Our Documentation Index page gives a basic list of the areas we have documented. The General Philosophy describes our philosophical outlook, while Core Concepts describe the main ideas which are needed to understand coding FaerieMUD. Our engine is based on the same Design Patterns you're describing. It is open source and is basically finished and tested.
The game engine is known as "The MUES Engine" (pronounced "muse") for Multi-User Environment Server because it allows many users to simultaneously interact with one or more environments each being served by one or more servers. When MUES is being used for serving MMORPGs or MUDs, the environments are usually called "worlds" but MUES does not make any assumptions about their nature. They can be chat rooms or workgroups for collaboration or whatever.
The MUES code is pretty well documented, so you may even be able to use it as pseudocode. (For that matter, it may be possible to use it in Ruby since it doesn't make assumptions about how the objects which are served to it are created.)
Good luck, and let us know if any of your ideas look like they'd help us.
All of which should not be taken as disagreeing about any of the other advice to look at WorldForge or MUDdev lists or whatever.
...is included in the latest "total cost of ownership" study Microsoft has purchased to show that Linux is really more expensive than overpriced bloatware.
...where the pointy-haired boss announces that management has discovered that 40 percent of sick days are being taken on Friday and Monday, declares they "know what this means," and wonders why Asok has fallen on the floor laughing.
Dilbert explains that the new intern can "probably do math."
...about how biased the judge was, this is the book to read. This is the book which was used by Microsoft to portray the judge as biased.
The judge compared specific acts of MS execs to specific acts of organized crime figures. Microsoft PR put out a press release which accused the judge of saying they were like gangsters. The press picked this up and it became accepted as fact that the judge said the biased things which MS PR attributed to him.
So, if your friends make wild claims about how biased the judge was, get this book and read the actual things which he said and how they were actually reported. You will be able to respond with the actual facts (since this is the place they were reported, without the MS-influenced misreporting). This is the primary source on the judge's statements. The judge talked to Auletta throughout the trial under the condition that his comments not be published until after it was over. He was talking about what his reactions to each piece of evidence were and what his reasons for those reactions were.
Judges are paid to evaluate what they are hearing based on the evidence in front of them. This is not bias. To report exactly what those reactions were and how they were based on what happened in court should be considered as useful insight into the system, not as a way for a criminal enterprise to dodge its responsibility for its actions.
Anybody who tells you the judge said something different than what he said in this book can be shot down with finality.
...we have a review and we're not sure the reviewer read the whole thing. And we have a comment on that review by a guy who read the chapter titles and deduced the author's bias from that.
I didn't know this was a contest to see who could post the wildest speculation.
Actually Auletta started out from the viewpoint of a guy who was frankly awed by Gates' accomplishments but willing to consider the possibility the government might have a case. He listened to both sides and concluded that Microsoft arrogance did more to convince the judge than the Justice Department.
Such a viewpoint and methodology is recommended to those who complain about bias based on chapter titles.
...that I've stumbled across a NP-complete problem the solution to which will allow me to rule the known universe.
I'm not revealing it here, of course, because I don't trust everyone who reads this. (And I have very little desire to be ruled by someone else, especially if they stole the idea from me.)
I doubt this is the only such problem, so everyone should be very careful about publishing any solution.
Carrying out the technology-sharing provision remains one of the sticking points in the settlement talks. The government wants to make sure it is effective, while Microsoft wants to make sure it can protect its intellectual property.
--from the Times article
Most of us who make our living from copyrighted material do not protect it by restricting access. We enforce it by going after those who pirate it. MS has more resources for this than most of us, and we do fine.
Restricting access is the refuge preferred by those who steal the IP of others, by those whose code is embarrassing when viewed by true professionals, and by those who seek commercial advantage by including secret APIs in their operating systems.
This is starting to become a pattern...
on
Simsville Canceled
·
· Score: 2
First, the Warcraft role-playing game, then Sid Meier's dinosaur game, and now Simsville.
Companies are cancelling projects that don't meet their standards. They seem to think the loss of big money already thrown into the project is less important than the loss of reputation due to a shoddy product.
...as much as I like Shockwave Rider, The Dispossessed may prove to be one of the great works in all of literature. Certainly it will be one of the most influential in literature, combining (as it does) the utopian novel and the dystopia into a single genre. It is hard to imagine anyone writing a utopian novel in the future without admitting the possibility that the utopia described therein could be corrupted by overzealous supporters.
And the influence may extend into government and into all of our lives. If the so-called "Third Way" so popular in politics throughout the world today continues to grow in governmental influence, The Dispossessed may one day be credited with reviving it. It was popular in the late '40s and early '50s when centrists tried to promote Sweden as the "middle way." It wasn't until after the book's publication that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton began to move their parties to the center.
...that worked on a quest-based CRPG set in the Warcraft world (now, I guess, it's the "World of Warcraft") for a couple years before abandoning the project because they couldn't meet their own standards.
Don't expect them to release this unless they can do it right. (This is a good thing.) So don't get your hopes too high. If it doesn't come to fruition, it will be because they couldn't make it as fun as they thought it should be. If it is released, it will probably be late. (Blizzard has a reputation for taking the extra time to do things right.)
...in journalism (tech or otherwise), despite the current state of affairs.
It's unfortunate this discussion has devolved into a bunch of flames about the least interesting part of this article (the rant on/.) because the question of media whoredom is far more interesting. The most fascinating part of such pimping of advertisers products is that it doesn't serve the advertisers. After the first time a reader buys a lousy product after seeing an ad and a review in a magazine, he will assume all products advertised there are just as worthless.
An excellent recent example can be found in David Coursey's column about Blackcomb, MS's first truly.Net OS release. Coursey explains that Blackcomb will be delayed, suggesting: "[A]s Blackcomb waits, there's talk that Microsoft will add a refresher release of Windows XP (supposedly code-named Longhorn) in the 2003 time frame, as a means of rolling out some new technology before the Blackcomb release."
The ZDNet pimp continues with the warning, "Microsoft should consider this carefully, as its most trouble-prone Windows release came to be in just this manner. Windows Me, it should be remembered, was an interim release brought out after Windows XP was delayed for a year. Win Me seems to have caused at least as many problems as it solved. Perhaps Microsoft will remember this before it updates Windows XP just because it needs a revenue hit while Blackcomb is delayed."
Now go to ZDNet's reviews of Windows ME and try to find anything that let readers know it was the "most trouble-prone Windows release" which "caused at least as many problems as it solved." It just isn't there in the reviews. It seems that ZDNet was only willing to tell this to readers because Windows XP is now out, so its advertiser is now urging users to update from WinME to something else.
It is quite disturbing how often this is the case. When I started my company, I was not in a position to test systems myself so I read the industry press which seemed to be in complete agreement that NT 4.0 was going to finally be a stable network operating system from Microsoft and that Access was an excellent database for small business. I put all my money in a sales program written with Access and came very close to losing it all -- my business, all my money, even my house.
