Try looking at Perl code from 2009 instead.
You can say that Perl code from 2000 and Perl code written today are practically two different programming languages.

Differently from most other languages, Perl is an evolving language.

Just so you can get a clear example, compare the syntax of Perl code written using MooseX::Declare with whatever code you're dealing with:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/MooseX-Declare/lib/MooseX/Declare.pm

I bet if it wasn't for the dollar signs in front of variable names, you wouldn't even recognize it as Perl.

So, yes, Perl code from the 2000 is mostly crappy. Look for the newer stuff.

I happen to be Uruguayan and currently live in Uruguay... and while I endorse the OLPC project in my country (Plan Ceibal), I'd say you're grossly exaggerating its results - we already had a very good literacy prior to it (as in, better than the US), and the XO itself might not even have been the cheapest option.

The assessment from the study cited in the article I linked to might exaggerate the results, but note that the reference was to computer literacy, not literacy -- there's a pretty big difference between the two. (And, incidentally, the US has pretty abysmal levels of functional literacy, so if you are using any meaningful measure of literacy to compare with, I wouldn't classify "better than the US" as necessarily "very good" when it comes to literacy.)

and the XO itself might not even have been the cheapest option.

The XO may not be the cheapest (or even, what is more important, cost effective) option, perhaps -- though "might not be" isn't the same as a credible basis for believing that its not -- but certainly, the existence of the XO has spurred lots of efforts by big players in the hardware and software industry whose place would be threatened by widespread adoption of another platform to compete directly with it, and those other companies are defending long-term profit interests that go well beyond the immediate market for the XO and similar devices. But those other choices wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the OLPC project.

And, whether its necessarily the best product or the best solution, its hard to call the XO's that have been delivered, and what they have enabled, not a real product or a real solution.

Though if the OLPC project had not existed, I doubt such a far-reaching and ambitious plan would have been implemented, so even if it was more PR than anything, it WAS important, in making the politician's minds open to the possibility (and it was a HUGE selling point for politicians of the current party in power at the recent elections which they won).

The page linked to is an ad laden (carefully selected related items, yeah right) mess that has this third or fourth hand.

True. The source is a badly written Bloomberg story which says the new battery has a capacity of "3.4 amperes per hour". I wrote to the reporter pointing out the meaninglessness of that number. The useful numbers for battery technologies are $/KwH and Kg/KwH, and they don't have those. The only useful piece of information in the story is that Panasonic will make a real announcement tomorrow.

Apple is going to release a new version of the iPhone in the summer? Wow, how surprising and unprecedented

So it has multiple inheritance, namespaces (ok it *finally* has those), compiler-guaranteed type safety (some don't like this feature, but you can't say it's the same thing that's for sure), and metaprogramming/templating? I'm pretty sure it has none of those, and its OO implementation is pretty terrible in general. PHP is great for making a quick web page or simple web app, but once you get into more complex projects the simple static traceability of C++, not to mention multiple inheritance and the like, start to pay off in huge ways. The speed, while still an advantage (even just in symbol table lookups), isn't near as much a factor as the development time is.

Probably not, no.

"I'm re-painting the garage and wanted to find out if latex would bond to stucco, so I thought I would do a 'search' for... I don't know... latex bondage!" Happens all the time

I think what people are welcoming is a balance of power. Anyone with a little wisdom will understand that big corporations will be untrustworthy no matter who they are. They need someone to keep them in check.

For years Microsoft hasn't had an effective opponent and the industry has felt the impact. Otherwise viable alternatives aren't viable because of incompatibility, (likely intentional) interoperability problems, etc.

So I am still cautiously cheering Google on for a bit - I feel like the playing field is leveling and that will force everyone to play more fair. When there's no monopoly to abuse, you can't abuse it.

Yeah man! Fight the power!

Or being invisible to X-Ray...

I have mixed feelings on this. I have a 4 year in computer engineering, so I've had my fair share of calc, but I regard school as largely wasted time. Most of the material wasn't so new or wasn't something I couldn't have learned in less time with curiosity and search engines.

But recently I had to hire a few people. I hired one that seemed pretty promising but switched his degree from computer science to IS because he couldn't pass calc. He sucked horribly. According to him he's "math retarded" and the only math related thing he's good at is programming... only he sucks at programming.

Then I hired a guy that had a degree in mechanical engineering but wanted to take a crack at programming. He had no problem with calc, a bit with differential equations. He had no programming experience. He was so teachable, such a quick learner, he was leaps and bounds better. I have no gripes about this guy.

This is anecdotal, but it was quite eye-opening for me and reinforced my suspicion that people that can handle hard math can generally kick ass programming.

It's not as simple as $poundsLost - exercising will build muscle and make you healthier in so many ways. Muscle is heavier than fat. Even if you didn't lose a bunch of pounds, after exercising for a while you're benefiting from a healthier cardiovascular system and more balance in terms of muscle tone. At the worst point in my health I started working out and I was pleased to lose a pound or two a week, because it wasn't just fat lost it was muscle gained as well. If you didn't lose a pound at all working out is worth it because your mood improves and your entire body feels better. Weight isn't everything.

Yeah! Thieves that paid for the hardware they "stole"! Dirty bastards!

Excellent point. Garbage collection is not an end-all solution. It's good for some things, but not all things.
Working on a large flash game, I frequently ran into code like this:

... because Garbage Collectors work based on references. That line of code is directly equivalent to

There were *more* memory leaks in that application than in any non-GC'd app I'd worked on, because programmers got lazy and figured GC would take care of everything for them.

And that's just the first problem I have with GC. The client demanded this program be done in flash or no contract, so we were stuck with flash. Our graphics suffered a few framedrops every few seconds, and we determined it was due to Garbage Collection, which we have no controll over. Our workaround, which makes me sick to this day, was to allocate a bunch of random lightweight objects every few cycles to trigger their garbage collection more often.

That just wouldn't have happened if we used C++.

Absolutely true, but it's a lot easier to get that courage when you've communicated ahead of time with thousands of others and you know they'll be there too.