I know from my limited work patching the kernel, this is the biggest barrier for me (and I'm an experienced C programmer). The code is clean. Individual parts are relatively self-documenting, but there's little documentation about subsystems. There's little documentation about why things are done certain ways. Many kernel systems (e.g. network drivers) are part of larger abstracted systems designed to reduce the amount of duplicate logic, but these abstract systems either aren't documented at all or, due to the rapid pace of kernel development, have out-of-date documentation. Furthermore, when people do have questions, they're directed to the kernel mailing lists, which are overwhelming and, dare I say, unfriendly to the new developer. The mailing list archives are littered with unanswered questions and reprimands from older developers to newer developers just trying to contribute.
Some on the kernel development team may like it that way because it keeps out the uneducated and let's them maintain their way of doing things. I think that's why we're also seeing the fragmentation of Linux development as larger corporations that count on Linux pull the source in house where they can introduce new staff to it in a more friendly way. Of course, when they do that, oftentimes, the work doesn't make it back into the mainline kernel, so that's really a detriment to the kernel itself.
That CD switcher applet for AfterStep was what originally brought me to CnD and eventually Slashdot. It was the only thing that made my 3-disk CD changer in my old Gateway useful. Thanks for writing that!
Wow, I'm trying to think of a better way to make a continent that's already antagonistic towards you migrate even faster to other alternatives like Linux. I can't do it. You're going to threaten to pull out of a multi-BILLION dollar market over some fines, alienating your customers and moving them to consider non-Microsoft solutions.
No, the good idea for Microsoft is to publicly bluster and privately strike a deal with the EU to come into compliance and pay a reduced fine. Microsoft essentially made a gamble and lost and will now minimize its losses.
I haven't seen the source code for either, but I've heard that MySQL's source code is a real mess, and that SAP DB's source code is a real mess in comparison to MySQL's source code.
What you just said is:
I don't know the truth, but I'll state something as fact in hopes that nobody catches me.
In actuality, MySQL's codebase isn't a mess. It's actually quite well organized, and the new releases are even more well thought-out. MySQL does a very good job of compartmentalizing sections of code so they don't interfere with each other, reusing common code, abstracting the differences between architectures and operating systems, and it allows them to very quickly and very easily incorporate new database engines. I refer you to their recent inclusion of the NDB clustered storage engine and the newly developed archive and federated storage engines.
Yeah, this is a great comment. On the one hand, you have Linux advocates and distribution channels shouting that Linux is ready for the desktop and they have installers that do everything for you and it supports X, Y, and Z hardware right out of the box.
However, when someone has a problem, it seems like the solution is always the same: if you spent as much time coding a solution as you did bitching about it, it'd be fixed right now. To me as an end-user, that seems like a cop-out. To me as a programmer, that seems like the coders don't want to be bothered with trivial bugs, but want to code new and exciting, but mostly broken, tidbits of software. Neither are good for the community.
Guess what, the average person is still going to have to call tech support to install their video games. That's just the way it is. There is no way that everyone in the world is going to become an ace at computers. That's why mature video game companies invest in a) better installers and b) tech support. If Linux really cares about the global domination aspect, maybe their community can change its PoV a little about these less technical users that are coming in and HELPFULLY pointing out serious impediments to that goal.
Software raid is fine for simple configurations, but if you want to "do it right" - especially considering that you just dropped about a kilobuck on HDDs, go Hardware. A good, reasonably priced true hardware RAID controller that will fit the bill for you is the 3Ware Escalade 7506-8. It has 8 IDE ports, 1 for each drive - you don't want to run two RAID drives in master/slave mode off of a single IDE port; it will play hell with your I/O performance. It's true hardware raid, so you don't have to worry about big CPU overhead and being able to boot with a failed drive (a major disadvantage to software RAID if your boot partition is on a RAID volume, certain RAID-1 configurations excepted). You can buy them for under $450. provantage.com price [provantage.com] is $423.48 (I have no relationship with them other than I've noticed that their prices tend to be decent).
Hardware RAID5 is fine if your sole goal is reliability. If you need even an iota of performance, then go with software RAID5. The 3wares have especially abysmal RAID5 performance, specially older series like the 75xx and 85xx cards. 3ware's admitted it, and something targeted for fixing in the 95xx series (haven't gotten my hands on those yet, so I don't know).
As for software RAID reliability, I find that Linux's software RAID is much more forgiving than even the most resilient of hardware RAIDs. I've lost 4 drives out of a 12 drive system at the same time, and Linux has let me piece the RAID back together and I've lost nothing. Was the machine down? Yes. Did I lose data? No. Compare that with a 3ware hardware RAID system where I lost 2 drives. Even thought I probably could have salvaged 99% of the data off that array, the 3ware just would not let me work with that failed array.
Also, on any reasonably modern system, the software RAID will be faster. You just have a much faster processor to do the RAID processing for you. The added overhead of the RAID5 processing is nothing compared to a 1-2GHz processor.
Please, I wish moderators wouldn't mark Insightful non-sensical postings...
The use of the weapon was the knockout blow the ended the first World War. There's know way of telling how many livers were saved as a result of the war ending then compared to going on for however longer it would have went without it.
First, the bomb provided the climax to the SECOND World War. The First World War (or Great War) was fought earlier in the century. There is some debate as to how much longer Japan would have held out. Germany and Italy had long since been defeated. Hirohito could see the war ending in Japan as American systematically defeated his forces island-by-island in the Pacific (at great cost, yes, but the resolve of the Allies was winning consistently). Certainly, the bombs hastened his decision, but he likely would've surrendered anyway simply to avoid the firebombing that destroyed the likes of Dresden. Some historians doubt the Nagasaki bomb was evennecessary, and both bombs were a show of power that ended up killing largely civilian populations, not causing military destruction.
