Anyone else notice the funny stuff going on with the statistics? All the statistics are reported as percentages of the XP value, with higher = better. That means that if wine is "+ 90%", it's performing less than twice as fast as XP. But if it's "- 90%", XP is performing ten times faster!
So whatever this is measuring (and I concur that it seems to be mostly Linux graphics drivers), it's not reporting the results particularly well.
Sure, one-click shopping is obvious, once you've seen it. But Spamazon's landsharks can (and I'm sure would) say, "If it's that obvious, why weren't people doing it years ago?" It's a valid question, and one that needs to be answered.
Okay, here's the reason. Amazon decided to institute this change at about the right time. Earlier, there was not yet enough trust (or ignorance, depending on perspective) by consumers in internet security, and there was not enough trust by vendors in ability to consider a sale binding without a specific authorizing action. Once these trends had reached the right point, eliminating a few actions from the sale process was indeed obvious. It's similar to the reason that fewer and fewer fast food restaurants are asking for signatures on credit cards. Obviously it's not that the idea is just astonishingly innovative, but rather than the time has come when the idea is acceptable.
Ridiculous! There are two ways to worry about criminal activity. First, you can try to prevent it and track the people who commit it. Second, you can try to keep track of where everyone is all the time, so that if criminal activity happens you already have the information to know what happened. The second is more effective, but most people of the world would consistently reject it.
If even 0.01% of spam, or 0.01% of virii, or 0.01% of hacking, or 0.01% of child porn, or 0.01% of terrorist communication, came from people parking their cars near unsecured wireless connections, then MAYBE you could make a reasonable case that personal responsibility requires securing a connection. We all know, though, that that's not the case. Unsecured wireless is an imagined threat. Tracking it down is not taking action against criminals; it's at best just trying to make sure we can keep track of who is doing everything, all the time. And THAT is just scary.
So how do you choose a plumber? A real estate agent? A lawyer? Do you choose a good plumber because you already know what size pipe is required for the supply line to your upstairs bathroom? More likely, you do it by checking references, work history, qualifications as measured by others (e.g., certifications), and looking at recommendations from other people that you trust. Of course, not everyone ends up with a good plumber... but the effectiveness is high enough to drive most of the really bad ones out of business.
It is NOT necessary to be smart in order to recognize someone who is smart. It's not necessary to understand foreign policy in order to know who knows about foreign policy. And it's not necessary to understand economics in order to choose someone on the basis of policies that will be good for the economy. Saying otherwise is rhetorical trickery; it's so contrary to everyone's every-day experience that it's hard to believe that you mean it.
The question, then, is what is wrong with the U.S. system. It's not that people are dumb; it's that people are in some sense proud of being dumb, and that prevents them from looking too hard for smart people to represent them.
Okay, I understand how what I said might have been confusing. To clarify:
PostgreSQL uses MVCC; SQL Server does not
MVCC is "radically different" from a non-MVCC DBMS
Most DBMSs don't use MVCC (though a substantial number do)
I did not mean to imply that PostgreSQL is the only MVCC database out there. Sorry if anyone read that into what I wrote. I only meant to point out that it's very difficult to copy core code from PostgreSQL to SQL Server, as someone implied might be happening.
I bet they [MS] are even using a bunch of the same code [as PostgreSQL].
That is very, very doubtful. Databases start out by making a fundamental choice in terms of how to handle transactional integrity in concurrent requests. PostgreSQL makes a somewhat radically different choice than do most other database systems out there (including SQL Server). As a result, pretty much any significant feature (anything that's really about functionality and not user interface) is going to be very difficult to port from PostgreSQL to SQL Server.
That isn't to say that algorithms don't cross-apply, of course, but the code itself is sure to be rewritten from scratch.
The term "web services" is definitely misapplied in common usage... but since it's a well-established term, it's probably a good idea not to use it to mean something completely different, as this article does, and expect people to understand what you're talking about. "Web services" means that software will be communicating with other software by well-defined RPC interfaces (generally described with a WSDL document) tunneled through the HTTP protocol. It does not mean eBay and Hotmail!
You're pissed at Tivo and don't want to pay them on principle, but you're a DirecTV customer? I'm trying to imagine the set of priorities that makes those decisions reasonable. Or perhaps you're not aware that DirecTV is one of the most evil companies currently in existence.