This led me to be suspicious of the tech press on NT, which was fortunate because they didn't admit 4.0 was a dog until 5.0 (or Win 2000, if you prefer) came out actually delivering what the industry press said 4.0 had. We chose Linux for our web server, which worked so well that we are now using Linux as our network OS.
I now get my Windows news from ArsTechnica, although there is a bit of a bias even there.
If you want to understand the reasons for pimping in tech press, compare the journals written for doctors with those written for lawyers. Doctors are used to getting everything for free, including their professional publications. Lawyers are used to paying for everything and passing it along (in "library use" charges) to their clients. The result is that lawyers' journals are highly informative, while doctors' journals (not JAMA or New England Journal of Medicine, but periodicals directed specifically to practicing physicians in various specialties like Cap/Cities Medical News Group) imagine themselves to be captives of the drug companies which buy most of their advertising space.
I say "imagine" because the drug companies are neither well served by nor particularly interested in magazines which deceive doctors in their interest. The editors, who are often corporate whores without the ability to conceive of a drug company which is not just as unethical as they are, just assume they are. A case in point is the reporting on the side effects of early birth-control pills:
The reporters sent to professional gatherings where the side effects were announced by researchers wrote stories for their editors' OB-GYN magazines. The drug companies were not trying to hide these results. Often their researchers were the ones doing the announcing. Often they had come up with alternatives which were safer, which they wanted the subscribers to these magazines to prescribe to their patients. But the editors steadfastly refused to publish the information on the grounds that side effects might scare people from using drug company products.
The long-term result was that more people were harmed by side effects, birth-control pills got a bad name at precisely the time when they had become much more safe. The corrupt editors had actually harmed drug-company profits, even though the companies themselves had never asked for the dishonest coverage.
Now the question should be: How much of the current tech downturn is the result of tech-media pimps failing to serve their advertisers by failing to serve their readers?
I was aware that the treaty had not been sent to the Senate for ratification. I was also aware that the reason it was not sent by the Clinton administration was that they knew it would not pass.
That is a far cry from saying, as the FUDsters are, (and I do not put you in that category by any means) that there was no support for Kyoto in the Senate and no support in the EU. There is insufficient support in the Senate and overwhelming support in the EU, both among politicians and among the people (even in the business community).
While I do not agree with you on the exemption of non-industrialized nations from the limits, I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge the arguments on the other side and address yourself to those arguments rather than spreading five-year-old disinformation.
I'm sorry my carelessness caused you to doubt my statements about the EU. I will email you a transcript which may help restore my credibility. My main concern is that this discussion is dominated by oft-repeated FUD, which suggests that those who oppose the treaty don't have the kind of reasoned arguments you put forward. I hope my own mis-statements do not get repeated so often they similarly undermine my own position (which is less than full support for the treaty).
Every EU country has passed the internal laws (or is passing them) required for Kyoto. Many are way ahead of us on this. The U.S. adopted a wait-and-hope-it-proves-wrong strategy in 1990 while the Europeans adopted a do-as-much-now-as-we-can-so-it'll-hurt-less-later strategy. Both were valid strategies. We now know which one was better.
Why do the anti-Kyoto FUDsters think they can get away with saying the Europeans haven't ratified? Because it's technically true: Members of the EU are not allowed to ratify treaties. That's the EU's responsibility. The EU hasn't ratified because it hasn't yet decided what the procedure for ratification will be under the European Union. They are agreed on ratification of this treaty, but they aren't going to rush to create a bad ratification procedure just to ratify something they all know they're going to approve. They'd be stuck with that bad procedure.
The Senate vote was 0-98 because those who support the treaty want the right to bring it up later, something which only those who voted against can do under the rules of the Senate. So, why do the opponents of Kyoto keep resurrecting this cannard? Because their goal is to deceive, not to inform.
It is clear who is repeating lies, Shivetya, the only question is whether you are one of those deceivers or one of the deceived.
I've noticed that, when somebody comes along with a counter-theory, the junk-science purveyors (again, on both sides of any issue) glom onto it. Even if the counter-theory was presented with a genuine interest in science (and not deliberate deception as appears to be the case here), those who've come to use it in their arguments do so without regard to whether it checks out or not.
You can see the results here: surface temperatures versus atmospheric temperatures, ice ages held off, any number of items which (whatever their original validity) no longer hold water scientifically trotted forth by those who want to believe in what they want to believe more than they want to know what is really true.
...and a non-scientist is not whether they have theories or whether they understand what theories are. It is whether they test their theories against real-world data to determine the degree to which they predict that data. Everybody (scientists and non-scientists alike) has theories. Everybody tests them or accepts them without challenge. Those who rigorously test them in an open environment where others can review their work are scientists.
Climatologists who believe in global warming have for years put forward theories which, to a greater or lesser degree, made predictions which (for the most part) have been borne out by the subsequent data. When they have proven wrong, they have modified their theories or become skeptics. Those who consider themselves "global-warming skeptics" have likewise put forward theories (global warming is not caused by humans, global warming is good, the homeostatic mechanics of weather will fix the problem). When they have proven wrong, they have changed their theories or become supporters of the global-warming hypothesis.
To whatever extent any of those on either side have refused to accept evidence, they are not scientists. Right now, the tide of data is running against the skeptics. But that doesn't mean it always will. If they come up with theories which better predict the data, they will gain ascendency.
The theory put forth in Fallen Angels is not a "competing" theory because it assumes that the global-warming theorists are right about the effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The fact that this theory suggests that greenhouse gases are holding back an ecological catastrophe in no suggests that another ecological catastrophe would not be created by over-shooting the needed amount of warming. In fact, the theory in the book almost requires that the global warming theory be also possible.
Fallen Angels is a fun book, but it has almost nothing to do with global warming. The real question it asks is whether a bunch of geeks at a sci-fi convention could actually put a spacecraft in orbit if they really wanted to. (I heard a rumor that an actual science-fiction convention raised money by holding an auction or raffle whose prize was a place in the book.)
The use of the scientific theory in the book is to give them the motivation: The idea is that eco-extremists have instituted a totalitarian state to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions, triggering the ice age which those emissions were preventing. These enviro-Nazis are clamping down on technology, including the space program. (This explains why the government won't put up the spacecraft.) The last bastion of technology is the space station, which has fans among the clandestine groups who still meet at illegal, underground SF conventions. When two astronauts crash, the geeks have to get them back to space before the government finds them.
All of which is fun, but not very believable. The theory is interesting, but of no particular relevance to the current debate over greenhouse gases. In the book, the banning of fossil fuels triggers an ice age, eliminating the need for the ban. But the government continues to suppress the one thing which could save the earth from the advancing sheets of ice.
While this might be believable, the fact that the population continues to go along is not. (The exception is Milwaukee, where the city's government secretly burns fossil fuels.) People might be fooled into accepting a phoney ban on carbon dioxide when global warming was a real issue. But by the time it's snowing in July that argument is gonna fall real flat.
This post says less about science or theories or greenhouse gases than about the will to believe demonstrated by its author. Robotech_Master obviously wants to believe that global warming is "just" a theory, so he is willing to ignore the fact that the theory he puts forward actually includes global warming. Indeed, one could argue that many of the posts to Katz's piece (on both sides) are more evidence of the will to believe than anything else.
