This IS sad and unfortunate and etc. But it is definitely NOT the same as if someone tore up the books in your reading room. No information was destroyed and even if it was it could presumably be easily recovered from backup.
A better analogy would be: You provide a reading/public-discussion room. But now some bully is standing at the door intimidating everyone away.
Let's don't fall into the "this email virus cost my company $18 trillion dollars" mind-set. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
I've noticed/. acting flaky the last few days as well. There must be someone(s) working on both (or more) sites. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
The title and summary say "Can Unix handle it?" while the "below the fold" area asks "Can Linux/Intel handle it?".
I'd say the answer to the first question is a resounding "duh!". The answer to the second is a resounding "probably".
I found Oracle on Linux to be quite usable and nice (except for lame non-readline-enabled interactive tools) and fairly fast. But there is something...incongruous about spending $2000 on hardware, $2000 on Oracle and then using a free OS (that you WILL have to tweak to optimize).
Other tidbits: 1) Do NOT, I repeat NOT NOT NOT use Oracle on NT. The (evaluation) version I tried sucked BIG TIME. The bulk loader didn't properly support all the file formats it was supposed to and I was able to repeatedly crash the box by mistyping field names into the table creator GUI. Add all the problems of NT (no real remote management, etc) and you have yourselves the makings of a nightmare.
2) Raw devices are for more than recovery. They also help in the speed department. If you are going to be loading 30+ GB of data multiple times (this is a backup, right?) you are going to want speed. IIRC, ~100MB took about 5 minutes to bulk load (raw, not insert) on Oracle for Linux. That's 25 hours of load time for 30 GB.
3) Can't you take the backups from your primary DB and load them as restores to the backup DB? That would save tons of time and effort (up front AND ongoing). -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Red Hat isn't a distro for the people who want the latest and greatest updates as soon as possible."
You are suggesting that it would be good policy to delay security releases because some users might not want them? Even Microsoft doesn't use this argument... -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
See it was just a bunch of charts and graphs, I skipped to the "conclusions" section and found the following item: "All the major vendors have improved over time. That is to say, the number of updated packages released for security reasons and not just "normal" upgrade activity is decreasing, which suggests decreases in the number of security flaws."
Yes, that's right, the author finds that the number of updated packages is decreasing and concludes it's because security is getting better. If IDC released this report with s/Linux/Windows run against it we'd be all over them like green on grass.
Nothing to see here. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"This is definitely a great system for anyone who wants to have their computer be the size of several refrigerators."
I foresee a day when computers may be as small as one refridgerator. Probably there will be a world market for no more than 10 of these. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
If the microbes survive, we'll know that life originated not more than 10 minutes from Earth! (If your life had originated here, you'd be home by now) -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
This probably would have been fun and cool--if it hadn't been posted on Slashdot. Face it, Taco, your project now has a lot of intertia--you can't tiptoe delicately into something anymore. Once you mention it, it is toast.
How many times have we seen things like this on cool websites posted to Slashdot: "Well, we got mentioned on Slashdot. Sorry I have to take this down, but my bandwidth can't handle it." Pretty soon people are going to start thinking twice before even creating sites like this. Slashdot will be "stifling innovation". -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"What he doesn't realize (and this is short sighted stupidity) is that n cooperators will always beat n freeloaders in this example. "
I'm not sure who "he" refers to in this sentence, so I'll just respond to the last portion. Yes, N coops will beat N defectors. But the pool of defectors is not liable to "predation" by a lone cooperator while a pool of coops IS liable to predation by a single defector. Only if the coops can identify the defector (and, if the pool is large, communicate that identity to each other) can defectors be kept out. Neither of these conditions holds for the King example. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"The Prisoner's Dilemma is only interesting if the same players play together over and over. What we have here is a "one-shot" game, and in such a game the only rational strategy is to defect."
You mention Hofstadter's column, but you neglect to mention his conclusion that the REAL rational strategy is to cooperate, even in a one-shot. Of course, his experiment with rational people didn't pan out as he wanted...
