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User: MoNsTeR

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  1. Re:Bright and Sunny Skies Today! on Amazon EBS Failure Brings Down Reddit, Imgur, Others · · Score: 2

    If you think the risks of running in the cloud are less than the risks of running in a traditional data center, you're very much mistaken.

    If one AWS AZ goes down I can bring up servers in a second one. If one AWS region goes down I can bring up servers in a second one. In fact to hedge against these risks I *already have* servers in multiple zones and regions.

    Sure you can do that with traditional data centers. Just host your stuff across more than one, right? Do you have any concept of what that COSTS? Especially if you, say, want to add servers in multiple data centers, or move servers from one to another. Plus now you have multiple vendors, contacts, SLAs, and so son, and so forth. And heaven help you if you ever want to *decrease* your capacity. Have fun selling those servers on ebay.

    Reddit and friends are suffering downtime from a single AZ outage because their architectures have single points of failure. Don't build your systems that way! If you have single points of failure it doesn't matter whether you're hosted in the cloud, in a commercial data center, or in your own data center. Conversely if your architecture is good and doesn't have single points of failure, the hosting question comes down to this: what do you specialize in as a business? If that list doesn't include "running a data center", don't run your own data center. If it doesn't include "maintaining a shit load of hardware", then don't host in a commercial data center either, run in the cloud. I think you will find that this latter category includes 99.99% of businesses.

  2. TOAD for Oracle on What's Keeping You On Windows? · · Score: 1

    I have no idea why Quest Software hasn't put out a version of TOAD for Oracle that runs on Linux, or a cross-platform Java version for that matter.  But until they do, I will develop/administer on a Windows desktop.

    Besides, Windows 7 is pretty nice in a lot of ways.  Install cygwin and you've got 90% of the best of both worlds.

  3. Re:Quorum looks a lot like Pascal on Is Perl Better Than a Randomly Generated Programming Language? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If those punctuation marks (or keywords) make the code more readable, then they're not gratuitous are they?  I, for one, find brace-less languages fantastically hard to read, Python especially.

  4. Re:I like these training wheels on Type Safety Coming To DB Queries · · Score: 1

    You need a subquery that generates the iterative values for you.  Oracle provides a concise way to do this right in your query:

    select x.start_time
         , p.direction
         , sum(p.bytes) as b
      from (select -60+10*(level-1) as start_time
              from dual
            connect by level <= 6
           ) x
         , packets p
    where p.time_stamp >= x.start_time
       and p.time_stamp <  x.start_time+(10/24/60/60)
    group by x.start_time
            , p.direction

    If your RDBMS doesn't have an equivalent to CONNECT BY LEVEL, you will either need to put your values in a table (think a reusable "integers" or "dates" table), or do something like (select -60 as foo from dual UNION ALL select -50 from dual UNION ALL select -40...and so on).

  5. Re:Reinventing the wheel on Type Safety Coming To DB Queries · · Score: 1

    Parameterized queries require pre-registration with the database engine, and have a host of other gotchas. EG: No dynamically created SQL queries.

    This is a feature, not a bug.

    Build all your queries as parameterized queries (or better yet, stored procedures) and you will never have "type safety" problems. In fact the posting barely makes sense to me. How would you ever end up trying to date-range a string field? That query would never run! Oh right, there are still idiots out there that build queries at runtime. Well, don't fucking do that!

    Besides, parameterized queries are 100% immune to SQL injection. You'd think people would care more about that these days.

  6. Well it IS unenforceable... on Google/Facebook: Do-Not-Track Threatens CA Economy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I mean, seriously. There is no mechanism by which Do Not Track can actually be made to work as it is currently being proposed. This is more important than whether you think it's a good idea.

    If you want to be able to opt out of being tracked, you need to built it in to browser behavior and/or web protocols themselves. You can't simply ASK sites not to track you and expect anything to happen, nor can you rely on a law to do this for you.

  7. Why? on Tech Experts Look To Help Save the Postal Service · · Score: 0

    Why try to save it? If it's failing the market test, it should die. Rescind the Federal monopoly that the USPS enjoys, and let UPS, Fedex, etc. figure out a profitable way to deliver letters.

  8. Not true and never has been on AMD Bulldozer Will Bring Socket Shift To PCs · · Score: 1

    "One of the most dreaded hurdles on the PC upgrade path is the CPU socket. If socket design changes then you'll almost certainly need a new motherboard when you do upgrade."

    This is a complete red herring. I have been building my own PCs since 1997. I have not once, ever, been able to re-use a motherboard when upgrading. Yes, some of that is due to sockets changing, but not all of it. Sometimes you need a new board to support the newest memory technology, or to support the changed voltage requirements of the new chips. Bottom line is, unless you're an early-and-often adopter, buying new CPUs the day they're released (which historically has meant spending $900+), you just won't ever get two CPUs' worth of life out of one motherboard, regardless of whether the required socket has changed.

  9. USE BIND VARIABLES on MySql.com Hacked With Sql Injection · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Jesus fuck, people. It's not rocket surgery.

    If you use bind variables, you CANNOT be SQL-injected.

    If you don't, you can be.

    It's that fucking simple. Do The Right Thing.

  10. Right for the wrong reasons on CMU Eliminates Object Oriented Programming For Freshman · · Score: 2

    OOP should absolutely not be taught at the freshman level, because it gets in the way of understanding more basic concepts like, oh I dunno, variables, branching, looping, subroutines, I/O, etc. Their claim that OOP is "anti-modular" is of course absurd. "Anti-parallel" is probably arguable, but how that's relevant at an undergraduate level of instruction is highly questionable.

    At any rate the real problem is that colleges offer degrees in "computer science" but not "software engineering". How many of these students will finish their degrees without ever having committed to source control? Without coding to a 3rd-party API? Connecting to a database? Performing maintenance programming? Working in an honest-to-god team?

