You're splitting hairs. Companies are run by people. They have or lack the morals the people who run them have.
Also, Monty announced leaving Sun in Feb 2009 to create his own company. The Oracle merger was completed in Jan 2010. So he conceived of and created his own company to compete with the one he sold to well before Oracle owned MySQL.
I'll agree with you except for the part where they'd be happy if he just took it and STFU. I think Oracle knew exactly what they were doing when they bought Sun, and they cared quite a lot about MySQL. I think Oracle was happy to try and exploit MySQL's popularity as a "gateway drug" - they would be poised and waiting with salespeople to offer a "real database" when folks who built a business on LAMP outgrew it and were looking for something better. To support this opinion, I'll remind you that Oracle bought Sleepycat Software (makers of Berkeley DB) in 2006 directly, not indirectly through a merger. I'd argue that Berkeley DB was the one database that was MORE popular than MySQL for simple web applications. I certainly used BerkeleyDB a hell of a lot, and it was a damned fine tool that didn't try to be more (or pretend to be more) that it was. Still is, IMHO.
Understood, but as far as I am aware, MySQL never pretended to be that.
Monty has long made excuses for MySQL's inadequacies (most notably the pre-INNODB argument that foreign key constraints weren't really that important and you could just enforce such constraints in software). So there *were* attempts to pretend that MySQL was a "serious" database equivalent to better alternatives. Many of the shortcuts MySQL uses (or used - some of this is historical) apply to edge cases that aren't apparent to "I'm not a DBA" developers creating simple LAMP applications. But when you *do* run into one of those edge cases, then you quickly feel the pain and realize that it could have all been avoided.
1. Create a popular but flawed FLOSS product (MySQL). 2. Build a business atop flawed FLOSS product (MySQL AB). 3. Ca$h out by selling your baby to formerly glorious tech company on the ropes (FGTCOTR, aka SUN). 4. Profit! 5. Leave FGTCOTR after a tasteful waiting period to start your own company DOING THE SAME THING YOU JUST SOLD because you can fork the OSS codebase you just sold. 6. Take public potshots at EVIL Corp (who very predictably acquired FGTCOTR) for mismanaging the baby you sold (because EVIL), while flogging your fork of the product you sold as a viable alternative (FLOSS, to cloak yourself in the veneer of legitimacy because you can live off of steps 3 and 4). 7. Reunite to form company that does the same thing the company you sold for big $$$ did, to compete with the product you willingly relinquished control over. 8. GOTO #1?
I can't decide whether to admire Monty for successfully gaming the system, or condemn him as an amoral manipulator who wasted no time screwing over the very people he sold out to at the earliest possible opportunity.
Grudgingly, I lean toward admiration. Nicely done, sir.
That said, I avoid MySQL as the half-baked relational DB pretender that it is and use PostgreSQL whenever possible. Better technology without the drama. I have never regretted PgSQL once, MySQL many times.
You're seriously calling 7 colored blinking LEDs in your peripheral vision a "hud screen"? You did' reinforce ZeroPly's point - his scenario seems very innovative compared to what you could do with 7 head-mounted LEDs.
Everything is listed as having DRM, and for a reasonable percentage of the customer base, affixing a DRM label to an ebook *will* cause lost sales. That's not exactly a harmless error, whether or not DRM is actually present. The author has a legitimate grievance.
Because I'm old-fashioned and as a general rule-of-thumb don't pay for services rendered until, well, they are rendered. I generally don't pay for promises, and when you get right down to it, that's what Kickstarter projects are. So if a project sets a funding goal to get off the ground and pledges meet or exceed that goal, it's time to sit back and see how they do before "throwing more money into the mix". Even an established person or group with a track record isn't a guarantee of success - an extreme example would be 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever. So if I'm interested in helping a project get off the ground and while I'm thinking about it they reach or exceed their "get off the ground" goal, I'll say I missed the boat and wait for something more substantial or ask them to make another funding request. Makes perfect sense to me.
Have you looked into kickstarter? I know there is risk there, but I am waiting on 3 games and so far getting good updates on all of them save for the DFA. Wasteland and the new carmageddon seem to be coming along nicely.
