Whatever it's relative shortcomings (monochrome, no fancy animations), the tech-house installation had one thing that they didn't have in Poland: Steve Wozniac
Well,
here is one ORM system that would probably qualify as prior art, having been released in 1994.
Enterprise Objects is now bundled with Apple's Xcode as part of WebObjects. It's kind of ironic that Apple encourages WebObjects/EOF developers to deploy their applications on the JBoss application server, which also comes pre-installed on Mac OS X Server.
Is it because you believe in that middle class white folks have all the breaks? That is what I read.
um...? Well, I guess there is one group in better shape than middle class white folks--rich white folks.
OK, I'm kind of joking--there are also a lot of rich people out there who aren't white who are in pretty good shape, too, and are in better shape than the middle class of any race.
But it is definitely the case that the police usually know who they work for. In the suburbs, it's the town's residents and home owners who pay property taxes and go to town council meetings and board of education meetings etc. No suburban cop working in a nice, mid-sized suburban town would be stupid enough to beat up a resident. He would not only get fired from a pretty cushy job, but he would also probably be charged with assault. But does the average beat cop in NYC or LA really see himself as working for the city's poor or minority populations? Maybe they see themselves as *serving* and *protecting* those populations, but not working *for* them. Even the worst kind of person doesn't beat up his boss, but maybe he beats up his kid, or the old lady that lives down the street, people he knows he should be looking out for. There are a lot of good cops out there, and a couple of bad ones, in rich suburban towns, in rural areas and in cities as well. What is different is the power relation between the populations they work with and themselves. Someone who is white and has lived in Newton, Mass., or Palo Alto, or Saddle River, NJ, or McLean, Virginia their entire lives will have only seen one sort of power relation between the population and the police--a power relation unlike what someone living in the Bronx, Washington, DC, or Los Angeles might experience. These disparate power relations cause bad cops in certain neighborhoods to tow the line, and allows bad cops in other neighborhoods to beat people up. And it is also the case that any random person living in these wealthy suburban towns is likely to be white, and a random person living in the Bronx, or in D.C. or in LA is less likely to be white than if that random person lived in another part of the country (probabilistically speaking). So there is, to some extent, a racial component to this as well, even if it is hard to prove that it is casually related to the question of police power and occasional abuse of that power.
So if Silver Sloth is generalizing, sure, maybe it's only part of the picture, but he makes a point, right, even if you don't think he does it in the right way?
I'm a Brown CS concentrator, and I thought, and still think, that the program there is excellent. I can't imagine an academic department being any more supportive of its students, or any more interested in making its subject matter accessible and engaging to both first-year novices and senior-year concentrators. The Brown program integrates upperclassmen (and -women) in the running of the department in a way that creates a real community, by providing many, many opportunities for collaboration between professors and students, and by making undergraduates teaching assistants in a way that improves the quality of learning for all parties. It also gives its students a damn good education: it starts by building strong fundamentals in CS theory, mathematics, and practical systems engineering, and then builds on those fundamentals to produce very well-rounded CS graduates with a depth of expertise in a variety of sub-specializations (graphics, theory, systems engineering, operating systems, AI). Brown CS professors are demanding, rigorous and brilliant, but the majority also see their first priority to be to mould the next generation of Computer Scientists, and their second priority to be academic research.
I don't know how Brown's program compares to MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. in terms of providing real research opportunities for undergrads (probably pretty well, in fact); it certainly does not have the same reputation for graduate studies. Brown CS does accomplish something that I think is even more difficult (and important) than simply providing a strong computer-science education, however: it makes computer science compelling even for those people (like me) who would never have even thought previously to dedicate their professional lives to computers. I would say that Brown CS may be the ideal undergraduate program in computer science; it inspires a devotion for the discipline that can last an entire career, and provides a rigorous and strong preparatory basis for further development, whether that development be provided by industry or by other, more graduate-oriented institutions like Carnegie-Mellon or Stanford. Randy Pausch's story about how he became a computer science educator is really illustrative. Randy Pausch's mentor, Andy van Dam, is only one of the many devoted men and women that make up the department.
Why not just run the heavy reports in a separate instance or on a separate machine? That way reporting won't cause standard transactional traffic to be queued up behind it, but without any more than a day of time investment.
And, if I may add my two cents, might it not be easier to code a wrapper around External Methods that abstracts the complicated elements of loading code from the file system, and that is able to dynamically load new methods from the file system (or check for changes)? And even if you can't do that, it seems a waste to recode an entire system just to avoid restarting a server when code changes are deployed. How often do you deploy into production at a time of day that the system needs to run continuously, without a one-minute interruption?
Just my two cents, but I would like to know your thought process. I have found this type of question to be difficult to answer in the past.
What was the point of holding back for so long now. Now he just lost the last hope for his negotiation.
Or, he wasn't holding back in order to negotiate, but because he wanted to get the opportunity to tell all of his grievances to the one person who he thought might have the power and wherewithal to "fix" the situation. From reading about the motions that his lawyers have filed in court, it seems that Childs is willing to risk going to jail just to be able to publicize the hard time he's been having at work for the past couple of years. In fact, he might have willingly accepted or even pursued the prospect of prosecution because he knew that he would then have a public forum to air his views, and possibly embarrass his bosses (which, despite their best efforts, he has).
Set aside for *just* a moment that people who have purchased one of Psystar's machines will, if Apple's lawsuit succeeds, be unable to update their OS or receive security updates, and may even suffer worse outcomes (like having their machines bricked)...
Psystar is not some heavily funded corporation run by over-paid executives who bleed the profits of the firm at the expense of shareholders in order to line their pockets. It is a small, entrepreneurial, privately owned shop, probably run by its owners, just trying to build a business. It is not a scam, it is just a couple of computer geeks trying to make a living doing what they like to do, pushing the envelope. And there is really no evidence that they have made that much money at all, anyway.
I am genuinely surprised by the way that this company has been demonized by slashdot readers. I think that they deserve some credit for taking the risk of going up against the big boys, even if their strategy is of questionable merit or unlikely to succeed. I would think that slashdot readers would value that kind of hacker spirit, and would also understand that a small, garage-based-business is unlikely to have a public relations machine capable of responding to all of the press that they have received (what garage-based business would?), and is at the same time likely to make the same mistakes that Psystar has.
And just because Apple is suing these guys, and is probably willing to spend more money bankrupting them than Psystar's owners have ever seen in their lives, does not necessarily mean that Psystar is in the wrong, or that any of what they have been doing is deceptive, unethical, or illegal. And if Psystar customers are left in the lurch because of the Apple suit, then is it really more Psystar's fault than it is Apple's?
