🌐 Mailman 3 October 2005 - Python-list - python.org

Help beautify ugly heuristic code
by Stuart D. Gathman July 25, 2006

July 25, 2006

I have a function that recognizes PTR records for dynamic IPs. There is no hard and fast rule for this - every ISP does it differently, and may change their policy at any time, and use different conventions in different places. Nevertheless, it is useful to apply stricter authentication standards to incoming email when the PTR for the IP indicates a dynamic IP (namely, the PTR record is ignored since it doesn't mean anything except to the ISP). This is because Windoze Zombies are the favorite platform of spammers. Here is the very ugly code so far. It offends me to look at it, but haven't had any better ideas. I have lots of test data from mail logs. # examples we don't yet recognize: # # 1Cust65.tnt4.atl4.da.uu.net at ('67.192.40.65', 4588) # 1Cust200.tnt8.bne1.da.uu.net at ('203.61.67.200', 4144) # 1Cust141.tnt30.rtm1.nld.da.uu.net at ('213.116.154.141', 2036) # user64.net2045.mo.sprint-hsd.net at ('67.77.185.64', 3901) # wiley-268-8196.roadrunner.nf.net at ('205.251.174.46', 4810) # 221.fib163.satnet.net at ('200.69.163.221', 3301) # cpc2-ches1-4-0-cust8.lutn.cable.ntl.com at ('80.4.105.8', 61099) # user239.res.openband.net at ('65.246.82.239', 1392) # xdsl-2449.zgora.dialog.net.pl at ('81.168.237.145', 1238) # spr1-runc1-4-0-cust25.bagu.broadband.ntl.com at ('80.5.10.25', 1684) # user-0c6s7hv.cable.mindspring.com at ('24.110.30.63', 3720) # user-0c8hvet.cable.mindspring.com at ('24.136.253.221', 4529) # user-0cdf5j8.cable.mindspring.com at ('24.215.150.104', 3783) # mmds-dhcp-11-143.plateautel.net at ('63.99.131.143', 4858) # ca-santaanahub-cuda3-c6b-134.anhmca.adelphia.net at ('68.67.152.134', 62047) # cbl-sd-02-79.aster.com.do at ('200.88.62.79', 4153) # h105n6c2o912.bredband.skanova.com at ('213.67.33.105', 3259) import re ip3 = re.compile('([0-9]{1,3})[.x-]([0-9]{1,3})[.x-]([0-9]{1,3})') rehmac = re.compile( 'h[0-9a-f]{12}[.]|pcp[0-9]{6,10}pcs[.]|no-reverse|S[0-9a-f]{16}[.][a-z]{2}[.]' ) def is_dynip(host,addr): """Return True if hostname is for a dynamic ip. Examples: >>> is_dynip('post3.fabulousdealz.com','69.60.99.112') False >>> is_dynip('adsl-69-208-201-177.dsl.emhril.ameritech.net','69.208.201.177') True >>> is_dynip('[1.2.3.4]','1.2.3.4') True """ if host.startswith('[') and host.endswith(']'): return True if addr: if host.find(addr) >= 0: return True a = addr.split('.') ia = map(int,a) m = ip3.search(host) if m: g = map(int,m.groups()) if g == ia[1:] or g == ia[:3]: return True if g[0] == ia[3] and g[1:] == ia[:2]: return True g.reverse() if g == ia[1:] or g == ia[:3]: return True if rehmac.search(host): return True if host.find("%s." % '-'.join(a[2:])) >= 0: return True if host.find("w%s." % '-'.join(a[:2])) >= 0: return True if host.find("dsl%s-" % '-'.join(a[:2])) >= 0: return True if host.find(''.join(a[:3])) >= 0: return True if host.find(''.join(a[1:])) >= 0: return True x = "%02x%02x%02x%02x" % tuple(ia) if host.lower().find(x) >= 0: return True z = [n.zfill(3) for n in a] if host.find('-'.join(z)) >= 0: return True if host.find("-%s." % '-'.join(z[2:])) >= 0: return True if host.find("%s." % ''.join(z[2:])) >= 0: return True if host.find(''.join(z)) >= 0: return True a.reverse() if host.find("%s." % '-'.join(a[:2])) >= 0: return True if host.find("%s." % '.'.join(a[:2])) >= 0: return True if host.find("%s." % a[0]) >= 0 and \ host.find('.adsl.') > 0 or host.find('.dial-up.') > 0: return True return False if __name__ == '__main__': import fileinput for ln in fileinput.input(): a = ln.split() if len(a) == 2: ip,host = a if host.startswith('[') and host.endswith(']'): continue # no PTR if is_dynip(host,ip): print ip,host

