Jilly's drinking too much snakebite
and falling over while trying to dance to the Sisters of Mercy
probably won't interest most of london.pm

Alex
-- 
"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you
 can have everything that you want." - Jareth, Labyrinth



Re: require Module; and filehandles

2001-04-27 Thread Ian Brayshaw

>On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:32:24PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> > Ian Brayshaw wrote:
> > > it's the internal workings of require that stop the tie
> > > from being honoured. I presume that the require burrows
> > > down into the internals and isn't aware that it's a tie'd
> > > handle. As far as I can tell the code within the require
> > > call is unaware that this handle is an object. If you place
> > > an AUTOLOAD method in TrueHandle instead of the READ and
> > > READLINE methods, only DESTROY is called.
> >
> > Did you tell p5p about this? Perhaps they can do something about
> > it, if they consider this a bug.
>
>Having looked at the implementation yesterday, I pity the person
>who's *so* certain it's a bug that they try and fix it. It would
>not be an easy thing to do, I don't think. (Anyway, PerlIO layers
>will save us all!)

The report has been sent. Will see what comes of it. I suspect nothing, 
given the new PerlIO layers.

Thanks for your help.


Ian
_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.




Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Philip Newton

Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 02:30:20PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> > I blame majordomo, when's that mailman thing getting here?
> 
> Well, it is based on Python, which might cause a few stirrings around
> here...

You think the Perl community is proud of the majordomo code?

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
All opinions are my own, not my employer's.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Dominic Mitchell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 02:30:20PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> Philip Newton wrote:
> > Chris Ball wrote:
> > >   Are postings subscriber only ..? ]
> 
> Subscriber not even, more like. I bet this email never makes it to the
> list for a start.
> 
> I blame majordomo, when's that mailman thing getting here?

Well, it is based on Python, which might cause a few stirrings around
here...

-Dom



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Jonathan Peterson



Philip Newton wrote:
> 
> Chris Ball wrote:
> >   Are postings subscriber only ..? ]

Subscriber not even, more like. I bet this email never makes it to the
list for a start.

I blame majordomo, when's that mailman thing getting here?

Jonathan Peterson
Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Philip Newton

Chris Ball wrote:
>   Are postings subscriber only ..? ]

As far as I know, yes; Jonathan Stowe has to hand-approve non-subscriber
postings for them to make it to the list.

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
All opinions are my own, not my employer's.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Dominic Mitchell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:59:53PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 10:11:40AM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> > > 
> > > Ho ho, you should have heard the stick that support got from that little
> > > prank.  Have you been sent a green CD, sir?  We'd better send you an
> > > orange one to recover your system...  It went on for *weeks*.
> > 
> > I take it this pre-dated Matrix, or the red/blue pill jokes would have
> > dragged it on for a few more... 
> 
> umm 94?95?

More likely late 96 early 97.

-Dom



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 10:11:40AM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> > 
> > Ho ho, you should have heard the stick that support got from that little
> > prank.  Have you been sent a green CD, sir?  We'd better send you an
> > orange one to recover your system...  It went on for *weeks*.
> 
> I take it this pre-dated Matrix, or the red/blue pill jokes would have
> dragged it on for a few more... 

umm 94?95?

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Martin Ling

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 10:11:40AM +0100, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> 
> Ho ho, you should have heard the stick that support got from that little
> prank.  Have you been sent a green CD, sir?  We'd better send you an
> orange one to recover your system...  It went on for *weeks*.

I take it this pre-dated Matrix, or the red/blue pill jokes would have
dragged it on for a few more... 


Martin



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Chris Ball

[ I sent this earlier on, but it doesn't seem to have gone through -
  I'm trying again using the address I subscribed with, but I'm sure
  I've used a non-subscription address before. Are postings subscriber
  only ..? ]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:03:46AM +0100, Lucy McWilliam wrote:
> OK, so I was just being nosy - as opposed to being in the position of
> offering a job - and noticed Alex is: a) younger than me (makes a
> change!), and b) went to UMIST.  Hmmm, would it be bad form to reminisce
> about all things Manc on a London.pm list?!

Absolutely. It'd be terribly inconsiderate. :hides his .signature. 

~C.