In any case, there are two flaws in your argument:
1) This isn't a one-shot. There are other writers in the world and probably other novels from this writer. Thus we could play the game many more times. For this to work, we'd need some way of identifying the "players" however. In this case, that would also include "did they give copies to other defectors?"
2) (most importantly) You've got the payoff matrix wrong. In addition to the $1 vs $0 in the "Novel not Released" column, you need to add "Didn't get to read the end of the book". Assign tags like so:
A: I defect AND novel released B: I cooperate AND novel released C: I defect AND novel not released D: I cooperate AND novel not released
A game only counts as the Prisoner's Dilemna if A > B > C > D. As it stands, B (coop and get novel) is greater than C (defect and lose novel). But to some people the risk of a dollar is negligble compared with the cost of missing the end of a King novel. To determine the real chances you'd have to do a poll to find people who cared enough about King that they would download a partial novel. Then ask them for numbers that would satisfy
$1 x (risk of losing dollar) - (value of reading FULL novel) x (risk of NOT reading FULL novel) = 0
That said, I think King's choice of a percentage rather than a straight dollar amount will doom this to failure AND I think your idea of escrow is a good one. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Without propellant" is a little misleading. The ship still needs propellant to get INTO orbit in the first place and it still needs an energy source to reel the wire in/out (and a 5 km wire must weigh quite a bit) Could this latter be provided by the inducted electro? -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"There even seems to be a integrated mp3 player to listen to your own music while fragging your opponent."
Uh-oh. MS better integrate an MP3 player in the Doom clone they've already integrated into Excel... -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
That's right, kill of the 2D Fox Animation and give us more of the bi-dimensional animation from Fox like: The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Futurama and Family Guy. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
It was a breadth-first search over all the tools. For instance, there were several chapters on using the programming tool that comes with the kit. Problem is, I couldn't use the tool and wouldn't even if I could. So those chapters were largely waste for me. There was only one chapter on NQC. --
Just because they think you might be using Steg doesn't mean they can pull your message right out. First, encrypt it--that makes it harder to prove it's a message. Then, don't do some simple-minded "flip a single bit in every pixel" scheme. Have a pass phrase that determines which bits to flip. Etc. --
What we really need is some way of obscuring text so that "outsiders" can't read it. I suggest wrapping a long strip of paper around a rod, writing your message vertically, unwrapping and sending the strip (but not the rod) to the person you want to talk to. You will have to setup a rod-size with them beforehand, of course. --
That's only 10% of the problem. Another 30% or so is that even for any given human "pornography" is not well-defined. "I know it when I see it" they say, while reading Playboy and rejecting Hustler.
But the biggest problem is subjectivity. Example: Suppose a company made some software that you could explain (even in English) exactly what you didn't want to let through. And let's say the software was 100% accurate (letting through those images and only those images that you defined as non-pornographic). That definition STILL doesn't apply to ME. So if ISPs started using this software, the images I don't get to view are decided by someone else. That's no good. --
Let's say someone wrote some censorware that worked like this: Each proxy talks to the "mothership" (presumably at the company's site) to decide if a site is objectionable or not. That data set is decided by individual users who "vote" on items that got through the proxy. For instance, if enough people got through to "Naked-Teen-Girls.com" and told the server that was no good, it would be scored lower and lower until no proxies would let it through. Sounds good until you realize that if enough idiots are available (which is always the case) eventually totally harmless sites will be blocked (and probably many "harmful" sites would get through).
Now tell me: What's the difference between the above scheme and Slashdot's moderation system? --
"Jupiter Report Says Napster Users Buy MORE Music"
"More" is a comparative. Napster users buy more music than who or what? The answer makes a big difference.
If, for instance, the answer was "...than they would have if they hadn't used Napster" then we have good argument to bring to the record companies. (Of course, the record companies could say "sure, for now--but what about when EVERYBODY uses Napster?").
But if the answer was "...than people who don't use Napster" it proves nothing. Maybe Napster-usage and album-purchase volume are both functions of some common cause (like, enjoying listening to music). Maybe these people's purchase volume has even DECREASED since the introduction of Napster, but is still "more" than non-Napster users.