Sorry to see this moderated as "Troll" when it's so exactly right! A lot of free software is great, but the people who are interested in it tend to sabotage adoption. And I don't mean people like Richard Stallman, who really believe in things and work for what they believe in. I don't mean people who can logically describe the advantages of using free software, either. Instead, I mean people who just like feeling superior and lack a sense of the dignity of others around them. These people range from the famous (Eric Raymond, e.g.) down to the masses of low-self-esteem high school kids looking for something to identify with.
A company that I know well recently (several years back) fired the top system administrator for basically being so obnoxiously religious and derisive about software that everyone got sick of hearing from her. We just couldn't get any work done for the time spent listening to her Microsoft jokes and puns. Unfortunately, she wasn't alone and I'm sure this isn't the only time something like this has happened.
Honestly, I'd make one important correction. It's not that corporate management or boards of directors lack ethics or "scruples". It's that we've invented an entire SYSTEM of pseudo-ethics that basically requires them to act in the ways that make them look greedy, short-sighted, and immoral. If they didn't, they'd probably be vulnerable to a lawsuit from shareholders for untold damages.
By insulting the people in charge of large corporations, the problem with privatization of most government services is trivialized. It makes it sound as if we could fix everything, if only the right people got promoted. Trouble is, there is a more serious issue that prevents that from happening.
Caveat: I've never used Suse, so I could be just dead wrong. If I am, someone slap me. That said...
I believe Suse includes the ALSA sound drivers with their distribution. ALSA is not a part of the standard kernel, and is infinitely superior to the standard linux kernel sound drivers. One way that ALSA is superior is that sound drivers are available as modules! Not true for stock kernels, where they have to be compiled in. (Also, of course, there's the OSS/Linux commercial drivers which are modularized, but Debian won't include those because they aren't free. Surprise!)
To answer the question, no. I don't think this will be the future of how information is exchanged. All other indicators point in the opposite direction. Communication has become more prevalent today specifically because it doesn't cost anything. Whether or not the cost is substantial, the very act of making a receiver of information pay for that information means that the recipient will start to think really hard about whether that information is needed.
By contrast, the entire point of the "information age" and the internet is that communication increases and more information is shared. And we already have mechanisms to do this. And they are working very well. So what's the point of this web site, except to try to make money. Certainly not to increase this flow of information.
The case for the web site can only be that it would encourage people to offer information, since they would be paid for it. And this would be great if there were a shortage of people offering information. But there's not. And when this site starts charging people real money, I don't think it will survive much longer.
Smaller and simpler, sure. But, then, you can do that today just by calling mmap() on the database under most Unix systems. Well, no. Certainly you could use mmap() to get a memory mapped file, but there are a couple of deficiencies associated with that approach. First, the page table isn't saved across a reboot or restart of the process, so you can't be sure you'll get back that mmap in the same place. That means you can't use pointers, which means that you are either doing without them (and getting bad performance issues) or keeping data elsewhere before copying it to the mmap'ed segment. That's not a lot better than writing occasionally to a file. Second, EROS has checkpointing to ensure that saved state of many different objects are all saved at an identical time and are consistent with each other. That consistency is very hard to guarantee except at the operating system level. I'm not yet sure what I think of this, but it definitely is something new and unique. It provides some concepts and abilities that just can't reasonably happen under a traditional RAM/disk model a la UNIX, Windows, Mac, VMS, etc. Chris
Okay, here's the most likely course of action for Turbocluster patches once they get submitted. If the patches (which, admittedly, I've yet to read) are just cryptic "hooks" used by proprietary Turbocluster software, then I am very certain they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it into the stock kernel. If they are a well-designed architectural extension for clustering, then Linus may accept them. Or he may propose some changes, some people may modify the patches, some minor modification may be accepted. TurboLinux will find it much easier to make small changes to their product to fit the accepted version than to maintain a separate kernel. So we might end up with a very well-designed clustering architecture in the kernel with no open source tools. Great! So now anyone who desires can use proprietary tools, while others of us can write open source clustering tools for Linux. In either case, the kernel architecture is open source (has to be to be a kernel patch) and all of Linux benefits from a good, open source clustering architecture in the kernel. The only risk of a "fork" is in the time between a proposed patch and when Linux and others are comfortable enough with the patches to include them. During that time, use of Turbocluster will mostly be testing in a few situations, which will make things that much more stable when a clustering architecture gets included in the kernel. Nothing to be afraid of either way.
