Ever heard of gay men and women? And what about bisexuals? It's a choice you make to be heterosexual or otherwise. It may be unconcious, but it's a choice. There's nothing fundamental about sex choice, much less fields of interest.
Hmmm... You're going to have to define "choice", "unconscious", and "fundamental".
Don't try to pretend anyone understands exactly what determines sexual preference. It's not a choice in the usual sense the word is used. And from what I've seen, it is pretty fundamental.
Thanks for the response. I tried, but I can't convince my friend away from a PC - I'd be trying Ardour if it were me, but then I'm more into the tech than the audio...
That thread on the DUC is helpful, thanks.
I was curious about this issue, because Wakko's post above is correct that just to pump the audio data alone should not require much performance. I did some more research, and found that the big reason for the Mac's better performance in this area is the G4 CPU's floating point performance, which has historically been better than Intel's. Heavy floating point calcs are needed when applying effects/filters, so if the problem you're talking about is dropout during playback, this is probably the issue - the CPU can't handle it, it really has little to do with the OS.
This is definitely true for host-based audio processing systems. With Pro Tools, it's not completely clear to me how processing is split between the host CPU and the DSPs. Still, they're clearly using the host CPU heavily.
A PIII 850 like you mentioned would almost certainly be outperformed on floating point by a G4 - there's a table on this page (from 2000) that shows a G4 500 being 2-5 times faster than a PIII-700. Of course, the G4 hasn't quite kept up with in the multi-GHz race, and Athlons are supposed to have good FP performance, so the situation with newer CPUs may be quite different.
I can't believe you just suggested a PC can't handle the relatively minute demands of digital audio. Maybe if you were recording to floppy disks, this would be true, but even an older PC will have no trouble handling a couple dozen tracks at 24/96. (Do the math.)
The OP talked about "data I/O" but that might not be what he really meant. The problem most people run into is that when trying to play back a multi-track composition with a bunch of effects on each track, being calculated in real time, you can quite easily hit the limits of just about any sub-1GHz CPU - especially on Windows. The fact that most people don't have a clue about what's actually going on doesn't help...
I have a friend who's thinking of buying a Digi 002 and a PC to go with it. DigiDesign have some pretty specific specs for a PC running Windows - basically, a minimum of 2GHz.
Since I want to save my friend from making any mistakes - can you tell me the specs of the PC you're using for ProTools? I mean, if a 2GHz machine is still going to give trouble, I want to tell him to stay the hell away from that route...
The OP said "This tact has always been met warmly". Although that might be what he really meant, I think he actually meant to say "tactic", or perhaps "tack" (as in approach). No spelling checker will help with that one, though...
Attempting to read the submitter's mind, perhaps he's thinking that this could make Wilkes-Barre more attractive to some businesses than the Philly area.
It's a stretch, maybe, but for example, there are a bunch of companies with call centers and the like in the New Jersey suburbs across the Delaware from Philly (Cherry Hill, Marlton, Mt Laurel). Call centers just need office space, warm bodies, and connectivity, and all but the latter are cheaper in out of the way places. Wilkes-Barre is 2 hours from Philly, so it's not as far from actual civilization:) as some such places are.
You're wrong, it's true! Only it was John Denver who was killed, not Stephen King. And it was in a homemade plane, not in his home. Now you know.
P.S. masq, I hate to point this out, but that other guy you're talking to - he's you! It looks like you're suffering from a condition known as Post-Slashdot-sucking stress disorder (PSSSD or PS3D), in which the very boundaries of your personality begin to dissolve when you find that the high-quality, informative and unbiased content you've become used to (wait - which site is this again?) is taken away and replaced by a bunch of failed, grade-school-level attempts at humor.
There's only one cure, and it isn't easy: do not, under any circumstances, read Slashdot for the rest of the day. Like I said, it won't be easy. If you find your hands shaking, cut back on the coffee and penguin mints, and try some peppermint or camomile tea.
It may help to set up a support group amongst those of your co-workers who also read Slashdot. You can tell which ones they are by observing whether their hands are shaking. Once you're all gathered in the break room, you all sit in a circle and stand up in turns and say "My name is Mark oops I mean masq and I'm addicted to Slashdot."
You're then supposed to generally bond with and comfort each other. However, this usually devolves into incoherent angry yelling and threats when two people in the circle discover that they are mortal enemies on Slashdot, but hadn't previously known each other's real identities or that they were only separated by a few thin cubicle walls. At this point, you should get up and lock the door, then announce that no-one is getting out until all of your differences are resolved. Why, you'll hardly notice the rest of the day go by!
