Re: Templating Solutions

[Jonathan Peterson]

I like ePerl, comprised of
Apache::ePerl
Parse::ePerl

It's a very simple does what it says on the tin way of embedding perl in 
any other (text) fine, plus it has low level access to what it does in it's 
parse routine. Handy in many situations, I find.

No new versions since 1998 and none planned, so it's stable. Or dead, 
depending on your viewpoint.


-- 
Jonathan Peterson
Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, +44 (0)20 7383 6092
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: YAPC::Europe: flights, hotels and minigolf.

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
>we can even stand outside the business lounge and wave in
>at Dave Cross who will be stroking his gold plated cat and
>enjoying a gimlet

Is this some S&M reference? How does one enjoy a gimlet? Gouge it into the 
cat maybe



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

Re: (Open|Net)BSD local root exploit

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> Now imagine a big field, with a treasure chest in the middle
> of it - this is your security.

Now, imagine the chest is buried in the field, and no-one saw me bury it. 
This is my security.



However, after playing Baldurs Gate 2 all weekend, I'm obliged to say that 
really if you have a priceless artifact that you don't want found, the 
trick is to give to a peasant, because no adventurer is going to go round 
killing every peasant in the land to find the one with the treasure. See 
also the way diamonds are transported around Hatton Garden (i.e. in 
people's pockets, not in securicor vans).



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

RE: *Buffy's Not Included

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 10:01 14/06/01 +0100, you wrote:

>I could produce my own file format from scratch - and write the tools to
>look after it... eg
>
>#URL#http://whatever.com
>#SCORE#0
>#SUMMARY#'broken html' bugger"

When I see something like that I think it should be in XML. There's an 
overhead involved with properly parsing and writing XML, especially if you 
want to work with Schemas or DTDs. However, if you go down the XML::Simple 
or XML::Writer route, the overhead is barely more than doing your own 
little parser for your own little ASCII format, and it's a hell of a lot 
more scaleable.


>The data from these files will primarily be diplayed within an HTML page. 
>A
>perceived advantage of XML here (for someone who has barely scratched the
>surface of what XML can do), is the ability to (relatively) easily take 
>the
>XML and spit it out to the browser - and yes I know it's never quite that
>simple.

I'm biased because I'm now working in a highly SGML / XML based company, 
and it's remarkable what they manage to do with XSLT.

>I'm also trying to future proof the system slightly - I think that by 
>having
>the data XML based it may make it easier to use in new and wonderful ways 
>in
>the future, without having to write all the tools from scratch.

Yes. XML still suffers from a lack of fully working tools, and the way 
things like Schemas aren't 100% pinned down yet. But, overall, I kind of 
like it.


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

Re: Some pretty pictures ...

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 13:01 11/06/01 +0100, you wrote:

>Unlikely. http://www.iterative-software.com/~pdcawley/acme.png is
>vaguely perlish though.

Hey, that's a good photo. It's Leontastic.




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

Re: www.gateway.gov.uk

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 18:51 09/06/01 +0100, you wrote:


>Precisely.  And using Java et al is a discrimination against the mobility
>impaired.

Not to mention the way it discriminates totally against people who can't 
afford, don't have, morally object to, are too old to learn to use, 
computers.

Sure, it's kind of a crap designed website, and they should have done it in 
a way that worked on more platforms (although, to be honest, I can't see a 
way round the problems - it's very hard to do client side certificates in a 
portable way, and I'd rather see them do something than nothing).

However, it's not that big a deal.


However, it's hardly the end of the world
>/J\

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

Re: JOB: Eng. Proj Management

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 00:23 09/06/01 +0100, you wrote:
>"Jonathan Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > A reasonably reliable headhunter I've dealt with in the past is
> > looking for technical project managers for new web company. Let me
> > know if interested...
>
>Hmm... I wonder if I could morph...

Come over to the dark side...

>Bet that's a permie thing isn't it?

He didn't say, so probably that's what they'd prefer, yes.



>--
>Piers Cawley
>www.iterative-software.com

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

JOB: Eng. Proj Management

[Jonathan Peterson]

Hi,

A reasonably reliable headhunter I've dealt with in the past is looking for 
technical project managers for new web company. Let me know if 
interested...



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

Religion (was Re: M$ SQueaLServer)

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
>At the end of the day, the simple fact is that Windows 2000 crashes more
>frequently than *n[ui]x does -- this surely is unquestioned fact.

I just questioned it. Win2k appears to be a very nice OS, although I've 
never used it at the server end. It may have all sorts of scalability 
issues and general crapnesses but I've not seen any evidence that it (or NT 
4 for that matter) crashed more than Unix. There appear to be near infinite 
numbers of people who will testify that they worked in some huge IT place 
and all the NT servers were rebooted daily and all the nix machines had 
been running since 1988 with no reboots. There are just as many people who 
will say that they worked in similar environments where both systems hardly 
ever needed to be rebooted. I've known banks (GS) where solaris machines 
were rebooted daily or weekly.

As for my very limited experience, neither Solaris nor NT crash during 
normal use as server platforms. I've known NT screw up during some hardware 
installs and some application installs. But then I've known Solaris do the 
same for some application installs.





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

Re: Social meet

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 16:59 06/06/01 +0100, you wrote:
>   Tho' if
>anyone going has a mobile I'd appreciate the number just in case.

Since the rest of London.pm has my mobile I see no reason for you to be 
different. - 07989 747 853
I tend to arrive early, leave early.



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

Hang the Java programmers

[Jonathan Peterson]

While unwillingly attempting to educate myself in the dark arts of Java, I 
came across this in a bit of (official Sun) documentation:

"Passivation is the opposite of activation. "

Only a Java programmer could be that f**cking bloody minded, pig ignorant, 
or both. Amusingly, ejbPassivate is a method of entity beans, which look 
suspiciously like on of the most stupid things I've ever come across. But 
then I'm not a real programmer.



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

Re: crazy golf

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 14:31 04/06/01 +, you wrote:
> > Assuming you're not a Masai tribesperson. And assuming that the
> > Romans weren't lying about the Celts (Though why would they want to do
> > that?)
>
>It would seem to me to be counter-productive.  If you want to conquer
>a country you don't spread rumours that they drink their victims blood.

Sure you do. That way everyone thinks they are barbarians, and they don't 
mind you invading them and civilising them. As it happens the Celts were 
barbarians*, and the Romans did bring civilisation to them (insert relevant 
Life of Brian sketch).

You also spread rumours of there being lots of gold and "so many pearls 
they lie uncollected on the beaches". Works like a charm.


*This is not a value judgement so just don't start.


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

Religion

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 15:53 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:

>I find it strange that the only surviving English/British religion,
>Paganism, is the target for being abolished.

Is paganism a religion? Isn't it a "none of the above" grouping of 
religions? Or does it refer to "What Northern and central Europe did before 
the Romans"?

>Mayday was traditionally the
>fertility festival. It would make more sense to embrace the Pagan holidays
>seeing as they are celebrated more evenly throughout the year. Plus they
>don't glorify death and have a healthy celebration for life.

This is all true. But Christian festivals are for the most part 
intellectualised versions of the non-christian ones they replaced. Easter 
is a fertility festival. Chistmas is a winter feast. All souls day is the 
same as Halloween (excepting that Halloween is now just a Woolworth's 
marketing mechanism).