6 14

Earthquake Forecasting Program July 11, 2005
by edgrsprj June 15, 2006

June 15, 2006

PROPOSED EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING COMPUTER PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT EFFORT Posted July 11, 2005 My main earthquake forecasting Web page is: http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/Data.html Newsgroup Readers: If you circulate copies of this report to groups of computer programmers at different universities etc. around the world then they might find the subject matter to be interesting. The information in this report represents expressions of personal opinion. THE GOAL OF THIS REPORT This is part of an effort to get some idea regarding how many computer programmers and other researchers around the world might be interested in participating in a project aimed at developing life saving earthquake forecasting computer programs. That effort is not presently underway. And I don't know when or if it will get started. I am simply attempting to determine if other people believe that large numbers of volunteers would be interested in working on such a project or if there would instead be little interest in it. That information would be helpful for developing a plan for establishing a Web site where the project would be centered. Personnel running the following Web site have volunteered to make their site available for such an effort. But nothing has gotten underway so far. http://www.ictwhoiswho.net/comprend/index.cfm If quite a few people were interested in such a Web site based computer program development effort then after it got started work would undoubtedly progress quite rapidly. If only a few were interested then it might never get started. If you would like to express an opinion on the likelihood of people being interested in the idea then you can try posting a note in response to this one. The sci.geo.earthquakes or comp.lang.misc newsgroups might be appropriate if you wish to post to just one newsgroup. Of you can try contacting me by e-mail. THE CORE OF THE PRESENT EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING PROGRAM In connection with an earthquake forecasting effort which has been underway for the past 15 years I believe I have been able to crack the "Earthquake Code." That means making crucially important discoveries regarding how earthquakes are being triggered. Two of them which are discussed on the following Web page are called the "Gravity Point" and "Earthquake Triggering Symmetry." http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/90-05.html The earthquake triggering and forecasting theories and data on that Web page were discussed on my behalf by one of my research colleagues in the People's Republic of China at a disaster mitigation conference in that country in December of 2003. Governments and disaster mitigation groups around the world were told about the Web site earlier this year. And my Web site visitor counter indicates that some 100 to 200 people around the world are presently downloading information from the site each day. My earthquake forecasting computer programs use those Gravity Point and Earthquake Triggering Symmetry discoveries and others to compare electromagnetic energy field fluctuation type signals (EM signals) with more than 30,000 earthquakes which occurred since the beginning of 1990. Some 100 to 200 signals detected during a 3 month period of time are involved. For some as yet unknown reason they are often highly selective for earthquakes which are likely to occur near populated areas, making them unusually valuable. The earthquake which is the best match with all of those signals is rated # 1. The worst match would have a rating number greater than 30,000. A listing of more than 100 of the best matches is then posted perhaps once a week to the following Web page: http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/Data.html For a recent example of how well that approach to forecasting earthquakes can work, data displayed on that Web page on June 27, 2005 gave the following earthquake a # 3 rating (possible rating range: 1 to 30,000+): 2005/01/11 19:19:48 11.40N 86.51W 40.7 5.0 Near the Coast of Nicaragua (U.S. National Earthquake Information Service data) And less than a week later on July 2, 2005 the following powerful and strongly felt earthquake occurred: 2005/07/02 02:16:46 11.18N 86.40W 45.5 6.7 Near the Coast of Nicaragua 11.40N and 86.51W versus 11.18N and 86.40W Pretty good accuracy for a forecasting program! That earthquake was reportedly strongly felt in Managua. Had it occurred directly beneath the city and near the surface then I expect that it would have been devastating. WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE Basically, more sophisticated data processing and data display computer program subroutines need to be developed. They could be built on my already existing computer programs and data. People would develop new subroutines, give them a try, and see if they did a better job of determining or displaying where an earthquake might be about to occur. The subroutines could be stored at the proposed Web site. Ones that were especially helpful could be merged into the main program one version of which might run as a CGI program at the Web site. Other versions of the programs would be downloadable for free for use on personal computers. The basic form of the data processing routine for my existing program and probably many other earthquake forecasting programs might be expressed in the following manner: Prob = aA + bB + cC + dD + eE + ... "Prob" is the probability that an earthquake of a given magnitude will occur at a specific latitude, longitude, depth, and time. A, B, C, D, and E . are things such as: A - the gradual buildup of strain in a fault zone due to the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates relative to one another B - temporary strain added to the fault zone by bending, stretching, and compression forces related to the Solid Earth Tide. (The ground shifts a little in response to the sun and moon gravities just as ocean water does - hence the Solid Earth Tide) C - temporary strain added to the fault zone by the weight of ocean water shifting from one location to another in connection with ocean tides a, b, c, d, and e .. are "weight" factors which specify how important A, B, and C etc. are at different points in time. "A," the gradual buildup of strain in a fault zone related to tectonic plate movement etc. is undoubtedly the most important factor and perhaps the only one which scientists around the world are in agreement on. It can probably be determined with a certain amount of accuracy for some fault zones at the present time, but not too many. With my present computer programs I do not use actual values for "A" as they would be impossible to determine. Instead when a strong EM signal is detected I simply assume that a fault zone somewhere has stored enough strain energy that it is about ready to fracture. And an effort is made to determine where it is located. With each probability calculation my present computer programs do about 30 separate comparisons between each of the 100 to 200 EM signals and the more than 30,000 earthquakes in my database file. The comparisons involve things such as the positions of the sun and the moon in the sky and the locations of ocean and Solid Earth Tide crests and troughs around the world when the EM signal was detected and when the earthquake occurred. For an example of one possible and relatively easy computer program improvement, an effort