I think that it would be just about the least surprising thing yet if the Russians bought one of these from NASA, put it up there, hooked it up to the Net, and sold access to it. Does anybody think NASA would have a problem with that?
More seriously, they could let reporters interview astronauts with this, and take tours of the ISS. Also, they could have Senators who are voting on improvements to the ISS wear it. My point is, all of the Quicktime VR to the contrary, there's nothing like seeing live images that you're actually controlling to making something seem real. It would be the same effect that keeps people riveted to the news when the word "Live" is pulsating in the corner of their screen.
I think part of the problem with the ISS is that it hasn't really sunk in for most people that it even exists (not to mention the third world, which doesn't know, or probably care, about it's existence at all.)
Anyway, I'm glad it runs Linux and all. Go team. Rah Rah Rah
I recently started playing some of these games again under emulation. I didn't even remember how good they were. They're so much better than the current offerings, it makes me just sad. Not to say that there haven't been other good RPGs, just that they pale in comparison to SNES ones.
One thing that's interesting is how long it took to get those games out. I don't remember when the SNES came out, but these were some of the last games to come out for that platform. I think VII only came out about two years after VI (III in the US.) Square really takes their time with Final Fantasy. In my oppinion, they didn't even really finish VII until the movie came out; I think there were things they wanted to put in VII, but didn't, for one reason or another. A lot of those aspects made it into the movie however (In a comment I made a while ago, I covered a lot of these similarities. Check out my
My thoughts on the movie.)
In also seems that most Square RPGs are about fun gameplay, Secret of Evermore, Chrono Trigger and more, but the Final Fantasies I've played have all been about story. VI has one of the best stories, and the deepest casts I've ever seen. Xenogears comes close, but I'm not done with that game yet.
I think that getting older makes it possible to fully absorb their depth. It sounds cheesy, but I feel like I understand the game better, now. Also, it's really impressive, some of the graphics they acheived with that primitive hardware.
This time, next year, either.NET or Java will be dead, and the future of Microsoft will have been decided, one way or the other. If.NET wins, Microsoft will have total power. The UN and NATO might as will surrender to it, if that happens.
Nope. Next year, Java will still be doing exactly what it has done for the last couple of years---provide developers with a stable, well documented, easy to use platform. It's not perfect (especially GUI stuff) but it's quite good. The people who will use.NET are the people who use VB now. Corporations don't survive if they make substantial investments and then throw them away. You said so yourself.
Also, your comment about MS threatening the U.N. or NATO is a joke. The U.N. is much more then just the General Assembly, but it's far from any sort of enemy with Microsoft. Why would Microsoft consider taking on something like the UN? Enlighten me.
NATO is a military organization. They have: guns, soldiers, ships, tanks, airplanes, satelites as well as conventional and nuclear missiles and bombs. Additionally, they have the comunications and computational resources to manage all of that. They fight wars. Microsoft has a bunch of desktops and servers.
First, slashdot is being misleading. They're talking only about electronic forms of media. The slashdot article doesn't mention that this doesn't apply to paper books. Nor does it mention that some publishers want to move to all digital forms for libraries.
Anyway, on another note, this marks the further progress of a disturbing trend. Some time ago, like, say 1997, copyright holders were reactive. That is to say, they waited until Napster was in use, and was allowing people to trade songs. Now, they seem to be going after parties that they suspect may one day plan to engage in something less than total protection of their copyrighted material. In other words, they're on the offensive.
However, the more aggresive they become, the more reviled they'll be. I expect that if anybody engages in a large scale legal assault on libraries, they'll have the public up in ferocious arms. After all, libraries are one of the few things that people (without a finiancial or religous interest at odds with their purpose) almost universally support.
Inaction is tantamount to assistance. If our government lets private consortiums lay our libraries bare, they'll be no better (and arguably a good deal worse) that governments like China. At least they don't pretend to be fair.
Based upon preliminary projections, within a year, the linux kernel will be approximately 1.2GB for the newest version's source code. And since I have to get the newest version the day it comes out, my DSL won't cut it.
Plus, there's all the porn. The luscious, high quality porn. Since it's an acedemic network, does that mean the porn will be free?
Well, not really. The listeners generally agreed that it lost a lot of midrange. That's kind of funny, because I thought computer speakers were only good at mirange reproduction.
Oh well, since everybody else here is bitching about how the test was executed, I guess I'll add my two cents.
I think they should have got all of the creators of the formats together, killed their teachers, framed one of the other creators, and let them fight it out in a Ninja-mayhem-apocolypse-monkey-battle-old-skool-rh etorical fight. Or not.
Linux appliances I _really_ want
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Death of a Rebel
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· Score: 3
I can't wait for linux to be ported to the following devices:
Toilets
Watches
Sprinklers
Lawn-mowers
My wife's eighteen inch black dildo
And my PS2 (cause that's be so useful)
Okay, dildos aside, how many of those actually are going to happen?
