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Slashback: Debianism, Nukes, Discretion
Lots of pretty pictures. An unnamed reader wrote to say "that notes and pictures from the Debian Conference are now available." There are lots of cool (somewhat KDE-centric, go figure) shots from the recent LinuxTag in an article at dot.kde.org, too ;)
Adobe: an especially thick, recalcitrant material. aicra writes: "according to an email sent to the list:
KIllustrator is now known as 'Kontour' (after Adobe claimed that KIllustrator was too close to Adobe Illustrator, in case you haven't followed the news).Cute nuclear material shipment, has all shots, answers to "Lucky." We miss it very much. Please call. Random Walk writes: "The Russian memo, and the email exchange between Russian and U.S. principals involved in the problem of nuclear material lost in a MS database, is available online from the CDI. I found the following sentence particularly funny: 'Relatively poor quality of Microsoft SQL Server has created very serious problems in development and implementation of CMAS.' There is a very detailed discussion of the problem(s) with MS SQL Servers 6.5 and 7.0. The Russian report also has interesting words about the 'common fault failure' problem and the need to be more careful when selecting software for critical systems."This obviously breaks translations... I have kept the name killustrator.po[t] for the message files, so this remains. But the appearances of the word KIllustrator have been replaced.
This delays the release by about 2 days -- so that there is time to get the new messages translated for rc1 if you're fast (and for the final release otherwise)."
Take this exchange for what you will. As michael posted the other day though, the issue isn't necessarily all (or even primarily) Microsoft. The importance of robust software doing the dirty work doesn't get much clearer though.
Absolutely, positively, undeniably, unmitigatedly maybe. Later. Last week, we relayed a report that Psion was getting out of the consumer products market. An Anonymous Coward writes now, however, that "according to this article at Psion Place: Peter Bancroft, a senior spokesman for Psion, released a follow-up statement saying that 'There will be more Psion consumer products in the future.' According to Bancroft Psion is merely 'suspending' their plans to develop a consumer Bluetooth device."
The same statment, though, indicates that if Psion does eventually develop consumer products again (with hints about Bluetooth), it may make them in combination with a partner, or sell off the rights entirely.
I would have thought "KIllustrate" would have been a wonderful name. Less to change, and everyone who is going to keep calling it KIllustrator for the next five years will be relatively happy because they wont have to be translating the name for the unilluminated as they recall the software's history...
Damn straight! That's 1 in a 1000 on every 'SELECT' with 'ORDER BY'. So, in 1000 queries of that form, you can expect about 1 error (to labour the point), and that's only for this known bug. I dread to thimk of how badly it mangles stuff...
While no one competent in the corporate IT field uses MS SQL Server for anything important (that's what Oracle is for), there's plenty of incompetents in the world, and the amount of real money that could simply go astray due to the cumulative errors in gimcrack MS systems is scary.
MORAL: Don't use MS software for anything that matters. Preferably, don't use it at all. If you don't like Open Source, then your still better off with a non-MS proprietary vendor...
What's wrong with the Russians' work on ISS? Near as I could tell, it's been mainly our Yankee work that's coming apart at the seams.
-Paul Komarek
Yep, and when Apple killed the Newton, they announced that they would return to the handheld market in 1999.
We're still waiting.....
Geoff
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
--
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
"Shared" Source isn't actually "shared" in the full sense -- you're just allowed to pay a lot to *look* at it. I doubt it even actually builds. Having that kind of access to the source is interesting acedemically, but misses the entire point of the open source and free software movements it's trying to mimic.
I wouldn't be surprised if you have to agree to not participate in any such thing if you want to see MS source code.
AKrobat? After EffeKts? PhotoDelucKs?
I think "PageMaKer" or "FrameMaKer" would be too klose for komfort.
Regards, Ralph.
It does.
The EPOC OS may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if you can't download the email addresses you entered in your PDA right to your mail program with ease, it's useless.
It can, so it isn't.
A CD-ROM containing the PsiWin PC-Psion sync software is included with every Psion computer.
Regards, Ralph.
Off topic, of course, but who's replacing him? I'm assuming Satriani and Vai are still doing it -- did they get a third, or are they gonna call it G2 now? ;P
Oh, I know about and love the SP2 security features - but the RIM sync software and Palm software (as well as the Dataviz fancy Desktop To Go software) don't have this problem. They can just use Outlook directly without dialog boxes.
I can't give Palm too many props in the software area, though - though their desktop software upgrades are free, it took nearly a year after Win2K was released to have a non-beta quality USB driver. That's way too long.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I'll address just a couple of these points that you make (which are perfectly valid ones):
Murky screen: Yes, I've seen the contrast setting and fiddled with it. It's still pretty crummy. However, two counterpoints to that: first off, the Revo/Revo Plus is the entry-level Psion, and competes closest to Palms. And the screen is much crisper on Palms, even the lower-end ones. I know the 5mx has a much nicer screen (with backlighting), but it's also a lot bigger and heavier.
"Just deal with it" doesn't cut it. Hinges can be engineered for a lot less flex pretty easily - I think they sacrificed that in the design for the telescoping back and port covering when folded. The Revo normally costs some serious $ - it shouldn't feel flimsy.
I haven't seen the Linux software for it yet, but I'll go hunt and see how good it is. I do not have a problem with Outlook (or Windows, for that matter - other than the fact that I need to use it at work whatsoever, but that's another story!) - and I might mention that _nothing_ else I own has problems in this regard. The PC doesn't lose track of the Palm, Jornada, or Blackberry. However, the older EPOC Connect software Diamond included didn't work at all (never could find the Revo), and the new (beta, but the best they offer) version from Psion still drops the connection.
As for cost - I realize the Psions are positioned higher up. But that's too small a market. If you want to compete for profits with Palm and Microsoft, you need to have software developers. To have more developers, you need more users (the bulk of them go where the money is). To have more users, you need market share - and to get market share, you need PDA's that appear to the consumer, not just the geek.
And no, I didn't buy it used. I bought it new from Outpost.com, who is dumping the Diamond Mako (a Revo Plus with a different badge) along with Sparco and a few other vendors, since Diamond/Sonicblue is getting out of the Psion business. It was shrinkwrapped and everything.
Obviously, I haven't figured out everything it can do - four days is just enough to scratch the surface. I have downloaded quite a few apps to tinker with and learn, and don't get me wrong. I do consider it a neat device, I like it, and I'm glad I picked it up.