...the sheer volume of nonsense and dishonesty being propagated by those who oppose the Kyoto Treaty. There are certainly questions about the scientific truth of global warming predictions. But they are not being accurately portrayed in the three posts above this one. Let's look at three posts (working downward in the current tree):
general_re started with:
...there is far from any consensus that this warming is a result of human activity.
--general_re
Master Bait replied with:
About the only people in the scientific community that don't believe in what you say are the very few who get research grants from big oil companies to make up research poopooing global warming.
-- Master Bait
And Golias weighed in with:
That's fun to say, but the largest and most current study to date on the topic (a joint venture by the feds and the National Academy of Sciences done almost immediately after the final nail in the Kyoto Treaty coffin was hammered in), showed that there was, in fact, no consensus in the scientific community about this at all.
I read a report from two members of NAS which raised several issues:
1. There is no certainty about any of this. We are very bad at predicting weather, and still understand very little of it. ...
4. Geological temeratures are in constant flux. From about 800 to 1300 AD there was successful agriculture in Greenland. The cold period of the centuries that followed forced the Vikings to abandon their settlements in North America, and shortened average human life spans in Europe by 10 years. ...
6. The sun spot cycles seem to have a much bigger impact on global climate than we once suspected. When your main source of heat is a massive, chaotic, uncontrolled fusion reaction, change is something you need to learn to expect.
7. Over the short term (less than a century or two), upper-atmosphere clouds have been discovered to be extremely efficient thermostats for the Earth. When the ammount of heat coming from the sun changes, the clouds get bigger or smaller to compensate, regulating the climate.
Some people feel that the best way to counter all this carbon going into the air (mostly in the form of CO2) is to use some kind of machine to extract atmospheric carbon. Fortunately, such machines already exist. They are called trees. It appears that John Denver had the solution to global warming figured out before anybody ever heard of it.
-- Golias
Here we see FUD of the highest order: everything from outright lies to glib irrelevancies.
Start with general_re's claim that "there is far from any consensus that this warming is the result of human activity." By any definition of "consensus" this is flatly false. There is a consensus (indeed, very close to unanimity) that global warming exists. There is a consensus (strong and widespread, verging on unanimous) that some portion of that warming is caused by humans. There is a consensus (strong and growing, but not unanimous) that the human-caused share is signficant and dangerous. There is even a consensus (much weaker, but still signficant) that most of the currently observed warming is caused by human activity. This last consensus derives primarily through negative data showing that other proposed causes are not contributing.
While Master Bait's claim that only people who aren't part of this consensus get grants from big oil isn't strictly true, it is true that a disturbing number of the "skeptics" are financed by those with a financial interest in the results. Master's exaggerations are dwarfed by Golias' counter-exaggeration:
"That's fun to say, but the largest and most current study to date on the topic (a joint venture by the feds and the National Academy of Sciences done almost immediately after the final nail in the Kyoto Treaty coffin was hammered in), showed that there was, in fact, no consensus in the scientific community about this at all."
Which is also fun to say, I'm sure, but far more inaccurate than Master Bait's overstatement. Almost as fun as paraphrasing "members of the NAS" without citing references, credentials or names (or giving anyone a chance to see if they have since changed their minds -- as many skeptics have).
Picking on four of Golias' itemized points, I would say: (1) wrong or irrelevant; (4) irrelevant; (6) irrelevant and wrong; and (7) totally irrelevant (as befits all good FUD). And then he ends with a true fact which argues against everything he seems to be saying. (All of this is not to imply endorse any of the other points.)
(1) We're not very good at predicting the weather, but we're pretty good at predicting the climate. It's going to rain in the rain forest. It's going to snow in the mountains during winter. Weather is a chaotic system; climate is a thermodynamic system. Northern Europe might cool off while the rest of the world is heating up, but the average has been pretty accurately predicted (by those models Golias derides in item 2). And we're getting better. And the degree to which we aren't good at predicting climatic change is irrelevant if our best current knowledge says a disaster will come if we don't respond.
(4) Geologic temperatures are in constant flux on a geologic time scale. And that flux has often meant bad things for the creatures of earth. The fact that historically recorded fluxes have shortened people's lifetimes is an argument against a concern for global warming only for those who don't care if their lives are shortened. The fact that geologically recorded fluxes have wiped out a vast majority of all the species which have ever evolved on the planet is an argument against a concern for global warming only for those who don't care if their species is wiped out.
(6) Sun spot cycles have been long suspected as contributors to climatic change (since it was first realized that the earth could be viewed as a thermodynamic system and the numbers didn't add up). They have also been completely eliminated as the cause of the observed global warming of last 10 years (as recently confirmed by Pres. Bush's commission on which he made sure there were respected "skeptics"). To the degree that item 6 is not wrong, it is irrelevant: It would not matter to the dead people whether they were killed by sun spots or the combined neglect of two Bush administrations; they would still be dead.
(7) Upper-atmosphere clouds (and, indeed, the entire chaotic system of weather and climate) have, in fact, been discovered to be extremely efficient thermostats by precisely the same kind of science which has discovered that greenhouse gases turn up that thermostat. The fact that upper-atmospheric clouds also regulate the temperature of Venus does not prevent it from being a hellish wasteland of greenhouse gas.
And, finally, the fact that trees can be used to mitigate the accumulation of CO2 says nothing about whether that accumulation should be mitigated.
...from my sources in PRE-pre-Columbian American History, that Native Americans only became enlightened Noble Savages AFTER they killed off the mammoths.
Nobody complained about the extinction of the "giant lizards with really big teeth" (as some of the megafauna of the day were known). But, in the famine which followed the death of the last wooly pachyderm, many were heard to lament, "Maybe we shouldn't have killed them all. I wonder if we shouldn't adopt a different philosophy vis-a-vis these bison. Something along the lines of we're-all-the-children-of-the-Great-Spirit or something like that. Besides, Rousseau will respect us more."
...mainly because Ruby's OO model is dynamic. (Perl's is, too, but as a "first language" it is problematic.)
Much of this "Ask Slashdot" seems a little unfocused: Some people are answering with the assumption that a "first language" is a CS major's first programming language, while others are assuming the class will be attended either primarily or partially by those in other disciplines.
To me JAVA makes sense for the second case, but not for the first. With a good IDE, beginners can get up useful programs with a basic understanding. But it is not a language I would ever choose once I knew the others (OK, in certain cross-platform environments, maybe) for really tough projects.
Ruby breaks through this barrier because it works for beginners who really need a glue language without limitations (Python, Perl or Ruby) as well as for people who are going to be pushing the limits of OO before they are through with their careers.
But the Ruby book (linked in the parent) demonstrates a problem with using OO for new programmers: Which comes first, the OO chicken, or the basic programming egg? How do you teach what OO is without having some basic commands to demonstrate it with? And how do you teach basic commands in an OO language without doing it object-orientedly?
