Here is what's happening. When SCO finally collapses, who do you go after for damanges? SCO's money will be insufficient to cover the damage to IBM's business and reputation, and most of that money would be eaten up by SCO's lawyers anyway. That is why IBM has been trying to make the case against the Canopy Group, SCO's parent company. Canopy has some money which IBM would be able to recover. But think of what happens if IBM proves, in the court of law, a direct link between SCO and Microsoft? Oh, Microsoft has money. Lots of it. That would be a VERY juicy target for IBM to go after. Microsoft knows this. That is the reason they've been trying to distance themselves from SCO ever since the Baystar connection became known. If Microsoft were found to be liable for the actions of its proxy, it would also open them up to a lawsuit by *any* Linux company. Hmmm, this is going to get interesting!
Postgresql is underdocumented, the MySQL online documentation simply excels.
Complete and utter bullshit. How is this for documentation? There are also excellent books about it.
There is no readily available workforce that has actual Postgresql knowledge. There are on the other hand buttloads of people available that can drive average sized MySQL installations for cheap money.
That's a circular argument: everybody uses MySQL because everyone else does. (I can name a certain OS that benefits from this situation...) A good DBA would have no problem picking up PostgreSQL in a matter of days. I don't care about trained monkeys.
There is no readily available workforce that has actual Postgresql knowledge. There are on the other hand buttloads of people available that can drive average sized MySQL installations for cheap money.
Again bullshit. PostgreSQL supports multiple databases per server very well, including separate access controls for each db.
Postgresql replication is regarded mostly experimental and is not properly integrated with the server. In larger MySQL deployments, replication is often used for load sharing (direct read only queries against any replica), and for backups.
Replication (in both MySQL and PostgreSQL) is mostly useless since it is asynchronous. That is, when you commit a transaction you can not be sure if/when it gets propagated to the slaves. Therefore, if you read from a slave you can never be sure that it's up to date. I'll grant you that there are certain situations where this can be tolerated, but for high availability mission critical sites, it's useless. For that you need distributed transactions. The only open source DB that supports them is firebird.
BTW, I'm glad you mentioned backups. PostgreSQL , just like any real database, can do on-line backups. However, to back up MySQL, you need to read-lock all the tables! The only way to get around that is by setting up replication and backing up the slave.
Postgresql already has many features MySQL either just got with 4.1 or is planned to get in 5.x. That is useless, though, if you do not need these features, but need to deploy in a hosted standard environment, relying on the available workforce.
Yeah, I'm sure you don't need transactions, subselects, triggers, stored procedures, or even *gasp* correct and predictable behaviour.
But you are right about one thing: everybody uses MySQL because everybody else does.
I am looking for a good cd/floppy based firewall distro for a 486. Cable/DSL support, configurable iptables rules, caching DNS server, ssh server. Any recommendations?
If I was running Microsoft, I'd just pull out of Europe.
Good riddance! Unfortunately, I don't think microsoft would actually abandon the largest market in the world.
I am totally against ethically dubious practices to achieve a monopoly. But I don't consider "bundling" anti competitive behavior. This is just another example of the EU over regulating.
That's funny, cause that was exactly the reason for US DoJ anti-trust case against microsoft: ms leveraged monopoly in one market (desktop OS) to gain monopoly in another (web browsers). It was web browsers then, it's media players now. Microsoft was found guilty, and, as a punishment, was required to primise not to do it again.
Why aren't they suing BMW for including radios in their automobiles?? After all, it is a "value added" additional component. It's not a car.
Is BMW a monopoly? Are they trying to "cut off the air supply" to a competing radio manufacturer?
I don't mean to start a flame war, but isn't this Microsoft Monopoly crap getting a little old?
Yeah, cause we all know that if we just stop saying that then microsoft will not be a monopoly any more! I mean DoJ seems to think so...
There are countless examples (especially in the computer industry) of companies that seemed like monopolies (IBM for example) that were devastated overnight when a superior idea entered the market place.
You mean like the way mozilla took over IE's market share as soon as it was released? Oh wait... Let me spell this out for you: you cannot compete with a monopolist on the basis of better products that compete in the same market. That is why we have the rules to restrict abuse of monopoly.
BTW, the only reason IBM lost the market power it had is that the market became (mostly) irrelevant. IBM still has monopoly in mainframes (which is what they were sued for), but mainframes are disappearing. It has absolutely nothing to do with building a better product.
It wouldn't likely be Microsoft.