Kickstarter would be the logical next step if the sources I mentioned already don't maintain a reasonable influx of new material as I find time to play through what I have. I don't mind paying for games after they are completed, which reduces the motivation to pre-fund them via Kickstarter. The few games I considered contributing to (Double Fine Adventure, for example), reached their funding goals so fast I didn't really have a chance to become a backer. These are games we're talking about, though, so purchasing the finished product seems like just as good a way to reward a job well done, at least for those not struggling for funding. Also, there are some non-game kickstarter categories that seem more needful of up front funding and don't result in a mass market ready finished product that can generate more revenue, such as art, dance or theater. I'd support those projects over a game, at least via that mechanism.
I've encountered lots of projects over the years that sound neat on paper and have enough meat to flesh out a thesis-sized research project, but don't quite have the universal applicability that translates to widespread practical (and financial) success in the real world.
Two problems jump right out at me:
1. Instead of having to remember a sequence of characters, a user now has to remember and replicate a set of obscure behavioral quirks. Or actually they don't, because it's supposed to be innate. But just as a signature isn't identical everytime, the quirky typing won't be either, leading to possible authentication failures, unless the authentication method is forgiving enough to take this into account.... which leads us to
2. It's open to mimicry, particularly if it's forgiving enough to account for natural variability. Authenticate enough times around an observant person with a knack for forgery and they can pick up on the patterns. A little bit of practices, and those rhythm and style quirks can be copied. Even easier if they can record video and/or audio with a mobile device.
If the mimicry is successful, it's a lot harder to learn a new set of unconscious quirks than to just memorize a new password.
Overall, the method seems academically interesting but not feasible in practice, except perhaps in a limited set of circumstances.
As a rule, I don't buy games with DRM, and I stopped that before DLC became popular, so never even had to face that choice. Sometimes games with DRM on WIndows will have Linux versions that aren't DRM encumbered - they are few and far between but I will buy those. I stopped buying Cliff'y B's games a long time ago because Epic stopped being Linux friendly. Nothing changed.
Currently, I spend my money on DRM-free games at gog.com, Humble Bundles, the occasional Android app and on DRM-free PC games like The Witcher. I've got more games than I have time to play and I find them more enjoyable than the current A-list games I've tried at a friend's house. I'm happy with my gaming choices and don't seem to be missing anything.
I conclude I must not be part of the target demographic of the mainstream gaming industry - I don't really miss them and they don't seem to miss me.
Could you please elaborate? I sense that you are skeptical about OIN, but your 911 and racketeering analogies are just obscure enough that I don't quite grasp what you're getting at. Just spell it out in plain english - I would appreciate it.
(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with OIN - just trying to understand what Trepidity is going on about. If it were clear, I could make a rational decision about whether to trust and support OIN, or not).
(Second disclaimer: Stop playing fucking word games and just say what you mean. Your message might be more effective that way.)
The Timothy correction bot is hard at work - two errors I have noticed in today's posts have been corrected within minutes of each other. Yet no post of thanks from Timothy for noticing the discrepancies. I'm depressed.
That's why I called out Hugh Pickens as well. After I double checked to make sure I was correct. This is some sloppy shiznit, because we're doing the job that the editor is supposed to be doing. Hugh may very well have made the original error, but it should have been caught by Timothy.
*shakes head*. I don't know. After more than a decade as a slashdotter, I may just have to ask to have my account disabled and move on. This is just pathetic.
"Our hope is that, by having it available for display, it can be an inspiration to the next generation of scientists," says Crick's granddaughter, Kindra Check."
It's Kindra "Crick".
Proofreading much?
You know, I've been mostly ignoring the Timothy bashing that goes on here, but now I'm starting to get it. Timothy, please try a little harder. Hugh Pickens? The same - sloppy.