I'm also glad I didn't pay list price for it. Because after four days, it is a cool device, but I can tell readily why Psion has bombed so utterly in the general consumer market. Because when I take off my geek hat and try and look at it like the average person who might go to a Staples or something for a PDA, it does not measure up. People like you and I, however sophisticated we may be, do not make a marketplace.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Well, after reading a comment in last week's Psion article about the Diamond Mako (a rebadged Revo Plus) being available at Outpost and a few other places for just $100, I ordered one. What the heck - I have a Palm Vx now and a HP Jornada 520 (the HP was free), and I've had a Newton and a Sharp Wizard in the past, along with a couple of prior Palms. I also have a Blackberry (mostly e-mail, I don't use the PDA functionality on it). I've been looking for a "perfect" PDA since before they were called PDA's, and I'd always wanted to try a Psion but they were too damned expensive.
.txt file over. Which put it into Psion Word, not their Notepad app. Oh well.
So after using it for a full weekend +, I can see the usefulness of it to some people but I also can see why Psion's made pretty much zero dent in the consumer PDA market as a whole. I'd played with some other models before, but the Revo Plus is the first one I've owned.
Good points to the Psion:
-When folded, the shell is pretty solid. It's the only plastic PDA I've ever felt comfortable with in a pants pocket (the converse, though, is it's a little tall for shirt pockets).
-The weight is comfortable to carry.
-Battery life is excellent, and there's clear battery life indicators.
-It's pretty quick - switching applications is fast once you get used to the clunky way to do it (or download a nice free task switcher).
-EPOC apps seem to generally be pretty compact. With 16MB of RAM you can cram a lot o stuff into it.
-Licensing Opera: Good Move!
-Like CE, you can browse the palmtop's filesystem when it's docked from your PC. It makes transfers pretty easy.
Unfortunately, it's balanced by things that truly suck:
-The screen (the Revo is non-backlit) can be murky.
-When open, it feels pretty flimsy and flexes in my hand. It's much nicer on a table than in the hand.
- The connectivity software included with the Diamond version is horrid (an older EPOC Connect version). Downloading the current version from Psion (and patching it to the latest fixes) makes it usable, but it still has an alarming habit of disconnecting itself from my Windows laptop with no warning.
-The CopyAnywhere software for Psion/Windows clipboard sharing sucks hard.
-Syncing with Outlook (which I hate, but it is the standard for us) results in Outlook popping up to ask permission to share the e-mail addresses. Outlook thinks PsiWin's a damned macro virus! My Palm and Blackberry don't have this problem - they actually integrate with Outlook well.
-Syncing with my Mac at home - the Palm does it for free (with a free download or software on the disc nowadays, I believe). Buy a Mac, and the software to sync a Palm is already on the hard drive. Psion charges $65 for it, and all it can do is file backups.
-On a related note, all you can easily share from Outlook is the Contacts and Calendar files (which are probably the strongest of the built-in Psion apps, IMO). And the notes from Contacts don't transfer. Also, the Notes section of Outlook doesn't map to anything at all (no conduit), so I had to export to Notepad and copy the
Basically, I like the unit, it's useful, rugged (when closed), has a nice geek factor to it, and I don't regret buying it at all. That said, I think the average consumer would be far better served with a Palm (or maybe CE), and here's why:
-Palms are far cheaper on average. Easier impulse buy.
-A Palm has much more seamless connectivity with the two main desktop platforms out there (Mac and Windows), and it's all included for free with the organizers. Linux support is pretty good, too.
-Palms are smaller, lighter, and more easily pass the shirt pocket test. They also feel more solid when being used. Pocket PC's usually feel like tanks (and excepting the iPaq, are usually built like them) - they're even more rugged than the Psion is.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I was thinking Fu'dobe (fuh-doh-be) or Fukdobe might make a good name.
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I get Tennessee. (I must admit that I have no experience in converting from sexagesimal to decimal, or vice-versa.) I tried Terraserver, and got Alpha, Tennessee. (It would appear that he's in the middle of a field, or perhaps a low-contrast suburban housing development. :)
-Waldo
Have fun with the confusions.
This isn't a satisfactory result, except that I'm happy the developers aren't risking their careers/incomes by putting themselves in line of legal fire. This doesn't mean I'm happy with Adobe for laying claim to a word that used to be part of the English language. Far from it.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I said here, and I quote:
Guess I won't be taking any more crap from Microsoft defenders the next time I assume that Microsoft can't cut it - the one time I trust Microsoft not to have screwed things up, they go and let me down.
Yep, that last laugh is pretty satisfying, at least until my major city disappears in a ball of nuclear fire :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I think directly flaming MS over their product quality is pointless. There was once, a long time ago, a point to this. But nowdays, Microsoft's track record and reputation are well-established and known to everyone, so responsibility falls not upon Microsoft, but upon whoever makes the decision to use their products. It's kinda like if a monkey shoots someone: you don't blame the monkey, you blame whoever let the monkey have a gun.
Usually there's a reason for companies to use Microsoft products such as MS SQL. The most common reasons are:
- They don't know better
- A MSCE (either actually certified, or a wannabe in the same mindset)
employee or consultant, as part of the lock-in an job security strategy,
has set them up to do that. Some PHB in IS has probably set a policy
that these are the tools people must use.
My normal reaction to this is: Do nothing, because it isn't my problem. The company will be natually punished/rewarded for its own ignorance and gullibility. If I were a stockholder, I might wish that the people responsible were fired and replaced someone more competent or honest. But realistically, I know that whatever infintesimal fraction of a share I own indirectly through some mutual fund, is utterly powerless.Here we have the government using Microsoft products, and using them for important things. I don't see this as being any different than the classical stories about $900 hammers and toilet seats. The "it's not my problem" approach that applies 99% of the time, doesn't apply in this instance since it partly my tax dollars that are being misappropriated, either through fraud or ignorance. But the "infintesimal fraction of a share" argument still applies. So what the fuck can be done?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It depends on the job at hand. If a Fisher-Price toy plastic hammer does a poor job of driving actual metal nails into wood, that doesn't really mean it's a poor product. The hammer's job is to entertain children, not drive nails.
MSSQL is no different. The problem isn't that it fails one in a thousand, the real problem is that someone responsible for working with nukes, thinks that 999/1000 is good enough.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While I agree with the point you are trying to make, MS SQL 6.5 is still the only commercial db I've seen that lets you wipe out a whole table with a single mouse click and gives no warning or confirm dialog. I've seen a reasonably competent DBA do exactly that.
If you are trying to figure out how to do this, think bidirectional replication and a disaster recovery situation that involves installling a replacement server. (Which is something that does come up a bit in maintaining critical systems).
The misspelled words are Killing me.
/.
And yet you are still reading
--
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
> You can't tell me any amount of engineering in the world can make those things "safe".