  11. They're right though... on Pink Floyd Give In To Digital Downloads · · Score: 1

    I mean if you don't listen to Pink Floyd albums as ALBUMS, you're doing it wrong.

  12. Re:Good! on First Electric Cars Have Power Industry Worried · · Score: 1

    Do you actually know what "deregulation" means in this context? California did not "deregulate" its power industry, it "re-regulated" it into a non-functioning arrangement:

    - wholesale power suppliers were free to adjust prices
    - retail power providers were not (the aforementioned government price fixing)
    - generation costs spiked due to exogenous factors
    - You do the math.

    It doesn't even take a first year Econ student to figure out that this was doomed from the start.

  13. Re:He sega dreamcast on Has Any Creative Work Failed Because of Piracy? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was going to post the same thing. A friend who had a DC had maybe 2 or 3 purchased games, and a whole spindle of CDRs with downloaded ones.

  14. How about "it doesn't f****** work" on YouTube Explains Where HTML5 Video Fails · · Score: 1

    Just sign up for the HTML5 beta on YouTube and give it a try. It doesn't fucking work! Videos stutter, the audio gets replaced by static, some videos don't play at all. And this is in Chrome! I'm all for doing away with Flash but right now the video tag is just not a viable alternative.

  15. Re:Real World on Later School Start For Teenagers Brings Drop In Absenteeism · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, high school is a prison for teenagers. All that stuff with textbooks is window dressing.

  16. Legacy of Kain on The Problems With Video Game Voice Acting · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Which of course is why basically linear games can have excellent voice acting. And by this of course I mean Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, and their sequels, which to this day have the best voice acting in any game ever made. I mean, just watch the intro to Soul Reaver, and play the first 10 minutes of the game, and compare that to more recent rot like Final Fantasy 10 and up, the Metal Gear Solid series, and even Modern Warfare 2 (which is good, but not the equal of, say, SR2).

  17. Personally I prefer the noise... on Music While Programming? · · Score: 1

    ...but that's just me. It's easier for me to tune out office background noise than music, since I like music.

    The important point is that your boss is being an idiot and you need to walk in there and tell him he's being an idiot. And if you're afraid to do that it means you need a different job because you ABSOLUTELY NEED to be able to do that.

  18. Post Title? on FTC Says Virtual Worlds Bad For Minors · · Score: 1

    I'll admit to having only skimmed the FTC posting, but I didn't see anything saying that could be construed as "virtual worlds are bad for minors." They said that minors have ACCESS to virtual worlds, but any conclusion of harm is based on prior assumptions, with which many of us would disagree.

  19. I take it back! on Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released · · Score: 1

    Either they did fix it or migrating settings skips over it. It was Smart Folders (which I swear I disabled on the setup tab) making it appear as if it had happened.

  20. Glad to see they haven't fixed my bug... on Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released · · Score: 1

    ...wherein when you set up a new IMAP account it purges all the messages you had marked-as-deleted without asking you. Or in this case does it when migrating settings from version 2, again without asking you.

    I actually had a developer try to argue this wasn't a bug. Are you fucking serious, guys? Permanently deleting 10,000+ messages with no confirmation is a FEATURE?

    I also like how it had to re-download all my folders for no good reason.

    Pretty close to re-installing 2.x at this point.

  21. Re:What is going one here? on Google May Limit Free News Access · · Score: 1

    You're too quick with that "False." there. Two other obvious possibilities exist:
    1. Google hasn't found out about it.
    2. These sites have An Arrangement with Google that bends the rules.

    As dependent as my company is on Google traffic, I can assure you that Anonymous Coward's statement is broadly true. Unless you are special, if Google discovers their bot sees different content than real users you get the boot.

  22. no principled difference, eh? on Recipient of First Software Patent Defends Them · · Score: 1

    If there's no principled difference between hardware and software, that doesn't imply that software should be patentable, it implies that hardware SHOULDN'T be patentable.

    If that seems a little extreme in the opposite direction it's probably because there IS a principled difference.

    Theoretical arguments aside, empirically software patents are unnecessary. The software industry innovates at a faster pace than any other on the planet. Most of what we create is never patented and doesn't need to be in order to be useful. The only people in the software business who need patent protection are professional litigators. If software patents disappeared tomorrow, innovation would INCREASE because we would no longer be working under the constant threat of a lawsuit.

  23. serious issues on Firefox 2.0 Posted a Day Early · · Score: 1

    1. It clobbered by bookmarks.

    2. Tabs don't work. I can open new tabs but not load anything in them or close them.

    And that's just in 60 seconds of looking it over.

    It's marginally conceivable that some extension I have is to blame but I am not using anything particularly exotic so even if that is the case many others would be in danger as well.

  24. speaking as a Coloradan... on Stephen Colbert vs The Hungarian Government · · Score: 1

    ...get bent!

    Also may I suggest Wyoming.

    (note: Yes I get that this is a joke.)

  25. Re:Isn't that their right? on Microsoft Threatens To Withdraw Windows in S.Korea · · Score: 1

    Putting aside the question of whether such a law is at all just...

    So the government says "you can't do that, you have to do this instead," why can't MS respond with, "well we don't want to do that, so we're not going to do anything, bye!"? Taking one's ball and going home truly is the perfect analogy. If you're going to try to impose your rules on me, you need to be willing to accept the possibility that I'll react by withdrawing my participation in thte game.

    Sure, you can spin it as MS trying to "extort" the government to change their ruling, but that implies MS is bluffing. It may very well be the case that it's better for them to exit that market than play by the local rules. And if they're willing to actually do that, more power to them. Governments need to be shown the unintended consequences of foolish policies.