Mutually Assured Destruction was a valid theory because USSR fell not by military attack but simple political failure. Actually, the USSR fell to the economic failure of the Communist system. Reagan increased defense spending during the 1980s essentially starting an arms race the Soviets could not maintain. Trying to match the military buildup of the US bankrupted the USSR. The social revolution that followed was inevitable given the critical mass of the poor left in Russia.
In fact, the biggest threat the USA faces today is not from any organized state but from stateless terrorists who would love to get ahold of nuclear weapons, but don't have a government worth of resources to develop what history has proven is quite a hard thing to come accross and control. Arguable. It's doubtful that nuclear terrorists could detonate more than one or two bombs on American soil in the best (for them) of scenarios, no matter what the alarmists in the White House would have you believe. Such an attack wouldn't destroy the US, not like a devastating nuclear war as we might have had during the Cold War. Others think greater threats to America come from biological and chemical agents that can easily and rapidly be dispersed into weakly guarded public utility systems. Nuclear weapons (at least on the order a terrorist is likely to come into contact with) have a comparitively limited damage potential.
As long as it is explained that this is simply the look and feel and has no real functionality differences (explained in a calm and simple manner), things should be less scary.
This seems like a silly thing to say. Have you ever had something like an installation configuration option explained to you in wholly wild language?
WARNING! IF YOU SELECT THE NETSCAPE THEME, YOUR BROWSER WILL STILL NOT BE NETSCAPE! IN FACT, THE NETSCAPE THEME WILL PROBABLY FUNCTION MORE LIKE INTERNET EXPLORER, EXCEPT WORSE BECAUSE WE SPENT THREE WEEKS WORKING ON THE TEXT OF THIS WARNING INSTEAD OF FIXING THE VARIOUS RESOURCE USAGE BUGS THAT CAUSE FIREFOX TO USE 500MB OF MEMORY! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ALSO, NO WARRANTY IS IMPLIED BY THIS WARNING! HAVE A NICE DAY!
Perhaps Apple could bundle pre-paid music from iTMS, to make the effective price $100? For example, $199 bundled with $100 of music is kinda like a $100 iPod. Music companies do discounted promotional bundles all the time, so this wouldn't be far fetched. And for bundling with an iPod, it could be pre-loaded on the hard drive, or pre-paid (gift certificate) to download from iTMS, so there would be no physical costs, just licensing costs. Or perhaps each iPod comes with $100 of sode (which gives iTunes away)?:-)
Geezus, STOP GIVING THEM FSCKING MARKETING IDEAS! I want an iPod for $100! I don't want 100 bucks worth of music. I don't want a stupid gift certificate or licensing or anything. I'm a dirt cheap geek who is thisclose to actually braving the redneck land of Wal-Mart to get a $99 PC that I can muck around with. You telling Apple all these different ways for them to charge me even more for a product I already think is overpriced isn't getting me any closer to my wet dream.
Really? Why doesn't anybody just say, "If they take a loss on the iPod, they'll sell more at the Music Store. Also, give away 100,000 Junior iPods free to water their mouths!" Now that's a marketing plan I can get on board with.
Those of us that do file bugs with Redhat in bugzilla have learned that they rarely get addressed unless you yourself provide the solution. There are a few package managers that keep up (httpd, net-snmp), but kernel bugs? Forget about it. Perl bugs? Forget about it. You can give the most detailed bug report possible and you're still lucky if it even gets addressed.
Hell, the other day I reported a bug in anaconda that causes every single raid5 installation to be suspect to corruption, and so far, not even a reply. The most I've seen is that they added someone else's e-mail address to the bug.
Maybe it's not that no one files bugs. Maybe it's that people learned that filing bugs with RedHat was futile.
The article is 3 years old, yet mySQL still has problems as they developers don't seem to believe that ACID is important. Open ACS on "Why Not mySQL" [openacs.org]
Well, the ACID qualifications have been satisfied by MySQL through the InnoDB handler for over two years. Other issues, such as advanced SQL features, are still in progress.
But to the original point, I think it's a good thing that MySQL doesn't think that ACID is important. They have different priorities. Their priorities do not lie in making a database that conforms to someone (anyone) else's theories of the perfect database. They implement features that are requested by their customers (pay a minimal licensing fee and you suddenly get a much greater voice in the direction MySQL is taking) and their overriding goal is to implement those features as efficiently as possible, so that speed and performance aren't sacrificed for feature bloat. They tend to implement their features along the line of standards, but they also through in numerous "extensions" to that standard that make way for faster processing and quicker development time. That sounds to me like an excellent way to run a software project.
With that said, they have a roadmap for implementation of various features, including subselects, triggers, etc. and they've already explained why one is getting implemented before the other. If you think a really, really important feature is missing, pay them some money and then say, "Hey, this is a really important feature to us and we just gave you $XXXXX."
Look here [webtechniques.com] and here [sitepoint.com]. Both of these websites mention what postgreSQL (and Oracle)offers that mysql is lacking as well as how to migrate to PostgreSQL.
The first article was written in September 2001. The second article was written in October 2001. The person who replied to your post cited an article from 2000, almost three years ago. The PostgreSQL vs. MySQL argument would be a whole lot more interesting if the articles cited were actually relevant to newer versions of both databases. It would also be great if they were more than just, "Hey, look, I got my inefficient bulletin board working a little better under database XYZ."
The best database is the one that has the features you need, the performance you desire, at a price you're willing to pay.
Re:Slashdot effect (the good, bad, and the FAQ)
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Barcode-Controlled Home?
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· Score: 2, Offtopic
As for the staff, Slashdot people could email web site admins and ask about their bandwidth/web server. But what if the site owner doesn't read email on the weekends? (that isn't uncommon) What is to be done in that case?
Uh, they wait until they get a response? It's not as if Slashdot is going to get scooped on one of these. Heaven forbid that the editors, with all their journalistic rabidity, actually had to wait to post a story that was probably submitted a week ago.