They owned SoftImage for a while (Alias' main competition at the time) and it didn't work out.
Actually, Microsoft got exactly what they wanted out of that deal. You see, at the time NOBODY did 3d in windows. That world was still dominated by SGI. Microsoft bought SoftImage and forced them to port to windows. For a long time SoftImage did nothing but porting. This has set them back by a lot, and cost them a lot of market share. But Microsoft didn't care. They proved that 3d is possible on windows, so everyone else started porting to windows as well. At that point SoftImage was no longer useful to Microsoft, so MS promptly disposed of it.
I'm not going to dig through C standard, but this code is unsafe, so there is a perfectly good reason to disallow this (even though it will compile).
This macro is expanded in-line, so the code
isdigit('5')
is translated by C preprocessor to
(('5') >= '0' && ('5') = '9')
Now imagine what happens with isdigit(i++). If i == 9, i will be incremented twice and you will get the wrong answer.
Also consider what happens if x is a return value of a function, e.g. isdigit( foo(...) ). First, the function is called twice (which can be slow and certainly unneccessary). Second, the function may have side-effects (i.e. it may modify an external variable, write to a file, etc.), so doing it twice is equally bad.
PostgreSQL now has some type of replication available from PostgreSQL Inc, but it looked to me like somewhat of a hodge podge of perl, triggers and who knows what else.
There is simply no way you can get 7x difference simply by switching an IDE HD to SCSI with similar specs. I always get suspicious when I see more than 2x difference. There must be something else. Either something is misconfigured or it is not an apples to apples comparison. Notice that the tests were performed on two completely different machines. The hardware and software configurations were not listed. Which versions of the kernel were the two machines running? Which versions of mutt? Which file systems?, etc. It will be quite funny if it turns out that the file systems are not the same.
For a more real-world comparison, check out http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html . For instance, the web server drivemark lists various 7200RPM IDE HDs at 120-139 io/sec. The fastest 7200RPM SCSI HD, Quantum Atlas V scores 170 io/sec -- a 30% improvement. That is believable. The fastest 10000RPM HD, Quantum Atlas 10k IV, scores 261 io/sec - twice as fast as a typical 7200RPM IDE HD. That is also believable. The "benchmark" showing a SCSI drive 7x faster than a similar IDE drive is not believable.
This lawsuit has already happened. That is why monitor manufacturers always print viewable area right next to the diagonal length. In that lawsuit, consumers got the labels and the coupons for new monitors; lawyers got the cash. If anyone has a link to more detailed information, please post it.
With the ever-increasing clock speed of our CPUs, what is the point of having a hardware MPEG decoder? I understand that p2-400 is sufficient to play DVD-quality movies. The amount you spend on the hardware decoder could have been better spent on memory or video card or CPU or whatever. Now, a hardware encoder would certainly be useful as encoding is still very CPU-intensive. I was contemplating a tivo-like box with a hardware encoder. Does anyone know if hardware MPEG encoders are supported on Linux?
For example, I'd say it's MUCH easier to use the COM-reliant WSH (Windows Scripting Host) to add scripting capabilities to my application than it is to write my own interpreters for all those languages, or make my own scripting language. I've done both, and using WSH takes almost no time or effort, whereas writing my own backend and/or language compiler/interpreter can take days.
This example is stupid. You are saying that it is much easier to use a third-party library than to write your own implementation. Well, duh! And it makes no difference whether you access the library via COM or plain C++ / Java / whatever interface.
If I want to integrate my application with other windows apps, COM is pretty much the only way to go. Some programs MIGHT offer a native C++ or Java API, but 99% of the time the applications I have to integrate with expose a COM API exclusively. So, writing my app using vanilla C++ doesn't do much since I have to do all that COM programming anyway.
There! Now we get to the real reason windows programmers use COM: they are forced to!
I've had managers muddle through simple excel macros to control my software and do some great customization that way, but a C/C++/Java API means only other programmers will be able to take advantage of that feature.
There are other ways to do it. There is no reason why excel couldn't have a scripting library to link with your application. It's no different from linking with WSH. But Microsoft chose COM...
but it's a billion dollars that those companies didn't have to spend to buy software. therefore they are able to use the money for more urgent and important things.
Uhhm, no they couldn't. They didn't have that billion dollars in the first place. This is the point the parent post was making but it obviously went right over your head. Non-profit orgs can't spend the money on software. Microsoft can't charge them for software. But giving away the software actually benefits Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I wish they'd get smacked for "SQL Server", "Proxy Server", etc.