-- 
Chris Ball.
Department of Computation, UMIST, England.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] || http://printf.net/
finger: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- 



Re: require Module; and filehandles

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Houston

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:32:24PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> Ian Brayshaw wrote:
> > it's the internal workings of require that stop the tie 
> > from being honoured. I presume that the require burrows
> > down into the internals and isn't aware that it's a tie'd
> > handle. As far as I can tell the code within the require
> > call is unaware that this handle is an object. If you place
> > an AUTOLOAD method in TrueHandle instead of the READ and 
> > READLINE methods, only DESTROY is called.
> 
> Did you tell p5p about this? Perhaps they can do something about it, if they
> consider this a bug.

Having looked at the implementation yesterday, I pity the person
who's *so* certain it's a bug that they try and fix it. It would
not be an easy thing to do, I don't think. (Anyway, PerlIO layers
will save us all!)

 .robin.

-- 
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?



Re: require Module; and filehandles

2001-04-27 Thread Neil Ford

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:31:38PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> > And hide the test failures if you are running on SCO OpenServer or
> > Unixware  (see p5p passim) :)
> 
> Does anyone still run SCO? Thought they'd all died.
> 
Well the last place I worked that ran OpenSewer did get closed down, though
the fact it was running SCO wasn't a factor in it's demise :-)

I know that Virgin Cosmetics run SCO (they run the same software we did) and
I suspect there are many more pyramid selling^W^Wdirect marketing companies
doing the same.

So not all dead yet. Heck I even list OpenSewer amongst the products I'll
work with. well somebody has too :-)

Neil.
-- 
Neil C. Ford
Managing Director, Yet Another Computer Solutions Company Limited
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.yacsc.com



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> Paul Makepeace sent the following bits through the ether:
> 
> > If it was that simple, someone would've done it -- DBI is a very
> > mature and competent module
> 
> That's the problem. It seems like people aren't content with writing
> their own, slightly different, templating system, and have moved onto
> many different DBI abstraction layers to cope with all databases at
> the same time. The OO-DB persistence modules all have their own way of
> doing it too...

I know .. I know .. damm programmers keep messing with things until they
break them ...

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: require Module; and filehandles

2001-04-27 Thread Philip Newton

Ian Brayshaw wrote:
> it's the internal workings of require that stop the tie 
> from being honoured. I presume that the require burrows
> down into the internals and isn't aware that it's a tie'd
> handle. As far as I can tell the code within the require
> call is unaware that this handle is an object. If you place
> an AUTOLOAD method in TrueHandle instead of the READ and 
> READLINE methods, only DESTROY is called.

Did you tell p5p about this? Perhaps they can do something about it, if they
consider this a bug.

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
All opinions are my own, not my employer's.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.



Re: require Module; and filehandles

2001-04-27 Thread Philip Newton

Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> And hide the test failures if you are running on SCO OpenServer or
> Unixware  (see p5p passim) :)

Does anyone still run SCO? Thought they'd all died.

Cheers,
Phi "OpenSewer" lip
-- 
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
All opinions are my own, not my employer's.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Barbie

From: "Chris Heathcote" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> on 27/4/01 11:08 am, Rob Partington wrote:
>
> >> about all things Manc on a London.pm list?!
> >
> > Given the number of people I've seen from Manchester Uni at the
> > technical meetings, probably not...
>
> Y'see I was a Salford problem kid...

I always knew Manchester was the centre of the Universe. Shame about the
footballs teams though.

Barbie.





Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Chris Heathcote

on 27/4/01 11:08 am, Rob Partington wrote:

>> about all things Manc on a London.pm list?!
> 
> Given the number of people I've seen from Manchester Uni at the
> technical meetings, probably not...

Y'see I was a Salford problem kid...

c.
-- 
 every day, computers are making people easier to use

  http://www.unorthodoxstyles.com




Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Leon Brocard

Paul Makepeace sent the following bits through the ether:

> Does anyone have any Real World experience with the speed-up (even
> hand-wavy vague anecdotes) of using bind values v. reparsing the SQL
> each time (for databases that support this obviously). Postgres and
> Oracle I'm particularly interested in.

