SQL validator
on
SQL Validator
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If ANSI and ISO really wanted to help SQL, they would make the fricking SQL standards available in electronic form without cost, instead of charging hundreds of dollars for them.
I remember at the last company I worked for, we had one battered copy of the SQL92 standard (which is basically just an annotated BNF grammar) that we shared among the whole office.
Re:The kicker's in the tail
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
·
· Score: 1
My favorite:
Windows Key + Break = System Properties
Also good but not as cool are:
Alt+Space+M = Maximize current window
Alt+Space+N = Minimize current window
"IMHO, if you haven't read Knuth's work, you aren't a programmer."
There are plenty of people out there who've read (and even understood) Knuth's books, yet who still write horrible spaghetti code. This includes at least 50% of the mathematics PhD's who have worked for me over the years. I would barely classify these people as programmers.
At the same time, I have seen plenty of good (even "very good") software engineers who have never even seen Knuth's books.
TAOCP (esp. vol I) is important, I would even agree with you that aspiring programmers "should" read it, but IMHO the knowledge is neither sufficient nor entirely necessary for making good programmers.
Henry James, in his Principles of Psychology (1890 or thereabouts) described the mind's multitasking and task-switching in terms that modern-day computer folks will find quite familiar.
There's a running joe that James' century old work represents basically everything cognitive scientists know today. In other words, not much new progress in the last 100 years.:) Anyways, to quote from James' book, chapter 11 (emphasis mine):
[p. 409] If, then, by the original question, how many ideas or things can we attend to at once, be meant how many entirely disconnected systems or processes of conception can go on simultaneously, the answer is, not easily more than one, unless the processes are very habitual; but then two, or even three, without very much oscillation of the attention. Where, however, the processes are less automatic, as in the story of Julius Caesar dictating four letters whilst he writes a fifth,[9] there must be a rapid oscillation of the mind from one to the next, and no consequent gain of time. Within any one of the systems the parts may be numberless, but we attend to them collectively when we conceive the whole which they form.
When the things to be attended to are small sensations, and when the effort is to be exact in noting them, it is found that attention to one interferes a good deal with the perception of the other. A good deal of fine work has been done in this field, of which I must give some account.
It has long been noticed, when expectant attention is concentrated upon one of two sensations, that the other one is apt to be displaced from consciousness for a moment and to appear subsequent; although in reality the two may have been contemporaneous events...
Chad Loder Rapid 7, Inc. The next generation of network security products
I posted this to Bugtraq last night but it
got rejected.:P
Anyways, if cable modem users are seeing
drastically increased ARPing, the targeting
of the Code Red III variant should explain
it -- hitting non-existent addresses on your
subnet will cause the CMTSheadend router to
ARP out to see who's got that address, you get
the picture.
At the very least, it's a good opportunity for
users to see how many modems your provider has
packed onto your segment. If they've packed too
many on there, you can be sure the CMTS router's
going to get seriously bogged down.
I have an automated program which sends the IP
addresses to the ARIS list *and* to my ISP's
security department (those IP's which fall under
their management) -- I wonder if ISP's are
considering just dropping all packets from
infected hosts, so when the customer comes to
them and complains, they say "Oh, you're infected,
reboot, install the patch, and we'll reconnect
you." Seems that this would reduce the load
on the CMTS and would be faster than trying to
track down each customer individually.
Chad Loder
Rapid 7, Inc. - Next generation security products and services
Under the DMCA, corporations are allowed to take away fair use via technological means, but consumers are legally prohibited from taking it back.
Adobe sets a scary precedent by allowing taxpayer money to be used to prosecute someone who challenges a corporation's marketing claims.
I saw Dmitry's talk at DEFCon, I don't think it's anything to put someone in JAIL for. At the very least this should be a civil suit filed by Adobe -- the criminalization of supposed copyright interference is a new and frightening phenomenon of this century.
Let me first say, so many of these bills are structured in terms of patches to existing bills. I think the government should alwasy provide the output of 'diff -u -w' so everyone can review the patch in context before deciding whether to apply it to our Constitution.
