The biggest reason I can think to have multiple ports is that the chipset needed to make a hub is very inexpensive, thus giving them a feature while adding little expense. I can't actually think of any other reason...
I had meant to make Joe a clueless user who simply follows his friend's instructions. Jane, on the other hand, was meant to be a non-technical, but intelligent person, who fully comprehended the technical benefits that the geek had explained, while finding additional, non-technical benefit to this particular solution, thus her reaction to the geek's suggestion.
You're right though, it would've been better if I had made the geek a character more like Bernie
from Waiting For Bob
Well, again, I'd argue that you're not the target market. Gamers tend to use high-end gear and to really need hubs, since a LAN party with only one guy on-line would be pretty lame. Every LAN party I've ever been to has involved a well-wired house, or at least a temporarily well-wired house (hey boss, just evaluating one of the new gigabit switches and a couple NICs...).
Imagine for a moment if you only had one computer at your house, ever. (yes, pretend you're an average computer user.) Now see why it's useful? If you have to take that computer down for a hard reset, it doesn't matter if the firewall is down, seeing as nothing else connects to it.
This isn't for a business, or for a hardcore geek. It's meant as a security solution for your average Joe, who only has one computer, and wants to work from home on his broadband connection.
Joe currently has a few options, he can get some personal firewall software, but he was talking to a geek friend of his who told him that it would be pretty trivial to make a trojan that would disable the personal firewall software.
Jane looked at the integrated router/firewall/hub solutions, but she didn't like that. She already doesn't like that her cable modem has one ugly box next to her computer, and she doesn't want another ugly box there. The last thing she wants is more confusing cables to figure out, and besides, her power strip doesn't have any more space for the wall wart that invariably powers those things.
Joe and Jane talk to their geek friend, and he says 'hey, i've got a solution which is just as good as a seperate computer, but it goes right inside your current 'puter, but has it's own processor and everything, so it's not affected by trojans, viruses or anything'. Joe thinks 'great, i have no idea what that means, but what the hell, if my geek friend says it's the shit, then it's the shit'. Jane thinks 'Hmmm.... that sounds good, and it eliminates any number of security attacks, while reducing cable clutter, i'll buy one for myself.'
Then their geek friend helps them set it up, and goes home to the p75 that he converted into a firewall. On the way, he opens his mailbox and inside is an electric bill. He reads the bill, and does some calculations on the operating cost of the p75, and realizes that in addition to being a white-noise generator and an eye-sore, that p75 is costing him more money than it's saving. The geek goes out to the store, buys one of these firecards, installs it, and realizes that for a home solution, it's really not a bad idea.
I guess they don't make any money on me then, since when I signed up they had the $100 or $200 lifetime subscription fee.
As for the idea that we're stealing a huge source of revenue, nah. Is turning your gasoline powered car into an electric wrong, because you're stealing from oil change places, and gas stations?
Besides, where are you going to find schedule data in the right format? TMS offers the data, but not in the right format, and not for the PPV stations (as of six months ago anyway).
Is that why they searched me for drugs when I crossed the border while drunk and high, not having slept in 30 hours, and barely able to remember where I worked, or what my job was?
It's a horrible article because it's got it's head up it's ass. If you're going to write an article about standards compliance, the natural thing to do would be to do a comparison. Obviously we can't link to Microsoft's internal bug repository, but makes a straw man argument that somehow, there are no bugs in IE which cause under certain rare circumstances, for IE to violate official web standards.
It's funny to see that some people are willing to pull a stunt like this, in an attempt to get the bugs they care about fixed. Anybody who has been following Mozilla development (like for instance me, this being posted from a version of Mozilla built from CVS earlier today) is aware that some known bugs will be left in NS6 and fixed in NS6.01 or whatever simply because right now they need to ship product. If there's a bug which causes seven pages on the Internet to display slightly incorrectly, they really don't give a shit, and that's GOOD.
No I'm not smoking crack, it really is a good thing. What good will a perfect, bug-free browser do if it's delivered at the same time as emacs 27 and Linux 2.6? If we get a damned good browser out there, it forces a larger portion of the web to make sure they work with IE, and Mozilla. If nothing is shipped, then IE becomes the standard, and there's no chance of preserving a standards based web.
I have nothing against IE, I think it's a great browser, and IE 5 for Mac is, in my opinion, the best browser I've used. The idea that we should abandon mozilla, stop reporting bugs, and hope that IE6 saves the world is even more ignorant than the slashdroids who think that Linux is the only decent operating system in the world.
Congratulations Michael, you and the trolls were having a short dick contest, and it looks like you won.
The point they were making is that it's a different interface to the same functionality, depending on what db you're using, and they're absolutely right. Since these languages are written (allegedly) for people who aren't exactly geniuses, that's a bad thing.