I agree with the FAQ. Slashdot shouldn't have to mirror the sites, but for all their emphasis on being a community-oriented site, they sure aren't kind to small site owners. CNN, BBCi, C|Net, etc should all be able to handle the traffic. Some rinky-dink virtual site will never be able to handle it, and if the editors can't realize that, maybe they need to turn over their "community-oriented site" to someone more knowledgeable about the community.
They're not talking about a national ID card system.
The page (which is a poor one, since it's really just an agenda for presentations) covers two topics. One is an ID system for transportation workers, so that they have some way of verifying that the guy in the tarmac in a blue jumpsuit really is an employee who is allowed to be there. That is arguably a good thing. Many professions have this. I go to a hospital and my doctor is wearing an ID badge, and that makes me feel good, because if I trust the badge, I'm reasonably assured that this main isn't some psycho pretending to be a doctor. The TSA is looking at a way to unify the many different systems under one, so that rather than having 50 different types of identification depending on where you go, everyone will have the same types of ID. They're not implementing a new system. They're making an existing one more standardized.
The second is the Registered Traveler ID. This system is a voluntary system for frequent flyers to bypass the tedious and sometimes invasive security procedures at airports and train stations. Basically, you go through the background checks, etc. once, and then you can skip all the feel-down lines and breeze your way to the gate. Basically, they want to make it easier for people to travel. If you, as a citizen, don't want to be registered, don't get the card. You can go through the long lines with other unregistered travelers and your "privacy" (or the illusion of it) is safe.
That's why you run through the configuration utility before you compile the kernel. You don't need to branch the kernel source to limit features in the kernel. You just don't select them when you compile the kernel. Voila. Your kernel does not have those features. Do you think when Oscar Office Worker got that copy of Windows 2000 Workstation and Mitch MIS Admin got that copy of Windows 2000 Server, they came from different source repositories? I doubt it.
With that said, the kernel source is getting gigantic, and it would be nice if they released source bundles geared towards those who might be compiling in more desktop-oriented features and those who might be compiling for a server.
Try Resin, a non-free open-source servlet/JSP server. It can run standalone or as an Apache plugin and absolutely screams. It works great with the IBM JDK under Linux and has very cheap licensing fees and incredible developer support. I myself am not partial to the whole Java phenomena, but if I had to use a web server for serving up such code, I wouldn't hesitate to use Resin.
Sometimes, one has to step back from the plethora of big-name projects and realize that people are making considerable effort righting the mistakes made by the early pioneers of that medium.
And sometimes, paying a little for a server engine ain't such a bad thing. Most companies with budgets can afford cheapo licenses.
And yet, Slashdot, the site that posted this news, is still using Times New Roman.. ironic.
No, not ironic. Slashdot does not still use Times New Roman. Your web browser still defaults to Times New Roman. I have my default font on my MS box set to Tahoma, and Slashdot renders in Tahoma and is much easier to skim because of it. If anything, Slashdot's solution is the "most open" solution.
The real question is, "Why are you still using Times New Roman, when other better web reading fonts are out there?"
While I don't think Microsoft's software should be accepted by Peru simply because they're Microsoft, I think that saying the US government should not support Microsoft because Microsoft broke some anti-trust laws is a bit naive, even for open-source folks. The ambassador does have an interest to promote the interests of this country, and certainly promoting Microsoft does that, but it really has nothing to do with lining Microsoft's coffers (tax breaks and kickbacks do more than any puny Peruvian contract will do). It has more to do with the economy generated by Microsoft.
Think about exactly how much of our technological economy is based on Microsoft. The world's leading computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.) ship Microsoft-based systems. They provide support (which means jobs) for those systems. Dell has already tried shipping Linux systems and it failed miserably for them. Other companies have met limited success (what is VA Linux doing now?). Think about how many Windows admins there are for every Unix admin. Those people don't work for Microsoft, and they generate a huge amount of IT service domestic product. What about all the software houses that write software (some of which would undoubtedly be used in Peru) for Windows not because Windows is the best, but simply because it's the most ubiquitous?.
If you cut out Microsoft from *consideration*, you cut out huge areas of the US service industry. Can Dell make Linux-capable boxen? Sure. Is it in their best interests on a limited scale? History has shown no. Are their Linux IT companies to help the Peruvian government manage their systems? Yes. Are they chances good they'll be around in six months? It's iffy, given the poor track record of open-source company management and the relative unprofessionalism that the industry (perceptionally) seems mired in.
THe ambassador is not saying, "Accept Microsoft." He's saying "Don't shut out consideration of Microsoft by mandating an open-source regulation." Let free trade and market forces ("Is it a better product?" or "Is it a better deal?" or "Is it better service-wise?") determine which technology to choose, not some ideology. That's a capitalist mentality, true, but it's one that's allowed the growth of open-source in this country in some areas, and the last time I checked, Peru had an economy based on capitalism.
See, to me when someone calls it a "stable release", that means it's already been stabilized. Sure, you're going to have the occasional bug fix here and there, but actual "stabilization" should've been done in the 2.5.99 range, ie. the previous development branch. Once the stable tree is released, there shouldn't be a need to stabilize it and branching the new development tree right then makes sense. There should not be an "development" per se in the stable release after that, only the occasional maintenance.
If the kernel maintainers would just grasp this one simple point, maybe this issue wouldn't be one, and maybe people wouldn't laugh at the.0 release of the kernel.
The USPTO has become such an outrage that it needs to become in issue in this year's elections. That can only happen if media attention can be drawn to absurd patents, and this is just the kind of thing to do it. Everyone can understand how preposterous this is; and then, if we're lucky, the TV news will get someone like Bruce Perens or ESR as a talking head for background, and that person can go on to say, "You know the patent office does this all the time, let me give you some more examples, and let me explain the damage that it does to our economy." It's our best chance.