Anyways, the bill seems meaningless in terms of adding additional protection for school computers. The biggest difference from the original bill is actually a change in language from:
"whoever...intentionally causes damage without authorization" [subsec. (a) paragraph (5.A)] and "whoever...recklessly causes damage" [subsec. (a) paragraph (5.B)] to:
"whoever...intentionally affects or impairs without authorization".
IANAL, but it seems to be there's a big difference between "causes damage" and "affects or impairs", considering ANYTHING one does to a computer affects the computer. And in a way, any program you run on a computer "impairs" the computer's ability to do other things (as quickly, say).
This is an instance of a wider problem. It is yet another example of how appointed (read: not elected) executive officials have with alarming frequency been enacting regulations which are effectively law.
The constitution gives legislative power solely to Congress for good reason.
Who: FDIC What: "Know Your Customer" proposal for mandatory bank account activity profiling
The list goes on and on. I am afraid that until we force Congress to assert its sole right to legislate, we will be running around trying to stamp out these fires as they pop up. Inevitably some of this shit is going to slip by. We need to solve the root problem.
"For this architecture, you really need a great compiler," said HP's David Mosberger in an interview earlier this month. Mosberger has been working on Linux for Intel's upcoming chip families for two years.
My understanding is that this new Intel chip will be the first commercially available chip to use the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing).
From what I've read, the philosophy of EPIC is to have the CPU slavishly execute instructions in the exact order and manner prescribed by the compiler, allowing compilers to do intense optimizations without worrying about being second-guessed by the CPU. To quote from an article in this month's issue of IEEE Computer magazine:
[EPIC and VLIW code] provides an explicit plan for how the processor will execute the program, a plan the compiler creates statically at compile time. The code explicitly specifies when each operation will be executed, which functional units will do the work, and which registers will hold the operands.
I'm trolling? You've told me I'm acting in a pointless, childish, and tiresome manner, whereas I simply pointed out something I've found annoys me and other experienced Python programmers.
I will continue to use Python where it's applicable and where relevant, I will continue to point out shortcomings in the language. If you disagree, you're more than welcome to argue with me, but if you're so worried about trolling, you should start with yourself.
Saving keystrokes is not of primary importance to most programmers. Two pieces of code which look exactly the same in most text editors and in hard-copy should be executed exactly the same, otherwise confusion can arise.
This has not made Python easier to read for me, certainly.
One annoying thing about Python is that indentation is parsed for statement-grouping purposes. Just like makefiles. It's a bad idea for languages meant to be written by humans.
Sorry to put a damper on things, but this is not directly an issue of Linux vs. NT. The article does not say this, but it is obviously between Lotus Notes vs. Microsoft Exchange
The DoD has been evaluating and testing software for DMS (Defense Messaging System) since at least late '94. DMS is a secure messaging and groupware specification based on Fortezza (smartcard) encryption and X.400 and X.500 mail and directory services.
The prime contractor for this DoD project is Loral (or now Lockheed Martin), and the two competing subcontractors are Lotus and Microsoft.
Microsoft has been trying to push Exchange as a groupware platform for a long time, but it really does not fit the bill nearly as well as Lotus Notes (or Domino). The operating systems are going to be Microsoft (because the DMS specifications call for a turnkey solution, and unfortunately Linux is not widely considered a turnkey OS). But at least Lotus' products run on most platforms, whereas Microsoft's products run only on Microsoft platforms.
If I remember correctly, Hultin was a supporter of Lotus and was miffed when the Navy decided to switch gears and go with Microsoft (even though Lotus' products have fared better through all stages of Lockheed Martin's lab tests). Another example of Microsoft's influence over superior products.
You can learn more about Lotus's solution at http://www.lmdms.com/. Or do a web search for "Defense Messaging System".
Give me a break. Sony has so many products and technologies (including licensing on the CD format, lots of other electronic gadgets, etc.) plus they have a very large and successful record label and a successful theater chain, do you honestly think that something with the comparitively low sales volume is going to destroy them?
Give me a break. Sony has so many products and technologies (including licensing on the CD format, lots of other electronic gadgets, etc.) plus they have a very large and successful record label and a successful theater chain, do you honestly think that something with the comparitively low sales volume is going to destroy them?
