Programming Language Survey

Programming Language Survey

[Yaofei Chen]

Hi all,

We are doing a survey for Programming Language Trend right now. If you have
interest, please visit http://swlab.njit.edu/techwatch to participate our
survey. 

Thanks a lot!

Yaofei

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <1b2f70c3.0305161120.6ca17b7e@posting.google.com>, yxc1856@njit.edu (Yaofei Chen) writes:

> We are doing a survey for Programming Language Trend right now. If you have
> interest, please visit http://swlab.njit.edu/techwatch to participate our
> survey. 

Or perhaps you will find it a waste of time.

I got a lot of visible HTML code and when I plowed through to the end
and clicked "Submit" it responded with "No answer is submitted.".

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Stephane Richard]

Not sure what the problem could be....I just tried taking the survey and it
worked perfectly fine for me.

Stephane Richard

"Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
news:qKWlbpQmoH9g@eisner.encompasserve.org...
> In article <1b2f70c3.0305161120.6ca17b7e@posting.google.com>,
yxc1856@njit.edu (Yaofei Chen) writes:
>
> > We are doing a survey for Programming Language Trend right now. If you
have
> > interest, please visit http://swlab.njit.edu/techwatch to participate
our
> > survey.
>
> Or perhaps you will find it a waste of time.
>
> I got a lot of visible HTML code and when I plowed through to the end
> and clicked "Submit" it responded with "No answer is submitted.".

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <2wbxa.9575$cK5.1565@nwrdny02.gnilink.net>, "Stephane Richard" <stephane.richard@verizon.net> writes:
> Not sure what the problem could be....I just tried taking the survey and it
> worked perfectly fine for me.
> 
> Stephane Richard
> 
> "Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
> news:qKWlbpQmoH9g@eisner.encompasserve.org...
>> In article <1b2f70c3.0305161120.6ca17b7e@posting.google.com>,
> yxc1856@njit.edu (Yaofei Chen) writes:
>>
>> > We are doing a survey for Programming Language Trend right now. If you
> have
>> > interest, please visit http://swlab.njit.edu/techwatch to participate
> our
>> > survey.
>>
>> Or perhaps you will find it a waste of time.
>>
>> I got a lot of visible HTML code and when I plowed through to the end
>> and clicked "Submit" it responded with "No answer is submitted.".

I certainly cannot make http://validator.w3.org/ accept it.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Stephane Richard wrote:
> Not sure what the problem could be....I just tried taking the survey and it
> worked perfectly fine for me.

Did you by any chance use IE?

I get the same problems here with Mozilla. 
-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <slrnbcc1d0.3c3.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no>, Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> writes:
> Stephane Richard wrote:
>> Not sure what the problem could be....I just tried taking the survey and it
>> worked perfectly fine for me.
> 
> Did you by any chance use IE?
> 
> I get the same problems here with Mozilla. 

The failures I got were while using Netscape Communicator.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Georg Bauhaus]

Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@spamcop.net> wrote:
: I got a lot of visible HTML code and when I plowed through to the end
: and clicked "Submit" it responded with "No answer is submitted.".

Has your browser had to accept cookies?

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <baasfh$blf$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>, Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:
> Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@spamcop.net> wrote:
> : I got a lot of visible HTML code and when I plowed through to the end
> : and clicked "Submit" it responded with "No answer is submitted.".
> 
> Has your browser had to accept cookies?

Of course not.  My browser settings are fully secured - no cookies, Java
or JavaScript.

And certainly I would not have filled out the survey if the start
had said it required cookies.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> Of course not.  My browser settings are fully secured - no cookies, Java
> or JavaScript.

On my machine in Linux I have linked the cookie file to /dev/null so all
the information just goes into the nothingness. The benifit is that
cookie sites works for that session. However they are still in memory so
I guess it is not safe. But at least I don't have the spying cookies accumulate
on my machine :-)

-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Wesley Groleau]

Many browsers support one or more of the following settings:

  - Ask before accepting a cookie.

  - Remember whether you said "yes" or "no" and
    automatically apply the same answer next time
    to a request by the same hostname.

  - Delete all cookies when you exit the browser.

