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12-18-2008

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Zen and the Misery of Experience

Tim Bass
12-18-2008 04:56 AM
It is great to relax and just enjoy the good life in Northern Thailand.* As I read so many blog posts and technology articles by people who just don’t have a clue about what they are talking about, I am reminded of a passage by one of the world’s great writers Umberto Eco.

Foucault’s Pendulum was the second novel written by Umberto Eco. The plot revolves around three friends, who work for a small publishing company in Milan. After reading many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories and decide they can do better and begin to invent their own conspiracy for fun.* Their conspiracy, which they call “The Plan”, is about an immense and intricate plot to take over the world by a secret order descended from the Knights Templar.* As the game progresses, the three men slowly become obsessed with the details and their game turns dangerous when other learn of The Plan and believe that the three have actually discovered the secret to regaining the lost, vast fortune of the Templars.

In this amazing novel, there is an immortal, Comte de St. Germain, who is central to the story.** During a long ocean voyage, standing desk-side on top of a large vessel watching the sun go down, one of Comte de St. Germain admirers asks, in effect (paraphrasing),

“It must be great to be immortal?” (paraphrasing)

The next few passages in the Eco’s narrative are unsurpassed in beauty and wisdom, as Comte de St. Germain laments the painfulness of watching humans born into the world, grow, learn and die, passing along very little knowledge to the next generation, who are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.* This, in a nutshell, is a metaphor of the human condition.

So, as my hair slowly, but surely, turns gray, and I read so many opinions from those with less experience, I feel pain as did Comte de St. Germain in his amazing immortal journey.* Granted, one lifetime and three decades of technical experience, including zero day Internet distributed computing and network systems engineering experience, is a far cry from immortality; however, I can still feel the pain of reading and watching so many with less experience make so many mistakes, or boast of their new “discoveries”.

It is almost unimaginable to think about how much pain one would feel after living hundreds of generations, like Comte de St. Germain, seeing “experts” with little clue about what they are doing, talking as if they actually knew what they were talking about.

Sigh.

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uri::url

URI::URL(3)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					       URI::URL(3)

NAME

       URI::URL - Uniform Resource Locators

SYNOPSIS

	$u1 = URI::URL->new($str, $base);
	$u2 = $u1->abs;

DESCRIPTION

       This module is provided for backwards compatibility with modules that depend on the interface provided by the "URI::URL" class that used to
       be distributed with the libwww-perl library.

       The following differences exist compared to the "URI" class interface:

       o  The URI::URL module exports the url() function as an alternate constructor interface.

       o  The constructor takes an optional $base argument.  The "URI::URL" class is a subclass of "URI::WithBase".

       o  The URI::URL->newlocal class method is the same as URI::file->new_abs.

       o  URI::URL::strict(1)

       o  $url->print_on method

       o  $url->crack method

       o  $url->full_path: same as ($uri->abs_path || "/")

       o  $url->netloc: same as $uri->authority

       o  $url->epath, $url->equery: same as $uri->path, $uri->query

       o  $url->path and $url->query pass unescaped strings.

       o  $url->path_components: same as $uri->path_segments (if you don't consider path segment parameters)

       o  $url->params and $url->eparams methods

       o  $url->base method.  See URI::WithBase.

       o  $url->abs and $url->rel have an optional $base argument.  See URI::WithBase.

       o  $url->frag: same as $uri->fragment

       o  $url->keywords: same as $uri->query_keywords

       o  $url->localpath and friends map to $uri->file.

       o  $url->address and $url->encoded822addr: same as $uri->to for mailto URI

       o  $url->groupart method for news URI

       o  $url->article: same as $uri->message

SEE ALSO

       URI, URI::WithBase

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 1998-2000 Gisle Aas.

perl v5.16.2							    2012-02-11							       URI::URL(3)