This sort of thing scares me. What scares me even more is the suggestion that we start creating new species to replace old ones, etc. I am not religious, I don't believe there should be any self-imposed limits on knowledge or anything like that, but I hope we are conservative in this arena. Just because we can make something happen doesn't mean we can control it or even predict its ramifications.
I can think of several examples of humans affecting nature and ending up bringing other species (or themselves) closer to extinction.
This practice is at least as old as agriculture. Consider what clearing out large patches of forest or prairie does to the local ecosystem. Even shooting predators like wolves and coyotes causes problems and killing snakes causes even more problems (they control the rodent population).
Until recently (last 100-200 years or so), I guess this has not been a problem (any more than beavers damming a brook) because of scale. One human (or a group) would try something, it would change the local state, and the human(s) would live or die depending on where they stood in the resulting balance.
Now we have the technology to affect our surroundings more dramatically, and we do enough of that without meaning to (CFCs, the widespread over-use of antibiotics leading to virulent strains of disease, etc.), shouldn't we be laying low? Do we really understand the affects we're having on the ecosystem enough now to start trying to rectify them (whatever they are)?
The problem with breeding new species (especially species which reproduce quickly like insects, fungi/algae, rodents), as many./ folks have pointed out, is that they can multiply beyond our ability to control them (the kudzu vine is one example, not of breeding, but of transplanting). By doing so they can upset the balance and wipe out other species, and so on...
I think this fear has probably influenced countless B movies, but can we afford to play with new species designed by the race that came up the nuclear bomb, N-Sync, and CORBA?
I read your comment and was agreeing with you until I realized that you were referring to the people who *call* tech support, not the people who *work* in tech support. The phenomenon you are describing is caused by the fact that intelligent people don't generally need to call tech support. And when smart people start to pick up the phone, they think back, as I do, and try to remember a single instance where a tech support person actually gave them a useful answer (not counting when your call gets put through to the development staff). Then they hang up and go look for better software.
Isn't this the same damn thing that happened to Wired magazine? When I first starting reading it years ago, it was cutting edge, it was a little edgy, it was pretty cool. They still send me the magazine today (for free) but it's basically worthless to me. It reads like Fortune Magazine: so-and-so made $300 million from a technology developed for free in academia -- aren't they wonderful? Plus, I saw an $11,000 necklace advertised in the January '00 issue! The demographic is changing for a lot of this stuff, presumably this will include Slashdot as well (it already happened to www.codeguru.com) -- it's been changing since McDonald's opened in Red Square (do I liken open-source to communism? maybe...how does that bode for open-source?)
Slashdot Mirror
I remember at the last company I worked for, we had one battered copy of the SQL92 standard (which is basically just an annotated BNF grammar) that we shared among the whole office.
My favorite:
Windows Key + Break = System Properties
Also good but not as cool are:
Alt+Space+M = Maximize current window
Alt+Space+N = Minimize current window
Sierre is spending money on better games than Tribes2 now. :)
"IMHO, if you haven't read Knuth's work, you aren't a programmer."
There are plenty of people out there who've read (and even understood) Knuth's books, yet who still write horrible spaghetti code. This includes at least 50% of the mathematics PhD's who have worked for me over the years. I would barely classify these people as programmers.
At the same time, I have seen plenty of good (even "very good") software engineers who have never even seen Knuth's books.
TAOCP (esp. vol I) is important, I would even agree with you that aspiring programmers "should" read it, but IMHO the knowledge is neither sufficient nor entirely necessary for making good programmers.
There's a running joe that James' century old work represents basically everything cognitive scientists know today. In other words, not much new progress in the last 100 years. :) Anyways, to quote from James' book, chapter 11 (emphasis mine):
[p. 409] If, then, by the original question, how many ideas or things can we attend to at once, be meant how many entirely disconnected systems or processes of conception can go on simultaneously, the answer is, not easily more than one, unless the processes are very habitual; but then two, or even three, without very much oscillation of the attention. Where, however, the processes are less automatic, as in the story of Julius Caesar dictating four letters whilst he writes a fifth,[9] there must be a rapid oscillation of the mind from one to the next, and no consequent gain of time. Within any one of the systems the parts may be numberless, but we attend to them collectively when we conceive the whole which they form.