The claim that space-time doesn't exist (or is a contradiction) rests on that very assertation.
You show no evidence that you understand relativity at all, which is not surprising, considering how complicated it is. Complicated theories are not, however, wrong on the basis of their complexity. Nor are they wrong because you and people like you don't understand them. The fact is, relativity (both of them) are two of the most tested, studied and defendable scientific theories around.
I suppose you'd have a little more credibility if you showed any knowledge of the theory, but you haven't. For example, do you even know what a reference frame is?
Nobody debunks a scientific theory without first understanding the claims it is making. In smaller words, try reading before making an ass out of yourself.
I've read that website, and I'm just curious about one thing; how can one person be so wrong, and yet have the ability to make a shockingly ugly website, too? Further, how could someone actually be taken in by all of this quackery?
That whole website comes from the naive, Newtonian definition of motion. Asserting that the colloquial meaning of a word influences it's technical definition is a fallacy. I quote:
When push comes to shove they will insist that physicists mean something different when they speak of motion in spacetime.
And I say, so? Computer scientists speak of "stacks," even though they are not physical objects being placed upon one another. Use your own head, and don't be taken in by brightly colored, confusing math symbols.
Your snide Anti-NASA insinuations are an affront, and baseless, too. Why the insinuation that NASA hasn't done anything worthwhile or impressive since the X-Projects? I think they've done some impressive things, like acheiving orbit, for one. Also, this project is not comperable with the X-Projects. Those were learning aids; this is supposed to become a useful launch vehicle. Further, the X-Projects were nowhere near cheap.
And second, why laud the Japanese for having a low cost vehicle. For one thing yet, it doesn't work, second, it's only acheived 25m (unless the units are a typo on your part.) Also, what is it's carrying capacity? Thing looks like it would have trouble carrying 10 kgs to orbit, much less a payload of useful size.
Japan doesn't have a space program worth a damn because the government wont spend the money. Frankly, private space launches aren't there. We can push for NASA to get us there, which is preferable, since we won't have patents on scram-jets, re-entry sheilds, etc. The point is, NASA is it when it comes to space, for now. (Of course, there are other agencies, like the europeans, who need NASA to exist, but they're far from independant.)
By the way, re-read you last sentence. I'm not talking about your content, just the grammer. It's painful.
I use OS X, which is a nice happy UNIX (BSD) without pages of boot information. You know what? I survived! Of course, OS X doesn't allow the tinkering that Linux does, but it goes to illutrate a point; people don't need, or even notice, their kernel boot messages.
I personally have done a little kernel programming, and that is the only time I paid any attention to these messages. Every other boot ends up with me just looking at the screen with glazed over eyes, not a single message registering. When things go wrong, those messages are invaluable, but if the kernel can't get it's debugging messsages on the screen during a catastrophe, there's not much chance that dmesg would help anyway.
I've always thought those messages looked pretty interestingly verbose... The more I think about that sentence, the more my head hurts.
How many people here said that they should have held their ground, and not sold the name? I thought so. But consider this, if they have any shareholders, and they don't take a deal like his, then they'll probably be liable for a shareholder's suit.
But this is slashdot, and we don't like to think about business, except Sony and Nintendo.
Imagine you are writing a server, like say, Apache. So, this server has to handle, oh, about a thousand requests at the same time. Please tell me what other way to solve this than with threads.
The obvious answer is to use another process, and to use some fancy IPC mechanism to communicate. However, having the process context takes up an enourmous amount of memory; having more threads generally only means another stack. Further, spawning threads is an order of magnitude faster than spawning processes.
Another example is a GUI. Imagine you have an image processing application. This application has a particular filter which takes ten minutes to execute. Using an IPC mechanism, the signals or events or whatever from the windowing system will get buffered for ten minutes. People get impatient if a system doesn't respond to mouse clicks in about a third of a second. If you used threads, then the GUI code would never, ever have to wait.
It comes down to performance. Some applications don't exist in an environment where performance is critical. A surprising number of them, however do.
By the way, your exemple of recursion has it backwads. Using processes and IPC is like using recursion. Threading is the iterative way.
You are wrong, and I'd love to correct you. However, don't take it personally; naming the sides of the moon "light," and "dark" is very misleading. In truth, the light side of the moon is lit 50% of the time and the dark side of the moon is lit 50% of the time. The so called "light" side always faces toward the Earth. This is due to a phenomenon known as tidal lock.
At least the second part of your comment was better informed...
NO, he did not mean what you orriginally thought he said. He did not say that one language can accomplish a task which is impossible in another language; rather, he said that one language (like LISP) is better at doing certain things than others (like C). Perhaps he should have called this elegance, or utility, but please don't confuse a mistake in labeling with a mistake in reason.
