That's a fair point.

Thanks for the info - I'll go brush up on C++ again.

Perl's strength is that it's expressive. It's not a language which is easy to learn or which generates heavily optimized code.

In the demo phase, you're not really worried about performance. The goal is to have something showing as quickly as possible, and not worry too much about how fast it runs, or how much memory it takes. Overspec your demo system for the time being (ie - make it really fast and install lots of memory), and once you have a reasonable interface go back and recode it in a simpler language which can be more easily optimized.

Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive. You end up spending tons of time debugging issues of memory allocation, library interface details, and datatype conversion.

Expressive languages are harder to learn, but any individual line in the expressive language does a lot more. Since you are writing fewer lines, and since the fewer lines do more, you end up making programs more easily and in less time.

Yes, the programs will execute a little slower, but as mentioned, this is not important in the demo stage. Your productivity will be much higher. And there are lots of places where performance simply doesn't matter. Scripts usually fall into this category.

Perl was designed by a linguist, not an engineer. As such, it's harder to learn (it's got tons more keywords and context), but once you get the hang of it coding is much more efficient. The following single line:

@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;

unfolds into several lines of C++, plus a subroutine definition with datatype definitions. The following line:

@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;

can be implemented using one of over a dozen possible library calls in C++, but is builtin in perl. You don't have to look up the library call interface specific to your system.

And note that writing unreadable/unmaintainable code is an aspect of the *coder*, not the language. If you disregard perl because "other people use it to write poorly" you are probably one of those people, in which case you should avoid coding altogether.

"Hi, I'm the lowest-level support guy, I've got this menu I have to go down before I give up and connect you to someone who understands your problem."

"Let's start. Unplug the modem, wait 60 seconds, and plug it back in. Does that solve your problem?"

(Several steps later)

"Okay, now unplug the ethernet cable from the modem and computer, switch it end-for-end, and plug it back in again. Does that solve your problem?(*)"

This is what I have to go through before I can talk to someone about their system bouncing an E-mail I sent.

It's a psychology thing. When you need to give someone instructions or ask for help or whatever, you have to communicate the situation and what you want done.

I've never had a problem with level 2 support, they understand the problem, ask some pertinent questions ("but you can otherwise access the internet OK, yes?") and fix the problem.

If the level 1 person continually misunderstands what you are describing, misdiagnoses the problem, or stubbornly avoids dealing with your problem getting angry is a natural consequence. They are wasting your time, and doing it on purpose.

It's OK to get angry at stupid, stubborn people.

(*) Not making this up. An actual Comcast level-1 support request.

Firstly, the mosquito in question, Aedes aegypti is not native to the Americas. If we destroy them utterly, bats and whatever will go back to eating other mosquitoes.

Secondly, the release of genetically altered mosquitoes has been done before in the Cayman Islands, which reduced the mosquito population by 80%.

Thirdly, this type of modification (where the insects mate but the offspring don't develop) has been done in America before with the screw worm, which infected mostly livestock (and some humans). The screw worm has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, good riddance.

And finally, the headline "FDA Wants To Release Millions of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes In Florida" is one-sided and inflammatory. It does not mention "FDA wants to control several types of tropical fevers" or "FDA wants to eliminate a non-native pest that transmits disease".

Let's get everyone all worked up about the uncertainties of genetic engineering by completely ignoring the contextual reasons for doing so.

Because, you know, genetic engineering is bad in any form, even if it saves lives and brings the ecology closer to its original state.

I see this type of quip a lot on slashdot.

It's meant to push a specific agenda by pointing out yet another bit of anecdotal evidence that something is "obviously" wrong(*).

In this case it's the "obvious" wrongness of libertarianism and free market capitalism, even though the telco/ISP situation is so far removed from a free market that the label doesn't apply. The subtext is "we need government regulation because free capitalism doesn't work".

Except that the anecdote is completely the opposite of free capitalism.

