Do you know how the executive branch of the United States government works. You probably think you do, but your comment lays out the breadth of your ignorance.
While there are many agencies that are under the direct control of the President, many are not. Many of the agencies are independent, which means that, once appointed to the office, the head of the agency may not be removed by the President.
This means that, while the United States will soon have a new administration, it will not have a new Federal Reserve chairman, nor will it have a new FCC chairman. There are many other offices which are independent, but these two are the most important. The only way for us to get a new head for the FCC, for example, is for them to resign or the Senate to impeach them. So, when you speak of Bush's FCC, you are mistaken, the FCC is not connected to an administration, except the one that appointed it's executive. Nor is the FCC "Republican," either, since the Senate cannot impeach the head of the FCC without strong Democratic support.
I don't know the name of every independent administration's head, nor would I expect you to, but when you try to play the pundit, reread your sixth grade civics textbook first.
Just wondering what some of the other uses you can put a project like this to. Obviously, most people think of it as a way to run Windows in Linux. I think, however, of the IBM VM of old, (or not so old) where you can run different operating systems for increased uptime, scalability, etc.
So, what are some of the non-obvious uses for something link this?
Overall, I thought the minisereis started out good. The acting, with
the exception of Duke Leto, was good. I think that the charachters
were fairly true to their lierary counterparts, in terms of the
feeling they created. Liet Keynes was a particularily well casted
charachter, so was Rabban. Another thing I did like was the Guild
Heighliner, very cool loking ship, but the navigator looked, well,
ridiculous.
Yet another thing I did like was the worm graphics. The rest of the CG
was merely passable, but the worm shined through-it had a great sense
of size and power. Finally, I liked the fact that, unlike the movie,
the director did not try to directly translate the book for the
movie. The story was somewhat rewritten to be more appropriate for the
format, a prudent decision.
Nothing is perfect, and this movie is no exception. While I like the
fact that it is interpreted version of the book, some changes are
almost too egregious. The most anoying thing of all was the romance
between Princess Irulan and Paul. In the book, Paul did not
like Irulan, he never did, and she entered into the story very near the
end. Further, Irulan did not at first like Paul either, though she did
later, in Dune Messiah.
Also paiful to watch was Gurney Halleck telling about his days in the
Harkonen slave pits. Duncan Idaho was the one in the slave pits. The
last major problem I saw was the ornithopters. Only the Dune computer
game has got it right so far: they should flap their wings like a
bird.
In any case, it was highly enjoyable to see this not suck.
I have only been using OpenBSD for a short while now, so forgive me if this question is based upon some incorrect assumtions.
OpenBSD's kernel design seems to be of the monolithic species. OpenVMS (no relation) and NT are two prominent operating systems that use a microkernel archetecture. The microkernel design seems to me to be fundamentally more secure, since there is less priveledged code. Further, if one of the servers is compromised, the damage is minimezed.
My question is this: Is the OpenBSD design fundamentally secure, or is it only a very well done implementation of a basically flawed design?
This is only in relation to your 'unrelatred' rant about exceptions. I think Java's exceptions are far and away the most amazingly useful language construct for dealing with errors in any major language. In fact, in my oppinion, Java's exceptions are one of Java's best features. From your commment, I don't think that you quite understand them.
If I may interpret your comment, you seem to be under the impression that a call to a method that can throw an exception must be surrounded by a try, with a catch clause of an appropriate exception type. This is because Java makes methods declare the types of exceptions they will throw. However, all that Java enforces is that you state what you want to do with the exception. You can state that you want a given exception type to 'bubble-up' by placing it after the method declaration if you don't want to catch it.
So, if you have a method that does some IO, rather that use your own `try' block, you can put the phrase 'throws IOException' after the method name in the class definition. This makes any uncaught IOException be thrown up to the next level of execution.
Furthermore, if you want your exceptions to behave more like C++ exceptions, you can make them RuntimeExceptions. These do not have to be declared in the class definition, and they are not caught by default.
Assuming (and it's a big assumption) that you understand from my comment how to use Java's exceptions, maybe you have some issue with my statement that Java's error handling constructs are better that any other mainstream language. Lets compare:
C Good old C, no error support whatsoever. You have to do it yourself, and with C's weak typing, this is even worse.
perl Like C, no error support in the language. Yes, you can emulate exceptions with 'eval's, but this is an ugly hack. Perl's support for 'undef' makes it slightly better in this regard.
C++ A huge hack of C, it's crufty nature shows through in it's exception support. Without Java's declarations of thorwable exceptions (the 'throws' clause), it is easy to accidentally allow exceptions to find thier way to the main subroutine. Also, it's lack of runtime typing is a big pain in my ass.
Python I don't know, someone else can handle this one.
Please keep in mind that a lot of this is just my own opinion, just like your comment was. However, I make sure I understand a language feature before I decry it. I don't think Java is a perfect language (it needs templates for one) but I do think you should know what you are talking about.
Don't you think that your comments are more than a little unsubstatiated? Have you ever used an ATM? If so, you are using transactions. Have you ever paid with something using a credit cart? If so, you are using a transaction application. Have you ever made an insurance claim? If so, you again have used transactions.
While preventing dataloss is an important application for databases, it is not the only one. Instead, try creating a large, complicated system using no transactions. In order to execute most data manipulations, you would have to modify more than one table. Even something like a bank account transfer would access at least three tables. How would you do this using something with no transactions? You would lock the tables as you needed them. How would you do this with a transaction safe system? You would forget about locking the tables and commit or rollback, depending on the success of the action.
The fact is, for simple joins, MySQL will always be faster, and simpler. For more complicated joins, it's naive query optimization is incredibly limited, with joins involving more than seven tables, my experience has shown that MySQL just cannot optimize correctly, even PostgreSQL was even faster on some of my most complicated joins.
