I wrote a few hundred lines of code to solve a very specific problem I was having, and dumped it on sourceforge. I've moved on, but I do hope the code can be of use to someone else.
To me, OSS is more about developers helping developers, and having a (possibly specious) guarantee that your generosity will be returned in kind, than it is about political goals...
Our firm, a small VAR/ASP, has decided to make a similar move to Linux/Perl/Apache from Windows/ASP/IIS.
Similar reasons, too. However our ownership have decided to stick with Microsoft SQL Server on the database side. Looks like our options on the Unix side for databases will be limited to SyBase, based on the ease of porting code from MS-SQL.
I wonder if this indicates a real trend, or just a couple of isolated incidents. Part of Microsoft's strength is the army of small developers...
what strikes me as the major limitation is the fact that it is document markup.
while there are times when being able to place routines inside documents is an advantage, there are times when the document itself gets in the way of visualizing the application's logic
it may be that I am unduly extrapolating from experience with commercial products that have similar features, but I prefer to write code that produces a document as output, not a document that contains code.
For example, I find writing a CGI to produce HTML is more powerful than inserting ASP code into my HTML documents. My own limitation rather than the language? Maybe...
Crystal Reports' interface is similar in concept, throwing code into discrete areas of a document...
Wow, does BOA look limited. I can see how it would be a viable alternative for extremely simple web apps, but the lack of complexity looks pretty damned crippling to me when you start looking at deploying more complex applications.
An alternate (better?) definition might be "Someone who is a citizen of any of the countries comprising 'the Americas'" (That covers all of the Canadian and Mexican US-immigrants who I just excluded, and includes most other people in this hemisphere who should be considered 'American':)
believe me, you don't have to worry about that one. We're just as pleased as can be not to be thought of as 'Americans'.
...Be in their own special space? IE: A read-only space?
The only problem with your idea is that then you would have a massive crapflood about "fascism" in every other/. post for months, beacause comments weren't allowed.
Don't believe me? Ask Michael about the people he pissed off...
As it is, most NT sysadmins I know/work with are utterly lacking in their ability to keep up to date on security patches/fixes etc.
Yeah, It does sound like flamebait but it's sadly been true in my experience too. The recent exploit that hit my employer's servers is case in point - the IIS patches to prevent it were 7 months old and had not been applied. When the inevitable happened, the admins mumbled something about "waiting for the service pack", and proceeded to apply 11 previously-unapplied patches to IIS.
*shudder* It's very unnerving to have the databases I am responsible for on these swiss-cheese servers...
no servers WHATSOEVER allowed, i.e. they explicitly prohibited http and ftp
So far, so good. I don't know if the cable operators in my neck of the woods are stupid, or overworked, or don't really care, but it all works out the same. Supposedly we are limited to one IP unless we beg for more, because of some kind of naming scheme. At least here in SW Ontario, @Home's network doesn't do the checking they claim they do. Also, no problems running ftp and http servers at all. And from the amount of portscanning traffic that I see in my logs, I am assuming there are a LOT of servers running on 24.x.x.x...
I have two drives in my computer, and having dealt with pullout drives in the past, I find switching the boot order in BIOS to be a lot easier than dealing with two pullout drives. On the other hand, the "cool factor" is not as evident as when you have two hard drives in those little plastic boxes.
I wonder about the physical punishment a drive in a pullout box takes, though... does it result in reduced lifespan?
Well, I don't know about you, but I must say that I prefer my baseball players to be rock-stupid, backwoods types. It makes me feel like there is a little karmic balance in the world. No fair if they are smart and interesting too, because then I have no way to satisfactorily explain my inability to run, catch or throw...
People that make and maintain Databases are called "database administrators", and Microsoft has an acronym for them as well, it's MSDBA (MS Database Administrator).
Uh, last time I checked my wallet card, the certification is MCDBA, not MSDBA. Thanks for playing though.
If you hire a green MCSE and let them code your web apps and make and maintain a mission critical database, you deserve whatever "hair-raising" consequences that happen to you.
Uh, right. Unfortunately to lots and lots of PHBs (including the ones who sign my paycheck unfortunately) MSCE == all around Microsoft platform expert.
If you're interested in scaling Windows, look into hiring DCOM/MTS/COM+ programmers and have them teach your MCSEs how to use these technologies, coupled with Network Load Balancing and SQL clustering and/or replication to scale out you systems. A well architectured Windows platform can scale more than most people think, because so many think MCSE is the be-all-and-end-all of MS platform know-how.
