For guys who consider Oracle and other commerical RDBMS their competition, they sure seemed to enjoy pointing out the faults of MySQL.
I think the connotation was that technologically MySQL(*) does not compete with PostgreSQL, not that PostgreSQL is not an alternative product.
In my opinion, OSS needs to be more friendly to each other. If one project lacks features, don't bash them, what's the point?
If PostgreSQL is underrated and underappreciated, I think the calling attention to its relative strengths is fair. Also, I think the licensing of MySQL(*) makes it a qualitatively different kind of "OSS" from PostgreSQL
Larry
* MySQL is a trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries.
By "impedance mismatch" I mean efficiently calling C functions and passing parameters / return values,and sharing data structures like arrays and structs.
Other things I think are major problems are inability to manage memory, lack of fundamental thread synchronization primitives and predictability, massive native (C) code impedance mismatches, and the enormous program (JVM) startup overhead.
JDK 1.5 should help with the JVM startup and threading problems. I hope someday for the ability to manage memory efficiently, at least letting me repeatedly resurrect garbage objects and get some sort of guarantees about when collection will happen.
I think Java is as good at implementing self-contained functionality, and interacting over the network, as any other environment, and there are lots of builtin modules for that kind of thing. But Java has not been very good at interacting with the machine it is running on, at least not nearly so well as something like C or Python; also, the startup time for a Java application is at least an order of magnitude great than for those other environments.
Java is a fairly nice language, and continues to be almost good enough to be better than the alternatives for a lot of applications. I think there is a pretty good chance that with JDK 1.5 it will have everything it needs to have quick interaction with the system on which it is running and to start applications quickly (usecs vs msecs). If the JDK/JRE can sort out the font/GUI situation enough to look like a normal program, I think Java will be used a lot more for programs with GUIs.
I have used Safari for about 6 months. It is marketed as something where you can access a particular book online for as long as you pay $XXX per month for that book (e.g. $1.50/month). If I am going to be using a book ongoing, I will just buy the book, as I find accessing the site (or pages I saved to my disk) vastly less convenient than having the paper book in my possession.
However, I continue to use Safari because I do not need to keep a book longer than 30 days, so what I can do is have access to a book for 30 days for about $1.50, and if it is something I would like to have around, I will buy the paper book; either way, I take the book off my Safari bookshelf after 30 days to make room for another book I can preview for 30 days.
I suppose I could go to the bookstore and buy the book and read it, and return it if I do not like it, and that would be cheaper, but I do not want to make that many trips to the bookstore.:-)
And of course if it is a book I only feel a need to read through once, then I do not even need to consider buying the paper edition.
There are other pricing options for people who want to preview more or less than, say, 10 books per month.
they are probably preparing for the day when Solaris will be phased out. It will be a gradual process of course, much like the way IBM is slowly depreciating AIX.
I see no reason for them to plan to phase Solaris out. It is arguably (and often measurably) better than Linux for the things where it wants to be better (dedicated servers), and I see no indication that is going to change. Linux has a lot of hardware drivers, and is great with system call overhead and other things which are nice to have on a single-user single CPU desktop system or small server, but I do not think Solaris has been worried about that kind of use for several years.
If Linux gets to a point where it is better than Solaris at the things Solaris is supposed to be good at, then I think Sun might think about using it instead, but I see no indication of things going in that direction. Not to mention that Solaris is extremely well documented.
I notice types most when I am calling some sort of
function, and when I am looking at the body of a
function which has parameters.
In a language where parameters have specified types, I
can look at the signature for a function I may want to call
and see at a glance what it is expecting me to pass.
When I
am looking in the body of an unfamiliar function at variables
which were defined as its parameters, I can see
at a glance what type of things those parameters
represent.
I find strongly typed languages make it much easier to
provide this information I find helpful. I find these
things sorely missing in real world use of languages like JavaScript, Python and Perl.
That information and more can be provided through some sort of of out-of-band
documentation mechanism, but I personally like having it
right there as part of the language.
My guess is that Sun thinks of Solaris as a very good operating
system which they have dozens/hundreds of talented people making
better all the time, and which seems to perform better on 8+ CPU
sparc systems than any other OS.
I think Sun respects that some customers want to have the same
operating environment on their x86 machines as on their sparc
machines, and rather than make those customers run Linux on
sparc, they provide the capability to run Solaris on x86.