On a different note, CmdrTaco said, "Its in pdf, but its actually worth a read." I have two problems. First, the two instances of "its" should be "it's," because the words are contractions for "it is," not the possessive pronoun. Second, why the implication that PDFs are not, in general, worth the read? Because they look identical on multiple platforms and allow the author to get exactly the result they want? Oh, the horror...
a cluster of S/370's with a large team writing assembler for them
Your kidding right? Please, please tell me you aren't really up on the technical details of your website's operation, and this isn't true.
Because, if you mean your guys are writing a program in assembler for serving web-pages, they deserve to be shot. There is no conceiveable reason to use assembly for anything by low-level operating system and embedded code.
What do I mean when I say there is no reason? You can accomplish anything you do in assembly with C, and most anything in higher level languages. Maybe your programmers told you it would be faster--if so, then they told a half-truth. It is theoretically faster, but in practice a good C compiler will produce tighter asm. Plus, the equivalent C code will take less time to develop, by a factor of about ten.
we're a listed company, and like it or not we are legally obliged to maximise revenue for our shareholders
So, perhaps you should consider writing code in a higher level language. It will be faster (most of the time) and will take a tiny percentage of the development time. Or maybe I should tell you shareholders all about asm v. C, and how your squandering their investment.
While I agree that many of these advances have not materialized, I don't really care. We don't have a paperless office? I never wanted one. No digital nation? Why would that have been such a good thing?
The fact is, only you and people like you ever wanted any of those things. When you talk about being out of touch with society, look to yourself for a change. Your the one who (in Wired for example) espoused pointless revolutionary propaganda about how astounding the information revolution would be. Meanwhile, people who knew how to code went out and made it all happen. Maybe you should think about your qualifications as a Internet critic.
When you look at who the Internet was created by, and why, you will understand why the world is not fundamentally different. Coding is hard, and it's completely understandable that the people who do it out of the goodness of their heard (or whatever moves those fingers) will do what they are interested in. Here is a hint: they are interested in communication, and making society a better place, not tearing down the walls of the Nation-State.
Your fundamental problem is in assuming that what you want from the Net is possible, desireable or even rational. What most people want is email or chat (the real killer-apps, not napster). Hence, the existence of email and chat.
The more you write, the more disconnected you become, and it's kind of sad. Pretty soon you'll be as important in the world as beatnicks are today. It's too bad, because everybody loves to hear your oppinion.
I like Oracle a lot, and I have used it at work to make a sizeable website. Before that, the website was based on MySQL. In every case I care to examine them in, Oracle beats MySQL.
To be fair, some simple queries did have lower latency on MySQL, but when the same queries were run in parralel (a few hundred clients), MySQL quickly fell behind Oracle. Further, if your website involves a lot of multi-stage updates to the database, you had better have Oracle. With MySQL, your options are: slow and contentious, or fast and corrupted.
The point is: in terms of performance, MySQL will start out faster than Oracle, but Oracle scales better. Running the command-line SQL program is not a valid benchmark. Also, don't trust the benchmarks on MySQL's website, they are not representative, or verifiable. While Oracle may take X seconds to run an operation with one user, it is reasonable to assume it will X seconds with a thousand users. The same is not true of MySQL.
In terms of pure features, MySQL is pitiful next to the might of Oracle. Oracle supports features like transactions, distributed transactions, replication, standby databases, PL/SQL, Java, and SQL92 support. MySQL supports: transactions, sorta. Plus, Oracle's backup solutions are incredible. It's nice to be able to have the server rewind the whole database to yesterday morning.
As others have mentioned, the support is phenomenal. I had a problem one time, so I called up Oracle, and got one of the techs on the phone. Eventually, they determined that I had run into an undocumented, platform specific bug. So, I sent them a number of trace files, and they had a programmer look them over. Within a few hours, I had a work-around. I compare this to my experience working with open-source programmers. If they don't think the problem is a big deal, they won't fix it. With Oracle, you really get your money's worth on technical support.
Re:Never use a gift horse to do a man's job
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MySQL FS
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· Score: 1
I would just like to comment on the differences between this project (MySQL fs) and Oracle's product (iFS). All of the information is based on the best source of information I have, namely the Oracle iFS product documentation and MySQL fs website.
MySQL fs is a method of accessing data in SQL tables via the UNIX filesystem mechanism. Tables are directories, rows are numbered sub-directories within table directories and columns are named files within row subdirectories. More complex functions, like aggregate functions, are accessed through hidden files, or files whose names begin with a dot. In my oppinion, this is a kludge. Some operations are even more of a kludge. Some simple things in MySQL, like doing a join, or selecting a particular column for the entire table. In addition to being difficult, that are lacking SQL support features like indexes (although this could change.)