Come on, slashdot, stand up for one of your own! Apple's claims must be, in part, novel, and must also rely on principals of law that are not widely accepted or even, in the final event, enforceable (limiting the WAY that shrink-wrapped software legitimately purchased is used, not just by whom it is used?). Just because Apple is richer and more powerful does not mean that they are the good guys on this one.
And regarding the people who might be left with hobbled Psystar machines when all is said and done: with all the press that this has gotten, there cannot be a single Psystar customer that didn't know what they were getting into. I'm not crying for any of them.
It's that, really, Obama is -lying-. He's creating one perception, but plans on engaging in another. It might be prudent, might be wise, balanced, and all of that, but the fact is, he's -lying-. You claim that he is lying based on your own supposition that his future actions will not match the perception that he has "created" with his statement. The problem with your assertion is that it is based on (1) your own assumptions about his private plans and intentions (which you claim, somehow, contradict his public statements), which we cannot know, and (2) your own perception about what he is saying, which is inherently subjective. I do not have the same perception as you do, nor do I assume the same thing about his plans. Dose that mean that he is lying to you, but not to me, with the exact same statement?
It's not about that to me, its more about honesty. Obama and the Democrats are seeking to create the perception that they won't engage in the same sort of domestic spying that Bush did, and really, they will. They might do it under the rule of law, but at the end, the emotional aspect of the charge they bring : "Bush is spying on you", is something they plan on doing too. Well, I think you discount too much the importance of the rule of law. The law, at least, is dependent on the concurrence and agreement of many persons, not the whim of one man, and must be deliberated and adopted in public; it is of inherent value. I also don't think that it is appropriate to conflate Barack Obama with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is a broad coalition of people, saying many different and sometimes contradictory things, just like the Republican Party. I do not have the impression at all that Obama himself has dwelt on the issue of Bush's spying, per se, but rather on the unreasonableness of his actions, and the illegality of operating outside the law, so I see no hypocrisy at all, even if you are right about his private intentions (and I don't think you are).
Regardless, rather than trying to divine so much minutia about the character of our politicians, I personally think that it is wiser to ask, will this person act to further my interests, or will this person act against my interests, on balance and in relation to my other choices. It is because my interests, and our national interests, will be better served by his election that I support Obama. And it is because the interests of the majority of Americans will be served by his election that I believe that he will win in November.
At the risk of sounding a little sappy, the fact that there are a lot of people that think like you is one of the things that's right about America. We all need to accept responsibility for our actions and our decisions, and if our position in this world is the result of our own efforts, it is more valid.
But what I'm talking about isn't giving handouts to working people, or creating incentives for idleness among the young. (The fact is that most young people I know are not so frivolous as you indicate. Most are saddled with large debt from college, and are doing their best to make their way in the world.) What I am talking about is eliminating the handouts, tax breaks, preferential contracts, and regulatory biases that are provided to the largest corporations and to the rich.
If 30% of our government budget goes to paying for social programs for old people, sick people and poor people, at least 30% of our government budget goes to padding the pockets of the rich and the connected, either directly through subsidies, preferential leases of government land and fat contracts, or indirectly through preferential tax rates that have the rich paying lower percentages than the middle class, and through regulatory programs that provide shelter and protection for large corporations at the expense of small businesses and entrepreneurs who are not politically connected.
I believe in having a smaller government. But I also believe that economic stability is created by the existence of reliable social-insurance programs that can only be economically feasible if 100% of a society participates in them (i.e. if they are mandatory). There is a very valid economic argument that states that we have not had another depression in this country, in part, because of a basic level of personal stability provided to the American worker/consumer by medicare and social security. There is also a very valid economic argument that states that such programs can never be stabilizing in their effects nor economically feasible unless they are made universal by the state. If there is anything that should be cut within our budget, it is the preference shown to the rich and well-connected. Why cut valuable, stability-creating social programs when so much corruption and waste exists?
And I have no problem with people being wealthy. But the level of wealth that has been given to the most wealthy in recent years is hard for ordinary people to comprehend because it is so vast (kind of like it's hard to imagine the size of the universe). Think about this: A multi-millionaire ($5 million?) has perhaps ten or one-hundred times the net worth of an ordinary, middle-class person. Bill Gates, however, has one-thousand-times the net worth of that multi-millionaire. The greatest class divide in this country is not between the rich and the poor, but between the billionaire and the millionaire. There is a balance that must be struck in society between the incentives created by the prospect of wealth, and the interest of a democracy to ensure that no single, tiny minority is able to concentrate power and influence. When wealth within an unreachable class becomes so concentrated, the democracy is threatened, and that class is able to use the levers of government that it controls in order further increase its wealth, and its power. All economic incentives disappear, and the society deteriorates, as it has so often in Latin America. If it is "class warfare," it is the class of super-rich against all the classes of rich, middle-class, and poor alike, and it is a war that has been declared on us; for us, it is only self-defense.
The fact is that this country is fabulously wealthy. It is wealthy because of the richness of its land, because of the energy of its people, and because of its democratic government and the rule of law. The wealth that is created in this country is created in part by the elite: by corporate leaders, super-rich families, and Republican and Democratic politicians. But the vast majority of
First, I would like to note that my response was directed at the false claim made that my quote was not addressing privacy specifically, when in fact it was.
Regarding Obama's position on privacy, I read Obama's position as an attempt to balance the legitimate use of modern technology against the inherent risk of abuse. I don't see anything where Obama is advocating spying on or collecting data on *all* Americans, although he doesn't condemn it explicitly, I do grant you.
I think it is unrealistic to expect that law enforcement will *never* use relational databases or large hard disks in conducting its legitimate surveillance activities. What needs to be put in place are tangible controls and limitations on the ability to use information stored in these systems, guidelines as to how these systems can be used within the law, and how such correct and legitimate use can be verified *by the public* and enforced.
If libertarians were to focus on creating control systems, usage limitations and transparency in these matters, I think libertarian goals would be better served. And I doubt that McCain would be any more likely than Obama to seek balance in this area.
As it is, I'm really disappointed about the manned mission to Mars being on the chopping block. Its important to me and to the USA for nationalistic reasons. Those things matter. Twenty years from now, when we finally get there, we aren't going to care about some poor slob not getting his teeth filled becuase he didn't have the money... we're going to care about the US Flag on Mars. It's going to be a good time and a great feat. On the other hand, pure and basic research is interesting, if it leads to new products for consumers... but, if it doesn't, then, you know, its not that big of a deal.