Yeah, that's exactly what we need. In an era where people don't tune into politics because there aren't any real issues, let's throw the whole geek-led patent issue at them. When will the geek community learn that the best way to forward geek causes is not to try and get the general populace behind them? You would think after the beatings in high school we would learn that our plights don't interest those in the "real" world.
Look, our country is in a recession. The rich are getting tax breaks. More people are living in poverty. Social security, which many in our generation believe will form the foundation of our post-retirement earnings, is in jeopardy of falling apart. There is a war against terrorism and a parallel war against human rights. When you stack the fact that out of the thousands of patents that the USPTO gives out a year, a few are silly and challengable against the real problems plaguing our country right now, I don't think we're talking an election year issue.
Geeks need to get off their horses and walk among the people for whom silly patents and the lawsuits that question them are not life-challenging events.
p.s. The last thing we need is ESR getting on national television as a representative of the geek community. If you want to talk about ways to connect geek causes with mainstream America, ESR does not enter into the conversation.
Re:Hibernation comments are missing the point
on
UNIX Process Cryogenics?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
And if you have something like that, you open yourself up to a wealth of potential problems in the program. Take this simple perl script.
#!perl
use strict;
my $pid = $$;
print $pid
If you stop it between those two $pid commands, there's no guarantee that you're going to get the same pid value back. Programs would have to be specifically programmed to handle this sort of thing (there are other examples, this is just the most basic; network programs particularly would have problems).
Re:Suggestion for users about the ads...
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2, Troll
Get an ad-blocking program.
Yeah, that's great until the sites that you want to read go the way of the dodo because they depend on the click-throughs that their ads generate and that you're eliminating because you're more intent on preventing something from showing up than you are on actually getting the content you need.
Not you personally, but the royal "you".
Take a look at the world around you. On television, you see advertising, unless you're watching a premium service that you pay for, like HBO or pay-per-view. On radio, you see advertising unless you're listening to a station like NPR which is funded through user donations (and during fund drives, fundraising pleas work just like advertisements). Even movies have taken on advertising to supplement the rising costs of making movies people want to see. I'm not sure what made the Internet think it was going to be any different, but that attitude has caught up with its proponents and sites are failing.
I really wish that rather than Slashdot taking on additional, large-scale advertising or premium payment, they move to an NPR-like member format, where Slashdot is "sponsored" by various individuals and companies. I have more respect for NPR than I do for HBO, and I hope Slashdot doesn't turn into "every other site", but rather becomes a model of a way to be successful and still maintain respect.
I dont understand why any company would do this to their customers.
Do what to their customers? Video monitor them and try and prevent shoplifting? They've been doing that for ages. You just have a huge database to match from rather than one security guard's mind now. This will only affect two groups of people: shoplifters and people who look like shoplifters. Group A probably don't "shop" at Borders anyway, so by them boycotting Borders. Borders isn't losing any money (in fact, they're probably gaining money). Group B aren't Group B until they're actually accused, and if Borders is really smart, they won't actually do anything with the "accused" until they break the law by actually shoplifting something (ie. use the system to keep a closer eye on people who may be potential shoplifters). Of course, details are fuzzy, but the Slashdot crowd jumps on the worst-case-scenario bandwagon and proceeds to shoot themselves in the foot.
You're right, if you don't like it, don't shop there. If you're really lucky, you'll end up with no bookstores to shop at all because you're paranoid.
My Experience
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Dorm Storm?
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· Score: 5, Informative
I went to school at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, one of the earlier schools to have a mandate that all students should be "wired" (as they called it). When I arrived as a freshman in 1995, all non-Greek on-campus housing was wired with 10baseT LAN access and all libraries and academic buildings (save for the Architecture building, funny enough) had access to the same network. Remember, this is the first year that Windows 95 came out. Through the network, not only did you have access to the Internet, but you also had a complete suite of software available without any installation hassles, including Maple, Word, Excel, and various other programs required for all your classes. By my sophomore year, when I started working for the IT guys as a part-time student installer, every on-campus student could bring in their machine and plug it in. I spent a good deal of time running around to various buildings, installing ethernet cards and making sure people could print, login, stuff like that.
The number one most important thing for a large-scale mass install like this is excellent documentation. I'm not talking user manuals, but step-by-step, written for special-ed third grader instructions. The docs for this project were excellent. I may have helped out maybe 50 people tops in those first couple of move-in weeks. I think the figures I remember were something like 70% of people needed no help beyond the instructions. That's pretty good when you're dealing with 5000 students, 3500 of which had older computers that were setup on the network the previous year (those are more difficult because they still have all their settings in place for older configurations).
The second most important tip is to have well-written support software. The software that Lehigh had doing the dirty work of configuring network settings, initializing programs for network use, and setting up printers and connections was pretty solid. Everyone once and while you'd get some oddball Packard Bell that didn't like it, but for the most part, it was solid. Macs were even supported well (indeed first, because the school actually transitioned from all Macs to all PCs during this period). People running Linux were usually clued in on their own, so no help needed there. In contrast, other friends have reported stories to me of utter nightmare installs due to programs crashing, wiping out configuration settings, installing the wrong software, etc. at other universities. If you don't have solid software that you yourself are comfortable using, don't push it out onto thousands of incoming freshmen. Every tiny annoyance you see will become a full-blown logistical nightmare as you try and coordinate your support staff to fix it.
Finally, use e-mail effectively. Our student consultants were all setup with mailing lists that we could post problems and solutions (mostly solutions) for even the rarest of situations. We were all told to do this and told to watch for the information as well. Information flows a lot better when a bunch of geeks can read threads of problems and solutions than when you go over it during organizational meetings. For us, those usually were reserved for congratulatory pizza and the occasional mass wishlist.
Of course, all that is probably a little dated (we didn't have wireless LANs yet when I left), but as far as logistics goes, it's pretty much the same good advice.