Most people don't bother to pick apart the logic of such a statement - they rely on the innuendo as a shortcut for the best position to take. As Robert Cialdini points out in his book "Influence", it engages one of our automatic systems of information gathering: click, whirr... "capitalism doesn't work, got it!".

What could be the motivations of someone pushing this type of agenda on an audience of highly trained, highly-intelligent viewers, I wonder? Why would they want to bypass the rational process to engage the automatic system in an attempt to sway opinion?

(*) Another type is the framing association quip, such as always writing "Libertarian" next to a derogatory word such as "loonie", as in "yet more Libertarian hogwash" as if "hogwash" was a foregone conclusion.

Huh, I didn't know that.

If figured that the message body and subject text could be encrypted separately from the routing (and other) header information.

Today, I learned.

My top priority is privacy.

Does their service have built-in encryption, such that they cannot decrypt the message contents?

I can do spam filtering, searching, and other rule-based operations on my home system. What I *can't* do locally is prevent others from sticking their noses in my business.

Whether it be my ISP adding ads to the data stream for goods and services I might be interested in, or the website provider tailoring ads for goods and services that might be of interest to me, or my home country looking for perceived criminal activity, or someone *else's* country looking to steal corporate secrets or leverage me into forced compliance, or any of a number of other reasons.

Of late I'm actually pretty interested in the privacy aspect.

How high up on your list of priorities is privacy?

Here's a concrete example for you.

Cleveland Cops recently shot a black teenager who had an air-pistol.

That's OK, because the air pistol is indistinguishable from a real pistol (the red tip had been removed), and the police followed proper procedure. In a statement given to the press, the police described how the teenager had been told three times to raise his hands, and when he didn't comply and went for the pistol, he was shot twice and killed.

No problem, it wasn't a black-on-white issue, the police were responding to a call, it really *really* looked like he had a pistol, and he didn't respond to repeated commands to surrender.

...except that video of the shooting shows police opening fire less than 2 seconds after arriving on the scene, and neither [of the two policemen] administered first aid to Rice after the shooting.

The entire police force closed ranks and kept quiet while the department made an official statement that was a complete falsification of the evidence, in order for two officers to shirk legal responsibility. The police didn't release the surveillance video until public pressure forced them to.

So enlighten me, I'm confused. Which of the police in the Cleveland police force are *not* guilty of aiding and abetting a crime?

Get a used mouseman from ebay ($10 and free shipping), throw away the top cover, and 3-d print your own.

Don't own a 3-d printer? Probably one of your friends does, or the local university, or the local hackerspace, or as a last resort you can use shapeways.

Grab some modeling clay in your hand, make a 3-d scan of the resulting "handle", add fasteners for the buttons and ball (or IR chip), then 3-d print a custom-grip top cover. You can get IR mouse elements and ball elements from old mice, usually for free on Craigslist. Or the local Salvation Army store.

Purchase a sheet of friendly plastic (polycaprolactone), soften it in a pan of boiling water, then lay it over your relaxed open hand like a handkerchief. Wait for it to cool and harden, take a dremel to it, and use that as a custom-molded mouse top.

Get an Arduino, or any of the zillions of hobbyist microcontroller systems (pic, propeller, &c) which have a USB interface, and add buttons and an IR chip from an existing older mouse and program the buttons specifically for your needs.

Get a used mouse with lots of buttons, remount the buttons into a custom top as mentioned, then reprogram the button codes in the driver.

Or write your own USB driver at the OS level - it's not that hard. (For windows, it involves downloading the DDK and modifying an example found on the net.)

That is an excellent statement of the moral issues involved. Here are some more issues to consider:

Measles: We are spending science effort, money, and time producing a vaccine that replaces a person's physical weakness.

(Is character and lack of willpower a learned trait, or conditioned by physical attributes? Should we force people into weight-watchers and exercise programs?)