When the things to be attended to are small sensations, and when the effort is to be exact in noting them, it is found that attention to one interferes a good deal with the perception of the other. A good deal of fine work has been done in this field, of which I must give some account.
It has long been noticed, when expectant attention is concentrated upon one of two sensations, that the other one is apt to be displaced from consciousness for a moment and to appear subsequent; although in reality the two may have been contemporaneous events...
Chad Loder
Rapid 7, Inc.
The next generation of network security products
Anyways, if cable modem users are seeing drastically increased ARPing, the targeting of the Code Red III variant should explain it -- hitting non-existent addresses on your subnet will cause the CMTSheadend router to ARP out to see who's got that address, you get the picture.
At the very least, it's a good opportunity for users to see how many modems your provider has packed onto your segment. If they've packed too many on there, you can be sure the CMTS router's going to get seriously bogged down.
I have an automated program which sends the IP addresses to the ARIS list *and* to my ISP's security department (those IP's which fall under their management) -- I wonder if ISP's are considering just dropping all packets from infected hosts, so when the customer comes to them and complains, they say "Oh, you're infected, reboot, install the patch, and we'll reconnect you." Seems that this would reduce the load on the CMTS and would be faster than trying to track down each customer individually.
Chad Loder
Rapid 7, Inc. - Next generation security products and services
http://www.rapid7.com
Adobe sets a scary precedent by allowing taxpayer money to be used to prosecute someone who challenges a corporation's marketing claims.
I saw Dmitry's talk at DEFCon, I don't think it's anything to put someone in JAIL for. At the very least this should be a civil suit filed by Adobe -- the criminalization of supposed copyright interference is a new and frightening phenomenon of this century.
Anyways, the bill seems meaningless in terms of adding additional protection for school computers. The biggest difference from the original bill is actually a change in language from:
"whoever...intentionally causes damage without authorization" [subsec. (a) paragraph (5.A)] and "whoever...recklessly causes damage" [subsec. (a) paragraph (5.B)] to:
"whoever...intentionally affects or impairs without authorization".
IANAL, but it seems to be there's a big difference between "causes damage" and "affects or impairs", considering ANYTHING one does to a computer affects the computer. And in a way, any program you run on a computer "impairs" the computer's ability to do other things (as quickly, say).
Network Security Tools and Services
Rapid 7, Inc.
Poor old Adobe. FrameMaker kicks (kicked?) major ass over Word or any other GUI tool for editing complex documents.
The constitution gives legislative power solely to Congress for good reason.
Other recent examples:
What: Medical privacy regulations
What: Mandatory use of SSN's for PO box holders
What: "Know Your Customer" proposal for mandatory bank account activity profiling
The list goes on and on. I am afraid that until we force Congress to assert its sole right to legislate, we will be running around trying to stamp out these fires as they pop up. Inevitably some of this shit is going to slip by. We need to solve the root problem.
My understanding is that this new Intel chip will be the first commercially available chip to use the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing).
From what I've read, the philosophy of EPIC is to have the CPU slavishly execute instructions in the exact order and manner prescribed by the compiler, allowing compilers to do intense optimizations without worrying about being second-guessed by the CPU. To quote from an article in this month's issue of IEEE Computer magazine:
There is a decent overview of EPIC at http://www.linux3d.net/cpu/CPU/epic/.What I couldn't determine from my reading was whose standard it is and to what degree the IA-64 chip will implement it?
I will continue to use Python where it's applicable and where relevant, I will continue to point out shortcomings in the language. If you disagree, you're more than welcome to argue with me, but if you're so worried about trolling, you should start with yourself.
This has not made Python easier to read for me, certainly.
One annoying thing about Python is that indentation is parsed for statement-grouping purposes. Just like makefiles. It's a bad idea for languages meant to be written by humans.
What's even funnier is that your post was made in all sincerity.
How about "I will never vote for you again?"
