I'm not so bothered by not giving everyone warm fuzzies. You can't please everyone:) I'd have the government have a standard format, perhaps in print like a large phone book, and perhaps with a very spiffy web interface allowing all sorts of queries. It's true that magazines and other media that rely on advertisements for sponsorship may not get as much funding. I think it's worth that downside. As for the registry, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to keep up to date. Things like prices could be kept current with very little effort -- things that may need verification may take slightly longer, although I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to work these details out.
Propoganda isn't necessarily evil, but it's not the high point of human existence, and if it can be avoided, I think that's a good thing. What point is there in people wasting money buying a branded version of a product when they can get literally the same product without the brand for considerably less? Why should we celebrate when people who are too busy to research the best product/deal for their needs end up getting something because they see an advert for it? Why should we celebrate when the psychologists these companies hire to help them make advertisements cause people to buy things they don't even need in the first place?
A government site could provide such a registry, and when the facts are incorrect, people could sue the company that makes incorrect entries. It's true that not all ads are about trickery, but almost all of them include extraneous, misleading, or propogandic content. Many advertisements have colours and arrangement designed to get people to buy something they otherwise wouldn't, or are about pushing a brand rather than a product. Not cool. As for new types of products, people can read about them elsewhere and then know to look for them in the listings, or they can see their friends using them.
It would be more efficient to have national catalogues of products, perhaps online, than to have advertisements which are more about hype than substance. If I want something, I'd check the catalogue. If I don't, an ad won't help. Ads are about trickery, not about providing things people want.
There are always bozos who actually buy things they get spammed about, which is why spammers continue doing what they do. It would be nice to fine the companies whose products are being pushed by spam as a way to combat this, but then of course companies would aim to have their competitors fined. Better, I think, to just shoot the spammers on recognition:)
In any case, using Adblock is a good way to deal with things until a more permanent and global solution to end internet advertising can be found.
All the ISPs that decided to trust MAPS decided to put their recommendations into force. It's not that they've been delegated power from above, it's that they provide a good way to deal with a problem. ISPs should be more careful to look at who they're providing service for, and be as responsive as humanly possible when organizations that act to fight abuse come calling.
Nonsense. Subpoenas are great when what one is doing is clearly against the law, but if you want to, say, find the address of some spammer who's acting inside the law, so you can go picket their house or even decide if they're irritating enough to sue, then you're screwed. It's not good enough that if you're already going to sue, you can get the information. This rule change inconveniences spammers, and so it's a wonderful thing.
The point is, spammers often register these domains and remain invisible with their spam hosts so it's like whack-a-mole when you want to keep them down. I'd like a petition in support of this rule change.
In my experience, that's a recipe for disaster. In my old workplace, there were four of us, and there were constant power struggles. Eventually, things got better when some of us left, or so I hear.
If you release something under license X, and people acquire it under that license, then unless you have language saying otherwise, releasing it again under license Y does not affect the people who already have it under license X.
I'm curious how Ceefax compares to Minitel (France) -- I recall hearing from several sources that Minitel was a spiritual ancestor to the Internet, where a lot of information was available in the home starting in the mid-70s.
The comparitive evaluation is kind of hit and miss. You have a point on replication -- I would certainly trust another database software more (although I would prefer DB/2 or Oracle over Sybase, certainly) in those kinds of configuration. As for the documentation, actually, I personally prefer Postgres's documentation. What do you think is done better in Sybase documentation? As for stored procedures, I think Postgres wins there too. This is primarily because Sybase offers, as far as I understand, only SQL-like stored procedures, not *too* different from Oracle's PL/SQL (but actually inferior to Oracle's language). Postgres offers something similar to this as well, but also (as Oracle and DB/2 do, to a lesser extent) lets you write them in other languages, like Java or Perl.
As for the original poster's concern about loading large amounts of data into a database, while it is unlikely that anyone would want to load an entire DVD into a single BLOB in a database, it is concievable that, for database/website/whatever designs that use large amounts of data, that much *worth* of data might be loaded into seperate BLOBs. It's an open topic in what constitutes best practice if heavy use of BLOBs is a good idea, but simply calling largish databases a stupid thing to want seems a bit shortsighted to me.