PHPLib actually does a pretty decent job of addressing this problem in php3, but php4 didn't take that particular lesson from phplib.
They didn't "single out PHP", they made some constructive criticism. All you slashdroids need to learn the difference.
Given the world's largest cluestick with which you could assault every single SysAd on the planet, what clues would you distribute, other than the use of bastille, and the knowledge that there's life outside computers?
you see, by now the moderators are done reading this article, as they only moderate for a few messages each article, once there are over 100 comments, you could post the cure for cancer and not get moderated up.
It's not quite as good as the template functionality, but what i do is create for every page, two files. foo.php and foo.ihtml. here's an ultra simple example
----foo.php
$username = "Bob";
----foo.ihtml
Hi ! How are you today?
---
as noted, it's not as nice as the phplib templating, but it's better than nothing.
I've looked at phplib.netuse.de, and don't see what's 'far and away' more advanced. Could you please elaborate, such that/. might contain useful information?
phplib was an excellent library for use with PHP3, however the best parts of it (namely session support) have been included in PHP4 standard, so there isn't much need to look at it anymore, except for legacy use, or if PHP4 is still too young for your purposes.
Have you written any large projects in PHP? I mean really large, mission-critical projects. If so you'll quickly see that while it has strong points, it's far from perfect.
The database connectivity is far from perfect, and ODBC isn't the magic bullet some people like to think it is. While you can use ODBC to connect to an Oracle database, it will offer significantly lower performance than using the ora_ functions.
If you want an example of the lack of uniformity in the database API, look at odbc_fetch_row, it takes a statement handle, and optionally a row number. If the row number is omitted, it returns the next row. Now look at pg_fetch_row, it takes a statement handle, and a mandatory row number. If you omit the row number, it just plain doesn't work.
Look at the functionality of something as simple as 'break'. One would assume that break would exit any looping construct, whether it be for, foreach, or while. Well, you'd be right that it exits for or while, but it doesn't exit a foreach.
And there are other inconsistencies too, which are obnoxious, for example 'is_array, is_long, is_dir, and is_double' all do what you'd expect. but it's not 'is_set', it's 'isset'. If you take a reference to $this in the constructor for an object, it's not the same reference that the new class returns. (Bug 7454)
And they're right, debugging support for PHP is horrible. The debuggers that are out there only work on certain versions, so if you're doing development against the CVS version of PHP in order to get the latest bug fixes, they won't work, because of changes to the Zend internals. error_log is the equivalent of debugging with printf, and if you add your own error handler, there's a bug which prevents it from showing the
error message. (Bug 7283).
PHP has been here since 1994, but it's been massively rewritten at least twice. Once in PHP3, and again for PHP4. It has a lot of potential, enough that I'm using it on large, important projects. But I wouldn't dream of using it on a large, important project that had to be done in 2 weeks. The language still needs time to stabalize.
You want to end AIDS education because it somehow encourages homosexuality? Have you thought about what this means? Will it be illegal to setup www.aidsinfo.com?
You want to ban flag burning as a legal activity? What follows that? It's dangerous precendent.
You don't want any homosexuals defending your country, even if they're completely capable? You truly believe that a homosexual has no control nor any ability to work with non-homosexuals in an effective manner to accomplish a task?
You want quotas ended by a guy who makes it clear that his reason for ending them is to legalize discrimination?
You want a nationalistic leader who doesn't recognize the importance of foreign policy?
If this is what you believe, fine. It scares me, but it's your right to believe it. If you don't believe all that, please do more research into your candidate's views so you don't accidentally say something you don't mean.
Bookpool looks great. As for the attraction to fatbrain, for me it was the fact that they were there, I knew about them, and I never had any reason to complain about them.
Fatbrain, which I believe was recently purchased by Barnes and Noble, which many of us are also boycotting, in order to support independant bookstores.
Of course, I just want consequence-free sex. That's why I have a 4-year old daughter who I love dearly, and who has brought joy and a lack of sleep into my life, even though I'm not married, and it was accidental.
You're right, I do love to fuck my brains out without worry about the consequences. Now that I have one child, I know that if the consequence is another child, I'd be delighted, if surprised.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest reason I can think to have multiple ports is that the chipset needed to make a hub is very inexpensive, thus giving them a feature while adding little expense. I can't actually think of any other reason...
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
I had meant to make Joe a clueless user who simply follows his friend's instructions. Jane, on the other hand, was meant to be a non-technical, but intelligent person, who fully comprehended the technical benefits that the geek had explained, while finding additional, non-technical benefit to this particular solution, thus her reaction to the geek's suggestion.
