The nuclear waste problem was the biggest driver for germany's nuclear exit decision, for 30 years this was discussed and determined to be basically unsolvable. (The incident in japan led to a re-think of the exit-of-the-exit decision, but the doubts about waste handling had been there at all times).
To me, this is nuclear's biggest threat, and whenever I see discussions on slashdot this does not really seem to be an issue to US citizens at all. Why is this the case? Are these problems properly addressed in school and media? In germany, we have constantly very critical journalism regarding nuclear waste disposal, as we also have a site where waste is leaking and this proves to be a huge and expensive problem. Generally, storing waste for 10.000 years in a safe manner is not considered to be possible. (And think about the costs which occur in those timelines).
When reading slashdot, I always get the impression that people still think nuclear has a future, and that we simply have not got the right technology in place yet. To me, nuclear has been a dead end for years, and its only a matter of time that everyone needs to switch to renewables (which would happen in 20 years max). Is nuclear really considered as a real option by the general US population? Are the implications properly educated? Total costs of waste disposal and storage and the risks which remain?
In any case, it's not true. The goal in germany is to go for sustainable energy sources, especially wind and solar.
Coal (at least having lots of emissions here) would not be an option for germany, since they're taking part in the Kyoto protocol. The United States are unfortunately not ratifying it, and remain one of the biggest pollutors in the world.
While it is true that in C++ OO is bolted on a procedural language, I see no problem here. Any compiler construction book shows that this the normal way of implementing OO to run on todays processors.
What I don't like in Java is that they seem to take away features of OO which may be used wrongly, namely multiple inheritance. The idea is probably to take away the gun to shoot yourself into the foot, but I actually find the gun useful. What C++ gives you is full power and flexibility. Using that power wisely is left to the programmer. I use C++ and Java on a daily basis. Features I have come to miss in Java are multiple inheritance, friends and protected and private inheritance, and of course templates.
I think those are the main reasons C++ is still here. You can do things with it which are simply not easily possible with other languages.
It's theoretical because you are assuming that the number of files does not influence the performance of a file system. Just because ReiserFS handles many small files efficiently, it does not mean that it would be even more efficient to have less files.
When it comes down to it, the task for a file system is mainly for localizing individual files (and maintaining storage efficiently). I think that there is no need to further split up information which the client (the application) would need together anyhow. If the information belongs together (like configuration settings), put it into one file, use the filesystem to localize the file, then read the whole file at once.
That's how the filesystem is designed to work. Splitting up things into many small files when there's no need just causes a lot of more file system calls to happen. This is inefficient.
One could now argue that one should put everything an application needs into one file, because this would be even more efficient. But for all practical purposes, one ends up putting things belonging to the same context into one file (have a look at/etc/samba/*), but still use several files because it's just intuitive to separate things by the context.
In practice, you have to assume some parameters when designing your file system: Read-to-write-ratio, file size / number of files ratio, etc.
There probably is not a one size fits it all solution for files.
Your example picks a scenario where ReiserFS performs well. I sure one construct other scenarios where ReiserFS performs less good than other FSs. This should not be used as evidence that ReiserFS does not care about numbers of files on a partition.
This (good) idea will fail again, because IMHO the people involved are too short-sighted.
Main points against this proposition include:
- It has worked to far, no need to change it. - Why yet another key-value format? The old one does all we need. - I hate XML. It's a hype, and that will pass.
My points for this proposition:
- It has worked so far, but maybe there is room for improvement? - XML gives you more than many other key-value-formats, namely namespaces and proper escaping. - Get over the XML-is-a-hype. Try to look at the benefits neutrally, then use what's best to do the job. IMO, XML is a code like ASCII (on top of a charset). Anyone who proposes that he can read a text-configfile with any editor is really using a tool to convert the data into ASCII. Well, I can read any XML file with any text-editor, or I can read it with nice formatting because XML is so machine-readable.
In my opinion, the mess in/etc may not need to be cleaned up explicitly. Instead, use a proper system-wide and POSIX-standardized API for implementing a defaults system which gives the user/application programmer/sysadmin benefits so he is inclined to use the API.
Benefits could be: - No self-made serializing/parsing system needed. - Platform-independent defaults system. - Forget escaping or namespaces. The API provides that. - Installation-specific or user-specific overriding of values.
The API could use a user-defined file format, but probably XML does all you need.
Provide tools for the grep-happy people to search the config-files.
But again, this will fail, mainly because the people involved are not looking for benefits of an improved system.
This proposition is short-sighted as best. By this logic, one could eliminate the need for many simpler database applications, mail storage systems, and other stuff.