Documentation. Solid software. Communication. If you've got that, you should be fine.
Slashdot Mirror
I know from my limited work patching the kernel, this is the biggest barrier for me (and I'm an experienced C programmer). The code is clean. Individual parts are relatively self-documenting, but there's little documentation about subsystems. There's little documentation about why things are done certain ways. Many kernel systems (e.g. network drivers) are part of larger abstracted systems designed to reduce the amount of duplicate logic, but these abstract systems either aren't documented at all or, due to the rapid pace of kernel development, have out-of-date documentation. Furthermore, when people do have questions, they're directed to the kernel mailing lists, which are overwhelming and, dare I say, unfriendly to the new developer. The mailing list archives are littered with unanswered questions and reprimands from older developers to newer developers just trying to contribute.
Some on the kernel development team may like it that way because it keeps out the uneducated and let's them maintain their way of doing things. I think that's why we're also seeing the fragmentation of Linux development as larger corporations that count on Linux pull the source in house where they can introduce new staff to it in a more friendly way. Of course, when they do that, oftentimes, the work doesn't make it back into the mainline kernel, so that's really a detriment to the kernel itself.
That CD switcher applet for AfterStep was what originally brought me to CnD and eventually Slashdot. It was the only thing that made my 3-disk CD changer in my old Gateway useful. Thanks for writing that!
If you were Microsoft ... you'd be stupid.
Wow, I'm trying to think of a better way to make a continent that's already antagonistic towards you migrate even faster to other alternatives like Linux. I can't do it. You're going to threaten to pull out of a multi-BILLION dollar market over some fines, alienating your customers and moving them to consider non-Microsoft solutions.
No, the good idea for Microsoft is to publicly bluster and privately strike a deal with the EU to come into compliance and pay a reduced fine. Microsoft essentially made a gamble and lost and will now minimize its losses.
I sent him an internet this morning. He should get it in a few days.
I haven't seen the source code for either, but I've heard that MySQL's source code is a real mess, and that SAP DB's source code is a real mess in comparison to MySQL's source code.
What you just said is:
I don't know the truth, but I'll state something as fact in hopes that nobody catches me.
In actuality, MySQL's codebase isn't a mess. It's actually quite well organized, and the new releases are even more well thought-out. MySQL does a very good job of compartmentalizing sections of code so they don't interfere with each other, reusing common code, abstracting the differences between architectures and operating systems, and it allows them to very quickly and very easily incorporate new database engines. I refer you to their recent inclusion of the NDB clustered storage engine and the newly developed archive and federated storage engines.
Yeah, this is a great comment. On the one hand, you have Linux advocates and distribution channels shouting that Linux is ready for the desktop and they have installers that do everything for you and it supports X, Y, and Z hardware right out of the box.
However, when someone has a problem, it seems like the solution is always the same: if you spent as much time coding a solution as you did bitching about it, it'd be fixed right now. To me as an end-user, that seems like a cop-out. To me as a programmer, that seems like the coders don't want to be bothered with trivial bugs, but want to code new and exciting, but mostly broken, tidbits of software. Neither are good for the community.
Guess what, the average person is still going to have to call tech support to install their video games. That's just the way it is. There is no way that everyone in the world is going to become an ace at computers. That's why mature video game companies invest in a) better installers and b) tech support. If Linux really cares about the global domination aspect, maybe their community can change its PoV a little about these less technical users that are coming in and HELPFULLY pointing out serious impediments to that goal.
Software raid is fine for simple configurations, but if you want to "do it right" - especially considering that you just dropped about a kilobuck on HDDs, go Hardware. A good, reasonably priced true hardware RAID controller that will fit the bill for you is the 3Ware Escalade 7506-8. It has 8 IDE ports, 1 for each drive - you don't want to run two RAID drives in master/slave mode off of a single IDE port; it will play hell with your I/O performance. It's true hardware raid, so you don't have to worry about big CPU overhead and being able to boot with a failed drive (a major disadvantage to software RAID if your boot partition is on a RAID volume, certain RAID-1 configurations excepted). You can buy them for under $450. provantage.com price [provantage.com] is $423.48 (I have no relationship with them other than I've noticed that their prices tend to be decent).
Hardware RAID5 is fine if your sole goal is reliability. If you need even an iota of performance, then go with software RAID5. The 3wares have especially abysmal RAID5 performance, specially older series like the 75xx and 85xx cards. 3ware's admitted it, and something targeted for fixing in the 95xx series (haven't gotten my hands on those yet, so I don't know).
As for software RAID reliability, I find that Linux's software RAID is much more forgiving than even the most resilient of hardware RAIDs. I've lost 4 drives out of a 12 drive system at the same time, and Linux has let me piece the RAID back together and I've lost nothing. Was the machine down? Yes. Did I lose data? No. Compare that with a 3ware hardware RAID system where I lost 2 drives. Even thought I probably could have salvaged 99% of the data off that array, the 3ware just would not let me work with that failed array.
Also, on any reasonably modern system, the software RAID will be faster. You just have a much faster processor to do the RAID processing for you. The added overhead of the RAID5 processing is nothing compared to a 1-2GHz processor.
Please, I wish moderators wouldn't mark Insightful non-sensical postings ...
The use of the weapon was the knockout blow the ended the first World War. There's know way of telling how many livers were saved as a result of the war ending then compared to going on for however longer it would have went without it.
First, the bomb provided the climax to the SECOND World War. The First World War (or Great War) was fought earlier in the century. There is some debate as to how much longer Japan would have held out. Germany and Italy had long since been defeated. Hirohito could see the war ending in Japan as American systematically defeated his forces island-by-island in the Pacific (at great cost, yes, but the resolve of the Allies was winning consistently). Certainly, the bombs hastened his decision, but he likely would've surrendered anyway simply to avoid the firebombing that destroyed the likes of Dresden. Some historians doubt the Nagasaki bomb was evennecessary, and both bombs were a show of power that ended up killing largely civilian populations, not causing military destruction.