Oracle's iFS is a fileserver that just happens to be powered by Oracle's database. It runs (IIRC) NFS, SMB, LDAP and Novell's filesharing system. All of the clients, regardless of protocol, would see the same files. This is a blackbox system, the user does not need to understand the table structures involved in providing the file services. In fact, if users did have access to the tables, they would have access to data they do not have permission to access. For this reason, the iFS SQL backend is only made available to administrators. Since the nature of the service is hidden, the system could be exchanged for more a conventional solution, like a Linux server running equivalent servers.
So, your implication that I am making a foolhardy judgement is questionable. I may be making a rushed judgement, but not because of the reasons you gave; Oracle is making no comperable product. I hope you can see that a network filesystem powered by a RDBMS is different from a SQL client masquerading as a filesystem.
Just as a post-script, I do use Oracle professionally, but at work I use the more conventional linux atalk, samba and nfsd solution, but I have investigated iFS.
Never use a gift horse to do a man's job
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MySQL FS
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· Score: 2
This seems like a horrible idea. The idea of both a filesystem and a database is to store data in a (hopefully) secure, long term fashion. However, to call their aproaches radically different is understatement bordering on absurdity.
A database is about data. The data is partitioned into tables and columns, with a large number of additional constraints (unique, primary key, foreign key and check clauses, for example) to limit the values of the data. Additionaly, the data is strongly typed. In order to access this data, SQL supports very high level commands, like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE.
The power of a database is most basically in its very high level nature. You, as the user/programmer, do not care where the data is, who else is using it, how it is stored, or what the old values where. The database management system takes care of all of that. Other powerful features of databases include indexes, joins, subselects, real NULLs, aggregate(set) functions, and GROUP BYs (sub-setting).
Now, contrast this with the low level file/directory structure. In this, you have a hierarchy of directories, each of which contains one or more files. A file is nothing more that a stream of bytes, and the only constraint they have is that they be uniquely named within their directory. Also, a single file can be in more that one directory.
In order to use a file, the programmer must know where the file is, possibly who else is using it (with lock files, for example), what format the data is stored in and, if they want to be able to undo their actions, the old values. The advantages to files are the plethora of tools for manipulating them (at least in the case of text), and lower startup cost (eg. it takes less time to make a stupid file format than a SQL schema).
This project is therefore brain-dead as an application development platform. 'But,' I can hear the reply, 'it's useful for users who want to change the data in the database.' Reply: every database accepts SQL, which modifies the data. Some SQL API's I've seen only take two lines of code to retreive some data. And SQL won't shit on your data if you accidentally type it in in the wrong format, it'll conplain, but your data will be safe and secure.
This is quite possibly the worst idea I've ever heard. Worse than Linux as an Internet Explorer plugin, worse than Napster as a family tree generator, worse than Quake III as a spreadsheet, and even worse than Apache as a VMS shell.
Obtaining a nuclear weapon is realativly easy. If a hypothetical terrorist organization cannot build a nuclear warhead, they can buy one. Now, I don't know the specifics, but I do know that there are a number of of small, former Soviet countries with a portion of the former USSR's cache of weapons and a failing economy.
Given that a large terrorist organization or small "rouge state" (euphemism of the week) could obtain a nuclear weapon, how do they get it to the their favorite Great Satan?
The most effective method for delivering a nuclear weapon is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Nobody has an effective defense against a dozen nuclear weapons raining down at Mach 30. The next most effective is the shorter range missles, or medium range missle. This is similar to the weapons in Cuba. These are effective because they can be launched from a boat far out in international waters. Finally, a terrorist can simply carry a suitcase nuke into a sensitive location.
The first method of Nuke delivery, ICBMs, is quite expensive. It takes a huge amount of training, manpower and resourses. Quite frankly, an ICBM installation with an single missile would be rather more difficult to procure that the warhead itself. Also, nuclear launch sites are difficult to build without being visible by the US. And the US has not been hesitant in bombing terrorist camps, like the training camp in Afghanistan.
So, which rouge states can launch weapons at us? An ICBM from a rouge state means a space program. The only non-western country with even the possibility of a space program is China. So, I generally think that a NMD is useless, until China makes a use for one. They don't have an ICBM system yet, as far as I know, but my knowledge in this area is spotty, at best. We do not need a NMD of the scope Bush wants until we see some compelling evidence that China is in fact tooling up to be agressive toward the United States.
Long and medium range missiles are the next biggest treat. However, systems like Aegis (or whatever the USN calls their shipborne missle defense), Patriot and the 747 laser system are largely effective. Operated redundantly, these systems provide effective defense against known threats. However, they are not deployed widely enough to protect against all treats, like the freighter at sea.
There is a tradeoff, though. These medium and short range defenses protect against a known target, but they do not protect against an unknown, surprise assault. By it's very nature, an unknown terrorist assault would be a single missle, or maybe two. New York and Washington are both within range of a ship. So, the only way missiles could get through is if they are not all that dangerous.
