I like the FRESH acronym another person suggested. I would also suggest:
Better Secure Telnet, or "BeST" for short.
My reason is that this clearly changes the name, as he requested, but it also implies that his closed, costly implementation has been superceded by something superior. Which it has.
What your former employer is doing simply shows they're a bunch of jerks. But it is not illegal or immoral to be a jerk, just unattractive.
Hmm. Well, the poster can at least do the same thing that the company is doing. In other words, if the company is going contact his current employer because he's saying libelous or slanderous things publically, he can certainly sue right back for their slanderous statements. And almost anything his old company says will be.
For instance, if the old company says to the new company, "your employee is slandering us" -- then they better have proved the slander in a court of law, or they'll be in a world of hurt. If his old company instead merely says, "look what your employee said" then they better have proved or at least have proof that that employee actually said it. If the company is merely going to lob accusations, they need to understand they're playing a dangerous game that may get them stuck with absurdly large punitive damages.
This is the very same reason that many employers will only confirm someone's job title and dates of employment. Saying anything else, such as "he worked as hard as everyone else" may sound nice, but open the company to a lawsuit if in fact that employee felt that his 80 hour work weeks meant he worked harder than everyone else. Boom. The company is in legal trouble.
I have practical experience with Oracle on Solaris (while I was at Borland and SST), with Access on Windows NT (while I was at Actuate), with CSV flat-file databases on Solaris, and with MySQL on Linux (at SST). In addition, the employee I found thanks to the/. thread on hiring, has experience with MySQL on Linux as well.
From what I can tell, MySQL is fast, fast, fast for certain limited uses, and can handle databases into the hundreds of thousands of records, although I have not pushed it into millions yet. At somewhere around 250,000 database calls every day, the thing starts to have problems, like the server needs a reboot. I don't know if the same problem happens if those calls are spread out over a long period of time. Throwing more iron at it, or reworking the indexes may help. We haven't upgraded to 3.23 stable yet, though, so that may solve the problem. In addition, we've begun using the "p" functions for databases -- you know, the "persistent" database connections. Use "mysql_pconnect" instead of "mysql_connect" for (sometimes) better response.
One of the nice backups for MySQL (and few people seem to use this, but I like it a lot) is that it can write out every SQL update/insert/delete statement to a file. In the case of database corruption, you can take that file, go though the last few statments, and try to correct it. Then regen the ENTIRE database from that SQL file. In addition, 3.23 has something new -- replication or mirroring, something where it duplicates the database onto backup disks. I haven't used that yet. Perhaps someone reading this could share more.
As for Oracle, yes, it can handle just about anything. I don't like the speed on older versions of the database. 8i is good, but actually not as fast as MySQL for some selects. I haven't tried 9. But it is a workhorse, it is storing hundreds of tables and millions of records for us. My current employer is trying to move away from it, because of the cost issue you cited. One of the things I like about Oracle is triggers, which MySQL doesn't have yet.
I know that the worst database I used was back at Borland in 1996 -- I don't remember what the database was called, it was part of a Lotus Domino system. In any case, with 100,000 member records in the database, it took a good 20 minutes for it to add a new record. It was miserable. We had to put big bold text on the "become a member" page that warned of the wait, and I had to write a JavaScript (onclick) for the submit button, that returned false on subsequent clicks, so that people didn't abort the procedure on accident. I hated that. I felt like we were this technology company that didn't understand Web technology.
As an interesting aside, back then Borland had a product called IntraBuilder. It was one of the first Cold Fusion-like systems, but it's database system was just poor. That's partly why they named it as they did -- they needed to brand it as an intranet tool, because they knew it wasn't fast enough for a full Internet deployment. But once the product was out there, the pressure was on to use it on Borland's site. We tried, Chris Malatesta and I. But I recall showing the IntraBuilder team some pages it served up, and how there was a full-second delay per user. Their response? "That seems acceptable to us." Chris and I tried to talk to them about scalability, about how the seconds accumulate and build up. They had no idea how hammered the product would be on a "real" Internet Web site. The product died, thankfully, when we ran a test with dozens of users, and database corruption was rampant -- one person's password appearing on another person's browser, and so on. Ugh. I don't miss those early days.
I agree with John Murdoch's excellent post (why is his post only +3? He offered much more authoritative information than the rest of us). It sounds like this is a large burden on an imprecise system, and that GPS is so lacking in contextual information as to be dangerous. By that I mean, if it can only determine your latitude and longitude, but cannot determine your "z-order" as it may be (whether you're on the overpass or underpass), then it cannot correctly set your speed.