Sending cookies to /dev/null means in those few cases
where you will tolerate the cookie long enough to
work the site, you have to fiddle with softlinks or whatever.

But if you have NO such cases, then why not have your browser
"Just say no" ?  Most can do that, too.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Wesley Groleau wrote:
> Many browsers support one or more of the following settings:
> 
>   - Ask before accepting a cookie.
> 
>   - Remember whether you said "yes" or "no" and
>     automatically apply the same answer next time
>     to a request by the same hostname.
> 
>   - Delete all cookies when you exit the browser.
> 
> Sending cookies to /dev/null means in those few cases
> where you will tolerate the cookie long enough to
> work the site, you have to fiddle with softlinks or whatever.
> 
> But if you have NO such cases, then why not have your browser
> "Just say no" ?  Most can do that, too.

Because if you say no the sites say: Sorry your browser needs to accept
cookies.... Exiting now.

-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <slrnbcidbl.7sv.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no>, Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> writes:
> Wesley Groleau wrote:

>> But if you have NO such cases, then why not have your browser
>> "Just say no" ?  Most can do that, too.
> 
> Because if you say no the sites say: Sorry your browser needs to accept
> cookies.... Exiting now.

I figure they need to learn a lesson by losing my custom.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Wesley Groleau wrote:
> Sending cookies to /dev/null means in those few cases
> where you will tolerate the cookie long enough to
> work the site, you have to fiddle with softlinks or whatever.

What are softlinks?

-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[David C. Hoos]

A softlink is a file pointing to a file or directory, and is
created with ln -s.

A "hard link" is created with ln (no -s), and can only be
done on files.  For example on my web site I have
.tgz files hard linked to .tar.gz files, so that whichever
extension the downloader prefers to use will get the
same file.


"Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message
news:slrnbcidec.7sv.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no...
> Wesley Groleau wrote:
> > Sending cookies to /dev/null means in those few cases
> > where you will tolerate the cookie long enough to
> > work the site, you have to fiddle with softlinks or whatever.
>
> What are softlinks?
>
> -- 
> Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/
> _______________________________________________
> comp.lang.ada mailing list
> comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada
>

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

David C. Hoos wrote:
> A softlink is a file pointing to a file or directory, and is
> created with ln -s.
> 
> A "hard link" is created with ln (no -s), and can only be
> done on files.  For example on my web site I have
> .tgz files hard linked to .tar.gz files, so that whichever
> extension the downloader prefers to use will get the
> same file.


Ah! I missunderstood completely I though he was refering to HTML and
cookies. OK, but now I really don't understand what "you have to fiddle
with softlinks or whatever" means.  Doing ln -s /dev/null cookei.txt is
not hard. With Mozilla the cookies are stored in *one* file and not thousands
like with IE.


-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Wesley Groleau]

> Ah! I missunderstood completely I though he was refering to HTML and
> cookies. OK, but now I really don't understand what "you have to fiddle
> with softlinks or whatever" means.  Doing ln -s /dev/null cookei.txt is
> not hard. With Mozilla the cookies are stored in *one* file and not thousands
> like with IE.

The thing is, if you send cookie to the bit bucket,
and then you decide you actually want to do something
that requires cookie exchange, you have to undo it
at a prompt.  If you just disable cookies via preferences
in the browser, it's a tiny bit easier to toggle them back on.

Or, as I suggested, Mozilla and others will let you specify
"This site can swap cookies, the others can't"

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Wesley Groleau wrote:
> The thing is, if you send cookie to the bit bucket,
> and then you decide you actually want to do something
> that requires cookie exchange, you have to undo it
> at a prompt.  If you just disable cookies via preferences
> in the browser, it's a tiny bit easier to toggle them back on.

Understand now. Well, at the moment there are no sites that I use where
I need the cookie to persist on my system. If it were I would use Opera
on that site.

> Or, as I suggested, Mozilla and others will let you specify
> "This site can swap cookies, the others can't"

Hmm, I think I should get updated on the changes. Didn't know it could
do that now. Sounds great though.


-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Hyman Rosen]

Preben Randhol wrote:
> What are softlinks?