could be made to see if factoring in earthquake fault zone orientation - north and south versus east and west - improved the probability calculations. Another improvement would involve determining the importance of the latitudes of the Gravity Points and the sublunar points. At the present time only their longitudes are used in my calculations. (The sublunar point is the location on the surface of the Earth which a line drawn between the center of the Earth and the center of the moon would pass through.) An earthquake forecasting group at Madras University in India has already developed some advanced earthquake location determination routines which it appears might be helpful to this effort. Routines developed for use at the following Web sites might also be helpful. http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/step/ http://www-aig.jpl.nasa.gov/public/dus/quakesim/ THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IN PRESENT USE The original programs were written in a number of languages including Basic. The main program is presently written in Perl. That language was chosen because it is fast and powerful, the compiler can be downloaded for free by anyone, and because it looks like it is getting sufficient support that calculations can be trusted and it will be around for a while. There is another feature of that language which I am guessing many other programming languages probably presently offer though that was not the case in the past. That is the ability to make changes to the program code itself at the same time that the program is running. I myself do that in the following manner: Ordinarily the main program "P1" starts running and performs a group of calculations. That takes about 5 minutes. It then waits for a keyboard instruction telling it how the output data should be displayed. As with probably any program, once it is running in the normal mode no changes can be made to the program itself. However when it is run in the following experimental mode that rule does not apply. A short program I will call "P2" starts running and immediately uses a "do" statement to get the regular program P1 to compile and start running. P1 does the original calculations like normal. But instead of waiting for the operator to enter a data display command it exits and P2 becomes active again. A display instruction is entered and P1 is told to recompile and start running again. Instead of doing all of the calculations from scratch it jumps strait to the display routine and uses the entered command to begin printing the output data. The data generated when it originally did the calculations are still in memory. The advantage here is that at any time, program P1 can be called into a text editor, modified as desired, and then saved. A new display subroutine can be added to it or an existing routine can be modified while the previously generated data are still active in the computer. Then when P1 is directed by P2 to recompile (that takes about a second) and run, the new subroutine is included just as if it were in the original program. If the compiler encounters a programming error it terminates and returns control to program P2. A correction can then be made to the new program code and the sequence repeated. No data are lost because of the error. And you don't have to wait for 5 minutes while the program recalculates everything. Data processing and display routines could be written with other programming languages besides Perl. If done with sufficient care more than one language could be used at the same time. The different language routines would simply be linked with one another. A LIFE SAVING EFFORT It appears to me (sadly) that few governments have a very good sense of direction with regard to the development of life saving earthquake forecasting programs. The work is usually undertaken by independent research groups at various government agencies or universities. They go their own ways, uninterested in or unable to work with one another to effectively forecast deadly earthquakes. They often claim that if they share information then they could lose their patent rights and potential profits etc. And that could actually happen. But isn't saving tens of thousands of lives more important than simply making a meager profit (which no one that I am aware of is presently able to do with their forecasting programs anyway)? I myself presently own 3 U.S. copyrights related to my forecasting technology. But I have been letting interested parties around the world use it for free. See: http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/301.html One country where forecasting program information is shared to some extent is the People's Republic of China were some 10,000 people reportedly work full-time in a state sponsored earthquake forecasting program. They are also supported by a small army of volunteer workers. But even there the forecasting efforts of different groups are not effectively coordinated very often from what I can see. And advanced forecasting technology being developed in other countries is frequently ignored. A listing of some other earthquake forecasting programs around the world can be found on the following Web page: http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/141.html A book discussing one of the forecasting programs listed on that Web page is scheduled for release some time in late 2005. See: http://www.sentientpublications.com/catalog/earthquakes.php I myself assisted with that effort by providing the author with some free technical information and book content advice. The proposed Internet Web site effort to develop an effective earthquake forecasting program discussed in this present report could not be ignored by governments around the world. Once they saw how well the programs worked then they would be forced to begin using them to predict their own earthquakes. United Nations personnel appeared to like this concept when I formally proposed it to them in July of 2004. http://www.unisdr.org/wcdr-dialogue/t3-dialogue.htm#34 And they discussed it repeatedly in their summary reports of the ideas proposed during that Internet Web site based conference. But no governments or disaster mitigation groups expressed any interest in developing the concept. Since the starting point for the proposed forecasting program development efforts would be the computer programs that I already have running, success would be guaranteed. So, the important question would then be, "How many computer programmers and other researchers would be interested in helping with such an effort?" This type of work is quite interesting and exciting when you become actively involved with it. You can generate a forecast. And then when the earthquake occurs where you expected you can get a pretty good shock. If the earthquake is also destructive the experience can be rather frightening. The importance of the work should be obvious. More than a quarter of million people reportedly perished in connection with the December 26, 2004 earthquake generated tsunami (tidal wave) in the Indian Ocean. My present forecasting computer programs did not become operational until several weeks after it occurred. But when I ran my EM signal data from around that time through the programs the results indicated to me that the earthquake could have been predicted. Why devote valuable free time to developing computer programs which do ordinary things when that time could be devoted to developing programs which might eventually help save tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives?