The actions and spirit of paganism (say, wearing leaves and dancing round a 
tree in May) are good healthy things to do. The cerebral aspects of 
paganism are daft ("If I wear leaves and dance round a tree the tree spirit 
will make me more fertile"). To the extent Christianity leaves one alone 
and replaces the other, I like it. I agree that at times it hasn't done a 
very good job of leaving alone. But nothing's perfect...

Jon, thinking Paganism and Christianity should co-exist happily as do Art 
and Science.

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

Re: crazy golf

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 14:23 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:
>"Jonathan Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>Personally I'd rather get rid of the overtly christian holidays and
>stick with good old pagan stuff like May day. And not because of the
>labour movement, it's a *way* older holiday than that.

True enough - but look!

Among the nine saints that are celebrated on 1st may is St Joseph who is 
the patron saint of those who fight against communism. YAY

No, I'm not making this up: 
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/pst00162.htm





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

Re: General Election

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 14:23 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 01, 2001 at 01:55:20PM +0100, Cross David - dcross wrote:
> > The New Labour version starts like this:
> >
> > "The people's flag is lightest pink,
> > It's not as red as you might think."
>
>How things have changed.

Yikes!

Changed for the better, apparently. The idea of Prescott getting hold of 
the mace is truly alarming.


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

RE: crazy golf

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 13:27 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:

>weather's awful. We [0] want June and July holidays how about US

Quite the opposite!!! We need more winter holidays to cheer us up during 
those dark rainy months. We should have holidays for all the major Saint's 
days, and get rid of silly artificial things like Mayday. Or we should just 
not work half the time, like the French.




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

Re: Montreal

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 13:12 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:

>are the botanical gardens, and biodome (all touristy).  As far as I'm
>concerned though, the best thing to do in Montreal are the bars, cafes and 
>
>shops.

There's a nice catholic cathedral, the docks are nice, and there's a lovely 
local museum near the docks that talks about the bourgeoisie more than any 
other museum I've ever been in.

Those were the the only things open on Boxing Day in Montreal last year. 
But I didn't look that hard because it was 20 below and windy.


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

Re: General Election

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 10:32 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:
>  I suggest we leave the pub at about 9:30pm and get the tube
>back to mine, stopping at Threshers en route.

Can't we just go to another pub that's got Peter Snow on the telly?

>There will, of course, be an entrance test. Anyone who doesn't know the
>first verse and chorus of "The Red Flag" will not be admitted :)

Don't do that Dave. It's bad to drink alone.

>Vive la Revolution!

Sounds like the tag line of a shampoo commercial.


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

Re: Inline::PERL

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 09:40 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote:

>Another gem from Perlmonks. I'm thinking I should post this one to the
>Cookwood board :)

It was in the unforgettable episode on 23rd May when bk said:

"Yay! You have now totally redeemed yourself in my mind. I'm sorry... I 
seem to have missed the class on the usage of the different kinds of OR 
operators."

Since then Bk and Dave's relationship has got better and better, with 
smiley faces common place and good humour generally prevalent. But does Bk 
harbour underlying resentment? Is he luring Dave into a false sense of 
security? Has his programming actually improved any?

It's better than enders!

Oh, and I think the thing about readdir returning the first entry of an 
array in scalar context is dumb. That isn't DWIM. Returning the number of 
entries in the directory would be about a million times more sensible 
(especially if it didn't count . and .. as entries).


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

Re: l337

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 10:28 30/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>> my name is jon i have installed an irc client on my linux shell account
>can u tell me where the c00lest irc places are like what server and channel
>and stuff u all use so i can learn PERL and hacking and stuff from l337 ppl
>like all u are.
>>
>> tx!!
>>
>> jon
>
>I think there is probably more we can learn from you Jon.

Apparently my reputation on the list as a paragon of reason and eloquence isn't as 
widespread as I had assumed. I threw caution to the wind my ommitting a "this post is 
ironical" smiley to the end of my post. Alas, I am undone.



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

l337

[Jonathan Peterson]

my name is jon i have installed an irc client on my linux shell account can u tell me 
where the c00lest irc places are like what server and channel and stuff u all use so i 
can learn PERL and hacking and stuff from l337 ppl like all u are.

tx!!

jon


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

XML

[Jonathan Peterson]

Hi folx,

Why is it that every time I spend 2 hours working with XML I discover a new twist that 
makes everything more complex than it used to be? And that's deliberately ignoring the 
advanced stuff.

Anyway, does anyone know of any XML authoring tools (any platform) that let you 
compose XML against a Schema (latest spec), enforcing validation as you go?

XML-Spy seems great in most respects but appears to have bugs in this last one.


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

Re: Election Manifestos

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 07:49 23/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>At 17:37 22/05/2001, Roger Burton West wrote:
>
>
>>And get a shell account, why don't you?
>
>Thanks. I already have several. 

[snip]


>Much as I'd love it if everyone was to be able to post to the list from their 
>favourite Unix mail client all the time, 


Oxymoron, surely?

>have the time or knowledge to do that. This email client snobbery is getting too 
>frequent. Just because someone is posting from an Exchange server, it doesn't 
>necessarily mean that what they are saying is less valid.

Indeed. And some of us use display technology that doesn't have an overwhelming urge 
to be backward compatible with 1972, and can therefore do cool futuristic stuff like 
handle more than 72 columns.

>:->


>Dave...
>[bugger! another grumpy start to the day]

I blame the hot weather. It's unnatural.

Jon 'Troll? Where?' Peterson


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

Re: Eh up! Abysinnia!

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 12:06 22/05/01 -0400, you wrote:
>If you haven't guessed, i'm from the states.

Ah. So 'Mars' wasn't too close.

:-)


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

Re: Election Manifestos

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 17:01 22/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Right, yes, which is why we - sorry, you plural, I was way out of the country
>at the time - elected Labour based on their fantastic performance last time
>which lead to the General Strike and the Winter of Discontent. Sorry, a
>nanosecond of thought would show that that is complete bullshit.

Not so. Labour were voted in on the basis of the Tories screw ups. Like I said, we 
vote against the party that has most recently screwed up. Labour hasn't screwed up 
yet. The economy is pretty OK, house prices haven't crashed, unemployment is OK. This 
is what people vote on. No-one really cares about the dome. No-one cares about asylum 
seekers unless they live in Dover. No-one cares about building 500,000 houses unless 
they are going to be built right next to them. No-one even cares that much about crime 
unless they've been a victim of it during the last government. No-one cares about the 
NHS unless they or a relative have a serious illness.

Remember - Economy, property prices, unemployment. Get those right, avoid foreign wars 
(can be OK, but too risky), and you stay in power. Simple. It helps if you kiss babies 
and have charisma, but that's hardly a new thing.



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

Re: Election Manifestos

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 16:31 22/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 04:16:16PM +0100, Chris Heathcote wrote:
>> From air-conditioned tubes, thru to RIPA, to cheap petrol, it's
>> bandwagon-jumping.
>
>Ah, congratulations! You seem to have been completely politically
>brainwashed; i

The cynicism of the electorate will rise or fall to match the cynicism of the elected, 
nothing more.

It is always best to judge politicians on what they do, not what they say. This is 
always a problem for the parties not in power, as they haven't had the chance to do 
anything. Thus, all they can really do come election time is to point out the things 
the party in power has done wrong. This then gets called 'negative campaigning'.

However, it strikes me as simply being the way modern democracy works and we should 
just get on with it. We vote for the encumbent party until they screw up big time and 
then we switch and repeat the process.

There's no point judging the parties on what they say they'll do, only on what they 
did last time they were in power.