I fully agree with you about the value of a dramatic, mind-blowing nationalistic project. Going to the moon (the first time) unified and inspired this country, and made most of the world stand in awe of what we had accomplished. But going to the moon inspired the world most because was the work of a free people, a society that had already achieved a level of prosperity and equality that was previously unknown to humanity. Dictators and aristocracies throughout history have broken the backs of their subjects to create magnificent testaments to their power. Reaching the moon, however, perhaps the greatest advancement of human technology and social organization, was accomplished by a society of equals, of free men and women who together decided that it was their prerogative to walk in the heavens.
I am not at all sure that we now live in that same free, egalitarian society. Only the wealthy and the lucky today can count on receiving a good education. The ability of the poor, and even the middle class, to escape their circumstances is limited by the constant specter of a surprise bankruptcy brought on by an accident or by chronic disease. And while the poor and middle class struggle to maintain their modest lifestyles under mountains of debt, a new class that is too wealthy simply to be called rich live gilded, isolated lives of decadence, self-absorption and frivolousness, increasingly powerful and at the same time unaccountable for their actions. Within this context, to seek glory by reaching for the stars seems a symptom of the worst hubris.
However, if what you want is a massive, governmentally-funded scientific research program that will astound the world and unite the American people, look no further than the effort to produce viable solar technology. The amount of government money that has gone into solar research (including subsidies) pales in comparison to money currently dedicated to researching and subsidizing fossil fuels. The spending discrepancy is even greater when you count the cost of the war in Iraq, which we wouldn't be fighting if it weren't for oil (without oil, Iraq would rank with Zaire and Zimbabwe in its level of importance in our foreign policy). And in spite of this handicap, the cost of solar energy has fallen dramatically over the years and is almost on par with the market price of electricity in many places (including the cost of delivery and the cost of capital, it is between 150% and 200% of the price of electricity in many places). Additional investment will yield results, and will eventually, and certainly, bring the price of solar electricity below the cost of other energy sources. Imagine if it is the United States that is able to give the world limitless energy from the sun, how inspiring that would be.
As for media decentralization goes, see, you guys put the cart before the horse. The media is what it is because of the internet. Newspapers took a beating from radio, and then TV, and adjusted and consolidated. Now computers make them pointless. Sucks, but that's just life. Radio has a role, but it will adjust, and when you have netradio and sirius and terrestrial radio you have a lot more choice than you did before. universal broadband access is just socialism.... what it basically means is that everyone else's broadband bill is going to go up so that poor people can get broadband and maybe if it doesn't go
Actually, this *is* a quote from the privacy section of his technology policy paper. The whole section on privacy is as follows:
Safeguard our Right to Privacy: The open information platforms of the 21st century can also tempt institutions to violate the privacy of citizens. Dramatic increases in computing power, decreases in storage costs and huge flows of information that characterize the digital age bring enormous benefits, but also create risk of abuse. We need sensible safeguards that protect privacy in this dynamic new world. As president, Barack Obama will strengthen privacy protections for the digital age and will harness the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy.
To ensure that powerful databases containing information on Americans that are necessary tools in the fight against terrorism are not misused for other purposes, Barack Obama supports restrictions on how information may be used and technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used.
Obama supports updating surveillance laws and ensuring that law enforcement investigations and intelligence-gathering relating to U.S. citizens are done only under the rule of law.
Obama will also work to provide robust protection against misuses of particularly sensitive kinds of information, such as e-health records and location data that do not fit comfortably within sector-specific privacy laws.
Obama will increase the Federal Trade Commissionâ(TM)s enforcement budget and will step up international cooperation to track down cyber-criminals so that U.S. law enforcement can better prevent and punish spam, spyware, telemarketing and phishing intrusions into the privacy of American homes and computers.
Would you consider that because you were wrong about this that you may also be wrong about the other things that you wrote? I encourage you to "face facts" (as you put it).
Who is the shill here, exactly? I make no claims to being neutral in this race. I'm a supporter of Barack Obama; I became a supporter after seeing his Google speech. Does that invalidate the points that I have made? A shill is someone pretending to be neutral. Are you asserting that you are a neutral observer?
Thank you for posting that link about Obama, though. I was unaware of the fact that he would delay a manned mission to Mars. But as I noted in my previous post, such a defunding would be a re-prioritization of funding that may, in fact, help further the interests of science. I think that the question debated by the CJR article you link to is most pertinent: "Is manned spaceflight really necessary, however, especially if it costs an exorbitant amount of money that could be used to help things like inner-city schools?" I would say that decreasing the funding of NASA in order to improve science education in public schools and in order to develop clean energy technologies is a wise move.
You have not provided any evidence, however, to back up your assertion that fighting blatant piracy in China is the same thing as supporting frivolous and harmful RIAA litigation. I will be honest and say that I do not know how Barack Obama feels about the RIAA. I will say this, however: the RIAA's litigation tactics are a travesty of justice, and an abuse of corporate power to the highest order, but in spite of that being the case I nonetheless believe that it is wrong for connected Chinese entrepreneurs to sell unlicensed copies of Hollywood movies for profit. I cannot accept, as you assert, that fighting piracy in China is somehow equivalent to suing little old ladies for using bittorrent, if only for the reason that I personally support fighting Chinese piracy and condemn the RIAA's tactics. It is the case that the RIAA and MPAA have taken advantage of the ignorance of our policy makers in order to further a narrow corporate agenda. That does not mean, however, that Obama is so gullible that he will not be able to balance their legitimate interests against the interests of individual Americans, and the need for broad fair-use allowances. I will also say this, however: I personally believe that McCain *is* that gullible, engineering degree (894th in a class of 899?) or not.
And why you say that media decentralization and universal broadband access are "stupid" is beyond me ("stupid"? really?). One of the biggest threats to our democracy in the past decade has been the centralization of the control of broadcast media in the hands of an elite and wealthy group, and the most pertinent antidote to that threat has been the growth of the internet. Universal broadband access and net neutrality are the two internet policy objectives that our government can pursue that will produce the greatest democratic effect. Checking (and possibly reversing) media concentration is the flip-side of that same coin.
And one more thing: Do you really have to drag race into this discussion? "Rich white kids"? Seriously?
This post is misleading and, I suspect, factually incorrect.
Barack Obama explicitly supports Net Neutrality ("I will take a back seat to no one when it comes to Network Neutrality"), media decentralization, and universal broadband access. He supports universal file/data formats ("we will put government data online in universally accessible formats"); and he understands the inherent risks to privacy created by our new technology ("Dramatic increases in computing power, decreases in storage costs and huge flows of information that characterize the digital age bring enormous benefits, but also create risk of abuse."). And if Obama advocates reducing the NASA budget (and I have no specific information about this, it would be nice if tjstork would provide a reference), such defunding would be a re-prioritization of spending only, as he "supports doubling federal funding for basic [scientific] research."