And finally, there is the terrorist carrying the nuke. This nuke would almost certainly come from outside the country, and it would be quite the job to get it past customs. Even assuming it could be imported into the country, it would not be a huge nuke.
The threats today are more numerous, but they are less likely to happen and less dangerous. In the fifties and sixties, the threat was that thousands of huge warheads would be raining down over every large city in the United States. Many of these warheads would be Hydrogen bombs, thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The total time from launch to detonation would be about thirty minutes, and there was not a single defense.
Today we have few hydrogen bomb threats, and few organizations capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The ICBM assault is laughable: only the US and former soviets have them, and the US gives the soviets huge sums of money to prop them up. Why would the soviets bite the hand that feeds them? Medium range threats are not as dangerous, a handful of missles launched at the coasts is not armageddon. And finally, the low tech "suitcase" delivery is the lowest grade nuclear threat.
I don't see how you can claim that the first scenario--the US and Russia completely decimated with the rest of the world in a nuclear winter--is better than the second--a handful of low grade weapons likely to be stopped before they are launced. Even given this ridiculous argument, you don't even try to back it up. How did you arive at this conclusion?
And further, are you really blindly accepting Powell and Bush's statements at face value? Make no mistake, Powell is a politician, and he's a better one than Bush. Colin Powell would not say the a missile launch against the US is the greatest threat because it's true, but because it serves his interest. (BTW I think the greatest threat is a biological weapon). While I disagree with you, I think you're pompous and condescending and I share almost no interest in you, I have rarely found you to be uninformed. If this is really you, I may have to change my mind.
I'm pretty sure it was an Iranian airliner, but you don't hear much about it anymore in the US. What you do hear is comments along the lines of 'Geez, what did we ever do to them,' directed at Iran by my people watching the news.
Slashdot Mirror
More seriously, they could let reporters interview astronauts with this, and take tours of the ISS. Also, they could have Senators who are voting on improvements to the ISS wear it. My point is, all of the Quicktime VR to the contrary, there's nothing like seeing live images that you're actually controlling to making something seem real. It would be the same effect that keeps people riveted to the news when the word "Live" is pulsating in the corner of their screen.
I think part of the problem with the ISS is that it hasn't really sunk in for most people that it even exists (not to mention the third world, which doesn't know, or probably care, about it's existence at all.)
Anyway, I'm glad it runs Linux and all. Go team. Rah Rah Rah
One thing that's interesting is how long it took to get those games out. I don't remember when the SNES came out, but these were some of the last games to come out for that platform. I think VII only came out about two years after VI (III in the US.) Square really takes their time with Final Fantasy. In my oppinion, they didn't even really finish VII until the movie came out; I think there were things they wanted to put in VII, but didn't, for one reason or another. A lot of those aspects made it into the movie however (In a comment I made a while ago, I covered a lot of these similarities. Check out my My thoughts on the movie.)
In also seems that most Square RPGs are about fun gameplay, Secret of Evermore, Chrono Trigger and more, but the Final Fantasies I've played have all been about story. VI has one of the best stories, and the deepest casts I've ever seen. Xenogears comes close, but I'm not done with that game yet.
I think that getting older makes it possible to fully absorb their depth. It sounds cheesy, but I feel like I understand the game better, now. Also, it's really impressive, some of the graphics they acheived with that primitive hardware.
Nope. Next year, Java will still be doing exactly what it has done for the last couple of years---provide developers with a stable, well documented, easy to use platform. It's not perfect (especially GUI stuff) but it's quite good. The people who will use .NET are the people who use VB now. Corporations don't survive if they make substantial investments and then throw them away. You said so yourself.
Also, your comment about MS threatening the U.N. or NATO is a joke. The U.N. is much more then just the General Assembly, but it's far from any sort of enemy with Microsoft. Why would Microsoft consider taking on something like the UN? Enlighten me.
NATO is a military organization. They have: guns, soldiers, ships, tanks, airplanes, satelites as well as conventional and nuclear missiles and bombs. Additionally, they have the comunications and computational resources to manage all of that. They fight wars. Microsoft has a bunch of desktops and servers.
When you pirate MP3s, you're downloading communism!
(I didn't make that up, I just saw it on a poster.)
Anyway, on another note, this marks the further progress of a disturbing trend. Some time ago, like, say 1997, copyright holders were reactive. That is to say, they waited until Napster was in use, and was allowing people to trade songs. Now, they seem to be going after parties that they suspect may one day plan to engage in something less than total protection of their copyrighted material. In other words, they're on the offensive.
However, the more aggresive they become, the more reviled they'll be. I expect that if anybody engages in a large scale legal assault on libraries, they'll have the public up in ferocious arms. After all, libraries are one of the few things that people (without a finiancial or religous interest at odds with their purpose) almost universally support.