It helps a lot (and is also blindingly easy to benchmark yourself ;-).
Using bind_columns also helps to speed up DBI, see:
http://www.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/msg/perl-DBI-dev%3A503109

Leon
-- 
Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/
Iterative Software..http://yapc.org/Europe/

... Insert part "M" into notch "C" of part "F"



tube strike / may meeting postponed til 10th

2001-04-27 Thread jo walsh


well, it looks like the tube strike (8pm Weds 2nd May - 8pm Thurs 3rd May)
is still on, and this will scupper our May social meeting plans rather.

invoking the awesome powers delegated to me by davorg i pronounce that
May's social meeting will be postponed until thursday May 10th, and if the
tube strike happens to be called off lastminute like, we'll stick to the
10th so as to avoid any more confusion than usual.
i'll update the website to reflect all this.

http://www.thisislondon.com/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=385519&in_review_text_id=331603
http://www.tubehell.com/files/aslef.htm

jo


--
would everyone stop please taking the law into their own hands
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://state51.co.uk




Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Leon Brocard

Paul Makepeace sent the following bits through the ether:

> If it was that simple, someone would've done it -- DBI is a very
> mature and competent module

That's the problem. It seems like people aren't content with writing
their own, slightly different, templating system, and have moved onto
many different DBI abstraction layers to cope with all databases at
the same time. The OO-DB persistence modules all have their own way of
doing it too...

Leon
-- 
Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/
Iterative Software..http://yapc.org/Europe/

... Did anyone see my lost carrier?



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Rob Partington

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Lucy McWilliam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>  Hmmm, would it be bad form to reminisce
> about all things Manc on a London.pm list?!

Given the number of people I've seen from Manchester Uni at the
technical meetings, probably not...
-- 
rob partington % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://lynx.browser.org/
Bsc(Hons) Computer Science
University of Manchester
Graduated 1995



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Lucy McWilliam


On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Alex Page wrote:

> Yeah, I was redoing my CV the other day (it's at 
>http://www.cpio.org/~grimoire/cv.html if you
> want to employ me...)

OK, so I was just being nosy - as opposed to being in the position of
offering a job - and noticed Alex is: a) younger than me (makes a
change!), and b) went to UMIST.  Hmmm, would it be bad form to reminisce
about all things Manc on a London.pm list?!


L.
BSc(Hons) Anatomical Sciences
University of Manchester
Graduated 1999




Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread David Cantrell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 07:21:35AM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:33:36PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> >actually .. nutscrape under Linux annoys me when it insists on looking up
> >a hostname no matter how hard you click on the stop button .. bad
> >threading.
> 
> Excellent reason to use a proxy. Junkbuster's good...

Junkbuster++

I don't use it for busting junk, but because I can quickly and easily change
its settings with a shell script, instead of having to fuck around in
Netscape's menus to change proxies.  I really just use it as a mere proxy,
either going straight to the rest of the net or via ssh port forwarding to
another proxy elsewhere.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our latest and greatest
 operating system which we couldn't be arsed to complete



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
 
> Ho ho, you should have heard the stick that support got from that little
> prank.  Have you been sent a green CD, sir?  We'd better send you an
> orange one to recover your system...  It went on for *weeks*.

umm .. I went for the 'format from the ground up' method and took it as
an opportunity to rod the thing out ;) 

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Dominic Mitchell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:23:16AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > 
> > now I am absolutely totally 100% certain that some web browser (and thats
> > all it is) should *not* mess around with the way I view folders. I think
> > that was a turning point for me and my judgement is probably clouded and
> 
> No, no, no, that's _not_ all it is. IE is a set of distributed objects
> that between them handle those things that you might want to do related
> to HTTP and the rendering of HTML and assocciated technologies. That's
> MUCH more than just a browser.
> 
> Once IE is installed on your system it becomes relatively simple to make
> an excel spreadsheet where some cell has a value that is the result of
> an HTTP request. This is not something AFAIK that Opera or Netscape do.
> I think Mozilla is trying to be more like this, but I never use it so I
> don't know. I do know that Mozilla appears to be just as 'lightweight'
> as IE.
> 
> The tragedy is that all these great objects and classes tend to be only
> accessible from inside stuff like VBA or VB or MSVC++. Maybe Perl's DCOM
> bindings on Win32 are robust enough now that I can use perl to script
> the IE objects, I don't know.

It's pretty easily manageable from within Python, last time that I
looked, and it should work pretty well inside Perl, too.