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

Re: Election Manifestos

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 16:02 22/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>the Tory's want to repeal IR35, make RIPA less strict and speed up Local
>Loop unbundling, whereas Labour want to introduce laws meaning that if
>you pretend to be a teenager on the Net you can be jailed for 5 years
>(bad luck bK).

They are politicians. They lie. Although the move to prevent people pretending to be 
teenagers I find particularly amusing (for dark values of amusing).

Let's face it, no-one is very interested in civil rights these days, and especially 
not on the Internet. 


>This is not an invitation for a flame war, it all got said, done and
>^

Pull the other one! :-)

 

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

Re: MIME stuff - Am I missing something?

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 13:27 22/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

I don't know if you are parsing mail or something else, but in the past I've had luck 
with MIME::Parser using the effective_type() method to get the mime type out of emails.

If you are trying to figure it out magically based on just the file format or filename 
or something(e.g. just pointing it at a raw jpeg) I didn't think MIME:: would help. 
Could be wrong tho. Apache has some stuff that attempts to do this, but unless you 
fancy making your program a mod_perl handler that won't help you much.

use MIME::Parser;
my $parser = new MIME::Parser;
$parser->output_to_core(1);
$parser->decode_headers(1);

my $message;
my $errors;
### Parse input:
my $entity = $parser->parse(\*STDIN) or $errors .= "parse failed $!\n";

$message->{head} = $entity->head();
$message->{body}->{attachments} = []; #put attachments (if any) in here
if($message->{body}->{text} = $entity->bodyhandle()) # if it's single part 
{
#if they've sent a message that _only_ contains non-text data as a 
 #single part
    if ($entity->effective_type !~ /text/)

...



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

Re: [OT] Cordelia (was Re: They are all vampires!)

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
>appears on Angel, a show named after someone in the resorataion of whose
>^^^

Ah, an excellent typo consisting of one additional character, one omitted character, 
and a transposed pair. I shall put it in my collection. I should say by the look of 
it, this one was speed induced.

Goes off to start new thesis on typographical errors to be presented at the ICA.




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

Re: Long shot

[Jonathan Peterson]

Outlook express is evil.

It actually appears to work correctly for IMAP, and is reasonably fast,
but...

1. For some unknown reason it doesn't let you use mail filters on IMAP
messages, thereby rendering it completely unsuited to my needs

2. And this is the really evil one. If you use plain text mode it ALWAYS
uses your proportional font for displaying and composing mail. If you use
HTML mode it will let you work in fixed width, but obviously then sends the
message as multi-part mime HTML mail, which is unacceptable.

So, I have:

Netscape - works, can filter mail, poor interface, dreadfully slow
PC-pine - works, can filter mail, dreadful interface, fast
Eudora - annoying bugs, can filter mail, good interface, slow
Express - works, can't filter mail, good interface, quite fast

So, Eudora still ahead...

Long shot

[Jonathan Peterson]

Anyone know a windows IMAP client that:
1. Isn't Netscape
2. Isn't Eudora
3. Actually Works
4. Is free or cheap

Sigh...

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

RE: Sara Cox - was Re: FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 11:06 21/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Dave Cross:
>
>> See, I find it's in the personality. Which doesn't come 
>> across too well in glossy magazine.
>
>Hmmm. I wonder how you'd go about making personality pr0n?

Mills and Boon.


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

Re: Perlish interface to PayPal?

[Jonathan Peterson]

This (non-perl unix command line tool) might be better than nothing:

http://members01.chello.se/hampasfirma/ppsend/



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

Re: pc components

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 14:48 17/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>If your in London then forget mail order and go to TCR on a Saturday,
>you get to take home what you pay for and with the drop in spending
>lately its getting easier to haggle the price down.

Are you refering to the 'computer fair' or just TCR in general?

Also, if any London person is unaware of it, the shop CEX (Computer 
EXchange) on TCR (just north of Goddge St Stn) sells excellent 2nd hand 
hardware, are very knowledgeable, will accept returns with no hassle, and 
have never let me down etc etc etc.

And they sell 2nd hand software too, esp. MS development stuff.



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

Re: Buffy ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 12:31 16/05/01 -0400, you wrote:
>On Wed, 16 May 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote:
>
> >
> > http://page.auctions.yahoo.com/uk/auction/51586918
> >

The seller seems to do quite a trade in signed photos. The last SMG one:

"Sultry Buffy Vampire Slayer SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR Signed 8x10 Photo With 
COA
"

went for a mere 21 quid




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

Re: Dell asset numbers ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 16:39 16/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>does anyone happen to know if you can discover the asset number of a Dell
>poweredge swerver remotely? apparenlty its 'in the bios' .. how useful.

It should also be on a silvery sticker on the back of the machine somewhere 
with the barcodes. You could try asking a mailbox bod to go have a look and 
write down the numbers they find and email them all to you. The asset 
number is a different length to the serial number so you should be able to 
work out which is which.




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

Transtec Sparc Clones

[Jonathan Peterson]

I think some of the people who use this list have used Transtec's Sparc 
clone machines. My question is:

1. Are they any good
2. Are they _really_ identical to Sparcs at the OS level, or do you need 
funky drivers and non-standard BIOS / PROM settings in Solaris to work it?

I just love that 1/3 of Sun's price, but shurely too good to be true>

Ta,

JP

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

Caller ID (was Re: Enough!)

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 21:08 15/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>They already offer it.
>You can bar up to ten numbers (IIRC). I don't know how it deals
>with withheld numbers. Never checked.

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that you always send your CID when 
you make a phone call. If you choose to withhold the ID, it still gets 
sent, it just gets sent with a 'do not disclose' flag set, which all (BT 
approved) phones and services (like 1471) must honour. Therefore it should 
be easy for BT themselves to offer something that can bar CID witheld 
calls.

But this might be wrong, or might just be how the US system works or 
something.


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

One liner

[Jonathan Peterson]

Probably all you people who program for a living think this is 
[crap/obvious/can be done in 3 bytes] but I liked it:

$|++; print qw(\ | / -)[$i%4]."\r"; $|--;

Put a spinning progress thing in your loops...



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

Re: Enough!

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 12:48 15/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>extension number.  I simply don't want people phoning me up who refuse to
>own up to who they are before they invade my privacy.




Yeah, me neither. Damn strangers, I don't talk to them and neither do my 
kids.

And if there's an unexpected knock at the door, I pretend I'm out. Too much 
crime. Too many weirdos.

I don't open letters without a return address - and if they've been _hand 
delivered_ with unknown handwriting - that's just sick, man.

And if someone stops me in the street and asks for directions I _always_ 
ask to see ID.

Now, If my mate phones me up in the restaurant or the train, well I always 
take the call, I mean communication is the cornerstone of society, man, yea 
I always have a good old laugh on the mobile in the pub, down the shops, in 
the library.

It's just invasion of privacy I'm against.




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

Re: Enough!

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 15:59 14/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>On 14 May 2001, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
>
> >
> > Please, would you take the politics elsewhere? Some of us really don't
> > give a shit either way.
> >
>
>I did warn them but they appeared to ignore me ...

Actually I think we can be very proud of ourselves for having had a flame 
free politics thread. I think we all deserve a drink.


P.S. Next meeting I shall be standing on a chair and distributing copies of 
my new pamphlet "The Scientific and Social Reform Party or 'Jack and the 
Journeyman': A Treatise on the Equitable and Scientific running of Society 
for the Good of All and the Furtherment of Mankind." Also available from WE 
Thompson and Sons, Printers, Orpington Yard, price 2d.