I don't think this problem is insurmountable. But it may be more important than choosing a language. (In fact, the object-oriented ZOOs so offensive to Steeltoe may be failed attempts to do this.)
The final question which needs to be addressed by people deciding about JAVA in first-year classes (or Ruby for that matter) is: What PRECISELY do you mean by "object oriented"?
Perhaps because I have been around so long, I see OO as a dynamic concept. It has changed over time and really only reached its maturity with the publication of Design Patterns. I fully expect it will change still more in the future.
Some languages (JAVA, C++ and Python) take a very accurate snapshot of the current thinking on OO and implement it very well. Other languages (Perl and Ruby) assume that OO will evolve and give you the ability to implement as much of object-orientedness as you'd like.
An interesting question is whether aspect-oriented programming (boy, do I hate that name) will become a part of object-oriented programming or whether it will be considered a separate paradigm. Ruby is the one of the few languages that implements aspect-oriented concepts (like mix-ins) and it also allows programmers to choose where they want to work on that spectrum. (You can ignore aspect-orientedness, you can use the features offered by the language itself, or you can modify its aspect-oriented features into whatever becomes the next definition of the new paradigm.)
All of this makes it an excellent choice for the CS majors starting a basic class which needs an OO language.
One drawback with Ruby (which may actually prove a boon to beginning CS majors) is the lack of a large library like CPAN or the C libraries. Although it is growing, the Ruby Archive is nowhere near as comprehensive as CPAN. While this may be occasionally frustrating, it offers CS majors a good way to make a name for themselves. (There's nothing like applying for a job and finding your prospective employer uses a module you wrote. Voila! Instant reference.) All you have to do to make a name in the Ruby community is go to CPAN, find a module which has no counterpart on the Ruby Archive, and port it to the Ruby idiom. Of course, if Ruby fizzles, that still won't get you a job. But at least you can tell some Perl employer you know the module well enough to port it.
...'cause this guy's saying something that's not getting reported: The Appeals Court case was handled by amateurs with the guys who won the case at lower levels sitting helplessly in the front row. It's reasonable to expect that Bush would not use David Boies after Florida. But making ALL the guys who knew the case sit there and watch fools sabotage the mission amounts to judicio-terrorism.
I frequently said during the campaign the Bush administration would not make a big impact on the anti-trust trial. I was wrong. These guys have gone to a level of legal corruption unprecedented in American history. I never anticipated they would attempt anything so blatant.
It will be interesting to see what the state attorneys general do.
For the definitive answer on hyphens, see Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Hint: They only connect words that are all connected by other hyphens. The main thing is to avoid the problem which occurred when the Chattanooga News merged with the Chattanooga Free Press to become the hyphenated Chattanooga News-Free Press.
A lot depends here on what we mean by the OO in OODBMS. Even in programming, the meaning of object-orientation has changed through the years. And the problem of ambiguity is even greater with database management tools.
I am glad there are good and smart people working on a standard for what constitutes an OODBMS. I suspect it will be a few years before a definitive standard is completely figured out.
Consider, for example, some of the very different things people mean by an "Object-Oriented Database Management System":
Some people use it to mean "something which will give me persistence in the OO app I'm currently working on." For them a relational database management product with a few OO tools may be fine (assuming their objects are sufficiently simple).
Some people use it to mean "something that will give me the ability to tie behavior to persistent objects." For them good stored procedures (like Oracle with a third-party product for debugging stored procedures) may be exactly what they want.
Some people use it to mean "a DBMS which implements all the major features of current OO theory." A OODBMS which truly implements standards (as linked to in the original article) is what's needed for these people.
Some people use it to mean "something which will enable me to implement all ideas currently associated with advanced OO theory (including aspect-oriented programming) and anything which may be included in that theory in the future." A DBMS with a dynamic model of object-oriented-ness (along the lines of Perl's dynamic model of what OO is) would be required. I don't know if anyone's actually accomplished this, but I would be both impressed and interested if it's been done (especially if it's language-independent, assuming that's possible).
And some people use it to mean "a DBMS which is fundamentally object-oriented in its underlying structure enabling a variety of powerful table-creation tools." This can be accomplished with some of the better OODBMSs (depending, once again, on just what you mean by "fundamentally object-oriented").
Given all this, I suspect it will be a while before a clear definition is agreed upon. It may even come out of theoretical work in academia. Until that time, the practical reasons listed here will continue to be why many don't use OODBMSs. And the attractive features they offer will continue to be why some people will ignore those practical problems.
Oh, no! It looks like we're back to "it depends on the problem you're working on" just like so many of these debates.
For instance, during the '70s and '80s as more and more researchers presented papers on the dangers of some popular oral contraceptives of the era, many of the publications which were supposed to be informing the OB-GYN community were strangely silent on the implied criticism of their drug-company advertisers. The research was seldom reported to the practitioners who most needed the data.
For instance, the medical news group of Cap Cities (owned for at least part of that time by ABC) repeatedly refused to publish stories written by its staff about the dangers documented in these papers, even though the drug companies had come up with safer alternatives.
Paradoxically, this meant the public heard about these problems anedoctally. The problems ended up worse than if the problems (and their solutions) had been better publicized. And the drug companies ended up with a bigger black eye than if the OB-GYN community had been notified.
All of this happened primarily because doctors are so used to getting their info as freebies that they won't pay for subscriptions. Interestingly, Steven Brill has pointed out recently that lawyers expect to pay for subscriptions to their journals. I suspect this produces much less distortion in their magazines.
Brill has argued that if the information-wants-to-be-free crowd wins on the Internet the result might be the same kind of misinformation that has plagued doctors. In other words, if Internet users continue to expect that they don't have to pay for content, the content they get may end up being worth less than they're paying.
My idealistic journalism professors back in college used to tell us that we shouldn't change our coverage or our news judgment to protect advertisers. They argued that what newspapers (or, by extension, other media) offer is the respect their audiences have for their impartiality. If you compromise that for advertisers' short term interests, the value of the advertising is decreased because readers do not associate the periodical with accuracy.
I have seen several instances of this kind of failure (where a newspaper was so completely in thrall to its advertisers that the advertising had no benefit and the paper went under) through the years. So, I suspect this is a case where the idealists' advice also turns out to be the pragmatists' observation.
You did leave out an important translation of the following part:
I noted that the parents did not indicate that they were given information regarding the next level to express their concerns, nor have they called back to discuss the results of my second inquiry into the matter.
Which should be translated as: "I will lie at will about the parents who revealed my actions even though those I am lying to have read the article in which the parents did, in fact, indicate they were given information regarding the next level to express their concerns."
One could also add something about the legal liability this guy will be facing if he does end up with a Columbine-like situtation when it is discovered that he ignored warnings that he was recreating a situation very much like the one at Columbine which helped to produce the killings. When one adds this to his slanderous sniping from behind FERPA ("privacy concerns prevent me from telling you why I think this parent is dirty-bad-nasty"), I would not like to be holding his libel-slander-gross-negligence insurance.