Mozilla will be nice and able to do all this, it's basically reimplemented
COM as XPCOM for its own use.  Which is all very well and good, but
there's no easy way (yet) to get at XPCOM from outside of mozilla.
ActiveState are working on this, though and there was a recent
announcement about Perl/Python XPCOM integration being available as a
preview release.  Probably worth checking out...

-Dom



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:38:45AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> > but of course .. however the topic was (somewhere along the thread)
> > related to portable methods to try and keep from having to change all the
> > SQL between different db version.
> 
> Why do this? Unless you're using the db in a toy capacity (which is
> fair enough: see PHP) it's like using Java when you could be using
> custom DSP hardware.

well somewhere along the thread the topic was keeping your db and app
sorta independent (ala tangram) for the 'we like it .. does it work on
Postgres as well as MySQL' days that come along and you'd rather not
change too much... but agreed for serious heavy duty work a fienly tuned
db schema using the best bits of whatever db you happen to have is the
way to go. 

> 
> [side note: I did just see a bizarre thread in macosx-dev where
> one guy claimed his FFT code was executing faster in Java than C
> because its interpreter used runtime info to optimize it. Search on
> 'informal benchmarks']

uh huh .. but he's a Java programmer .. his C could be *REALLY* bad ;) ..
favourite Java quote 'If javas garbage collector is damn good, how come
the whole thing doesn't delete itself upon execution?'

> > the blocking anly occurs occasionally, ... if you do it sensibly (get all
> > the data ready .. {lock, get max, insert, release}  the lock period is
> > tiny. and not really an issue.
> 
> There are enough assumptions here to make me again suggest you use
> a vendor-specific route :-)

yes .. but the verndor specific code lives in the wrapper class ...

> 
> > however I stll prefer my method (implement it as a 'library' wrapper
> > class on DBI with the appropriate (AUTO_INCREMENT, ROWID, oid, SEQUENCE
> > or whatevr) technique and a library::insert($sql,@args) method) and then
> > you just have to plug in the approprate wrapper between your app and
> > todays choice of DB and in theory the app can stay the same.
> 
> If it was that simple, someone would've done it -- DBI is a very
> mature and competent module. Go check out Automatic Key or Sequence
> Generation in the DBD driver feature summaries and you'll see why
> it's hard to encapsulate this: they're all sooo different.

sure .. but with a wrapper that implements a vendor specific technique
and say  a library_mysql, library_postgres etc I just plug in the
appropriate one between the app and DBI and it works for me ...its just
another layer of (plugable) abstraction.  doesnt seem to slow it down
that much ...
(and if speed was that imoprtant I'd do it in C++[1] anyway :)


[1] .. well except I'm crap at it so it probably wouldnt work .. come to
think of it some of my perl doesnt work .. hmmm.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Dominic Mitchell

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:41:00AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> [ and don't even ask me about the time Demon distributed some pox ridden
> disk with IE4.1 on it ..'err I just installed the latest version of
> Turnpike and seem to have inherited IE4 .. how do I get rid of it as its
> screwed my desktop and folders' 'easy sir just do remove-programs etc'
> 'err hello .. Ive done that and my desktop is *still* screwed .. my
> folders appear as some sort of poxy browser with a stop button and
> back-forward buttons and they didn't before and I dont want them' ' err
> sorry sir .. it does some things to the kernel that can't be removed' 
> now I am absolutely totally 100% certain that some web browser (and thats
> all it is) should *not* mess around with the way I view folders. I think
> that was a turning point for me and my judgement is probably clouded and
> unnecessarily predjudiced against it. ]

Ho ho, you should have heard the stick that support got from that little
prank.  Have you been sent a green CD, sir?  We'd better send you an
orange one to recover your system...  It went on for *weeks*.

-Dom (always preferred green anyway)



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:49:33AM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote:
> Oracle quite a bit - it parses the statement with placeholders and
> does large amounts of cacheing. Definitely worth it if you're fiddling
> with large dbs. For postgres it's a lot less important IME.

Great, thanks!

This is all in preparation for a syntax adjustment in everyone's
favourite MTA... (which I'm fully expecting to get fried on)

Paul



Re: Buffy? .. naah .. wait till you see this

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:39:18AM +0100, Robert Shiels wrote:
> Have a look at her right big toe in this, has someone doctored the photo?
> 
> http://britneyspears.ac/bs/024b.jpg

I read press releases that explicitly denied all rumors of any surgical
enhancements to Britney's anatomy.