However. One of the systems in place in San Francisco (and it has problems, I'm not offering a perfect solution here, just a working one) is a scanning device for people who use toll bridges. As you pass the toll booth, it scans your car, sees the account id plate you've attached, and debits your account. The solution for speed limiting is to simply reverse that system: put the scanners on the cars, and attach the "plates" to the speed limit signs that already exist.
This does a number of things. First, it distributes the load -- now we have a scalable system that can be put in place community by community. Second, it preserves context -- now someone on an overpass will scan the sign that is also on that overpass. It will not be able to scan the signs on the streets underneath, and will thus enjoy much less ambiguous data.
You may wonder about the risks. Well, since the system is already working in a few places (albeit in reverse), I think the system has more promise. However, it is open to manipulation -- signs could be vandalized, etc. And you would probably want to post more signs, so that redudant signals ensure "uptime" for the speed limiting device. And you would want to revert to no limit in the absence of data. But this may be more practical, and I haven't patented the idea if anyone wants to steal it.
Personally, I think these kinds of discoveries only bolster my belief that God created this universe. Here's why.
The Bible (and perhaps the Torah, which shares some similar (same?) text, but I'm not Jewish, so I'm sure) states that man was created in the likeness of God. People speculate as to what that means -- God is about 6 feet tall, or God experiences love and hate and passion as we do, or whatever. But I think it is mostly our drive to create. God took the ultimate step in creating this universe, but we take similar steps every day -- from programming complex gaming worlds to virtual life to buildings to atriums to everything else. Our ability to create is unparalleled -- for instance, dolphins are likely just as intelligent as we are, but I am hard pressed to point to their many underwater creations.
The ultimate creations, at least the creations I am most satisfied with, are the ones where a foundation is laid down for evolution. Preprogrammed creations are okay -- the characters in Diablo, the simple AI in some scientific experiments, etc. But what is sooooo satisfying is to create a framework, some general parameters for a learning program, and then letting the program loose in the environment. Because it may take advantage of your framework in ways you NEVER imagined, even though you built it!
And to come full circle, back to the point of this thread: I think God may turn out to be the master programmer, the ultimate scientist, who built a framework so astounding, so complex, and so consistent, that we could eventually become "self aware" of our own framework, and master it in ways unimagined. I don't believe that God preprogrammed everything here, and I expect that whatever base God did create is "open" enough to surprise us with other life forms, misconceptions about life and our role in the universe, and just about anything else. To see us discovering the foundation God laid down for us is a little beyond exciting. I wouldn't want to live at any other time in history.
I am amazed at how perfectly this article dovetails with this story. Joel has a long, reasoned, and compelling essay about why code should be reused instead of rewritten. I suggest the original poster (and the rest of us) take a look.
no children are being harmed in its production, so I don't see how it could be illegal.
Are you sure no children are harmed? By that I mean, if someone fosters a person's desire to sexualize children, doesn't that create a dangerous environment for kids? If we allow people to treat children as sexual objects, even virtual children, how long is it before we feel a real impact? We're setting the bar pretty low for deviant behavior -- before, you had to cross a line just to view the stuff, but now, you'll only cross a line if you do the stuff.
In addition, how virtual is virtual? Are we talking about complete art and fabrication? Or does taking the Gerber baby face and pasting it onto nude baby bodies count? Will this make it legal for someone to use real baby faces on fake baby bodies? Or vice versa? If my daughter's face is scanned and used for something like that, and if my daughter stumbles across it when she's a little older, what does that do to her then? How sick and vile can it be and still be considered harmless in multiple scenarios?
I'm not convinced I want to make it comfortable or easy for people to "dip their toe in the water" of child porn.
Archie's gatherer scoured FTP sites across the Internet and indexed all of the files it found.
Just substitute HTTP for FTP, and that sounds a whole lot like AltaVista's patent. Isn't this the exact kind of prior art needed to end their patent on spidering technology?
The messages seem to suggest that perhaps my requirements for the job were too high. In fact, my actual problem, I've determined, was that my requirements were too low. I was inundated with nearly 200 ASP developers who were so clearly pro-Microsoft that they would have undermined the entire architecture I am putting in place. Apparently, anyone can get "Microsoft Certified" -- including some very, very sloppy developers. I brought many non-PHP developers in for interviews, hoped to train one of them, and as one woman put it: "let's just use Frontpage, it's easy." When I asked how Frontpage would be able to meet coding goals of using XHTML, PHP, and browser-neutral DOM scripting, her response was again typical: "HTML, ASP, and JScript are close enough."
