From my limited perspective of life, Litium-Polymer batteries is an extraordinary invention that is currently starting to be used in more expensive appliances, but as time progresses will bring entirely new levels of performance from battery powered equipment of any kind.
Why shouldn't someone start a company with the business idea to manufacture computers which only he and hemselves could make programs for. That would be really silly, but it must be up to the computer vendor to decide for himself how his products is supposed to be used. The customers will then decide what suits them best.
Most certainly will most slashdot readers dislike such a computer, but then again, slashdot readers form only a miniscule part of humanity...
It is impossible for anyone to say anything about what such a technology would or would not make this and that available to consumers.
The thing is that most people work to make money. The more money the better. Most people won't invest money in something if it is unlikely to return a dividend. If DRM will increase the likelihood of getting your money back, more money will be invested and more items, services or whatever will be available for the consumer to buy (not for free). We can't see into the future so we can't exactly tell what these "items" or "services" are. It is up to inventors of the future to come up with these things.
Besides, just because somthing is available for a fee IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT YOU MUST PURCHASE IT! I don't understand this shit, people are yelling about they aren't allowed to rip and copy their Samantha Fox (or whatever) CD:s over the internet. But what so? You don't have to buy the music under those circumstances. You ALWAYS HAVE THE OPTION NOT TO BUY!
It might not have much to do with the original subject, but the sheer number of people in south-east-asia is going to make those countries (primarily India and the Peoples Republic of China) the next superpowers of the world without American workers or anyone else is able to do _anything_ about it. In a way, I would guess USA pretty soon will end up very much in the same situation as France or Great Britain (but particularly France) is today. A country of moderate power dreaming of how it once was...
Several earlier posts here claims that Microsoft will simply win by putting MSN Search on the taskbar. That may be so but they have an even more powerful card up their sleeve. I think that if they would combine personal search, company search and global search into this MSN Search toolbar, Google is as fried as a toast in a toaster. This way, Microsoft would not only leverage Windows to compete with Google, but also users and company private MS Office or MS Outlook content, which most users have plenty of. If Google is ever going to win, they must start provide similar tools at once.
There are a few annoying facts with this benchmark.
First of all, the download package includes setup instructions for most of the other products _except_ MySQL. It is not possible for me to learn database setup options and test for myself. For all I know, if the benchmark is not audited by an organization like TPC, the "winning" product might as well run their transactions at a lower level of isolation or enable certain disk buffering options that many products have.
Secondly, the entire Nile application is written around a concept of dynamically generating SQL statements, and execute them. Most more sophisticated products have elaborate schemes to allow applications to precompile statements and to reuse compile queries. As it happens, the MySQL JDBC driver used by the benchmarketers does not support parameter markers. Even if an application would issue SQL-statements that were reusable, the MySQL JDBC-driver would replace all parameter markers with the actual parameter value at execution time, and them compile the entire query. SQL products in general offers the possibility to very easily compile ad-hoc queries, but it does not necessarily give the optimum performance.
Thirdly, the nile application makes pretty sure to avoid MySQL pitfalls, such as large result sets. I didn't see any code at all specifally designed to avoid the other products pitfalls. Either, they don't have any, or the benchmark figures they published have the pitfalls "embedded".
I'll give one credit to MySQL though, it appears as it is compiling their SQL-dialect pretty quickly.
Re:Like it or not, managers default to commercial
on
What is Open Source?
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· Score: 1
This point does have merit, but I suppose you're talking about problems with small to mid sized companies. Big ones (Like Microsoft, IBM, Novell, etc.) aren't going to fix your problems any time soon; they have so many customers, unless you're a big-shot (who can spend the $$$ to fix it yourself), they won't care. Have you had the pleasure of paying money for an incident to report a bug to MS?:)
Not that I have been involved with Microsoft support on a daily basis, but two of the three support cases I have worked with against Microsoft was actually fixed. Ok, the fixes wasn't released promptly but quick enough. In one case I got a "hotfix" within a few weeks that we could install at customer sites manually until the regular service pack was released.