Despite your implied accusation that I just have an 'innate' dislike for Microsoft which makes my skepticism a given, thus questionable, I would in fact argue that my skepticism is well founded. The story above doesn't speak well for the customer experience for Azure users, even given the outages experienced by users of Amazon's cloud. Based on both my own direct personal experience with the company and it's products (starting with MS-DOS sometime in 1982), second-hand knowledge of other people's experiences with products I haven't owned and being a student of the Microsoft's history for most of its existence, I'd say they get things wrong a large proportion of the time. That's the basis for skepticism about Azure, not some inborn 'dislike'. When they get things right, I'm happy to pay for and use Microsoft products - this is being posted from Windows 7 (my current primary desktop OS) and typed on a Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 keyboard.
I stand by my original skepticism about the significance of the performance test and my belief that it should carry less weight when choosing between products than the long-term history of a company with respect to the customer experience. If you'd care to counter that assertion with something resembling a rational argument rather than lobbing personal attacks from behind the safe wall of anonymous cowardice, I'd be happy to read it.
I have a history disliking Microsoft so I shall continue to do so.
FTFY.
Wait, did you, AC, just "quote" a statement you totally made up? I don't see that statement in my post, and it's not an accurate summary either. Nice try though.
There's no "history" of disliking Microsoft - I'm as ambivalent about the company emotionally as I am about any company - they aren't people, whatever the legal fictions say. I use their products or I don't, depending on what I need and the general experience I get. What I said was that I have a long experience with the company, their products and referred to my experience as a customer during that time. There's no dislike, only disappointment punctuated by brief periods of satisfaction. If they evolve into a company with whom doing business is a pleasure, I have no problem discontinuing the mythical dislike you ascribe to me. So I'm not really sure what your point was, other than snark.
Slashdot Mirror
You're splitting hairs. Companies are run by people. They have or lack the morals the people who run them have.
Also, Monty announced leaving Sun in Feb 2009 to create his own company. The Oracle merger was completed in Jan 2010. So he conceived of and created his own company to compete with the one he sold to well before Oracle owned MySQL.
My pleasure.
Damn. Forgot about that. You are absolutely right. Wish I could edit posts.
I'll agree with you except for the part where they'd be happy if he just took it and STFU. I think Oracle knew exactly what they were doing when they bought Sun, and they cared quite a lot about MySQL. I think Oracle was happy to try and exploit MySQL's popularity as a "gateway drug" - they would be poised and waiting with salespeople to offer a "real database" when folks who built a business on LAMP outgrew it and were looking for something better. To support this opinion, I'll remind you that Oracle bought Sleepycat Software (makers of Berkeley DB) in 2006 directly, not indirectly through a merger. I'd argue that Berkeley DB was the one database that was MORE popular than MySQL for simple web applications. I certainly used BerkeleyDB a hell of a lot, and it was a damned fine tool that didn't try to be more (or pretend to be more) that it was. Still is, IMHO.
Understood, but as far as I am aware, MySQL never pretended to be that.
Monty has long made excuses for MySQL's inadequacies (most notably the pre-INNODB argument that foreign key constraints weren't really that important and you could just enforce such constraints in software). So there *were* attempts to pretend that MySQL was a "serious" database equivalent to better alternatives. Many of the shortcuts MySQL uses (or used - some of this is historical) apply to edge cases that aren't apparent to "I'm not a DBA" developers creating simple LAMP applications. But when you *do* run into one of those edge cases, then you quickly feel the pain and realize that it could have all been avoided.
Here's a good read: http://grimoire.ca/mysql/choose-something-else
1. Create a popular but flawed FLOSS product (MySQL).
2. Build a business atop flawed FLOSS product (MySQL AB).
3. Ca$h out by selling your baby to formerly glorious tech company on the ropes (FGTCOTR, aka SUN).
4. Profit!
5. Leave FGTCOTR after a tasteful waiting period to start your own company DOING THE SAME THING YOU JUST SOLD because you can fork the OSS codebase you just sold.
6. Take public potshots at EVIL Corp (who very predictably acquired FGTCOTR) for mismanaging the baby you sold (because EVIL), while flogging your fork of the product you sold as a viable alternative (FLOSS, to cloak yourself in the veneer of legitimacy because you can live off of steps 3 and 4).