I just took in too much. What eventually worked for me was searching only for PHP on hotjobs.com, monster.com, alt.php, and Google's advanced search (well, on Google I had to add some search terms like "resume" to focus the search, but same idea). Thanks everyone for advice. I'll go answer all the emails now.
The theory of evolution is currently the best way to explain the current state of life on this planet and make verifiable predictions about events.
But to many people, what you have just said is explicitly at odds with their theory -- they would say calling your theory "best" is entirely subjective. Millions of Catholics, Christians, and Jews believe that God trumps evolution. I am not so arrogant as to think I have "fact" in evolution and God is a myth -- especially with a/. news article just yesterday about how our theory about the size of planets apparently needs a little modification. We couldn't even correctly predict what kind of life was at the bottom of our deepest oceans just 5 years ago. Now suddenly we've figured out how things worked throughout millions of years of history, and we're willing to call it fact?
I'm sorry, but while I think evolution is a correct theory, I only think it, and I am inclined to say that any number of other theories may be more accurate. I'm no more going to push evolution on a Christian kid than push creationism on an atheist kid. I'd rather a few theories be taught, or none at all. Personally, I think God invented evolution.
It is interesting to see the numbers being thrown around. Clearly there is circumstantial evidence showing, well, just about whatever you want it to show. However.
Science has tested, re-tested, and re-re-tested this problem. It has been named, categorized, and diagnosed repeatedly. Initially, it was called the Werther's effect. About 200 years ago, a book about a character named Werther who commits suicide triggered a wave of copycat suicides. So many, in fact, that the book was banned in a number of countries. Researches came in, investigated, and concluded that a thing called the "Werther's effect" would cause like-minded people to emulate those they relate to, fictional or otherwise.
Within the last 100 years, science has called this "social proof" -- which basically means this: we look at similar people and take similar action. A pale white tech guy in the IT department might read slashdot 3 times a day, and eventually other pale white tech guys in the IT department start following his example. Whereas, the black woman who is the VP of Marketing may have so little in common with those IT guys that she never reads slashdot, because that's not "her kind of thing."
Similarly, a cartoony poorly rendered robot-battle game from the 80s is so hard to relate to that it would be difficult for "similar people" to do "similar things." However, put a game in front of a teenage introvert that shows a teenage introvert killing others, and social proof will become a powerful swaying device. Does that always mean such a game creates a killer? Of course not, but I do mean to imply that science has, well, got this down to a science. There are a number of books that outline the steps and the environment needed to get people to copycat media. So I find it odd to see such rampant speculation on slashdot, when the scientific community put this to bed long ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the FRESH acronym another person suggested. I would also suggest:
Better Secure Telnet, or "BeST" for short.
My reason is that this clearly changes the name, as he requested, but it also implies that his closed, costly implementation has been superceded by something superior. Which it has.
Hmm. Well, the poster can at least do the same thing that the company is doing. In other words, if the company is going contact his current employer because he's saying libelous or slanderous things publically, he can certainly sue right back for their slanderous statements. And almost anything his old company says will be.
For instance, if the old company says to the new company, "your employee is slandering us" -- then they better have proved the slander in a court of law, or they'll be in a world of hurt. If his old company instead merely says, "look what your employee said" then they better have proved or at least have proof that that employee actually said it. If the company is merely going to lob accusations, they need to understand they're playing a dangerous game that may get them stuck with absurdly large punitive damages.
This is the very same reason that many employers will only confirm someone's job title and dates of employment. Saying anything else, such as "he worked as hard as everyone else" may sound nice, but open the company to a lawsuit if in fact that employee felt that his 80 hour work weeks meant he worked harder than everyone else. Boom. The company is in legal trouble.
I have practical experience with Oracle on Solaris (while I was at Borland and SST), with Access on Windows NT (while I was at Actuate), with CSV flat-file databases on Solaris, and with MySQL on Linux (at SST). In addition, the employee I found thanks to the /. thread on hiring, has experience with MySQL on Linux as well.
From what I can tell, MySQL is fast, fast, fast for certain limited uses, and can handle databases into the hundreds of thousands of records, although I have not pushed it into millions yet. At somewhere around 250,000 database calls every day, the thing starts to have problems, like the server needs a reboot. I don't know if the same problem happens if those calls are spread out over a long period of time. Throwing more iron at it, or reworking the indexes may help. We haven't upgraded to 3.23 stable yet, though, so that may solve the problem. In addition, we've begun using the "p" functions for databases -- you know, the "persistent" database connections. Use "mysql_pconnect" instead of "mysql_connect" for (sometimes) better response.
