A fin is a limb on a fish.

Get yourself a copy of "Perl Best Practices" and read it. It will show you the errors of your ways and make you write better and more readable code.

No, but perhaps a "my ($a,$b,$c) = @_;" would have been. Since I'm a long-time Perl programmer, I can't really speak for the newbie. But the use of the numerous $_[n]-lines is probably unclear. In any case, it is considered bad code, since it is both hard to read and error prone.

Using a foreach, instead of the C-style for loop, is certainly easier and MUCH closer to the implementation used in Quorum and Randomo. So that, at least, was very poorly thought-out. And Randomo? Is it really random? Or is it really Quorum with a bunch of substitutions made? Just look at the code samples.

When I had a look at the paper, the first thing I noticed was the use of the ampersand sigil in a function call. This has been considered bad code in Perl since time immemmorial and really goes to show to things:
* The researchers didn't know the first thing about contemporary Perl and didn't bother to find out, ie. do research.
* The researchers did nothing to make the Perl code readable, which is paramount for newbies to any language.

And worst of all, and this is really appalling, they are cherry-picking their methods. Just look at the table and the numbers, then read their analysis. And don't even get me started on the sample-size...

It is sad indeed that the death of this man, who contributed a whole lot more to IT, will be overshadowed by the death of a CEO whose main achievement was dishing out cool gadgets. Without Dennis Ritchie, these gadgets would never have seen the light of day.

No Ritchie, no UNIX, no FreeBSD, no OSX. (And, of course, no Windows or Linux either.)

Without the C programming language, the IT world would be completely different today.
May he rest in peace.

That's a ridiculous idea! Torvalds has never shown anything but contempt for Apple's products. When Torvalds started hacking together linux, Mac OS was still in version 7 (or was it even 6). Say what you like about the GUI, but under the hood, OS 7 was a complete mess, as were 8 and 9.

Of course, OS X changed all this, after ten years of Linux, when Torvalds and his kernel had become world-famous. If anything, it is the other way around. Iow, the success of Linux inspired Apple enough to believe that they could greatly improve on their system. Now, OS X is based on FreeBSD, which certainly has been heavily influenced by Linux. I'm not claiming that OS X would never have seen the light of day without Linux, but it would certainly have been a crappier product.

Of course, this all applies to the technology under the hood. Linus has never been active in GUI development, which is were Apple has become famous.

In the case of Orval, the beer is brewed under license by a private company. The brewery just happens to be placed within the walls of the abbey and is therefore permitted to carry the trappist log on the bottle. The beer can be brewed by anyone, as long as it's under the supervision of the monks. As far as the US goes, I suppose the trappist logo is a registered trademark, so the product must meet the approval of the trademark owner in the US as well. Since all the major trappist breweries avoid mentioning who does the actual brewing (except when stating that it's a separate company, as in the case of Orval), I suspect that none of them are really brewed by monks. The monks at Westvleteren, however, do not allow reselling the beer and will only sell only one crate per visitor, which is why I suspect that their beer is actually brewed by the monks themselves. It is easily the best of the Trappists, perhaps because of that reason. And I'm not just saying that because it's so hard to get. If you find a bottle in a beer shop in eg. Brussels, it's well worth the hefty price you have to pay.

If you actually knew what you're doing and are using the correct modes and macros, coding HTML with emacs can be quite OK. I certainly haven't found anything better, but HTML has never been my main language.

Actually, the pure text editor is at the core of any developer's toolbox. Anything else gives up too much control and will. The best HTML coders I've met have all used their favourite text editors with awesome results. The notion that a specially designed tool must be the best for a specific task is a myth.

This will actually become a HUGE problem for the people of the member states.

Unlike the US, the EU doesn't recognise concepts like "unlawful search", "evidence inadmissible in court", etc. It's up to the member states. And many member states have an attitude that basically boils down to "evidence is evidence, regardless of how it was obtained". If you're arrested in, say, Finland and demand any rights, the response will be along the lines of "You don't have any rights! You've been watching too much television!"

I used to have a lot of anti-US sentiments, but lately I've come to realise what a great document the Bill of Rights actually is.

Valid points, but the question is about buying, not using floppies. I myself have probably used a floppy less than five years ago, but I don't think I've bought any for more than ten years.

And there are no other options??? Problem is that tasers are used where no force should be used at all, except for perhaps grabbing the suspect, maybe putting on handcuffs, and transferring the suspect off the premises or into a police car. As the GP said, we've all seen the videos of police and security officers torturing people with tasers as a punishment for disobedience. Apparently, torture is OK when performed with tasers.

If it's true, that tasers are so goddamn safe, yet 70 people died of tasers last year, then doesn't it imply that police officers with tasers are just a bit too trigger-happy? Perhaps the problem IS procedural. But Taser International is certainly responsible for marketing these perhaps less lethal, but still lethal torture devices as a "safe" alternative to grabbing the suspect/disobedient citizen.

Your idea of a perfect world is a world without sex???