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Microsoft Brazil says they were only asking for an explaination
They are plain lying, or they are the most stupid people alive.
When you only ask for an explanation, you don't use the Judiciary. You send a letter, make a phone call, whatever.
When you use the Judiciary to ask for an explanation, the only possible reason for going thru the trouble and expense is that it is a required step to be able to sue later on.
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basing the structure of the database on the nature of the queries sound like it could rapidly turn into a nightmare
You could argue ISO SQL itself is a nightmare, but fact is Oracle SQL or Transact SQL are even worse, MySQL a disaster and mostly everything else a complete disaster, specifically if it has something to to with XML or OO. The only good stuff around are the relational systems: Tutorial D (toys only up to now), Alphora Dataphor (MS.Net), Duro and Opus (only libraries)...
But fact is that the only goal of structuring data is, not only querying, but manipulating it - SQL is actually misnomed. If you can't manipulate, it is not useful, it is not even data but only random bits. And SQL specifically lacks much power that the relational model provides.
Also, SQL includes DDL. So you do use it to structure the database. Bad as it is, doing it in something like ERDs is even worse and still has too be translated to SQL or something the like.
SQL is not relational. It violates several principles of the relational model. The ISO SQL standards don't even mention the relational word since at last ISO SQL:1999.
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"SQL database" is a meaningless phrase.
It ain't. An SQL database is a database created and manipulated with ISO SQL. An SQL DBMS is a DBMS creating and manipulating SQL databases. You can even speak of SQL data, meaning data structured with SQL.
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Set the sticky bit and a+rwx on / and munge your file ownerships (or POSIX ACLs) to your heart's content. Bam! No more heirarchy.
How come? ACLs and hierarchisation are orthogonal.
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Add / to your path, add / to your lib dir, add / to your man dir. It'd work.
And would be a mess. Unique naming anyone?
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different users should have different views? Er, uh, ok, so then we have/home/foo and/home/bar. No more need to worry about namespace collision. Add that to your environment paths.
And then get hierarchy back.
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Things in multiple places? Sounds like hard (or symbolic) links to me. (man ln) Nothing revolutionary.
Links still need something to be primarily somewhere in the hierarchy.
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The moment you introduce anything vaguely clever, like different views per user, you've just added the old heirarchy under a new name.
No, that's where the relational model for database management, or at least SQL, enter. You can do very interesting things with it, be it under the covers or at the interface.
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Databases are good at what they do, which, curiously, isn't generally managing files.
OS/400 does quite well. And a relational system would be even better.
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instead of relatively simple and understandable things like POSIX and even X Windows, we now have 1000 layered buzzwords from SOAP to XML to JavaScript to whatever where no programmer on earth can hope to understand them well enough
On the spot, AC.
What I wished was that we went back to POSIX -- well, not quite, actually some garbage-collected functional stuff running on POSIX -- and the X Window System.
And I think that could come to pass. With GNU/Linux spreading, Mac OS X holding its share and getting X servers (both Apple's gratis and Fink's free ones), and Cygwin/X getting easier and easier to install, we could soon have X servers everywhere, so that we could run applications from POSIX servers whenever HTTP didn't suffice.
A trend may be starting with public Telecenters and other LTSP or otherwise host-and-terminals GNU/Linux implementations.
Then we could go back to improving the host (GNU Hurd, functional programming, relational databases) and the terminals (Cairo, I/O) and stop worrying about the API du jour.
While on general lines I agree with the article, he clearly misunderstands WinFS -- the effect might still be the same, as either MS itself is misunderstanding WinFS, or at least selling it badly.
WinFS, or files on a SQL -- not relational -- database is not about organising for search, but about not having to organise, yet being able to.
With current hierarchical filesystems, we are forced to organise files hierarchically, and that's very often cumbersome. So search functions have to dig into each document and kinda Google it, building a full-text index, and that takes lots of resources and is difficult to do. Not even Apple does it good enough, at least it didn't in my then-Mac OS 9 366MHz iBook.
With an SQL database as the filesystem, even if SQL is so inferior to the relational potential, we get rid of the necessity but not of the possibility of hierarchies: we can still put some or all of our files in hierarchies, but now the specific nodes in the hierarchies where the file is are just some more attributes, so any file can be at several places at several hierarchies, or at none at all. Searching too becomes more efficient, but the real benefit is alternatives to organisation, and therefore the possibility of richer queries and easier remembering.
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I had it running on a second NFS/Samba server that was using LVM2 (only difference that I can tell). With the 2.6 kernel I got kernel panics 2-3 times a week.
Similar experience here. Had 2.6.3, if I remember well, with LVM, software RAID5 and ext3. Didn't got kernel panics, but abort logs that forced a reboot 'cause the filesystems were remounted readonly. Eventually I lost the/, so backed down to 2.4.