Simple insert/update actions likewise are much faster, but with the lack of foreign keys, you have to write select statements yourself to maintain referential integrety.
MySQL is faster for simple actions that wouldn't need foreign key checks, and complex manipulations. However, consider when you have to make a modification to a large number of tables. in MySQL, you would have to lock each table, blocking out any other access to the same data, while something like PostgreSQL allows concurrent access to the data.
You talk about the performance killing features of full SQL, they do indeed have a performance hit. These are overkill for glorified flat file databases, but for a normalised database, transactions give you an order of magnintude more speed.
Consider the ACID test, durability is only one fourth of the equation, atomicity, durablity and isolation make up the rest of the equation. These features not only make the system more stable, they also make life for a developer much easier. They also allow a far more robust, scalable and flexible system to be developed in a shorter amount of time. Every big website that uses a DMBS uses something with transactions, not because they are a performance killer, but because they are a more scalable solution.
At the low end, big databases are slower, but as the size of the system grows, MySQL gets slower faster, untill at Enterprise level, it becomes slower. Lest you think I don't know what I'm talking abount, I work for a fairly large e-commerce site as the senior programmer.
BTW: I do agress that SQL is not the ultimate solution, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's awful, though. Instead of bitching, why don't you design something better, I am designing something better, it's just a long way down the road.
I don't think you quite get it. If you had skimmed beyond the first couple of pages, and not just copied the first bullet pointed list, you might have emerged with an understanding of the laws involved. In the paragraph directly under the list you copied and pasted, there is the legal precedent for the sixth point.
Sony v. Connectix and Nintendo v. Galoob are two cases where the especially weak sixth point is substantiated. In order to issue an injuction, the Plaintiff (RIAA) must show that they are being irreparably injured. Nintendo v. Galoob in particular puts more of a burden on the Plaintiff to receive an injuction.
Further adding weight to Napster's side, the last point especially, is the next paragraph. They refer to testimony by the RIAA's own expert witnesses that sales have increased since Napster's inception. Sound damning? It only dives weight to the last point only. I find your comment about the sixth point being weak with so much case history backing it up. Also, maybe you should check a law textbook: you might need to refresh your memory with the definition of an injunction.
For more info on point no. three, see pages 9-17. Basically, if there is only one possible legitimate use for a product, then it does not infringe on copyright law. This includes products which are advertised as having copyright circumvention capabilities.
The fifth point seems the weakest, prima facie. However, an understanding of the actual claim made by Napster, and not just the summary, would possibly illuminate you. They claim that the directory of MP3s is what is covered by the first amendment. See pages 29-29.
Note to Self: do not emulate TheGreek. Write original content in Slashdot posts. Read the actual documents before commenting on them.
PS: You wrote 492 charachters. The text you coppied verbatim came out at 1171 charachters. That's about 42% your content. I try to shoot for more like 97%+ original content.
While we cannot make a perfect decision about what to record for our decendants/replacements, we can make an educated guess. Go to your local book store. Look for books on aboriginal people. Count the number of books in the following subjects: art, religion, technology and history. You should find that the most common subject is history, followed by art, religion and technology. Repeat for Phonecians, Greeks, Chinese and Europeans.
How should this guide our decisions when makeing such and artifact as the Rosetta Disk? I would propose that we give them that which we value in our own ancestors.
We should explain our history. Let our future archeologists understand us through our history, maybe (wistful thinking, I know) they will avoid some of our mistakes. Give them dates, give them events. They will find artifacts, so why not give them a context with which to understand those artifacts?
As for art: what is the one remnant of 'cave-men' everyone is aware of? Paintings and arrow heads. Art is universal. A child can understand a painting. Art stands on it's own merits.
Religion, philosophy and technology I group together. Why? Not because I think of them as alike in any way, rather, I imagine that a 10,000 year distant archeologist would have trouble distiguishing them. We don't have all of the answers, and these three diciplines all attempt to answer the same fundamental questions. In 10,000 years, we have come from no philosophy to metaphysics. We've come from arrowheads to high yield laser guided nuclear bombs. We've come from huge, impersonal, hierarchical, bumbling religion to...huge, impersonal, hierarchical, bumbling religion. And hell, why should we bother explaining the difference? We should just present them as different theories addressing the same issue.
P.S.: These damn things will not last if they're on the earth. Terra Firma is awful on artifacts. The ice caps, mountain tops or the moon might not be bad ideas. My vote goes for the moon. Why? Because we can make it highly visible. Just imagine a few high albedo plains aranged in a straight line, like an elipsis... It would at least give tourists something to see if society doesn't collapse. And any developing society would know what to do when they got to the moon, if they got to 1960-ish technology.
To me, it's a glaring ommission to not have any string matching algorithms. In other words, where are the regular expressions?!? One of the most impressive algorithms I have ever seen is related to regular expressions. There are two types of regular expression algorithms. On follows directly from the regular expression, and the complexety of the regular expression directly correlates with the running time of the algorithm. With the second type of algorithm, the running time of the algorithm is proportional to the length of the string, and the length of the regular expression. In other words, you can always predict how long it will take to run. No matter how complicated. The first kind is NFA, or non-deterministic finite automata. The next kind is DFA, ie. deterministic finita-automata. Anyway, it is really easy to write a NFA, but writing a DFA is super complicated, it involves this awesome thing called the E-closure. The algorithm to product a DFA via the E-closure is the impressive algorithm I think should have been on the list.
I heard about this algorithm in the book: Compilers: Priciples, Techniques and Tools (The Dragon Book, Second Edition) It doesn't have a name for the algorithm though. Anyone who is interested in regular expressions, parsers, lexers, compilers, interpreters and validators should deffinatly check out this book.