Guns: Guns have a protection effect similar to vaccines. Even though the probability of being self-injured by a gun goes up if you own one(*), the aggregate total chance of death from all causes goes down for the neighborhood. It's a sort of "herd immunity" for crime.

(Is restricting guns better or worse for society in general, as measured by the mortality rate?)

Flu: We are spending science effort, money, and time producing a vaccine who's purpose is largely to increase manufacturing productivity; ie - to keep you at work for an extra 5 days during the winter (**).

(Is it worth millions of people each spending $35 for a vaccine that's only partially effective?)

And note that everything mentioned is a probability, and that there is a probability of having a bad reaction to any individual shot. The probability is very low, but it's not zero.

(If the probability that the child will get the disease is lower than the probability that they will get a bad reaction, should we still force them to get vaccinated?)

What we have is a spectrum of efficacy weighed against the morality of forcing someone to do (or not do) something. The measles (and smallpox and polio) vaccine is on one end, while the Lyme vaccination is probably on the other.

Where do we draw the line with forcing people to do things? Is "living in society" a strong enough reason to go against someone's religious beliefs? Do the beliefs have to be religious to qualify for an exception?

Are we ready to ditch the doctrine of individual dissent, or must everyone bow to the wishes of society?

Where do we draw that line?

(*) Mostly due to suicide, and as has been pointed out, suicides will happen whether guns are available or not.

(**) Yes, the flu can kill and it's miserable to have, but the marketing is all about not losing work due to sick days. Go online and try to determine whether getting the flu shot is *effective* - you won't find studies, all you'll find is people saying "of course it is!". Science by authority, and all that.

Lessee here. 57 million calls at 10 seconds per call is about 433 man years wasted

I'm sorry, I don't get it.

You seem to be implying that I should care that you, an admitted telemarketer, might be put out of a job along with four others.

I just don't understand your position.

Could you explain it with a car analogy?

Way back in the 1970s, a scientist named Roy Curtiss engineered Chi-1776: a strain of E. Coli for precisely these purposes. It was unable to synthesize d-amino pimelic acid, it couldn't exchange plasmids(*) with other bacteria, it was killed by detergents and UV radiation, and so on.

It was subsequently discovered that the survival of Chi-1776 was greatly enhanced when a plasmid commonly used for research was added.

Chi-1776 was also found difficult to work with. The very safeguards that made it safe for experimental use also made it difficult to grow. In fermentors it was outcompeted by just about everything else in the environment, so absolutely sterile environments were required, and this turns out to be very difficult in practice.

In response, researchers turned to a strain labelled K-12 which had a higher survival rate than Chi-1776, but couldn't infect the digestive tract and also couldn't survive in the wild.

...until it was found to infect mouse digestive tracts after the mice had been given certain antibiotics.

Also, despite strict procedures in place for chemical or physical disinfection, K-12 was subsequently found in the sewer systems supporting the University of Texas.

Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it, or so they say. Does that statement apply to the current situation?

(*) A plasmid is a "loop" of DNA that is sometimes exchanged between bacteria. It's a method of propagating useful survival traits without going through the full reproductive cycle.

Because the police are terrified.

They have to respond to any incident as if it was the worst possible scenario, because if they ever, ever misjudge a situation they would be held responsible for "not doing enough" to stop crime.

They have to respond in the most dickish way possible.

Just ask them.

In the game, you control a fleet of starships as you journey through the galaxy to complete missions, protect planets and their inhabitants, and build a planetary federation.

That seems to be targeting only a subset of consumers(*).

What if I want to build a totalitarian empire? Subjugate and control planets, turn their productive output towards my ever-growing fleet of interplanetary destroyers? Drive my enemies before me, hear the lamentation of their women, yada yada.

Sort of like Ronan from Guardians of the galaxy?

Not all of us want to have good, clean, wholesome fun, 'ya know...

(*) I'm reminded of the children's holodeck game from Star Trek, where the "correct solution" was to broker a truce between the tree person and the water person. Made me want to puke.