Tommorrow, Slashdot will be back to normal. Just remember, whatever you do, do not click the link labelled "Yesterday's edition", otherwise the whole sorry cycle will begin again...
To your point (1), we're not talking about bugs in general, we're talking about security problems. Historically, by far the majority of security exploits have been due to C issues like buffer overflows and pointer dereferencing.
You seem to be taking this as language evangelism. I'm not promoting Java, I could care less. I've written more C and C++ code than I have Java. The issue of language safety vs. non-safety is not C vs. Java. It's "unsafe languages bad, safe languages better". You can't argue "unsafe languages OK", because both history and logic are against you.
If you're arguing that Java specifically is not the safe language you want to move to, that's fine with me. But don't confuse the shortcomings of Java with all safe languages. If you want to see safe languages that provide really high performance and very advanced features, take a look at ML, or OCaml, or Scheme.
The facts are against your argument - where are all the remote attacks on Java servers, for example? Haven't seen many of those reported. Are you sure you understand the degree of safety a language like Java (or Lisp or ML etc.) provides?
It's not a question of "abilities" - you're making the exact "macho" mistake the article talked about. People make mistakes. There've been exploitable holes, which are only possible because of C, in software written by some of the smartest programmers around.
Do people in cars without airbags or safety belts drive more carefully because of it? Maybe some do, but does that result in lower deaths or injury rates for those people? No. Same basic issue.
Perhaps a better analogy would be to say that a really good high-wire artist doesn't need a net. But that's only true until the first time he makes a mistake. It's not a question of 'if', just 'when'. Scale that up to large numbers of C/C++ programmers, and you have today's software industry - where falling off the high wire and going splat into the unforgiving concrete of an 0wn3d box is par for the course.
Did you miss the point? Notice how the programmers' statement is almost grammatically correct, while the execs are illiterate. This is a demonstration of the Dilbert principle, in which the prize idiots get promoted into management, where they can only do harm indirectly.
There are plenty of comments here and published papers on writing clean, secure, and efficient code, regardless of which language is used.
Yes, and there are plenty of published papers on the fact that safe languages do, in fact, buy you some safety. Obviously, they can't protect against all classes of programmer error; but they can protect against certain important classes of error, such as string buffer overflows, and arbitrary pointer dereferences, both of which have been the major factors in creating easily exploitable remote security holes.
So, the author of the article in question is correct. In fact, kidding yourself that there's no difference between C and a safe language in terms of security, is exactly the sort of overconfidence (in this case based on either denial or ignorance) that the article was referring to.
Slashdot effect on a global scale?
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
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· Score: 5, Interesting
According to an Infoworld article, Al Jazeera had just published photos of the U.S. soldiers who were allegedly executed. In the U.S., these pictures have effectively been censored - the major media don't want to touch them. Mightn't Al-Jazeera simply be suffering from a large-scale Slashdot effect, as people around the world try to download photos?
While consulting, I've come across companies doing all sorts of dumb or just lazy things which make their sites slow and not very scalable. Then they get a big burst of unusual activity for whatever reason, their site crashes, and they like to claim conspiracy because it means it's not their fault.
I'll believe this is a DDOS when I see the IRC transcripts from the people claiming to be the perpetrators (if that's not proof, I don't know what is:) Till then, this is Al-Jazeera crying because their site couldn't handle sudden worldwide interest.
Before you throw your sarcasm around, be sure you understand what the person is trying to say.
In the OP's defense, it's hard to understand what someone is trying to say if they use the wrong words. The term "abstract thinker" applies to math and programming at least as much, if not more, than it does to poetry. Math and programming both deal with abstractions - in fact, many parts of math are significantly more abstract than anything you find in programming.
Perhaps you should have said "unstructured thinker" or "poetic thinker".
However, you could argue pedantically that putting a large number into fewer bits was a representation problem and hence in the realm of Computer Science...
Yes, if only the programmer had been versed in algorithmic information theory, he would have known not to do that!;)
Re:The 'word' which goes before is the Foreword!
on
Linux Server Hacks
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· Score: 2, Informative
I noticed that too. I reckon this one's a losing battle - there's too much similarity between the two words, in meaning as well as sound. The first meaning listed for "forward" at m-w.com is "1 a : near, being at, or belonging to the forepart b : situated in advance" - pretty applicable, wouldn't you say? Think of the forward hold of a ship, or the U.S. Forward Command Center in Qatar.
In addition, a creative person challenged on this issue might notice that "foreword" dates to 1842, whereas "forward" dates to the 12 century. One could imagine that "foreword" was in fact considered quite a clever pun, when it was first used. And at a mere 160-odd years old, it's virtually newfangled - not great material for an argument against the changing of language...