I hate to be a downer for you, but Open Source is not the answer to every question. Many open source programs are solutions to problems no one but the developer would care to see a solution for, but reading email is something everyone and their mother wants to do. My point: Microsoft can design better user interfaces, Open Source can implement them better.
Now I realise that is a lot to swallow, but I do have an argument to back that up. In essence, programmers in general, Open Source hackers in particular, make bad user interface designers (I know, I'm a good coder, and only a mediocre user interface designer). People who make good user interfaces are called user interface designers, people who write GUI code are user interface implementors. They can be the same people, but those people are doing two fundamentally different tasks. The one task (programming) involves studying data, processes, the user interface specification of the user interface designers and understanding, then creating an implementation that balances all of those aspects. The other task involves studying users, studying the task, and specifying a user interface. The point is, Open Source works primarily because programmers enjoy programming. Hackers may may have a day job where they get paid for programming, but hackers see it not as a means to an end (ie. a paycheck) but as something they like doing, and are lucky enough to get paid for. User interface designers are like engineers, they do it because it's their job, and no one else wants to do it.
How do good comercial graphical user interfaces get designed and implemented? An insightful software development manager hires or directs a user interface designer to create a user interface, and the programmers write the code. How does open source software get "designed?" People who just enjoy coding get down and write it, for the joy of the job. Notice that the Open Source model has no room for usability testing, or quality assurance. Both of these happen to a small degree, but usability needs to exist from the initial stages. The only way really user friendly software gets written is by creating a design, then writing code which continuously improves from a mere approximation of the design to something that fully captures it.
To wrap things up: I think it is a extremely reasonable position for the GNOME developers to take. Borowing GUI designs is legal, and lets the GNOME hackers do what they are good at. I think more software could stand to be written this way: a user interface is originally designed and implemented by some company. They make some money on ititial versions of the software. Later, when the software becomes commodotised (as Outlook surely has), Open Source will produce a stabler, faster, more portable, more extensible, cheaper (obviously), more interoperable (standards compliant), more customizable and generally better replacement. Open Source and Commercial software both have their strengths. Luckily, there is only a little overlap, and I see this as a model for the way they can work together.
Looks like someone has an error in their SQL. I'd suggest checking for uniqueness before attempting the insert, just a quick select. I must say, I like minimal sites; and this certainly is one. However, there seems to be no cool way to view what people are doing to the site. I think this kind of thing could make the web useful (like yahoo did wayyyy back when they could index a decent amount of the web) It's new, but don't use asp and MS-SQL, your just asking for the pain.
If history is any guide whatsoever, then I must admit that Bill Joy and other technological alarmists seem to have little weight to their arguments. The key issue that I have to contest with is this: that the new threats offered by nanotechnology, genetics and robotics are putting the human race into such danger that we need to take measures that have never before been necessary. He would have us limit the kind of research that could be done. I think this is exactly the wrong stance to take. People who are not free in their research are not researching at all. Look at comercial versus pure research, which makes the most basic breakthroughs, contrasted with the one that makes the most applied breakthroughs.
Now I agree that these new technolgies are more dangerous than any previously. However, no effective control of research can ever be done, not given that nature of research. Research into one completely innocuous area can have applications in any other area. Yes, there is a great danger, but the cure would no doubt be worse than the disease. Consider: what form could this restraint take? Self control by the scientists is exceedingly unlikely, otherwise they would hardly be good scientists. Some oversight commitee? This would easily be one of the most powerful organisations in the world, if they could dampen any sort of research they found 'unsafe.' Should we folloy Joy's prescriptions, we would be condemning ourselves to remain in technological doldrums for ages.
One way or another, I imagine that we will find ourselves facing these dangers. I honestly beleive that any research organisation oversight commitee would be ineffective. They would be unable do their job perfectly, so eventually, some of these threats will come to see the light of day. The human race would be better equiped if it knows the dangers, and how would we know the dangers? By unencumbered research.
Throughout history, the human race has had many leaps forward in technology, and those have all put the human race in danger. However, the only thing that has saved humanity from technology is: technology. This leads me to beleive that the only way to face the dangers alarmists warn us of is knowledge.
I am the head programmer for an e-commerce site, and I recently decided to rewrite everything, from the groud up. Using these simple guidelines, I was able to acheive spped increases on the order of 100-500 times faster.
Avoid monolithic components at all costs. I mean by this: large tables in your database, large columns in your tables, and large, multi-function CGI programs. This also means that everything should do one thing, and one thing only.
You database design needs to be normalized, and your selects optimized. Understand indexes. If you don't understand the concepts of normalization and database optimization, buy a book. Read it. Grok it. Also, examine the algorithms that are employed by the CGIs. If the algorithms are less than optimal, rewrite them from scratch. Rule of thumb: the source of software speed is ~90% design, ~10% implementation. If you use a fundamentally crappy algorithm or database design, a better implementation won't help you.
Another desirable aspect of a high volume web site is many servers. For example, your server's LAN should probably include: a web server for dynamic pages, a web server for static content (this can include static content masquerading as dynamic content, ie. caching server, or images), a secure server (if you need it), a database server, and a log server. That last one is a bit unique, and underrated. The best thing to do is log as much activity as you can, this allows you to identify problem areas. A log server doesn't have to be high powered, but it allows you to correlate activity much better. Customize your hardware to it's task. RAID is your friend. Swapping is the devil. The proccessor isn't always the bottleneck. Keep this kind of stuff in mind, and above all, keep the UNIX philosophy in mind.
Where I work, we have just a basic shopping cart system, by since everything is a small component, it is easy to upgrade and extend. We have somthing like 25 tables in our database, and none with more than 9 columns.
Are you using MySQL? If so, a quick hint: use INSERT DELAYED instead of INSERT, and EXPLAIN SELECTs. If you have to manually join tables, that's a good thing.
You may all want to check out kgconfig. I know it is not exactly related to the subject matter, but it is a graphical system configuration tool. I would like to see this get more recognition.