They're UNIXy things. In UNIX, the unique designator for a
file is called an "inode" and represents a numeric index
into a data structure containing the files of a filesystem.
Directories consist of pairs of inode numbers and names.
Thus, it's perfectly possible for the same inode, and thus
its file, to be known by many names. These many names of a
file are called hard links. (The "hard" is a back formation
which came about after soft links were invented, like "analog"
watches.)

Because hard links represent a pointer into the filesystem,
you cannot make hard links point to files in different
filesystems. This became an increasing handicap as the
number of filesystems on a computer grew. So soft links were
invented. A soft link is simply a file which holds the name
of another file, and is specially marked as being such.
When someone attempts to open a named soft link, the file
to which it links is opened instead.

Soft links cause much more complexity than hard links. It's
possible for the target of a soft link to be missing, or to
create circular chains of links. They're subject to race
conditions, and opening long chains of them can be slow.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> Preben Randhol wrote:
>> What are softlinks?
> 
[explanation of softlinks]

Thanks. I got confused by the discussion so I thought he was talking
about something to do with HTML and cookies and not softlinks which I
know well as I use them frequently. Sorry about the mixup.

-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Yaofei Chen]

We do use cookie, just don't want one guy to fill the survey multiple
times. That is our only purpose.

Thanks again for your participation! :-)



Wesley Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message news:<oaGcnSkEFJ0-qVSjXTWcqw@gbronline.com>...
> Many browsers support one or more of the following settings:
> 
>   - Ask before accepting a cookie.
> 
>   - Remember whether you said "yes" or "no" and
>     automatically apply the same answer next time
>     to a request by the same hostname.
> 
>   - Delete all cookies when you exit the browser.
> 
> Sending cookies to /dev/null means in those few cases
> where you will tolerate the cookie long enough to
> work the site, you have to fiddle with softlinks or whatever.
> 
> But if you have NO such cases, then why not have your browser
> "Just say no" ?  Most can do that, too.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <1b2f70c3.0305191843.4b86e1cc@posting.google.com>, yxc1856@njit.edu (Yaofei Chen) writes:

> We do use cookie, just don't want one guy to fill the survey multiple
> times. That is our only purpose.

But you do want people with cookies disabled to go through the
process to no avail, by not announcing it in your posting here !!!

And what makes you think someone who really wanted to disturb
your results would not just erase the cookies ?

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Wesley Groleau]

Yaofei Chen wrote:
> We do use cookie, just don't want one guy to fill the survey multiple
> times. That is our only purpose.

Doesn't work.  If I wanted to "stuff the ballot box"
I could turn on cookies, fill out the form, trash my cookie file,
fill out the form, trash my cookie file, fill out the form, .....

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Preben Randhol]

Wesley Groleau wrote:
> Yaofei Chen wrote:
>> We do use cookie, just don't want one guy to fill the survey multiple
>> times. That is our only purpose.
> 
> Doesn't work.  If I wanted to "stuff the ballot box"
> I could turn on cookies, fill out the form, trash my cookie file,
> fill out the form, trash my cookie file, fill out the form, .....

Or link it to /dev/null and restart the browser ;-)

-- 
Preben Randhol                    http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Wes" == Wesley Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> writes:

Wes> Sending cookies to /dev/null means in those few cases where you
Wes> will tolerate the cookie long enough to work the site, you have
Wes> to fiddle with softlinks or whatever.

Do you know any browser which don't keep cookies acquired in the
current browsing session in memory and need to store them and reload
them from the disk? I don't.

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/sam

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Georg Bauhaus]

Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@spamcop.net> wrote:
: In article <baasfh$blf$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>, Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:
:> 
:> Has your browser had to accept cookies?
: 
: Of course not.  My browser settings are fully secured - no cookies, Java
: or JavaScript.

That might explain a few things. They did send cookies, 
ASPs in the background, and they might have done tracking
using cookies (an alternative beeing URL-rewriting).
When finally results are to be stored, a uniqueness check might have
to be done first, using the session cookie (HTTP beeing stateless,
the request, and therefore the data, might have come from anywhere).

Cookies are potentially evil if and only if the browser software
does not give you control over them; in particular, it should be
possible to prevent programs from reading cookies,
and to protect cookies such that only the originating site
may request them, and only with your consent. Wesley Groleau
has listed some possibilities, Mozilla has quite extensive
support for cookie control.