A side benefit is letting people with x86 machines try Solaris
and develop applications for it.
I think sometimes Sun tries to succeed by giving customers
what they want, rather than trying to gain advantage through
manipulation.
There are some other interesting changes coming to provide a more coherent
memory model,
vastly improved
concurrency support,
and
intra-JVM application isolation. Java is getting much better at providing access to the capabilities of the underlying OS, and the JVM working more like a little multi-process OS itself...
Larry
Risk Management
on
.NET or CORBA?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think for me it would be more a question of building on something relatively stable vs relatively unstable. Considering Miguel seems to see.NET as a technology to succeed CORBA, I would feel ok saying the same thing. But CORBA and GTK are a platform that, although somewhat crufty, seem to have gone through much more real world use than.NET.
Also, for the next several months at least, it seems like.NET suggests Windows and CORBA+GTK suggests *nix, although of course that is not an essential necessity, but maybe it is a constraint for some projects.
I think because this was their first "official" release of any revision of GNOME, there was a lot more that went into it than what they will need to do for an update for the changes in 2.2.
Google Groups (USENET Archives)
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 1
I do not care much what happens to Google as a web search engine, but I am worried about what will happen to the USENET archives. I wish there was a public domain archive/repository.
Larry
Re:why does it hurt when i do this...
on
Unionfs for Linux?
·
· Score: 1
unionfs with two fs's really isn't all that great idea. and no offence, but unionfs with more then two fs's is monumentally stupid. where do new files get created? how do you deal with conflicts? what happens with files that you edit? what if you remove a file that exists on more then one fs?
I think a union/overlay/translucent filesystem is a natural and useful construct. I think having N readonly layers below one writable layer is as intuitive as for 1 readonly layer.
I dont think problems with name conflicts are necessarily much worse than having to map to 8.3 names, or names which differ only by case on a filesystem which is not case preserving.
Having to choose whether or not to have copy on write, or choose a z value for each layer, does not seem like a problem which makes the cost of overlay filesystems more than the benefit.
Here are my personal random thoughts and opinions
off the top of my head, which may be of no value at all.
Academia at the college+ level is its own universe.
Try to understand it as such, and try not to see how
it fits in with the real world - it doesn't.
"Network" with people who may be directly or
indirectly connected to
graduate students and those similar people
who actually do everything; perhaps more
importantly, try to find people who have access
to old exams, lab reports, papers, etc. from the
classes you are going to take.
If you do not have to work to make money, don't.
Focus solely on becoming connected and powerful
in that academic universe. If you have to work,
try to work at school.
Don't waste time going to social functions which
are just an excuse to get wasted and have sex.
There will be plenty of time for that in the
real world and it will be at least as enjoyable.
Quickly figure out a field where you are almost
certain to make a good living, and you expect it
will be least unpleasant to be in that field
forever, and major in that.
Forget about getting some sort of "well rounded"
education, or any sort of education at all, and
focus solely on developing ostensibly good qualifications
for a career. You have the rest of your life
to educate yourself, and it is a lot easier and
more pleasant to do it outside the context of
getting graded and having to please some
primadonna professor or graduate student.
Take the classes where you are mostly likely to get a high grade.
Be pleasant to everybody, no matter how insignificant
or lame or annoying or unpleasant they seem to be.
Avoid opportunities to express dissenting opinions,
or anything else that somebody with authority does
not want to hear.
Windows PowerPro,
is a pretty good no cost Windows shell replacement. It has a
lot of features, but it seems to be more oriented towards
productivity than aesthetics. I found it easy to install
and configure. It has been around for years, and used to
be called "Stiletto". There is a somewhat active mailing list.
I have worked at least a year in every permutation of office
vs cube, and shared vs not. Obviously a shared cube is the
worst and a solo office is the best, but I personally _much_
prefer a solo cube to a shared office. I think having to
share an office (or cube) puts a significant amount of
social pressure on a person to interact with the other
person, and also makes it much difficult to have private
conversations or to avoid hearing the private conversations
of the other person (or the not private conversations of
the other person). For me it is a night and day difference
between sharing and not sharing, whereas cube vs office is
not that significant.
> > Clearly SOAP itself does not provide application
> > level security, but I personally do not see that
> > as a "SOAP security problem".
>
> Why is the lack of security in SOAP not a SOAP
> security problem? Are you saying that security is
> outside SOAP's scope? That doesn't sound right to
> me. Surely security should be one of the prime
> concerns of any protocol.