We're working on that problem specifically. We've got a CGI templating system that is really superior and really object-oriented (i.e. perfect for Ruby). We're porting it to Ruby.
The only holdup is it requires Text::Balanced (a truly incredible piece of code) and Parse::RecDescent. As soon as we have those ported (and Damian Conway has offered help), we'll be able to post our templating system.
DBI is another kettle of fish, however. I hope somebody is working on it. We do have a TableAdapter interface which gives us a really good OO interface to databases designed to hold complex objects. But DBI offers a better interface for strictly SQL-like stuff. It is not trivial, especially if you're trying to offer one interface which works for many different databases (which is the idea of DBI).
Legalistic "No Comment" response to my email...
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 2
...to the district superintendent:
Due to federal law, FERPA, I cannot discuss the facts regarding this issue.
Er, I didn't ask you to discuss the facts regarding any issue. Please be assured that your response will be duly noted in any lawsuits brought as a result of any violence which results from your deliberate decision to ignore my concerns.
Slashdot Mirror
...except you can substitute Ruby for C#.
Our Documentation Index page gives a basic list of the areas we have documented. The General Philosophy describes our philosophical outlook, while Core Concepts describe the main ideas which are needed to understand coding FaerieMUD. Our engine is based on the same Design Patterns you're describing. It is open source and is basically finished and tested.
The game engine is known as "The MUES Engine" (pronounced "muse") for Multi-User Environment Server because it allows many users to simultaneously interact with one or more environments each being served by one or more servers. When MUES is being used for serving MMORPGs or MUDs, the environments are usually called "worlds" but MUES does not make any assumptions about their nature. They can be chat rooms or workgroups for collaboration or whatever.
The MUES code is pretty well documented, so you may even be able to use it as pseudocode. (For that matter, it may be possible to use it in Ruby since it doesn't make assumptions about how the objects which are served to it are created.)
Good luck, and let us know if any of your ideas look like they'd help us.
All of which should not be taken as disagreeing about any of the other advice to look at WorldForge or MUDdev lists or whatever.
...is included in the latest "total cost of ownership" study Microsoft has purchased to show that Linux is really more expensive than overpriced bloatware.
...where the pointy-haired boss announces that management has discovered that 40 percent of sick days are being taken on Friday and Monday, declares they "know what this means," and wonders why Asok has fallen on the floor laughing.
Dilbert explains that the new intern can "probably do math."
...about how biased the judge was, this is the book to read. This is the book which was used by Microsoft to portray the judge as biased.
The judge compared specific acts of MS execs to specific acts of organized crime figures. Microsoft PR put out a press release which accused the judge of saying they were like gangsters. The press picked this up and it became accepted as fact that the judge said the biased things which MS PR attributed to him.
So, if your friends make wild claims about how biased the judge was, get this book and read the actual things which he said and how they were actually reported. You will be able to respond with the actual facts (since this is the place they were reported, without the MS-influenced misreporting). This is the primary source on the judge's statements. The judge talked to Auletta throughout the trial under the condition that his comments not be published until after it was over. He was talking about what his reactions to each piece of evidence were and what his reasons for those reactions were.
Judges are paid to evaluate what they are hearing based on the evidence in front of them. This is not bias. To report exactly what those reactions were and how they were based on what happened in court should be considered as useful insight into the system, not as a way for a criminal enterprise to dodge its responsibility for its actions.
Anybody who tells you the judge said something different than what he said in this book can be shot down with finality.
...we have a review and we're not sure the reviewer read the whole thing. And we have a comment on that review by a guy who read the chapter titles and deduced the author's bias from that.
I didn't know this was a contest to see who could post the wildest speculation.
Actually Auletta started out from the viewpoint of a guy who was frankly awed by Gates' accomplishments but willing to consider the possibility the government might have a case. He listened to both sides and concluded that Microsoft arrogance did more to convince the judge than the Justice Department.
Such a viewpoint and methodology is recommended to those who complain about bias based on chapter titles.
...that I've stumbled across a NP-complete problem the solution to which will allow me to rule the known universe.
I'm not revealing it here, of course, because I don't trust everyone who reads this. (And I have very little desire to be ruled by someone else, especially if they stole the idea from me.)
I doubt this is the only such problem, so everyone should be very careful about publishing any solution.
...what Microsoft really wants.
Most of us who make our living from copyrighted material do not protect it by restricting access. We enforce it by going after those who pirate it. MS has more resources for this than most of us, and we do fine.
Restricting access is the refuge preferred by those who steal the IP of others, by those whose code is embarrassing when viewed by true professionals, and by those who seek commercial advantage by including secret APIs in their operating systems.
First, the Warcraft role-playing game, then Sid Meier's dinosaur game, and now Simsville.
Companies are cancelling projects that don't meet their standards. They seem to think the loss of big money already thrown into the project is less important than the loss of reputation due to a shoddy product.
...as much as I like Shockwave Rider, The Dispossessed may prove to be one of the great works in all of literature. Certainly it will be one of the most influential in literature, combining (as it does) the utopian novel and the dystopia into a single genre. It is hard to imagine anyone writing a utopian novel in the future without admitting the possibility that the utopia described therein could be corrupted by overzealous supporters.
And the influence may extend into government and into all of our lives. If the so-called "Third Way" so popular in politics throughout the world today continues to grow in governmental influence, The Dispossessed may one day be credited with reviving it. It was popular in the late '40s and early '50s when centrists tried to promote Sweden as the "middle way." It wasn't until after the book's publication that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton began to move their parties to the center.
...that worked on a quest-based CRPG set in the Warcraft world (now, I guess, it's the "World of Warcraft") for a couple years before abandoning the project because they couldn't meet their own standards.
Don't expect them to release this unless they can do it right. (This is a good thing.) So don't get your hopes too high. If it doesn't come to fruition, it will be because they couldn't make it as fun as they thought it should be. If it is released, it will probably be late. (Blizzard has a reputation for taking the extra time to do things right.)
It will probably also be very good.
...in journalism (tech or otherwise), despite the current state of affairs.
It's unfortunate this discussion has devolved into a bunch of flames about the least interesting part of this article (the rant on /.) because the question of media whoredom is far more interesting. The most fascinating part of such pimping of advertisers products is that it doesn't serve the advertisers. After the first time a reader buys a lousy product after seeing an ad and a review in a magazine, he will assume all products advertised there are just as worthless.
An excellent recent example can be found in David Coursey's column about Blackcomb, MS's first truly .Net OS release. Coursey explains that Blackcomb will be delayed, suggesting: "[A]s Blackcomb waits, there's talk that Microsoft will add a refresher release of Windows XP (supposedly code-named Longhorn) in the 2003 time frame, as a means of rolling out some new technology before the Blackcomb release."
The ZDNet pimp continues with the warning, "Microsoft should consider this carefully, as its most trouble-prone Windows release came to be in just this manner. Windows Me, it should be remembered, was an interim release brought out after Windows XP was delayed for a year. Win Me seems to have caused at least as many problems as it solved. Perhaps Microsoft will remember this before it updates Windows XP just because it needs a revenue hit while Blackcomb is delayed."
