> but for amount of traffic that slashdot recieves, why not use a more robust tool?
[...]
> I'm impressed that slashdot is able to operate as fast as it does given its impressive user base
You sorta answered your own question (more robust==slower). Slashdot can be fast because the underlying database is not a RDBMS. Not having transaction, or locking give you an order of magnitude performance increase. But this only work if you can stand little data integrity problems (for instance reading data that is not fully written, or is already deleted) .
MySQl was done for this. Buidling very fast solution at the expense of the integrity. You should not run you bank account on MySQL, but you can use it to track karma. That's why I feel that 'improving' MySQL into a more robust system may be a philosophy/design error.
And, no, duplicate stories on slashdot are NOT due to lack of row locking.:-)
> users=>many, rowsize=>small, pagesize=>large, and update frequency/volume=>high
and transaction => long (For short transactions, page-locking is not a problem as the page-wait will be very short. If each transaction do a single update, I doubt page/row locking would change much). Most financial transaction are short.
Note that I still recall SyBase's (Paraphrased):
"You transaction have be choosen as the victim of a deadlock"
as page-locking give a much bigger potential for deadlocks.
MySQL have been designed to be lightweight and fast for non-critical applications.
Users of MySQL have happilly fit this definition, but now, more and more of them are going higher profile. Instead of migrating to a more adequate tool, they want to migrate the tool itself. IMHO, a bad idea.
Locking is definitely not a trivial subject. I doubt that it can/should be implemented as an afterthought.
(Go on. Moderate this as flamebait. It is probably one)
I never understood why people have to re-invent the wheel every time.
Linux is slowly re-implementing what FreeBSD already have, (vm, or kqueue), and now MySQL is trying to turn itself into a real DB, althought it doesn't have the the foundations for this.
If someone (ie slashdot) have a problem with the absence of row-locking, then he shouldn't use MySQL at the first place. Maybe it is just me, but I would be more enthousiast to a 'optimise PostgreSQL' then to a 'compexify MySQL'. Probably because premature optimisation is the root of all evils.
Or maybe because the concept of a non-ACID (basic ?:-) ) database make me barf...
> But if I wanted a processor that had the potential possibilty of letting me design my very own processor to simulate atop it, and at near-hardware speeds, then I'd buy a Crusoe
The real architecture of Crusoe is private and subject to change at any time (ie: even between steppings of the processor).
This is quite paradoxal: it is slow as an IA32 (because of emulation), and its best feature (emulation) is not avalaible for anything but IA32.
I beleive it is a switch. The can silence anyone in a fraction of second.
Don't like the content of that web site ? Blam, 404 not found.
Wanna shut down this individual ? Blam, connection failed.
Wanna slow down the connection of someone, suppress its ability to go somewhere ? It ability to send mail to someone ? To recieve a confirmation of its emails ? Just a couple of clics away.
There are other things, like monitoring:
Wanna know who connects to this info ? Wanna know what this guy internet pattern use is [Which sites, how often, who he mail to, who he receive mail from] ? Wanna know who, in the people that had communication with him, have a similar pattenr use ? Clic, clic, clic. Done
Very usefull for threats, too. Wanna get this guy receiving illegual material ? No problem. Now he is officialy on underground illegual mailing lists, its browser went to a couple of illegual sites (If your HTML pass via my machines, I can do very neat things).
And, well, with the info you grab, it will be a very easy game to crack its machine if needed...
Sure, Carnivore won't do that now, but I bet it'll be used for that in a not-so-far future.
> Technology to grant immortality would be a complete disaster.
Agreed. It would be the ultimate nightmare. Every human or earth have similar lifespan (not equal, similar). So at least, there is some egality on the most important thing.
In the last year or so we have seen a tremendous escalation in the quantity and size of political protests against globalization and the rising power of corporate multi-nationals [bla-bla]
The question seemed pretty clear. At least to me. It was indirectly referring to the WTO manifestation at seattle. You know, this kind of stuff.
The answer of Browne is amusingly off topic. Talking about free-trade, etc, etc... Or, when talking about Lost Jobs, he only talks about money spent on foreign products, not products made in coutry with lower wages.
And this anwser is also very very long. Much longer than others. I suspect it have just been copy/pasted from somewhere. Any pointer?
> For crying out loud, let companies have some rights, okay?
Yes. Please, help those companies. Companies needs your help. They need more rights. You see many of them dying on NASDAQ. Oh, I wish my childs will live in a world where this won't occur any more.