:-) passing EU regulations in my case... but as I hinted I don't necessarily think that's a good thing...
Safer than they were anyway - safer to the point of (almost
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Actually, a hell of a lot of really good engineering work does go into lego - and most regualtions-compliant kids toys in general. It's quite difficult to make toys that kids won't hurt themselves with - and, while they can still choke on lego, the whole choking-on-stuff thing tends to pass before you hit the lego recommended age ( and for before that, you have the unswallowable Duplo).
Designing safe kid's toys is not easy! Note that I am a qualified mechanical engineer, with experience of meeting safety requirements for a pedal car, so this isn't just me talking crap.
At the same time, I really think that kids these days are just too safe - all they seem to learn is how to be good little consumers...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Also, if it is just a bug in SELECT statements, no data is actually being lost - its just not showing up where it should be.
This might be a cultural thing, but where I'm from, if something doesn't show up where it should be, we describe it as being "lost" (until it is "found")
--
Matt
Matt
Jeezus, do they still _make_ pedal carz?
I thought they had been outlawed in principle - for safety reasons.
I remember those well. They were a _great_ way to do all kinds of foot injuries, from pinching them in the moving parts to scraping them on the ground. There were, of course, the whole gamut of collision class problems (other kids had pedal carz, too) and then there were the running-off-the -road style problems (just put one over a curb - with or without help from another vehicle - a rollover is a distinct possibility, with pinched fingers pretty much guaranteed).
But the _real_ way to really really kill yourself was to get a bigger kid (the bigger the better - kinda like the big-block V8 engines that were being mounted in real cars at the time) to shove you up to an honest 15MPH or so. At that kind of speed, anything could happen - except that you couldn't get yer feet anywhere _near_ the pedals, so braking was pretty much out of the question.
It sure was a good thing we didn't live near any good, steep hills. The kids who lived near hills had _scars_.
All I see in toy stores anymore are electric jobs with a top speed of about 2 mi/hr, and reduction gearing so strong that there's no possibility of pushing them any faster.
DON'T GET ME WRONG! Pedal cars taught me vital lessons: that I wasn't indestructable, and that moving concrete sidewalk can _hurt_ raw skin. Both these proved invaluable as soon as I learned to ride a bicycle....
You can't tell me any amount of engineering in the world can make those things "safe".
Lego? Fsck that - I was known to eat _staples_!
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Err, Tennessee... I should learn to read maps... that and I need some more caffeine.
Slashdot's traveling, I guess.
The memo explains the testing in detail and clarifies that the fault was isolated as a MS SQL Server bug. The problem in v6.5 was 'fixed' in 7.0, but it turned out that 7.0 had only reduced the bug's impact, not fixed it. As a regular SQL Server user (now using 2000) I can confirm that SELECT integrity bugs are not unusual, as can be seen by reviewing the bug-fix list for each service pack. The relevent part of the memo is here:
Additional tests were developed in order to detect a systematic appearance of this SQL Server 6.5 software flaw. These tests were constructed in a such way that a presence of a flaw in the SQL Server 6.5 has been proved for sure. Microsoft did confirm a presence of this software flaw. This flaw has been filed by Microsoft as flaw No. SRX000403600845.
In a course of transition of KI-MACS application software core from version 6.5 to 7.0 and intensive testing of the modified KI-MACS, at the end of July, 2000 one more flaw has been detected in the SQL Server 7.0. This flaw has been recognized by the Microsoft and filed as flaw No. SRX000727603512. Principal modifications introduced by the Microsoft in SQL Server 7.0 which are relating to the data security and data protection in a Database, and presence of the said flaw, are considered as creating a direct threat to data security and data protection in the SQL Server 7.0 Databases.
That's amazingly shitty
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Oh, yes. There are plenty of other sites using Microsoft databases to track dangerous materials. Does that prove that they haven't lost stuff? No, it only proves that those tools are being used.
t ml#8
. pdf
f
& A-at-RCP.pdf (2MB on
s cy.html#ATTACHMENT 4
f
The system with bugs apparently uses Microsoft Access (therefore using a
Microsoft operating system). Developed at Oak Ridge, it involves a PC
which monitors containers which rest on weight sensors. Some
installations also use electronically-readable tags, heat sensors or
radiation sensors. Russian seals were used, not the
electronically-monitored Oak Ridge seals. Announced plans were for 15
Russian facilities to be using the system.
http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN02-16-96/la1995.h
http://www.y12.doe.gov/orsens/pubs/inmm99report-r
http://www.y12.doe.gov/orsens/pubs/esarda-vane.pd
http://rmtc.ippe.obninsk.ru/seminars/eng/tri2/NMC
slow link)
The U.S. NRC had a different problem with a Microsoft database in 2000.
The Nuclear Materials Management and Safeguards System was first
implemented with Microsoft FoxPro, which "the computer industry no
longer supports".
http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/COMMISSION/SECYS/2000-0163
The OPTI-RP software for selecting radiation protection options uses
Microsoft Access.
http://ean.cepn.asso.fr/pdf/EAN-2.pdf
Microsoft Access is used for a Singapore inventory of Air Emissions,
Watewater, Solid Waste and Toxic waste.
http://www.dnauk.co.uk/env-pro.htm#it12
Southern Africa's 20 Megawatt pool type reactor SAFARI-1 is automated
with a Windows NT system, including material tracking. Also: "...we are
looking at remote reporting and further user interfaces at the homes of
senior plant personnel, for faster response time to incidents requiring
operator intervention"
http://www.adroit.co.za/news/briefs.html#ITEM27
The Australian Radiation Incident Register uses Microsoft Access.
http://www.arps.org.au/ARPS25abstracts.PDF (350K on slow link)
The 2000 nuclear Information System on Occupational Exposure (ISOE) 1
and 2 database uses Microsoft Access.
http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/reports/2000/nea2728.pd
Yeah, I guess you didn't read: http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/nukesoftware.txt
Microbob
Who knows how accurate my GPS is? Soundslike it did about as well as I'd expect;)
... oh well.) Since I'm not a golfer nor have any burning desire to become one, the hat you see is not mine. Whereas if you'd had a camera on a certain spot a few miles southeast of here on the 4th of July you might have gotten some good aerial shots ;)
There are blackberries growing just off the backyard here, and the area is not yet converted into 100% suburban wasteland. (Though this development is certainly doing its part
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Oh yes, it's all SQL Servers fault. It's got nothing to do with the implementers being inept. Hell, the Russians are normally so good at developing things, just look at the fine work they did for the ISS.