A long time ago I switched from redhat to mandrake. I wonder if it's time to switch back.
Thursday.
simple. Microsoft reminds him of his wong.
Here is what's happening. When SCO finally collapses, who do you go after for damanges? SCO's money will be insufficient to cover the damage to IBM's business and reputation, and most of that money would be eaten up by SCO's lawyers anyway. That is why IBM has been trying to make the case against the Canopy Group, SCO's parent company. Canopy has some money which IBM would be able to recover. But think of what happens if IBM proves, in the court of law, a direct link between SCO and Microsoft? Oh, Microsoft has money. Lots of it. That would be a VERY juicy target for IBM to go after. Microsoft knows this. That is the reason they've been trying to distance themselves from SCO ever since the Baystar connection became known. If Microsoft were found to be liable for the actions of its proxy, it would also open them up to a lawsuit by *any* Linux company. Hmmm, this is going to get interesting!
Can somebody please comment on what happens to the lawsuit if SCO runs out of cash and dies? Can IBM still get the declaratory judgement?
Henceforth, the plural of orifice is scorifice.
I prefer to have my wood and my sake separately...
Postgresql is underdocumented, the MySQL online documentation simply excels.
Complete and utter bullshit. How is this for documentation? There are also excellent books about it.
There is no readily available workforce that has actual Postgresql knowledge. There are on the other hand buttloads of people available that can drive average sized MySQL installations for cheap money.
That's a circular argument: everybody uses MySQL because everyone else does. (I can name a certain OS that benefits from this situation...) A good DBA would have no problem picking up PostgreSQL in a matter of days. I don't care about trained monkeys.
There is no readily available workforce that has actual Postgresql knowledge. There are on the other hand buttloads of people available that can drive average sized MySQL installations for cheap money.
Again bullshit. PostgreSQL supports multiple databases per server very well, including separate access controls for each db.
Postgresql replication is regarded mostly experimental and is not properly integrated with the server. In larger MySQL deployments, replication is often used for load sharing (direct read only queries against any replica), and for backups.
Replication (in both MySQL and PostgreSQL) is mostly useless since it is asynchronous. That is, when you commit a transaction you can not be sure if/when it gets propagated to the slaves. Therefore, if you read from a slave you can never be sure that it's up to date. I'll grant you that there are certain situations where this can be tolerated, but for high availability mission critical sites, it's useless. For that you need distributed transactions. The only open source DB that supports them is firebird.
BTW, I'm glad you mentioned backups. PostgreSQL , just like any real database, can do on-line backups. However, to back up MySQL, you need to read-lock all the tables! The only way to get around that is by setting up replication and backing up the slave.
Postgresql already has many features MySQL either just got with 4.1 or is planned to get in 5.x. That is useless, though, if you do not need these features, but need to deploy in a hosted standard environment, relying on the available workforce.
Yeah, I'm sure you don't need transactions, subselects, triggers, stored procedures, or even *gasp* correct and predictable behaviour.
But you are right about one thing: everybody uses MySQL because everybody else does.
I am looking for a good cd/floppy based firewall distro for a 486. Cable/DSL support, configurable iptables rules, caching DNS server, ssh server. Any recommendations?
Good riddance! Unfortunately, I don't think microsoft would actually abandon the largest market in the world.
I am totally against ethically dubious practices to achieve a monopoly. But I don't consider "bundling" anti competitive behavior. This is just another example of the EU over regulating.
That's funny, cause that was exactly the reason for US DoJ anti-trust case against microsoft: ms leveraged monopoly in one market (desktop OS) to gain monopoly in another (web browsers). It was web browsers then, it's media players now. Microsoft was found guilty, and, as a punishment, was required to primise not to do it again.
Why aren't they suing BMW for including radios in their automobiles?? After all, it is a "value added" additional component. It's not a car.
Is BMW a monopoly? Are they trying to "cut off the air supply" to a competing radio manufacturer?
I don't mean to start a flame war, but isn't this Microsoft Monopoly crap getting a little old?
Yeah, cause we all know that if we just stop saying that then microsoft will not be a monopoly any more! I mean DoJ seems to think so...
There are countless examples (especially in the computer industry) of companies that seemed like monopolies (IBM for example) that were devastated overnight when a superior idea entered the market place.
You mean like the way mozilla took over IE's market share as soon as it was released? Oh wait... Let me spell this out for you: you cannot compete with a monopolist on the basis of better products that compete in the same market. That is why we have the rules to restrict abuse of monopoly.