Inaction is tantamount to assistance. If our government lets private consortiums lay our libraries bare, they'll be no better (and arguably a good deal worse) that governments like China. At least they don't pretend to be fair.
Based upon preliminary projections, within a year, the linux kernel will be approximately 1.2GB for the newest version's source code. And since I have to get the newest version the day it comes out, my DSL won't cut it.
Plus, there's all the porn. The luscious, high quality porn. Since it's an acedemic network, does that mean the porn will be free?
Oh well, since everybody else here is bitching about how the test was executed, I guess I'll add my two cents.
Okay, dildos aside, how many of those actually are going to happen?
That's evil, but very cool. The nice thing about apple is that you even can script it, with no extra software.
You show no evidence that you understand relativity at all, which is not surprising, considering how complicated it is. Complicated theories are not, however, wrong on the basis of their complexity. Nor are they wrong because you and people like you don't understand them. The fact is, relativity (both of them) are two of the most tested, studied and defendable scientific theories around.
I suppose you'd have a little more credibility if you showed any knowledge of the theory, but you haven't. For example, do you even know what a reference frame is?
Nobody debunks a scientific theory without first understanding the claims it is making. In smaller words, try reading before making an ass out of yourself.
Back that up. Nobody defines motion as v= dt/dt.
That whole website comes from the naive, Newtonian definition of motion. Asserting that the colloquial meaning of a word influences it's technical definition is a fallacy. I quote:
When push comes to shove they will insist that physicists mean something different when they speak of motion in spacetime.
And I say, so? Computer scientists speak of "stacks," even though they are not physical objects being placed upon one another. Use your own head, and don't be taken in by brightly colored, confusing math symbols.
Disgusting.
Your snide Anti-NASA insinuations are an affront, and baseless, too. Why the insinuation that NASA hasn't done anything worthwhile or impressive since the X-Projects? I think they've done some impressive things, like acheiving orbit, for one. Also, this project is not comperable with the X-Projects. Those were learning aids; this is supposed to become a useful launch vehicle. Further, the X-Projects were nowhere near cheap.
And second, why laud the Japanese for having a low cost vehicle. For one thing yet, it doesn't work, second, it's only acheived 25m (unless the units are a typo on your part.) Also, what is it's carrying capacity? Thing looks like it would have trouble carrying 10 kgs to orbit, much less a payload of useful size.
Japan doesn't have a space program worth a damn because the government wont spend the money. Frankly, private space launches aren't there. We can push for NASA to get us there, which is preferable, since we won't have patents on scram-jets, re-entry sheilds, etc. The point is, NASA is it when it comes to space, for now. (Of course, there are other agencies, like the europeans, who need NASA to exist, but they're far from independant.)
By the way, re-read you last sentence. I'm not talking about your content, just the grammer. It's painful.
I personally have done a little kernel programming, and that is the only time I paid any attention to these messages. Every other boot ends up with me just looking at the screen with glazed over eyes, not a single message registering. When things go wrong, those messages are invaluable, but if the kernel can't get it's debugging messsages on the screen during a catastrophe, there's not much chance that dmesg would help anyway.
I've always thought those messages looked pretty interestingly verbose... The more I think about that sentence, the more my head hurts.
But this is slashdot, and we don't like to think about business, except Sony and Nintendo.
The obvious answer is to use another process, and to use some fancy IPC mechanism to communicate. However, having the process context takes up an enourmous amount of memory; having more threads generally only means another stack. Further, spawning threads is an order of magnitude faster than spawning processes.
Another example is a GUI. Imagine you have an image processing application. This application has a particular filter which takes ten minutes to execute. Using an IPC mechanism, the signals or events or whatever from the windowing system will get buffered for ten minutes. People get impatient if a system doesn't respond to mouse clicks in about a third of a second. If you used threads, then the GUI code would never, ever have to wait.
It comes down to performance. Some applications don't exist in an environment where performance is critical. A surprising number of them, however do.
By the way, your exemple of recursion has it backwads. Using processes and IPC is like using recursion. Threading is the iterative way.
At least the second part of your comment was better informed...
On a different note, CmdrTaco said, "Its in pdf, but its actually worth a read." I have two problems. First, the two instances of "its" should be "it's," because the words are contractions for "it is," not the possessive pronoun. Second, why the implication that PDFs are not, in general, worth the read? Because they look identical on multiple platforms and allow the author to get exactly the result they want? Oh, the horror...
Your kidding right? Please, please tell me you aren't really up on the technical details of your website's operation, and this isn't true.
Because, if you mean your guys are writing a program in assembler for serving web-pages, they deserve to be shot. There is no conceiveable reason to use assembly for anything by low-level operating system and embedded code.