...I am not going to resolve MS SQL problems by playing around data formats which means a complete redesign of KI-MACS application software core (over 5 Mb of source code in Transact SQL). By the way, I was astonished to learn that MS staff is seriously proposing such
It is inconsequential that hundreds of thousands of other sites seem to run SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, and 2000 just fine.
Well, first of all, the bugs discovered by the Kurchatov Institute does actually exists, and acknowledged as such by Microsoft (see the mail from the MS engineer). Note the bugs are bugs within MS SQL Server, not in the implementation of the DB. So 'Oh yes, it's all SQL Servers fault.'
I don't care to check whether the problems is fixed by now, but I guess they are, though probably not for MS SQL 6.5. (read the text)
So every MS SQL server not patched, has the potential to be bitten by these bugs.
A nice quote from the text:
stupid advises as change of data formats to avoid MS SQL Server SYSTEM
problems.
Is it MS style of conducting business? If so, we have to be prepared to
deal with permanent troubles for the rest of our life.
And if someone releases an image editor called Ophotoshop?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Ummmm... then why can every other image editor I have on my Mac---including a freeware program---convert between CMYK and RGB just peachy (ie, as good as Photoshop)?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Difference between Adobe v. Killustrator and Ford v. Kontour: The former is name confusion between two vector drawing programs; the latter is a car and a drawing program. Now I will admit that, between Illustrator and Freehand, I can choose between two programs that do everything I need except scratch my ass. But neither is even close to being a car.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
No, Pantone, not Adobe, has a monopoly on this area because Pantone tests and mixes the inks, and publishes the swatch books. If you want Pantone support in your program, you need to pay a license fee to Pantone, NOT Adobe. (Furthermore, you're arguing spot color when I clearly was talking about CMYK. You can do spot without Photoshop, as long as you have an up-to-date and fresh swatchbook and a printer willing to accomodate your use of anything non-Photoshop.)
And I can do a CMYK conversion in a non-Photoshop program and bring it into Photoshop with all four channels intact and correct. Did it all the time when I last worked in-house for a printer, batch converting several hundred RGB images into CMYK.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Have you ever used an RDBMS in anger? Your statement is analogous to saying 'if you delete a file from your file system, no data is actually lost - it's just not showing up where it should be'. That's true, of course. If you go and inspect the inode, you'll find the data is still there - at least until it gets overwritten by something else. But it's not good to you because, without doing esoteric things in the bottom of the file system, you can't get at it.
The SELECT statement is the principal way of getting data out of an RDBMS. If it doesn't work, that RDBMS is broke. If it doesn't work and it doesn't barf, that RDBMS is not just broke, it's dangerous. I've spent twenty minutes this morning writing a heads-up to all my customers who use MS SQL Server, advising them of the problem.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
And you can prove this how?
Remember the nuclear materials accounting system was in use at Los Alamos for several years and they never detected thec error; the Russians were only able to detect the error because they had duplicate paper records. Do you have a papertrail (a real one, on real flattened dead trees) covering all your transactions? If not
Because, face it, man. If you are using SQL Server 6.5 (or have done in the past), and you use (or any software you use uses) ORDER BY, you have lost data. Like the guys at LANL, you just don't know it yet.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
GigsVT said:
:( _and_ a method to control/calibrate the RGB display---the latter is the sticking point for the GIMP.
>Sure, it might work "as good" on your screen
>(your screen can't show CMYK
>correctly anyway), but when you are going to be
>printing things on a press, you
>need to have support for real Pantone colors.
>Adobe continues to have a
>monopoly in this area.
The normal concept of Pantone spot colour is quite different from that of CMYK process colour. The latter requires (in the instance of computer modeling) a method to convert from RGB display on-screen to CMYK output (note that GhostScript does this, but is buggy and imprecise
Pantone is a commercial standard which anyone can make use of by _licensing_ it from the company---NeXT did this for NeXTstep, so drawing and other DTP programs were cheaper for it, since no extra license was necessary.
However, one can do spot colours without such a license---just create a channel/separation/plate and tell the printer, ``this plate should be blue, i.e., Pantone 301'', but it won't necessarily look like that on the screen (a common trick is to say cyan==blue, magenta==red, and such like, to get spot colour blending which the typical dtp apps don't handle). This is way cool if one has a RIP or other trapping/ink manipulation tool which allows ink-substitution.
Sadly, spot colours are misunderstood even in the graphic design industry (one Quark book author stated he didn't understand where the Pantone color numbers came from, they're from the ink formulation, so Pantone 301 is three parts cyan, 0 magenta, one yellow, no black)
The problem with the GIMP for spot colours is there's AFAICT no multi-channel support, with an understanding for colour as applied pigment and which models the difference between additive and subtractive colour.
William
--
Lettering Art in Modern Use
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Errhm, not quite, and in the following lines yourself are actually saying why...:
> If you go and inspect the inode, you'll find the data is still there - at least until it gets overwritten by something else.
Whereas, with this database bug, the data won't get overwritten (unless you DELETE it first...)
> But it's not good to you because, without doing esoteric things in the bottom of the file system, you can't get at it.
The real problem is that you won't expect a simple SELECT ... ORDER BY statement to fail, and fubar happens if your application program acts on the result it gets from the statement (for updating other tables, displaying reports to the users, sounding (or not sounding...) an alarm about missing nukes, etc.).
SELECT count(*) FROM table WHERE {conditions};
SELECT count(*) FROM table WHERE {conditions} ORDER BY {ordering};
and look at the difference in numbers?
Does SQL Server work with SELECT count(*)'s and ORDER BY's, but not with SELECT {data} ... ORDER BY's?
Indeed not. That's like citing Lego as an example of engineering excellence.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Also, if it is just a bug in SELECT statements, no data is actually being lost - its just not showing up where it should be.
Re:Shared Source (Score:1)
by pnatural on 08:56 PM July 16th, 2001 EST (#96)
(User #59329 Info)
Ever heard of SELECT INTO? A bug there would cause data to be lost. Or how about a stored proc that performs an INSERT or UPDATE based on the content of a SELECT? Add DTS into the mix, you have a million and one ways a bug in SELECT would cause data loss.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Shared Source (Score:2)
by mikeee on 09:06 PM July 16th, 2001 EST (#107)
(User #137160 Info)
>no data is actually being lost - its just not showing up where it should be.
You're saying that the data isn't lost, you just can't find it?
Hello!
And when it comes to nuclear security, I'll take transparency over features any day; put the damn records in a flat file if you have to.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Shared Source (Score:1)
by Tuross (root@[127.0.0.1]) on 09:17 PM July 16th, 2001 EST (#113)
(User #18533 Info) http://www.goldweb.com.au/~matt/
Also, if it is just a bug in SELECT statements, no data is actually being lost - its just not showing up where it should be.