Tried to follow the issues in the relevant mailing lists, there was little interest by the powers that be.
I guess Tannenbaun was right, monolithic kerni are getting just too complex. If only the Hurd got critical mass...
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we're still learning how to design security into systems
No, the problem is we refuse to learn. We continue to use proven unsafe systems (eg, MS as opposed to Un*x) and to code in proven unsafe languages (eg, C as opposed to Lisp).
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33000 civilian men women and children casualties in Iraq, journalists shot at and killed, tortured prisoners. I guess the difference is China tries to do these things in secrecy.
No, the difference is that there is no freedom in Tibet and China won't ever get out of there by itself.
In contrast it was the US who has given some sort of freedom to Iraq, and they are already on their way out.
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Open Firmware is a FORTH-based boottime environment that handles all Sun and Mac machines recently produced, and also was used in the PReP/CHRP boards. IBM may still use it in some areas, I'm not sure...
Unless I am severily mistaken, all POP systems (based on an IBM PowerPC reference design) being distributed by EyeTech and Genesi are also OpenFirmware.
I have some idea that SGIs, including the Intel ones, were also OF, but I am probably wrong on this one as SGI was a member of the ARC.
One more advantage of RISC systems: OpenFirmware is a real standard, while Intel just wants us to believe it has an 'open architecture standard' and an 'SIG' instead of conforming to an already existing, real open standard.
One more instance of the proprietary lock-in game.
I wonder what he meant that it is all downhill from MS WXP...
Does he mean he thinks MS 'quality' has gone down -- never touched MS WXP, but I know some usually quite reliable people who vouch MS WXP is less stable than MS W2K on white boxen -- and he expects for some reason -- which? -- to get even worse?
Or is it about DRM, Treacherous Computing and the such?
To claim that Pixar has more success than Disney ever had, you'd have to adjust their numbers not only to inflation but also to the size of the market at the time of Disney big successes.
That fallacy could be ascribed to chronological snobbery, but it is in fact simple lack of historical perspective.
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The idea that there were no Catholic editions of the Bible in vernacular languages is a myth
But that was never the point, it is common knowledge that when the Vulgata was translated, Vulgar Latim was the vernacular in the West.
The point is that Rome resourced not to the Bible, but to the more recent Fathers and to itself, effectively discouraging the reading of the Bible to the point of requiring episcopal approval for someone wishing to read it, as per its inclusion in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
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You mean object-SQL mapping. SQL ain't relational.
This specific problem simply wouldn't exist with in a relational system.
So while I see your point and agree, your example was a technological, not licensing, one.
They are plain lying, or they are the most stupid people alive.
When you only ask for an explanation, you don't use the Judiciary. You send a letter, make a phone call, whatever.
When you use the Judiciary to ask for an explanation, the only possible reason for going thru the trouble and expense is that it is a required step to be able to sue later on.
That or mind-bogging stupidity.
Did you mean né, the French male form for 'born'?
This went straight over my head... what's the reference?
You're welcome.
You could argue ISO SQL itself is a nightmare, but fact is Oracle SQL or Transact SQL are even worse, MySQL a disaster and mostly everything else a complete disaster, specifically if it has something to to with XML or OO. The only good stuff around are the relational systems: Tutorial D (toys only up to now), Alphora Dataphor (MS.Net), Duro and Opus (only libraries)...
But fact is that the only goal of structuring data is, not only querying, but manipulating it - SQL is actually misnomed. If you can't manipulate, it is not useful, it is not even data but only random bits. And SQL specifically lacks much power that the relational model provides.
Also, SQL includes DDL. So you do use it to structure the database. Bad as it is, doing it in something like ERDs is even worse and still has too be translated to SQL or something the like.
Structured Query Language.
SQL is not relational. It violates several principles of the relational model. The ISO SQL standards don't even mention the relational word since at last ISO SQL:1999.
It ain't. An SQL database is a database created and manipulated with ISO SQL. An SQL DBMS is a DBMS creating and manipulating SQL databases. You can even speak of SQL data, meaning data structured with SQL.
How come? ACLs and hierarchisation are orthogonal.
And would be a mess. Unique naming anyone?
And then get hierarchy back.
Links still need something to be primarily somewhere in the hierarchy.
No, that's where the relational model for database management, or at least SQL, enter. You can do very interesting things with it, be it under the covers or at the interface.
OS/400 does quite well. And a relational system would be even better.
On the spot, AC.
What I wished was that we went back to POSIX -- well, not quite, actually some garbage-collected functional stuff running on POSIX -- and the X Window System.