10 21

Accessing Parallel Port in Python Error : Priviledged Instruction
by guenais＠yahoo.com April 25, 2006

April 25, 2006

Hello When I use Pyparallel to access the parallel port in WinXP with Python I get an error saying that this is a priviledged instruction Any clue ? Mike

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computer algebra packages
by Rahul Feb. 23, 2006

Feb. 23, 2006

Hi. Well is there an open source computer algebra system written in python or at least having a python interface? I know of 2 efforts: pythonica and pyginac...are there any others? rahul

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PyDev 0.9.8.2 released
by Fabio Zadrozny Feb. 17, 2006

Feb. 17, 2006

Hi All, PyDev - Python IDE (Python Development Enviroment for Eclipse) version 0.9.8.2 has been released. Check the homepage (http://pydev.sourceforge.net/) for more details. Details for Release: 0.9.8.2 Major highlights: ------------------------ * Content assistants reviewed (and better documented on the homepage -- I really reccomend checking it) * Timeout parsing options added (this is available in the builder preferences page) * Auto-dedent added Others that are new and noteworthy: ----------------------------------------------------- * .pyc is removed when the corresponding .py file is removed. * Debugger has been changed so that it becomes faster (still not as fast as I would like, but still... faster) -- looking for people with expertise on this to help me, as I'm kind of lost on which should be the 'recommended' way to speed it more. * Some escaped quotes problems fixed when formatting code * Navigation with Ctrl+Shift+ (up or down) has been slightly improved, so that it goes to the start or the end of the file when no other class or method declaration is found * Other bug-fixes (as ususal) Cheers, Fabio -- Fabio Zadrozny ------------------------------------------------------ Software Developer ESSS - Engineering Simulation and Scientific Software www.esss.com.br PyDev - Python Development Enviroment for Eclipse pydev.sf.net pydev.blogspot.com

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Ann: Tkinter drag and drop module
by klappnase＠web.de Jan. 13, 2006

Jan. 13, 2006

I wrote a wrapper for the tkdnd Tk extension (<http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkdnd>), which adds native drag and drop support to Tkinter (windows and unix only). It was the first time for me to try wrapping a Tk extension, and I couldn't find any documentation on this, so I would still consider it experimental; however at least for the most part it seems to work well. The module can be used with both standard Tkinter and Tix, and makes it quite easy to e.g. drop a bunch of files from a file manager onto any Tkinter widget. It comes with a basic reference manual and a small demo app. It can be found at <http://www.8ung.at/klappnase/TkinterDnD/TkinterDnD.html>. Any feedback is much appreciated. Best regards Michael