Of course, you're on Windows, and if that platform is a necessity for you for some reason, I wouldn't suggest Postgres to you for awhile -- while 8.0 will have a Win32 port, it's probably best to avoid trusting your data to something that new. If I were in your situation, and had a lot of money, I'd go with Oracle, otherwise DB/2. Then again, DB/2 is looking better and better these days, so perhaps looking at Oracle is a waste of time. I certainly wouldn't go with MSSQL or Sybase.
It's an idiot detector. It appears to have served its purpose, so you can detach it now:)
More seriously, why the fnord did you think "Ask Slashdot" is the right place to ask this kind of question, and why did the editors decide this was worthwhile to post? Oy.
I don't understand -- firstly, why would supporting the Bolsheviks make him abominable, and secondly, I don't see how it's inconsistant to adopt the modus operandi of one society while in it, while still advocating the establishment of another kind of society. Communist groups in my neighborhood sell magazines, books, and the like (International Socialist Review, some Trotsky and Lenin, etc), and it doesn't seem at all problematic to me.
Compiling your own software is something you don't really want to do on systems at work, especially high-end systems, because it becomes a managability nightmare. Using packaged binaries on modern distros, when possible, means that you know the software doesn't have issues being compiled with that computing environment (gcc and other libraries), may have additional tweaks that are platform-appropriate, and most importantly, is externally verifiable. Being able to do a md5sum on binaries running elsewhere to match, or to verify the entire system and find all the files that have changed from a stock configuration is very useful, and is crippled when you can't expect the same binary as anyone else on the planet.
If you hate your customers, play either the Jeopardy theme or Hanson's MMMBop. Actually, some time ago, there was a site that had corporate anthems for download -- perhaps some of those would be appropriate...
During a cat stampede in my apartment, my tab key was tragically flung across the room, and attempts at surgical reattachment were unsuccessful. With a bit of tweaking of my.xmodmaprc, my caps lock is now a tabs key:)
It's kind of a misnomer to call the AMD64 a fully 64-bit environment -- address space versus word size blah blah blah. If, however, you do consider it a toy, then it's amusing to move from real software and toy hardware (a mature Linux plus AMD64) to toy software and real hardware (Gentoo plus PPC64).
Playing devil's advocate here, at least partly.. why/when, in general, is government intervention worthwhile in certain contracts? From a libertarian POV, probably never, or almost never (e.g. preventing certain types of abuses, e.g. slavery). From a liberal point of view, there are some types of contracts that are so naturally one-sided, e.g. landlord-tenant relations, that in order to prevent one side from being excessively harmed by the concentration of power on the other side, the government has seen fit to legislate. One necessary (but not sufficient) component of these types of deals is that the services offered are sufficiently necessary and scarce that it is difficult to live life without them. Another is that there exists a pattern of abuse by one side. It is left as an exercise to the reader to judge this means of thinking about things, and decide what the exact criteria should be for when and what intervention is proper.
I know that it's, in a sense, a created need, but of course the need versus want distinction is pretty much entirely colloquial -- they're just degrees of importance to a person. For me, because I've encoded about half my music collection in OGG (the older half is stuff I encoded years ago before I decided OGG was a good thing), OGG support is something I need in a music player. It's not really feasable or desirable for me to reencode all my recent encodings for hardware compatibility. To demonstrate the need/want distinction's fragility, we could say that we don't really need anything but WAV support in a music player.. after all, playing music isn't life and death -- how can we say we really need anything in the sphere?
Anyhow, I know that the answer might just be that the iPod isn't for folks like me. OGG, to me, isn't an obscure format, but Apple plays in different circles than I do. I just really like what I've seen of the iPod, and if Apple decided to support the format I have much of my music in, I'd love to get an iPod. A combined alarm clock, music player, text reader, and with an add-on, voice recorder sounds exactly what I'd like to have. I'm not blaming Apple for not supporting OGG, and I find it a bit confusing when you mention it "not being anyone's fault but your own.." -- all I'm saying is that OGG support is a prerequisite for any music player I buy, and I hope Apple adds it. No blame, no claims that Apple's being unholy or anything...
