2004-07-14: 9 months, 1000 writeups, 6088 XP

Recent Perl Release Announcements

Blatant advertisement: I have some nodes I'd like to see reach Selected Best Nodes, but aren't there yet:

node 349497
node 314238

In exchange, you may wish to downvote this node (of mine) which is horribly overrated:

node 327838

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CB quotes:
tilly We're not certified, but I might just be certifiable.
monoxide What is the "free nodelet" for?   tye its purpose isn't restricted
ysth (Click here to have perlmonks lie to you :)
diotalevi ...perltidy is an attempt to write a Perl parser. It seems to mostly work except when it doesn't.
DigitalKitty The brightest room in the house is the bathroom so I've been sitting on the toilet with the door shut so the white walls reflect maximum luminosity.
Corion bart: If I wanted YAML, I'd use Data::Dumper :-)
jZed you have a box without Perl on it? what do you use it for, a doorstop?
TimToady I want to underpromise and overperform this year.
Wassercrats I need a ghost writer to get a positive rep.
Wassercrats I mean I'd have to be the ghost writer. I'd need a different name.
Petruchio not everyone lives at an xterm. Normal people like fonts. I've met several, and they've told me.
tye [to be admitted to an order of monks] you either have to sleep with a god or produce something useful fitting in with the group
Abigail-II (not from CB, but too good to miss) I presume the OP to be living in the UK. Which means that there's a 76.34% chance that the OP is either a bookie, his father is a bookie, or the OP has a gambling problem.
b10m Although I used to be an MCSE, I have close to no knowledge of the win OS, sorry
ysth I may be brain damaged, but that doesn't mean I'm not a genius

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Political stuff:

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Just one example of post-Arafat incitement to murder of civilians by the PA:

In a recent broadcast, the mother of an Arab suicide terrorist talks about how she and other mothers in her position consider their sons' Shahada death as a joyful event, similar to a wedding. The following is an excerpt from the Palestinian Authority TV's Nov. 17th broadcast:

Moderator: "They [Israelis] accuse the Palestinian mother of hating her sons and encouraging them to die. This is what we hear from Israelis. Is this true?

Mother Um Al-Ajrami: "No, we do not encourage our sons to die. We encourage them to Shahada [martyrdom] for the homeland, for Allah. We [mothers of Shahids] don't say to the mothers of the [new] Shahids, 'We have come to comfort you', but rather, 'We have come to bless you on the wedding of your son, on the Shahada of your son. Congratulations to you on the Shahada... ' For us, the mourning is joyous. We give out drinks, we give out sweets. Praise to God -- the mourning is a joyous occasion."

(2004/10/31:)

Barbara Plett, BBC's Middle East correspondent, reported...her impressions of the sickly Arafat's departure. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry," she said.

BBC sources were quoted as saying that Plett realized that her words were a "misjudgment."

Plett's broadcast displayed her strong sympathy for Arafat, though among what she called his "obvious failings," she listed "his ambivalence towards violence." She was likely referring to the thousands of murders attributed to him and his men, earning him the commonly-used title, "father of modern-day terrorism."

(2004/10/10:)

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka volunteer organization that engages in collecting body parts after mass-casualty incidents of this nature, reports that the Egyptians are apparently more interested in looting than in rescuing the wounded and extricating the dead. Meshi-Zahav, who has been in Taba for the past two days, said last night that he saw Egyptians looting the hotel in Taba, and even the dead bodies, even before evacuation of the wounded had been completed - and certainly while people were trapped, dead or alive, under the rubble.

Many other Israelis on the scene confirmed these reports. They said that as they went through the rooms looking for survivors, they saw that drawers and closets had already been opened and stripped of their valuables, with the cheaper items left lying on the floor. Bodies emptied of their wallets and jewelry made the identification process even more difficult than it already was. A Channel Two television crew told of a female body that was brought for identification with a watch on her hand - and that by the end of the identification, the watch was no longer there.

That naughty IDF, shooting at protesters who are only throwing stones

From the first ever U.N. antisemitism conference:
"This meeting occurs at a point when the relationship between Jews and the United Nations is at an all-time low. The U.N. took root in the ashes of the Jewish people, and according to its charter was to flower on the strength of a commitment to tolerance and equality for all men and women and of nations large and small. Today, however, the U.N. provides a platform for those who cast the victims of the Nazis as the Nazi counterparts of the 21st century. The U.N. has become the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism - intolerance and inequality against the Jewish people and its state. complete speech