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Microsoft Hatred FAQ
by Xah Lee Dec. 19, 2005

Dec. 19, 2005

Microsoft Hatred, FAQ Xah Lee, 20020518 Question: U.S. Judges are not morons, and quite a few others are not morons. They find MS guilty, so it must be true. Answer: so did the German population thought Jews are morons by heritage, to the point that Jews should be exterminated from earth. Apparently, the entire German population cannot be morons, they must be right. Judge for yourself, is a principle i abide by. And when you judge, it is better to put some effort into it. How much you invest in this endearvor depends on how important the issue is to you. If you are like most people, for which the issue of Microsoft have remote effect on your personal well-being, then you can go out and buy a case of beer on one hand and pizza on the other, and rap with your online confabulation buddies about how evil is MS. If you are an author writing a book on this, then obviously its different because your reputation and ultimately daily bread depend on what you put down. If you are a MS competitor such as Apple or Sun, then obviously you will see to it with as much money as you can cough out that MS is guilty by all measures and gets put out of business. If you are a government employee such as a judge, of course it is your interest to please your boss, with your best accessment of the air. When i judge things, i like to imagine things being serious, as if my wife is a wager, my daughter is at stake, that any small factual error or mis-judgement or misleading perspective will cause unimaginable things to happen. Then, my opinions becomes better ones. Q: Microsoft's Operating System is used over 90% of PCs. If that's not monopoly, i don't know what is. A: Now suppose there is a very ethical company E, whose products have the best performance/price ratio, and making all the competitors looking so majorly stupid and ultimately won over 90% of the market as decided by consumers. Is E now a monopoly? Apparently, beer drinkers and pizza eaters needs to study a bit on the word monopoly, from the perspectives of language to history to law. If they have some extra time, they can sharpen views from philosophy & logic contexts as well. Q: What about all the people in the corporate environments who are forced to use MS products and aren't allowed the option/choice to use Mac/Linux/UNIX? A: Kick your boss's ass, or, choose to work for a company who have decisions that you liked. Q: What about MS buying out all competitors? A: Microsoft offered me $1 grand for saying good things about them. They didn't put a gunpoint on my head. I CHOOSE to take the bribe. Likewise, sold companies can and have decided what's best for them. It's nothing like under gunpoint. Q: Microsoft forced computer makers to not install competitor's applications or OSes. A: It is free country. Don't like MS this or that? Fuck MS and talk to the Solaris or BeOS or AIX or HP-UX or Apple or OS/2 or Amiga or NeXT or the Linuxes with their free yet fantastically easy-to-use and network-spamming X-Windows. Bad business prospects? Then grab the opportunity and become an entrepreneur and market your own beats-all OS. Too difficult? Let's sue Microsoft! Q: Microsoft distributed their Internet Explorer web browser free, using their “monopoly” power to put Netscape out of business. A: entirely inane coding monkeys listen: It takes huge investment to give away a quality software free. Netscape can give away Operating Systems free to put MS out of business too. Nobody is stopping Sun Microsystem from giving Java free, or BeOS a browser free, or Apple to bundle QuickTime deeply with their OS free. Not to mention that Netscape is worse than IE in just about every version till they become the OpenSource mozilla shit and eventually bought out by AOL and still shit. • Netscape struggles, announced open browser source code in 1998-01, industry shock http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html • Netscape browser code released in 1998-03. Mozilla FAQ. http://mozilla.org/docs/mozilla-faq.html • AOL buys Netscape in 1998-11 for 4.2 billion. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-218360.html?legacy=cnet • Jamie Zawinski, resignation and postmortem, 1999-04 http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html • suck.com, Greg Knauss & Terry Colon, 2000-04, Netscape 6 mockery http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/04/10/ http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/200004,greg_knauss_netscape.zip • Xah Lee, Netscape Crap http://xahlee.org/Writ_dir/macos-talk/58.txt Q: Microsoft implemented extra things to standard protocols in their OS so that other OS makers cannot be compatible with their OS while their OS can be compatible with all. They used this Embrace & Extend to lock out competitors. A: My perspective is this: suppose you are now a company who's OS sits over 90% of computers (regardless how this come to be for the moment). Now, lots of “standard” protocols in the industry is a result of popularity (RFC = Really Fucking Common), and popularity resulted from