But I agree that the support organisation itself can be a major hurdle, but that is not a property that really has anything to do with whether the product is released with source or not. It is just that when software companies becomes larger, it becomes more difficult for support personnel to know everything about each product. Keeping development staff at support jobs is just wasting resources in a way that only smaller companies with limited number of clients can do.
No, but truth be told, most OSS developers aren't working on their projects because they're told to or are being paid. They do it because their projects are their babies.
Typically, problems reported are fixed in relatively short order because:
1) you've likely, in the process of debugging your own software or tools, have isolated the problem to a specific area and pattern and
2) OSS folks almost always use the software they write themselves. That's usually why they write it in the first place.
There is *nothing* unique about this that makes these properties apply to open-source software only. I work developing a closed source product for a smaller company (80 employees) and I can tell you, most of the 15 of us actually coding the product both consider it our baby as well as we use it ourselves.
You seem to focus on the client/server part or whatever. But the client library, which you do link into your program, is also GPL'ed - since version 4.0.x, which is the current stable version, so this would be what the web site is about.
The really interesting thing about MySQL and GPL is that they are _forced_ to purchase the rights from anyone making a client driver for the MySQL server. And, they have already done so on at least one occasion (the JDBC driver).
As far as I can see, anyone making a popular client driver under BSD or LGPL will be a direct threat to MySQL revenue.
Today Open Source is like any buzzword we have come across in history. In the 80-ies AI was the hot thing. "Everything" was to be AI and everyone wanted to be associated with the word, but eventually the hype backfired and today no one cares. Now that Open Source is a mainstream word it is only a matter of time before this buzzword gets outdated too.
One of the major arguments mr Mullen has for striking back is that the virus attackas are eating his bandwith. Bandwidth is something most people can use more of.
BUT!
When I browse my tcpdumps it is evident to me that it is not only viruses that consume my precious bandwidth. These figures aren't scientific but I would guess that 40% of the attacks on my system is through netbios (I suspect these are most often real virus attacks) and another 40% are "attacks" from various distributed file-sharing services. Most commonly used port appears to be 4662.
Now I am fucking mad about that these file-sharing-kiddies are using my bandwidth to locate other file-sharing-islands. Time to strike back...!:-)
If you're building proprietary software for use internally by the company, then they are not, legally, distributing it! In effect, it is purely free, so long as you don't distribute your derivative works.
But that is "fucking vague" too. Exactly what is "distribute"? If I am working for the government, can I distribute my derivative work to all government subsidiaries without publishing source code? In projects I have worked with, there have been people from several companies involved! Can I share my derivative work with my co-worker?
Re:Am I missing something in the title of this.
on
Pike Scripting Language
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The vikings originated from the entire scandinavian peninsula including Denmark. The difference is that the eastern vikings mostly traded eastwards on the rivers of todays Russia, while the the vikings from todays Norway travelled westward on the Atlantic Ocean.
Well... In most other situations I have been involved with a profit margin of 50% means that I earn 50% of what the unit cost to produce, not that I make twice the money it costs to produce.
The correct production cost per unit is therefore $162 (300/1,85).
IT departments HATE non-stop tiny changes, each of which requires new testing, and likely breaks several of their applications. This can be seen in the reality that many shops still use NT 4.0 even with its successor 2000, and its successor XP, available. Hell, most IT departments shun at even installing service packs.
Yeah. In my shop we are running a Windows NT 3.51 as a file/printer/authentication server. Works great, no need to upgrade (or change to Linux...).
As other posters have noted, SQL is like learning chess. A moment to learn the rules, a lifetime to master.
But also from a grammatical point of view, SQL is huge. A simple language like Java requires only a few hundred reduction rules, while SQL requires several thousands of them! The fact that SQL requires parsing tables many times larger than Java (and most other languages) does not mean SQL is a good language, but is more an effect of that SQL is the Cobol of query languages, which have been patched with features over and over again.