Mutually Assured Destruction was a valid theory because USSR fell not by military attack but simple political failure.
Actually, the USSR fell to the economic failure of the Communist system. Reagan increased defense spending during the 1980s essentially starting an arms race the Soviets could not maintain. Trying to match the military buildup of the US bankrupted the USSR. The social revolution that followed was inevitable given the critical mass of the poor left in Russia.
In fact, the biggest threat the USA faces today is not from any organized state but from stateless terrorists who would love to get ahold of nuclear weapons, but don't have a government worth of resources to develop what history has proven is quite a hard thing to come accross and control.
Arguable. It's doubtful that nuclear terrorists could detonate more than one or two bombs on American soil in the best (for them) of scenarios, no matter what the alarmists in the White House would have you believe. Such an attack wouldn't destroy the US, not like a devastating nuclear war as we might have had during the Cold War. Others think greater threats to America come from biological and chemical agents that can easily and rapidly be dispersed into weakly guarded public utility systems. Nuclear weapons (at least on the order a terrorist is likely to come into contact with) have a comparitively limited damage potential.
As long as it is explained that this is simply the look and feel and has no real functionality differences (explained in a calm and simple manner), things should be less scary.
This seems like a silly thing to say. Have you ever had something like an installation configuration option explained to you in wholly wild language?
WARNING! IF YOU SELECT THE NETSCAPE THEME, YOUR BROWSER WILL STILL NOT BE NETSCAPE! IN FACT, THE NETSCAPE THEME WILL PROBABLY FUNCTION MORE LIKE INTERNET EXPLORER, EXCEPT WORSE BECAUSE WE SPENT THREE WEEKS WORKING ON THE TEXT OF THIS WARNING INSTEAD OF FIXING THE VARIOUS RESOURCE USAGE BUGS THAT CAUSE FIREFOX TO USE 500MB OF MEMORY! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ALSO, NO WARRANTY IS IMPLIED BY THIS WARNING! HAVE A NICE DAY!
Perhaps Apple could bundle pre-paid music from iTMS, to make the effective price $100? For example, $199 bundled with $100 of music is kinda like a $100 iPod. Music companies do discounted promotional bundles all the time, so this wouldn't be far fetched. And for bundling with an iPod, it could be pre-loaded on the hard drive, or pre-paid (gift certificate) to download from iTMS, so there would be no physical costs, just licensing costs. Or perhaps each iPod comes with $100 of sode (which gives iTunes away)? :-)
Geezus, STOP GIVING THEM FSCKING MARKETING IDEAS! I want an iPod for $100! I don't want 100 bucks worth of music. I don't want a stupid gift certificate or licensing or anything. I'm a dirt cheap geek who is thisclose to actually braving the redneck land of Wal-Mart to get a $99 PC that I can muck around with. You telling Apple all these different ways for them to charge me even more for a product I already think is overpriced isn't getting me any closer to my wet dream.
Really? Why doesn't anybody just say, "If they take a loss on the iPod, they'll sell more at the Music Store. Also, give away 100,000 Junior iPods free to water their mouths!" Now that's a marketing plan I can get on board with.
Those of us that do file bugs with Redhat in bugzilla have learned that they rarely get addressed unless you yourself provide the solution. There are a few package managers that keep up (httpd, net-snmp), but kernel bugs? Forget about it. Perl bugs? Forget about it. You can give the most detailed bug report possible and you're still lucky if it even gets addressed.
Hell, the other day I reported a bug in anaconda that causes every single raid5 installation to be suspect to corruption, and so far, not even a reply. The most I've seen is that they added someone else's e-mail address to the bug.
Maybe it's not that no one files bugs. Maybe it's that people learned that filing bugs with RedHat was futile.
The article is 3 years old, yet mySQL still has problems as they developers don't seem to believe that ACID is important. Open ACS on "Why Not mySQL" [openacs.org]
Well, the ACID qualifications have been satisfied by MySQL through the InnoDB handler for over two years. Other issues, such as advanced SQL features, are still in progress.
But to the original point, I think it's a good thing that MySQL doesn't think that ACID is important. They have different priorities. Their priorities do not lie in making a database that conforms to someone (anyone) else's theories of the perfect database. They implement features that are requested by their customers (pay a minimal licensing fee and you suddenly get a much greater voice in the direction MySQL is taking) and their overriding goal is to implement those features as efficiently as possible, so that speed and performance aren't sacrificed for feature bloat. They tend to implement their features along the line of standards, but they also through in numerous "extensions" to that standard that make way for faster processing and quicker development time. That sounds to me like an excellent way to run a software project.
With that said, they have a roadmap for implementation of various features, including subselects, triggers, etc. and they've already explained why one is getting implemented before the other. If you think a really, really important feature is missing, pay them some money and then say, "Hey, this is a really important feature to us and we just gave you $XXXXX."
Look here [webtechniques.com] and here [sitepoint.com]. Both of these websites mention what postgreSQL (and Oracle)offers that mysql is lacking as well as how to migrate to PostgreSQL.
The first article was written in September 2001. The second article was written in October 2001. The person who replied to your post cited an article from 2000, almost three years ago. The PostgreSQL vs. MySQL argument would be a whole lot more interesting if the articles cited were actually relevant to newer versions of both databases. It would also be great if they were more than just, "Hey, look, I got my inefficient bulletin board working a little better under database XYZ."
The best database is the one that has the features you need, the performance you desire, at a price you're willing to pay.
As for the staff, Slashdot people could email web site admins and ask about their bandwidth/web server. But what if the site owner doesn't read email on the weekends? (that isn't uncommon) What is to be done in that case?