Personally, this poll does nothing for me. The point to me is not "how can I maximize the label (or even artist) profit". The issue to me is "do I really own the things I supposedly own", meaning "can I make copies of the data I 'own'". --
Even supposedly cross-platform code needs to be tested. And, usually, at least slightly modified to run on the new system. I don't think IBM is saying "write your software to run on Linux, here's a machine to do it on". I think they are saying "got some software that you'd like to make (sure) run(s) on Linux? come to our center and see!" --
IBM's strategy is very smart--help APP developers start using Linux and there will be more apps--which means more users, which means more of everything for everybody.
But throwing money at the kernel people gets you nothing. The kernel people aren't driven by money. You might conceivably find someone who was unable to implement a feature due to lack of money, but all your money has bought is the feature--not apps that exploit the feature.
In short, IBM is throwing money at problems that benefit from having money thrown at them--but no farther. --
Except don't get the OReilly book. I paged through it at the store and it looked like it was doing a breadth-first search on the tools rather than a depth-first on any particular tool. Since I run Linux, I use nqc--so I bought that book by the NQC creator.
I've wanted to get into robotics for quite a while and made numerous attempts to learn electronics (even the basics). Many failures later I can only conclude that I am not an EE type.
Then I got the Mindstorms--AWESOME. Now instead of having to be a mechanical, electrical AND software engineer, I can be a half-assed mechanical engineer, and a mostly-competent software engineer and get 10 times the results.
Of course, if your situation is different (i.e. you are good at EE but bad at programming) this advice doesn't apply to you... --
"The major point is the lack of reusable code between major applications..."
I agree that this can be a problem if you are writing a "major application" under Unix. You constantly come across problems where you think "surely this has been solved before".
And GNOME is doing an admirable job of solving some of this problems in libraries--unfortunately they still are global solutions. You have to buy into GNOME to an unacceptable degree to get the solutions to work. For instance, you have to use GTK, CORBA, etc, etc, etc. --
Slashdot Mirror
This IS sad and unfortunate and etc. But it is definitely NOT the same as if someone tore up the books in your reading room. No information was destroyed and even if it was it could presumably be easily recovered from backup.
A better analogy would be: You provide a reading/public-discussion room. But now some bully is standing at the door intimidating everyone away.
Let's don't fall into the "this email virus cost my company $18 trillion dollars" mind-set.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
I've noticed /. acting flaky the last few days as well. There must be someone(s) working on both (or more) sites.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"I hope they will not give up and try to resurrect the site soon."
I hope just the opposite. I want them to resurrect the site. 8^)
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
The title and summary say "Can Unix handle it?" while the "below the fold" area asks "Can Linux/Intel handle it?".
I'd say the answer to the first question is a resounding "duh!". The answer to the second is a resounding "probably".
I found Oracle on Linux to be quite usable and nice (except for lame non-readline-enabled interactive tools) and fairly fast. But there is something...incongruous about spending $2000 on hardware, $2000 on Oracle and then using a free OS (that you WILL have to tweak to optimize).
Other tidbits:
1) Do NOT, I repeat NOT NOT NOT use Oracle on NT. The (evaluation) version I tried sucked BIG TIME. The bulk loader didn't properly support all the file formats it was supposed to and I was able to repeatedly crash the box by mistyping field names into the table creator GUI. Add all the problems of NT (no real remote management, etc) and you have yourselves the makings of a nightmare.
2) Raw devices are for more than recovery. They also help in the speed department. If you are going to be loading 30+ GB of data multiple times (this is a backup, right?) you are going to want speed. IIRC, ~100MB took about 5 minutes to bulk load (raw, not insert) on Oracle for Linux. That's 25 hours of load time for 30 GB.
3) Can't you take the backups from your primary DB and load them as restores to the backup DB? That would save tons of time and effort (up front AND ongoing).
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Red Hat isn't a distro for the people who want the latest and greatest updates as soon as possible."
You are suggesting that it would be good policy to delay security releases because some users might not want them? Even Microsoft doesn't use this argument...