You almost made me cry. The guy published *internal* documents, explaining how to screw customers. Bad, bad, boy. And he probably made the CEO cry.
Please, mod him up. Higher. He is only at 3. He deserves a 5.
From your posting history, I see you are a Libertarian. [Surprising isn't it ?]. Shouldn't, in a free market, people allowed to leak internal documents of companies so customers can make educated choices ? Or is the Libertarian platform more simply resumed by:
I am a professional software writer. Like many of us. I have not been trained to see every security aspect of things. Most I know of on the subject come from public resources, like bugtraq, or hack recipies.
I now think twice when writing code. I tend to avoid buffer overflows, because I understand how most attacks are done. I see much code that lack very basic principle.
If *talking* about exploits is illegal, then how can you expect average programmers to be trained to write half secure code ?
Cheers,
--fred
Re:Price-Performance of "iCubes" and other Macs
on
X On OSX Now Free
·
· Score: 1
> I've been told to expect twice the performance from a G3 than a similarly clocked PIII.
This is not true in my experience. I got 16% lower performance from a G3 350 compared to a PIII 500. A G4 400 had exactly the same performance than the G3 (well, it was 0.56% faster).
It all depends on what you do, how you do it, if you are processor/fp/memopry bound, etc, etc.
Anyway G3/G4 are really cool machines. But the Steve Jobs hype is just false (unless you happen to use only altivec-enhanced applications)
> productivity gain by less futzing about with hardware, due to standardization
This is *the* benefit of apple hardware. I lost counteless hours with PCs. PCs are cheap, but only if your time is cheap. If it is not, Apple machines are great alternatives.
They consider property more important than existance.
The salvery comparison was right on the target. There are a lot of part in the world where slavery exists, but where you won't be shot for trying to escape.
You will just die of hunger.
This is the world they are preparing to themselves. Dreaming of 'Changing of employment because of policies' is not something that will last forever.
> "As a Slashdot discussion grows more controversial, the probability of an allegation of 'troll' approaches one." (Anne Marie's First Law of Slashdot)
There was no discussion here. He posted this comment on the top, and I replied directly to him. Hardly a discussion.
Btw, inventing your own laws and citing them, is IMHO, ridiculous. May I remember you fred's second rule ?
"As a Slashdot discussion grows more controversial, the probability of lame arguments is one."
And the third rule:
"Anyone that uses its +1 bonus to post uninformative content should be ashamed".
My 'Troll' comment is just an opinion on the way the viewpoint is presented, not on the viewpoint itself. When I disagree with a viewpoint, I discuss it, unless it is clearly presented in the only sake of getting karma points, or getting a lot of replies.
I can't beleive anyone would say 'censorship is not this great evil' with a straight face on slashdot for any reason but lame trolling.
I would *not* have considered it as a troll is it was written:
"IMHO, censorship is not this great evil", or "censorship may not be this great evil".
In those case I would have considered it an opinion, and may have argued with it.
> You are sending mail and surfing while on company time and you whine because your employer wants to see how you are using it's resources.
So, in your book, your employer can read your mail. Your employer can tap your phone. They can put microphones in your cubicle. Should they put electrods on your head too, to monitor what you think ?
In your book, and employee is also just a resource that the company can monitor.
I find something weird in that. I am not a resource. I don't want to be a member of a society that consider myself as a resource.
> They say it's illegal regarding US laws (California IIRC), but because they do have international editors they have tried to 'spell out' exactly what they mean.
So foreigners are subjected to California law ? I think it sucks.
What would be needed is a distributed directory, so the warez part could be maintained outside of america. Corporation would give access to a map on the directory that would avoid the litigious parts, which will still be accessible by other means.
Slashdot Mirror
> Then, in my humble opinion, you are an idiot.
Oh yes. In my opinion too, of course.
Cheers,
--fred
> but for amount of traffic that slashdot recieves, why not use a more robust tool?
:-)
[...]
> I'm impressed that slashdot is able to operate as fast as it does given its impressive user base
You sorta answered your own question (more robust==slower). Slashdot can be fast because the underlying database is not a RDBMS. Not having transaction, or locking give you an order of magnitude performance increase. But this only work if you can stand little data integrity problems (for instance reading data that is not fully written, or is already deleted) .
MySQl was done for this. Buidling very fast solution at the expense of the integrity. You should not run you bank account on MySQL, but you can use it to track karma. That's why I feel that 'improving' MySQL into a more robust system may be a philosophy/design error.
And, no, duplicate stories on slashdot are NOT due to lack of row locking.