Reading this article, I got a very anti-programmer feeling. The author seemed to be saying that any moderatly decent coder should ba able to make secure code. Anyone who writes on internet security should be forced, at gunpoint, to read this essay, lest they take the same attitude. The fact is, writing code that works is hard, and writing code that is secure is an order of magnitude more difficult. However, there are reasonably secure packages out there, so if anyone is to blame for these lost credit card numbers, it is the administrators and managers responsibility. It just seems clear to me that the fault lies not even with MS SQL, but the administrators.
I own the domain name gemma.com. (Check my URL, for example) there's nothing on it now, since I recently changed ISPs. However, I do use it, primarilly to offer small opensource programs. One day, the Gemma construction company called, demanding that I give up my domain name. I offered to sell it to them, but they didn't like that idea. They never called back. Maybe someone who has heard of them could let me know, they might have got another site up, or they might be preparing to sue me...
In any case, I don't think that you will lose. However, lawsuits generally do cause a lot of money and time to be invested in them, and you don't get anything for winning when your the defendant. So what I'm trying to say is: the only way for you to really win is to not get sued. A counter-suit can reparate some (3x if I remember right) of the monetary loses, but how can it reparate the time sunk in to defending the domainname?
I know that this is a question many linux users will have. Since, for the past few years, PC (as the findings of fact define PC) owners have had to pay a higher price for their PCs because of unwanted Microsoft software, like windows and IE. I think that alternative Operating system users, or even just netscape users, would have a case for a class action suit. Please let me know what you think.
As far as I recall, general relativity defines gravity as the curvature of space-time. Gravity waves are the result of changes in the curvature of space time. Gravity waves are theorised have these properties:
Gravity waves will be accompanied by gravitons, a hypothetical particle that has zero rest mass and twice the spin of a photon.
Gravity waves and gravitons propagate outward at the speed of light.
Gravity waves compress mass in one direction perpendicular to the direction they travel, and expand it in a direction perpendicular to both the direction of compression and direction of travel.
Gravity waves are moving ripples in space-time.
Black holes coliding make big gravity waves.
Gravity waves pass through matter.
This experiment it is trying to get empirical evidence on all of the above claims. This has been a goal of some physicists since the theory was proposed in 1916. However, this goal has previously been beyond experimenters technological reach. It takes today's most sophisticated lasers and detectors to isolate a gravity wave from far away. Any local vibrations reaching either the lasers (like noise, or earthquakes) or the detectors will be easily confused with gravity waves. However, the mass of nearby objects does not interfere, just the vibrations they produce.
As for the design of the installation: it is in the shape of an L, because (as I mentioned before) gravity waves both compress and expand matter as they pass through it. On laser moves faster, and the other slower. This is different from a Michalson inferometer, which checks if normal gravity (that is: curvature of space-time) bends light. A Michalson inferometer isn't used to determine the nature of gravity waves.
Gravity affects all of the universe simultaneously (although it doesn't affect it much, it does affect it). Gravity waves are held back by the speed of light limit though. So, the two installations would get waves at different times, depending on the orientation of the earth to the event.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and that's why we US taxpayers get this installation. If this had already been proven, we wouldn't need these two new observatories.
"I think this story was sent down from heaven to give us Linux users a chance to gloat over windows users," is the gist of the few messages posted so far. I don't really think we should have that attitude at all. We need to understand that there are [l]users out there who think HTML email is really neat, the same way I think that the new kernel debugging features are cool. We have to understand that our tastes in all things computers are not absolute. So Microsoft f***ed it up yet again; all companies do it. One of the reasons linux has been so secure and powerful is the foundation for it's design: UNIX. Windows is much younger than UNIX. And anyway, UNIX had it's virus/security problems a (not so)long time ago. The Worm anyone?
All computer systems have security holes. Complex ones more so. If you want some more rhetoric on why secuity is never perfect, read Bruce Schneier's interview here.
I think Microsoft was rash in releasing software with this little hole in it, but it doesn't mean that we're better than users of HTML email. Besides, all of Microsoft's really good OS people are on NT(Win2000) which doesn't have this particular problem. Microsoft doesn't really take the security of Win9x seriously anyway.
I personally am waiting to see how linux stacks up to Win2000. After all, this is like comparing the newest NT to version 2.0.36(my first kernel!).
With all the talk about violent video games causing the killing sprees in schools, offices and on the streets, I have a question for you.
The game industry's usual response to such allegations is to tone down the graphical violence. Parental controlls can allow you to limit the amout of blood, gibs, etc.
I think that displaying the visual artifacts of violence is to treat it more seriously, and removing them won't help as much as some other methods.
Do you think such content controlls are effective? I think that a more mature story and cast would be more effective in carrying a non violent message that a bunch of 'clean' deaths would be. Of course feel free to disagree with me, as I know ID has been a villian in many murders.
Well, speaking from experience, DNS cache does signifigantly increase browsing, esp. on a high latency device like a modem. How do I use such a cache? It's not in the browser, which is bloated enough already, as has often been pointed out. Rather, I maintain a cache using bind.
Event if you don't go all the way and make bind run as a real name server, you can still do caching only DNS. Plus, it's really cool to have resolv.conf have this line: nameserver: 127.0.0.1
I think every linux dist I've seen has bind, and there's a really easy howto on setting it up for caching.
The way I see it, tax is a way of paying for services. You might not use, want or need any of the services bought with your tax money, but the capability (in theory) exists. Postage stamps are the governments way of taxing us for carrying our mail. However, don't companies like sprint and at&t carry most mail? So, what the government is trying to do is charge money for a service provided by someone else.
sarcasm mode ON Well, since the government gives huge amounts of money to big buisiness in the form of tax breaks, they _deserve_ this money sarcasm mode OFF
This sounds like it could be a fun feature of a (I hope) great game. The only way I can think of it is in terms of CIV. I would try to set it up so that I had an early warning system. Whenever one of my units saw an enemy, and I forgot about them, I'd get pissed. Then I'd miss my chance to fight. I think also a good application would be automated production. A dialog could pop up when a city gets a new unit, and allow you to continue pumping out units, automagically.