>/J\

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

Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 15:36 14/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 11:17:14AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> > 2. A teacher can't be alone in a room with a pupil unless the door is 
> open.
>
>I know it's one of those Zen koans, but I just can't work it out.

ROFL

Unless the door to the pupil's mind is open then there is no teacher.

And he was enlightened.



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

Re: BOFHs requiring license

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 15:05 14/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 01:11:30PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
>
> > David Cantrell wrote:
> >
> > > Isn't it interesting that Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, de Gaulle and
> > > Churchill were all 'charismatic' leaders.
> >
> > Hmmm... As were Svein Forkbeard, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,
> > Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Alfred the Great, Tokugawa, ...
> >
> > Hey - I know this is a bit wild, but maybe there's some kind of
> > connection between 'charisma' and 'leadership'...
>
>As I think you realised, I didn't meant the usual sort of charisma.  I
>mean more along the lines of those 'charismatic' evangelist churches and
>other religious cults.

:-) Too good an opportunity to miss. Perhaps the difference between your 
set of leaders and mine, is that the ones you mentioned all had personality 
cults to a degree, although in the case of Churchill I wouldn't have said 
so.

However, in the case of Alexander the Great, certainly, I would say they 
had a personality cult similar to or greater than Hitler's (or to a sect 
leader, or whatever). Alexander inspired God like devotion in his men, and 
was as insanely ambitious as Hitler. And a much much much better general. 
Military leaders have quite often had significant personality cults within 
their own armies (right up to Montgomery and McArthur).

We tend to condemn personality cults outright these days. However, I think 
for much of history they were the basis of social organisation to a greater 
or lesser degree. Certainly northern Europe before (and to some extend 
after (vikings, saxons etc)) the Romans was based around small king's whose 
leadership was determined mainly by personal loyalty. In some ways quite 
democratic, in other ways deeply unstable. Probably the single greatest 
reason the Vikings didn't conquer Europe.




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

Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)

[Jonathan Peterson]

> I'm not trying to negate your point, which I agree with, but I'm not sure if
> this one is true. Teachers at my daughters school have refused to give
> medicine to her, and to other children, some of whom are on constant
> medication; their mother comes into the school to administer it.
> 
> You seem to know a lot about teachers though...

Good for them. It is actually, I think, the school's discretion, but if
the parent insists that they can't do it, the only option is for the
school to do it or to exclude the child. The sensible solution is to
make the child responsible for taking their medicine, which a) they'll
have to do sooner or later and b) they are in most cases well able to
do. The problem is legal responsibilty. My mother has no problem telling
some child to eat their pill. She has a big problem with being sued, if
she forgets to remind the child, and the child forgets, too, and shit
happens.

But of course modern society can't cope with the idea that it's just
plain old bad luck some kid has a condition like that, so they demand
that teachers are responsible, or else they'll demand that all schools
have a school nurse who's responsible. It's all crap, and it's all in
the last 10 years.

My mother is a primary school teacher, as was my aunt, as is my cousin
and his wife etc etc. I also help out at my old scout troop, which
brings me into contact with some of the more insane child-related
legislation. 


> /Robert

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

Re: BOFHs requiring license

[Jonathan Peterson]

David Cantrell wrote:
> 
> On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 10:37:23AM +0100, Cross David - dcross wrote:
> 
> > Oh, and Churchill was an arsehole. As the population worked out in the 1945
> > General Election. Anyone responding with nonsense about him winning the
> > second world war will be given a history lesson :)
> 
> Isn't it interesting that Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, de Gaulle and
> Churchill were all 'charismatic' leaders.
> 

Hmmm... As were Svein Forkbeard, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Alfred the Great, Tokugawa, ...

Hey - I know this is a bit wild, but maybe there's some kind of
connection between 'charisma' and 'leadership'...



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

Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 11:58 14/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>If you ignore all of those, I
>wonder how many of those 'stealth' taxes would really exist.

IR35, for a start ?

On the subject of idiocy and legislation, here's a good one

A dairy farmer has some cows (might not anymore, actually, but anyway...), 
and he has slightly more cows than he has pasture. So, he rents a field 
from the neighbouring farmer. So far, so sensible. But this field is the 
other side of a road. And it's not his, he just rents it. And the milking 
parlour is on his land. Cows get milked twice a day. So, twice a day, the 
farmer takes his cows over the road to munch grass, and twice a day he 
takes them back to be milked.

The EU (may they burn in hell) require this to be documented. It has to be 
documented because the cows are leaving his land. It has to be documented 
because the cows are crossing a road. No, I've no idea why, either.

Each cow has a small book, like a large cheque book. Every day, the farmer 
takes four slips out of the cheque book, for each crossing of the road. He 
fills in when the cow crossed the road, and why, and some other details. He 
sends the slips to some office in the EU somewhere, where they will be 
pointlessly processed at our expense. He does this for each of the twenty 
odd cows involved. So, that's like writing 80 cheques. He does this EVERY 
DAY OF HIS LIFE (you have to milk cows on weekends, you know).

And then people wonder why people hate the European integration so much. 
It's odd, isn't it?



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

Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 11:17 14/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>Governments never get value for money on anything they do. Discuss.

The Louisiana purchase was a pretty good deal. So was Alaska. So was the 
Suez canal. Government subsidy of scientific research has possibly been a 
very good deal, it's hard to quantify. Government funded defence research 
seems to work reasonably well.

>R

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

Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 10:45 14/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>Part of the reason why they haven't delivered the promises that I think 
>are
>important (decent public services) is because they've hamstrung themselves
>with this clueless tory low-tax approach.

Yup.

>I genuinely believe that the
>public are sick of watching the NHS, education system etc wasting away on 
>a
>starvation diet and would be willing to pay a bit of extra tax to make 
>sure
>that their kids can get schooled and that their sick can be healed.

For a very very unusual definition of 'bit'. Also, money is NOT the 
solution to schools (and prob. NHS). They don't suffer simply from under 
funding. Schools suffer from under funding, insane overegulation and 
bureaucracy, low public approval of teachers, increasingly stupid parents, 
and so on. These are deep problems with society that "A penny on income 
tax" will do nothing against on its own. For your amusement, here are some 
regulations that teachers have fun complying with, in addition to working 
long hours (standing up, mind) for bugger all money.

1. There is a law that specifies the minimum distance apart towel hooks 
must be in children's changing rooms.
2. A teacher can't be alone in a room with a pupil unless the door is open.
3. Teachers are responsible for children taking their medicine. If a child 
has a critical allergy to (bee stings, etc, etc) the teachers are 
responsible for administering intra-venous beta blockers etc. They don't 
get paid more for being nurses too.

>Let's face it, it's possible to say "Labour isn't working", but after the
>systematic dismantling of manufacturing industry, the fragmentation and
>decay of our rail infrastructure at the hands of private companies who 
>sack
>thousands of track maintenance staff to increase profit margins, boom and
>bust economics leading to the worst recession in decades, deregulation of
>the cattle-feed industry leading directly to the BSE crisis that made
>British meat an international laughing-stock/pariah ... I could go on ...
>I'd say that conservative ideas worked a lot worse.

Yes, in these instances. As regards agriculture, EU legislation has done 
far more harm than anything ever passed by any UK government, mainly 
because there's 10 times as much of it. In other areas (education, foreign 
policy) I'd say the right had better ideas and a better track record.