When you think about it, you can probably convert most storage needs into versions which use the filesystem only, yet filesystems have their limits. The idea of a file is to put more than just one key in it. This is how the filesystem is dimensioned and tools have been made to manage the filesystem. Yes, you can misuse the filesystem for other things.
Things which only make sense in a context are usually tied together into that context, and a file is only the way to make a context persistent. This does not mean that a directory is a simpler way to make that context, altough it may appear so.
If we take your idea a step further, think about the huge data structures a filesystem has to maintain when the number of files explodes. It does not make sense.
Put information into the files, that's what they are made for.
Back when I was at the university, a student in the distributed systems lecture asked the professor about voip. This was in 1997, so the prof replied: "Why would you want to do this? Use the phone." The student said that this would be much cheaper, like a local phone call. The prof said that the university pays something like DEM 1 million per year for their internet connection. If the student used voip, this would just shift costs.
I've often wondered about why voip can be cheaper. At the very least, when you're using the phone, you're paying for what you get. When people are using voip, this will still use the bandwidth, but you are shifting costs onto everyone else (at least onto the backbone providers).
Can someone point me to a study that voip is really cheaper (more efficient) than conventional telephoning?
Years ago, I bought a DAT with a then-not-so-common optical digital output. The shop had two optical cables, a cheap one and an expensive one from Sony with a neoprene or some thick plasik coating. I asked which one I should buy, and the seller told me I should go for the sony, because it had better shielding.
The current issue of the german c't magazine has a comparison of Apples XServe vs. Dells PowerEdge 1650.
Basically what they are saying is that for low-end office serving the XServe does well, however, as more performance is needed, the PowerEdge clearly wins (Linux). Administration and integration in Mac OS X environments are strengths of the XServe. Want more power, go for Dell/Linux.
Whether of not Gracenote hijacked anything depends on you point of view.
IIRC, the whole thing went like this:
Ti Kan and Steve Scherf defined the protocol and made a server. People started to contribute the data. At some point, Ti Kan (I might be mistaken in this) started to commercialize the service, either by selling the data to a company, or by founding a company himself. Gradually, the new company started bugging makers of mp3-software to only include support for cddb, thus practicing unfair methods to support cddb. The methods included things like "either you only support cddb, or you will not support cddb at all."
So the service started as free, then turned into a commercial service. At the same time, the free service was hindered.
About that It's not your data, it belongs to the songwriters and record companies. You just re-typed it, big frigging deal.:
Again, this depends on you view. Of course, you're just writing down information which others have written. The point is that the value of the data consists not of the information itself, but of the availability through a service like freedb/cddb. Thus Gracenote did hijack the data. Not the contents, but the value. The value is the time of the thousands of people who typed in the information.
DaimlerChrysler has been working on systems like these for a long time. Check out www.fleetnet.de for an example.
Fleetnet is about ad-hoc networks. Cars build up connections while they are in radio contact, and can exchange data. Suppose an accident happens on the highway. Cars directly behind could detect that an accident has happened, and start slowing down. Cars passing by in the other direction could pick up the information and start sending and warning other cars they drive by, warning them about the upcoming traffic jam. The nice thing here is that the system is decentralized, and this makes it (in theory) harder to profile single users. Also, the information lives only in regions where it is relevant.
cu Lars
Can somebody explain to me AGP memory sharing?
on
Apple Drops Mac OS 9
·
· Score: 1
Can somebody explain why Apple is emphasizing the 32MB video RAM? I thought one of the features of AGP is that the graphics card can use main RAM as well?
This is just great. Suddenly my 2 months old iBook just became a lot older. The iBook will be 6 months old when Jaguar comes out. And already they are not supporting it's graphics card with the new feature...
Really? I'm curious about this:
Television with its tube ist based on the "Braunsche Roehre". Is K.F. Braun German or British?
Cars: The motor was developed by Karl Otto and Gottlieb Daimler. Who are the british people you speak of?
cu
Lars
There will a a proliferation of indie bands. Tastes will no longer be so bland, and we will get better variety. There is absolutely nothing -- morally, ethically or commercially -- wrong with such a development.
I don't think this will happen. The variety of music will mutate the recording industry to a rating industry. Since most people do not want to spend their time sorting playlists, the industry will do that pre-sorting for them. That's basically what it's doing right now, through their marketing.
Do you really think that people will have the time and motivation to try and listen to those 10000 bands which will emerge out of this movement? I think the industry will do its marketing again, and make sure that only the best (or those they like) come to the surface. Lesser bands will never be listened to, just because the sheer mass of music out there.
Why do you think most people listen to radio? Because most people are lazy. The _want_ to have music preselected for them.