HTH :)

Paul



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:38:45AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
> but of course .. however the topic was (somewhere along the thread)
> related to portable methods to try and keep from having to change all the
> SQL between different db version.

Why do this? Unless you're using the db in a toy capacity (which is
fair enough: see PHP) it's like using Java when you could be using
custom DSP hardware.

[side note: I did just see a bizarre thread in macosx-dev where
one guy claimed his FFT code was executing faster in Java than C
because its interpreter used runtime info to optimize it. Search on
'informal benchmarks']

> the blocking anly occurs occasionally, ... if you do it sensibly (get all
> the data ready .. {lock, get max, insert, release}  the lock period is
> tiny. and not really an issue.

There are enough assumptions here to make me again suggest you use
a vendor-specific route :-)

> however I stll prefer my method (implement it as a 'library' wrapper
> class on DBI with the appropriate (AUTO_INCREMENT, ROWID, oid, SEQUENCE
> or whatevr) technique and a library::insert($sql,@args) method) and then
> you just have to plug in the approprate wrapper between your app and
> todays choice of DB and in theory the app can stay the same.

If it was that simple, someone would've done it -- DBI is a very
mature and competent module. Go check out Automatic Key or Sequence
Generation in the DBD driver feature summaries and you'll see why
it's hard to encapsulate this: they're all sooo different.

Paul



Re: DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Roger Burton West

On or about Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:46:16AM -0700, Paul Makepeace typed:
>Does anyone have any Real World experience with the speed-up (even
>hand-wavy vague anecdotes) of using bind values v. reparsing the SQL
>each time (for databases that support this obviously). Postgres and
>Oracle I'm particularly interested in.

Oracle quite a bit - it parses the statement with placeholders and
does large amounts of cacheing. Definitely worth it if you're fiddling
with large dbs. For postgres it's a lot less important IME.

Roger



Re: Buffy? .. naah .. wait till you see this

2001-04-27 Thread Robert Shiels

Have a look at her right big toe in this, has someone doctored the photo?

http://britneyspears.ac/bs/024b.jpg

-- 
Robert



- Original Message - 
From: "Robin Szemeti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: 26 April 2001 21:19
Subject: Buffy? .. naah .. wait till you see this


> amusing:
> 
> http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
> 
> -- 
> Robin Szemeti
> 
> The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
> So I installed Linux!
> 
> 




Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:

> The real answer is since you are using a database you care about speed
> so spend three minutes reading the docs/google for your particular
> database vendor and implement whatever strategy is suggested
> (AUTO_INCREMENT, ROWID, oid, SEQUENCE, before-row-insert triggers,
> etc).

but of course .. however the topic was (somewhere along the thread)
related to portable methods to try and keep from having to change all the
SQL between different db version.

Anyway .. for 90% of web apps its its a 100:1 read/write ratio .. lots of
people browse .. occasionally one of em places a bid/ makes a purchase so
the blocking anly occurs occasionally, ... if you do it sensibly (get all
the data ready .. {lock, get max, insert, release}  the lock period is
tiny. and not really an issue.

however I stll prefer my method (implement it as a 'library' wrapper
class on DBI with the appropriate (AUTO_INCREMENT, ROWID, oid, SEQUENCE
or whatevr) technique and a library::insert($sql,@args) method) and then
you just have to plug in the approprate wrapper between your app and
todays choice of DB and in theory the app can stay the same.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



DBD::*->bind_param() ?

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

Seems like DBD::Pg and mysql both support bind_param().. but do they
really? Checking mysql API docs seems to suggest (unless I'm looking at
the beginner version) there aren't any functions to prepare statements.
I haven't looked at Postgres.

Can anyone confirm/deny?

Ah ha! (answering my own question):

http://dbi.symbolstone.org/cgi/summarydump?module=Msql-Mysql-modules
? is emulated
http://dbi.symbolstone.org/cgi/summarydump?module=DBD::Pg
Yes, "?" and ":1" styles (native)

Does anyone have any Real World experience with the speed-up (even
hand-wavy vague anecdotes) of using bind values v. reparsing the SQL
each time (for databases that support this obviously). Postgres and
Oracle I'm particularly interested in.