Cookies can be useful! In a decent browser, they can act as
a token somewhat like a tag in a tagged type for its identification,
or like an enum value.
(Somehow an HTTP server must know the origin of the page it
receives in circumstances like a survey; to use something other
than cookies one could use hidden content in a web page that is
generated when a new request for the survey page is made, somehow
coding the originators IP address as well; but IP addresses may
be dynamic, and the process is similar to generating a session
cookie anyway. In addition, cookies may be useful in (server
side) state tracking, e.g. when the client browser software has
crashed. the server may then send the proper page on resumption,
if the cookie still provides enough information.)

With a good browser, cookies aren't seen by any machine not explicitely
listed by you. If a server uses URL-rewriting instead (like Apple's
WebObjects), the rewritten URL is not too different from a
cookie HTTP header, as far as sniffing protection is concerned.

Anyway, any site using cookies could explain why they do so,
and send some explanatory comments.


-- Georg

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <f5sop-4e3.ln1@beastie.ix.netcom.com>, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> Larry Kilgallen fed this fish to the penguins on Monday 19 May 2003 
> 11:59 am:
> 
> 
>> And certainly I would not have filled out the survey if the start
>> had said it required cookies.
> 
>         The mere fact that it seems (from looking at the first question page) 
> to use individual pages for the questions, the only way to keep track 
> of which answers belong together is to concatenate them into a cookie 
> as you go along.

Another method is the use of hidden fields.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Yaofei" == Yaofei Chen <yxc1856@njit.edu> writes:

Yaofei> We are doing a survey for Programming Language Trend
Yaofei> right now. If you have interest, please visit
Yaofei> http://swlab.njit.edu/techwatch to participate our survey.

You should first learn HTML. For your information, "&nbsp;" MUST be
terminated by ";" if you don't want it to appear as plain "&nbsp" in
HTML compliant browsers.

Your first question gives:

| Currently, do you know any of the following programming languages?
| 	 &nbsp1. &nbspADA
| 	 &nbsp2. &nbspALGOL
| 	 &nbsp3. &nbspAPL
| 	 &nbsp4. &nbspBASIC
| 	 &nbsp5. &nbspC
| [...]

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/sam

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Yaofei Chen]

Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net> wrote in message news:<87u1bufwq5.fsf@inf.enst.fr>...
> >>>>> "Yaofei" == Yaofei Chen <yxc1856@njit.edu> writes:
> 
> Yaofei> We are doing a survey for Programming Language Trend
> Yaofei> right now. If you have interest, please visit
> Yaofei> http://swlab.njit.edu/techwatch to participate our survey.
> 
> You should first learn HTML. For your information, "&nbsp;" MUST be
> terminated by ";" if you don't want it to appear as plain "&nbsp" in
> HTML compliant browsers.
> 
> Your first question gives:
> 
> | Currently, do you know any of the following programming languages?
> | 	 &nbsp1. &nbspADA
> | 	 &nbsp2. &nbspALGOL
> | 	 &nbsp3. &nbspAPL
> | 	 &nbsp4. &nbspBASIC
> | 	 &nbsp5. &nbspC
> | [...]
> 
>   Sam


Fixed the buggy HTML. :-) Thanks.

Re: Programming Language Survey

[Georg Bauhaus]

Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net> wrote:
: 
: You should first learn HTML. For your information, "&nbsp;" MUST be
: terminated by ";"

Only if it isn't terminated by record end (RE), or otherwise omissable.

 [61] reference end =
   ( refc |						[;]
    RE )?

In XHTML, you must add ';'. Still:
: if you don't want it to appear as plain "&nbsp" in
: HTML compliant browsers.
: 
: Your first question gives:
: 
: | Currently, do you know any of the following programming languages?
: |        &nbsp1. &nbspADA

Additionally, there probably is no entity named "nbspALGOL" defined in any
of the included entity reference sets?

: |        &nbsp2. &nbspALGOL
: |        &nbsp3. &nbspAPL
: |        &nbsp4. &nbspBASIC
: |        &nbsp5. &nbspC
: | [...]
: 
:  Sam

-- Georg