How about a database with the exact same query API (not just "but it's all SQL") as, say, Oracle or MS-SQL, or even Postgres, that allows any number of parallel query servers to work against a single datastore?
What would be the purpose of that? Performance gains? I/O is going to be your bottleneck there, and it sounds like it would start to clog up sooner, rather than later.
In other words, instead of yet another incompatible database, how about one that we could just switch to from an existing one, that is arbitrarily scalable against shared data.
Vertica isn't using shared data. It's a "shared nothing" database. Each server in the cluster holds only part of the database. Therefore, query processing and data access I/O is distributed equally. FYI, IBM DB2 does clustering this way. By comparison, Oracle RAC is a "shared everything" database. Each server holds a replica of the entire dataset. This makes for a very reliable database, but replicating the data limits the performance of the cluster when compared to a shared-nothing design.
If you're going to get clever and act like you can solve hard problems, why not give people what we need, and not just what you think you can give us?
If you're going to get all snotty and superior, why not first try to understand the problem that the product is intended to solve, not just the problem you're imagining people have? This product is targeted at the data warehousing market. If you know a better way to do data warehousing than what Vertica is proposing, it seems like the time you spend posting to Slashdot could be better spent publishing research papers.
In the real world, the traditional methods too improve and unless they can maintain a 100x lead continually the new technology flops.
This might be the obvious conclusion if Vertica were targeting the mass market and trying to compete directly with Oracle, SQL Server, or DB2, but they are not. TFA says Vertica is targeted at the data warehousing market, which is a very specific application area that can be better served with niche products than with the traditional general-purpose relational RDBMSs. Based on what I've read, it sounds like Vertica is addressing a market similar to that of Greenplum. These guys are trying use open source to go up against the entrenched proprietary players, such as Teradata, that charge literal millions of dollars for software to run big data warehouses.
827 page manual for general user who is already familiar with XP? That is insane. Companies should demand Microsoft to pay for the retraining of their employees and upgrade costs and data migration costs.
You are making two erroneous assumptions:
That the number of pages in a book is proportional to the amount of useful content it contains.
That anyone needs a manual to start using Windows Vista.
Surely the fact that Microsoft does not include a manual with the product, instead providing the user with a context-sensitive electronic help system, indicates that Microsoft doesn't actually feel that a printed manual is necessary at all?
O'Reilly and Pogue say that the manual is "missing," but remember, they are biased. They are in the business of printing books.
if Explorer.exe was authorized 30 seconds ago, it's unlikely it was compromised since then, and should retain that authorization.
I'm with you, but I'm curious... 30 seconds seems like a long time inside a computer. Why exactly is Explorer.exe "unlikely" to be compromised? If I was intentionally attacking this security mechanism, isn't compromising Explorer.exe after it obtained authorization exactly the method that I would use?
Oh yeah... (replying to my own post to add one more thing)... the reason we suspect that the avian flu may be capable of mutating into an air-transmissible form is that A.) it's a form of flu virus, and B.) we know that flu viruses exist that are transmissible through the air. We also have at least a good idea what genetic traits a flu virus needs to have to be air-transmissible, and the avian flu is, relatively speaking, very close to having those traits. We're not talking about the possibility of a human being evolving wings and a tail, here. We're talking about a flu virus -- a very simple organism -- mutating in such a way that it has characteristics that are already present in other flu viruses that we see all the time. There is no reason to believe that in order to gain those characteristics the avian flu would have to become less deadly. So it stands to reason that, should the avian flu gain characteristics that make it air-transmissible, it might very possibly remain every bit as deadly to humans as it is now...in which case we'd have a very serious medical problem on our hands. This is why we'd like to have an idea of how to combat such a virus, should such a thing come into existence.
Why is it inevitable that bird flu will mutate into a form capable of this sort of transmission?
It's not inevitable that it will mutate into that form. But it is inevitable that it will mutate. That's what flu viruses do. Mutations are random. Avian flu could mutate into a form that causes it to cease to be harmful to anything. It could also mutate into a very dangerous disease. That these two potential outcomes are diametrically opposed might be sufficient justification for you to say it's not worth our scientists worrying about. I, on the other hand, am uncomfortable with rolling the dice on the lives of all of humankind when we know that the potential for a very serious threat exists.