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
(Yet Another Statistical Security Story)
See it was just a bunch of charts and graphs, I skipped to the "conclusions" section and found the following item: "All the major vendors have improved over time. That is to say, the number of updated packages released for security reasons and not just "normal" upgrade activity is decreasing, which suggests decreases in the number of security flaws."
Yes, that's right, the author finds that the number of updated packages is decreasing and concludes it's because security is getting better. If IDC released this report with s/Linux/Windows run against it we'd be all over them like green on grass.
Nothing to see here.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"This is definitely a great system for anyone who wants to have their computer be the size of several refrigerators."
I foresee a day when computers may be as small as one refridgerator. Probably there will be a world market for no more than 10 of these.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
If the microbes survive, we'll know that life originated not more than 10 minutes from Earth! (If your life had originated here, you'd be home by now)
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
This probably would have been fun and cool--if it hadn't been posted on Slashdot. Face it, Taco, your project now has a lot of intertia--you can't tiptoe delicately into something anymore. Once you mention it, it is toast.
How many times have we seen things like this on cool websites posted to Slashdot: "Well, we got mentioned on Slashdot. Sorry I have to take this down, but my bandwidth can't handle it." Pretty soon people are going to start thinking twice before even creating sites like this. Slashdot will be "stifling innovation".
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"What he doesn't realize (and this is short sighted stupidity) is that n cooperators will always beat n freeloaders in this example. "
I'm not sure who "he" refers to in this sentence, so I'll just respond to the last portion. Yes, N coops will beat N defectors. But the pool of defectors is not liable to "predation" by a lone cooperator while a pool of coops IS liable to predation by a single defector. Only if the coops can identify the defector (and, if the pool is large, communicate that identity to each other) can defectors be kept out. Neither of these conditions holds for the King example.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"The Prisoner's Dilemma is only interesting if the same players play together over and over. What we have here is a "one-shot" game, and in such a game the only rational strategy is to defect."
You mention Hofstadter's column, but you neglect to mention his conclusion that the REAL rational strategy is to cooperate, even in a one-shot. Of course, his experiment with rational people didn't pan out as he wanted...
In any case, there are two flaws in your argument:
1) This isn't a one-shot. There are other writers in the world and probably other novels from this writer. Thus we could play the game many more times. For this to work, we'd need some way of identifying the "players" however. In this case, that would also include "did they give copies to other defectors?"
2) (most importantly) You've got the payoff matrix wrong. In addition to the $1 vs $0 in the "Novel not Released" column, you need to add "Didn't get to read the end of the book". Assign tags like so:
A: I defect AND novel released
B: I cooperate AND novel released
C: I defect AND novel not released
D: I cooperate AND novel not released
A game only counts as the Prisoner's Dilemna if A > B > C > D. As it stands, B (coop and get novel) is greater than C (defect and lose novel). But to some people the risk of a dollar is negligble compared with the cost of missing the end of a King novel. To determine the real chances you'd have to do a poll to find people who cared enough about King that they would download a partial novel. Then ask them for numbers that would satisfy
$1 x (risk of losing dollar) - (value of reading FULL novel) x (risk of NOT reading FULL novel) = 0
That said, I think King's choice of a percentage rather than a straight dollar amount will doom this to failure AND I think your idea of escrow is a good one.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Without propellant" is a little misleading. The ship still needs propellant to get INTO orbit in the first place and it still needs an energy source to reel the wire in/out (and a 5 km wire must weigh quite a bit) Could this latter be provided by the inducted electro?
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"There even seems to be a integrated mp3 player to listen to your own music while fragging your opponent."
Uh-oh. MS better integrate an MP3 player in the Doom clone they've already integrated into Excel...
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
That's right, kill of the 2D Fox Animation and give us more of the bi-dimensional animation from Fox like: The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Futurama and Family Guy.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
It was a breadth-first search over all the tools. For instance, there were several chapters on using the programming tool that comes with the kit. Problem is, I couldn't use the tool and wouldn't even if I could. So those chapters were largely waste for me. There was only one chapter on NQC.
--
Just because they think you might be using Steg doesn't mean they can pull your message right out. First, encrypt it--that makes it harder to prove it's a message. Then, don't do some simple-minded "flip a single bit in every pixel" scheme. Have a pass phrase that determines which bits to flip. Etc.