Furthermore, Barack Obama's policy regarding technology reflects a thorough and deep understanding of the underlying issues pertinent to technology and information. John McCain will never have any personal involvement in creating a technology policy promulgated by his administration; instead he will rely on his staff, who will inevitably rely on lobbyists. The fact is that John McCain knows very very little about these issues, and that he has also shown consistently that he has no problem giving industry lobbyists free reign in his campaign. Barack Obama understands technology, and won't compromise on the central issues.
Barack Obama's technology policy is located here on barackobama.com.
Another relevant link is a talk Obama gave at Googe, where he touches on many of these issues, here.
Finally, to conclude from the fact that Barack Obama has accepted money from the most consistently-Democratic industrial block in the US that he will necessarily back its most outrageous demands is logically spurious. tjstork writes that "he is a strong proponent of doing everything with IP that many slashdotters would virulently oppose." I do not have any information supporting such a claim, and I would ask tjstork to provide a reference. The fact is that slashdotters are very willing to balance the interests of IP "owners" against the interests of the general public and the interests of innovation. As long as Obama recognizes that there is a balance to be struck, and is willing to *act* knowing that things are currently out of balance, I am happy to support his positions on IP. If there is anything that Barack Obama is about, it is about creating a fair and informed balance between competing interests.
It seems to me that Barack Obama is almost, if not quite, the ideal candidate for the/. crowd.
Whatever its problems may be, the Acela is the fastest and easiest way to get from NYC to Washington. A flight might be of shorter duration, but when you factor in the inconvenience and delay of ticketing and security, and the time and cost of getting to the airport, the overall trip is faster. Plus you don't have to mess with those stupid ziplock bags, and you don't have to turn off your cell phone. I never fly between NY and DC, it's only the Acela.
It would be great, though, if they improved the tracks to get the full speed out of the train.
In a networked database setup (i.e. Oracle on one machine, C++/Java/Python app on another), it is necessarily the case that at some level in your program stack a string conversion will have to be made. This is because the db data transmitted over the network (or between processes on the same machine) is formatted as strings, and must be converted to other data types. Effectively, you are right, at some level someone has to iterate over all the data returned by the db and format it into the data structures that are used by your application.
As a result of this requirement, there has been a proliferation of object-relational mapping frameworks created in recent years (Hibernate, WebObjects in Java, SQLAlchemy, Django in Python, and many more) the purpose of which is to abstract out all that conversion so that the programmer only has to deal with objects. In addition, in most lower-level db-access libraries that accept direct SQL calls, there is some built-in data conversion facility, so that you are getting Integer objects, for example, instead of getting text. I'm not sure about the availability of object-relational frameworks for C-style languages, though. One of the best used to be WebObject's Obj-C version, but that was discontinued years ago by Apple.
Now in the case of SQLite, no network transmission takes place, and all database manipulation happens within the memory space of your own application (which is linked to the SQLite c libraries). For this reason, there is no conversion from number to character data and back again as the data moves from disk through the network to your app. I am not familiar enough with the low-level data structures of SQLite to know whether number data is converted to string data before it is written to disk, but considering the efficiency of the library I would very seriously doubt it. What matters is that when you are iterating over your result set using the SQLite c functions (see: http://www.sqlite.org/quickstart.html) you are able to specify in what format you expect the data to be provided to you (char* or int, for example), and the system will provide it to you.
I think the problem that you might be having is that you are using C++ for your database application. I think that most people developing database applications these days are using Java, PHP, Python, etc. (interpreted languages) because they are easier to code in and because most deployments are not to individual users but to web application servers that are designed for use with those languages. Considering that client-server systems (user apps making direct database connections) are really inferior design-wise (vis-a-vis security, stability, maintainability) in relation to thin-client systems (where the server can most easily be coded in an interpreted language), the only reason that I can imagine for using SQL with C++ is for local data storage. SQLite would actually be perfect for that.
I would say both that it is reliable and that people have confidence in it; people have confidence in it because it is reliable, and because many people use it, its reliability increases as bugs are found and corrected.
I do want to thank you for showing me dbtxt, though. Your point that distributing a single file is very easy is well taken. It seems like an especially good thing to use if you are distributing a script to a machine the configuration of which you are unfamiliar with.
Like I said, dbtxt looks cool. And I agree with you that the thought of reading through sqlite's code to find a bug or add functionality is not attractive. But sqlite is on a totally different level of reliability; the fact that it is at the core of the iPhone's data management points to the level of confidence that people have in it. And it is what it is: if you need to do more than what an ACID-compliant, SQL-based relational database system can do, SQLite is probably not for you; but there are very few things that you can't do with an ACID-compliant SQL-based relational database system. And the fact is that 800k is an exageration (we were all mistaken about that). The SQLite c library is actually closer to 250k in size (http://www.sqlite.org/about.html).
He said he wanted a flat-file database. Why, on this Earth, would he ever need "standard SQL including joins." SQL is designed for relational databases and, in particular, joins are only EVER used in a multi-table, relational database. In fact, the guy even said "SQL is overkill". First of all, my point was that in comparison to a python-only tool like dbtxt, sqlite is probably worth the additional memory overhead of a couple hundred kilobytes.
Second, I'm not sure that you know any better than I do what the poster really needs. Open office calc might be an option, but certainly not if 800k is too much space; open office is what, like 200 megs? And dbtxt might also be an option, if doing everything in Python is what the person wants; I love Python, but there are plenty of people who don't. I'm sure that all three proposals are equally valid.
Now, to defend SQLite: in most cases, dealing with a relational database is "overkill" not because of SQL per se, but because of the fact that software needs to be installed and configured*, and because complex sets of processes need to be managed and maintained. SQLite is useful, in part, because it provides the functionality of a relational database without the complexity of the engine. Now, if you don't want or need SQL, then you might not consider that particular feature to be of particular benefit. Nonetheless, there are many situations where SQL might not be required, but where it might be useful, where in the past SQL might not have been used, but where now, because of SQLite, it will be used. There are very few cases where real-world information is not most accurately represented as relational data (in comparison to flat data). SQLite allows you to avoid making compromises regarding the way that that data is stored. And SQLite is fast.
*(Although some interpreted languages might require that sqlite's libraries be installed on a system for it to be used by a program, that is not the case for compiled languages like C, C++, Obj-C, etc., where the sqlite libraries can be compiled directly into the code distributed to end users.)
OK, dbtxt looks interesting, but SQLite is very stable (it's used as the data storage in the iPhone, in Firefox, and in Skype, for example), and has a ton of features, like:
- mostly ACID compliant (i.e. transactions w/rollback)
- standard SQL (or close enough to it; de facto, there's no such thing), including joins
- indexes and primary key generation
- concurrent use by multiple processes w/locking
- extremely cross-platform, including many OSs and most languages
- a great command-line editing tool
I'm not surprised that most of the posts here site SQLite, because it is great. And it's public domain, so it can be used by anyone, anywhere, for any commercial or private purpose.