Paul



Re: davorg, evil destroyer of privacy

2001-04-27 Thread Jonathan Stowe

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Marcel Grunauer wrote:

> On Thursday, April 26, 2001, at 07:23  PM, Niklas Nordebo wrote:
>
> > Gets a 9, apparently.
> >
> > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/26/1229238&mode=thread
>
> I like the following comment (I know you've seen it, Niklas):
>
> =for amusement
>
> Boycott This Book!!! (Score:2, Troll)
>


> =cut
>

Yeah I always knew Dave was a tool, er a tool of the capitalist hegemony
rather :)

/J\




Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, you wrote:

> Well, if you're daft enough to install Turdpoke you deserve all you
> get. 

In my defence your Honour, this relates to the BL[1] period of my life and
I am now a reformed character.  I have worshipped at The Shrine Of The
Penguin for many moons now,  broken bread with Linus and I won't be going
back to the cult od Gates[2].


[1] Before Linux
[2] Well .. unless the client is paying .. hey .. I'am a contractor after
all ..
-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



davorg, evil destroyer of privacy

2001-04-27 Thread Marcel Grunauer

On Thursday, April 26, 2001, at 07:23  PM, Niklas Nordebo wrote:

> Gets a 9, apparently.
>
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/26/1229238&mode=thread

I like the following comment (I know you've seen it, Niklas):

=for amusement

Boycott This Book!!! (Score:2, Troll)
by none on Thursday April 26, @12:10PM EST (#22)
(User #161746 Info)
Have you stopped to consider the consequences of the information 
contained in
books like this? This type of effort should not be supported by the Free
Software community.

Books like this give corporations the tools they need to destroy our 
privacy
and strip us of our rights. How do you think Double Click puts the 
information
about you it sells into useable form? With techniques it learns from 
this type
of book. Same goes for the corporate websites you visit, your 
supermarket, etc.

Information wants to be free, but not the information in this book. Data 
mining
and Data munging techniques should never have left the hallowed halls of 
academe.
Once they enter the public domain, they are immediately exploited by 
greedy
corporations. The author should have thought about that before writing a 
book
like this.

If you buy or support books like this, you have lost any right to 
complain about
your privacy being violated. If you are serious about privacy, boycott 
this book!

=cut

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"



Re: Good Accountants

2001-04-27 Thread Jonathan Peterson



Robin Szemeti wrote:
> 
> now I am absolutely totally 100% certain that some web browser (and thats
> all it is) should *not* mess around with the way I view folders. I think
> that was a turning point for me and my judgement is probably clouded and
> 

No, no, no, that's _not_ all it is. IE is a set of distributed objects
that between them handle those things that you might want to do related
to HTTP and the rendering of HTML and assocciated technologies. That's
MUCH more than just a browser.

Once IE is installed on your system it becomes relatively simple to make
an excel spreadsheet where some cell has a value that is the result of
an HTTP request. This is not something AFAIK that Opera or Netscape do.
I think Mozilla is trying to be more like this, but I never use it so I
don't know. I do know that Mozilla appears to be just as 'lightweight'
as IE.

The tragedy is that all these great objects and classes tend to be only
accessible from inside stuff like VBA or VB or MSVC++. Maybe Perl's DCOM
bindings on Win32 are robust enough now that I can use perl to script
the IE objects, I don't know.

Jon, who is now at a company that uses Netscape Messenger as the
corporate mail client. Weep. But at least they keep ports 22 and 23 open
on the firewall. Yay.



Re: MySQL -> Oracle wrapper/compat. libs

2001-04-27 Thread Paul Makepeace

On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 07:57:04AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote:
> David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Unfortunately no.  You'd have to:
> >   LOCK the table
> >   SELECT the maximum id currently in use and add one
> >   INSERT with that id
> >   UNLOCK the table
> > so all your other queries will block until the table is unlocked.
> 
> Create a 'seq' table associated with each table that needs
> autoincrement.
> 
> LOCK that table.
> SELECT the one entry that is the next value in the sequence.
> UPDATE the entry with an incremented value.
> UNLOCK the sequence table
> 
> INSERT into data table using the id you got from the other table.
> Which looks to me like it should be faster.

The real answer is since you are using a database you care about speed
so spend three minutes reading the docs/google for your particular
database vendor and implement whatever strategy is suggested
(AUTO_INCREMENT, ROWID, oid, SEQUENCE, before-row-insert triggers,
etc).

Paul