>You can't expect public services that have seen two decades of alternating
>neglect and red-tape frenzy, with a workforce that is completely 
>demoralised
>after being scapegoated for twenty years ("What do you mean we've screwed
>the education system - it's the fault of those loony-left teachers and 
>their
>'progressive' ideas!")

No, it's the fault of loony left legislators and their 'progressive' ideas 
:-)

>I have deeply unfashionable political views, though. I think tax and spend
>is a *good idea*.

Tax and spend isn't an idea. It's _how_ you tax and _how_ you spend. I 
don't mind the left wing notion of high tax and high spending. I mind the 
dumb way in which they spend it and (to a lesser extend) the dumb way in 
which they tax.



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

Re: BOFHs requiring license

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 18:50 13/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:38:45PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote:
> >
> > Democracy is overrated. I think a meritocracy is needed. Perhaps 
> measured by
> > Perl competence.
>
>It's a fairly well-arguable stance that *any* form of meritocracy is a
>reasonable system - certainly an improvement on, for example, a
>hereditary (mon|poly)archy.

Nah. I think meritocracies degenerate rapidly into self perpetuating 
oligarchies. The current ruling set starts to define 'merit' such that the 
friends and co-conspirators and like mindeds of the ruling set remain in 
power. Wasn't ICANN meant to be a meritocracy?

Actually, a hereditary democratic chamber such as the (old) house of lords 
strikes me as being a pretty good system. Swapping 'randomly selected' for 
hereditary would be a small improvement, possibly. Swapping 'selected by 
Tony Blair after consultation with his own sycophantic smile' for 
hereditary strikes me as pretty  stupid, corrupt and evil. Cough.



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

Re: BOFHs requiring license

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 17:58 13/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>At 17:38 13/05/2001, Simon Cozens wrote:
>>
>>Which "intelligent people who understood it" would that be, then?
>
>Take a look around you. This list, being representative of the Perl 
>community, tends towards the intelligent end of the spectrum. And from 
>what I've gathered from the conversations I've had with people here, the 
>vast majority of us tend towards the left[1].

Plenty of merchant banks full of very intelligent people who aren't very 
socialist.




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

Re: BOFHs requiring license

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 16:41 13/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>* Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > At 15:27 13/05/2001, Simon Cozens wrote:
> >
>
>if only the SNP covered the whole of the UK

Err, they do.




>--
>Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

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

Re: putting escape characters in files

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 16:31 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
there are too
many organisations (notably schools, as well as companies) pushing
excessive technical responsibilities onto unqualified and inexperienced
staff.

That's actually a really good point (about the schools). You hear about all 
these 'computers for schools' initiatives, but very rarely do you hear 
about 'CS teachers for schools'. It usually means that some maths teach 
somewhere gets another 2 lessons per week and a small LAN to look after.



Martin

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

Re: putting escape characters in files

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 15:42 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

It goes a little further than that. Cars are now consumer devices; but
if you were deploying a fleet of new company vans, you wouldn't expect
the random office guy who'd read a dummies book to maintain them - you'd
hire a mechanic.


Hmmm.. You're suggesting that the mechanic is a well trained engineer who 
knows all about cars, while companies are trying to get away with using 
pimply faced youths who've just read a book or got an MCP to maintain 
computers on the cheap. Your average mechanic follows instructions on a 
computer that tells him what part number to use to replace the faulty item. 
The act of replacing simply involves known what size socket wrench to use, 
and remembering where to attach the wires and hoses afterwards.

The average bottom rung mechanic knows as much about cars as the average 
bottom rung tech support guy knows about computers.

The difference is that the mechanic can't get a job without his NVQ, 
whereas the PFY can get a job without his MCP.


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

Re: putting escape characters in files

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 11:37 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

but then any reasonably flexible multi-purpose device is always going
to have a hard time being a consumer device as by it's nature it's
complex and trying to make complex things appear simple is very very
hard.


I can never work out if life is getting simpler or more complex. Computers 
seem very complex, and an application (lets say, a spreadsheet) appears to 
have thousands of features and whatnot that make the business of creating a 
Profit/Loss sheet far more complex than it ever was (or by implication 
ought to be).

But this replaced a system of copybooks, ledgers, accounting systems and 
procedures that was also very complex. Not only that, but all the actual 
arithmetic had to be done (by the human) as well. So the accountant of 1890 
needed to do mental arithmetic very fast and accurately (and in L.S.D.), 
and had to know and understand a bookshelf full of different ledgers, each 
with different columns, tables and and systems. And they had to work with 
near 100% accuracy, because of the difficulty of erasing or re-doing work.

I think the difference is not that computers (or cars, or whatever) are 
that much more complex than what went before them. The difference is:

1. People are expected to understand and deal with all these things, not to 
specialise in one. Today, we are expected to be able to drive a car and use 
a spreadsheet, and then paint the spare room. The Victorian accountant most 
likely would not have known how to ride, certainly not have known how to 
look after a horse. They would not have done their own cooking, even, would 
not be responsible for repairing or even organising repairs to their rented 
accomodation, etc etc.

2. The rate of change is very fast. The Victorian's system of accountancy, 
while more complex, would have been what he grew up with, and would not 
have changed radically over his life (assuming he retired prior to the 
1940's).

Jon

I see a topic far in the distance and rapidly dwindling...
-- 
Jonathan Peterson
Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: putting escape characters in files

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 10:32 11/05/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Dominic Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> > > If your terminal has flow control enabled it will eat ^Q and ^S for you.
> > > stty -ixon
> > > removes this problem.
> >
> > But then how do you pause that long ls listing when your
> > less,more,pg,sed,awk&perl binaries are all fscked?  :-)
>
>Stallman used to have a long rant about ^S/^Q that shipped with
>the emacs source. Wonder if it's still there.

You know, from the outside, Unix looks so well designed and clean and modern...


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

Re: Bah!

[Jonathan Peterson]

At 13:37 10/05/01 +0100, you wrote:

>Naah, it's not just a symlink.  I have a custom 404 handler which looks
>for pages similar to what you asked for based on a small database of
>things which may have changed.  I haven't updated it recently, but will
>do.  I'll make it so that requests for .../cv.foo get translated to
>.../cv[latest-version].foo.

HTTP::Approx anyone?


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

Re: Buffy musings ...

[Jonathan Peterson]

> 
> And while we are on the old films chestnut, my current recommendation
> is 'O Brother, where art thou?', excellent film. However I here Momento
> is a very good film as well.

Oh Brother should be subtitled. Don't expect to understand the dialogue
for the first 30 minutes until you are used to the accents. But yes,
it's a good film.


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

Re: sing if you're happy that way

[Jonathan Peterson]

> That much I'd figured out - perhaps I'm being too deep and meaningful in
> assuming that 'CHOPS' has some greater meaning. That said, 'CHOPS' and
> 'PISHA' have all sorts of possibilities for acronymic re-interpretation,
> e.g.:
> 


Perhaps from the Yiddish 'Pisher'?

Pisher - Male infant, a little squirt, a nobody 

(http://www.pass.to/glossary/gloz3.htm#letp)

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

Re: Apocalypse Two

[Jonathan Peterson]

> And much, much more!

"we'll switch to using . instead of ->"

Yay!!


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

Re: Funny thing

[Jonathan Peterson]

> > $foo = 'bar';
> > $foo =~ /bar/ and {print "yes"; print "yes again";}
> >
> 
>  ... and do { print ... };

I forgot about do. doh.