I'm not saying sex is a bad thing. I'm saying that, given a choice between having sex with someone I don't know or spending an evening talking with someone I can never have sex with, I would choose the latter. I figured most slashdot readers would be of a similar opinion. So was I wrong? How would you people choose in the above circumstance.
Hey, I have nothing but respect for everyone that writes for/. but this article is just sick and wrong. I suppose it's good advice if your goal in life is to get laid on a regular basis. I thought most/. readers were above that. My advice to/. readers: rewarding, fulfilling relationships are much easier if you: * Don't make sex your goal * Don't objectify the people you have relationships with * Don't think of it as "dating"
Slashdot Mirror
Numerical Recipes *is* a "good reference to this online". Google for "numerical recipes in c pdf".
Anyone else notice the funny stuff going on with the statistics? All the statistics are reported as percentages of the XP value, with higher = better. That means that if wine is "+ 90%", it's performing less than twice as fast as XP. But if it's "- 90%", XP is performing ten times faster!
So whatever this is measuring (and I concur that it seems to be mostly Linux graphics drivers), it's not reporting the results particularly well.
Ridiculous! There are two ways to worry about criminal activity. First, you can try to prevent it and track the people who commit it. Second, you can try to keep track of where everyone is all the time, so that if criminal activity happens you already have the information to know what happened. The second is more effective, but most people of the world would consistently reject it.
If even 0.01% of spam, or 0.01% of virii, or 0.01% of hacking, or 0.01% of child porn, or 0.01% of terrorist communication, came from people parking their cars near unsecured wireless connections, then MAYBE you could make a reasonable case that personal responsibility requires securing a connection. We all know, though, that that's not the case. Unsecured wireless is an imagined threat. Tracking it down is not taking action against criminals; it's at best just trying to make sure we can keep track of who is doing everything, all the time. And THAT is just scary.
So how do you choose a plumber? A real estate agent? A lawyer? Do you choose a good plumber because you already know what size pipe is required for the supply line to your upstairs bathroom? More likely, you do it by checking references, work history, qualifications as measured by others (e.g., certifications), and looking at recommendations from other people that you trust. Of course, not everyone ends up with a good plumber... but the effectiveness is high enough to drive most of the really bad ones out of business.
It is NOT necessary to be smart in order to recognize someone who is smart. It's not necessary to understand foreign policy in order to know who knows about foreign policy. And it's not necessary to understand economics in order to choose someone on the basis of policies that will be good for the economy. Saying otherwise is rhetorical trickery; it's so contrary to everyone's every-day experience that it's hard to believe that you mean it.
The question, then, is what is wrong with the U.S. system. It's not that people are dumb; it's that people are in some sense proud of being dumb, and that prevents them from looking too hard for smart people to represent them.
- PostgreSQL uses MVCC; SQL Server does not
- MVCC is "radically different" from a non-MVCC DBMS
- Most DBMSs don't use MVCC (though a substantial number do)
I did not mean to imply that PostgreSQL is the only MVCC database out there. Sorry if anyone read that into what I wrote. I only meant to point out that it's very difficult to copy core code from PostgreSQL to SQL Server, as someone implied might be happening.The term "web services" is definitely misapplied in common usage... but since it's a well-established term, it's probably a good idea not to use it to mean something completely different, as this article does, and expect people to understand what you're talking about. "Web services" means that software will be communicating with other software by well-defined RPC interfaces (generally described with a WSDL document) tunneled through the HTTP protocol. It does not mean eBay and Hotmail!
You're pissed at Tivo and don't want to pay them on principle, but you're a DirecTV customer? I'm trying to imagine the set of priorities that makes those decisions reasonable. Or perhaps you're not aware that DirecTV is one of the most evil companies currently in existence.
See http://www.directvdefense.org/ for details.
Sorry to see this moderated as "Troll" when it's so exactly right! A lot of free software is great, but the people who are interested in it tend to sabotage adoption. And I don't mean people like Richard Stallman, who really believe in things and work for what they believe in. I don't mean people who can logically describe the advantages of using free software, either. Instead, I mean people who just like feeling superior and lack a sense of the dignity of others around them. These people range from the famous (Eric Raymond, e.g.) down to the masses of low-self-esteem high school kids looking for something to identify with.