Slashdot Mirror
The nuclear waste problem was the biggest driver for germany's nuclear exit decision, for 30 years this was discussed and determined to be basically unsolvable. (The incident in japan led to a re-think of the exit-of-the-exit decision, but the doubts about waste handling had been there at all times).
To me, this is nuclear's biggest threat, and whenever I see discussions on slashdot this does not really seem to be an issue to US citizens at all. Why is this the case? Are these problems properly addressed in school and media? In germany, we have constantly very critical journalism regarding nuclear waste disposal, as we also have a site where waste is leaking and this proves to be a huge and expensive problem. Generally, storing waste for 10.000 years in a safe manner is not considered to be possible. (And think about the costs which occur in those timelines).
When reading slashdot, I always get the impression that people still think nuclear has a future, and that we simply have not got the right technology in place yet. To me, nuclear has been a dead end for years, and its only a matter of time that everyone needs to switch to renewables (which would happen in 20 years max). Is nuclear really considered as a real option by the general US population? Are the implications properly educated? Total costs of waste disposal and storage and the risks which remain?
Regards,
Lars
Where did you get this information from?
In any case, it's not true. The goal in germany is to go for sustainable energy sources, especially wind and solar.
Coal (at least having lots of emissions here) would not be an option for germany, since they're taking part in the Kyoto protocol. The United States are unfortunately not ratifying it, and remain one of the biggest pollutors in the world.
While it is true that in C++ OO is bolted on a procedural language, I see no problem here. Any compiler construction book shows that this the normal way of implementing OO to run on todays processors.
What I don't like in Java is that they seem to take away features of OO which may be used wrongly, namely multiple inheritance. The idea is probably to take away the gun to shoot yourself into the foot, but I actually find the gun useful. What C++ gives you is full power and flexibility. Using that power wisely is left to the programmer. I use C++ and Java on a daily basis. Features I have come to miss in Java are multiple inheritance, friends and protected and private inheritance, and of course templates.
I think those are the main reasons C++ is still here. You can do things with it which are simply not easily possible with other languages.
Lars
It's theoretical because you are assuming that the number of files does not influence the performance of a file system. Just because ReiserFS handles many small files efficiently, it does not mean that it would be even more efficient to have less files.
/etc/samba/*), but still use several files because it's just intuitive to separate things by the context.
When it comes down to it, the task for a file system is mainly for localizing individual files (and maintaining storage efficiently). I think that there is no need to further split up information which the client (the application) would need together anyhow. If the information belongs together (like configuration settings), put it into one file, use the filesystem to localize the file, then read the whole file at once.
That's how the filesystem is designed to work. Splitting up things into many small files when there's no need just causes a lot of more file system calls to happen. This is inefficient.
One could now argue that one should put everything an application needs into one file, because this would be even more efficient. But for all practical purposes, one ends up putting things belonging to the same context into one file (have a look at
Lars
This is very theoretical.
In practice, you have to assume some parameters when designing your file system: Read-to-write-ratio, file size / number of files ratio, etc.
There probably is not a one size fits it all solution for files.
Your example picks a scenario where ReiserFS performs well. I sure one construct other scenarios where ReiserFS performs less good than other FSs. This should not be used as evidence that ReiserFS does not care about numbers of files on a partition.
Lars
This (good) idea will fail again, because IMHO the people involved are too short-sighted.
/etc may not need to be cleaned up explicitly. Instead, use a proper system-wide and POSIX-standardized API for implementing a defaults system which gives the user/application programmer/sysadmin benefits so he is inclined to use the API.
Main points against this proposition include:
- It has worked to far, no need to change it.
- Why yet another key-value format? The old one does all we need.
- I hate XML. It's a hype, and that will pass.
My points for this proposition:
- It has worked so far, but maybe there is room for improvement?
- XML gives you more than many other key-value-formats, namely namespaces and proper escaping.
- Get over the XML-is-a-hype. Try to look at the benefits neutrally, then use what's best to do the job. IMO, XML is a code like ASCII (on top of a charset). Anyone who proposes that he can read a text-configfile with any editor is really using a tool to convert the data into ASCII. Well, I can read any XML file with any text-editor, or I can read it with nice formatting because XML is so machine-readable.
In my opinion, the mess in
Benefits could be:
- No self-made serializing/parsing system needed.
- Platform-independent defaults system.
- Forget escaping or namespaces. The API provides that.
- Installation-specific or user-specific overriding of values.
The API could use a user-defined file format, but probably XML does all you need.
Provide tools for the grep-happy people to search the config-files.
But again, this will fail, mainly because the people involved are not looking for benefits of an improved system.
Lars
This proposition is short-sighted as best.
