Bullshit. Your "simple" solution requires AT LEAST as much conceptual overhead and abstraction as using a proper database, and, as an added nonbonus, you're stuck with the '70s era Unix filesystem semantics and security model -- and, even better, you're at the mercy of the implementors of a system that's only tangentially related to a proper database. Anyone who'd ever built even a moderately complex application on top of a Unix filesystem would blanch at your suggestion that a combination of "lock files" and Unix primitives provides anything like a universal guarantee of atomicity.
Now, if you don't need atomicity, or transactional guarantees, or any of the other goodies that a proper database provides, I agree that the filesystem can be a viable alternative. And you're also right (excuse me for putting words in your mouth here) when you claim that people are too eager to build applications on top of a full-featured database system.
Not in this case, however. svn's use of Berkeley DB is to me, perfectly appropriate.
UNIX file systems, of course, have atomic write, transactions, and rollback, they just aren't called that.
Tell me, sensei, how to do a multiple file rollback on a raw Unix filesystem? Or how I can ensure transactional integrity without a transaction manager? Oh wait -- you can't. The facility doesn't exist.
We're switching. CVS is crufty, buggy, and slow. That alone is reason enough to switch, but atomic commits and faster and more transparent branching will be, in the long run, a more fundamental win.
I can say that functional languages are a lot more complicated than procedural languages.
Which functional languages are more complicated than which procedural ones? Scheme is a lovely, simple, tiny little language -- I have a hard time envisioning a simpler language. Haskell is also quite compact.
And in addition, I think that pure functional programs are much less complicated and full of crufty overhead than procedural ones. It's the whole "describe the problem" rather than "describe the solution" approach. I may be speaking as too much of a logic geek here, but wouldn't that in all cases be simpler?
Errr... "Annie Hall" and "Star Wars" don't even belong in the same room, cinematically speaking. One of those pictures is the greatest work by one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century -- the other, a half-baked, brainless mishmash of Joseph Campbell and dialog, editing, and direction so amatuerish it makes the head spin. That ILM went on to ruin many, many more movies with uselessly bad special effects, and, in concert with "Jaws" -- a radically superior movie -- ruined what was the golden era of American film, has earned Lucas a special place in hell, one where he will hopefully spend his days forced to watch "1942", "The Last Starfighter", and "Titanic".
Well, I've used a 10gb 2nd-gen (since sold to fund a mini) for what, two years now? And the collection's never been smaller than 80gb, and is currently 220? It hasn't been a problem for me yet.
The 40gb is too small for me, so I bought a mini. My collection is much larger than the largest iPod available, so I figure, get the smallest physical device. As long as I have to sync my iPod occasionally to the computer, what's the big diff between 4 and 40gb? An extra week's worth of music? If the battery lasted that long, maybe it'd be worth it, but as I plug my iPod into my computer every morning when I get to work, who cares?
ADM is a huge supporter of the US government's perverse sugar tariff. They're big fans of keeping low-cost foreign sugar out of the US market -- guess why?
CLEARLY the fossil fuel consumption can be reduced by using the electricity available from the ethanol to power and heat things. Sure, it drives the efficiency down, but who cares, if it's self sustaining!
But by definition, it can't be self-sustaining. There has to be an energy input somewhere.
Ok, then. I don't agree, but that's neither here nor there. It is, however, a seriously weird use of the word monopoly. There's vendor lock in with the Mac, of course, any fool can see that, but it doesn't shackle one nearly as much as do other proprietary systems.
I don't have an ideological problem with lock in (nor, at least so far, a pragmatic one), but others do, and that's a perfectly valid point of principle on which to stand.
Why would a normal user want to replace the boot drive? Isn't that a technician job? How do do do it in Windows? Do you just click on 'Replace Boot Drive' and it does it automatically? How do a naive user do it in OSX?
It's dead easy on the Mac. Just hold down the option key at boot up and you're presented with a list of bootable system volumes. Choose a different one (like, say, your iPod), and you're off to the races.
So, by extension, your argument is that BMW has a monopoly on the M5? Sony on the t68i? O'Reilly on "Mastering Regular Expressions"? Archos on the Jukebox?
A better question is: what's right about PS/2? Answer: nothing. It's not hot-swappable. The mouse/keyboard ports are physically identical, but logically distinct -- the most shit-stupid design mistake possible. What if you want more than one mouse? Keyboard?
I have a Kinesis Advantange USB keyboard, replacing an older Advantage PS/2 keyboard hooked up to my mac via an unreliable PS/2->USB adapter.