Ta.

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

Funny thing

[Jonathan Peterson]

I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but the code below gives a syntax
error. I think it ought to do what it looks like it ought to do. What's
the reason?

$foo = 'bar';
$foo =~ /bar/ and {print "yes"; print "yes again";}

gives: syntax error at test line 2, near "; print"

$foo = 'bar';
$foo =~ /bar/ and {print "yes";}

gives: syntax error at test line 2, near ";}"

$foo = 'bar';
$foo =~ /bar/ and {print "yes"}

prints "yes" as expected.

What's going on, eh?

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

Re: Mailbox power ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

Dave Hodgkinson wrote:

> > Sure, but I'll eat my hat if I can buy one on its own on TCR. It really
> > is too bad that CEX don't have a decent cable selection, since you can
> > get everything else from them.
> 
> Nah, blag one...I'm sure there are people round here with spares...
> 

*cough* So... anyone got a spare one of these (RJ45 -> DB9 serial i.e.
cisco or netra t1 console cable)? And if so can I borrow it for a day?
Mail me off list if you can help..

Cheers,

Jon

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

Re: Mailbox power ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> Those serial cables come with all kinds of stuph, Netgear ISDN
> routers, Cisco and so on.

Sure, but I'll eat my hat if I can buy one on its own on TCR. It really
is too bad that CEX don't have a decent cable selection, since you can
get everything else from them.

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

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

Re: Mailbox power ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> It sounds more like your file system has corrupted and needs manual
> fsck (problem common to any version of UNIX running
> non-logging/journeling file system).  If you have a remote console on
> it then you can fix this remotely.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. And there's me with no laptop. H...
Netras have those RJ45 serial ports don't they? The kind that no-one
sells cables for (well, no-one on Tottenham Court Rd) so you have to
make you own? It's all coming back to me now.

I forecast those boxen being down for a while. (I'm only looking after
them on a goodwill basis).


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

Re: Mailbox power ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> I hope that you have a serial console connection which will let you do
> this!

Yeah, like we'd be using Mailbox if we could afford a terminal server.
:-O

Tnx for the info tho' I can never rember stuff like that. 


> -Dom

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

Re: Mailbox power ..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> this mornings powerdown  @ 06:00 .. what time did yours come back up and
> has it gone up and down again since then .. mines been down twice :(

Oh bcks. Mine hasn't come back up at all. H.. I have a feeling
Sun's netra t1's don't auto power up. Design flaw. Must phone mailbox.
Grrr.
 
-- 
Jonathan Peterson
Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, 020 7383 6092
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Migrating South (was Good Accountants)

[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: Good Accountants (?)

[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]

Re: Good Accountants

[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

[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: Tech mtg - AAarrrgghh

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> That sounds like a great idea. Now, all we need in someone to
> organise it.
>
> Did you say you weren't busy for the next couple of weeks :)

If the powers that be give my penderel account the necessary privs to alter
the site then I will organise.

Note that this email will expire tomorrow and I'll be reachable at either
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Optimistic people can email me the their slides / notes / pictures and I
will convert / HTML-ise / upload as one big tarball as necessary.

RE: Tech mtg - AAarrrgghh

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> That sounds like a great idea. Now, all we need in someone to
> organise it.
>
> Did you say you weren't busy for the next couple of weeks :)

[apologies if this message gets sent twice, there's summat funny going on]

If the powers that be give my penderel account the necessary privs to alter
the site then I will organise.

Note that this email will expire tomorrow and I'll be reachable at either
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Optimistic people can email me the their slides / notes / pictures and I
will convert / HTML-ise / upload as one big tarball as necessary.

RE: Tech mtg - AAarrrgghh

[Jonathan Peterson]

It's just occured to me that today is the day that I have to move all my
belongings out of my desk and back home. That's about half a bookshelf, a
complete change of clothes and a bottle of tequila (and that's just my
bottom draw).

This is incompatible with travelling to State51 tonight :-(

Any chance of slides etc being posted to the web site? If we could get
something in the way of a summary of our technical meetings on the site, it
would not only help people who can't make the meetings, but would show to
the world what great things we do...



----
Jonathan PetersonIdeas Hub Ltd
(t) +44 (0)20 7487 1310
www.ideashub.com

RE: Komodo

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> umm ... since Linux accounts (at a guess) for 75% of Perl
> usauge, thats
> quite an 'afterthought'. My guess is they see ActiveState
> Perl as taking
> over the world and these tools are simply there to help get it to that
> position.

I think it's more than Windows accounts for 75% of the IDE market, rather
than the Perl market...

Anyway, I thought all this stuff about non-standard kinds of Win32 Perl was
sorted out years ago. Activestate Perl is the same as anyone else's Perl,
shurely? All the brain ache surrounding PPM and CPAN modules and XS is not
strictly perl related is it? I mean how the hell do you install CPAN packges
on EPOC perl or Mac Perl or any other platform that doesn't smell of Unix?

I've I'm wrong and Activestate Perl is full of unreleased modifications to
Perl itself or the core libs I'd like to know if it...

RE: Komodo

[Jonathan Peterson]

> > I note that the Linux distribution of Kodomo contained
> complete distributions
> > of Mozilla, Perl and Python.
>
> /me cancels the download, suggests Activestate acquire some Clue
>

Isn't that a bit harsh? If the Linux version is a Beta / Alpha type deal it
seems fair enough they want people to test it with known versions of its
dependant apps, no?

It its a full release then sure they should be a bit smarter.

RE: JOB: Anyone interested

[Jonathan Peterson]

> FYI this particular role wasn't available; they tried to put me up for
> some other things but didn't even get as far as interviews.
> 
> Roger (now working elsewhere)

Curious. Identical to my experiences with them.

Jon (soon to be working elsewhere)
 

perlcert list?

[Jonathan Peterson]

Is it me or is the perlcert list dead? I've not seen any messages for days
and one I tried now just vanished?


Jonathan PetersonIdeas Hub Ltd
(t) +44 (0)20 7487 1310
www.ideashub.com

>

RE: CPAN Logo

[Jonathan Peterson]

> > when did CPAN get a funky new logo ...
> >
> > http://www.cpan.org/misc/jpg/cpan.jpg
> >
>
> H

Indeedy. A logo that on its own gives you no idea that it has anything to do
with Perl. I especially like the use of a completely new font, rather than
the one used on O'Reilly books.

H

RE: Perl Certification Drive

[Jonathan Peterson]

> I think the money aspect is very important. This isn't YAS,
> it's supposed to
> be a professional qualification for professional programmers.
> £300 sounds
> like a good number for me. "If it only costs a fiver then
> what good can it
> be" will be the PHB's attitude, I've seen this often.

Yes, you are right. However, given the, ah, aversity of many perl programs
to getting certified, I'd like to remove barriers to entry. If we can get
the 'professional' stamp by sticking names like O'Reilly (Or Microsoft - why
not?) on the certificates, and then charge less, I think that would be
better. But if not, then I agree a charge (mayb more 50 than 300?!) can have
a similar effect.

Perl Certification Drive

[Jonathan Peterson]

> sorry, was unclear. robert proposed a meta-certification body
> which then
> gave the tests out to certifiers (netthink, iterative etc).
> this seems to
> me to be far too complicated and fragmented.

There are three main roles to this as I see it, and it's not obvious to me
that they should all be done by the same body.

1. Administration of the tests. Just the operational hassle of testing
people, scoring them, logging results, sending certificates out etc.