Your point is well-taken. As a matter of fact, I am the guy you are talking about. I have been trying to maintain and rebuild the databases and web appls that the MCSEs built over the past couple of years. What I see is pretty hair-raising. On my agenda for today is applying basic constraints (including foreign keys[!!]) to a database used by our biggest customer at five locations across North America.
Absolutely agreed that most Microsoft database installations can probably double their efficiency and scalability simply by having employees who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that most "qualified" Windows technicians and admins I have seen have skills that are useful at the small workgroup or departmental level. That fact itself, rather than the technical limitations of the platform, supplies the limiting factor in most cases.
And also notice how Linux was only in 1 category. Just because it can be tweaked to perform well in one category, it still isn't anywhere as robust or fast as the others.
That's probably true, but an organization using Linux has a much more clear path to scaling up than an organization using Windows. The skill sets required to develop for/administrate Linux are at least in the same ballpark as the skills required to work with the big 64-bit Unices.
However, if your people are only familiar with using the Access/SQL "upsize wizard" and clicking a few dialog boxes, you aren't going to be even close to ready for the big boxes when you need them..
My organization is looking at this very issue right now. As a small ASP we've found it easy to find (semi) skilled web developers and techs to work with the Windows platform, but now that our customers are demanding that we scale our operations the skill set of those MCSE's just doesn't cut it.
I don't see that our points of view are incompatible. I agree with all of your statements.
I don't dispute that the source of art is a conscious mind, or that trying to infer the intent of that mind is a useful and enjoyable game.
The point I am trying to make is just that it is impossible to truly know the "authorial intent" behind a piece of art. That being the case, I think it more useful to look at art as an independent artifact free of authorial intent.
It's the meaning that the viewer reads into the art that makes it interesting...
Huh? Every time you deal with people you infer intent. Will that driver make a right turn? Does that girl want to go out with me?
Art is no different from any other domain of human interaction; it can't be done without making guesses about intent
I'd disagree, because a piece of art, whether it is a book or a painting, is a text, not a human being. Once your work enters the world of texts, it is beyond the control or intent of the original creator. A good example of a text that behaves this way is the Bible. To paraphrase the original poster, any sense you have that the author of the Bible has an intent that can be measured today, and applied to your everyday life (for example in the form of values that can be applied), is an illusion for certain.
When interacting directly with a human you have their (relatively) unmediated behaviour to observe as a measure of their intent. When you are interacting with a slashdot posting, a biblical text, or a painting, you have only a heavily mediated view of the original human behaviour to make judgements from.
That's why there's been nothing new under the sun in Fantasy for so long - Tolkien said it all
I think it depends on your terms. If you mean "high fantasy" with elves, trolls, dragons, etc. etc. then I think Tolkein pretty much killed the subgenre by perfecting it. Why people like Brooks bother to pastiche him is beyond my understanding. Probably because there's scads of money in it I suppose...
Now, "fantasy" in general is by definition an open basket, and I don't think Tolkein's stuff is even really all that great. When you get out of the realm of "high fantasy" I think you'll find some really great material. If you demand nothing but elves, dwarves and hobgoblins, well, then you're probably the kind of person who reads "star trek" novelizations...
For fantasy that will blow your mind, try some Tim Powers. "The Anubis Gates", or "The Drawing of The Dark" should get you started.
Slashdot Mirror
This has been my, very limited, experience.
I wrote a few hundred lines of code to solve a very specific problem I was having, and dumped it on sourceforge. I've moved on, but I do hope the code can be of use to someone else.
To me, OSS is more about developers helping developers, and having a (possibly specious) guarantee that your generosity will be returned in kind, than it is about political goals...
Our firm, a small VAR/ASP, has decided to make a similar move to Linux/Perl/Apache from Windows/ASP/IIS.
Similar reasons, too. However our ownership have decided to stick with Microsoft SQL Server on the database side. Looks like our options on the Unix side for databases will be limited to SyBase, based on the ease of porting code from MS-SQL.