Having a db that is human readable can be a good thing--and a bad thing (anyone can change its contents manually?). Being small is a good thing. But even if you are doing embedded programing, is 800k such a burden that you would give up this feature set?
How useful is it to write something about computers that needs to be translated for the slashdot audience? Jargon is a great way to provide specialized information to insiders quickly and efficiently, but this is slashdot. If slashdot readers need for you to restate your description of a problem or observation related to the Linux kernel (even if that description is taken out of context), could it be that the paper could be written in a more open manner? The quote you provided from your paper seems to speak to a narrow audience; how narrow must your audience be, however, if it excludes a good portion of slashdot's readers?
If I seem overly critical, I do not mean to, it is only that I hate to see good, useful research made less accessible to non-academics by the use of academic language.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever it's relative shortcomings (monochrome, no fancy animations), the tech-house installation had one thing that they didn't have in Poland: Steve Wozniac
Well, here is one ORM system that would probably qualify as prior art, having been released in 1994.
Enterprise Objects is now bundled with Apple's Xcode as part of WebObjects. It's kind of ironic that Apple encourages WebObjects/EOF developers to deploy their applications on the JBoss application server, which also comes pre-installed on Mac OS X Server.
http://personalrobotics.stanford.edu/ OK, so it's not autonomous, but it's cool as hell nonetheless.
Can someone post some examples of this type of equipment?
Is it because you believe in that middle class white folks have all the breaks? That is what I read.
um...? Well, I guess there is one group in better shape than middle class white folks--rich white folks.
OK, I'm kind of joking--there are also a lot of rich people out there who aren't white who are in pretty good shape, too, and are in better shape than the middle class of any race.
But it is definitely the case that the police usually know who they work for. In the suburbs, it's the town's residents and home owners who pay property taxes and go to town council meetings and board of education meetings etc. No suburban cop working in a nice, mid-sized suburban town would be stupid enough to beat up a resident. He would not only get fired from a pretty cushy job, but he would also probably be charged with assault. But does the average beat cop in NYC or LA really see himself as working for the city's poor or minority populations? Maybe they see themselves as *serving* and *protecting* those populations, but not working *for* them. Even the worst kind of person doesn't beat up his boss, but maybe he beats up his kid, or the old lady that lives down the street, people he knows he should be looking out for. There are a lot of good cops out there, and a couple of bad ones, in rich suburban towns, in rural areas and in cities as well. What is different is the power relation between the populations they work with and themselves. Someone who is white and has lived in Newton, Mass., or Palo Alto, or Saddle River, NJ, or McLean, Virginia their entire lives will have only seen one sort of power relation between the population and the police--a power relation unlike what someone living in the Bronx, Washington, DC, or Los Angeles might experience. These disparate power relations cause bad cops in certain neighborhoods to tow the line, and allows bad cops in other neighborhoods to beat people up. And it is also the case that any random person living in these wealthy suburban towns is likely to be white, and a random person living in the Bronx, or in D.C. or in LA is less likely to be white than if that random person lived in another part of the country (probabilistically speaking). So there is, to some extent, a racial component to this as well, even if it is hard to prove that it is casually related to the question of police power and occasional abuse of that power.
So if Silver Sloth is generalizing, sure, maybe it's only part of the picture, but he makes a point, right, even if you don't think he does it in the right way?
I'm a Brown CS concentrator, and I thought, and still think, that the program there is excellent. I can't imagine an academic department being any more supportive of its students, or any more interested in making its subject matter accessible and engaging to both first-year novices and senior-year concentrators. The Brown program integrates upperclassmen (and -women) in the running of the department in a way that creates a real community, by providing many, many opportunities for collaboration between professors and students, and by making undergraduates teaching assistants in a way that improves the quality of learning for all parties. It also gives its students a damn good education: it starts by building strong fundamentals in CS theory, mathematics, and practical systems engineering, and then builds on those fundamentals to produce very well-rounded CS graduates with a depth of expertise in a variety of sub-specializations (graphics, theory, systems engineering, operating systems, AI). Brown CS professors are demanding, rigorous and brilliant, but the majority also see their first priority to be to mould the next generation of Computer Scientists, and their second priority to be academic research.
I don't know how Brown's program compares to MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. in terms of providing real research opportunities for undergrads (probably pretty well, in fact); it certainly does not have the same reputation for graduate studies. Brown CS does accomplish something that I think is even more difficult (and important) than simply providing a strong computer-science education, however: it makes computer science compelling even for those people (like me) who would never have even thought previously to dedicate their professional lives to computers. I would say that Brown CS may be the ideal undergraduate program in computer science; it inspires a devotion for the discipline that can last an entire career, and provides a rigorous and strong preparatory basis for further development, whether that development be provided by industry or by other, more graduate-oriented institutions like Carnegie-Mellon or Stanford. Randy Pausch's story about how he became a computer science educator is really illustrative. Randy Pausch's mentor, Andy van Dam, is only one of the many devoted men and women that make up the department.
Why not just run the heavy reports in a separate instance or on a separate machine? That way reporting won't cause standard transactional traffic to be queued up behind it, but without any more than a day of time investment.
And, if I may add my two cents, might it not be easier to code a wrapper around External Methods that abstracts the complicated elements of loading code from the file system, and that is able to dynamically load new methods from the file system (or check for changes)? And even if you can't do that, it seems a waste to recode an entire system just to avoid restarting a server when code changes are deployed. How often do you deploy into production at a time of day that the system needs to run continuously, without a one-minute interruption?
Just my two cents, but I would like to know your thought process. I have found this type of question to be difficult to answer in the past.
What was the point of holding back for so long now. Now he just lost the last hope for his negotiation.
Or, he wasn't holding back in order to negotiate, but because he wanted to get the opportunity to tell all of his grievances to the one person who he thought might have the power and wherewithal to "fix" the situation. From reading about the motions that his lawyers have filed in court, it seems that Childs is willing to risk going to jail just to be able to publicize the hard time he's been having at work for the past couple of years. In fact, he might have willingly accepted or even pursued the prospect of prosecution because he knew that he would then have a public forum to air his views, and possibly embarrass his bosses (which, despite their best efforts, he has).
Set aside for *just* a moment that people who have purchased one of Psystar's machines will, if Apple's lawsuit succeeds, be unable to update their OS or receive security updates, and may even suffer worse outcomes (like having their machines bricked)...