The DoD has been evaluating and testing software for DMS (Defense Messaging System) since at least late '94. DMS is a secure messaging and groupware specification based on Fortezza (smartcard) encryption and X.400 and X.500 mail and directory services.
The prime contractor for this DoD project is Loral (or now Lockheed Martin), and the two competing subcontractors are Lotus and Microsoft.
Microsoft has been trying to push Exchange as a groupware platform for a long time, but it really does not fit the bill nearly as well as Lotus Notes (or Domino). The operating systems are going to be Microsoft (because the DMS specifications call for a turnkey solution, and unfortunately Linux is not widely considered a turnkey OS). But at least Lotus' products run on most platforms, whereas Microsoft's products run only on Microsoft platforms.
If I remember correctly, Hultin was a supporter of Lotus and was miffed when the Navy decided to switch gears and go with Microsoft (even though Lotus' products have fared better through all stages of Lockheed Martin's lab tests). Another example of Microsoft's influence over superior products.
You can learn more about Lotus's solution at http://www.lmdms.com/. Or do a web search for "Defense Messaging System".
Give me a break. Sony has so many products and technologies (including licensing on the CD format, lots of other electronic gadgets, etc.) plus they have a very large and successful record label and a successful theater chain, do you honestly think that something with the comparitively low sales volume is going to destroy them?
Give me a break. Sony has so many products
and technologies (including licensing on the
CD format, lots of other electronic gadgets,
etc.) plus they have a very large and
successful record label and a successful
theater chain, do you honestly think that
something with the comparitively low sales
volume is going to destroy them?
This sort of thing scares me. What scares me even more is the suggestion that we start creating new species to replace old ones, etc. I am not religious, I don't believe there should be any self-imposed limits on knowledge or anything like that, but I hope we are conservative in this arena. Just because we can make something happen doesn't mean we can control it or even predict its ramifications.
./ folks have pointed out, is that they can multiply beyond our ability to control them (the kudzu vine is one example, not of breeding, but of transplanting). By doing so they can upset the balance and wipe out other species, and so on...
I can think of several examples of humans affecting nature and ending up bringing other species (or themselves) closer to extinction.
This practice is at least as old as agriculture. Consider what clearing out large patches of forest or prairie does to the local ecosystem. Even shooting predators like wolves and coyotes causes problems and killing snakes causes even more problems (they control the rodent population).
Until recently (last 100-200 years or so), I guess this has not been a problem (any more than beavers damming a brook) because of scale. One human (or a group) would try something, it would change the local state, and the human(s) would live or die depending on where they stood in the resulting balance.
Now we have the technology to affect our surroundings more dramatically, and we do enough of that without meaning to (CFCs, the widespread over-use of antibiotics leading to virulent strains of disease, etc.), shouldn't we be laying low? Do we really understand the affects we're having on the ecosystem enough now to start trying to rectify them (whatever they are)?
The problem with breeding new species (especially species which reproduce quickly like insects, fungi/algae, rodents), as many
I think this fear has probably influenced countless B movies, but can we afford to play with new species designed by the race that came up the nuclear bomb, N-Sync, and CORBA?
I read your comment and was agreeing with you until I realized that you were referring to the people who *call* tech support, not the people who *work* in tech support. The phenomenon you are describing is caused by the fact that intelligent people don't generally need to call tech support. And when smart people start to pick up the phone, they think back, as I do, and try to remember a single instance where a tech support person actually gave them a useful answer (not counting when your call gets put through to the development staff). Then they hang up and go look for better software.
Isn't this the same damn thing that happened to Wired magazine? When I first starting reading it years ago, it was cutting edge, it was a little edgy, it was pretty cool. They still send me the magazine today (for free) but it's basically worthless to me. It reads like Fortune Magazine: so-and-so made $300 million from a technology developed for free in academia -- aren't they wonderful?
Plus, I saw an $11,000 necklace advertised in the January '00 issue! The demographic is changing for a lot of this stuff, presumably this will include Slashdot as well (it already happened to www.codeguru.com) -- it's been changing since McDonald's opened in Red Square (do I liken open-source to communism? maybe...how does that bode for open-source?)