Now go to ZDNet's reviews of Windows ME and try to find anything that let readers know it was the "most trouble-prone Windows release" which "caused at least as many problems as it solved." It just isn't there in the reviews. It seems that ZDNet was only willing to tell this to readers because Windows XP is now out, so its advertiser is now urging users to update from WinME to something else.
It is quite disturbing how often this is the case. When I started my company, I was not in a position to test systems myself so I read the industry press which seemed to be in complete agreement that NT 4.0 was going to finally be a stable network operating system from Microsoft and that Access was an excellent database for small business. I put all my money in a sales program written with Access and came very close to losing it all -- my business, all my money, even my house.
This led me to be suspicious of the tech press on NT, which was fortunate because they didn't admit 4.0 was a dog until 5.0 (or Win 2000, if you prefer) came out actually delivering what the industry press said 4.0 had. We chose Linux for our web server, which worked so well that we are now using Linux as our network OS.
I now get my Windows news from ArsTechnica, although there is a bit of a bias even there.
If you want to understand the reasons for pimping in tech press, compare the journals written for doctors with those written for lawyers. Doctors are used to getting everything for free, including their professional publications. Lawyers are used to paying for everything and passing it along (in "library use" charges) to their clients. The result is that lawyers' journals are highly informative, while doctors' journals (not JAMA or New England Journal of Medicine, but periodicals directed specifically to practicing physicians in various specialties like Cap/Cities Medical News Group) imagine themselves to be captives of the drug companies which buy most of their advertising space.
I say "imagine" because the drug companies are neither well served by nor particularly interested in magazines which deceive doctors in their interest. The editors, who are often corporate whores without the ability to conceive of a drug company which is not just as unethical as they are, just assume they are. A case in point is the reporting on the side effects of early birth-control pills:
The reporters sent to professional gatherings where the side effects were announced by researchers wrote stories for their editors' OB-GYN magazines. The drug companies were not trying to hide these results. Often their researchers were the ones doing the announcing. Often they had come up with alternatives which were safer, which they wanted the subscribers to these magazines to prescribe to their patients. But the editors steadfastly refused to publish the information on the grounds that side effects might scare people from using drug company products.
The long-term result was that more people were harmed by side effects, birth-control pills got a bad name at precisely the time when they had become much more safe. The corrupt editors had actually harmed drug-company profits, even though the companies themselves had never asked for the dishonest coverage.
Now the question should be: How much of the current tech downturn is the result of tech-media pimps failing to serve their advertisers by failing to serve their readers?
I was aware that the treaty had not been sent to the Senate for ratification. I was also aware that the reason it was not sent by the Clinton administration was that they knew it would not pass.
That is a far cry from saying, as the FUDsters are, (and I do not put you in that category by any means) that there was no support for Kyoto in the Senate and no support in the EU. There is insufficient support in the Senate and overwhelming support in the EU, both among politicians and among the people (even in the business community).
While I do not agree with you on the exemption of non-industrialized nations from the limits, I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge the arguments on the other side and address yourself to those arguments rather than spreading five-year-old disinformation.
I'm sorry my carelessness caused you to doubt my statements about the EU. I will email you a transcript which may help restore my credibility. My main concern is that this discussion is dominated by oft-repeated FUD, which suggests that those who oppose the treaty don't have the kind of reasoned arguments you put forward. I hope my own mis-statements do not get repeated so often they similarly undermine my own position (which is less than full support for the treaty).
Every EU country has passed the internal laws (or is passing them) required for Kyoto. Many are way ahead of us on this. The U.S. adopted a wait-and-hope-it-proves-wrong strategy in 1990 while the Europeans adopted a do-as-much-now-as-we-can-so-it'll-hurt-less-later strategy. Both were valid strategies. We now know which one was better.
Why do the anti-Kyoto FUDsters think they can get away with saying the Europeans haven't ratified? Because it's technically true: Members of the EU are not allowed to ratify treaties. That's the EU's responsibility. The EU hasn't ratified because it hasn't yet decided what the procedure for ratification will be under the European Union. They are agreed on ratification of this treaty, but they aren't going to rush to create a bad ratification procedure just to ratify something they all know they're going to approve. They'd be stuck with that bad procedure.
The Senate vote was 0-98 because those who support the treaty want the right to bring it up later, something which only those who voted against can do under the rules of the Senate. So, why do the opponents of Kyoto keep resurrecting this cannard? Because their goal is to deceive, not to inform.
It is clear who is repeating lies, Shivetya, the only question is whether you are one of those deceivers or one of the deceived.
I've noticed that, when somebody comes along with a counter-theory, the junk-science purveyors (again, on both sides of any issue) glom onto it. Even if the counter-theory was presented with a genuine interest in science (and not deliberate deception as appears to be the case here), those who've come to use it in their arguments do so without regard to whether it checks out or not.
You can see the results here: surface temperatures versus atmospheric temperatures, ice ages held off, any number of items which (whatever their original validity) no longer hold water scientifically trotted forth by those who want to believe in what they want to believe more than they want to know what is really true.
...and a non-scientist is not whether they have theories or whether they understand what theories are. It is whether they test their theories against real-world data to determine the degree to which they predict that data. Everybody (scientists and non-scientists alike) has theories. Everybody tests them or accepts them without challenge. Those who rigorously test them in an open environment where others can review their work are scientists.
Climatologists who believe in global warming have for years put forward theories which, to a greater or lesser degree, made predictions which (for the most part) have been borne out by the subsequent data. When they have proven wrong, they have modified their theories or become skeptics. Those who consider themselves "global-warming skeptics" have likewise put forward theories (global warming is not caused by humans, global warming is good, the homeostatic mechanics of weather will fix the problem). When they have proven wrong, they have changed their theories or become supporters of the global-warming hypothesis.
To whatever extent any of those on either side have refused to accept evidence, they are not scientists. Right now, the tide of data is running against the skeptics. But that doesn't mean it always will. If they come up with theories which better predict the data, they will gain ascendency.
The theory put forth in Fallen Angels is not a "competing" theory because it assumes that the global-warming theorists are right about the effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The fact that this theory suggests that greenhouse gases are holding back an ecological catastrophe in no suggests that another ecological catastrophe would not be created by over-shooting the needed amount of warming. In fact, the theory in the book almost requires that the global warming theory be also possible.
Fallen Angels is a fun book, but it has almost nothing to do with global warming. The real question it asks is whether a bunch of geeks at a sci-fi convention could actually put a spacecraft in orbit if they really wanted to. (I heard a rumor that an actual science-fiction convention raised money by holding an auction or raffle whose prize was a place in the book.)
The use of the scientific theory in the book is to give them the motivation: The idea is that eco-extremists have instituted a totalitarian state to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions, triggering the ice age which those emissions were preventing. These enviro-Nazis are clamping down on technology, including the space program. (This explains why the government won't put up the spacecraft.) The last bastion of technology is the space station, which has fans among the clandestine groups who still meet at illegal, underground SF conventions. When two astronauts crash, the geeks have to get them back to space before the government finds them.