One of the nice backups for MySQL (and few people seem to use this, but I like it a lot) is that it can write out every SQL update/insert/delete statement to a file. In the case of database corruption, you can take that file, go though the last few statments, and try to correct it. Then regen the ENTIRE database from that SQL file. In addition, 3.23 has something new -- replication or mirroring, something where it duplicates the database onto backup disks. I haven't used that yet. Perhaps someone reading this could share more.
As for Oracle, yes, it can handle just about anything. I don't like the speed on older versions of the database. 8i is good, but actually not as fast as MySQL for some selects. I haven't tried 9. But it is a workhorse, it is storing hundreds of tables and millions of records for us. My current employer is trying to move away from it, because of the cost issue you cited. One of the things I like about Oracle is triggers, which MySQL doesn't have yet.
I know that the worst database I used was back at Borland in 1996 -- I don't remember what the database was called, it was part of a Lotus Domino system. In any case, with 100,000 member records in the database, it took a good 20 minutes for it to add a new record. It was miserable. We had to put big bold text on the "become a member" page that warned of the wait, and I had to write a JavaScript (onclick) for the submit button, that returned false on subsequent clicks, so that people didn't abort the procedure on accident. I hated that. I felt like we were this technology company that didn't understand Web technology.
As an interesting aside, back then Borland had a product called IntraBuilder. It was one of the first Cold Fusion-like systems, but it's database system was just poor. That's partly why they named it as they did -- they needed to brand it as an intranet tool, because they knew it wasn't fast enough for a full Internet deployment. But once the product was out there, the pressure was on to use it on Borland's site. We tried, Chris Malatesta and I. But I recall showing the IntraBuilder team some pages it served up, and how there was a full-second delay per user. Their response? "That seems acceptable to us." Chris and I tried to talk to them about scalability, about how the seconds accumulate and build up. They had no idea how hammered the product would be on a "real" Internet Web site. The product died, thankfully, when we ran a test with dozens of users, and database corruption was rampant -- one person's password appearing on another person's browser, and so on. Ugh. I don't miss those early days.
I agree with John Murdoch's excellent post (why is his post only +3? He offered much more authoritative information than the rest of us). It sounds like this is a large burden on an imprecise system, and that GPS is so lacking in contextual information as to be dangerous. By that I mean, if it can only determine your latitude and longitude, but cannot determine your "z-order" as it may be (whether you're on the overpass or underpass), then it cannot correctly set your speed.
However. One of the systems in place in San Francisco (and it has problems, I'm not offering a perfect solution here, just a working one) is a scanning device for people who use toll bridges. As you pass the toll booth, it scans your car, sees the account id plate you've attached, and debits your account. The solution for speed limiting is to simply reverse that system: put the scanners on the cars, and attach the "plates" to the speed limit signs that already exist.
This does a number of things. First, it distributes the load -- now we have a scalable system that can be put in place community by community. Second, it preserves context -- now someone on an overpass will scan the sign that is also on that overpass. It will not be able to scan the signs on the streets underneath, and will thus enjoy much less ambiguous data.
You may wonder about the risks. Well, since the system is already working in a few places (albeit in reverse), I think the system has more promise. However, it is open to manipulation -- signs could be vandalized, etc. And you would probably want to post more signs, so that redudant signals ensure "uptime" for the speed limiting device. And you would want to revert to no limit in the absence of data. But this may be more practical, and I haven't patented the idea if anyone wants to steal it.
Personally, I think these kinds of discoveries only bolster my belief that God created this universe. Here's why.
The Bible (and perhaps the Torah, which shares some similar (same?) text, but I'm not Jewish, so I'm sure) states that man was created in the likeness of God. People speculate as to what that means -- God is about 6 feet tall, or God experiences love and hate and passion as we do, or whatever. But I think it is mostly our drive to create. God took the ultimate step in creating this universe, but we take similar steps every day -- from programming complex gaming worlds to virtual life to buildings to atriums to everything else. Our ability to create is unparalleled -- for instance, dolphins are likely just as intelligent as we are, but I am hard pressed to point to their many underwater creations.
The ultimate creations, at least the creations I am most satisfied with, are the ones where a foundation is laid down for evolution. Preprogrammed creations are okay -- the characters in Diablo, the simple AI in some scientific experiments, etc. But what is sooooo satisfying is to create a framework, some general parameters for a learning program, and then letting the program loose in the environment. Because it may take advantage of your framework in ways you NEVER imagined, even though you built it!
And to come full circle, back to the point of this thread: I think God may turn out to be the master programmer, the ultimate scientist, who built a framework so astounding, so complex, and so consistent, that we could eventually become "self aware" of our own framework, and master it in ways unimagined. I don't believe that God preprogrammed everything here, and I expect that whatever base God did create is "open" enough to surprise us with other life forms, misconceptions about life and our role in the universe, and just about anything else. To see us discovering the foundation God laid down for us is a little beyond exciting. I wouldn't want to live at any other time in history.