7. Reunite to form company that does the same thing the company you sold for big $$$ did, to compete with the product you willingly relinquished control over.
8. GOTO #1?
I can't decide whether to admire Monty for successfully gaming the system, or condemn him as an amoral manipulator who wasted no time screwing over the very people he sold out to at the earliest possible opportunity.
Grudgingly, I lean toward admiration. Nicely done, sir.
That said, I avoid MySQL as the half-baked relational DB pretender that it is and use PostgreSQL whenever possible. Better technology without the drama. I have never regretted PgSQL once, MySQL many times.
You're seriously calling 7 colored blinking LEDs in your peripheral vision a "hud screen"? You did' reinforce ZeroPly's point - his scenario seems very innovative compared to what you could do with 7 head-mounted LEDs.
That's all that needs to be said, oh clueless A/C. Go look at Svartalf's profile to get yourself a free helping of context.
And yet ...
Everything is listed as having DRM, and for a reasonable percentage of the customer base, affixing a DRM label to an ebook *will* cause lost sales. That's not exactly a harmless error, whether or not DRM is actually present. The author has a legitimate grievance.
Because I'm old-fashioned and as a general rule-of-thumb don't pay for services rendered until, well, they are rendered. I generally don't pay for promises, and when you get right down to it, that's what Kickstarter projects are. So if a project sets a funding goal to get off the ground and pledges meet or exceed that goal, it's time to sit back and see how they do before "throwing more money into the mix". Even an established person or group with a track record isn't a guarantee of success - an extreme example would be 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever. So if I'm interested in helping a project get off the ground and while I'm thinking about it they reach or exceed their "get off the ground" goal, I'll say I missed the boat and wait for something more substantial or ask them to make another funding request. Makes perfect sense to me.
Have you looked into kickstarter?
I know there is risk there, but I am waiting on 3 games and so far getting good updates on all of them save for the DFA. Wasteland and the new carmageddon seem to be coming along nicely.
Kickstarter would be the logical next step if the sources I mentioned already don't maintain a reasonable influx of new material as I find time to play through what I have. I don't mind paying for games after they are completed, which reduces the motivation to pre-fund them via Kickstarter. The few games I considered contributing to (Double Fine Adventure, for example), reached their funding goals so fast I didn't really have a chance to become a backer. These are games we're talking about, though, so purchasing the finished product seems like just as good a way to reward a job well done, at least for those not struggling for funding. Also, there are some non-game kickstarter categories that seem more needful of up front funding and don't result in a mass market ready finished product that can generate more revenue, such as art, dance or theater. I'd support those projects over a game, at least via that mechanism.
I've encountered lots of projects over the years that sound neat on paper and have enough meat to flesh out a thesis-sized research project, but don't quite have the universal applicability that translates to widespread practical (and financial) success in the real world.
Two problems jump right out at me:
1. Instead of having to remember a sequence of characters, a user now has to remember and replicate a set of obscure behavioral quirks. Or actually they don't, because it's supposed to be innate. But just as a signature isn't identical everytime, the quirky typing won't be either, leading to possible authentication failures, unless the authentication method is forgiving enough to take this into account. ... which leads us to
2. It's open to mimicry, particularly if it's forgiving enough to account for natural variability. Authenticate enough times around an observant person with a knack for forgery and they can pick up on the patterns. A little bit of practices, and those rhythm and style quirks can be copied. Even easier if they can record video and/or audio with a mobile device.
If the mimicry is successful, it's a lot harder to learn a new set of unconscious quirks than to just memorize a new password.
Overall, the method seems academically interesting but not feasible in practice, except perhaps in a limited set of circumstances.
I'll second that.
As a rule, I don't buy games with DRM, and I stopped that before DLC became popular, so never even had to face that choice. Sometimes games with DRM on WIndows will have Linux versions that aren't DRM encumbered - they are few and far between but I will buy those. I stopped buying Cliff'y B's games a long time ago because Epic stopped being Linux friendly. Nothing changed.