This might be a cultural thing, but where I'm from, if something doesn't show up where it should be, we describe it as being "lost" (until it is "found")
--
Matt
"Hope you don't think I'm rude - FUCK YOU!!"
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Maybe the GPL is a "cancer," maybe it's not. But it's never misplaced plutonium.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
An error every 1 of 1,000 operations is outstandingly crappy. Microsoft actually acknowledged it, so the bug must be real. I'll have to run some tests on SQL Server tomorrow. Has anyone else reproduced the bug? Please post if you have.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=1, Funny=1, Total=2
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
And are you sure you are not a 15 year old "legal wizard"?
Troll Like a Champion Today
Ever heard of SELECT INTO? A bug there would cause data to be lost. Or how about a stored proc that performs an INSERT or UPDATE based on the content of a SELECT? Add DTS into the mix, you have a million and one ways a bug in SELECT would cause data loss.
I don't think reliable means what you think it means. From reading the article it looks like proper care means adding extra checks to detect database corruption. It's a continuing struggle because each release has different bugs.
Probably because the X-Window System (not X Windows) predated MS Windows?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Pay attention. There have been two confirmed bugs in *Microsoft's* database, causing errors. These are not a product of bad design or error on the part of the KI-MACS developers.
In addition, there were flaws in KI-MACS that were not. But saying Microsoft is blameless is a lie.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Saw the G3 show or something just now?
;)
It did rock
"Our hardware runs better without Windows"
?Home Page
http://slashdot.org/features/01/06/10/0034241.shtm l
Hint: how come no one bothered to comment in that article ?
Just for the record, I think that it's better to loose data with a GPL'd database than with a Microsoft one.
Um, did you notice that all the other archived stories have comments ? The pages and pages of trite slashbotism at the bottom was a bit of a giveaway, y'know.
Korel Draw should be free of any legal issues... If you want to jump on buzzword bandwagon, then SVGK? Others: CirKle, Kalligraphy, ArtKompanion, BrushstroKe, DrawBespoKe, Kontemporary, LandsKape, um those off top of head. Sure others can think of more.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Read it, please: they found an admitted bug in SQL Server 6.5. I like this quote, from a Russian engineer: "By the way, I was astonished to learn that MS staff is seriously proposing such stupid advises as change of data formats to avoid MS SQL Server SYSTEM problems."
Know what a "Vectra" is? Is it:
It's both. I don't see GM and HP in court over either...
-- Steve
(If the unicode char didn't come out right, it should look like a backwards c)
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
What's wrong with Killu ? and if you really want to get their goats, Killu Straighter!* ************
************************************
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
XML causes global warming.
no where do I see ian... or any representation of his company. Considering he's the founder of debain.. that's kind of odd.
-neil
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
"Welcome to Microsoft Cover-My-Ass-System 2000(TM) - What do you want to screw up today?
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
One difference... Mouse pointers sometimes slip by accident when you're trying to click on something. I know I'm not the only one who's hand has slipped from time to time, and dragged a desktop icon to the "Recycle Bin" or folder by accident. Now, unless you're stupid enough to name your databases in some kind of sequential order, this wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem with a CLI, since you'd have to be thinking wrong to do remove the wrong database (not that CLI or GUI can really protect you from that, either way).
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Okay, now you're just going out of your way to be an asshole. People make mistakes, learn to live with it. I'm not the only person who's deleted a file I shouldn't have, and I'm almost certain that you're not infallable, either. Microsoft has always touted the user interface of Windows NT as a selling feature, implying even a rank idiot could operate a Windows NT server (and many do). I think it's fair game to call out user interface errors when they are found.
Now, I'm not a DBA and won't even claim to be one, but I do have to keep one MS SQL server up and running. The only thing I've ever really even modified on it was configuring it to do daily backups because the original programmers had some strange notion that automated backup proceedures are somehow bad. Other than that, I stay away from it -- the program that connects to it is fragile and buggy, and I don't want to accept blame for breaking it in any way. I don't even dare apply Windows NT or MSSQL7 service packs to it. But the fact the company won't hire a qualified DBA is not my concern, as long as I fulfill my obligations as sys admin by making sure all the data on that server is properly backed up, and that it remains running all day long.
What I don't want to hear about is some'l33t MySQL server with 10 records in it doing a better job from someone barely out of school.
Well, if anyone ever suggested MySQL for something that was "mission critical" and that no data could ever be lost, they really should be fired on the spot. MySQL was never designed for that, and anyone who uses it for that is just plain stupid. That said, I do use it myself at work for the website and the online ordering for non-critical data such as pricing, and minimal customer data. If information is lost, it's not important, because it will not affect operations at the company one bit (although it might make a little more work for one person -- me). For "Open Source" software, PostgreSQL and InterBase are probably better competitors to MS SQL and Oracle, although I don't have any real information on any of them.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Any my point was that Microsoft constantly touts their "user friendly" graphical user interface as a primary reason to buy their products, goes out of their way to point out that UNIX's may cost more because you have to hire a qualified administrator (implying that you don't with NT). I think it's fair game to criticise them on their GUIs when they've obviously made an error in the design of the interface by their very own GUI guidelines. If UNIX was being marketed the same way as NT is, then, yes, I'd have the same criticism of UNIX and the rm command or the MySQL 'drop [database]' command. Now, I'm sure you know, just as I do, that you do need a qualified administrator for NT machines, just as you do for UNIX ones.
Try it, with SQL server it usually works. If it doesn't then revert to your backup.
I don't think so. The program that contacts that SQL database is so picky that the program fails to work properly unless the client is running Windows NT 4.0 SP5 or SP6 with Office 97 SR2-a and Internet Explorer 4.0 or 5.0x. Windows 2000, 98, 95, XP or ME don't work. Office 97 SR-1, 97 SR-2b, 2000 or XP don't work. Internet Explorer 5.5 is known to break it. ANYTHING that updates ODBC drivers breaks it. It's a house of cards. There's no way I'm bringing it down on myself.
I think you may find "online ordering" is fairly mission critical for those websites who rely on the Internet as a shop-front, and thousands of those rely on MS SQL Server.
Perhaps, but I use it only for non-critical data. If, by chance, it did horribly die, I could either just restore from backup with little or no ill effects, or consequences. Orders, credit card numbers, etc are not stored in that database (well, it does keep a copy of the order, but it's unused). The "house of cards" database I mentioned above handles all the orders... Somehow I do seem to be able to manage to keep things running on the crappy servers the company has purchased (no name brand anything). Damn this job sucks.