Psystar is not some heavily funded corporation run by over-paid executives who bleed the profits of the firm at the expense of shareholders in order to line their pockets. It is a small, entrepreneurial, privately owned shop, probably run by its owners, just trying to build a business. It is not a scam, it is just a couple of computer geeks trying to make a living doing what they like to do, pushing the envelope. And there is really no evidence that they have made that much money at all, anyway.
I am genuinely surprised by the way that this company has been demonized by slashdot readers. I think that they deserve some credit for taking the risk of going up against the big boys, even if their strategy is of questionable merit or unlikely to succeed. I would think that slashdot readers would value that kind of hacker spirit, and would also understand that a small, garage-based-business is unlikely to have a public relations machine capable of responding to all of the press that they have received (what garage-based business would?), and is at the same time likely to make the same mistakes that Psystar has.
And just because Apple is suing these guys, and is probably willing to spend more money bankrupting them than Psystar's owners have ever seen in their lives, does not necessarily mean that Psystar is in the wrong, or that any of what they have been doing is deceptive, unethical, or illegal. And if Psystar customers are left in the lurch because of the Apple suit, then is it really more Psystar's fault than it is Apple's?
Come on, slashdot, stand up for one of your own! Apple's claims must be, in part, novel, and must also rely on principals of law that are not widely accepted or even, in the final event, enforceable (limiting the WAY that shrink-wrapped software legitimately purchased is used, not just by whom it is used?). Just because Apple is richer and more powerful does not mean that they are the good guys on this one.
And regarding the people who might be left with hobbled Psystar machines when all is said and done: with all the press that this has gotten, there cannot be a single Psystar customer that didn't know what they were getting into. I'm not crying for any of them.
Regardless, rather than trying to divine so much minutia about the character of our politicians, I personally think that it is wiser to ask, will this person act to further my interests, or will this person act against my interests, on balance and in relation to my other choices. It is because my interests, and our national interests, will be better served by his election that I support Obama. And it is because the interests of the majority of Americans will be served by his election that I believe that he will win in November.
At the risk of sounding a little sappy, the fact that there are a lot of people that think like you is one of the things that's right about America. We all need to accept responsibility for our actions and our decisions, and if our position in this world is the result of our own efforts, it is more valid.
But what I'm talking about isn't giving handouts to working people, or creating incentives for idleness among the young. (The fact is that most young people I know are not so frivolous as you indicate. Most are saddled with large debt from college, and are doing their best to make their way in the world.) What I am talking about is eliminating the handouts, tax breaks, preferential contracts, and regulatory biases that are provided to the largest corporations and to the rich.
If 30% of our government budget goes to paying for social programs for old people, sick people and poor people, at least 30% of our government budget goes to padding the pockets of the rich and the connected, either directly through subsidies, preferential leases of government land and fat contracts, or indirectly through preferential tax rates that have the rich paying lower percentages than the middle class, and through regulatory programs that provide shelter and protection for large corporations at the expense of small businesses and entrepreneurs who are not politically connected.
I believe in having a smaller government. But I also believe that economic stability is created by the existence of reliable social-insurance programs that can only be economically feasible if 100% of a society participates in them (i.e. if they are mandatory). There is a very valid economic argument that states that we have not had another depression in this country, in part, because of a basic level of personal stability provided to the American worker/consumer by medicare and social security. There is also a very valid economic argument that states that such programs can never be stabilizing in their effects nor economically feasible unless they are made universal by the state. If there is anything that should be cut within our budget, it is the preference shown to the rich and well-connected. Why cut valuable, stability-creating social programs when so much corruption and waste exists?
And I have no problem with people being wealthy. But the level of wealth that has been given to the most wealthy in recent years is hard for ordinary people to comprehend because it is so vast (kind of like it's hard to imagine the size of the universe). Think about this: A multi-millionaire ($5 million?) has perhaps ten or one-hundred times the net worth of an ordinary, middle-class person. Bill Gates, however, has one-thousand-times the net worth of that multi-millionaire. The greatest class divide in this country is not between the rich and the poor, but between the billionaire and the millionaire. There is a balance that must be struck in society between the incentives created by the prospect of wealth, and the interest of a democracy to ensure that no single, tiny minority is able to concentrate power and influence. When wealth within an unreachable class becomes so concentrated, the democracy is threatened, and that class is able to use the levers of government that it controls in order further increase its wealth, and its power. All economic incentives disappear, and the society deteriorates, as it has so often in Latin America. If it is "class warfare," it is the class of super-rich against all the classes of rich, middle-class, and poor alike, and it is a war that has been declared on us; for us, it is only self-defense.
The fact is that this country is fabulously wealthy. It is wealthy because of the richness of its land, because of the energy of its people, and because of its democratic government and the rule of law. The wealth that is created in this country is created in part by the elite: by corporate leaders, super-rich families, and Republican and Democratic politicians. But the vast majority of
First, I would like to note that my response was directed at the false claim made that my quote was not addressing privacy specifically, when in fact it was.
Regarding Obama's position on privacy, I read Obama's position as an attempt to balance the legitimate use of modern technology against the inherent risk of abuse. I don't see anything where Obama is advocating spying on or collecting data on *all* Americans, although he doesn't condemn it explicitly, I do grant you.
I think it is unrealistic to expect that law enforcement will *never* use relational databases or large hard disks in conducting its legitimate surveillance activities. What needs to be put in place are tangible controls and limitations on the ability to use information stored in these systems, guidelines as to how these systems can be used within the law, and how such correct and legitimate use can be verified *by the public* and enforced.
If libertarians were to focus on creating control systems, usage limitations and transparency in these matters, I think libertarian goals would be better served. And I doubt that McCain would be any more likely than Obama to seek balance in this area.
As it is, I'm really disappointed about the manned mission to Mars being on the chopping block. Its important to me and to the USA for nationalistic reasons. Those things matter. Twenty years from now, when we finally get there, we aren't going to care about some poor slob not getting his teeth filled becuase he didn't have the money... we're going to care about the US Flag on Mars. It's going to be a good time and a great feat. On the other hand, pure and basic research is interesting, if it leads to new products for consumers... but, if it doesn't, then, you know, its not that big of a deal.
I fully agree with you about the value of a dramatic, mind-blowing nationalistic project. Going to the moon (the first time) unified and inspired this country, and made most of the world stand in awe of what we had accomplished. But going to the moon inspired the world most because was the work of a free people, a society that had already achieved a level of prosperity and equality that was previously unknown to humanity. Dictators and aristocracies throughout history have broken the backs of their subjects to create magnificent testaments to their power. Reaching the moon, however, perhaps the greatest advancement of human technology and social organization, was accomplished by a society of equals, of free men and women who together decided that it was their prerogative to walk in the heavens.
