use Perl

I'm all for lowering the Schwartz factor, but it is annoying when CPAN authors remove all their older module versions the second they update it on CPAN.

Why? Because it leaves re-distributors (FreeBSD ports tree, in this case) with very little (no) time to upgrade the distribution. See, the FreeBSD ports tree contains the version number of the module, so when that module is removed from CPAN, it is not longer installable via the ports tree, until the maintainer has had time to 1) discover that the module has been upgraded, and 2) get it into the tree. Normally, with the vigilant maintainers and committers we have on the project, this doesn't take so long, maybe a day or two. On top of this, we have the delay of the user syncronising his local ports tree, but I would expect most users to do this before installing stuff, anyway.

So my message for CPAN authors is: please do remove old, stale modules from CPAN, but please keep a few of the newer versions, at least for a couple of weeks. This makes the life a bit easier for the rest of us. Thanks in advance :)

/Lars

The YAPC Europe Foundation, in their infinite wisdom, have selected the bid from Copenhagen to hold next year's YAPC::EU. The organisers are currently worried about what the auction will turn up...

NPW2007 is two days away, but with the SAS strike going on, who knows how many people will be able to get here on time?

Many of the participants are local, but a lot of the speakers are flying in, and I'm worried about how many holes that will leave in the schedule.

Update, Thu Apr 26 23:57 CEST: The strike is over, but they say there will still be cancellations friday, as we approach normality. At least people should be able the get home in good order.

The NPW2007 schedule is done, and is looking very good indeed.

jonasbn has done a helluva job in getting some very interesting speakers, and I'm looking so much forward to the workshop. There will be a lot of experienced Perl hackers to learn from and be inspired by. And Perl 6 is inching closer every day; we have 3 talks on the subject of the Perl of tomorrow.

If you have decided to attend, why don't you go and buy your ticket right now; there is still 3 more days of the 20% Early Bird discount. It won't get any cheaper.

/Lars

So finally, I got my trip to YAPC::EU 2006 in Birmingham set up. Plane, hotel and conference booked. Better late than never. It seems we'll be 4 from Cph.pm, but that's ok. We might not get any t-shirt done this year, unfortunately. Oh well.

I was reading about the new Matrox Extio F1400, and being the old fart that I am, I realised that this actucally mimics the North Star Dimension, that I was working on back in '85.

It's funny how technology goes around in circles...

It occurred to me today, that MSN's "people-icon" is a ludo-piece. They've tried masking it by giving it arms, but it is ludo-piece.

I wonder what that says about their attitude towards their customers...

Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie, is no idiot:

Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration. Moving forward, within all parts of the organization, each of us should ask “What’s different?”, and explore and embrace techniques to reduce complexity.

Sage advice. I know a few soon-to-be-former collegues who should take that to heart.

From Dave Winer via Richard Stastny.

Bruce Schneier makes a very interesting point: Why did none of the PC anti-virus products discover the Sony rootkit? It has been around for over a year, so it seems these security vendors are either 1) incompetent or 2) willingly looking the other way. Even though you should never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence, this not an industry you would want to entrust with the security of your computing platform.

Now, this is far from the first time that the security industry is caught with its hand in the cookie jar, but this is a new twist. Where is Rob Rosenberger when you need him?

This comes to mind:

The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them - which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.

Or so we thought...

Yesterday, my collegue Jesper and I were discussing the wonderful concept of 'corporate apathy', the fact that the increasing corporate bureaucracy and despotism turns people away from creative critisism, and leaves the corporation without (often much needed!) internal counterweights against the worst of the managerial mistakes.

The term 'corporate apathy' erupted from reading an article about a year ago, but neither Jesper nor myself could remember exactly *what* article. We spent a lot of time trying to locate it, but to no avail.

Today, I found it: Politics-Oriented Software Development. Brilliant piece.