being free, from the RFCs of the fantastically incompetent by the truely stupid unix tech morons. What can you do if you want to improve these protocols? If you go with totally different protocols, then the incompatibility with the rest 10% isn't your best interest. I would adopt existing protocols, and extend them with improvements. Being a commercial entity, i'm sorry that it is not my duty to release my improvments to my competitors. Any of you incompetent IBM/AIX/OS/2 or SGI/Irix or HP/HP-UX or Sun/Solaris or Apple/AU-X/Mac can do the same, not that they haven't. Of course, the universe of moronic unixers and Apple fanatics cannot see that. The unix idiots cannot see that their fantastically stupid protocols are fantastically stupid in the first place. The Apple fanatics are simply chronically fanatic. Q: Microsoft product is notorious for their lack of security. A: In my very sound opinion, if Microsoft's OS's security flaws is measured at one, then the unixes are measured at one myriad. If unixes suddenly switch popularity with Windows, then the world's computers will collapse uncontrollably by all sorts of viruses and attacks. This can be seen for technical person who knows unix history well: • http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html (e.g. ftpd/proftpd, inetd/xinetd, sendmail/qmail, X-Windows, telnet, passwd, login, rsh, rlogin.) • on the criminality of buffer overflow, by Henry Baker, 2001. http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/buffer_overflow.html • Fast Food The UNIX Way: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_fastfood_dir/fastfood.html • Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/%7Eesr/jargon/ • The Rise of Worse is Better, by Richard P. Gabriel, 1991, at http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html and plenty other pre-90s documents to get a sense of just how fantastically insecure unix was and is. Unix today is not just technically slacking in the “security” department, but the unix ways created far more unmanageable security risks that's another topic to discuss. The unix crime, is not just being utmost technically sloppy. Its entire system and “philosophy” created an entire generation of incompetent programers and thinking and programing languages, with damage that is a few magnitude times beyond all computer viruses and attacks damages in history combined. See also: • Responsible Software License: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/responsible_license.html Q: Microsoft products are simply poor quality. A: Perhaps this in general is true pre-1997. I think the vast majority of MS products today have better performance/price ratio then competitors. This includes their operating system, their input devices (mouse & keyboard), their X-Box gaming console, their software game titles, their software architectures and languages (.NET, C#), their technologies (few i know: SMB), and many of their software applications (suite of Office, which consistently ranked top since early 90s). e.g. Tom's hardware review on x-box, esp in comparison with Sony Playstation 2. (2002-02): http://www4.tomshardware.com/consumer/02q1/020204/index.html the leading role of MS Office products can be seen in MacUser & MacWorld magazine reviews through out early 90s. Q: BeOS was once to be bundled with PC, but MS meddled with it and basically at the end fucked Be up. A: BeOS is a fantastically fucking useless OS. No DVD player, No Java, No QuickTime, No games, no Mathematica, no nothing. For all practical purposes, fucking useless in a different way than every donkey unixes. Not to mention the evil Apple computer, refused to pass the QuickTime technology, and tried to prevent BeOS from running on Apple hardware by refusing to release their PPC hardware spec. Be founder Jean-Louis Gassee wrote an article about it. Who's fucking whom? Q: X inc tried to do W, but MS threatened to depart. A: Dear X inc., try to find a bigger dick for your needs. If you cannot find any, too bad! Suck it up to the big brother and hold on to what you can get! If you have the smarts, milk him dry! Free country, free to choose partnership. Ladies, previous night's indiscretion is not rape the morning after. Q: I'm not a beer bucket or pizza hole, but i want to do research over the web. Is there any free stuff on the web i can grab? I'm an OpenSource advocate, i demand free things. A: • http://www.moraldefense.com/Campaigns/Microsoft/Antitrust_FAQ/default.htm (The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism) • http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v21n2/friedman.html (The Business Community's Suicidal Impulse by Milton Friedman, 1999-03) local copy Q: I'm thinking of putting my wife and daughter on the table. What do you suggest to begin with? A: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/jdini/basic_economics.html Q: Are you confident enough to bet your wifes and daughters for what you say? A: No. But I put my reputation in. ------- This post is archived at: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/mshatredfaq.html Xah xah(a)xahlee.org ∑ http://xahlee.org/