2. Creation of the tests. Deciding what the different exams are, how hard
they are, what questions in them each year (quarter?), etc.

3. Marketing. Creating awareness of the certification, encouraging employees
to take the certification, making employers aware of it, encouraging
organisations to help with number 1 above.

Of all of these 1 is the hardest. IMO web based tests are inadequate. It's
too easy to cheat, from having the book in front of you, to having your mate
next to you, to doing it under 15 different names and seeing which one does
best. I'm not discounting a purely web based test, but I'm not convinced.

This means, you need to sit people down in exam like conditions of some
sort, where you can enforce at least time limit, that the person doing the
test is the one getting the certificate, and that they don't phone a friend
etc.

I think the only way of making this feasible, then, is to distribute it
across any company willing to participate. All it needs is for a company to
set a meeting room aside for a day, and provide a volunteer to administer
the test. We should be able to get corporates to do this in exchange for the
publicity and goodwill, and a small admin fee payed by each candidate
(fiver?).

Part of the role of the people doing task 2 will be to ensure that the tests
can be easily administered in this way.

Comments?

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> > Well as a fairly independent person in this matter, i will volunteer
> > to coordinate this. Unless there are any objections - i already
>
> TIMTOWTDI kind of screws things up. Different people will code in
> different styles. How can you evaluate this?

I don't think it's a huge problem. For a start, certification can be
multiple choice, which eliminates the need to deal with correct answers in
esoteric style. (shamless plug for my amazing perltest project -
http://www.snowdrift.org/computers/perl/pt/)

Secondly, there is absolutely not reason why the certification can't agree
on a compulsory style. This is what happens in driving tests. There is more
than one way to turn the steering wheel, from suicide spinner to hand over
hand, but the driving certification declares that shuffling (or whatever
it's called) is the 'correct way'. No-one actually believes that you're a
dangerous driver if you use one of the other methods in some situations, and
it all works OK.

Thirdly, IMO certification is more about establishing that the candidate
doesn't do stupid things than that they are very clever. The driving test
only seeks to establish that you've read the highway code, and can get from
A to B without screwing up.

Likewise Perl certification should seek to show that a candidate has RTFM'd
and get get from A to B without screwing up, for various values of A and B .

>
> If I see a sensible plan for certification, this sounds sensible, but
> consider what most people think of eg. MCSEs.

Most _people_ consider MCSEs a useful way of gauge a minimum standard of
knowledge in prospective employees. Most professional system engineers and
programers may feel differently.

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

I quote from the MediaSurface brochure on my desk:

"The Content Server is written in Perl, the de facto standard language for
server-side applications on the World Wide Web."

> It's not just that, if a software house wants to support a languages
> interaction with its product, where does it go for Perl? P5P? CLPM?
> Could a CEO/CTO go on and really discuss sensitive matters with
> either group?

Alas that TPI went titsup.com. Businesses love partnerships - they smell of
shared risks. Businesses can partner with RedHat to get involved with Linux.
They can't partner with anyone but ActiveState to get involved with Perl,
and for some reason ActiveState just don't seem to have the right vibes.

> Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest
> problems with Perl work in london, coming from the other side of
> things.

Yeah it's a bitch.

> *sigh*
>
> Greg
>
> --
> Greg McCarroll
http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> I reckon interperability is big, and that XML-RPC (or possibly even
> SOAP) will change the way we work. There's no point writing everything
> in one language or environment any more. Microsoft may have understood
> this with .NET. Discuss.

MS have understood this ever since they realised that VB and C++ worked well
together by addressing differnent roles and different markets. MS have
always been remarkably language agnostic - sure they like to embrace and
extend, but at least they do embrace. Rexx, Test, Perl, VB, QB, C++, C, ADA
are all languages that MS has officially supported now or in the past, and
there are probably many others. Hell, MS were even going to support Java,
until Sun told them they couldn't, simply because they wanted to make it
actually useful by fixing it.*



*Yeah, I'm the one person in the universe who supported MS in their case
with Sun.



> Leon
> --
> Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/
> yapc::Europehttp://yapc.org/Europe/
>
> ... With a rubber duck, one's never alone
>

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> The "J2EE platform" consists of so many disparate technologies
> that it's very hard to generalise about it. It's quite easy
> to get a non-Java program to talk to an HTTP servlet, for
> example :-)

:) I was thinking of EJB, specifically. Once you put a load of logic into
beans, it seems damned hard to use them without the rest of the Java based
infrastructure.

> Presumably most people build solutions around e.g. weblogic,
> rather than doing everything from raw ingredients.

Yes, they do. Pity. I'm starting to be of the opinion that having a platform
that will scale nicely tomorrow is no reason to have a platform that is 3
times as complex as it needs to be today.

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> you've heard the adage "noone was ever sacked for hiring ibm"
> - i think
> we're moving towards s/IBM/Java/

This is, probably, true. That doesn't prevent there being a huge role for
Perl.

One thing to remember is that the hype cuts two ways. We may read in a
magazine of ten projects using Java, and none using Perl, but that is as
much because the companies that are using Perl don't bother sending press
releases to everyone than it is because no one is using Perl.

I'd also add that Java, to my eyes, seems dreadfully uncooperative. Is it
really as hard as it seems to get a non Java program to talk to j2ee stuff?
Or is it all just part of the Java marketing? Is it me or is COM actually
way easier to use than CORBA?

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> afford and retain uber perl hackers) people start wanting to hear the
> corporate technology buzzwords - j2ee, open market, bea, sap,
> siebel etc
>
> this is just my 2p - please appreciate that i would love the
> situation to
> be different (ie people queueing up for solutions using open source
> methods - particulary perl) but i don't think that is the market
> situation.

I actually think we've reached a peak on this, depending somewhat on market
sector. Big corporates tend to go for siebel and co in large part because
they can justify the capex (capital expenditure - i.e. big lump sums) far
more easily than they can justify opex (operation expenditure - i.e. ongoing
costs like wages). Why this should be is a whole other story, but that's the
case. It makes it easy to get the board to sign off a 500,000 license fee,
but hard to get them to sign off new people. They are also more used to
writing off investments over a 3-5 year period.

The recent .com crash has had many desirable effects as well as undesirable
ones, and one of these is the devaluation in hype in .com related
technologies. An awful lot of the value of the big packages is based on
future value - "You don't need this software today, but you will in a year's
time so buy it today and you'll be ahead of the competition and able to
scale up fast when the orders start pouring in!". This doesn't carry much
weight anymore.

Another reason I think people will move away from big packages is that
another chunk of their supposed attractiveness was that you wouldn't end up
hostage to a bunch of unruly techies in the basement, without whom you were
sunk. All it means is that you end up hostage to a single software supplier,
without whose expensive support contracts you are sunk.


I actually think that in lean times, Perl appears extremely attractive, and
now would be a good time to get the marketing bandwagon rolling. Of course
Perl is free and has no marketing bandwagon, but there's always speaker's
corner...

RE: originality

[Jonathan Peterson]

> This _really_ should happen.

Can we get some O'Reily collateral to hand out to the congregation?

RE: originality

[Jonathan Peterson]

> taking over a London Eye pod

Did this on Friday. Not worth the money. Especially in the fog.

> hiring a room in the V&A, Science Museum or Nat Hist Museum

If you could get a private view (so to speak) of the difference engine or
the BABY stuff they are doing in the Sci museum, that would be cool.