By this logic, one could eliminate the need for many simpler database applications, mail storage systems, and other stuff.
When you think about it, you can probably convert most storage needs into versions which use the filesystem only, yet filesystems have their limits. The idea of a file is to put more than just one key in it. This is how the filesystem is dimensioned and tools have been made to manage the filesystem. Yes, you can misuse the filesystem for other things.
Things which only make sense in a context are usually tied together into that context, and a file is only the way to make a context persistent. This does not mean that a directory is a simpler way to make that context, altough it may appear so.
If we take your idea a step further, think about the huge data structures a filesystem has to maintain when the number of files explodes. It does not make sense.
Put information into the files, that's what they are made for.
Lars
I have one. I sometimes wonder if this could power the tv I'm watching when I'm using it.
Back when I was at the university, a student in the distributed systems lecture asked the professor about voip. This was in 1997, so the prof replied: "Why would you want to do this? Use the phone." The student said that this would be much cheaper, like a local phone call. The prof said that the university pays something like DEM 1 million per year for their internet connection. If the student used voip, this would just shift costs.
I've often wondered about why voip can be cheaper. At the very least, when you're using the phone, you're paying for what you get. When people are using voip, this will still use the bandwidth, but you are shifting costs onto everyone else (at least onto the backbone providers).
Can someone point me to a study that voip is really cheaper (more efficient) than conventional telephoning?
Lars
Years ago, I bought a DAT with a then-not-so-common optical digital output. The shop had two optical cables, a cheap one and an expensive one from Sony with a neoprene or some thick plasik coating. I asked which one I should buy, and the seller told me I should go for the sony, because it had better shielding.
I still wonder if he was kidding or not.
The current issue of the german c't magazine has a comparison of Apples XServe vs. Dells PowerEdge 1650.
Basically what they are saying is that for low-end office serving the XServe does well, however, as more performance is needed, the PowerEdge clearly wins (Linux). Administration and integration in Mac OS X environments are strengths of the XServe. Want more power, go for Dell/Linux.
Lars
Whether of not Gracenote hijacked anything depends on you point of view.
IIRC, the whole thing went like this:
Ti Kan and Steve Scherf defined the protocol and made a server. People started to contribute the data. At some point, Ti Kan (I might be mistaken in this) started to commercialize the service, either by selling the data to a company, or by founding a company himself. Gradually, the new company started bugging makers of mp3-software to only include support for cddb, thus practicing unfair methods to support cddb. The methods included things like "either you only support cddb, or you will not support cddb at all."
So the service started as free, then turned into a commercial service. At the same time, the free service was hindered.
About that It's not your data, it belongs to the songwriters and record companies. You just re-typed it, big frigging deal.:
Again, this depends on you view. Of course, you're just writing down information which others have written. The point is that the value of the data consists not of the information itself, but of the availability through a service like freedb/cddb. Thus Gracenote did hijack the data. Not the contents, but the value. The value is the time of the thousands of people who typed in the information.
Lars
DaimlerChrysler has been working on systems like these for a long time. Check out www.fleetnet.de for an example.
Fleetnet is about ad-hoc networks. Cars build up connections while they are in radio contact, and can exchange data. Suppose an accident happens on the highway. Cars directly behind could detect that an accident has happened, and start slowing down. Cars passing by in the other direction could pick up the information and start sending and warning other cars they drive by, warning them about the upcoming traffic jam.
The nice thing here is that the system is decentralized, and this makes it (in theory) harder to profile single users. Also, the information lives only in regions where it is relevant.
cu
Lars
Can somebody explain why Apple is emphasizing the 32MB video RAM? I thought one of the features of AGP is that the graphics card can use main RAM as well?
Lars
This is just great. Suddenly my 2 months old iBook just became a lot older. The iBook will be 6 months old when Jaguar comes out. And already they are not supporting it's graphics card with the new feature...
Way to go, apple.
Lars
AFAIK this is exactly the case in Germany. Monopolies are not allowed, even if a company grows to that by itself.
Lars
Nice, very good research there...
cu Lars
Do you really expect to get to testing now that you have posted that here? ;)
Really? I'm curious about this: Television with its tube ist based on the "Braunsche Roehre". Is K.F. Braun German or British? Cars: The motor was developed by Karl Otto and Gottlieb Daimler. Who are the british people you speak of? cu Lars
Do you really think that people will have the time and motivation to try and listen to those 10000 bands which will emerge out of this movement? I think the industry will do its marketing again, and make sure that only the best (or those they like) come to the surface. Lesser bands will never be listened to, just because the sheer mass of music out there.
Why do you think most people listen to radio? Because most people are lazy. The _want_ to have music preselected for them.
cu Lars