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Do you know how the executive branch of the United States government works. You probably think you do, but your comment lays out the breadth of your ignorance.
While there are many agencies that are under the direct control of the President, many are not. Many of the agencies are independent, which means that, once appointed to the office, the head of the agency may not be removed by the President.
This means that, while the United States will soon have a new administration, it will not have a new Federal Reserve chairman, nor will it have a new FCC chairman. There are many other offices which are independent, but these two are the most important. The only way for us to get a new head for the FCC, for example, is for them to resign or the Senate to impeach them. So, when you speak of Bush's FCC, you are mistaken, the FCC is not connected to an administration, except the one that appointed it's executive. Nor is the FCC "Republican," either, since the Senate cannot impeach the head of the FCC without strong Democratic support.
I don't know the name of every independent administration's head, nor would I expect you to, but when you try to play the pundit, reread your sixth grade civics textbook first.
Just wondering what some of the other uses you can put a project like this to. Obviously, most people think of it as a way to run Windows in Linux. I think, however, of the IBM VM of old, (or not so old) where you can run different operating systems for increased uptime, scalability, etc.
So, what are some of the non-obvious uses for something link this?
Overall, I thought the minisereis started out good. The acting, with the exception of Duke Leto, was good. I think that the charachters were fairly true to their lierary counterparts, in terms of the feeling they created. Liet Keynes was a particularily well casted charachter, so was Rabban. Another thing I did like was the Guild Heighliner, very cool loking ship, but the navigator looked, well, ridiculous.
Yet another thing I did like was the worm graphics. The rest of the CG was merely passable, but the worm shined through-it had a great sense of size and power. Finally, I liked the fact that, unlike the movie, the director did not try to directly translate the book for the movie. The story was somewhat rewritten to be more appropriate for the format, a prudent decision.
Nothing is perfect, and this movie is no exception. While I like the fact that it is interpreted version of the book, some changes are almost too egregious. The most anoying thing of all was the romance between Princess Irulan and Paul. In the book, Paul did not like Irulan, he never did, and she entered into the story very near the end. Further, Irulan did not at first like Paul either, though she did later, in Dune Messiah.
Also paiful to watch was Gurney Halleck telling about his days in the Harkonen slave pits. Duncan Idaho was the one in the slave pits. The last major problem I saw was the ornithopters. Only the Dune computer game has got it right so far: they should flap their wings like a bird.
In any case, it was highly enjoyable to see this not suck.
I have only been using OpenBSD for a short while now, so forgive me if this question is based upon some incorrect assumtions.
OpenBSD's kernel design seems to be of the monolithic species. OpenVMS (no relation) and NT are two prominent operating systems that use a microkernel archetecture. The microkernel design seems to me to be fundamentally more secure, since there is less priveledged code. Further, if one of the servers is compromised, the damage is minimezed.
My question is this: Is the OpenBSD design fundamentally secure, or is it only a very well done implementation of a basically flawed design?
This is only in relation to your 'unrelatred' rant about exceptions. I think Java's exceptions are far and away the most amazingly useful language construct for dealing with errors in any major language. In fact, in my oppinion, Java's exceptions are one of Java's best features. From your commment, I don't think that you quite understand them.
If I may interpret your comment, you seem to be under the impression that a call to a method that can throw an exception must be surrounded by a try, with a catch clause of an appropriate exception type. This is because Java makes methods declare the types of exceptions they will throw. However, all that Java enforces is that you state what you want to do with the exception. You can state that you want a given exception type to 'bubble-up' by placing it after the method declaration if you don't want to catch it.
So, if you have a method that does some IO, rather that use your own `try' block, you can put the phrase 'throws IOException' after the method name in the class definition. This makes any uncaught IOException be thrown up to the next level of execution.
Furthermore, if you want your exceptions to behave more like C++ exceptions, you can make them RuntimeExceptions. These do not have to be declared in the class definition, and they are not caught by default.
Assuming (and it's a big assumption) that you understand from my comment how to use Java's exceptions, maybe you have some issue with my statement that Java's error handling constructs are better that any other mainstream language. Lets compare:
Please keep in mind that a lot of this is just my own opinion, just like your comment was. However, I make sure I understand a language feature before I decry it. I don't think Java is a perfect language (it needs templates for one) but I do think you should know what you are talking about.
Don't you think that your comments are more than a little unsubstatiated? Have you ever used an ATM? If so, you are using transactions. Have you ever paid with something using a credit cart? If so, you are using a transaction application. Have you ever made an insurance claim? If so, you again have used transactions.
While preventing dataloss is an important application for databases, it is not the only one. Instead, try creating a large, complicated system using no transactions. In order to execute most data manipulations, you would have to modify more than one table. Even something like a bank account transfer would access at least three tables. How would you do this using something with no transactions? You would lock the tables as you needed them. How would you do this with a transaction safe system? You would forget about locking the tables and commit or rollback, depending on the success of the action.
The fact is, for simple joins, MySQL will always be faster, and simpler. For more complicated joins, it's naive query optimization is incredibly limited, with joins involving more than seven tables, my experience has shown that MySQL just cannot optimize correctly, even PostgreSQL was even faster on some of my most complicated joins.
Simple insert/update actions likewise are much faster, but with the lack of foreign keys, you have to write select statements yourself to maintain referential integrety.