I'd deploy Oracle on Solaris 8 days a week if I could, but it's expensive, full of magic (none of which is in manuals, it's smoke & mirrors DBAing), and is only cost-effective for real cash-generating business entities. If you want a reasonably straightforward system with cheap support costs (in terms of manpower), then there are far worse things than deploying SQL server.
That's one thing that bugs me about Microsoft SQL Server. Many salespeople will simply say SQL without qualifying it with Microsoft, leaving you guessing about if they mean Microsoft's product, or just some SQL server in general. And regarding Oracle's price... There's the old saying, "You get what you pay for."
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Did you read the story? This is not about database corruption. Yes, databases get corrupted, just about anything can cause it. A good server that can do transaction logging so that you can roll the database forward from the recovered transaction logs is extremely important. But this article isn't about database corruption. It's about SQL server returning incorrect results from a simple, common command. The best DBA and sysadmin in the world can't combat this. And if Oracle had these kinds of problems with their database, they deserve the same criticisms. The database corruption problem arrises from relying on data that the server is telling you is correct, but is, in fact, incomplete. This is one of those things that you can't even work around very easily in your own software, because aside from running multiple queries of the same type and comparing them, how are you to know how many results you're supposed to get each time?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Indeed. However, most people rely on the fact that the database server itself won't lend a willing hand in the destruction of your data by feeding you incorrect information from SELECT commands.
MS SQL Server is alive and kicking and pervasive throughout enterprise computing. With proper care, it can be as reliable and strong as Oracle and leagues stronger than MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Reliable is not random data loss. If SELECTs and ORDER BY ops are not returning all the data they should, there is something seriously wrong, and the best DBA in the world probably can't do a damn thing about it. One would expect that some esoteric features might be buggy, but one that is as ubiquitous as SELECT? RDBMS's live and die by the data integrity they provide -- I wouldn't run MySQL for a mission critical system that could not ever lose or corrupt data because it was never made for that. MS SQL and Oracle are both designed to do this, and if MS SQL can't deliver, I'd call that a pretty big reliability problem.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Never use MySQL to store anything important. Use PostgreSQL, InterBase, or some other Open Source DBMS which passes the ACID test.
Check here for a discussion of the problems with MySQL.
The difference, though, is that MySQL does not pretend to be a real DBMS. It's problems are well known and documented. Even Las Alamos couldn't mistake it for one. MS SQL, on the other hand, is marketed as a enterprise level RDBMS. Consequently, its users have an expectation of a resonable level of quality.
In short, it is acceptable for MySQL to lose data, it is not acceptable for PostgreSQL, Oracle, Interbase, MS SQL, or any other database in their league to behave in a similar manner.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''I've said it before, I'll say it again. If a Microsoft License Inspector is auditing your site, and he leaves, but leaves his briefcase behind, then RUN!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
In reply to "What will imaging professionals use instead of Photoshop?": bring out the gimp!
No. GIMP does NOT support CMYK process colors or PANTONE colors. Imaging professionals use PANTONE colors, and most of the good algorithms for going between RGB, CMYK, and PANTONE are patented. No, inverting the RGB components and subtracting the minimum does not count, as CMYK is highly nonlinear.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just thought to note that I've done a major update to my Debian Conference page, somebody of course posted it just before I had my report ready. :-)
AJT
> At the same time, I really think that kids these
> days are just too safe - all they seem to learn
> is how to be good little consumers...
Of course. In the US/WIPO/12ft Swedish Lizard Overlords/Corporate New World Order that's all they'll be allowed to be anyway. Might as well indoctrinate them from an early age.
>no data is actually being lost - its just not showing up where it should be.
You're saying that the data isn't lost, you just can't find it?
Hello!
And when it comes to nuclear security, I'll take transparency over features any day; put the damn records in a flat file if you have to.
One of my closest friends is a Computer Science PhD student studying databases, and she pretty much agrees with /.'s take -- Microsoft SQL server is awful. There are things that even basic database packages implement that MSFT SQL doesn't -- and it does a much better job.
She mentioned IBM's DB2 as an example of vastly superior database software.
"...and it does a much better job."
Should read: "And it does a much WORSE job."
Serves me right for not hitting [Preview].
From: Mikrosoft
Re: New databaseski
Date: 11/1/1989
Comrades,
We offer you some of our new software which is as strong and reliable as your venerable Berlin Wall. May the Communist Party, founded on the ideals of Lenin and supported by MS SQL Server(tm), reign for another century.
Love,
Bill
======================================
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
Maybe we could have some company pay the fee, look at the source, and then work with another team who has never seen the source to finish the WINE compatibility libraries. IIRC this is how the x86 clones were eventually made possible - a "clean room" engineering with some other guys who knew what was going on telling them if they were warm or cold as far as getting it right, but never telling them anything specific. Maybe we could unseat windows the same way IBM got nailed.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
That's for the Java portions of Microsoft's EULAs. Specifically, it reads:
"The Software product may contain support for programs written in Java. Java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as online control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communications systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of Java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage."
. I know I'm not the only one who's hand has slipped from time to time, and dragged a desktop icon to the "Recycle Bin" or folder by accident
How the hell can you blame Microsoft for your stupidity on not being able to handle the most common input device?
It's a sad day on slashdot when people are sinking to this level.
I've installed several instances of multiple SQL Server 7 databases, usually as a temp-store in a DMZ with automagic replication to a main server, and I've never seen so much as a bit of data disappear.
Admitedly the code was written by professional coders and not hacked together in 20 minutes, but the data was & is still there.
Please people. I remember when MS started pushing SQL server, and people were pleased it was based on the (rather good) Sybase codebase, so at least keep your flames subjective rather than whining.
Let those who manages real, large systems make intelligent comment on this. I don't, but I know people who do, and I really am curious to hear about real world problems.
What I don't want to hear about is some'l33t MySQL server with 10 records in it doing a better job from someone barely out of school.
Microsoft has always touted the user interface of Windows NT as a selling feature, implying even a rank idiot could operate a Windows NT server (and many do). I think it's fair game to call out user interface errors when they are found.
But by this logic Unix has an inherent failure in letting any idiot do rm -r when they've just backed up one level from a symlink, and trashed a vital directory structure! My point was that blaming a standard human-computer interface allowing you to delete a database hardly constitutes MS evil.
I don't even dare apply Windows NT or MSSQL7 service packs to it
Try it, with SQL server it usually works. If it doesn't then revert to your backup.
That said, I do use it myself at work for the website and the online ordering for non-critical data such as pricing, and minimal customer data. If information is lost, it's not important, because it will not affect operations at the company one bit
I think you may find "online ordering" is fairly mission critical for those websites who rely on the Internet as a shop-front, and thousands of those rely on MS SQL Server. I rarely recommend MS products, and even rarer when they are used as components of web servers (I'm a security consultant after all), but I think the product is being flamed far more than it deserves here.