It's wondrous. I think switching four years ago to Kinesis has saved my hands. I was developing chronic, persistent wrist pain from using my old IBM bucking-spring steel job -- still the best of the flat keyboards -- and was at my wit's end, when the ergo woman at my workplace brought a Kinesis by for me to try.
Heaven! Keeping the wrists straight, even with my monster hands, has taken enormous strain off of them, and as a result, no more pain.
In addition, I use a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro trackball (the USB one with four buttons and a scroll wheel), and switch it from left to right every couple of weeks. When I'm out with the powerbook, I use the Apple Pro mono-button mouse, which I dearly, dearly love as well.
"The Office" isn't a pathetic apologia for the cubicle life. It's a genuinely subversive take on the meaninglessness of work in general. Oh, and "The Office" is piss yourself funny, whereas Dilbert has never been anywhere within sniffing distance of an actual joke.
I like the way the iTMS works, but I don't buy much music there, as most of what I want is not on the Big Five. To me, the biggest iPod win is not.m4p (FairPlay burdened AAC) from the Music Store. The big win is the integration between iTunes the music jukebox/ripper/&c. and the iPod. It's seamless; they are really two parts of the same tool.
I use Emacs exclusively on my Mac, but firing up BBEdit and checking out the preferences, under "Text Editing"... lo and behold! "Use Emacs Key Bindings"
It used to be that when I saw a record on Touch & Go (or Lookout!, or Dischord), I'd buy it, because all the other bands on Touch & Go were great. This worked because T & G signed bands that they liked, some of whom were great, some less so. Everyone got a fair shake, usually a 50/50 split on profits, IIRC.
Labels will hopefully become smaller and more focused, like the independents from the Golden Age. Fewer bands will end up millionaires, but it's likely that the greater majority will do much better for themselves. Little known fact: Green Day made more money from their Lookout! back catalog than the zillion copies of their major label releases. Illustrative:
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit. Your "simple" solution requires AT LEAST as much conceptual overhead and abstraction as using a proper database, and, as an added nonbonus, you're stuck with the '70s era Unix filesystem semantics and security model -- and, even better, you're at the mercy of the implementors of a system that's only tangentially related to a proper database. Anyone who'd ever built even a moderately complex application on top of a Unix filesystem would blanch at your suggestion that a combination of "lock files" and Unix primitives provides anything like a universal guarantee of atomicity.
Now, if you don't need atomicity, or transactional guarantees, or any of the other goodies that a proper database provides, I agree that the filesystem can be a viable alternative. And you're also right (excuse me for putting words in your mouth here) when you claim that people are too eager to build applications on top of a full-featured database system.
Not in this case, however. svn's use of Berkeley DB is to me, perfectly appropriate.
'jfb
UNIX file systems, of course, have atomic write, transactions, and rollback, they just aren't called that.
Tell me, sensei, how to do a multiple file rollback on a raw Unix filesystem? Or how I can ensure transactional integrity without a transaction manager? Oh wait -- you can't. The facility doesn't exist.
'jfb
We're switching. CVS is crufty, buggy, and slow. That alone is reason enough to switch, but atomic commits and faster and more transparent branching will be, in the long run, a more fundamental win.
'jfb
I can say that functional languages are a lot more complicated than procedural languages.
Which functional languages are more complicated than which procedural ones? Scheme is a lovely, simple, tiny little language -- I have a hard time envisioning a simpler language. Haskell is also quite compact.
And in addition, I think that pure functional programs are much less complicated and full of crufty overhead than procedural ones. It's the whole "describe the problem" rather than "describe the solution" approach. I may be speaking as too much of a logic geek here, but wouldn't that in all cases be simpler?
'jfb
Well, he did have a hand in "Raiders".
'jfb
I agree about Faramir, but the changes to Denethor were really beyond the pale.
'jfb
Errr ... "Annie Hall" and "Star Wars" don't even belong in the same room, cinematically speaking. One of those pictures is the greatest work by one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century -- the other, a half-baked, brainless mishmash of Joseph Campbell and dialog, editing, and direction so amatuerish it makes the head spin. That ILM went on to ruin many, many more movies with uselessly bad special effects, and, in concert with "Jaws" -- a radically superior movie -- ruined what was the golden era of American film, has earned Lucas a special place in hell, one where he will hopefully spend his days forced to watch "1942", "The Last Starfighter", and "Titanic".
'jfb
Well, I've used a 10gb 2nd-gen (since sold to fund a mini) for what, two years now? And the collection's never been smaller than 80gb, and is currently 220? It hasn't been a problem for me yet.