I am not at all sure that we now live in that same free, egalitarian society. Only the wealthy and the lucky today can count on receiving a good education. The ability of the poor, and even the middle class, to escape their circumstances is limited by the constant specter of a surprise bankruptcy brought on by an accident or by chronic disease. And while the poor and middle class struggle to maintain their modest lifestyles under mountains of debt, a new class that is too wealthy simply to be called rich live gilded, isolated lives of decadence, self-absorption and frivolousness, increasingly powerful and at the same time unaccountable for their actions. Within this context, to seek glory by reaching for the stars seems a symptom of the worst hubris.
However, if what you want is a massive, governmentally-funded scientific research program that will astound the world and unite the American people, look no further than the effort to produce viable solar technology. The amount of government money that has gone into solar research (including subsidies) pales in comparison to money currently dedicated to researching and subsidizing fossil fuels. The spending discrepancy is even greater when you count the cost of the war in Iraq, which we wouldn't be fighting if it weren't for oil (without oil, Iraq would rank with Zaire and Zimbabwe in its level of importance in our foreign policy). And in spite of this handicap, the cost of solar energy has fallen dramatically over the years and is almost on par with the market price of electricity in many places (including the cost of delivery and the cost of capital, it is between 150% and 200% of the price of electricity in many places). Additional investment will yield results, and will eventually, and certainly, bring the price of solar electricity below the cost of other energy sources. Imagine if it is the United States that is able to give the world limitless energy from the sun, how inspiring that would be.
As for media decentralization goes, see, you guys put the cart before the horse. The media is what it is because of the internet. Newspapers took a beating from radio, and then TV, and adjusted and consolidated. Now computers make them pointless. Sucks, but that's just life. Radio has a role, but it will adjust, and when you have netradio and sirius and terrestrial radio you have a lot more choice than you did before. universal broadband access is just socialism.... what it basically means is that everyone else's broadband bill is going to go up so that poor people can get broadband and maybe if it doesn't go
- To ensure that powerful databases containing information on Americans that are necessary tools in the fight against terrorism are not misused for other purposes, Barack Obama supports restrictions on how information may be used and technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used.
- Obama supports updating surveillance laws and ensuring that law enforcement investigations and intelligence-gathering relating to U.S. citizens are done only under the rule of law.
- Obama will also work to provide robust protection against misuses of particularly sensitive kinds of information, such as e-health records and location data that do not fit comfortably within sector-specific privacy laws.
- Obama will increase the Federal Trade Commissionâ(TM)s enforcement budget and will step up international cooperation to track down cyber-criminals so that U.S. law enforcement can better prevent and punish spam, spyware, telemarketing and phishing intrusions into the privacy of American homes and computers.
Would you consider that because you were wrong about this that you may also be wrong about the other things that you wrote? I encourage you to "face facts" (as you put it).Tjstork:
Who is the shill here, exactly? I make no claims to being neutral in this race. I'm a supporter of Barack Obama; I became a supporter after seeing his Google speech. Does that invalidate the points that I have made? A shill is someone pretending to be neutral. Are you asserting that you are a neutral observer?
Thank you for posting that link about Obama, though. I was unaware of the fact that he would delay a manned mission to Mars. But as I noted in my previous post, such a defunding would be a re-prioritization of funding that may, in fact, help further the interests of science. I think that the question debated by the CJR article you link to is most pertinent: "Is manned spaceflight really necessary, however, especially if it costs an exorbitant amount of money that could be used to help things like inner-city schools?" I would say that decreasing the funding of NASA in order to improve science education in public schools and in order to develop clean energy technologies is a wise move.
You have not provided any evidence, however, to back up your assertion that fighting blatant piracy in China is the same thing as supporting frivolous and harmful RIAA litigation. I will be honest and say that I do not know how Barack Obama feels about the RIAA. I will say this, however: the RIAA's litigation tactics are a travesty of justice, and an abuse of corporate power to the highest order, but in spite of that being the case I nonetheless believe that it is wrong for connected Chinese entrepreneurs to sell unlicensed copies of Hollywood movies for profit. I cannot accept, as you assert, that fighting piracy in China is somehow equivalent to suing little old ladies for using bittorrent, if only for the reason that I personally support fighting Chinese piracy and condemn the RIAA's tactics. It is the case that the RIAA and MPAA have taken advantage of the ignorance of our policy makers in order to further a narrow corporate agenda. That does not mean, however, that Obama is so gullible that he will not be able to balance their legitimate interests against the interests of individual Americans, and the need for broad fair-use allowances. I will also say this, however: I personally believe that McCain *is* that gullible, engineering degree (894th in a class of 899?) or not.
And why you say that media decentralization and universal broadband access are "stupid" is beyond me ("stupid"? really?). One of the biggest threats to our democracy in the past decade has been the centralization of the control of broadcast media in the hands of an elite and wealthy group, and the most pertinent antidote to that threat has been the growth of the internet. Universal broadband access and net neutrality are the two internet policy objectives that our government can pursue that will produce the greatest democratic effect. Checking (and possibly reversing) media concentration is the flip-side of that same coin.
And one more thing: Do you really have to drag race into this discussion? "Rich white kids"? Seriously?
This post is misleading and, I suspect, factually incorrect.
/. crowd.
Barack Obama explicitly supports Net Neutrality ("I will take a back seat to no one when it comes to Network Neutrality"), media decentralization, and universal broadband access. He supports universal file/data formats ("we will put government data online in universally accessible formats"); and he understands the inherent risks to privacy created by our new technology ("Dramatic increases in computing power, decreases in storage costs and huge flows of information that characterize the digital age bring enormous benefits, but also create risk of abuse."). And if Obama advocates reducing the NASA budget (and I have no specific information about this, it would be nice if tjstork would provide a reference), such defunding would be a re-prioritization of spending only, as he "supports doubling federal funding for basic [scientific] research."
Furthermore, Barack Obama's policy regarding technology reflects a thorough and deep understanding of the underlying issues pertinent to technology and information. John McCain will never have any personal involvement in creating a technology policy promulgated by his administration; instead he will rely on his staff, who will inevitably rely on lobbyists. The fact is that John McCain knows very very little about these issues, and that he has also shown consistently that he has no problem giving industry lobbyists free reign in his campaign. Barack Obama understands technology, and won't compromise on the central issues.
Barack Obama's technology policy is located here on barackobama.com.
Another relevant link is a talk Obama gave at Googe, where he touches on many of these issues, here.