MySQL is faster for simple actions that wouldn't need foreign key checks, and complex manipulations. However, consider when you have to make a modification to a large number of tables. in MySQL, you would have to lock each table, blocking out any other access to the same data, while something like PostgreSQL allows concurrent access to the data.
You talk about the performance killing features of full SQL, they do indeed have a performance hit. These are overkill for glorified flat file databases, but for a normalised database, transactions give you an order of magnintude more speed.
Consider the ACID test, durability is only one fourth of the equation, atomicity, durablity and isolation make up the rest of the equation. These features not only make the system more stable, they also make life for a developer much easier. They also allow a far more robust, scalable and flexible system to be developed in a shorter amount of time. Every big website that uses a DMBS uses something with transactions, not because they are a performance killer, but because they are a more scalable solution.
At the low end, big databases are slower, but as the size of the system grows, MySQL gets slower faster, untill at Enterprise level, it becomes slower. Lest you think I don't know what I'm talking abount, I work for a fairly large e-commerce site as the senior programmer.
BTW: I do agress that SQL is not the ultimate solution, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's awful, though. Instead of bitching, why don't you design something better, I am designing something better, it's just a long way down the road.
Sony v. Connectix and Nintendo v. Galoob are two cases where the especially weak sixth point is substantiated. In order to issue an injuction, the Plaintiff (RIAA) must show that they are being irreparably injured. Nintendo v. Galoob in particular puts more of a burden on the Plaintiff to receive an injuction.
Further adding weight to Napster's side, the last point especially, is the next paragraph. They refer to testimony by the RIAA's own expert witnesses that sales have increased since Napster's inception. Sound damning? It only dives weight to the last point only. I find your comment about the sixth point being weak with so much case history backing it up. Also, maybe you should check a law textbook: you might need to refresh your memory with the definition of an injunction.
For more info on point no. three, see pages 9-17. Basically, if there is only one possible legitimate use for a product, then it does not infringe on copyright law. This includes products which are advertised as having copyright circumvention capabilities.
The fifth point seems the weakest, prima facie. However, an understanding of the actual claim made by Napster, and not just the summary, would possibly illuminate you. They claim that the directory of MP3s is what is covered by the first amendment. See pages 29-29.
Note to Self: do not emulate TheGreek. Write original content in Slashdot posts. Read the actual documents before commenting on them.
PS: You wrote 492 charachters. The text you coppied verbatim came out at 1171 charachters. That's about 42% your content. I try to shoot for more like 97%+ original content.
While we cannot make a perfect decision about what to record for our decendants/replacements, we can make an educated guess. Go to your local book store. Look for books on aboriginal people. Count the number of books in the following subjects: art, religion, technology and history. You should find that the most common subject is history, followed by art, religion and technology. Repeat for Phonecians, Greeks, Chinese and Europeans.
How should this guide our decisions when makeing such and artifact as the Rosetta Disk? I would propose that we give them that which we value in our own ancestors.
We should explain our history. Let our future archeologists understand us through our history, maybe (wistful thinking, I know) they will avoid some of our mistakes. Give them dates, give them events. They will find artifacts, so why not give them a context with which to understand those artifacts?
As for art: what is the one remnant of 'cave-men' everyone is aware of? Paintings and arrow heads. Art is universal. A child can understand a painting. Art stands on it's own merits.
Religion, philosophy and technology I group together. Why? Not because I think of them as alike in any way, rather, I imagine that a 10,000 year distant archeologist would have trouble distiguishing them. We don't have all of the answers, and these three diciplines all attempt to answer the same fundamental questions. In 10,000 years, we have come from no philosophy to metaphysics. We've come from arrowheads to high yield laser guided nuclear bombs. We've come from huge, impersonal, hierarchical, bumbling religion to...huge, impersonal, hierarchical, bumbling religion. And hell, why should we bother explaining the difference? We should just present them as different theories addressing the same issue.
P.S.: These damn things will not last if they're on the earth. Terra Firma is awful on artifacts. The ice caps, mountain tops or the moon might not be bad ideas. My vote goes for the moon. Why? Because we can make it highly visible. Just imagine a few high albedo plains aranged in a straight line, like an elipsis... It would at least give tourists something to see if society doesn't collapse. And any developing society would know what to do when they got to the moon, if they got to 1960-ish technology.
To me, it's a glaring ommission to not have any string matching algorithms. In other words, where are the regular expressions?!? One of the most impressive algorithms I have ever seen is related to regular expressions. There are two types of regular expression algorithms. On follows directly from the regular expression, and the complexety of the regular expression directly correlates with the running time of the algorithm. With the second type of algorithm, the running time of the algorithm is proportional to the length of the string, and the length of the regular expression. In other words, you can always predict how long it will take to run. No matter how complicated. The first kind is NFA, or non-deterministic finite automata. The next kind is DFA, ie. deterministic finita-automata. Anyway, it is really easy to write a NFA, but writing a DFA is super complicated, it involves this awesome thing called the E-closure. The algorithm to product a DFA via the E-closure is the impressive algorithm I think should have been on the list.
I heard about this algorithm in the book: Compilers: Priciples, Techniques and Tools (The Dragon Book, Second Edition) It doesn't have a name for the algorithm though. Anyone who is interested in regular expressions, parsers, lexers, compilers, interpreters and validators should deffinatly check out this book.
I hate to be a downer for you, but Open Source is not the answer to every question. Many open source programs are solutions to problems no one but the developer would care to see a solution for, but reading email is something everyone and their mother wants to do. My point: Microsoft can design better user interfaces, Open Source can implement them better.