Uh, they wait until they get a response? It's not as if Slashdot is going to get scooped on one of these. Heaven forbid that the editors, with all their journalistic rabidity, actually had to wait to post a story that was probably submitted a week ago.
I agree with the FAQ. Slashdot shouldn't have to mirror the sites, but for all their emphasis on being a community-oriented site, they sure aren't kind to small site owners. CNN, BBCi, C|Net, etc should all be able to handle the traffic. Some rinky-dink virtual site will never be able to handle it, and if the editors can't realize that, maybe they need to turn over their "community-oriented site" to someone more knowledgeable about the community.
They're not talking about a national ID card system.
The page (which is a poor one, since it's really just an agenda for presentations) covers two topics. One is an ID system for transportation workers, so that they have some way of verifying that the guy in the tarmac in a blue jumpsuit really is an employee who is allowed to be there. That is arguably a good thing. Many professions have this. I go to a hospital and my doctor is wearing an ID badge, and that makes me feel good, because if I trust the badge, I'm reasonably assured that this main isn't some psycho pretending to be a doctor. The TSA is looking at a way to unify the many different systems under one, so that rather than having 50 different types of identification depending on where you go, everyone will have the same types of ID. They're not implementing a new system. They're making an existing one more standardized.
The second is the Registered Traveler ID. This system is a voluntary system for frequent flyers to bypass the tedious and sometimes invasive security procedures at airports and train stations. Basically, you go through the background checks, etc. once, and then you can skip all the feel-down lines and breeze your way to the gate. Basically, they want to make it easier for people to travel. If you, as a citizen, don't want to be registered, don't get the card. You can go through the long lines with other unregistered travelers and your "privacy" (or the illusion of it) is safe.
All right, I'll bite.
That's why you run through the configuration utility before you compile the kernel. You don't need to branch the kernel source to limit features in the kernel. You just don't select them when you compile the kernel. Voila. Your kernel does not have those features. Do you think when Oscar Office Worker got that copy of Windows 2000 Workstation and Mitch MIS Admin got that copy of Windows 2000 Server, they came from different source repositories? I doubt it.
With that said, the kernel source is getting gigantic, and it would be nice if they released source bundles geared towards those who might be compiling in more desktop-oriented features and those who might be compiling for a server.
Try Resin, a non-free open-source servlet/JSP server. It can run standalone or as an Apache plugin and absolutely screams. It works great with the IBM JDK under Linux and has very cheap licensing fees and incredible developer support. I myself am not partial to the whole Java phenomena, but if I had to use a web server for serving up such code, I wouldn't hesitate to use Resin.
Sometimes, one has to step back from the plethora of big-name projects and realize that people are making considerable effort righting the mistakes made by the early pioneers of that medium.
And sometimes, paying a little for a server engine ain't such a bad thing. Most companies with budgets can afford cheapo licenses.
And yet, Slashdot, the site that posted this news, is still using Times New Roman.. ironic.
No, not ironic. Slashdot does not still use Times New Roman. Your web browser still defaults to Times New Roman. I have my default font on my MS box set to Tahoma, and Slashdot renders in Tahoma and is much easier to skim because of it. If anything, Slashdot's solution is the "most open" solution.
The real question is, "Why are you still using Times New Roman, when other better web reading fonts are out there?"
While I don't think Microsoft's software should be accepted by Peru simply because they're Microsoft, I think that saying the US government should not support Microsoft because Microsoft broke some anti-trust laws is a bit naive, even for open-source folks. The ambassador does have an interest to promote the interests of this country, and certainly promoting Microsoft does that, but it really has nothing to do with lining Microsoft's coffers (tax breaks and kickbacks do more than any puny Peruvian contract will do). It has more to do with the economy generated by Microsoft.
Think about exactly how much of our technological economy is based on Microsoft. The world's leading computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.) ship Microsoft-based systems. They provide support (which means jobs) for those systems. Dell has already tried shipping Linux systems and it failed miserably for them. Other companies have met limited success (what is VA Linux doing now?). Think about how many Windows admins there are for every Unix admin. Those people don't work for Microsoft, and they generate a huge amount of IT service domestic product. What about all the software houses that write software (some of which would undoubtedly be used in Peru) for Windows not because Windows is the best, but simply because it's the most ubiquitous?.
If you cut out Microsoft from *consideration*, you cut out huge areas of the US service industry. Can Dell make Linux-capable boxen? Sure. Is it in their best interests on a limited scale? History has shown no. Are their Linux IT companies to help the Peruvian government manage their systems? Yes. Are they chances good they'll be around in six months? It's iffy, given the poor track record of open-source company management and the relative unprofessionalism that the industry (perceptionally) seems mired in.
THe ambassador is not saying, "Accept Microsoft." He's saying "Don't shut out consideration of Microsoft by mandating an open-source regulation." Let free trade and market forces ("Is it a better product?" or "Is it a better deal?" or "Is it better service-wise?") determine which technology to choose, not some ideology. That's a capitalist mentality, true, but it's one that's allowed the growth of open-source in this country in some areas, and the last time I checked, Peru had an economy based on capitalism.
See, to me when someone calls it a "stable release", that means it's already been stabilized. Sure, you're going to have the occasional bug fix here and there, but actual "stabilization" should've been done in the 2.5.99 range, ie. the previous development branch. Once the stable tree is released, there shouldn't be a need to stabilize it and branching the new development tree right then makes sense. There should not be an "development" per se in the stable release after that, only the occasional maintenance.
.0 release of the kernel.
If the kernel maintainers would just grasp this one simple point, maybe this issue wouldn't be one, and maybe people wouldn't laugh at the
The USPTO has become such an outrage that it needs to become in issue in this year's elections. That can only happen if media attention can be drawn to absurd patents, and this is just the kind of thing to do it. Everyone can understand how preposterous this is; and then, if we're lucky, the TV news will get someone like Bruce Perens or ESR as a talking head for background, and that person can go on to say, "You know the patent office does this all the time, let me give you some more examples, and let me explain the damage that it does to our economy." It's our best chance.