Most other query languages are more clean and easier to understand than SQL. Quel is one such language, but sadly Quel and all other SQL competitors are nowadays more or less extinct.
Re:Looking for proof.
on
Halloween VII
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I would say the opposite. Microsoft has from the start aimed at recruiting people "with clues". Personally, I haven't had an offer yet:-) but I know two guys who went on the PhD (most PhD:s have at least one clue) path and in the end ended up at Microsoft. It is funny that one of these guys were VERY anti-Microsoft back when we took classes together...
Re:Reminds me of HTML/CSS validators and standards
on
SQL Validator
·
· Score: 1
In a long term it is a economic disaster to use proprietary features for a product or project with a reasonably long life length. Proprietary vendors use the same strategy as drug dealers. Just get the programmers to use our proprietary features, and then they're stuck with us for their life. Even the real drug addicts are better off, they can (after all) quit.
The reason this isn't understood in the industry today is because of its age. I am sure, in 20 years standards will be something natural for software engineers. But, we won't see any new Microsoft or Oracle companies (with 50% profit margins) either, since competition among software vendors will be tougher.
All debates about Open Source as a concept is always making a mistake. They are always putting Open Source in one corner and commercial proprietary software in the other corner. This is a mistake. To be more precise, it is completely IRRELEVANT.
What is far more important is STANDARDS ADHERENCE. Good quality standard adhering product can be either Open Source or proprietary or may be characterized in any other way. In fact I have used both Microsoft and Open Source products which implement _public_ and _open_ standards well, just as both Microsoft and some Open Source projects make products that does not implement public and open standards.
Why is this important? Well for one thing, if there were an open standard defining what Word Processing documents should look like internally, I could use whatever product I liked best to manipulate my word processing files for me (note word processing files, not Word files). Competition among software companies would be improved, we would see more product alternatives that competed against each other.
In a wider view it is the lack of standards, and customers requiring them that is the driving force behind the profitability of Microsoft and similar companies. What methodology use to develop their software is not important.
If the IT industry would turn more towards standardized products we would be able to reap the benefits from both worlds.
NOTE: Maybe there is an open standard for word processing documents? I haven't heard of one but maybe a reader can enlighten me.
I think the point is that particular implementations of hierarchical systems (just like some relational ones do) exposes references directly to the data to the application. By using these references the application can return to the record he his working on quickly. I can't believe any hierarchical system can return arbitrary records at O(1) the first time the are accessed. It has to involve some kind of search.
From your post it is not clear why hierarchical systems perform better in the situations you point out.
I wish to know exactly why the hierarchical paradigm will perform better when there are thousands of users processing their data? Or why hierarchical systems are better at handling data which does not change, or why quering for certain elements by attributes (date) is better using a hierarchical database?
Slashdot Mirror
I did not quite get it. What has air travel to do with this article?
But then every one of Nokias competitors will also have free access to a browser for their mobile phones, and funded by Nokia... :-)
From my limited perspective of life, Litium-Polymer batteries is an extraordinary invention that is currently starting to be used in more expensive appliances, but as time progresses will bring entirely new levels of performance from battery powered equipment of any kind.
TYpical slashdot nonsense.
Why shouldn't someone start a company with the business idea to manufacture computers which only he and hemselves could make programs for. That would be really silly, but it must be up to the computer vendor to decide for himself how his products is supposed to be used. The customers will then decide what suits them best.
Most certainly will most slashdot readers dislike such a computer, but then again, slashdot readers form only a miniscule part of humanity...
This boycott thing is really the most stupid thing I have ever heard. Those Linux advocates that support such a boycott must grow up.
It is impossible for anyone to say anything about what such a technology would or would not make this and that available to consumers.
The thing is that most people work to make money. The more money the better. Most people won't invest money in something if it is unlikely to return a dividend. If DRM will increase the likelihood of getting your money back, more money will be invested and more items, services or whatever will be available for the consumer to buy (not for free). We can't see into the future so we can't exactly tell what these "items" or "services" are. It is up to inventors of the future to come up with these things.