I wonder if this indicates a real trend, or just a couple of isolated incidents. Part of Microsoft's strength is the army of small developers...
what strikes me as the major limitation is the fact that it is document markup.
while there are times when being able to place routines inside documents is an advantage, there are times when the document itself gets in the way of visualizing the application's logic
it may be that I am unduly extrapolating from experience with commercial products that have similar features, but I prefer to write code that produces a document as output, not a document that contains code.
For example, I find writing a CGI to produce HTML is more powerful than inserting ASP code into my HTML documents. My own limitation rather than the language? Maybe...
Crystal Reports' interface is similar in concept, throwing code into discrete areas of a document...
Wow, does BOA look limited. I can see how it would be a viable alternative for extremely simple web apps, but the lack of complexity looks pretty damned crippling to me when you start looking at deploying more complex applications.
what we need is a testing algrythem that all processors use. then we can rate chips as "it completed the Moffitt algorithem in 1.5 minutes!".
But won't you then have the problem of chips and architectures designed around the "Moffit algorithm"?
Kind of like the consumer 3D market, where drivers are tweaked for the common benchmarks...
I have @home in Windsor, Ontario and I get ~500kbps upstream, steady.
Don't you think it's irresponsible to list the IPs of owned hosts in public?
The kiddies will find them anyway, but there's no need to make it easy for them
BTW my CR2 stats page (written in perl, to feed the language flamefest) shows 980 code red II hits vs. 160 code red I hits.
The IP list is generated and stored more privately, looking for a good way to notify them...
Uh, I don't live in the USA so I really don't care what they do to themselves as long as they leave it all on their side of the border...
An alternate (better?) definition might be "Someone who is a citizen of any of the countries comprising 'the Americas'" (That covers all of the Canadian and Mexican US-immigrants who I just excluded, and includes most other people in this hemisphere who should be considered 'American' :)
believe me, you don't have to worry about that one. We're just as pleased as can be not to be thought of as 'Americans'.
couldn't resist...;)
OK let me get this straight. First, IBM. Now, Kodak.
What other companies that hold/held monopoly power are going to complain about someone else's monopoly next?
U.S. Steel? AT&T? Tim Horton's?
not that I think Kodak is wrong to cry foul, but come ON guys don't you remember EASTMAN KODAK CO. v. IMAGE TECHNICAL SERVICES, INC., et al. ??
uh, here's the link. They were convicted of violating the Sherman act in '92.
href=http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1The only problem with your idea is that then you would have a massive crapflood about "fascism" in every other /. post for months, beacause comments weren't allowed.
Don't believe me? Ask Michael about the people he pissed off...
The funny thing is I don't think we work at the same shop, unless you are in Canada.
I guess MCSEs are the same everywhere...
As it is, most NT sysadmins I know/work with are utterly lacking in their ability to keep up to date on security patches/fixes etc.
Yeah, It does sound like flamebait but it's sadly been true in my experience too. The recent exploit that hit my employer's servers is case in point - the IIS patches to prevent it were 7 months old and had not been applied. When the inevitable happened, the admins mumbled something about "waiting for the service pack", and proceeded to apply 11 previously-unapplied patches to IIS.
*shudder* It's very unnerving to have the databases I am responsible for on these swiss-cheese servers...
no servers WHATSOEVER allowed, i.e. they explicitly prohibited http and ftp So far, so good. I don't know if the cable operators in my neck of the woods are stupid, or overworked, or don't really care, but it all works out the same. Supposedly we are limited to one IP unless we beg for more, because of some kind of naming scheme. At least here in SW Ontario, @Home's network doesn't do the checking they claim they do. Also, no problems running ftp and http servers at all. And from the amount of portscanning traffic that I see in my logs, I am assuming there are a LOT of servers running on 24.x.x.x...
I wonder about the physical punishment a drive in a pullout box takes, though ... does it result in reduced lifespan?
... why does it look like one of the flying motorcycles from "Galactica 1980"?
Geeks wonderful, jocks evil.
Well, I don't know about you, but I must say that I prefer my baseball players to be rock-stupid, backwoods types. It makes me feel like there is a little karmic balance in the world. No fair if they are smart and interesting too, because then I have no way to satisfactorily explain my inability to run, catch or throw...
Does anyone else remember this game or should I just check myself into a "home" (as my wife has threatened to do to me recently)?
It did exist, we all loved it (that damned babel fish!), and you can play a java version of it here.