And on a side note, if you are reluctant to spend the "time and money" to combat diseases that can threaten any and all human populations, indiscriminate of their feelings on politics and economics, then I imagine you're absolutely horrified at the amount of time and money we Americans spend on things like invading Iraq and Afghanistan. If we as a society can't stop the second one, then I'd at least hope we can convince ourselves to do the first one. The two may not balance out -- the dollars spent on health research are just a drop in the bucket of the war effort -- but if we could stir ourselves to do just a little bit of good in the world it would make me sleep easier, personally.
We're waiting for the eventual mutation that will allow Avian Flu to spread through the air from person to person. So far it can't do that. So far, to get Avian Flu a person needs to eat or have contact with infected birds. Once it goes airborne, though, you will see Avian Flu killing a lot more people than the regular flu does. We're trying to figure out an effective therapeutic regimen before that happens.
Wikipedia has plenty of critics, but none of them have succeeded in replacing it. Nobody looking for information is going to replace Wikipedia because there is more authoritative editors or tighter control at another site.
That said, Infoseek is a very good search engine. It gives me all the results I need. It's well established as the industry leader in that space. Nobody is going to replace Infoseek just because they have less ads or they return slightly different search results at another site.
The GPL specifically states that patents must be licensed for free use by everyone or not licensed at all. By sublicensing Microsoft's patents for their customers, Novell is violating that clause and risks having their rights under the GPL terminated.
And yet, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen seem to agree that you are mistaken.
I think the idea of making some kind of "national sex offender chatroom registry" is pretty silly. But it seems to me that a registered sex offender who, upon getting out of jail, signs up for an online chat service with the same online ID as the one he was using when he committed his original offenses should probably be seen as being in violation of the terms of his probation. Police might want to have a record of what those original IDs were, in that case. For that matter, maybe it's appropriate for someone who uses chatrooms to groom children for abuse to be barred from using any chat service again for (at minimum) a long, long time? These would be decisions for judges to make.
Here's what I don't get: It seems to me that, at least in most of the places I've been in Europe, European businesses are unwilling to turn away purchases from American tourists. Therefore, everyplace that uses the chip and PIN system can also accept American-style swipe-the-card transactions. So if your goal was merely to steal or clone a credit card and buy yourself a nice plate of frogs' legs, wouldn't it be easier to just do it American-style?
Second, do consumers not have credit card loss protection in Europe, the way they do in the U.S.? In the U.S., you're only liable for something like $50 on a fraudulent charge, and rarely do you end up paying even that. I had someone charge something like $950 to one of my cards recently, I spotted it right away, and it took something like a three-minute phone call to have the charge halted. They sent me a form in the mail, which I signed and returned, and that was the last I ever heard about it.
The real problem is not for the consumer and it's not for the credit card company. The problem is for the merchant. Here's how it works, at least in the U.S.: Someone steals my credit card. The thief walks into a Best Buy and purchases a TV. They walk out with the TV. I see the fraudulent charge on my bill. I call up my credit card company. They reverse the charge. Maybe someone investigates to see if they can find the person who made the charge. Let's say they're successful in their investigation (which actually happens more often than you think, mostly because most criminals are either stupid or greedy, or both). Unfortunately, however, the thief has already sold the TV and spent the money on crystal meth. Best Buy now has two options: A.) they can try to sue the thief to cover the cost of the TV; or B.) they can eat the loss and move on. Now let's say it isn't Best Buy. Let's say it's a single mom and pop store that's lost a TV and they have the same options. Sound fair to you?
Getting to machines while they are still turned on and taking a forensically sound copy is an option even in the absence of USB Keys, Karney explained. "Even though the logical volume is encrypted the OS works on top of an abstraction layer. We can see what the OS sees so that it's possible to acquire data on a running Vista machine even when it is running BitLocker."
Hey, there's a clever idea! I wonder where they thought up that one? I'm glad to see people aren't spending all their time worrying about Vista's DRM...
You use to then be able to use those bits freely. Now you can't courtesy of DRM. The freedom to copy useless bits is not what the net is about.
Invariably these discussions of DRM and Vista get way out of hand. On a PC at home I use Vista daily as my primary OS. Since upgrading from XP to Vista I have encountered no more DRM than before. None. Zero. I play my music via DRM-free MP3 files, I watch TV shows as DRM-free AVIs. Is all of that strictly legal? No. But that's a different question. You seem to be saying that Vista, which is a computer operating system, has somehow magically removed your ability to use your computer in a DRM-free way. And that's just false.
