[geeks] forking stupid interpreters

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Sunday, March 24, 2002 at 23:22:23 (+0000), Mike Meredith wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] forking stupid interpreters
>
> You've totally missed my point ... an interpreter isn't a problem if it 
> is embedded, or running as a daemon process. As my example of running a 
> Perl-based adzapper on a web cache illustrated.

No, I didn't miss any point -- I saw right through it (far deeper than
you might imagine! :-)

If a compiled-to-machine-code program can do in a million cycles what
your perl script requires a billion cycles to do, which is better?  Do
you really want to run something that can be 2-3 orders of magnitude
slower (even un-forked) when throughput is your issue?

If you don't want spam then don't accept mail from known spammers and
open relays -- i.e. don't let it in the door in the first place.

If you don't want virii and worms to run wild on your network then don't
run vulnerable software (and fix bugs when you hear rumours about them,
not once they've been exploited! ;-)

Then you'll have lots of cycles left over to fork umpteen thousand
perl/java/whatever scripts to filter and sort and manage your legit email.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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