Cheers,
--fred
> users=>many, rowsize=>small, pagesize=>large, and update frequency/volume=>high
and transaction => long (For short transactions, page-locking is not a problem as the page-wait will be very short. If each transaction do a single update, I doubt page/row locking would change much). Most financial transaction are short.
Note that I still recall SyBase's (Paraphrased):
"You transaction have be choosen as the victim of a deadlock"
as page-locking give a much bigger potential for deadlocks.
Cheers,
--fred
> Here's my guesswork:
Here is mine:
MySQL have been designed to be lightweight and fast for non-critical applications.
Users of MySQL have happilly fit this definition, but now, more and more of them are going higher profile. Instead of migrating to a more adequate tool, they want to migrate the tool itself. IMHO, a bad idea.
Locking is definitely not a trivial subject. I doubt that it can/should be implemented as an afterthought.
Cheers,
--fred
> Why is it that MySQL receives so much converage for adding 'features' that most/all other DBMSs take for granted
Because slashdot is built upon MySQL. Slashdot editors post stuff that interest them. MySQL is obviuously and rightfully one of those topics.
Cheers,
--fred
(Go on. Moderate this as flamebait. It is probably one)
:-) ) database make me barf...
I never understood why people have to re-invent the wheel every time.
Linux is slowly re-implementing what FreeBSD already have, (vm, or kqueue), and now MySQL is trying to turn itself into a real DB, althought it doesn't have the the foundations for this.
If someone (ie slashdot) have a problem with the absence of row-locking, then he shouldn't use MySQL at the first place. Maybe it is just me, but I would be more enthousiast to a 'optimise PostgreSQL' then to a 'compexify MySQL'. Probably because premature optimisation is the root of all evils.
Or maybe because the concept of a non-ACID (basic ?
Cheers,
--fred
Lol. Thanks. Last sentence make the troll a bit obvious, but the rest is darn funny.
Cheers,
--fred
> But if I wanted a processor that had the potential possibilty of letting me design my very own processor to simulate atop it, and at near-hardware speeds, then I'd buy a Crusoe
The real architecture of Crusoe is private and subject to change at any time (ie: even between steppings of the processor).
This is quite paradoxal: it is slow as an IA32 (because of emulation), and its best feature (emulation) is not avalaible for anything but IA32.
Cheers,
--fred
Good start, but definitely not sufficient. You can find tools for secure deletion at secutiryfocus
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/tools_categ ory.html?category=73
Cheers,
--fred
> 'd like to know other people's view on this
I beleive it is a switch. The can silence anyone in a fraction of second.
Don't like the content of that web site ? Blam, 404 not found.
Wanna shut down this individual ? Blam, connection failed.
Wanna slow down the connection of someone, suppress its ability to go somewhere ? It ability to send mail to someone ? To recieve a confirmation of its emails ? Just a couple of clics away.
There are other things, like monitoring:
Wanna know who connects to this info ? Wanna know what this guy internet pattern use is [Which sites, how often, who he mail to, who he receive mail from] ? Wanna know who, in the people that had communication with him, have a similar pattenr use ? Clic, clic, clic. Done
Very usefull for threats, too. Wanna get this guy receiving illegual material ? No problem. Now he is officialy on underground illegual mailing lists, its browser went to a couple of illegual sites (If your HTML pass via my machines, I can do very neat things).
And, well, with the info you grab, it will be a very easy game to crack its machine if needed...
Sure, Carnivore won't do that now, but I bet it'll be used for that in a not-so-far future.
Cheers,
--fred
> Technology to grant immortality would be a complete disaster.
Agreed. It would be the ultimate nightmare. Every human or earth have similar lifespan (not equal, similar). So at least, there is some egality on the most important thing.
Cheers,
--fred
> If you can talk about individuals right to privacy then why not for companies ?
It is incredible, there is, for instance, much more in common between an animal and a individual, than between an individual and a company !
Why would company should have the same rights than individual ?
Cheers,
--fred
Question 7 was:
In the last year or so we have seen a tremendous escalation in the quantity and size of political protests against globalization and the rising power of corporate multi-nationals [bla-bla]
The question seemed pretty clear. At least to me. It was indirectly referring to the WTO manifestation at seattle. You know, this kind of stuff.
The answer of Browne is amusingly off topic. Talking about free-trade, etc, etc... Or, when talking about Lost Jobs, he only talks about money spent on foreign products, not products made in coutry with lower wages.