I dont think there is a particular lack of security in SOAP,
or that security is outside the scope of SOAP, so much as
that SOAP is supposed to integrate well with separate security
mechanisms like XML Signature, XML Encryption, S/MIME,
HTTPS, etc., to let them provide the application and transport
security. So, maybe it could be said that SOAP "supports",
but does not "provide", security.
> > It seems the author is trying to proffer REST
> > [xml.com], a putatively alternative approach
>
> What's putative about it? REST says, for example,
> that every method has its own URI, while SOAP
> bundles a service's methods together under one URI.
I say it is "putative" because I do not take
it for granted that it is an approach which
provides an acceptable alternative to SOAP for
all the use cases where SOAP would be an
acceptable solution, although it may be.
> > the existing web architecture cannot be
> > used to satisfy the additional security
> > demands created by application level web
> > services interaction protocols like SOAP. I
> > do not see that as a "SOAP security problem"
>
> The article's complaint is that, not only is
> existing web architecture incompatible with SOAP
SOAP works on top of the existing web architecture as
a transport. It may not use transport security to derive
application security, but I do not think it claims to
derive application security from the transport, or provide
it by itself. I do not think it precludes transport
security (S/MIME, HTTPS,...), although it may curtail
the ability of the transport providers to enforce application
security, but I do not think they should need to.
> but there don't seem to be guidelines for
> developing secure SOAP apps - developers are
> left to their own devices. The amount of trouble
> people have with existing, well-understood
> approaches to networked services (such as
> those that fall under REST) suggests that
> expecting application developers to come up
> with good solutions on their own is risky.
SOAP provides part of a solution for developing
and deploying web services. I do not think
SOAP has ever been intended by itself to provide
the requisite security for a web service.
Clearly SOAP itself does not provide application
level security, but I personally do not see that
as a "SOAP security problem". I think the
security
topic is a red herring, and that is why I think
the article is FUD
It seems the author is trying to proffer REST, a putatively alternative approach
to the use of the existing web infrastructure as little more than a transport for
messages to be interpreted by the endpoints, like SOAP does, and I think that is the motivation for the FUD article mentioned in this slashdot story. To me that article does not seem to say much besides that the existing web architecture cannot be used to satisfy the additional security demands created by application level web services interaction protocols like SOAP. I do not see that as a "SOAP security problem".
Slashdot Mirror
Larry
* MySQL is a trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries.
By "impedance mismatch" I mean efficiently calling C functions and passing parameters / return values,and sharing data structures like arrays and structs.
JSR 166 and JSR 133 address some of the thread issues.
Larry
Other things I think are major problems are inability to manage memory, lack of fundamental thread synchronization primitives and predictability, massive native (C) code impedance mismatches, and the enormous program (JVM) startup overhead.
JDK 1.5 should help with the JVM startup and threading problems. I hope someday for the ability to manage memory efficiently, at least letting me repeatedly resurrect garbage objects and get some sort of guarantees about when collection will happen.
Larry
I am not waiting for Java or Python to be accepted as a "public standard". I am confident in the trustees of these languages/platforms.
Larry
It is also compressed in the direction of motion, warps time, and emits graviton pulses.
I think Java is as good at implementing self-contained functionality, and interacting over the network, as any other environment, and there are lots of builtin modules for that kind of thing. But Java has not been very good at interacting with the machine it is running on, at least not nearly so well as something like C or Python; also, the startup time for a Java application is at least an order of magnitude great than for those other environments.
Java is a fairly nice language, and continues to be almost good enough to be better than the alternatives for a lot of applications. I think there is a pretty good chance that with JDK 1.5 it will have everything it needs to have quick interaction with the system on which it is running and to start applications quickly (usecs vs msecs). If the JDK/JRE can sort out the font/GUI situation enough to look like a normal program, I think Java will be used a lot more for programs with GUIs.
Larry
I have used Safari for about 6 months. It is marketed as something where you can access a particular book online for as long as you pay $XXX per month for that book (e.g. $1.50/month). If I am going to be using a book ongoing, I will just buy the book, as I find accessing the site (or pages I saved to my disk) vastly less convenient than having the paper book in my possession.
However, I continue to use Safari because I do not need to keep a book longer than 30 days, so what I can do is have access to a book for 30 days for about $1.50, and if it is something I would like to have around, I will buy the paper book; either way, I take the book off my Safari bookshelf after 30 days to make room for another book I can preview for 30 days.