My point is that this doesn't really help anyone to visualize or understand the nature of the square root of a negative number, unless perhaps they didn't understand multiplications/square roots in the first place...
Your explanation might work as an explanation of square roots, but it really doesn't provide an explanation of i beyound saying that i=sqrt(-1) or i*i=-1, which of course, is its definition. You haven't added any meaning or insight into the nature of i, beyond its definition.
Hey! all i can say is, Respect your neighbour ! So no go that you would fool him and snatch his stuff.
Your joke doesn't work, because the whole point of this discussion is that it's not his stuff. He created it based on information in the public domain. Copyright as written in the Constitution grants an inventor limited rights to the fruits of his work, and after some time it must return to the public domain, for the benefit of the society on which its creation depended.
Think of it like a loan: you can borrow from the public domain, add some value, and sell that new thing for profit; but you have to pay back your loan in the end. You do that by returning your work to the public domain.
Algorithmic information theory and quantum physics disagrees with you...
Of course, neither of those are real people, so by your narrow perspective, perhaps they can't really disagree with you.
My definition of tard would be: someone who criticizes that which he does not understand, thus entering a sad, self-perpetuating cycle of tardhood. Open your mind.
Actually, I've implemented relational databases with schemas exactly like the one in your example. Of course, you'd have Customer, Order, and OrderItem tables. The Product table would be generic and primarily contain a unique ID for each product, whether it's a car, apple, orange, whatever. This table might also have some other generic fields like Description, Price, etc.
To handle the specific attributes of each product, one way to do it is to have a separate table for each product type that has unique attributes, and use a type selector field in the Product table. However, this is somewhat non-relational and may not scale well to large numbers of products.
Another way to do it, which is more flexible, is to have a generic ProductAttribute table with fields like (ProductID, AttributeID, Value) - details would vary depending on what you're trying to achieve, e.g. whether you want a distinct ProductID for each unique set of attributes, or want to select attributes only per order (if you're custom-building based on orders).
All the queries you mention are perfectly doable. Orders with 2 items? "select * from OrderItems group by OrderID having count(OrderID)=2". Orders with yellow items? "select ProductID from ProductAttributes where AttributeID=COLOR_ATTRIBUTE and Value='yellow'" would give a list of all yellow products. You could extend this request with joins into the Order table, or whatever it is you need. "The items that a customer who bought a chair and a yellow apple in possibly different trips has bought" : pretty simple, determine the product ids as above, join to the Orders table, and filter on the customer you're interested using "where CustomerID=$custid".
Sometimes, it is best to to define the schema later in the game, after you figure out what you are doing.
More likely, this is the road to disaster. I've seen companies that have painted themselves into some seriously small corners by doing this, and then spent millions on maintaining a system that just doesn't do what they need. Careful and detailed upfront analysis can save a huge amount of time and money. What you're really saying is that XML can be a substitute for upfront design. Maybe in small systems, but otherwise, that's just irresponsible.
I use XML plenty - as a transmission format for data in web apps, as a metadata representation format, for small domain-specific languages, and for document-oriented applications. But thinking of XML as a way to avoid having to actually figure out what you're doing - I guess it'll lead to job security for someone in the future, when all that has to be thrown out and replaced. Probably won't be fun jobs though.
These windmills would significantly add to the drag of the car, requiring more energy to be pumped into it to keep it moving. of course, if they just popped out when the car was slowing down, it may help
Watching cars screeching to a halt at a blockage on a highway will be fun... Tires squealing, cars sliding, windmills popping up like crazy!
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... You're going to have to define "choice", "unconscious", and "fundamental".
Don't try to pretend anyone understands exactly what determines sexual preference. It's not a choice in the usual sense the word is used. And from what I've seen, it is pretty fundamental.
And I'm impressed by your grammar.
You not with it, d00d.
You're letting your 16-month old son coin buzzwords now, or do you just have a case of daddy-brain?
Oh well, either way, I guess it couldn't be any worse than the current system...
That thread on the DUC is helpful, thanks.
I was curious about this issue, because Wakko's post above is correct that just to pump the audio data alone should not require much performance. I did some more research, and found that the big reason for the Mac's better performance in this area is the G4 CPU's floating point performance, which has historically been better than Intel's. Heavy floating point calcs are needed when applying effects/filters, so if the problem you're talking about is dropout during playback, this is probably the issue - the CPU can't handle it, it really has little to do with the OS.