All of which is fun, but not very believable. The theory is interesting, but of no particular relevance to the current debate over greenhouse gases. In the book, the banning of fossil fuels triggers an ice age, eliminating the need for the ban. But the government continues to suppress the one thing which could save the earth from the advancing sheets of ice.
While this might be believable, the fact that the population continues to go along is not. (The exception is Milwaukee, where the city's government secretly burns fossil fuels.) People might be fooled into accepting a phoney ban on carbon dioxide when global warming was a real issue. But by the time it's snowing in July that argument is gonna fall real flat.
This post says less about science or theories or greenhouse gases than about the will to believe demonstrated by its author. Robotech_Master obviously wants to believe that global warming is "just" a theory, so he is willing to ignore the fact that the theory he puts forward actually includes global warming. Indeed, one could argue that many of the posts to Katz's piece (on both sides) are more evidence of the will to believe than anything else.
...the sheer volume of nonsense and dishonesty being propagated by those who oppose the Kyoto Treaty. There are certainly questions about the scientific truth of global warming predictions. But they are not being accurately portrayed in the three posts above this one. Let's look at three posts (working downward in the current tree):
general_re started with:
Master Bait replied with:
And Golias weighed in with:
Here we see FUD of the highest order: everything from outright lies to glib irrelevancies.
Start with general_re's claim that "there is far from any consensus that this warming is the result of human activity." By any definition of "consensus" this is flatly false. There is a consensus (indeed, very close to unanimity) that global warming exists. There is a consensus (strong and widespread, verging on unanimous) that some portion of that warming is caused by humans. There is a consensus (strong and growing, but not unanimous) that the human-caused share is signficant and dangerous. There is even a consensus (much weaker, but still signficant) that most of the currently observed warming is caused by human activity. This last consensus derives primarily through negative data showing that other proposed causes are not contributing.
While Master Bait's claim that only people who aren't part of this consensus get grants from big oil isn't strictly true, it is true that a disturbing number of the "skeptics" are financed by those with a financial interest in the results. Master's exaggerations are dwarfed by Golias' counter-exaggeration:
"That's fun to say, but the largest and most current study to date on the topic (a joint venture by the feds and the National Academy of Sciences done almost immediately after the final nail in the Kyoto Treaty coffin was hammered in), showed that there was, in fact, no consensus in the scientific community about this at all."
Which is also fun to say, I'm sure, but far more inaccurate than Master Bait's overstatement. Almost as fun as paraphrasing "members of the NAS" without citing references, credentials or names (or giving anyone a chance to see if they have since changed their minds -- as many skeptics have).
Picking on four of Golias' itemized points, I would say: (1) wrong or irrelevant; (4) irrelevant; (6) irrelevant and wrong; and (7) totally irrelevant (as befits all good FUD). And then he ends with a true fact which argues against everything he seems to be saying. (All of this is not to imply endorse any of the other points.)
(1) We're not very good at predicting the weather, but we're pretty good at predicting the climate. It's going to rain in the rain forest. It's going to snow in the mountains during winter. Weather is a chaotic system; climate is a thermodynamic system. Northern Europe might cool off while the rest of the world is heating up, but the average has been pretty accurately predicted (by those models Golias derides in item 2). And we're getting better. And the degree to which we aren't good at predicting climatic change is irrelevant if our best current knowledge says a disaster will come if we don't respond.
(4) Geologic temperatures are in constant flux on a geologic time scale. And that flux has often meant bad things for the creatures of earth. The fact that historically recorded fluxes have shortened people's lifetimes is an argument against a concern for global warming only for those who don't care if their lives are shortened. The fact that geologically recorded fluxes have wiped out a vast majority of all the species which have ever evolved on the planet is an argument against a concern for global warming only for those who don't care if their species is wiped out.
(6) Sun spot cycles have been long suspected as contributors to climatic change (since it was first realized that the earth could be viewed as a thermodynamic system and the numbers didn't add up). They have also been completely eliminated as the cause of the observed global warming of last 10 years (as recently confirmed by Pres. Bush's commission on which he made sure there were respected "skeptics"). To the degree that item 6 is not wrong, it is irrelevant: It would not matter to the dead people whether they were killed by sun spots or the combined neglect of two Bush administrations; they would still be dead.
(7) Upper-atmosphere clouds (and, indeed, the entire chaotic system of weather and climate) have, in fact, been discovered to be extremely efficient thermostats by precisely the same kind of science which has discovered that greenhouse gases turn up that thermostat. The fact that upper-atmospheric clouds also regulate the temperature of Venus does not prevent it from being a hellish wasteland of greenhouse gas.
And, finally, the fact that trees can be used to mitigate the accumulation of CO2 says nothing about whether that accumulation should be mitigated.
...from my sources in PRE-pre-Columbian American History, that Native Americans only became enlightened Noble Savages AFTER they killed off the mammoths.
Nobody complained about the extinction of the "giant lizards with really big teeth" (as some of the megafauna of the day were known). But, in the famine which followed the death of the last wooly pachyderm, many were heard to lament, "Maybe we shouldn't have killed them all. I wonder if we shouldn't adopt a different philosophy vis-a-vis these bison. Something along the lines of we're-all-the-children-of-the-Great-Spirit or something like that. Besides, Rousseau will respect us more."
...mainly because Ruby's OO model is dynamic. (Perl's is, too, but as a "first language" it is problematic.)
Much of this "Ask Slashdot" seems a little unfocused: Some people are answering with the assumption that a "first language" is a CS major's first programming language, while others are assuming the class will be attended either primarily or partially by those in other disciplines.
To me JAVA makes sense for the second case, but not for the first. With a good IDE, beginners can get up useful programs with a basic understanding. But it is not a language I would ever choose once I knew the others (OK, in certain cross-platform environments, maybe) for really tough projects.
Ruby breaks through this barrier because it works for beginners who really need a glue language without limitations (Python, Perl or Ruby) as well as for people who are going to be pushing the limits of OO before they are through with their careers.
But the Ruby book (linked in the parent) demonstrates a problem with using OO for new programmers: Which comes first, the OO chicken, or the basic programming egg? How do you teach what OO is without having some basic commands to demonstrate it with? And how do you teach basic commands in an OO language without doing it object-orientedly?
I don't think this problem is insurmountable. But it may be more important than choosing a language. (In fact, the object-oriented ZOOs so offensive to Steeltoe may be failed attempts to do this.)
The final question which needs to be addressed by people deciding about JAVA in first-year classes (or Ruby for that matter) is: What PRECISELY do you mean by "object oriented"?
Perhaps because I have been around so long, I see OO as a dynamic concept. It has changed over time and really only reached its maturity with the publication of Design Patterns. I fully expect it will change still more in the future.
Some languages (JAVA, C++ and Python) take a very accurate snapshot of the current thinking on OO and implement it very well. Other languages (Perl and Ruby) assume that OO will evolve and give you the ability to implement as much of object-orientedness as you'd like.