I suppose I could go to the bookstore and buy the book and read it, and return it if I do not like it, and that would be cheaper, but I do not want to make that many trips to the bookstore. :-)
And of course if it is a book I only feel a need to read through once, then I do not even need to consider buying the paper edition.
There are other pricing options for people who want to preview more or less than, say, 10 books per month.
Larry
I see no reason for them to plan to phase Solaris out. It is arguably (and often measurably) better than Linux for the things where it wants to be better (dedicated servers), and I see no indication that is going to change. Linux has a lot of hardware drivers, and is great with system call overhead and other things which are nice to have on a single-user single CPU desktop system or small server, but I do not think Solaris has been worried about that kind of use for several years.
If Linux gets to a point where it is better than Solaris at the things Solaris is supposed to be good at, then I think Sun might think about using it instead, but I see no indication of things going in that direction. Not to mention that Solaris is extremely well documented.
Larry
That sounds to me like what the GPL is trying to curtail. No?
Larry
I notice types most when I am calling some sort of function, and when I am looking at the body of a function which has parameters.
In a language where parameters have specified types, I can look at the signature for a function I may want to call and see at a glance what it is expecting me to pass. When I am looking in the body of an unfamiliar function at variables which were defined as its parameters, I can see at a glance what type of things those parameters represent.
I find strongly typed languages make it much easier to provide this information I find helpful. I find these things sorely missing in real world use of languages like JavaScript, Python and Perl. That information and more can be provided through some sort of of out-of-band documentation mechanism, but I personally like having it right there as part of the language.
Larry
My guess is that Sun thinks of Solaris as a very good operating system which they have dozens/hundreds of talented people making better all the time, and which seems to perform better on 8+ CPU sparc systems than any other OS.
I think Sun respects that some customers want to have the same operating environment on their x86 machines as on their sparc machines, and rather than make those customers run Linux on sparc, they provide the capability to run Solaris on x86. A side benefit is letting people with x86 machines try Solaris and develop applications for it.
I think sometimes Sun tries to succeed by giving customers what they want, rather than trying to gain advantage through manipulation.
Larry
There are some other interesting changes coming to provide a more coherent memory model, vastly improved concurrency support, and intra-JVM application isolation. Java is getting much better at providing access to the capabilities of the underlying OS, and the JVM working more like a little multi-process OS itself...
Larry
I think for me it would be more a question of building on something relatively stable vs relatively unstable. Considering Miguel seems to see .NET as a technology to succeed CORBA, I would feel ok saying the same thing. But CORBA and GTK are a platform that, although somewhat crufty, seem to have gone through much more real world use than .NET.
Also, for the next several months at least, it seems like .NET suggests Windows and CORBA+GTK suggests *nix, although of course that is not an essential necessity, but maybe it is a constraint for some projects.
Larry
I think because this was their first "official" release of any revision of GNOME, there was a lot more that went into it than what they will need to do for an update for the changes in 2.2.
Larry
Not sure what advantages user-mode Linux would have over VMWare or Bochs.
It lets the kernel run as a regular user process, and has been developed to interact with the host in that context.
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/uses.html
Larry
I do not care much what happens to Google as a web search engine, but I am worried about what will happen to the USENET archives. I wish there was a public domain archive/repository.
Larry
unionfs with two fs's really isn't all that great idea. and no offence, but unionfs with more then two fs's is monumentally stupid. where do new files get created? how do you deal with conflicts? what happens with files that you edit? what if you remove a file that exists on more then one fs?
I think a union/overlay/translucent filesystem is a natural and useful construct. I think having N readonly layers below one writable layer is as intuitive as for 1 readonly layer.
I dont think problems with name conflicts are necessarily much worse than having to map to 8.3 names, or names which differ only by case on a filesystem which is not case preserving.
Having to choose whether or not to have copy on write, or choose a z value for each layer, does not seem like a problem which makes the cost of overlay filesystems more than the benefit.
LarryLarry
OpenNMS has some pretty good builtin functionality, and tries to make it easy to plugin more intelligence.
Larry
Here are my personal random thoughts and opinions off the top of my head, which may be of no value at all.
Academia at the college+ level is its own universe. Try to understand it as such, and try not to see how it fits in with the real world - it doesn't.