--
What we really need is some way of obscuring text so that "outsiders" can't read it. I suggest wrapping a long strip of paper around a rod, writing your message vertically, unwrapping and sending the strip (but not the rod) to the person you want to talk to. You will have to setup a rod-size with them beforehand, of course.
--
"The problem is that porn is semantics."
That's only 10% of the problem. Another 30% or so is that even for any given human "pornography" is not well-defined. "I know it when I see it" they say, while reading Playboy and rejecting Hustler.
But the biggest problem is subjectivity. Example: Suppose a company made some software that you could explain (even in English) exactly what you didn't want to let through. And let's say the software was 100% accurate (letting through those images and only those images that you defined as non-pornographic). That definition STILL doesn't apply to ME. So if ISPs started using this software, the images I don't get to view are decided by someone else. That's no good.
--
Let's say someone wrote some censorware that worked like this: Each proxy talks to the "mothership" (presumably at the company's site) to decide if a site is objectionable or not. That data set is decided by individual users who "vote" on items that got through the proxy. For instance, if enough people got through to "Naked-Teen-Girls.com" and told the server that was no good, it would be scored lower and lower until no proxies would let it through. Sounds good until you realize that if enough idiots are available (which is always the case) eventually totally harmless sites will be blocked (and probably many "harmful" sites would get through).
Now tell me: What's the difference between the above scheme and Slashdot's moderation system?
--
"Jupiter Report Says Napster Users Buy MORE Music"
"More" is a comparative. Napster users buy more music than who or what? The answer makes a big difference.
If, for instance, the answer was "...than they would have if they hadn't used Napster" then we have good argument to bring to the record companies. (Of course, the record companies could say "sure, for now--but what about when EVERYBODY uses Napster?").
But if the answer was "...than people who don't use Napster" it proves nothing. Maybe Napster-usage and album-purchase volume are both functions of some common cause (like, enjoying listening to music). Maybe these people's purchase volume has even DECREASED since the introduction of Napster, but is still "more" than non-Napster users.
Personally, this poll does nothing for me. The point to me is not "how can I maximize the label (or even artist) profit". The issue to me is "do I really own the things I supposedly own", meaning "can I make copies of the data I 'own'".
--
(any IBMers out there want to correct me?)
"...companies like IBM promoting Linux software."
Even supposedly cross-platform code needs to be tested. And, usually, at least slightly modified to run on the new system. I don't think IBM is saying "write your software to run on Linux, here's a machine to do it on". I think they are saying "got some software that you'd like to make (sure) run(s) on Linux? come to our center and see!"
--
IBM's strategy is very smart--help APP developers start using Linux and there will be more apps--which means more users, which means more of everything for everybody.
But throwing money at the kernel people gets you nothing. The kernel people aren't driven by money. You might conceivably find someone who was unable to implement a feature due to lack of money, but all your money has bought is the feature--not apps that exploit the feature.
In short, IBM is throwing money at problems that benefit from having money thrown at them--but no farther.
--
Except don't get the OReilly book. I paged through it at the store and it looked like it was doing a breadth-first search on the tools rather than a depth-first on any particular tool. Since I run Linux, I use nqc--so I bought that book by the NQC creator.
--
I've wanted to get into robotics for quite a while and made numerous attempts to learn electronics (even the basics). Many failures later I can only conclude that I am not an EE type.
Then I got the Mindstorms--AWESOME. Now instead of having to be a mechanical, electrical AND software engineer, I can be a half-assed mechanical engineer, and a mostly-competent software engineer and get 10 times the results.
Of course, if your situation is different (i.e. you are good at EE but bad at programming) this advice doesn't apply to you...
--
"The major point is the lack of reusable code between major applications..."
I agree that this can be a problem if you are writing a "major application" under Unix. You constantly come across problems where you think "surely this has been solved before".
And GNOME is doing an admirable job of solving some of this problems in libraries--unfortunately they still are global solutions. You have to buy into GNOME to an unacceptable degree to get the solutions to work. For instance, you have to use GTK, CORBA, etc, etc, etc.
--