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Jargons of Info Tech industry
by Xah Lee Dec. 4, 2005

Dec. 4, 2005

Jargons of Info Tech industry (A Love of Jargons) Xah Lee, 2002 Feb People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious jargons. The less educated they are, the more they like extraneous jargons, such as in the Unix & Perl community. Unlike mathematicians, where in mathematics there are no fewer jargons but each and every one are absolutely necessary. For example, polytope, manifold, injection/bijection/surjection, group/ring/field.., homological, projective, pencil, bundle, lattice, affine, topology, isomorphism, isometry, homeomorphism, aleph-0, fractal, supremum/infimum, simplex, matrix, quaternions, derivative/integral, ... and so on. Each and every one of these captures a concept, for which practical and theoretical considerations made the terms a necessity. Often there are synonyms for them because of historical developments, but never “jargons for jargon's sake” because mathematicians hate bloats and irrelevance. The jargon-soaked stupidity in computing field can be grouped into classes. First of all, there are jargons for marketing purposes. Thus you have Mac OS “X”, Windows “XP”, Sun OS to Solaris and the versioning confusion of 4.x to 7 to 8 and also the so called “Platform” instead of OS. One flagrant example is Sun Microsystem's Java stuff. Oak, Java, JDK, JSDK, J2EE, J2SE enterprise edition or no, from java 1.x to 1.2 == Java 2 now 1.3, JavaOne, JFC, Jini, JavaBeans, entity Beans, Awk, Swing... fucking stupid Java and fuck Sun Microsystems. This is just one example of Jargon hodgepodge of one single commercial entity. Marketing jargons cannot be avoided in modern society. They abound outside computing field too. The Jargons of marketing came from business practice, and they can be excusable because they are kinda a necessity or can be considered as a naturally evolved strategy for attracting attention in a laissez-faire economy system. The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners, of which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary. For example, the name Unix & Perl themselves are good examples of buzzing jargons. Unix is supposed to be opposed of Multics and hints on the offensive and tasteless term eunuchs. PERL is cooked up to be “Practical Extraction & Reporting Language” and for the precise marketing drama of being also “Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister”. These types of jargons exudes juvenile humor. Cheesiness and low-taste is their hall-mark. If you are familiar with unixism and perl programing, you'll find tons and tons of such jargons embraced and verbalized by unix & perl lovers. e.g. grep, glob, shell, pipe, man, regex, more, less, tarball, shebang, Schwartzian Transform, croak, bless, interpolation, TIMTOWTDI, DWIM, RFC, RTFM, I-ANAL, YMMV and so on. There is another class of jargon moronicity, which i find them most damaging to society, are jargons or spurious and vague terms used and brandished about by programers that we see and hear daily among design meetings, online tech group postings, or even in lots of computing textbooks or tutorials. I think the reason for these, is that these massive body of average programers usually don't have much knowledge of significant mathematics, yet they are capable of technical thinking that is not too abstract, thus you ends up with these people defining or hatching terms a-dime-a-dozen that's vague, context dependent, vacuous, and their commonality are often a result of sopho-morons trying to sound big. Here are some examples of the terms in question: • anonymous functions or lambda or lamba function • closure • exceptions (as in Java) • list, array, vector, aggregate • hash (or hash table) ← fantastically stupid • rehash (as in csh or tcsh) • regular expression (as in regex, grep, egrep, fgrep) • name space (as in Scheme vs Common Lisp debates) • depth first/breadth first (as in tree traversing.) • operator • operator overloading • polymorphism • inheritance • first class objects • pointers, references • tail recursion My time is limited, so i'll just give a brief explanation of my thesis on selective few of these examples among the umpteen. In a branch of math called lambda calculus, in which much theories of computation are based on, is the origin of the jargon _lambda function_ that is so frequently reciprocated by advanced programering donkeys. In practice, a subroutine without side-effects is supposed to be what “lambda function” means. Functional languages often can define them without assigning them to some variable (name), therefore the “function without side-effects” are also called “anonymous functions”. One can see that these are two distinct concepts. If mathematicians are designing computer languages, they would probably just called such thing _pure functions_. The term conveys the meaning, without the “lamba” abstruseness. (in fact, the mathematics oriented language Mathematica refers to lambda function as pure function, with the keyword Function.) Because most programers are sopho-morons who are less capable of clear thinking but nevertheless possess human vanity, we can see that they have not adopted the clear and fitting term, but instead you see lambda function this and that obfuscations dropping from their mouths constantly. Now the term “closure” can and indeed have meant several things in the computing field. The most common is for it to mean a subroutine that holds some memory but without some disadvantages of modifying a global variable. Usually such is a feature of a programing language. When taken to extreme, we have the what's called Object Oriented Programing methodology and languages. The other meaning of “closure” i have seen in text books, is for it to indicate that the things in the language is “closed” under the operations of the language. For example, for some languages you can apply operations or subroutines to any thing in the language. (These languages are often what's called “dynamic typing” or “typeless”). However, in other languages, things have types and cannot be passed around subroutines or operators arbitrarily. One can see that the term “closure” is quite vague in conveying its meaning. The term nevertheless is very popular among talkative programers and dense tutorials, precisely because it is vague and mysterious. These pseudo-wit living zombies, never thought for a moment that they are using a moronic term, mostly because they never clearly understand the concepts behind the term among the contexts. One can particular see this exhibition among Perl programers. (for an example of the fantastically stupid write-up on closure by the Perl folks, see “perldoc perlfaq7” and “perldoc perlref”.) in the so-called “high-level” computing languages, there are often data types that's some kind of a collection. The most illustrative is LISt Processing language's lists. Essentially, the essential concept is that the language can treat a collection of things as if it's a single entity. As computer languages evolve, such collection entity feature also diversified, from syntax to semantics to implementation. Thus, beside lists, there are also terms like vector, array, matrix, tree, hash/“hash table”/dictionary. Often each particular term is to convey a particular implementation of collection so that it has certain properties to facilitate specialized uses of such groupy. The Java language has such groupy that can illustrate the point well. In Java, there are these hierarchy of collection-type of things: Collection Set (AbstractSet, HashSet) SortedSet (TreeSet) List (AbstractList, LinkedList, Vector, ArrayList) Map (AbstractMap, HashMap, Hashtable) SortedMap (TreeMap) The words without parenthesis are Java Interfaces, and ones in are implementations. The interface hold a concept. The deeper the level, the more specific or specialized. The implementation carry out concepts. Different implementation gives different algorithmic properties. Essentially, these hierarchies of Java show the potential complexity and confusion around groupy entities in computer languages. Now, among the programers we see daily, who never really thought out of these things, will attach their own specific meaning to list/array/vector/matrix/etc type of jargons in driveling and arguments, oblivious to any thought of formalizing what the fuck they are really talking about. (one may think from the above tree-diagram that Java the language has at least put clear distinction to interface and implementation, whereas in my opinion they are one fantastic fuck up too, in many respects.) --------------------- This post is archived at http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/jargons.html © Copyright 2002 by Xah Lee. Xah xah(a)xahlee.org ∑ http://xahlee.org/

