Slashdot Mirror

The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things,
Third Edition
Carl Snyder, University of Miami
0-471-17905-1; © 1998

see:
publisher's description
amazon.com's page with related items

Actually, "antipattern" is an accepted term in the pattern commnunity for describing a bad process or design that on the surface looks like a good idea. If a Pattern is a good practice distilled from the experiences of many good develoeprs, then an antipattern is a "gotcha" thathas been distilled from experience common to many good developers. This book describes it, but
the name really has nothing to do with Sun's practice of describing things in terms of patterns.

That's right. The AntiPattern is a well established idea, even marked by the publication of an AntiPatterns book just a few years after the publication of Design Patterns by the gang of four.

You can buy this book at Wiley (the publisher's site), and it's likely that the author will get more royalties. (in theory my contract gives me a higher percentage for direct sales, although it's unlikely my XML books would ever sell enough to get me royalties)

Liam Quin

You can read the original paper in Jan 2002 Advanced Materials.

The abstract is online: Scroll down to 38-41: Explosive Nanocrystalline Porous Silicon and Its Use in Atomic Emission Spectroscopy.
Can't read the full article tho', unless you subscribe...visit your local library and ask for it.

A good place to start is Open Source XML Database Toolkit by Liam Quin.

The key point is that the best approach depends upon how the data will be accessed, used and updated. There does not appear to be an off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all solution, even if you go to a commercial platform.

The advantage of XML is that you can start with a simple approach and migrate to a more complex approach without having to do an expensive data conversion.

The disadvantage is that XML can be quite expensive to set up on legacy documents and expensive to maintain as well. For documents that change frequently, have multiple uses, or require precise retrieval strategies, XML is the way to go. It's particularly useful when version control must be tracked at the paragraph level.

If version control takes place at the level of the whole document, retieval is done by keyword, and documents are displayed in one form only, XML may not add anything but trouble.

"Don't run Outlook" is what every PHB that reads this site needs to see. They also need to see and read parts of Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls, Published by Wiley, 2/2/2000 where the authors point out exactly what's wrong with it, MSIE, non Mozilla Netscape, and Windows. They recomend never using Windows to connect to the internet, ever.

I work in a place that uses NT. When asked I will give my honest and full opinion of such things. I have my doubts that MS will ever fix its little problems, and know that free and superior alternatives exist.

Oh yeah, you know as well as I do that nothing is going to keep rouge applications from reading or writing your Outlook address book. Saying things you don't believe to garner ignorant responses is also known as trolling.

You can also see AltaVista's Brief History sixth paragraph). Archie FTP, AltaVista HTML.

You can also see AltaVista's Brief History sixth paragraph). Archie FTP, AltaVista HTML.

You can also see AltaVista's Brief History sixth paragraph). Archie FTP, AltaVista HTML.

If I had a buisness that was once a leader in it's field, and suddenly I was faced with the prospect of going out of buisness, I would be sorely tempted to beat people about the head with IP to keep from putting all my employees on the street.

However, it seems like there's lots of prior art. (See : A History of Search Engines) So this is probably just a corporate form of rigor mortis. Besides, doesn't everyone use Google these days?

A History of Search Engines

---------///----------
All generalizations are false.

For everyone clamoring for more facts, the article hasn't been published yet. It should appear in the November issue of Bioelectromagnetics. It seems that you can get the full text for free at their website, but it's possible that I only had access because my university has a site license or something. There is, however, an older study by the same group that looks very similar: Abstract and full text.

For what it's worth, this test with the milk is a standard measure in learning and memory studies called the Morris Water Maze. I personally know lots of people who use this test on a daily basis. You put the mice or rats in a white chamber with opaque water (that's what the powdered milk is for). There are black symbols painted on the walls of the chamber. The platform is submerged in the opaque water, and the only way the animals should be able to find it is by remembering where it is in relation to the symbols painted on the walls. This is therefore a test for spatial learning and memory. Usually the animals undergo two sessions a day. You can measure spatial learning by noting the decreases in the animals' "search time." You can test for long-term memory by removing the platform several days later, and noting how long the animals spend in the spot where the platform used to be. There are lots of other variations on this theme.

It has been shown that things which disrupt human learning and memory also disrupt performance on this test. Results from these studies also correlate well with another learning and memory test called the Barnes Maze. It's been used so much by so many people, I seriously doubt there is some "milk effect" skewing the results.

Just my $.02,
-margaret

For everyone clamoring for more facts, the article hasn't been published yet. It should appear in the November issue of Bioelectromagnetics. It seems that you can get the full text for free at their website, but it's possible that I only had access because my university has a site license or something. There is, however, an older study by the same group that looks very similar: Abstract and full text.

For what it's worth, this test with the milk is a standard measure in learning and memory studies called the Morris Water Maze. I personally know lots of people who use this test on a daily basis. You put the mice or rats in a white chamber with opaque water (that's what the powdered milk is for). There are black symbols painted on the walls of the chamber. The platform is submerged in the opaque water, and the only way the animals should be able to find it is by remembering where it is in relation to the symbols painted on the walls. This is therefore a test for spatial learning and memory. Usually the animals undergo two sessions a day. You can measure spatial learning by noting the decreases in the animals' "search time." You can test for long-term memory by removing the platform several days later, and noting how long the animals spend in the spot where the platform used to be. There are lots of other variations on this theme.

It has been shown that things which disrupt human learning and memory also disrupt performance on this test. Results from these studies also correlate well with another learning and memory test called the Barnes Maze. It's been used so much by so many people, I seriously doubt there is some "milk effect" skewing the results.

Just my $.02,
-margaret