I'd deploy Oracle on Solaris 8 days a week if I could, but it's expensive, full of magic (none of which is in manuals, it's smoke & mirrors DBAing), and is only cost-effective for real cash-generating business entities. If you want a reasonably straightforward system with cheap support costs (in terms of manpower), then there are far worse things than deploying SQL server.
Then they could fix the bug in their database that the Russians found.
For all the MS-bashing on this story, the bug seems a bit esoteric. All software has bugs. I doubt they would be better off with an open source database given the mission-criticalness of the application. The best open-source database is still incomplete compared to any commercial RDBMS.
Also, if it is just a bug in SELECT statements, no data is actually being lost - its just not showing up where it should be.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Sort of like the server side cursor locking up at about 30k records. This could not possibly be a MS SQL server bug! . MS SQL server is no better than a souped up version of Access. I just replaced two of them with Postgres and have not had a problem since. 50K for a MS License, Ha I think not.....
Got Code?
Since when is lost data in SQL server not a MS issue? Sounds pretty damn cut a dry to me!
Got Code?
If only MS put a note in the EULA, as they did in MS Age of Empires II : The Age of Kings, warning me not to make use of it in a nuclear facility.
But the article (well, the quoted message) says it's "Kontour," and it sounds like that's the decision of the author ...
vektor / veKtor would have been a cool choice, though -- then KDE project folks could sue Adobe for infringing on their intuhlektural prahpuhty whenever they refer to their product as a "vector-based drawing program."
simon
"Hey Carlito, r'membah me? Benny Blanco from the Bronx!"
Actually, I remember GM getting sued for the Chevy Beretta, since there is a firearms company by that name. Of course, in this case, there isn't a generic word "beretta" (except maybe "biretta", from the Italian "berretta", meaning a clergymen's cap), so the firearms company could claim that it could be mistaken that they were endorsing the car. It turned out in the court case that GM ended up paying the firearms company a whole sh*tload of money.
I'm not impressed by a DBMS that can do half a transaction. One of my clients has MS SQL 6.5 latest service pack and it performs an insert, fails part way and DOES NOT ROLLBACK!
--- Nukes don't kill people psychopathic megalomaniacs do.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
mysql>show databases
LittleData
BigData
mysql
mysql>drop database BigData;
ok, 0 rows affected
mysql>show databases
LittleData
mysql
mysql>
Damn, looks like I wiped a whole database(not just a table) with a single command with no warning or confirm dialog. The point is any inept administrator can lose data. You mention replication, but what good does replication do in this instance? The database gets dropped from your replicated DB as well. Time to find the tapes....
Enigma
Enigma
... makes me want to install Red Hat.
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
Lesson #1. Tables are unordered sets of rows. When you use funny tricks like ORDER BY you are getting the db to act like a sequential file system not a relational database. These tricks slow both Oracle and SQL down by a power of 10 in many cases. Its the difference between procedural and set orientated thinking. Believe me they are a world part both conceptually and performance wise.... All ordering in mission critical systems like this should be done in the host system, not the database...wrong tool for the wrong job...I blame the programmers here... 6.5 is ok..I had to admin it for 3 years...7.0 is better...2000 is better.... Another Rant....bean counters make more technology decisions than technologist....SQL is more cost effective than many Oracle installs....I did not say better, just cost effective.... If you haven't noticed bean counters are running the world right now....
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
Well, the price of much commercial software drives many to use free (and Free) alternatives. A bunch of Open Source people threatening never to buy Adobe's products ever again isn't threatening at all. I don't exactly know why Adobe is bullying KDE around, but I think it has something to do with the legal rule of "Defend it all the time, or lose it forever." We should just let this one go.... A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
KIllustrator is now known as 'Kontour' (after Adobe claimed that KIllustrator ...)
We need to ban the letter 'K' from all Linux software. The misspelled words are Killing me.
What's next? kmdrTaco?
The funny bit was GM claiming that they'd never heard of Beretta, that the name came from a computer program that randomly generated names. Apparently nobody in all of GM owns a gun or has ever heard of Robert Blake.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Even if this Ford car was named "Kontour" (it's named "Contour"), Ford would have absolutely no legal grounds to sue the KDE team. Killustrator and Adobe Illustrator are two different products in the same market, which is where trademark law is applied. Cars and software should be able to have the same or similar names without threat of legal action. Of course, this is all in theory, and IANAL.
-mdek.net
They didn't trademark the word "KIllustrator", they trademarked "Illustrator". Those are two different words. They are not the same word. I would side with Adobe if KDE had, instead of choosing "KIllustrator", chosen something more aloong the lines of... oh I don't know... "Illustrator"!
--
Good idea.
By banning the letter "k", distributions would have to refer to their "kernel" package by its real name---Linux! It almost makes too much sense!
As a corollary, maybe they would then call their distributions something besides "Linux". Perhaps "operating system".
Got friends?
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
someone's reply: But by this logic Unix has an inherent failure in letting any idiot do rm -r when they've just backed up one level from a symlink, and trashed a vital directory structure!
Who ever said that the Un*x CLUI was user-friendly and usable by idiots? Anybody who has should be slapped. So, if being user-friendly is a selling point, it should be user friendly.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
at least it's not cowboyGneal...
----
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
As someone who works for the company with the largest install base of MSSQL I have to say you will see good uses of a database and poor uses of a database application. Every had a SQL perform slowly after upsizing from Access? Try turning off Select-into-bulk-copy.
Some DBAs think it is fine to update some code without a backup first. Some think it is cool to just publish new code without testing it, because that makes them more efficient.
While these often don't cause problems, they do sometimes. Often they run to their boss pointing the finger at US (we host their server, they generally admin it).
Anyone running a critical website knows better than to deploy untested code. And this is just for a damn website. This is not nuclear material they're are tracking, it's your order for toilet paper you placed online!
Will Slashdot and it's readers get a grip? Even lazy admins of open source apps can make mistakes or deploy broken code or take short-cuts in general!
Please set your safetys to ON prior to blaming SQL or MS for all the lame admins short-comings...
Wouldn't you all have been smart enough to find a bug in a closed source app like the one used here? You are smart right? So, don't blame the car for going off the road when you had a 12 pack for lunch and a speed-ball for the long ride home! Or for that matter, the Cop who put you behind bars afterwards.
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
Anyone save a copy of the memo? The site seems to have been taken down...