And this anwser is also very very long. Much longer than others. I suspect it have just been copy/pasted from somewhere. Any pointer?
Cheers,
--fred
Cheers,
--fred
> For crying out loud, let companies have some rights, okay?
Yes. Please, help those companies. Companies needs your help. They need more rights. You see many of them dying on NASDAQ. Oh, I wish my childs will live in a world where this won't occur any more.
You almost made me cry. The guy published *internal* documents, explaining how to screw customers. Bad, bad, boy. And he probably made the CEO cry.
Please, mod him up. Higher. He is only at 3. He deserves a 5.
From your posting history, I see you are a Libertarian. [Surprising isn't it ?]. Shouldn't, in a free market, people allowed to leak internal documents of companies so customers can make educated choices ? Or is the Libertarian platform more simply resumed by:
"let companies have some rights"
Cheers,
--fred
Does VMWare support OPENSTEP ?
No.
Will they support OPENSTEP ?
No.
Can I do something about this ?
No.
Can plex86 run OPENSTEP ?
No.
Can I do something about it ?
Yes.
Cheers,
--fred
I am a professional software writer. Like many of us. I have not been trained to see every security aspect of things. Most I know of on the subject come from public resources, like bugtraq, or hack recipies.
I now think twice when writing code. I tend to avoid buffer overflows, because I understand how most attacks are done. I see much code that lack very basic principle.
If *talking* about exploits is illegal, then how can you expect average programmers to be trained to write half secure code ?
Cheers,
--fred
> I've been told to expect twice the performance from a G3 than a similarly clocked PIII.
This is not true in my experience. I got 16% lower performance from a G3 350 compared to a PIII 500. A G4 400 had exactly the same performance than the G3 (well, it was 0.56% faster).
It all depends on what you do, how you do it, if you are processor/fp/memopry bound, etc, etc.
Anyway G3/G4 are really cool machines. But the Steve Jobs hype is just false (unless you happen to use only altivec-enhanced applications)
> productivity gain by less futzing about with hardware, due to standardization
This is *the* benefit of apple hardware. I lost counteless hours with PCs. PCs are cheap, but only if your time is cheap. If it is not, Apple machines are great alternatives.
Cheers,
--fred
Yeah. This is the trouble of the other posters.
They consider property more important than existance.
The salvery comparison was right on the target. There are a lot of part in the world where slavery exists, but where you won't be shot for trying to escape.
You will just die of hunger.
This is the world they are preparing to themselves. Dreaming of 'Changing of employment because of policies' is not something that will last forever.
Cheers,
--fred
> "As a Slashdot discussion grows more controversial, the probability of an allegation of 'troll' approaches one." (Anne Marie's First Law of Slashdot)
There was no discussion here. He posted this comment on the top, and I replied directly to him. Hardly a discussion.
Btw, inventing your own laws and citing them, is IMHO, ridiculous. May I remember you fred's second rule ?
"As a Slashdot discussion grows more controversial, the probability of lame arguments is one."
And the third rule:
"Anyone that uses its +1 bonus to post uninformative content should be ashamed".
Cheers,
--fred
My 'Troll' comment is just an opinion on the way the viewpoint is presented, not on the viewpoint itself. When I disagree with a viewpoint, I discuss it, unless it is clearly presented in the only sake of getting karma points, or getting a lot of replies.
I can't beleive anyone would say 'censorship is not this great evil' with a straight face on slashdot for any reason but lame trolling.
I would *not* have considered it as a troll is it was written:
"IMHO, censorship is not this great evil", or "censorship may not be this great evil".
In those case I would have considered it an opinion, and may have argued with it.
Cheers,
--fred
lol. How true
--fred
> You are sending mail and surfing while on company time and you whine because your employer wants to see how you are using it's resources.
So, in your book, your employer can read your mail. Your employer can tap your phone. They can put microphones in your cubicle. Should they put electrods on your head too, to monitor what you think ?
In your book, and employee is also just a resource that the company can monitor.
I find something weird in that. I am not a resource. I don't want to be a member of a society that consider myself as a resource.
Cheers,
--fred
Score:-1 , Troll
Cheers,
--fred
> They say it's illegal regarding US laws (California IIRC), but because they do have international editors they have tried to 'spell out' exactly what they mean.
So foreigners are subjected to California law ? I think it sucks.
What would be needed is a distributed directory, so the warez part could be maintained outside of america. Corporation would give access to a map on the directory that would avoid the litigious parts, which will still be accessible by other means.
Cheers,
--fred