Some things to remember when implementing __getitem__

I've recently been doing some work on classes derived from list and tuple that fiddle with the behavior of __getitem__ , and ran intoa couple of surprises that I am going to write down so that I rememberthem in the future:

  • for the simple ' obj[i:j] ' case, __getitem__ is not called ifthe class has a __getslice__ method. list and tuple both do,despite the method being labeled as deprecated since Python 2.

Thesis: any server push technology inevitably breeds spam

Consider various server push technologies, where things come to youinstead of you having to seek them out: email, instant messaging,voice over IP phone server, and even text messaging on cell phones.All of them have spam problems (generally growing).

This is not a coincidence. Any server push technology will get overrunby spammers, because server push inherently gives them access topeople and is thus very, very attractive. As a consumer of server pushtechnology, your only recourse from the onslaught is to hide


The problem with browser minimum font size settings

Long ago, when I griped about Slashdot's redesign ,Oscar del Rio left a comment suggesting that I use Firefox's minimumfont size setting to cut this off. This isn't an approach that I likefor a relatively simple reason: I'm willing to have some text set small,just not the main text.

I want websites to be able to set less important things in small fontsizes, but I don't want them shrinking down the text I'm actually hereto read


Most world-editable wikis are doomed

The Linux iSCSI project keeps itsdocumentation in a world-editable wiki. I should really say kept,because it's hard to find much usable documentation in the wiki at themoment; most of the pages are overgrown with wiki spam. Some pages havehad a thousand edits in two days , all of them spam. All of this makesthe project's wiki an unfortunately excellent illustration of why mostopen wikis are doomed.

The problem is that there are just more spammers out there automatingtheir attacks than most


最動人的情書

B是我的舊男友,到了今天,他仍生我的氣,我們無法做回朋友。

我相信,從此以後,都不會再遇上像他的男生。

他寫給我的情書,總會讓我哭。

同時,亦會讓我恨自己,寫不出像樣的情書送給他。

他始終不相信,我離開,是為

高音不等於假音

看到一個有關K迷患「卡拉OK瘜肉症」的報告報導,是這樣寫的:

K迷高歌玩假音 聲帶易起迊

【明報專訊】唱卡拉OK已成為許多人不可或缺的社交活動,但不少人唱K時喜用假音,並勁狂喊,但太好唱口原來易有後遺症。日本耳


The downside of distinctive hostnames

Recently a co-worker pointed out that the downside to giving machines distinctive hostnames is that users become attachedto them, and when you introduce newer, better machines the users don'tmigrate to them. Once I thought about it, this made sense; after all,by naming things we make them distinct, and thus no longer quite sogeneric and equivalent.

(At this point I am tempted to think thoughts about brand loyaltyand the distinctiveness of brand logos.)

One contributing factor is that with many generic


暫停營業

雙眼被感冒菌感染。唉。暫停營業。

@media 07 在香港

在 Happy Designer 看到原來 @Media 07 會在 香港 搞!日期是 31/5 和 6/1 兩天。一眾 Web Standards 猛人 Dave Shea Molly Holzschlag 、Jeremy Keith 等等都會是主講嘉賓!

在香港這個 Web Standards 荒蕪之地,竟然會舉辦如此盛事,實在令我很意外。莫非是政府宣傳「亞洲國際都會」

@media07

超級星期六

24.2.2007 (六Sat)
下午3:00 - 4:30pm
尖沙咀星光行商務印書館
從器物出發,細察關於一個城市的歷史
講者︰董啟章 (作家)
梁款 (文化評論人)
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