Besides, just because somthing is available for a fee IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT YOU MUST PURCHASE IT! I don't understand this shit, people are yelling about they aren't allowed to rip and copy their Samantha Fox (or whatever) CD:s over the internet. But what so? You don't have to buy the music under those circumstances. You ALWAYS HAVE THE OPTION NOT TO BUY!
It might not have much to do with the original subject, but the sheer number of people in south-east-asia is going to make those countries (primarily India and the Peoples Republic of China) the next superpowers of the world without American workers or anyone else is able to do _anything_ about it. In a way, I would guess USA pretty soon will end up very much in the same situation as France or Great Britain (but particularly France) is today. A country of moderate power dreaming of how it once was...
Several earlier posts here claims that Microsoft will simply win by putting MSN Search on the taskbar. That may be so but they have an even more powerful card up their sleeve. I think that if they would combine personal search, company search and global search into this MSN Search toolbar, Google is as fried as a toast in a toaster. This way, Microsoft would not only leverage Windows to compete with Google, but also users and company private MS Office or MS Outlook content, which most users have plenty of. If Google is ever going to win, they must start provide similar tools at once.
There are a few annoying facts with this benchmark.
First of all, the download package includes setup instructions for most of the other products _except_ MySQL. It is not possible for me to learn database setup options and test for myself. For all I know, if the benchmark is not audited by an organization like TPC, the "winning" product might as well run their transactions at a lower level of isolation or enable certain disk buffering options that many products have.
Secondly, the entire Nile application is written around a concept of dynamically generating SQL statements, and execute them. Most more sophisticated products have elaborate schemes to allow applications to precompile statements and to reuse compile queries. As it happens, the MySQL JDBC driver used by the benchmarketers does not support parameter markers. Even if an application would issue SQL-statements that were reusable, the MySQL JDBC-driver would replace all parameter markers with the actual parameter value at execution time, and them compile the entire query. SQL products in general offers the possibility to very easily compile ad-hoc queries, but it does not necessarily give the optimum performance.
Thirdly, the nile application makes pretty sure to avoid MySQL pitfalls, such as large result sets. I didn't see any code at all specifally designed to avoid the other products pitfalls. Either, they don't have any, or the benchmark figures they published have the pitfalls "embedded".
I'll give one credit to MySQL though, it appears as it is compiling their SQL-dialect pretty quickly.
You seem to focus on the client/server part or whatever. But the client library, which you do link into your program, is also GPL'ed - since version 4.0.x, which is the current stable version, so this would be what the web site is about.
The really interesting thing about MySQL and GPL is that they are _forced_ to purchase the rights from anyone making a client driver for the MySQL server. And, they have already done so on at least one occasion (the JDBC driver).
As far as I can see, anyone making a popular client driver under BSD or LGPL will be a direct threat to MySQL revenue.
But if you allow stale data you don't have an ACID system. You will have little use of your "fine" InnoDB tables.
Today Open Source is like any buzzword we have come across in history. In the 80-ies AI was the hot thing. "Everything" was to be AI and everyone wanted to be associated with the word, but eventually the hype backfired and today no one cares. Now that Open Source is a mainstream word it is only a matter of time before this buzzword gets outdated too.
One of the major arguments mr Mullen has for striking back is that the virus attackas are eating his bandwith. Bandwidth is something most people can use more of.
:-)
BUT!
When I browse my tcpdumps it is evident to me that it is not only viruses that consume my precious bandwidth. These figures aren't scientific but I would guess that 40% of the attacks on my system is through netbios (I suspect these are most often real virus attacks) and another 40% are "attacks" from various distributed file-sharing services. Most commonly used port appears to be 4662.
Now I am fucking mad about that these file-sharing-kiddies are using my bandwidth to locate other file-sharing-islands. Time to strike back...!