Now I realise that is a lot to swallow, but I do have an argument to back that up. In essence, programmers in general, Open Source hackers in particular, make bad user interface designers (I know, I'm a good coder, and only a mediocre user interface designer). People who make good user interfaces are called user interface designers, people who write GUI code are user interface implementors. They can be the same people, but those people are doing two fundamentally different tasks. The one task (programming) involves studying data, processes, the user interface specification of the user interface designers and understanding, then creating an implementation that balances all of those aspects. The other task involves studying users, studying the task, and specifying a user interface. The point is, Open Source works primarily because programmers enjoy programming. Hackers may may have a day job where they get paid for programming, but hackers see it not as a means to an end (ie. a paycheck) but as something they like doing, and are lucky enough to get paid for. User interface designers are like engineers, they do it because it's their job, and no one else wants to do it.
How do good comercial graphical user interfaces get designed and implemented? An insightful software development manager hires or directs a user interface designer to create a user interface, and the programmers write the code. How does open source software get "designed?" People who just enjoy coding get down and write it, for the joy of the job. Notice that the Open Source model has no room for usability testing, or quality assurance. Both of these happen to a small degree, but usability needs to exist from the initial stages. The only way really user friendly software gets written is by creating a design, then writing code which continuously improves from a mere approximation of the design to something that fully captures it.
To wrap things up: I think it is a extremely reasonable position for the GNOME developers to take. Borowing GUI designs is legal, and lets the GNOME hackers do what they are good at. I think more software could stand to be written this way: a user interface is originally designed and implemented by some company. They make some money on ititial versions of the software. Later, when the software becomes commodotised (as Outlook surely has), Open Source will produce a stabler, faster, more portable, more extensible, cheaper (obviously), more interoperable (standards compliant), more customizable and generally better replacement. Open Source and Commercial software both have their strengths. Luckily, there is only a little overlap, and I see this as a model for the way they can work together.
Looks like someone has an error in their SQL. I'd suggest checking for uniqueness before attempting the insert, just a quick select. I must say, I like minimal sites; and this certainly is one. However, there seems to be no cool way to view what people are doing to the site. I think this kind of thing could make the web useful (like yahoo did wayyyy back when they could index a decent amount of the web) It's new, but don't use asp and MS-SQL, your just asking for the pain.
If history is any guide whatsoever, then I must admit that Bill Joy and other technological alarmists seem to have little weight to their arguments. The key issue that I have to contest with is this: that the new threats offered by nanotechnology, genetics and robotics are putting the human race into such danger that we need to take measures that have never before been necessary. He would have us limit the kind of research that could be done. I think this is exactly the wrong stance to take. People who are not free in their research are not researching at all. Look at comercial versus pure research, which makes the most basic breakthroughs, contrasted with the one that makes the most applied breakthroughs.
Now I agree that these new technolgies are more dangerous than any previously. However, no effective control of research can ever be done, not given that nature of research. Research into one completely innocuous area can have applications in any other area. Yes, there is a great danger, but the cure would no doubt be worse than the disease. Consider: what form could this restraint take? Self control by the scientists is exceedingly unlikely, otherwise they would hardly be good scientists. Some oversight commitee? This would easily be one of the most powerful organisations in the world, if they could dampen any sort of research they found 'unsafe.' Should we folloy Joy's prescriptions, we would be condemning ourselves to remain in technological doldrums for ages.
One way or another, I imagine that we will find ourselves facing these dangers. I honestly beleive that any research organisation oversight commitee would be ineffective. They would be unable do their job perfectly, so eventually, some of these threats will come to see the light of day. The human race would be better equiped if it knows the dangers, and how would we know the dangers? By unencumbered research.
Throughout history, the human race has had many leaps forward in technology, and those have all put the human race in danger. However, the only thing that has saved humanity from technology is: technology. This leads me to beleive that the only way to face the dangers alarmists warn us of is knowledge.
I am the head programmer for an e-commerce site, and I recently decided to rewrite everything, from the groud up. Using these simple guidelines, I was able to acheive spped increases on the order of 100-500 times faster.
Avoid monolithic components at all costs. I mean by this: large tables in your database, large columns in your tables, and large, multi-function CGI programs. This also means that everything should do one thing, and one thing only.
You database design needs to be normalized, and your selects optimized. Understand indexes. If you don't understand the concepts of normalization and database optimization, buy a book. Read it. Grok it. Also, examine the algorithms that are employed by the CGIs. If the algorithms are less than optimal, rewrite them from scratch. Rule of thumb: the source of software speed is ~90% design, ~10% implementation. If you use a fundamentally crappy algorithm or database design, a better implementation won't help you.
Another desirable aspect of a high volume web site is many servers. For example, your server's LAN should probably include: a web server for dynamic pages, a web server for static content (this can include static content masquerading as dynamic content, ie. caching server, or images), a secure server (if you need it), a database server, and a log server. That last one is a bit unique, and underrated. The best thing to do is log as much activity as you can, this allows you to identify problem areas. A log server doesn't have to be high powered, but it allows you to correlate activity much better. Customize your hardware to it's task. RAID is your friend. Swapping is the devil. The proccessor isn't always the bottleneck. Keep this kind of stuff in mind, and above all, keep the UNIX philosophy in mind.
Where I work, we have just a basic shopping cart system, by since everything is a small component, it is easy to upgrade and extend. We have somthing like 25 tables in our database, and none with more than 9 columns.
Are you using MySQL? If so, a quick hint: use INSERT DELAYED instead of INSERT, and EXPLAIN SELECTs. If you have to manually join tables, that's a good thing.
Reading this article, I got a very anti-programmer feeling. The author seemed to be saying that any moderatly decent coder should ba able to make secure code. Anyone who writes on internet security should be forced, at gunpoint, to read this essay, lest they take the same attitude. The fact is, writing code that works is hard, and writing code that is secure is an order of magnitude more difficult. However, there are reasonably secure packages out there, so if anyone is to blame for these lost credit card numbers, it is the administrators and managers responsibility. It just seems clear to me that the fault lies not even with MS SQL, but the administrators.