An interesting question is whether aspect-oriented programming (boy, do I hate that name) will become a part of object-oriented programming or whether it will be considered a separate paradigm. Ruby is the one of the few languages that implements aspect-oriented concepts (like mix-ins) and it also allows programmers to choose where they want to work on that spectrum. (You can ignore aspect-orientedness, you can use the features offered by the language itself, or you can modify its aspect-oriented features into whatever becomes the next definition of the new paradigm.)
All of this makes it an excellent choice for the CS majors starting a basic class which needs an OO language.
One drawback with Ruby (which may actually prove a boon to beginning CS majors) is the lack of a large library like CPAN or the C libraries. Although it is growing, the Ruby Archive is nowhere near as comprehensive as CPAN. While this may be occasionally frustrating, it offers CS majors a good way to make a name for themselves. (There's nothing like applying for a job and finding your prospective employer uses a module you wrote. Voila! Instant reference.) All you have to do to make a name in the Ruby community is go to CPAN, find a module which has no counterpart on the Ruby Archive, and port it to the Ruby idiom. Of course, if Ruby fizzles, that still won't get you a job. But at least you can tell some Perl employer you know the module well enough to port it.
...'cause this guy's saying something that's not getting reported: The Appeals Court case was handled by amateurs with the guys who won the case at lower levels sitting helplessly in the front row. It's reasonable to expect that Bush would not use David Boies after Florida. But making ALL the guys who knew the case sit there and watch fools sabotage the mission amounts to judicio-terrorism.
I frequently said during the campaign the Bush administration would not make a big impact on the anti-trust trial. I was wrong. These guys have gone to a level of legal corruption unprecedented in American history. I never anticipated they would attempt anything so blatant.
It will be interesting to see what the state attorneys general do.
For the definitive answer on hyphens, see Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Hint: They only connect words that are all connected by other hyphens. The main thing is to avoid the problem which occurred when the Chattanooga News merged with the Chattanooga Free Press to become the hyphenated Chattanooga News-Free Press.
A lot depends here on what we mean by the OO in OODBMS. Even in programming, the meaning of object-orientation has changed through the years. And the problem of ambiguity is even greater with database management tools.
I am glad there are good and smart people working on a standard for what constitutes an OODBMS. I suspect it will be a few years before a definitive standard is completely figured out.
Consider, for example, some of the very different things people mean by an "Object-Oriented Database Management System":
Some people use it to mean "something which will give me persistence in the OO app I'm currently working on." For them a relational database management product with a few OO tools may be fine (assuming their objects are sufficiently simple).
Some people use it to mean "something that will give me the ability to tie behavior to persistent objects." For them good stored procedures (like Oracle with a third-party product for debugging stored procedures) may be exactly what they want.
Some people use it to mean "a DBMS which implements all the major features of current OO theory." A OODBMS which truly implements standards (as linked to in the original article) is what's needed for these people.
Some people use it to mean "something which will enable me to implement all ideas currently associated with advanced OO theory (including aspect-oriented programming) and anything which may be included in that theory in the future." A DBMS with a dynamic model of object-oriented-ness (along the lines of Perl's dynamic model of what OO is) would be required. I don't know if anyone's actually accomplished this, but I would be both impressed and interested if it's been done (especially if it's language-independent, assuming that's possible).
And some people use it to mean "a DBMS which is fundamentally object-oriented in its underlying structure enabling a variety of powerful table-creation tools." This can be accomplished with some of the better OODBMSs (depending, once again, on just what you mean by "fundamentally object-oriented").
Given all this, I suspect it will be a while before a clear definition is agreed upon. It may even come out of theoretical work in academia. Until that time, the practical reasons listed here will continue to be why many don't use OODBMSs. And the attractive features they offer will continue to be why some people will ignore those practical problems.
Oh, no! It looks like we're back to "it depends on the problem you're working on" just like so many of these debates.
...they can be suppressed.
For instance, during the '70s and '80s as more and more researchers presented papers on the dangers of some popular oral contraceptives of the era, many of the publications which were supposed to be informing the OB-GYN community were strangely silent on the implied criticism of their drug-company advertisers. The research was seldom reported to the practitioners who most needed the data.
For instance, the medical news group of Cap Cities (owned for at least part of that time by ABC) repeatedly refused to publish stories written by its staff about the dangers documented in these papers, even though the drug companies had come up with safer alternatives.
Paradoxically, this meant the public heard about these problems anedoctally. The problems ended up worse than if the problems (and their solutions) had been better publicized. And the drug companies ended up with a bigger black eye than if the OB-GYN community had been notified.
All of this happened primarily because doctors are so used to getting their info as freebies that they won't pay for subscriptions. Interestingly, Steven Brill has pointed out recently that lawyers expect to pay for subscriptions to their journals. I suspect this produces much less distortion in their magazines.
Brill has argued that if the information-wants-to-be-free crowd wins on the Internet the result might be the same kind of misinformation that has plagued doctors. In other words, if Internet users continue to expect that they don't have to pay for content, the content they get may end up being worth less than they're paying.
My idealistic journalism professors back in college used to tell us that we shouldn't change our coverage or our news judgment to protect advertisers. They argued that what newspapers (or, by extension, other media) offer is the respect their audiences have for their impartiality. If you compromise that for advertisers' short term interests, the value of the advertising is decreased because readers do not associate the periodical with accuracy.
I have seen several instances of this kind of failure (where a newspaper was so completely in thrall to its advertisers that the advertising had no benefit and the paper went under) through the years. So, I suspect this is a case where the idealists' advice also turns out to be the pragmatists' observation.
No. You've pretty much nailed it on the head.
You did leave out an important translation of the following part:
Which should be translated as: "I will lie at will about the parents who revealed my actions even though those I am lying to have read the article in which the parents did, in fact, indicate they were given information regarding the next level to express their concerns."
One could also add something about the legal liability this guy will be facing if he does end up with a Columbine-like situtation when it is discovered that he ignored warnings that he was recreating a situation very much like the one at Columbine which helped to produce the killings. When one adds this to his slanderous sniping from behind FERPA ("privacy concerns prevent me from telling you why I think this parent is dirty-bad-nasty"), I would not like to be holding his libel-slander-gross-negligence insurance.
We're working on that problem specifically. We've got a CGI templating system that is really superior and really object-oriented (i.e. perfect for Ruby). We're porting it to Ruby.
The only holdup is it requires Text::Balanced (a truly incredible piece of code) and Parse::RecDescent. As soon as we have those ported (and Damian Conway has offered help), we'll be able to post our templating system.
DBI is another kettle of fish, however. I hope somebody is working on it. We do have a TableAdapter interface which gives us a really good OO interface to databases designed to hold complex objects. But DBI offers a better interface for strictly SQL-like stuff. It is not trivial, especially if you're trying to offer one interface which works for many different databases (which is the idea of DBI).
...to the district superintendent:
Er, I didn't ask you to discuss the facts regarding any issue. Please be assured that your response will be duly noted in any lawsuits brought as a result of any violence which results from your deliberate decision to ignore my concerns.