Currently, I spend my money on DRM-free games at gog.com, Humble Bundles, the occasional Android app and on DRM-free PC games like The Witcher. I've got more games than I have time to play and I find them more enjoyable than the current A-list games I've tried at a friend's house. I'm happy with my gaming choices and don't seem to be missing anything.
I conclude I must not be part of the target demographic of the mainstream gaming industry - I don't really miss them and they don't seem to miss me.
Could you please elaborate? I sense that you are skeptical about OIN, but your 911 and racketeering analogies are just obscure enough that I don't quite grasp what you're getting at. Just spell it out in plain english - I would appreciate it.
(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with OIN - just trying to understand what Trepidity is going on about. If it were clear, I could make a rational decision about whether to trust and support OIN, or not).
(Second disclaimer: Stop playing fucking word games and just say what you mean. Your message might be more effective that way.)
I would agree with squiggleslash's post. Spot on.
The Timothy correction bot is hard at work - two errors I have noticed in today's posts have been corrected within minutes of each other. Yet no post of thanks from Timothy for noticing the discrepancies. I'm depressed.
Hey look - it got fixed. Thanks for the credit, Timothy. Oh wait, there was no credit given for noticing the error. Meh.
That's why I called out Hugh Pickens as well. After I double checked to make sure I was correct. This is some sloppy shiznit, because we're doing the job that the editor is supposed to be doing. Hugh may very well have made the original error, but it should have been caught by Timothy.
*shakes head*. I don't know. After more than a decade as a slashdotter, I may just have to ask to have my account disabled and move on. This is just pathetic.
Don't mean to carry the timothy bashing over from my latest post on another story, but:
" IE7 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows"
That should read "IE10", right?
Timothy: Proofreading, please?
Seconded.
LOL. Maybe the crick in his neck distracted him from checking?
"Our hope is that, by having it available for display, it can be an inspiration to the next generation of scientists," says Crick's granddaughter, Kindra Check."
It's Kindra "Crick".
Proofreading much?
You know, I've been mostly ignoring the Timothy bashing that goes on here, but now I'm starting to get it. Timothy, please try a little harder. Hugh Pickens? The same - sloppy.
Hello again, "Different AC".
Would you or "Original AC" care to comment on this?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/02/23/1415231/certificate-expiry-leads-to-total-outage-for-microsoft-azure-secured-storage
Despite your implied accusation that I just have an 'innate' dislike for Microsoft which makes my skepticism a given, thus questionable, I would in fact argue that my skepticism is well founded. The story above doesn't speak well for the customer experience for Azure users, even given the outages experienced by users of Amazon's cloud. Based on both my own direct personal experience with the company and it's products (starting with MS-DOS sometime in 1982), second-hand knowledge of other people's experiences with products I haven't owned and being a student of the Microsoft's history for most of its existence, I'd say they get things wrong a large proportion of the time. That's the basis for skepticism about Azure, not some inborn 'dislike'. When they get things right, I'm happy to pay for and use Microsoft products - this is being posted from Windows 7 (my current primary desktop OS) and typed on a Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 keyboard.
I stand by my original skepticism about the significance of the performance test and my belief that it should carry less weight when choosing between products than the long-term history of a company with respect to the customer experience. If you'd care to counter that assertion with something resembling a rational argument rather than lobbing personal attacks from behind the safe wall of anonymous cowardice, I'd be happy to read it.
Hush and let the grownups talk.
I have a history disliking Microsoft so I shall continue to do so.
FTFY.
Wait, did you, AC, just "quote" a statement you totally made up? I don't see that statement in my post, and it's not an accurate summary either. Nice try though.
There's no "history" of disliking Microsoft - I'm as ambivalent about the company emotionally as I am about any company - they aren't people, whatever the legal fictions say. I use their products or I don't, depending on what I need and the general experience I get. What I said was that I have a long experience with the company, their products and referred to my experience as a customer during that time. There's no dislike, only disappointment punctuated by brief periods of satisfaction. If they evolve into a company with whom doing business is a pleasure, I have no problem discontinuing the mythical dislike you ascribe to me. So I'm not really sure what your point was, other than snark.