I am amazed at how perfectly this article dovetails with this story. Joel has a long, reasoned, and compelling essay about why code should be reused instead of rewritten. I suggest the original poster (and the rest of us) take a look.
Are you sure no children are harmed? By that I mean, if someone fosters a person's desire to sexualize children, doesn't that create a dangerous environment for kids? If we allow people to treat children as sexual objects, even virtual children, how long is it before we feel a real impact? We're setting the bar pretty low for deviant behavior -- before, you had to cross a line just to view the stuff, but now, you'll only cross a line if you do the stuff.
In addition, how virtual is virtual? Are we talking about complete art and fabrication? Or does taking the Gerber baby face and pasting it onto nude baby bodies count? Will this make it legal for someone to use real baby faces on fake baby bodies? Or vice versa? If my daughter's face is scanned and used for something like that, and if my daughter stumbles across it when she's a little older, what does that do to her then? How sick and vile can it be and still be considered harmless in multiple scenarios?
I'm not convinced I want to make it comfortable or easy for people to "dip their toe in the water" of child porn.
From the article, referring to Archie in 1990:
Just substitute HTTP for FTP, and that sounds a whole lot like AltaVista's patent. Isn't this the exact kind of prior art needed to end their patent on spidering technology?
The messages seem to suggest that perhaps my requirements for the job were too high. In fact, my actual problem, I've determined, was that my requirements were too low. I was inundated with nearly 200 ASP developers who were so clearly pro-Microsoft that they would have undermined the entire architecture I am putting in place. Apparently, anyone can get "Microsoft Certified" -- including some very, very sloppy developers. I brought many non-PHP developers in for interviews, hoped to train one of them, and as one woman put it: "let's just use Frontpage, it's easy." When I asked how Frontpage would be able to meet coding goals of using XHTML, PHP, and browser-neutral DOM scripting, her response was again typical: "HTML, ASP, and JScript are close enough."
I just took in too much. What eventually worked for me was searching only for PHP on hotjobs.com, monster.com, alt.php, and Google's advanced search (well, on Google I had to add some search terms like "resume" to focus the search, but same idea). Thanks everyone for advice. I'll go answer all the emails now.
But to many people, what you have just said is explicitly at odds with their theory -- they would say calling your theory "best" is entirely subjective. Millions of Catholics, Christians, and Jews believe that God trumps evolution. I am not so arrogant as to think I have "fact" in evolution and God is a myth -- especially with a /. news article just yesterday about how our theory about the size of planets apparently needs a little modification. We couldn't even correctly predict what kind of life was at the bottom of our deepest oceans just 5 years ago. Now suddenly we've figured out how things worked throughout millions of years of history, and we're willing to call it fact?
I'm sorry, but while I think evolution is a correct theory, I only think it, and I am inclined to say that any number of other theories may be more accurate. I'm no more going to push evolution on a Christian kid than push creationism on an atheist kid. I'd rather a few theories be taught, or none at all. Personally, I think God invented evolution.It is interesting to see the numbers being thrown around. Clearly there is circumstantial evidence showing, well, just about whatever you want it to show. However.
Science has tested, re-tested, and re-re-tested this problem. It has been named, categorized, and diagnosed repeatedly. Initially, it was called the Werther's effect. About 200 years ago, a book about a character named Werther who commits suicide triggered a wave of copycat suicides. So many, in fact, that the book was banned in a number of countries. Researches came in, investigated, and concluded that a thing called the "Werther's effect" would cause like-minded people to emulate those they relate to, fictional or otherwise.
Within the last 100 years, science has called this "social proof" -- which basically means this: we look at similar people and take similar action. A pale white tech guy in the IT department might read slashdot 3 times a day, and eventually other pale white tech guys in the IT department start following his example. Whereas, the black woman who is the VP of Marketing may have so little in common with those IT guys that she never reads slashdot, because that's not "her kind of thing."
Similarly, a cartoony poorly rendered robot-battle game from the 80s is so hard to relate to that it would be difficult for "similar people" to do "similar things." However, put a game in front of a teenage introvert that shows a teenage introvert killing others, and social proof will become a powerful swaying device. Does that always mean such a game creates a killer? Of course not, but I do mean to imply that science has, well, got this down to a science. There are a number of books that outline the steps and the environment needed to get people to copycat media. So I find it odd to see such rampant speculation on slashdot, when the scientific community put this to bed long ago.