You're right though, it would've been better if I had made the geek a character more like Bernie from Waiting For Bob
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Well, again, I'd argue that you're not the target market. Gamers tend to use high-end gear and to really need hubs, since a LAN party with only one guy on-line would be pretty lame. Every LAN party I've ever been to has involved a well-wired house, or at least a temporarily well-wired house (hey boss, just evaluating one of the new gigabit switches and a couple NICs...).
Imagine for a moment if you only had one computer at your house, ever. (yes, pretend you're an average computer user.) Now see why it's useful? If you have to take that computer down for a hard reset, it doesn't matter if the firewall is down, seeing as nothing else connects to it.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
This isn't for a business, or for a hardcore geek. It's meant as a security solution for your average Joe, who only has one computer, and wants to work from home on his broadband connection.
Joe currently has a few options, he can get some personal firewall software, but he was talking to a geek friend of his who told him that it would be pretty trivial to make a trojan that would disable the personal firewall software.
Jane looked at the integrated router/firewall/hub solutions, but she didn't like that. She already doesn't like that her cable modem has one ugly box next to her computer, and she doesn't want another ugly box there. The last thing she wants is more confusing cables to figure out, and besides, her power strip doesn't have any more space for the wall wart that invariably powers those things.
Joe and Jane talk to their geek friend, and he says 'hey, i've got a solution which is just as good as a seperate computer, but it goes right inside your current 'puter, but has it's own processor and everything, so it's not affected by trojans, viruses or anything'. Joe thinks 'great, i have no idea what that means, but what the hell, if my geek friend says it's the shit, then it's the shit'. Jane thinks 'Hmmm.... that sounds good, and it eliminates any number of security attacks, while reducing cable clutter, i'll buy one for myself.'
Then their geek friend helps them set it up, and goes home to the p75 that he converted into a firewall. On the way, he opens his mailbox and inside is an electric bill. He reads the bill, and does some calculations on the operating cost of the p75, and realizes that in addition to being a white-noise generator and an eye-sore, that p75 is costing him more money than it's saving. The geek goes out to the store, buys one of these firecards, installs it, and realizes that for a home solution, it's really not a bad idea.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
But according to yesterday's NY Times, some people messed up, realized it, asked for a new ballot, and were told 'nope, no new ballots'.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
I guess they don't make any money on me then, since when I signed up they had the $100 or $200 lifetime subscription fee.
As for the idea that we're stealing a huge source of revenue, nah. Is turning your gasoline powered car into an electric wrong, because you're stealing from oil change places, and gas stations?
Besides, where are you going to find schedule data in the right format? TMS offers the data, but not in the right format, and not for the PPV stations (as of six months ago anyway).
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
And anybody who pays attention would never have a bug like:
if (foo = bar)
or
while(foo(&baz, bar)
or
setproctitle(baz)
Yet I'd bet that you've at some point compiled, or attempted to compile code with the above stupidities in them. Everything is obvious in retrospect.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
You need basic motor skills to vote in your perfect world? Perfect, I know I don't want Stephen Hawking voting!
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Is that why they searched me for drugs when I crossed the border while drunk and high, not having slept in 30 hours, and barely able to remember where I worked, or what my job was?
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
It's a horrible article because it's got it's head up it's ass. If you're going to write an article about standards compliance, the natural thing to do would be to do a comparison. Obviously we can't link to Microsoft's internal bug repository, but makes a straw man argument that somehow, there are no bugs in IE which cause under certain rare circumstances, for IE to violate official web standards.
It's funny to see that some people are willing to pull a stunt like this, in an attempt to get the bugs they care about fixed. Anybody who has been following Mozilla development (like for instance me, this being posted from a version of Mozilla built from CVS earlier today) is aware that some known bugs will be left in NS6 and fixed in NS6.01 or whatever simply because right now they need to ship product. If there's a bug which causes seven pages on the Internet to display slightly incorrectly, they really don't give a shit, and that's GOOD.
No I'm not smoking crack, it really is a good thing. What good will a perfect, bug-free browser do if it's delivered at the same time as emacs 27 and Linux 2.6? If we get a damned good browser out there, it forces a larger portion of the web to make sure they work with IE, and Mozilla. If nothing is shipped, then IE becomes the standard, and there's no chance of preserving a standards based web.
I have nothing against IE, I think it's a great browser, and IE 5 for Mac is, in my opinion, the best browser I've used. The idea that we should abandon mozilla, stop reporting bugs, and hope that IE6 saves the world is even more ignorant than the slashdroids who think that Linux is the only decent operating system in the world.