What do I mean when I say there is no reason? You can accomplish anything you do in assembly with C, and most anything in higher level languages. Maybe your programmers told you it would be faster--if so, then they told a half-truth. It is theoretically faster, but in practice a good C compiler will produce tighter asm. Plus, the equivalent C code will take less time to develop, by a factor of about ten.
we're a listed company, and like it or not we are legally obliged to maximise revenue for our shareholders
So, perhaps you should consider writing code in a higher level language. It will be faster (most of the time) and will take a tiny percentage of the development time. Or maybe I should tell you shareholders all about asm v. C, and how your squandering their investment.
The fact is, only you and people like you ever wanted any of those things. When you talk about being out of touch with society, look to yourself for a change. Your the one who (in Wired for example) espoused pointless revolutionary propaganda about how astounding the information revolution would be. Meanwhile, people who knew how to code went out and made it all happen. Maybe you should think about your qualifications as a Internet critic.
When you look at who the Internet was created by, and why, you will understand why the world is not fundamentally different. Coding is hard, and it's completely understandable that the people who do it out of the goodness of their heard (or whatever moves those fingers) will do what they are interested in. Here is a hint: they are interested in communication, and making society a better place, not tearing down the walls of the Nation-State.
Your fundamental problem is in assuming that what you want from the Net is possible, desireable or even rational. What most people want is email or chat (the real killer-apps, not napster). Hence, the existence of email and chat.
The more you write, the more disconnected you become, and it's kind of sad. Pretty soon you'll be as important in the world as beatnicks are today. It's too bad, because everybody loves to hear your oppinion.
To be fair, some simple queries did have lower latency on MySQL, but when the same queries were run in parralel (a few hundred clients), MySQL quickly fell behind Oracle. Further, if your website involves a lot of multi-stage updates to the database, you had better have Oracle. With MySQL, your options are: slow and contentious, or fast and corrupted.
The point is: in terms of performance, MySQL will start out faster than Oracle, but Oracle scales better. Running the command-line SQL program is not a valid benchmark. Also, don't trust the benchmarks on MySQL's website, they are not representative, or verifiable. While Oracle may take X seconds to run an operation with one user, it is reasonable to assume it will X seconds with a thousand users. The same is not true of MySQL.
In terms of pure features, MySQL is pitiful next to the might of Oracle. Oracle supports features like transactions, distributed transactions, replication, standby databases, PL/SQL, Java, and SQL92 support. MySQL supports: transactions, sorta. Plus, Oracle's backup solutions are incredible. It's nice to be able to have the server rewind the whole database to yesterday morning.
As others have mentioned, the support is phenomenal. I had a problem one time, so I called up Oracle, and got one of the techs on the phone. Eventually, they determined that I had run into an undocumented, platform specific bug. So, I sent them a number of trace files, and they had a programmer look them over. Within a few hours, I had a work-around. I compare this to my experience working with open-source programmers. If they don't think the problem is a big deal, they won't fix it. With Oracle, you really get your money's worth on technical support.
MySQL fs is a method of accessing data in SQL tables via the UNIX filesystem mechanism. Tables are directories, rows are numbered sub-directories within table directories and columns are named files within row subdirectories. More complex functions, like aggregate functions, are accessed through hidden files, or files whose names begin with a dot. In my oppinion, this is a kludge. Some operations are even more of a kludge. Some simple things in MySQL, like doing a join, or selecting a particular column for the entire table. In addition to being difficult, that are lacking SQL support features like indexes (although this could change.)
Oracle's iFS is a fileserver that just happens to be powered by Oracle's database. It runs (IIRC) NFS, SMB, LDAP and Novell's filesharing system. All of the clients, regardless of protocol, would see the same files. This is a blackbox system, the user does not need to understand the table structures involved in providing the file services. In fact, if users did have access to the tables, they would have access to data they do not have permission to access. For this reason, the iFS SQL backend is only made available to administrators. Since the nature of the service is hidden, the system could be exchanged for more a conventional solution, like a Linux server running equivalent servers.
So, your implication that I am making a foolhardy judgement is questionable. I may be making a rushed judgement, but not because of the reasons you gave; Oracle is making no comperable product. I hope you can see that a network filesystem powered by a RDBMS is different from a SQL client masquerading as a filesystem.
Just as a post-script, I do use Oracle professionally, but at work I use the more conventional linux atalk, samba and nfsd solution, but I have investigated iFS.
A database is about data. The data is partitioned into tables and columns, with a large number of additional constraints (unique, primary key, foreign key and check clauses, for example) to limit the values of the data. Additionaly, the data is strongly typed. In order to access this data, SQL supports very high level commands, like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE.
The power of a database is most basically in its very high level nature. You, as the user/programmer, do not care where the data is, who else is using it, how it is stored, or what the old values where. The database management system takes care of all of that. Other powerful features of databases include indexes, joins, subselects, real NULLs, aggregate(set) functions, and GROUP BYs (sub-setting).