I don't think it's that clear that AAC is so clearly superior to OGG.. then again, I've never heard an AAC-encoded audio. I'm not really a big slashdot person -- check my user page -- I don't tend to comment much (although I've been around for awhile). I commented on it in my BLOG long before I talked about it on slashdot. I think your 300 people is an understatement -- some people probably don't look at the iPod at all because of its chosen media formats. As for the patent issue, it might not matter so much to you, but I actually do use Linux, I don't buy software, and so it's very convenient to me to rip my CDs and encode to OGG.
Please understand -- I'm not saying that Apple is brain-damaged for not supportng OGG -- I know it's not first on a list of priorities for music companies, and that makes sense. However, there's no harm in adding OGG support, and it's really not that hard. There are reference implementatons out there.
Finally, why do you feel the need to talk in such a flashy, grandstanding, condescending way? It just irritates people. I can understand if you think Apple's great -- I like them too, but it's silly to say that people who don't exactly follow the path they've paved to be 'wrong'.
I've owned Apple hardware before (eMate, 1st-gen iBook), and have no beef with the iPod. I think it's actually pretty cool, which is why I've held off on buying another handheld music player. It's not a question of economics -- implementing OGG wouldn't cost much, nor would it be horribly confusing if their music players suddenly gained the ability to play another format. Quicktime player already plays a number of formats, as does Windows media player, and nobody complains that they're too complex. I really just want to have something as cool as the iPod with the compatibility I need to make it work well with my Linux systems. I don't see why this desire should mark me as a troll.
I've heard that it's largely politics that're responsible for iPods not having native OGG codec support, which is the one thing keeping me from getting an iPod tomorrow..
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I'm not so bothered by not giving everyone warm fuzzies. You can't please everyone :) I'd have the government have a standard format, perhaps in print like a large phone book, and perhaps with a very spiffy web interface allowing all sorts of queries. It's true that magazines and other media that rely on advertisements for sponsorship may not get as much funding. I think it's worth that downside. As for the registry, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to keep up to date. Things like prices could be kept current with very little effort -- things that may need verification may take slightly longer, although I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to work these details out.
Propoganda isn't necessarily evil, but it's not the high point of human existence, and if it can be avoided, I think that's a good thing. What point is there in people wasting money buying a branded version of a product when they can get literally the same product without the brand for considerably less? Why should we celebrate when people who are too busy to research the best product/deal for their needs end up getting something because they see an advert for it? Why should we celebrate when the psychologists these companies hire to help them make advertisements cause people to buy things they don't even need in the first place?
A government site could provide such a registry, and when the facts are incorrect, people could sue the company that makes incorrect entries. It's true that not all ads are about trickery, but almost all of them include extraneous, misleading, or propogandic content. Many advertisements have colours and arrangement designed to get people to buy something they otherwise wouldn't, or are about pushing a brand rather than a product. Not cool. As for new types of products, people can read about them elsewhere and then know to look for them in the listings, or they can see their friends using them.
It would be more efficient to have national catalogues of products, perhaps online, than to have advertisements which are more about hype than substance. If I want something, I'd check the catalogue. If I don't, an ad won't help. Ads are about trickery, not about providing things people want.
There are always bozos who actually buy things they get spammed about, which is why spammers continue doing what they do. It would be nice to fine the companies whose products are being pushed by spam as a way to combat this, but then of course companies would aim to have their competitors fined. Better, I think, to just shoot the spammers on recognition :)
In any case, using Adblock is a good way to deal with things until a more permanent and global solution to end internet advertising can be found.
All the ISPs that decided to trust MAPS decided to put their recommendations into force. It's not that they've been delegated power from above, it's that they provide a good way to deal with a problem. ISPs should be more careful to look at who they're providing service for, and be as responsive as humanly possible when organizations that act to fight abuse come calling.