"Network" with people who may be directly or indirectly connected to graduate students and those similar people who actually do everything; perhaps more importantly, try to find people who have access to old exams, lab reports, papers, etc. from the classes you are going to take.
If you do not have to work to make money, don't. Focus solely on becoming connected and powerful in that academic universe. If you have to work, try to work at school.
Don't waste time going to social functions which are just an excuse to get wasted and have sex. There will be plenty of time for that in the real world and it will be at least as enjoyable.
Quickly figure out a field where you are almost certain to make a good living, and you expect it will be least unpleasant to be in that field forever, and major in that.
Forget about getting some sort of "well rounded" education, or any sort of education at all, and focus solely on developing ostensibly good qualifications for a career. You have the rest of your life to educate yourself, and it is a lot easier and more pleasant to do it outside the context of getting graded and having to please some primadonna professor or graduate student. Take the classes where you are mostly likely to get a high grade.
Be pleasant to everybody, no matter how insignificant or lame or annoying or unpleasant they seem to be. Avoid opportunities to express dissenting opinions, or anything else that somebody with authority does not want to hear.
Larry
Windows PowerPro, is a pretty good no cost Windows shell replacement. It has a lot of features, but it seems to be more oriented towards productivity than aesthetics. I found it easy to install and configure. It has been around for years, and used to be called "Stiletto". There is a somewhat active mailing list.
I have worked at least a year in every permutation of office vs cube, and shared vs not. Obviously a shared cube is the worst and a solo office is the best, but I personally _much_ prefer a solo cube to a shared office. I think having to share an office (or cube) puts a significant amount of social pressure on a person to interact with the other person, and also makes it much difficult to have private conversations or to avoid hearing the private conversations of the other person (or the not private conversations of the other person). For me it is a night and day difference between sharing and not sharing, whereas cube vs office is not that significant.
> > Clearly SOAP itself does not provide application
> > level security, but I personally do not see that
> > as a "SOAP security problem".
>
> Why is the lack of security in SOAP not a SOAP
> security problem? Are you saying that security is
> outside SOAP's scope? That doesn't sound right to
> me. Surely security should be one of the prime
> concerns of any protocol.
I dont think there is a particular lack of security in SOAP,
or that security is outside the scope of SOAP, so much as
that SOAP is supposed to integrate well with separate security
mechanisms like XML Signature, XML Encryption, S/MIME,
HTTPS, etc., to let them provide the application and transport
security. So, maybe it could be said that SOAP "supports",
but does not "provide", security.
> > It seems the author is trying to proffer REST
> > [xml.com], a putatively alternative approach
>
> What's putative about it? REST says, for example,
> that every method has its own URI, while SOAP
> bundles a service's methods together under one URI.
I say it is "putative" because I do not take
it for granted that it is an approach which
provides an acceptable alternative to SOAP for
all the use cases where SOAP would be an
acceptable solution, although it may be.
> > the existing web architecture cannot be
> > used to satisfy the additional security
> > demands created by application level web
> > services interaction protocols like SOAP. I
> > do not see that as a "SOAP security problem"
>
> The article's complaint is that, not only is
> existing web architecture incompatible with SOAP
SOAP works on top of the existing web architecture as
a transport. It may not use transport security to derive
application security, but I do not think it claims to
derive application security from the transport, or provide
it by itself. I do not think it precludes transport
security (S/MIME, HTTPS,...), although it may curtail
the ability of the transport providers to enforce application
security, but I do not think they should need to.
> but there don't seem to be guidelines for
> developing secure SOAP apps - developers are
> left to their own devices. The amount of trouble
> people have with existing, well-understood
> approaches to networked services (such as
> those that fall under REST) suggests that
> expecting application developers to come up
> with good solutions on their own is risky.
SOAP provides part of a solution for developing
and deploying web services. I do not think
SOAP has ever been intended by itself to provide
the requisite security for a web service.
Clearly SOAP itself does not provide application
level security, but I personally do not see that
as a "SOAP security problem". I think the security
topic is a red herring, and that is why I think
the article is FUD
It seems the author is trying to proffer REST, a putatively alternative approach to the use of the existing web infrastructure as little more than a transport for messages to be interpreted by the endpoints, like SOAP does, and I think that is the motivation for the FUD article mentioned in this slashdot story. To me that article does not seem to say much besides that the existing web architecture cannot be used to satisfy the additional security demands created by application level web services interaction protocols like SOAP. I do not see that as a "SOAP security problem".