This is definitely true for host-based audio processing systems. With Pro Tools, it's not completely clear to me how processing is split between the host CPU and the DSPs. Still, they're clearly using the host CPU heavily.
A PIII 850 like you mentioned would almost certainly be outperformed on floating point by a G4 - there's a table on this page (from 2000) that shows a G4 500 being 2-5 times faster than a PIII-700. Of course, the G4 hasn't quite kept up with in the multi-GHz race, and Athlons are supposed to have good FP performance, so the situation with newer CPUs may be quite different.
The OP talked about "data I/O" but that might not be what he really meant. The problem most people run into is that when trying to play back a multi-track composition with a bunch of effects on each track, being calculated in real time, you can quite easily hit the limits of just about any sub-1GHz CPU - especially on Windows. The fact that most people don't have a clue about what's actually going on doesn't help...
Since I want to save my friend from making any mistakes - can you tell me the specs of the PC you're using for ProTools? I mean, if a 2GHz machine is still going to give trouble, I want to tell him to stay the hell away from that route...
The OP said "This tact has always been met warmly". Although that might be what he really meant, I think he actually meant to say "tactic", or perhaps "tack" (as in approach). No spelling checker will help with that one, though...
Nice try. But save the advice until you've figured out what you're talking about. Don't act all surprised, you know you're clueless about this, right?
It's a stretch, maybe, but for example, there are a bunch of companies with call centers and the like in the New Jersey suburbs across the Delaware from Philly (Cherry Hill, Marlton, Mt Laurel). Call centers just need office space, warm bodies, and connectivity, and all but the latter are cheaper in out of the way places. Wilkes-Barre is 2 hours from Philly, so it's not as far from actual civilization :) as some such places are.
P.S. masq, I hate to point this out, but that other guy you're talking to - he's you! It looks like you're suffering from a condition known as Post-Slashdot-sucking stress disorder (PSSSD or PS3D), in which the very boundaries of your personality begin to dissolve when you find that the high-quality, informative and unbiased content you've become used to (wait - which site is this again?) is taken away and replaced by a bunch of failed, grade-school-level attempts at humor.
There's only one cure, and it isn't easy: do not, under any circumstances, read Slashdot for the rest of the day. Like I said, it won't be easy. If you find your hands shaking, cut back on the coffee and penguin mints, and try some peppermint or camomile tea.
It may help to set up a support group amongst those of your co-workers who also read Slashdot. You can tell which ones they are by observing whether their hands are shaking. Once you're all gathered in the break room, you all sit in a circle and stand up in turns and say "My name is Mark oops I mean masq and I'm addicted to Slashdot."
You're then supposed to generally bond with and comfort each other. However, this usually devolves into incoherent angry yelling and threats when two people in the circle discover that they are mortal enemies on Slashdot, but hadn't previously known each other's real identities or that they were only separated by a few thin cubicle walls. At this point, you should get up and lock the door, then announce that no-one is getting out until all of your differences are resolved. Why, you'll hardly notice the rest of the day go by!
Tommorrow, Slashdot will be back to normal. Just remember, whatever you do, do not click the link labelled "Yesterday's edition", otherwise the whole sorry cycle will begin again...
You seem to be taking this as language evangelism. I'm not promoting Java, I could care less. I've written more C and C++ code than I have Java. The issue of language safety vs. non-safety is not C vs. Java. It's "unsafe languages bad, safe languages better". You can't argue "unsafe languages OK", because both history and logic are against you.
If you're arguing that Java specifically is not the safe language you want to move to, that's fine with me. But don't confuse the shortcomings of Java with all safe languages. If you want to see safe languages that provide really high performance and very advanced features, take a look at ML, or OCaml, or Scheme.
It's not a question of "abilities" - you're making the exact "macho" mistake the article talked about. People make mistakes. There've been exploitable holes, which are only possible because of C, in software written by some of the smartest programmers around.
Do people in cars without airbags or safety belts drive more carefully because of it? Maybe some do, but does that result in lower deaths or injury rates for those people? No. Same basic issue.
Perhaps a better analogy would be to say that a really good high-wire artist doesn't need a net. But that's only true until the first time he makes a mistake. It's not a question of 'if', just 'when'. Scale that up to large numbers of C/C++ programmers, and you have today's software industry - where falling off the high wire and going splat into the unforgiving concrete of an 0wn3d box is par for the course.
Did you miss the point? Notice how the programmers' statement is almost grammatically correct, while the execs are illiterate. This is a demonstration of the Dilbert principle, in which the prize idiots get promoted into management, where they can only do harm indirectly.