'jfb
The 40gb is too small for me, so I bought a mini. My collection is much larger than the largest iPod available, so I figure, get the smallest physical device. As long as I have to sync my iPod occasionally to the computer, what's the big diff between 4 and 40gb? An extra week's worth of music? If the battery lasted that long, maybe it'd be worth it, but as I plug my iPod into my computer every morning when I get to work, who cares?
'jfb
There's getmail, which has the advantage of not dropping/mangling mail, like ESR's masterful fetchmail does.
'jfb
ADM is a huge supporter of the US government's perverse sugar tariff. They're big fans of keeping low-cost foreign sugar out of the US market -- guess why?
'jfb
CLEARLY the fossil fuel consumption can be reduced by using the electricity available from the ethanol to power and heat things. Sure, it drives the efficiency down, but who cares, if it's self sustaining!
But by definition, it can't be self-sustaining. There has to be an energy input somewhere.
'jfb
Ok, then. I don't agree, but that's neither here nor there. It is, however, a seriously weird use of the word monopoly. There's vendor lock in with the Mac, of course, any fool can see that, but it doesn't shackle one nearly as much as do other proprietary systems.
I don't have an ideological problem with lock in (nor, at least so far, a pragmatic one), but others do, and that's a perfectly valid point of principle on which to stand.
'jfb
Why would a normal user want to replace the boot drive? Isn't that a technician job? How do do do it in Windows? Do you just click on 'Replace Boot Drive' and it does it automatically? How do a naive user do it in OSX?
It's dead easy on the Mac. Just hold down the option key at boot up and you're presented with a list of bootable system volumes. Choose a different one (like, say, your iPod), and you're off to the races.
'jfb
So, by extension, your argument is that BMW has a monopoly on the M5? Sony on the t68i? O'Reilly on "Mastering Regular Expressions"? Archos on the Jukebox?
'jfb
A better question is: what's right about PS/2? Answer: nothing. It's not hot-swappable. The mouse/keyboard ports are physically identical, but logically distinct -- the most shit-stupid design mistake possible. What if you want more than one mouse? Keyboard?
In sum: good riddance to bad rubbish.
'jfb
I have a Kinesis Advantange USB keyboard, replacing an older Advantage PS/2 keyboard hooked up to my mac via an unreliable PS/2->USB adapter.
It's wondrous. I think switching four years ago to Kinesis has saved my hands. I was developing chronic, persistent wrist pain from using my old IBM bucking-spring steel job -- still the best of the flat keyboards -- and was at my wit's end, when the ergo woman at my workplace brought a Kinesis by for me to try.
Heaven! Keeping the wrists straight, even with my monster hands, has taken enormous strain off of them, and as a result, no more pain.
In addition, I use a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro trackball (the USB one with four buttons and a scroll wheel), and switch it from left to right every couple of weeks. When I'm out with the powerbook, I use the Apple Pro mono-button mouse, which I dearly, dearly love as well.
'jfb
"The Office" isn't a pathetic apologia for the cubicle life. It's a genuinely subversive take on the meaninglessness of work in general. Oh, and "The Office" is piss yourself funny, whereas Dilbert has never been anywhere within sniffing distance of an actual joke.
'jfb
I like the way the iTMS works, but I don't buy much music there, as most of what I want is not on the Big Five. To me, the biggest iPod win is not .m4p (FairPlay burdened AAC) from the Music Store. The big win is the integration between iTunes the music jukebox/ripper/&c. and the iPod. It's seamless; they are really two parts of the same tool.
'jfb
Kubric's Lolita is pretty great.
'jfb
My kingdom for mod points!
'jfb
Amtrak runs through Emeryville in East Bay, not San Francisco. Only really funny if you live here. And even then, not so much.
'jfb
Hell's bells -- let me know when I can take the train from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
'jfb
Errr ...
... lo and behold! "Use Emacs Key Bindings"
I use Emacs exclusively on my Mac, but firing up BBEdit and checking out the preferences, under "Text Editing"
'jfb
Why have record labels?
It used to be that when I saw a record on Touch & Go (or Lookout!, or Dischord), I'd buy it, because all the other bands on Touch & Go were great. This worked because T & G signed bands that they liked, some of whom were great, some less so. Everyone got a fair shake, usually a 50/50 split on profits, IIRC.
Labels will hopefully become smaller and more focused, like the independents from the Golden Age. Fewer bands will end up millionaires, but it's likely that the greater majority will do much better for themselves. Little known fact: Green Day made more money from their Lookout! back catalog than the zillion copies of their major label releases. Illustrative:
Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music"
'jfb