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2d array slicing problem
by jeg Nov. 27, 2005

Nov. 27, 2005

dear all, i'm an astronomer working with 2d images -- 2d numarrays. i have a script which basically does some operations on some images, and one of the first steps is to find a galaxy on an image (at, say, a known x,y coord), and create a sub-image by slicing out part of the larger array to create a more managable smaller one (e.g. 50x50 pixels from a 1000x1000 array). i was running this fine under python 2.3.4, but due to the slowness of my machine, moved to a speedy 64-bit linux box running version 2.4.2. arrays were no longer being sliced in the correct way, for example: B = A[3:7,6:10] generates different Bs if i run an identical script on the same image on the different machines. note: we deal with FITS format images, which are read into numarrays using the pyfits.py module. does anyone know any obvious reason this should be happening? many thanks if you can help, jim

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loop help
by Gorlon the Impossible Nov. 25, 2005

Nov. 25, 2005

Hello. I am using Python 2.3.5 with IDLE 1.0.5 on a Windows98 PC. I have some programming experience but mostly I am still learning. I am having some trouble understanding the behaviour of a piece of code I have written. It plots points using PIL. Here is my loop: triangle = [(320,27),(172,323),(468,323)] currentpoint = (randint(0,640),randint(0,350)) t = 0 while t < 10: ct = choice(triangle) mp = (currentpoint[0] + ct[0])/2, (currentpoint[1] + ct[1])/2 draw.point(mp,(0,0,0)) currentpoint = mp t = t + 1 This works fine. But, if I try to divide by a floating point number in the calculation of mp, instead of mp being overwritten each time thru the loop, it starts accumulating, leading to overflow errors for large values of t. Why is this?

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