Congratulations Michael, you and the trolls were having a short dick contest, and it looks like you won.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
The point they were making is that it's a different interface to the same functionality, depending on what db you're using, and they're absolutely right. Since these languages are written (allegedly) for people who aren't exactly geniuses, that's a bad thing.
PHPLib actually does a pretty decent job of addressing this problem in php3, but php4 didn't take that particular lesson from phplib.
They didn't "single out PHP", they made some constructive criticism. All you slashdroids need to learn the difference.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Given the world's largest cluestick with which you could assault every single SysAd on the planet, what clues would you distribute, other than the use of bastille, and the knowledge that there's life outside computers?
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
404 baby, 404.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
you see, by now the moderators are done reading this article, as they only moderate for a few messages each article, once there are over 100 comments, you could post the cure for cancer and not get moderated up.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
It's not quite as good as the template functionality, but what i do is create for every page, two files. foo.php and foo.ihtml. here's an ultra simple example
----foo.php
$username = "Bob";
----foo.ihtml
Hi ! How are you today?
---
as noted, it's not as nice as the phplib templating, but it's better than nothing.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
I've looked at phplib.netuse.de, and don't see what's 'far and away' more advanced. Could you please elaborate, such that /. might contain useful information?
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Actually you should check your history there. ODBC is a Microsoft invented standard. You should thank them for this innovation.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Okay, and what's your point, crack smoker?
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
phplib was an excellent library for use with PHP3, however the best parts of it (namely session support) have been included in PHP4 standard, so there isn't much need to look at it anymore, except for legacy use, or if PHP4 is still too young for your purposes.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Have you written any large projects in PHP? I mean really large, mission-critical projects. If so you'll quickly see that while it has strong points, it's far from perfect.
The database connectivity is far from perfect, and ODBC isn't the magic bullet some people like to think it is. While you can use ODBC to connect to an Oracle database, it will offer significantly lower performance than using the ora_ functions.
If you want an example of the lack of uniformity in the database API, look at odbc_fetch_row, it takes a statement handle, and optionally a row number. If the row number is omitted, it returns the next row. Now look at pg_fetch_row, it takes a statement handle, and a mandatory row number. If you omit the row number, it just plain doesn't work.
Look at the functionality of something as simple as 'break'. One would assume that break would exit any looping construct, whether it be for, foreach, or while. Well, you'd be right that it exits for or while, but it doesn't exit a foreach.
And there are other inconsistencies too, which are obnoxious, for example 'is_array, is_long, is_dir, and is_double' all do what you'd expect. but it's not 'is_set', it's 'isset'. If you take a reference to $this in the constructor for an object, it's not the same reference that the new class returns. (Bug 7454)
And they're right, debugging support for PHP is horrible. The debuggers that are out there only work on certain versions, so if you're doing development against the CVS version of PHP in order to get the latest bug fixes, they won't work, because of changes to the Zend internals. error_log is the equivalent of debugging with printf, and if you add your own error handler, there's a bug which prevents it from showing the error message. (Bug 7283).
PHP has been here since 1994, but it's been massively rewritten at least twice. Once in PHP3, and again for PHP4. It has a lot of potential, enough that I'm using it on large, important projects. But I wouldn't dream of using it on a large, important project that had to be done in 2 weeks. The language still needs time to stabalize.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Congratulations, AC, You won today's edition of the tin foil hat awards! A black helicopter will be by later to give you your award.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
If by right, you mean right wing....
You want to end AIDS education because it somehow encourages homosexuality? Have you thought about what this means? Will it be illegal to setup www.aidsinfo.com?
You want to ban flag burning as a legal activity? What follows that? It's dangerous precendent.
You don't want any homosexuals defending your country, even if they're completely capable? You truly believe that a homosexual has no control nor any ability to work with non-homosexuals in an effective manner to accomplish a task?
You want quotas ended by a guy who makes it clear that his reason for ending them is to legalize discrimination?
You want a nationalistic leader who doesn't recognize the importance of foreign policy?
If this is what you believe, fine. It scares me, but it's your right to believe it. If you don't believe all that, please do more research into your candidate's views so you don't accidentally say something you don't mean.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Bookpool looks great. As for the attraction to fatbrain, for me it was the fact that they were there, I knew about them, and I never had any reason to complain about them.
Now I've got a new technical bookstore!
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Fatbrain, which I believe was recently purchased by Barnes and Noble, which many of us are also boycotting, in order to support independant bookstores.
Now where do we buy?
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Of course, I just want consequence-free sex. That's why I have a 4-year old daughter who I love dearly, and who has brought joy and a lack of sleep into my life, even though I'm not married, and it was accidental.
You're right, I do love to fuck my brains out without worry about the consequences. Now that I have one child, I know that if the consequence is another child, I'd be delighted, if surprised.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"