One hopes that that would change as well. You can't win all battles entirely in one sitting.
Nonsense. Subpoenas are great when what one is doing is clearly against the law, but if you want to, say, find the address of some spammer who's acting inside the law, so you can go picket their house or even decide if they're irritating enough to sue, then you're screwed. It's not good enough that if you're already going to sue, you can get the information. This rule change inconveniences spammers, and so it's a wonderful thing.
The point is, spammers often register these domains and remain invisible with their spam hosts so it's like whack-a-mole when you want to keep them down. I'd like a petition in support of this rule change.
In my experience, that's a recipe for disaster. In my old workplace, there were four of us, and there were constant power struggles. Eventually, things got better when some of us left, or so I hear.
If you release something under license X, and people acquire it under that license, then unless you have language saying otherwise, releasing it again under license Y does not affect the people who already have it under license X.
I'm curious how Ceefax compares to Minitel (France) -- I recall hearing from several sources that Minitel was a spiritual ancestor to the Internet, where a lot of information was available in the home starting in the mid-70s.
The comparitive evaluation is kind of hit and miss. You have a point on replication -- I would certainly trust another database software more (although I would prefer DB/2 or Oracle over Sybase, certainly) in those kinds of configuration. As for the documentation, actually, I personally prefer Postgres's documentation. What do you think is done better in Sybase documentation? As for stored procedures, I think Postgres wins there too. This is primarily because Sybase offers, as far as I understand, only SQL-like stored procedures, not *too* different from Oracle's PL/SQL (but actually inferior to Oracle's language). Postgres offers something similar to this as well, but also (as Oracle and DB/2 do, to a lesser extent) lets you write them in other languages, like Java or Perl.
As for the original poster's concern about loading large amounts of data into a database, while it is unlikely that anyone would want to load an entire DVD into a single BLOB in a database, it is concievable that, for database/website/whatever designs that use large amounts of data, that much *worth* of data might be loaded into seperate BLOBs. It's an open topic in what constitutes best practice if heavy use of BLOBs is a good idea, but simply calling largish databases a stupid thing to want seems a bit shortsighted to me.
Of course, you're on Windows, and if that platform is a necessity for you for some reason, I wouldn't suggest Postgres to you for awhile -- while 8.0 will have a Win32 port, it's probably best to avoid trusting your data to something that new. If I were in your situation, and had a lot of money, I'd go with Oracle, otherwise DB/2. Then again, DB/2 is looking better and better these days, so perhaps looking at Oracle is a waste of time. I certainly wouldn't go with MSSQL or Sybase.
It's an idiot detector. It appears to have served its purpose, so you can detach it now :)
More seriously, why the fnord did you think "Ask Slashdot" is the right place to ask this kind of question, and why did the editors decide this was worthwhile to post? Oy.
Niice. For a sidekick, all we need are two shift keys :) It's been a loooong time. (I know this is obscure, but it's geeky)
I don't understand -- firstly, why would supporting the Bolsheviks make him abominable, and secondly, I don't see how it's inconsistant to adopt the modus operandi of one society while in it, while still advocating the establishment of another kind of society. Communist groups in my neighborhood sell magazines, books, and the like (International Socialist Review, some Trotsky and Lenin, etc), and it doesn't seem at all problematic to me.
Compiling your own software is something you don't really want to do on systems at work, especially high-end systems, because it becomes a managability nightmare. Using packaged binaries on modern distros, when possible, means that you know the software doesn't have issues being compiled with that computing environment (gcc and other libraries), may have additional tweaks that are platform-appropriate, and most importantly, is externally verifiable. Being able to do a md5sum on binaries running elsewhere to match, or to verify the entire system and find all the files that have changed from a stock configuration is very useful, and is crippled when you can't expect the same binary as anyone else on the planet.
If you hate your customers, play either the Jeopardy theme or Hanson's MMMBop. Actually, some time ago, there was a site that had corporate anthems for download -- perhaps some of those would be appropriate...