Yes, and there are plenty of published papers on the fact that safe languages do, in fact, buy you some safety. Obviously, they can't protect against all classes of programmer error; but they can protect against certain important classes of error, such as string buffer overflows, and arbitrary pointer dereferences, both of which have been the major factors in creating easily exploitable remote security holes.
So, the author of the article in question is correct. In fact, kidding yourself that there's no difference between C and a safe language in terms of security, is exactly the sort of overconfidence (in this case based on either denial or ignorance) that the article was referring to.
While consulting, I've come across companies doing all sorts of dumb or just lazy things which make their sites slow and not very scalable. Then they get a big burst of unusual activity for whatever reason, their site crashes, and they like to claim conspiracy because it means it's not their fault.
I'll believe this is a DDOS when I see the IRC transcripts from the people claiming to be the perpetrators (if that's not proof, I don't know what is :) Till then, this is Al-Jazeera crying because their site couldn't handle sudden worldwide interest.
In the OP's defense, it's hard to understand what someone is trying to say if they use the wrong words. The term "abstract thinker" applies to math and programming at least as much, if not more, than it does to poetry. Math and programming both deal with abstractions - in fact, many parts of math are significantly more abstract than anything you find in programming.
Perhaps you should have said "unstructured thinker" or "poetic thinker".
Yes, if only the programmer had been versed in algorithmic information theory, he would have known not to do that! ;)
In addition, a creative person challenged on this issue might notice that "foreword" dates to 1842, whereas "forward" dates to the 12 century. One could imagine that "foreword" was in fact considered quite a clever pun, when it was first used. And at a mere 160-odd years old, it's virtually newfangled - not great material for an argument against the changing of language...
My point is that this doesn't really help anyone to visualize or understand the nature of the square root of a negative number, unless perhaps they didn't understand multiplications/square roots in the first place...
Your explanation might work as an explanation of square roots, but it really doesn't provide an explanation of i beyound saying that i=sqrt(-1) or i*i=-1, which of course, is its definition. You haven't added any meaning or insight into the nature of i, beyond its definition.
Your joke doesn't work, because the whole point of this discussion is that it's not his stuff. He created it based on information in the public domain. Copyright as written in the Constitution grants an inventor limited rights to the fruits of his work, and after some time it must return to the public domain, for the benefit of the society on which its creation depended.
Think of it like a loan: you can borrow from the public domain, add some value, and sell that new thing for profit; but you have to pay back your loan in the end. You do that by returning your work to the public domain.
Of course, neither of those are real people, so by your narrow perspective, perhaps they can't really disagree with you.
My definition of tard would be: someone who criticizes that which he does not understand, thus entering a sad, self-perpetuating cycle of tardhood. Open your mind.
To handle the specific attributes of each product, one way to do it is to have a separate table for each product type that has unique attributes, and use a type selector field in the Product table. However, this is somewhat non-relational and may not scale well to large numbers of products. Another way to do it, which is more flexible, is to have a generic ProductAttribute table with fields like (ProductID, AttributeID, Value) - details would vary depending on what you're trying to achieve, e.g. whether you want a distinct ProductID for each unique set of attributes, or want to select attributes only per order (if you're custom-building based on orders).
All the queries you mention are perfectly doable. Orders with 2 items? "select * from OrderItems group by OrderID having count(OrderID)=2". Orders with yellow items? "select ProductID from ProductAttributes where AttributeID=COLOR_ATTRIBUTE and Value='yellow'" would give a list of all yellow products. You could extend this request with joins into the Order table, or whatever it is you need. "The items that a customer who bought a chair and a yellow apple in possibly different trips has bought" : pretty simple, determine the product ids as above, join to the Orders table, and filter on the customer you're interested using "where CustomerID=$custid".
Sometimes, it is best to to define the schema later in the game, after you figure out what you are doing.
More likely, this is the road to disaster. I've seen companies that have painted themselves into some seriously small corners by doing this, and then spent millions on maintaining a system that just doesn't do what they need. Careful and detailed upfront analysis can save a huge amount of time and money. What you're really saying is that XML can be a substitute for upfront design. Maybe in small systems, but otherwise, that's just irresponsible.
I use XML plenty - as a transmission format for data in web apps, as a metadata representation format, for small domain-specific languages, and for document-oriented applications. But thinking of XML as a way to avoid having to actually figure out what you're doing - I guess it'll lead to job security for someone in the future, when all that has to be thrown out and replaced. Probably won't be fun jobs though.
Watching cars screeching to a halt at a blockage on a highway will be fun... Tires squealing, cars sliding, windmills popping up like crazy!
I'll stop with the messages now. I hope you learn something from the references I've given.