Now, contrast this with the low level file/directory structure. In this, you have a hierarchy of directories, each of which contains one or more files. A file is nothing more that a stream of bytes, and the only constraint they have is that they be uniquely named within their directory. Also, a single file can be in more that one directory.
In order to use a file, the programmer must know where the file is, possibly who else is using it (with lock files, for example), what format the data is stored in and, if they want to be able to undo their actions, the old values. The advantages to files are the plethora of tools for manipulating them (at least in the case of text), and lower startup cost (eg. it takes less time to make a stupid file format than a SQL schema).
This project is therefore brain-dead as an application development platform. 'But,' I can hear the reply, 'it's useful for users who want to change the data in the database.' Reply: every database accepts SQL, which modifies the data. Some SQL API's I've seen only take two lines of code to retreive some data. And SQL won't shit on your data if you accidentally type it in in the wrong format, it'll conplain, but your data will be safe and secure.
This is quite possibly the worst idea I've ever heard. Worse than Linux as an Internet Explorer plugin, worse than Napster as a family tree generator, worse than Quake III as a spreadsheet, and even worse than Apache as a VMS shell.
Not that I have anything personal against it.
Given that a large terrorist organization or small "rouge state" (euphemism of the week) could obtain a nuclear weapon, how do they get it to the their favorite Great Satan?
The most effective method for delivering a nuclear weapon is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Nobody has an effective defense against a dozen nuclear weapons raining down at Mach 30. The next most effective is the shorter range missles, or medium range missle. This is similar to the weapons in Cuba. These are effective because they can be launched from a boat far out in international waters. Finally, a terrorist can simply carry a suitcase nuke into a sensitive location.
The first method of Nuke delivery, ICBMs, is quite expensive. It takes a huge amount of training, manpower and resourses. Quite frankly, an ICBM installation with an single missile would be rather more difficult to procure that the warhead itself. Also, nuclear launch sites are difficult to build without being visible by the US. And the US has not been hesitant in bombing terrorist camps, like the training camp in Afghanistan.
So, which rouge states can launch weapons at us? An ICBM from a rouge state means a space program. The only non-western country with even the possibility of a space program is China. So, I generally think that a NMD is useless, until China makes a use for one. They don't have an ICBM system yet, as far as I know, but my knowledge in this area is spotty, at best. We do not need a NMD of the scope Bush wants until we see some compelling evidence that China is in fact tooling up to be agressive toward the United States.
Long and medium range missiles are the next biggest treat. However, systems like Aegis (or whatever the USN calls their shipborne missle defense), Patriot and the 747 laser system are largely effective. Operated redundantly, these systems provide effective defense against known threats. However, they are not deployed widely enough to protect against all treats, like the freighter at sea.
There is a tradeoff, though. These medium and short range defenses protect against a known target, but they do not protect against an unknown, surprise assault. By it's very nature, an unknown terrorist assault would be a single missle, or maybe two. New York and Washington are both within range of a ship. So, the only way missiles could get through is if they are not all that dangerous.
And finally, there is the terrorist carrying the nuke. This nuke would almost certainly come from outside the country, and it would be quite the job to get it past customs. Even assuming it could be imported into the country, it would not be a huge nuke.
The threats today are more numerous, but they are less likely to happen and less dangerous. In the fifties and sixties, the threat was that thousands of huge warheads would be raining down over every large city in the United States. Many of these warheads would be Hydrogen bombs, thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The total time from launch to detonation would be about thirty minutes, and there was not a single defense.
Today we have few hydrogen bomb threats, and few organizations capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The ICBM assault is laughable: only the US and former soviets have them, and the US gives the soviets huge sums of money to prop them up. Why would the soviets bite the hand that feeds them? Medium range threats are not as dangerous, a handful of missles launched at the coasts is not armageddon. And finally, the low tech "suitcase" delivery is the lowest grade nuclear threat.
I don't see how you can claim that the first scenario--the US and Russia completely decimated with the rest of the world in a nuclear winter--is better than the second--a handful of low grade weapons likely to be stopped before they are launced. Even given this ridiculous argument, you don't even try to back it up. How did you arive at this conclusion?
And further, are you really blindly accepting Powell and Bush's statements at face value? Make no mistake, Powell is a politician, and he's a better one than Bush. Colin Powell would not say the a missile launch against the US is the greatest threat because it's true, but because it serves his interest. (BTW I think the greatest threat is a biological weapon). While I disagree with you, I think you're pompous and condescending and I share almost no interest in you, I have rarely found you to be uninformed. If this is really you, I may have to change my mind.
I'm pretty sure it was an Iranian airliner, but you don't hear much about it anymore in the US. What you do hear is comments along the lines of 'Geez, what did we ever do to them,' directed at Iran by my people watching the news.