During a cat stampede in my apartment, my tab key was tragically flung across the room, and attempts at surgical reattachment were unsuccessful. With a bit of tweaking of my .xmodmaprc, my caps lock is now a tabs key :)
It's kind of a misnomer to call the AMD64 a fully 64-bit environment -- address space versus word size blah blah blah. If, however, you do consider it a toy, then it's amusing to move from real software and toy hardware (a mature Linux plus AMD64) to toy software and real hardware (Gentoo plus PPC64).
Playing devil's advocate here, at least partly.. why/when, in general, is government intervention worthwhile in certain contracts? From a libertarian POV, probably never, or almost never (e.g. preventing certain types of abuses, e.g. slavery). From a liberal point of view, there are some types of contracts that are so naturally one-sided, e.g. landlord-tenant relations, that in order to prevent one side from being excessively harmed by the concentration of power on the other side, the government has seen fit to legislate. One necessary (but not sufficient) component of these types of deals is that the services offered are sufficiently necessary and scarce that it is difficult to live life without them. Another is that there exists a pattern of abuse by one side. It is left as an exercise to the reader to judge this means of thinking about things, and decide what the exact criteria should be for when and what intervention is proper.
I know that it's, in a sense, a created need, but of course the need versus want distinction is pretty much entirely colloquial -- they're just degrees of importance to a person. For me, because I've encoded about half my music collection in OGG (the older half is stuff I encoded years ago before I decided OGG was a good thing), OGG support is something I need in a music player. It's not really feasable or desirable for me to reencode all my recent encodings for hardware compatibility. To demonstrate the need/want distinction's fragility, we could say that we don't really need anything but WAV support in a music player.. after all, playing music isn't life and death -- how can we say we really need anything in the sphere?
Anyhow, I know that the answer might just be that the iPod isn't for folks like me. OGG, to me, isn't an obscure format, but Apple plays in different circles than I do. I just really like what I've seen of the iPod, and if Apple decided to support the format I have much of my music in, I'd love to get an iPod. A combined alarm clock, music player, text reader, and with an add-on, voice recorder sounds exactly what I'd like to have. I'm not blaming Apple for not supporting
OGG, and I find it a bit confusing when you mention it "not being anyone's fault but your own.." -- all I'm saying is that OGG support is a prerequisite for any music player I buy, and I hope Apple adds it. No blame, no claims that Apple's being unholy or anything...
Like everyone else, I also immediately thought of the vibrator. Oy. Geek minds think alike.
I don't think it's that clear that AAC is so clearly superior to OGG.. then again, I've never heard an AAC-encoded audio. I'm not really a big slashdot person -- check my user page -- I don't tend to comment much (although I've been around for awhile). I commented on it in my BLOG long before I talked about it on slashdot. I think your 300 people is an understatement -- some people probably don't look at the iPod at all because of its chosen media formats.
As for the patent issue, it might not matter so much to you, but I actually do use Linux, I don't buy software, and so it's very convenient to me to rip my CDs and encode to OGG.
Please understand -- I'm not saying that Apple is brain-damaged for not supportng OGG -- I know it's not first on a list of priorities for music companies, and that makes sense. However, there's no harm in adding OGG support, and it's really not that hard. There are reference implementatons out there.
Finally, why do you feel the need to talk in such a flashy, grandstanding, condescending way? It just irritates people. I can understand if you think Apple's great -- I like them too, but it's silly to say that people who don't exactly follow the path they've paved to be 'wrong'.
I've owned Apple hardware before (eMate, 1st-gen iBook), and have no beef with the iPod. I think it's actually pretty cool, which is why I've held off on buying another handheld music player. It's not a question of economics -- implementing OGG wouldn't cost much, nor would it be horribly confusing if their music players suddenly gained the ability to play another format. Quicktime player already plays a number of formats, as does Windows media player, and nobody complains that they're too complex. I really just want to have something as cool as the iPod with the compatibility I need to make it work well with my Linux systems. I don't see why this desire should mark me as a troll.
I've heard that it's largely politics that're responsible for iPods not having native OGG codec support, which is the one thing keeping me from getting an iPod tomorrow..