I own the domain name gemma.com. (Check my URL, for example) there's nothing on it now, since I recently changed ISPs. However, I do use it, primarilly to offer small opensource programs. One day, the Gemma construction company called, demanding that I give up my domain name. I offered to sell it to them, but they didn't like that idea. They never called back. Maybe someone who has heard of them could let me know, they might have got another site up, or they might be preparing to sue me...
In any case, I don't think that you will lose. However, lawsuits generally do cause a lot of money and time to be invested in them, and you don't get anything for winning when your the defendant. So what I'm trying to say is: the only way for you to really win is to not get sued. A counter-suit can reparate some (3x if I remember right) of the monetary loses, but how can it reparate the time sunk in to defending the domainname?
I know that this is a question many linux users will have. Since, for the past few years, PC
(as the findings of fact define PC) owners have had to pay a higher price for their PCs because of unwanted Microsoft software, like windows and IE. I think that alternative Operating system users, or even just netscape users, would have a case for a class action suit. Please let me know what you think.
As far as I recall, general relativity defines gravity as the curvature of space-time. Gravity waves are the result of changes in the curvature of space time. Gravity waves are theorised have these properties:
Gravity waves will be accompanied by gravitons, a hypothetical particle that has zero rest mass and twice the spin of a photon.
Gravity waves and gravitons propagate outward at the speed of light.
Gravity waves compress mass in one direction perpendicular to the direction they travel, and expand it in a direction perpendicular to both the direction of compression and direction of travel.
Gravity waves are moving ripples in space-time.
Black holes coliding make big gravity waves.
Gravity waves pass through matter.
This experiment it is trying to get empirical evidence on all of the above claims. This has been a goal of some physicists since the theory was proposed in 1916. However, this goal has previously been beyond experimenters technological reach. It takes today's most sophisticated lasers and detectors to isolate a gravity wave from far away. Any local vibrations reaching either the lasers (like noise, or earthquakes) or the detectors will be easily confused with gravity waves. However, the mass of nearby objects does not interfere, just the vibrations they produce.
As for the design of the installation: it is in the shape of an L, because (as I mentioned before) gravity waves both compress and expand matter as they pass through it. On laser moves faster, and the other slower. This is different from a Michalson inferometer, which checks if normal gravity (that is: curvature of space-time) bends light. A Michalson inferometer isn't used to determine the nature of gravity waves.
Gravity affects all of the universe simultaneously (although it doesn't affect it much, it does affect it). Gravity waves are held back by the speed of light limit though. So, the two installations would get waves at different times, depending on the orientation of the earth to the event.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and that's why we US taxpayers get this installation. If this had already been proven, we wouldn't need these two new observatories.
PS: Check out the observatories homepage for more info!
"I think this story was sent down from heaven to give us Linux users a chance to gloat over windows users," is the gist of the few messages posted so far. I don't really think we should have that attitude at all. We need to understand that there are [l]users out there who think HTML email is really neat, the same way I think that the new kernel debugging features are cool. We have to understand that our tastes in all things computers are not absolute. So Microsoft f***ed it up yet again; all companies do it. One of the reasons linux has been so secure and powerful is the foundation for it's design: UNIX. Windows is much younger than UNIX. And anyway, UNIX had it's virus/security problems a (not so)long time ago. The Worm anyone?
All computer systems have security holes. Complex ones more so. If you want some more rhetoric on why secuity is never perfect, read Bruce Schneier's interview here.
I think Microsoft was rash in releasing software with this little hole in it, but it doesn't mean that we're better than users of HTML email. Besides, all of Microsoft's really good OS people are on NT(Win2000) which doesn't have this particular problem. Microsoft doesn't really take the security of Win9x seriously anyway.
I personally am waiting to see how linux stacks up to Win2000. After all, this is like comparing the newest NT to version 2.0.36(my first kernel!).
/bye
With all the talk about violent video games causing the killing sprees in schools, offices and on the streets, I have a question for you.
The game industry's usual response to such allegations is to tone down the graphical violence. Parental controlls can allow you to limit the amout of blood, gibs, etc.
I think that displaying the visual artifacts of violence is to treat it more seriously, and removing them won't help as much as some other methods.
Do you think such content controlls are effective? I think that a more mature story and cast would be more effective in carrying a non violent message that a bunch of 'clean' deaths would be. Of course feel free to disagree with me, as I know ID has been a villian in many murders.
Well, speaking from experience, DNS cache does signifigantly increase browsing, esp. on a high latency device like a modem. How do I use such a cache? It's not in the browser, which is bloated enough already, as has often been pointed out. Rather, I maintain a cache using bind.
Event if you don't go all the way and make bind run as a real name server, you can still do caching only DNS. Plus, it's really cool to have resolv.conf have this line:
nameserver: 127.0.0.1
I think every linux dist I've seen has bind, and there's a really easy howto on setting it up for caching.
The way I see it, tax is a way of paying for services. You might not use, want or need any of the services bought with your tax money, but the capability (in theory) exists. Postage stamps are the governments way of taxing us for carrying our mail. However, don't companies like sprint and at&t carry most mail? So, what the government is trying to do is charge money for a service provided by someone else.
sarcasm mode ON
Well, since the government gives huge amounts of money to big buisiness in the form of tax breaks, they _deserve_ this money
sarcasm mode OFF
Just my two centibucks.
This sounds like it could be a fun feature of a (I hope) great game. The only way I can think of it is in terms of CIV. I would try to set it up so that I had an early warning system. Whenever one of my units saw an enemy, and I forgot about them, I'd get pissed. Then I'd miss my chance to fight. I think also a good application would be automated production. A dialog could pop up when a city gets a new unit, and allow you to continue pumping out units, automagically.
Man do I want this game.
Maybe I'll make a Gtk+ widget for a hyperbolic tree. It could essentially work like a tree widget, but on a larger scale. Good idea?