> Sunday morning Perl advocacy at Speaker's Corner

LoL that would rock, but only if we do it in fire-brand preacher style with
badly painted boards saying "Many are tempted by Java but all can be saved
if they take Perl into their businesses" and "Sun says 'Only Java can
deliver enterprise class solutions' but those who hear the word of Wall know
'There is more than one way to do it'".

> Walking round London with a PERL SALE board

Or a P is my B board? [duck]

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> i also think there is still room for sensible consultancies
> and contracting.
> i think the 1000 quid a day for web development companies will have a
> major problem however.

I hope so, they deserve it.

> at cebit, BT devices crashed and burned - why? they had been rushed
> out. BT is essentially a good technology if done right, the same is
> true for web sites, the industry just needs to slow its self down

I couldn't agree more. Of the .com companies I've seen screwing their
technology up, ridiculous deadlines for development have been the root cause
in most cases. The whole 'Doing business in Internet time' hype is stupid,
and just leads to people acting without thinking and then being charged
twice as much for shoddy work that appears to be completed quickly.

RE: Job: I'm looking for one..

[Jonathan Peterson]

> > > On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 05:19:12PM +0100, Leo Lapworth wrote:
> > > >Just to let you all know I'm on the market again.
> > >
> > > Me too.
> >
> > er.. and me.
> Ah.  The DotCom Apocalypse :)

Rumour has it that many people are bringing tech in house, which is hitting
conslutancies and agencies harder. I'm still not convinced that there's a
major downturn in the total number of tech jobs.

RE: white wine

[Jonathan Peterson]

> Graves, Monbazilac etc.  and had a very nice Trochenbeerenauslese a
> month or so ago that I reckon was just s good (and it
> should have been

It is a sad sad thing that it's darn near impossible to get decent German or
Austrian wine in this country since the Austrian anti-freeze scandal (and
since crap Liebfraumilch).

Anyone know a decent London win merchant who stocks a good range of German
or Austrian wines. Not just the desert wines, but the lighter ones too. I've
only ever seen eiswine for sale in a small number of restaurants, usually at
10UKPS / glass +

RE: white wine

[Jonathan Peterson]

> On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 11:22:34PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> > Unfortunately, the lovely Italian wine I found in caffs
> throughout Naples
> > back in November does not seem to be available over here at all.
>
> Why ship the good stuff to the ignorant Brits when they can
> keep it for
> themselves? Sounds like pretty good thinking to me.

Which reminds me - when the Brits acquired a taste for lager rather than
ale, why did we start drinking lager from every country in Europe except
Germany, who are the only ones to actually make drinkable stuff?

Falco!

[Jonathan Peterson]

Oopsy daisy

$job--; #not my fault!

If anyone wants to employ me please say so. Will wear suit for food. I do
management strategy marchitecture stuff. Or Perl if necessary. Or Solaris
sysadmin if desperate.

Laters,

Jon


Jonathan PetersonIdeas Hub Ltd
(t) +44 (0)20 7487 1310
www.ideashub.com

ISO 11180

[Jonathan Peterson]

> At 12:33 21/03/2001 +, Piers Cawley wrote:
>
> >Can I commend ISO 11180 to you?
>
> Hah - they think of everything.
>
> Just a shame that, as you have to pay for it, chances are
> most people won't
> use it.

Which, I'm obliged to say, can only be for the best.

The fact that government organisations have to use standards such as this
presumably explains why they move at half the speed of private enterprises.
I especially like the use of fixed width fields everywhere. Nice.

RE: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Jonathan Peterson]

> This site seems to confirm it tho:
>
> 
>

Hmmm, 11 reasons to use this format:

5 of these reasons are "Because it makes it easier for me to write software
if you do" which don't carry much weight IMNSHO

However, in the spirit of standardisation, I'd like to suggest:

1. Please can we stop this silly 'firstname lastname' format. The most
significant string (family name) should come first, with a standard
delimiter (comma) before the first name (which should come last). This is
what bibliographies and libraries have used for years, so should everyone
else. Please use:
LASTNAME, [FIRSTNAME|FIRST INITIAL]

2. The address format is a real mess, being least significant string first,
and no clear guide as to whether comma or newline or both are the acceptable
delimiters. Also, the location of the postcode string is arbitrary, and in
any case the postcode repeats information and is often redundant. However,
since postcodes can be easily fed into computer programs, and are language
independant, they should replace all that other stuff.
Please use:
ISO planet code, ISO country code, POSTCODE, Building Number[, apartment
number][, business name]

Note also that country code is compulsory. In the past post offices assumed
that addresses without a country code were local and assumed the 'current'
country as the one required for delivery. This sort of assumption landed us
in the Y2K mess where people foolishly assumed that a year was in the
'current' century, for some silly reason.

Note too that ISO planet code has been introduced so that when we colonise
mars, we will not be left with 3 billion ambiguous addresses! What a mess
that would be! As you see I have really learned from the Y2K thing, which
caused such massive chaos here on earth when all the computers stopped
working and the planes fell out of the sky etc etc.

I hope others will take these suggestions to heart,

Peterson, Jonathan
Earth, UK, W1H 6LT, 40, Ideashub
2001-03-21

RE: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Jonathan Peterson]

> 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: Matt's Scripts

[Jonathan Peterson]

> which is simply not needed.  If a user can't use scp, then I
> don't want
> that user.  I mean, it's not hard FFS.

Scp is not hard. Users should be able to use scp. However, the real point is
that scp sucks. scp is to a sensible way of transfering files what
command.com is to a good shell. scp is stateless. scp makes you enter your
password, again, all the time. scp doesn't let you browse the remote machine
(hell, even ftp manages that). scp doesn't do ASCII conversion between
differing architectures. scp doesn't even let you upload two files from
different directories in a single operation, where operation is defined in
human rather than computer terms.

sftp is obviously better in every respect than scp, and the only reason for
inflicting scp on a user is to convince them to spend the cash on f-secure's
sftp client for win|mac|whatever.

However, a million times better than any of these is to use SMB (just not
with plain text pwords). And if the client really needs to constantly upload
and download files in an encrypted state, setting up a VPN is the way to go,
and then they can use whatever they want, presumably SMB or NFS if the pipe
is at all reliable.

RE: Matt's Scripts

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> There is a GUI front-end for pscp, available from
> http://www.i-tree.org/, apparently, although I haven't tried it.

This is kind of flakey, and has trouble with stuff like files owned by a
user or group with more than 8 characters in its name. This is because it
determines filenames by doing ls and then counting a fixed number of columns
in from the left. :-(

RE: Matt's Scripts

[Jonathan Peterson]

> Could we write some sort of internal installer process so the
> instruction
> to the user would be type 'perl rand_text2.pl configure' and
> the script
> then rewrites itself.  Updating #! lines etc, possibly even asking

No, most people using these scripts don't have command line access to the
servers that they need to install the scripts on. We'd have to do something
like:

go to http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/randtext2.pl?mode=configure

and then have configure itself online.

RE: Matt's Scripts

[Jonathan Peterson]

> Yes, but *is a security hole, and not a small one*, usually.

Yes, if you put the wrong things in there, like locations of files. I guess
maybe Matt does this. On the other hand, other things can go in harmlessly,
and should, such as the response email address for formmail.

As for the security issue, there's no reason why we can't place extra layers
of checking in for these values (although of course that may not close all
holes).

I suppose in extreme cases where the original is a security nightmare, the
backward compatability mode should be off by default rather than on by
default - but if we don't acheive easy compatability no-one will use the
replacements.