Yeah, that's exactly what we need. In an era where people don't tune into politics because there aren't any real issues, let's throw the whole geek-led patent issue at them. When will the geek community learn that the best way to forward geek causes is not to try and get the general populace behind them? You would think after the beatings in high school we would learn that our plights don't interest those in the "real" world.
Look, our country is in a recession. The rich are getting tax breaks. More people are living in poverty. Social security, which many in our generation believe will form the foundation of our post-retirement earnings, is in jeopardy of falling apart. There is a war against terrorism and a parallel war against human rights. When you stack the fact that out of the thousands of patents that the USPTO gives out a year, a few are silly and challengable against the real problems plaguing our country right now, I don't think we're talking an election year issue.
Geeks need to get off their horses and walk among the people for whom silly patents and the lawsuits that question them are not life-challenging events.
p.s. The last thing we need is ESR getting on national television as a representative of the geek community. If you want to talk about ways to connect geek causes with mainstream America, ESR does not enter into the conversation.
And if you have something like that, you open yourself up to a wealth of potential problems in the program. Take this simple perl script.
#!perl
use strict;
my $pid = $$;
print $pid
If you stop it between those two $pid commands, there's no guarantee that you're going to get the same pid value back. Programs would have to be specifically programmed to handle this sort of thing (there are other examples, this is just the most basic; network programs particularly would have problems).
Get an ad-blocking program.
Yeah, that's great until the sites that you want to read go the way of the dodo because they depend on the click-throughs that their ads generate and that you're eliminating because you're more intent on preventing something from showing up than you are on actually getting the content you need.
Not you personally, but the royal "you".
Take a look at the world around you. On television, you see advertising, unless you're watching a premium service that you pay for, like HBO or pay-per-view. On radio, you see advertising unless you're listening to a station like NPR which is funded through user donations (and during fund drives, fundraising pleas work just like advertisements). Even movies have taken on advertising to supplement the rising costs of making movies people want to see. I'm not sure what made the Internet think it was going to be any different, but that attitude has caught up with its proponents and sites are failing.
I really wish that rather than Slashdot taking on additional, large-scale advertising or premium payment, they move to an NPR-like member format, where Slashdot is "sponsored" by various individuals and companies. I have more respect for NPR than I do for HBO, and I hope Slashdot doesn't turn into "every other site", but rather becomes a model of a way to be successful and still maintain respect.
I dont understand why any company would do this to their customers.
Do what to their customers? Video monitor them and try and prevent shoplifting? They've been doing that for ages. You just have a huge database to match from rather than one security guard's mind now. This will only affect two groups of people: shoplifters and people who look like shoplifters. Group A probably don't "shop" at Borders anyway, so by them boycotting Borders. Borders isn't losing any money (in fact, they're probably gaining money). Group B aren't Group B until they're actually accused, and if Borders is really smart, they won't actually do anything with the "accused" until they break the law by actually shoplifting something (ie. use the system to keep a closer eye on people who may be potential shoplifters). Of course, details are fuzzy, but the Slashdot crowd jumps on the worst-case-scenario bandwagon and proceeds to shoot themselves in the foot.
You're right, if you don't like it, don't shop there. If you're really lucky, you'll end up with no bookstores to shop at all because you're paranoid.
I went to school at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, one of the earlier schools to have a mandate that all students should be "wired" (as they called it). When I arrived as a freshman in 1995, all non-Greek on-campus housing was wired with 10baseT LAN access and all libraries and academic buildings (save for the Architecture building, funny enough) had access to the same network. Remember, this is the first year that Windows 95 came out. Through the network, not only did you have access to the Internet, but you also had a complete suite of software available without any installation hassles, including Maple, Word, Excel, and various other programs required for all your classes. By my sophomore year, when I started working for the IT guys as a part-time student installer, every on-campus student could bring in their machine and plug it in. I spent a good deal of time running around to various buildings, installing ethernet cards and making sure people could print, login, stuff like that.
The number one most important thing for a large-scale mass install like this is excellent documentation. I'm not talking user manuals, but step-by-step, written for special-ed third grader instructions. The docs for this project were excellent. I may have helped out maybe 50 people tops in those first couple of move-in weeks. I think the figures I remember were something like 70% of people needed no help beyond the instructions. That's pretty good when you're dealing with 5000 students, 3500 of which had older computers that were setup on the network the previous year (those are more difficult because they still have all their settings in place for older configurations).
The second most important tip is to have well-written support software. The software that Lehigh had doing the dirty work of configuring network settings, initializing programs for network use, and setting up printers and connections was pretty solid. Everyone once and while you'd get some oddball Packard Bell that didn't like it, but for the most part, it was solid. Macs were even supported well (indeed first, because the school actually transitioned from all Macs to all PCs during this period). People running Linux were usually clued in on their own, so no help needed there. In contrast, other friends have reported stories to me of utter nightmare installs due to programs crashing, wiping out configuration settings, installing the wrong software, etc. at other universities. If you don't have solid software that you yourself are comfortable using, don't push it out onto thousands of incoming freshmen. Every tiny annoyance you see will become a full-blown logistical nightmare as you try and coordinate your support staff to fix it.
Finally, use e-mail effectively. Our student consultants were all setup with mailing lists that we could post problems and solutions (mostly solutions) for even the rarest of situations. We were all told to do this and told to watch for the information as well. Information flows a lot better when a bunch of geeks can read threads of problems and solutions than when you go over it during organizational meetings. For us, those usually were reserved for congratulatory pizza and the occasional mass wishlist.
Of course, all that is probably a little dated (we didn't have wireless LANs yet when I left), but as far as logistics goes, it's pretty much the same good advice.
Documentation. Solid software. Communication. If you've got that, you should be fine.