For the Goatse-paranoid, that's http://www.xcalibur.co.uk/games/hitchhik.html
Uh, how is this off-topic? Somewhat funny on-topic humour, posted early on in the thread. +1 funny or at worst +0 ignore...
If I was the guy who moderated this down I'd fear metamod...
People that make and maintain Databases are called "database administrators", and Microsoft has an acronym for them as well, it's MSDBA (MS Database Administrator).
Uh, last time I checked my wallet card, the certification is MCDBA, not MSDBA. Thanks for playing though.
If you hire a green MCSE and let them code your web apps and make and maintain a mission critical database, you deserve whatever "hair-raising" consequences that happen to you.
Uh, right. Unfortunately to lots and lots of PHBs (including the ones who sign my paycheck unfortunately) MSCE == all around Microsoft platform expert.
If you're interested in scaling Windows, look into hiring DCOM/MTS/COM+ programmers and have them teach your MCSEs how to use these technologies, coupled with Network Load Balancing and SQL clustering and/or replication to scale out you systems. A well architectured Windows platform can scale more than most people think, because so many think MCSE is the be-all-and-end-all of MS platform know-how.
Your point is well-taken. As a matter of fact, I am the guy you are talking about. I have been trying to maintain and rebuild the databases and web appls that the MCSEs built over the past couple of years. What I see is pretty hair-raising. On my agenda for today is applying basic constraints (including foreign keys[!!]) to a database used by our biggest customer at five locations across North America.
Absolutely agreed that most Microsoft database installations can probably double their efficiency and scalability simply by having employees who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that most "qualified" Windows technicians and admins I have seen have skills that are useful at the small workgroup or departmental level. That fact itself, rather than the technical limitations of the platform, supplies the limiting factor in most cases.
And also notice how Linux was only in 1 category. Just because it can be tweaked to perform well in one category, it still isn't anywhere as robust or fast as the others.
That's probably true, but an organization using Linux has a much more clear path to scaling up than an organization using Windows. The skill sets required to develop for/administrate Linux are at least in the same ballpark as the skills required to work with the big 64-bit Unices.
However, if your people are only familiar with using the Access/SQL "upsize wizard" and clicking a few dialog boxes, you aren't going to be even close to ready for the big boxes when you need them..
My organization is looking at this very issue right now. As a small ASP we've found it easy to find (semi) skilled web developers and techs to work with the Windows platform, but now that our customers are demanding that we scale our operations the skill set of those MCSE's just doesn't cut it.
I don't see that our points of view are incompatible. I agree with all of your statements.
I don't dispute that the source of art is a conscious mind, or that trying to infer the intent of that mind is a useful and enjoyable game.
The point I am trying to make is just that it is impossible to truly know the "authorial intent" behind a piece of art. That being the case, I think it more useful to look at art as an independent artifact free of authorial intent.
It's the meaning that the viewer reads into the art that makes it interesting...
Huh? Every time you deal with people you infer intent. Will that driver make a right turn? Does that girl want to go out with me?
Art is no different from any other domain of human interaction; it can't be done without making guesses about intent
I'd disagree, because a piece of art, whether it is a book or a painting, is a text, not a human being. Once your work enters the world of texts, it is beyond the control or intent of the original creator. A good example of a text that behaves this way is the Bible. To paraphrase the original poster, any sense you have that the author of the Bible has an intent that can be measured today, and applied to your everyday life (for example in the form of values that can be applied), is an illusion for certain.
When interacting directly with a human you have their (relatively) unmediated behaviour to observe as a measure of their intent. When you are interacting with a slashdot posting, a biblical text, or a painting, you have only a heavily mediated view of the original human behaviour to make judgements from.
That's why there's been nothing new under the sun in Fantasy for so long - Tolkien said it all
I think it depends on your terms. If you mean "high fantasy" with elves, trolls, dragons, etc. etc. then I think Tolkein pretty much killed the subgenre by perfecting it. Why people like Brooks bother to pastiche him is beyond my understanding. Probably because there's scads of money in it I suppose...
Now, "fantasy" in general is by definition an open basket, and I don't think Tolkein's stuff is even really all that great. When you get out of the realm of "high fantasy" I think you'll find some really great material. If you demand nothing but elves, dwarves and hobgoblins, well, then you're probably the kind of person who reads "star trek" novelizations...
For fantasy that will blow your mind, try some Tim Powers. "The Anubis Gates", or "The Drawing of The Dark" should get you started.