The vikings originated from the entire scandinavian peninsula including Denmark. The difference is that the eastern vikings mostly traded eastwards on the rivers of todays Russia, while the the vikings from todays Norway travelled westward on the Atlantic Ocean.
Well...
In most other situations I have been involved with a profit margin of 50% means that I earn 50% of what the unit cost to produce, not that I make twice the money it costs to produce.
The correct production cost per unit is therefore $162 (300/1,85).
IT departments HATE non-stop tiny changes, each of which requires new testing, and likely breaks several of their applications. This can be seen in the reality that many shops still use NT 4.0 even with its successor 2000, and its successor XP, available. Hell, most IT departments shun at even installing service packs.
Yeah. In my shop we are running a Windows NT 3.51 as a file/printer/authentication server. Works great, no need to upgrade (or change to Linux...).
As other posters have noted, SQL is like learning chess. A moment to learn the rules, a lifetime to master.
But also from a grammatical point of view, SQL is huge. A simple language like Java requires only a few hundred reduction rules, while SQL requires several thousands of them! The fact that SQL requires parsing tables many times larger than Java (and most other languages) does not mean SQL is a good language, but is more an effect of that SQL is the Cobol of query languages, which have been patched with features over and over again.
Most other query languages are more clean and easier to understand than SQL. Quel is one such language, but sadly Quel and all other SQL competitors are nowadays more or less extinct.
I would say the opposite. Microsoft has from the start aimed at recruiting people "with clues". Personally, I haven't had an offer yet :-) but I know two guys who went on the PhD (most PhD:s have at least one clue) path and in the end ended up at Microsoft. It is funny that one of these guys were VERY anti-Microsoft back when we took classes together...
In a long term it is a economic disaster to use proprietary features for a product or project with a reasonably long life length. Proprietary vendors use the same strategy as drug dealers. Just get the programmers to use our proprietary features, and then they're stuck with us for their life. Even the real drug addicts are better off, they can (after all) quit.
The reason this isn't understood in the industry today is because of its age. I am sure, in 20 years standards will be something natural for software engineers. But, we won't see any new Microsoft or Oracle companies (with 50% profit margins) either, since competition among software vendors will be tougher.
Yeah. But your query obviously used a feature that is not SQL-92 or Core SQL-99... :-)
All debates about Open Source as a concept is always making a mistake. They are always putting Open Source in one corner and commercial proprietary software in the other corner. This is a mistake. To be more precise, it is completely IRRELEVANT.
What is far more important is STANDARDS ADHERENCE. Good quality standard adhering product can be either Open Source or proprietary or may be characterized in any other way. In fact I have used both Microsoft and Open Source products which implement _public_ and _open_ standards well, just as both Microsoft and some Open Source projects make products that does not implement public and open standards.
Why is this important? Well for one thing, if there were an open standard defining what Word Processing documents should look like internally, I could use whatever product I liked best to manipulate my word processing files for me (note word processing files, not Word files). Competition among software companies would be improved, we would see more product alternatives that competed against each other.
In a wider view it is the lack of standards, and customers requiring them that is the driving force behind the profitability of Microsoft and similar companies. What methodology use to develop their software is not important.
If the IT industry would turn more towards standardized products we would be able to reap the benefits from both worlds.
NOTE: Maybe there is an open standard for word processing documents? I haven't heard of one but maybe a reader can enlighten me.
I think the point is that particular implementations of hierarchical systems (just like some relational ones do) exposes references directly to the data to the application. By using these references the application can return to the record he his working on quickly. I can't believe any hierarchical system can return arbitrary records at O(1) the first time the are accessed. It has to involve some kind of search.
From your post it is not clear why hierarchical systems perform better in the situations you point out.
I wish to know exactly why the hierarchical paradigm will perform better when there are thousands of users processing their data? Or why hierarchical systems are better at handling data which does not change, or why quering for certain elements by attributes (date) is better using a hierarchical database?