And I think that could come to pass. With GNU/Linux spreading, Mac OS X holding its share and getting X servers (both Apple's gratis and Fink's free ones), and Cygwin/X getting easier and easier to install, we could soon have X servers everywhere, so that we could run applications from POSIX servers whenever HTTP didn't suffice.
A trend may be starting with public Telecenters and other LTSP or otherwise host-and-terminals GNU/Linux implementations.
Then we could go back to improving the host (GNU Hurd, functional programming, relational databases) and the terminals (Cairo, I/O) and stop worrying about the API du jour.
While on general lines I agree with the article, he clearly misunderstands WinFS -- the effect might still be the same, as either MS itself is misunderstanding WinFS, or at least selling it badly.
WinFS, or files on a SQL -- not relational -- database is not about organising for search, but about not having to organise, yet being able to.
With current hierarchical filesystems, we are forced to organise files hierarchically, and that's very often cumbersome. So search functions have to dig into each document and kinda Google it, building a full-text index, and that takes lots of resources and is difficult to do. Not even Apple does it good enough, at least it didn't in my then-Mac OS 9 366MHz iBook.
With an SQL database as the filesystem, even if SQL is so inferior to the relational potential, we get rid of the necessity but not of the possibility of hierarchies: we can still put some or all of our files in hierarchies, but now the specific nodes in the hierarchies where the file is are just some more attributes, so any file can be at several places at several hierarchies, or at none at all. Searching too becomes more efficient, but the real benefit is alternatives to organisation, and therefore the possibility of richer queries and easier remembering.
Similar experience here. Had 2.6.3, if I remember well, with LVM, software RAID5 and ext3. Didn't got kernel panics, but abort logs that forced a reboot 'cause the filesystems were remounted readonly. Eventually I lost the /, so backed down to 2.4.
Tried to follow the issues in the relevant mailing lists, there was little interest by the powers that be.
I guess Tannenbaun was right, monolithic kerni are getting just too complex. If only the Hurd got critical mass...
That is, it will be in service if MS WNT doesn't crash... remember the Ægis cruiser.
No, the problem is we refuse to learn. We continue to use proven unsafe systems (eg, MS as opposed to Un*x) and to code in proven unsafe languages (eg, C as opposed to Lisp).
I hereby propose the creation of WOFO -- the World Public Domain, Fair Use, Open Content and Free Software Organisation.
You meant webserfs for webmasters, didn't you?
No, the difference is that there is no freedom in Tibet and China won't ever get out of there by itself.
In contrast it was the US who has given some sort of freedom to Iraq, and they are already on their way out.
Besides the sheer scale of the respective crimes.
Unless I am severily mistaken, all POP systems (based on an IBM PowerPC reference design) being distributed by EyeTech and Genesi are also OpenFirmware.
I have some idea that SGIs, including the Intel ones, were also OF, but I am probably wrong on this one as SGI was a member of the ARC.
One more advantage of RISC systems: OpenFirmware is a real standard, while Intel just wants us to believe it has an 'open architecture standard' and an 'SIG' instead of conforming to an already existing, real open standard.
One more instance of the proprietary lock-in game.
Problem is, when running on GNU/Linux I'd recommend IBM DB2 or PostgreSQL, both higher-quality, cheaper, more ISO SQL compliant than Oracle.
Are as gentle introductions to programming as you could wish.
The Little Lisper is a classic, very fun with its retro look and culinaire theme, and quite efficient with its programming instruction method.
The Little Schemer substitutes cutesy baby elephant cartoons, and shifts to Scheme.
NT.
Choose Not True or MS WNT, both will make sense.
There are new drivers, new modules, new bug fixes besides the UI. All these could introduce regressions.
I wonder what he meant that it is all downhill from MS WXP...
Does he mean he thinks MS 'quality' has gone down -- never touched MS WXP, but I know some usually quite reliable people who vouch MS WXP is less stable than MS W2K on white boxen -- and he expects for some reason -- which? -- to get even worse?
Or is it about DRM, Treacherous Computing and the such?
These are not standards. They are not even completely documented.
It couldn't be, since SQL ain't relational...
To claim that Pixar has more success than Disney ever had, you'd have to adjust their numbers not only to inflation but also to the size of the market at the time of Disney big successes.
That fallacy could be ascribed to chronological snobbery, but it is in fact simple lack of historical perspective.
Even more interesting, they never did much of it, as with powder, the compass, long-ranging ships...
The same applies to Greeks and Romans with steam power.
But that was never the point, it is common knowledge that when the Vulgata was translated, Vulgar Latim was the vernacular in the West.
The point is that Rome resourced not to the Bible, but to the more recent Fathers and to itself, effectively discouraging the reading of the Bible to the point of requiring episcopal approval for someone wishing to read it, as per its inclusion in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.