BTW, the only reason IBM lost the market power it had is that the market became (mostly) irrelevant. IBM still has monopoly in mainframes (which is what they were sued for), but mainframes are disappearing. It has absolutely nothing to do with building a better product.
Actually, Microsoft got exactly what they wanted out of that deal. You see, at the time NOBODY did 3d in windows. That world was still dominated by SGI. Microsoft bought SoftImage and forced them to port to windows. For a long time SoftImage did nothing but porting. This has set them back by a lot, and cost them a lot of market share. But Microsoft didn't care. They proved that 3d is possible on windows, so everyone else started porting to windows as well. At that point SoftImage was no longer useful to Microsoft, so MS promptly disposed of it.
No, they will call it Pentium Pentium... :-)
#define isdigit(x) ((x) >= '0' && (x) <= '9')
I'm not going to dig through C standard, but this code is unsafe, so there is a perfectly good reason to disallow this (even though it will compile).
This macro is expanded in-line, so the code
isdigit('5')
is translated by C preprocessor to
(('5') >= '0' && ('5') = '9')
Now imagine what happens with isdigit(i++). If i == 9, i will be incremented twice and you will get the wrong answer.
Also consider what happens if x is a return value of a function, e.g. isdigit( foo(...) ). First, the function is called twice (which can be slow and certainly unneccessary). Second, the function may have side-effects (i.e. it may modify an external variable, write to a file, etc.), so doing it twice is equally bad.
Strange. That's how MySQL looks to me...
There is simply no way you can get 7x difference simply by switching an IDE HD to SCSI with similar specs. I always get suspicious when I see more than 2x difference. There must be something else. Either something is misconfigured or it is not an apples to apples comparison. Notice that the tests were performed on two completely different machines. The hardware and software configurations were not listed. Which versions of the kernel were the two machines running? Which versions of mutt? Which file systems?, etc. It will be quite funny if it turns out that the file systems are not the same.
For a more real-world comparison, check out http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html . For instance, the web server drivemark lists various 7200RPM IDE HDs at 120-139 io/sec. The fastest 7200RPM SCSI HD, Quantum Atlas V scores 170 io/sec -- a 30% improvement. That is believable. The fastest 10000RPM HD, Quantum Atlas 10k IV, scores 261 io/sec - twice as fast as a typical 7200RPM IDE HD. That is also believable. The "benchmark" showing a SCSI drive 7x faster than a similar IDE drive is not believable.
This lawsuit has already happened. That is why monitor manufacturers always print viewable area right next to the diagonal length. In that lawsuit, consumers got the labels and the coupons for new monitors; lawyers got the cash.
If anyone has a link to more detailed information, please post it.
Electric vehicles can't go very far or very fast, and when you drive one people will think you're gay.(*)
(*)Sponsored by the gasoline industry of America.
Paperless office will come soon after the paperless toilet.
With the ever-increasing clock speed of our CPUs, what is the point of having a hardware MPEG decoder? I understand that p2-400 is sufficient to play DVD-quality movies. The amount you spend on the hardware decoder could have been better spent on memory or video card or CPU or whatever. Now, a hardware encoder would certainly be useful as encoding is still very CPU-intensive. I was contemplating a tivo-like box with a hardware encoder. Does anyone know if hardware MPEG encoders are supported on Linux?
This example is stupid. You are saying that it is much easier to use a third-party library than to write your own implementation. Well, duh! And it makes no difference whether you access the library via COM or plain C++ / Java / whatever interface.
If I want to integrate my application with other windows apps, COM is pretty much the only way to go. Some programs MIGHT offer a native C++ or Java API, but 99% of the time the applications I have to integrate with expose a COM API exclusively. So, writing my app using vanilla C++ doesn't do much since I have to do all that COM programming anyway.
There! Now we get to the real reason windows programmers use COM: they are forced to!
I've had managers muddle through simple excel macros to control my software and do some great customization that way, but a C/C++/Java API means only other programmers will be able to take advantage of that feature.
There are other ways to do it. There is no reason why excel couldn't have a scripting library to link with your application. It's no different from linking with WSH. But Microsoft chose COM...
Wouldn't 2-legged dynosaurs be more likely to jump like kangaroo?
see subject
'nuff said
Uhhm, no they couldn't. They didn't have that billion dollars in the first place. This is the point the parent post was making but it obviously went right over your head. Non-profit orgs can't spend the money on software. Microsoft can't charge them for software. But giving away the software actually benefits Microsoft.