Finally, to conclude from the fact that Barack Obama has accepted money from the most consistently-Democratic industrial block in the US that he will necessarily back its most outrageous demands is logically spurious. tjstork writes that "he is a strong proponent of doing everything with IP that many slashdotters would virulently oppose." I do not have any information supporting such a claim, and I would ask tjstork to provide a reference. The fact is that slashdotters are very willing to balance the interests of IP "owners" against the interests of the general public and the interests of innovation. As long as Obama recognizes that there is a balance to be struck, and is willing to *act* knowing that things are currently out of balance, I am happy to support his positions on IP. If there is anything that Barack Obama is about, it is about creating a fair and informed balance between competing interests.
It seems to me that Barack Obama is almost, if not quite, the ideal candidate for the
Even at the highest resolution, all the buildings look like they were designed by Frank Gehry.
Whatever its problems may be, the Acela is the fastest and easiest way to get from NYC to Washington. A flight might be of shorter duration, but when you factor in the inconvenience and delay of ticketing and security, and the time and cost of getting to the airport, the overall trip is faster. Plus you don't have to mess with those stupid ziplock bags, and you don't have to turn off your cell phone. I never fly between NY and DC, it's only the Acela.
It would be great, though, if they improved the tracks to get the full speed out of the train.
In a networked database setup (i.e. Oracle on one machine, C++/Java/Python app on another), it is necessarily the case that at some level in your program stack a string conversion will have to be made. This is because the db data transmitted over the network (or between processes on the same machine) is formatted as strings, and must be converted to other data types. Effectively, you are right, at some level someone has to iterate over all the data returned by the db and format it into the data structures that are used by your application.
As a result of this requirement, there has been a proliferation of object-relational mapping frameworks created in recent years (Hibernate, WebObjects in Java, SQLAlchemy, Django in Python, and many more) the purpose of which is to abstract out all that conversion so that the programmer only has to deal with objects. In addition, in most lower-level db-access libraries that accept direct SQL calls, there is some built-in data conversion facility, so that you are getting Integer objects, for example, instead of getting text. I'm not sure about the availability of object-relational frameworks for C-style languages, though. One of the best used to be WebObject's Obj-C version, but that was discontinued years ago by Apple.
Now in the case of SQLite, no network transmission takes place, and all database manipulation happens within the memory space of your own application (which is linked to the SQLite c libraries). For this reason, there is no conversion from number to character data and back again as the data moves from disk through the network to your app. I am not familiar enough with the low-level data structures of SQLite to know whether number data is converted to string data before it is written to disk, but considering the efficiency of the library I would very seriously doubt it. What matters is that when you are iterating over your result set using the SQLite c functions (see: http://www.sqlite.org/quickstart.html) you are able to specify in what format you expect the data to be provided to you (char* or int, for example), and the system will provide it to you.
I think the problem that you might be having is that you are using C++ for your database application. I think that most people developing database applications these days are using Java, PHP, Python, etc. (interpreted languages) because they are easier to code in and because most deployments are not to individual users but to web application servers that are designed for use with those languages. Considering that client-server systems (user apps making direct database connections) are really inferior design-wise (vis-a-vis security, stability, maintainability) in relation to thin-client systems (where the server can most easily be coded in an interpreted language), the only reason that I can imagine for using SQL with C++ is for local data storage. SQLite would actually be perfect for that.
I would say both that it is reliable and that people have confidence in it; people have confidence in it because it is reliable, and because many people use it, its reliability increases as bugs are found and corrected.
I do want to thank you for showing me dbtxt, though. Your point that distributing a single file is very easy is well taken. It seems like an especially good thing to use if you are distributing a script to a machine the configuration of which you are unfamiliar with.
Like I said, dbtxt looks cool. And I agree with you that the thought of reading through sqlite's code to find a bug or add functionality is not attractive. But sqlite is on a totally different level of reliability; the fact that it is at the core of the iPhone's data management points to the level of confidence that people have in it. And it is what it is: if you need to do more than what an ACID-compliant, SQL-based relational database system can do, SQLite is probably not for you; but there are very few things that you can't do with an ACID-compliant SQL-based relational database system. And the fact is that 800k is an exageration (we were all mistaken about that). The SQLite c library is actually closer to 250k in size (http://www.sqlite.org/about.html).
Second, I'm not sure that you know any better than I do what the poster really needs. Open office calc might be an option, but certainly not if 800k is too much space; open office is what, like 200 megs? And dbtxt might also be an option, if doing everything in Python is what the person wants; I love Python, but there are plenty of people who don't. I'm sure that all three proposals are equally valid.
Now, to defend SQLite: in most cases, dealing with a relational database is "overkill" not because of SQL per se, but because of the fact that software needs to be installed and configured*, and because complex sets of processes need to be managed and maintained. SQLite is useful, in part, because it provides the functionality of a relational database without the complexity of the engine. Now, if you don't want or need SQL, then you might not consider that particular feature to be of particular benefit. Nonetheless, there are many situations where SQL might not be required, but where it might be useful, where in the past SQL might not have been used, but where now, because of SQLite, it will be used. There are very few cases where real-world information is not most accurately represented as relational data (in comparison to flat data). SQLite allows you to avoid making compromises regarding the way that that data is stored. And SQLite is fast.
*(Although some interpreted languages might require that sqlite's libraries be installed on a system for it to be used by a program, that is not the case for compiled languages like C, C++, Obj-C, etc., where the sqlite libraries can be compiled directly into the code distributed to end users.)
OK, dbtxt looks interesting, but SQLite is very stable (it's used as the data storage in the iPhone, in Firefox, and in Skype, for example), and has a ton of features, like:
- mostly ACID compliant (i.e. transactions w/rollback)
- standard SQL (or close enough to it; de facto, there's no such thing), including joins
- indexes and primary key generation
- concurrent use by multiple processes w/locking
- extremely cross-platform, including many OSs and most languages
- a great command-line editing tool
I'm not surprised that most of the posts here site SQLite, because it is great. And it's public domain, so it can be used by anyone, anywhere, for any commercial or private purpose.
Having a db that is human readable can be a good thing--and a bad thing (anyone can change its contents manually?). Being small is a good thing. But even if you are doing embedded programing, is 800k such a burden that you would give up this feature set?
Some of the thought process that went into the second solution. http://www.gmilburn.ca/2008/05/16/fermilabs-strange-code-letter/
How useful is it to write something about computers that needs to be translated for the slashdot audience? Jargon is a great way to provide specialized information to insiders quickly and efficiently, but this is slashdot. If slashdot readers need for you to restate your description of a problem or observation related to the Linux kernel (even if that description is taken out of context), could it be that the paper could be written in a more open manner? The quote you provided from your paper seems to speak to a narrow audience; how narrow must your audience be, however, if it excludes a good portion of slashdot's readers?
If I seem overly critical, I do not mean to, it is only that I hate to see good, useful research made less accessible to non-academics by the use of academic language.