A company that I know well recently (several years back) fired the top system administrator for basically being so obnoxiously religious and derisive about software that everyone got sick of hearing from her. We just couldn't get any work done for the time spent listening to her Microsoft jokes and puns. Unfortunately, she wasn't alone and I'm sure this isn't the only time something like this has happened.
Honestly, I'd make one important correction. It's not that corporate management or boards of directors lack ethics or "scruples". It's that we've invented an entire SYSTEM of pseudo-ethics that basically requires them to act in the ways that make them look greedy, short-sighted, and immoral. If they didn't, they'd probably be vulnerable to a lawsuit from shareholders for untold damages.
By insulting the people in charge of large corporations, the problem with privatization of most government services is trivialized. It makes it sound as if we could fix everything, if only the right people got promoted. Trouble is, there is a more serious issue that prevents that from happening.
I believe Suse includes the ALSA sound drivers with their distribution. ALSA is not a part of the standard kernel, and is infinitely superior to the standard linux kernel sound drivers. One way that ALSA is superior is that sound drivers are available as modules! Not true for stock kernels, where they have to be compiled in. (Also, of course, there's the OSS/Linux commercial drivers which are modularized, but Debian won't include those because they aren't free. Surprise!)
Chris
By contrast, the entire point of the "information age" and the internet is that communication increases and more information is shared. And we already have mechanisms to do this. And they are working very well. So what's the point of this web site, except to try to make money. Certainly not to increase this flow of information.
The case for the web site can only be that it would encourage people to offer information, since they would be paid for it. And this would be great if there were a shortage of people offering information. But there's not. And when this site starts charging people real money, I don't think it will survive much longer.
Smaller and simpler, sure. But, then, you can do that today just by calling mmap() on the database under most Unix systems. Well, no. Certainly you could use mmap() to get a memory mapped file, but there are a couple of deficiencies associated with that approach. First, the page table isn't saved across a reboot or restart of the process, so you can't be sure you'll get back that mmap in the same place. That means you can't use pointers, which means that you are either doing without them (and getting bad performance issues) or keeping data elsewhere before copying it to the mmap'ed segment. That's not a lot better than writing occasionally to a file. Second, EROS has checkpointing to ensure that saved state of many different objects are all saved at an identical time and are consistent with each other. That consistency is very hard to guarantee except at the operating system level. I'm not yet sure what I think of this, but it definitely is something new and unique. It provides some concepts and abilities that just can't reasonably happen under a traditional RAM/disk model a la UNIX, Windows, Mac, VMS, etc. Chris
Okay, here's the most likely course of action for Turbocluster patches once they get submitted. If the patches (which, admittedly, I've yet to read) are just cryptic "hooks" used by proprietary Turbocluster software, then I am very certain they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it into the stock kernel. If they are a well-designed architectural extension for clustering, then Linus may accept them. Or he may propose some changes, some people may modify the patches, some minor modification may be accepted. TurboLinux will find it much easier to make small changes to their product to fit the accepted version than to maintain a separate kernel. So we might end up with a very well-designed clustering architecture in the kernel with no open source tools. Great! So now anyone who desires can use proprietary tools, while others of us can write open source clustering tools for Linux. In either case, the kernel architecture is open source (has to be to be a kernel patch) and all of Linux benefits from a good, open source clustering architecture in the kernel. The only risk of a "fork" is in the time between a proposed patch and when Linux and others are comfortable enough with the patches to include them. During that time, use of Turbocluster will mostly be testing in a few situations, which will make things that much more stable when a clustering architecture gets included in the kernel. Nothing to be afraid of either way.
I'm not saying sex is a bad thing. I'm saying that, given a choice between having sex with someone I don't know or spending an evening talking with someone I can never have sex with, I would choose the latter. I figured most slashdot readers would be of a similar opinion. So was I wrong? How would you people choose in the above circumstance.
Hey, I have nothing but respect for everyone that writes for /. but this article is just sick and wrong. I suppose it's good advice if your goal in life is to get laid on a regular basis. I thought most /. readers were above that. My advice to /. readers: rewarding, fulfilling relationships are much easier if you: * Don't make sex your goal * Don't objectify the people you have relationships with * Don't think of it as "dating"