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
it routinely loses data on some sites ive put it onto. I've had user accounts mysteriously vanish without a trace. Thankfully these were minor sites, like messageboards, but you know some fool out there is recommending to his company to use it for financial transactions because its 'fast and open source'....
-
Right, being outside of the realm entirely, Ford could not attack a piece of computer software called Contour. Nope, no way.
I'm not even familiar with what Adobe Illustrator or the software formerly known as Killustrator do. I have absoluetly no interest in that sort of thing. I'm strictly a communications guy.
In any case, if "Illustrator" describes what it does (makes illustrations?) then I don't think that Adobe can have their say into who uses it. That would be like calling a word processor "Word Processor" and then attempting to sue a company that makes a program called a word processor. Not gonna happen. But I get this feeling that that isn't exactly a description of it's function, and that if the two programs do the same sorts of things, then Adobe does have some rights to that particular name.
It's like Microsoft Word. You couldn't very well go and develop "NewCorp Word". No one would treat that one very nicely. Or if it were instead of "kIllustrator" say it was called "NewCo Illustrator". Just because it's open source doesn't mean you can go ripping people's names off.
Of course, I'm POSITIVE THAT WAS NO ONE'S INTENTION was to rip people's names off. They just wanted their software to be recognized that it performs the same sort of functions as Adobe Illustrator. But that doesn't change that Adobe holds that name.
There's me $0.04.
All your base are belong to XO
http://mi-net.dynup.net/
http://blackmagik.dynup.net/
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I have got to score tickets to G3 this time around. Sorry to hear Eric Johnson won't be joining the mayhem, though. :(
Why not ' KILL ustrator'?
Perhaps I could be off, but I somehow see the Ford Motor Company going after them for this one.
I mean, theoretically, <i>some</i> person <i>somewhere<i> could mistake a vector drawing program for a vehicle from a company that could stand for <i>Fix Or Replace Daily</i>.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
..between Rt 66 and Country Club Way. I kept zooming in until I could see the top of Timothy's head. Ugh! That golf hat with the pom pom is ugly.
Mommy. What's a karma whore?
Obviously they made the wrong choice. Now we can truly blame MS for the end of the world! Who knows, maybe SQL server is really Skynet in disguise... (see movie Terminator)
Reading the Russian memos, it's clear they have this naïve idea that software should do what it says in the spec. They're clearly hankering after an ordered society with goals, and resisting the ferment of the free market where one sells whatever the hell one can get away with. Their aesthetic distaste at the concept of workarounds, to deal with the fact that the actual spec is whatever the hell was delivered, fairly blares out.
<flamebait<looking at their comments on strings, I bet they think in Pascal (or another Wirth-flavoured language that tries to stop you doing stupid things).</flamebait<
Having worked with many a Russian programmer, I can attest to their competence as programmer. They do like oderly processes and document their systems to a fault, but the software works as specified (even .0 versions) and if you find a bug, they fix correctly and quickly. Most of the times, they find the problem before we report it.
Nobody said it was SQL-Server.
I think it's time they stopped using MS-Access. Obviously the transactions aren't working right. Nor is the 'repair db' button. No matter how many times that was clicked, the data's still missing. Port attempts to FoxPro have yielded similar problems, and Excel now refuses to load on their server.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Oracle's corporate site
Oracle's technical site (marketing)- free downloads, product demos, documentation requires free login
Oracle's technical site (technical) bug fixes, patchs obtaining some content requires valid license key.
I've seen Oracle, Sybase and MS SQL Server run very well in critical environments with no data loss. I've also seen all three "loose" data all over the place -- the critical points are usually the administrator/administration and the application utilizing the db.
Marketing numbers would have us believe that MS SQL is not only commonly used but frequently used.
MS SQL is just as good in an appropriately sized environment as ORACLE, SYBASE, etc.
Incompetence usually comes in with improper design and implementation and administration (rampant).
In Germany we got a guy who has stolen plutonium from atomic recycling factory!
Apparantly the security there was so low that he just had to put it asides and take it with him home. check out the german magazine "spiegel online".
You may need babelfish
Who, with any clout, could someone contact at Adobe with a complaint ("I'm (or any of my friends) not gunna ever buy an Adobe product because of Adobe's handling of killustrator) ?
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
MS is catching the blame here for something that obviously isn't their fault._ ________
_________________________________________
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
I find it hard to believe that MS releases a commercial server product that actually loses data as a result of it's normal running. As users of MySQL, the slashdot staff should be aware of the precautions necessary with any database use -- even fault-impervious Open Source Tee Emm databases -- to prevent data loss and allow recovery. I place the blame for the missing nuclear material in the hands of the government adminsistrators, who were obviously too lazy to do their jobs.
I will agree that choosing the correct RDBMS solution is crucial. Smart companies use Oracle, not MS._ _____
____________________________________________
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
Wow, I think I've seen about 10 MS SQL databases screwing up in VERY critial environments. A military/government really shouldn't use Microsoft products when people's lives are on the line. In fact, they shouldn't rely on technology in general that much.
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
It is inconsequential that hundreds of thousands of other sites seem to run SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, and 2000 just fine. Hundreds of thousands of sites don't keep track of bomb-grade materials, do they? No one cares if the "Pampered Pet Database" loses information.
"It's even worse if you're locked into a proprietary operating system." -http://www.wehavethewayout.com/scale.asp?rew=0
my bad: i screwed up the /I tag
It is inconsequential that hundreds of thousands of other sites seem to run SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, and 2000 just fine.
Hundreds of thousands of sites don't keep track of bomb-grade materials, do they? No one cares if the "Pampered Pet Database" loses information.
"It's even worse if you're locked into a proprietary operating system." -http://www.wehavethewayout.com/scale.asp?rew=0
Carl G. Jung
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Carl G. Jung
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"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
hahahahaha.
I like the bolding of those words.
No site ever runs M$ software 'just fine'.
As in "GIllustrator" and "Xontour." Nothing can stop open-source! We will find a way around your puny alphabet restrictions! Aaahahahahaaaa
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
2) The Russians were given the program by the Americans. Offhand I don't remember who developed it, but it was a custom job.
"End self-quotes in Sigs!"
Second, DBAs don't write code, at least in any shop I've ever worked. I've known developers who fancied themselves DBAs but usually knew ERStudio or some other tool.
Third, MS tried two - for the clue impaired, that's one more time than one - times to fix the problem and still couldn't get it right.
Fourth, their idiot suggestion was to essentially rewrite the app to get around the bug. Of course, that would probably trip more MS bugs and entail a complete revalidation suite. Got a few mil lying around?
Finally, the dumb Russians found the bug and can at least recover from it. We trusted the app and nuked all our backups.