Of course that was the problem: When Ada came out only very powerfull system where able to run an Ada compiler so not many programmers could actualy try the language.
Actually, the problem as I understood it was that Ada compilers were required to undergo a strict certification process, managed in part by the U.S. government. This process was very expensive for compiler vendors, therefore the compilers were themselves very expensive. Getting your hands on an Ada compiler cost several thousand dollars, compared to a $150 copy of Turbo Pascal.
I've never used ADA, is it really so good that its inventor had to be listed twice in the same list?
Though the Ada language seems destined to be forgotten, at one time the U.S. Department of Defense required that any significant code written for DoD projects be written in Ada.
That is news to me. I dunno how I'd feel about that. I guess I'd feel better if they wanted me to print it out and sign it. But at least it's a document. If a company is planning on monkeying around with the deal, they probably wouldn't want even that kind of a "paper" trail.
Don't take it personally if Flushed Away didn't get the same box office that other movies in that market usually do. They did the full marketing job on it, complete with MacDonalds and Breakfast Cereal tie-ins.
You might be right... but I gotta say, I'd never even heard of "Flushed Away" before this thread. That says something.
It's called predatory pricing... It's one of the main reasons that straight free markets don't work.
That's a pretty sweeping generalization. On paper, predatory pricing may sound like an unstoppable weapon. But in real-world economies, where there's still real money at stake, it's not as if anybody can just decide to use predatory pricing anytime they feel like and get away with it. Pricing your own products below profitability always introduces short-term risk. Usually companies that employ this tactic back it up with a plan to jack the prices back up again, down the road, to make up for profits lost during the price war. If something unforeseen happens -- like the cost of raw materials goes up due to some catastrophe -- the period of predatory pricing can backfire. The longer a company has to raise its prices to offset losses, the more the barrier to entry for competition is lowered, diminishing the advantage given by the earlier, predatory pricing.
In other words, like most things in real-world economics, pricing is complicated. The reason predatory pricing is illegal in countries like the United States is not because it would bring the entire economy to a grinding halt and end society as we know it. It does, however, tend to have side effects that are unpleasant for more people than the number who would normally benefit from the practice.
In their own times, so were Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. Don't even get me started on Dumas.
Meh, it sounds witty but I don't see the evidence. The mere fact that all these works have lasted the ages is evidence that they are not the schlock you're painting them to be. There were other writers working in each of these gentlemen's eras whom you've never heard of.
Example: A contemporary of Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, published the first half of his novel, Don Quixote, in 1605. He wouldn't publish the second half until ten years later. But the first half was such a critical and popular success that it inspired another writer to publish a spurious sequel before Cervantes was able to get out his own conclusion. So I guess, by the standard of mass popularity, you could say Cervantes, like Shakespeare, was "the Britney Spears of his age." And yet I guarantee you that you can find a copy of Cervantes' legitimate second half of Don Quixote in your local library -- possibly several different translations -- but you will not find a copy of the fake sequel. One is timeless literature. The other is forgotten schlock.
Just because something is popular doesn't make it schlock. What makes it schlock, after the roar of the crowd has faded, is whether it's actually any good.
And, that said, I'm not a great fan of the Harry Potter books but I don't know if I'd categorize them as schlock, either. Great literature? No. But they have every indication of standing the test of time and remaining some of our most-loved juvenile fiction.
All this aside, when has there been this much hoopla over a book in recent times?
I dunno. I seem to remember a mindless schlock treasure-hunt beach novel called The Da Vinci Code, which actually sold so well in hardcover that the publisher delayed the paperback edition for a year or more.
In principle, I agree that anything that gets people to read who otherwise wouldn't is a good thing. It is a little disappointing, though, to see so many people reading just that one thing, and that one thing only, again and again, when that one thing isn't particularly good.
A really great achievement would be to get people to read and then keep them reading. In that respect, I'd actually credit Oprah Winfrey with more literacy in America than J.K. Rowling. Look at the past reading list of Oprah's book club and you'll see what I mean.
US refused to pass any copyright laws in the publishing industry
till the time there were enough US authors whose rights needed
to be protected. When Charles Dickens visited the US, he saw his
books sold legally all over the place & he wasn't getting a penny
out of these sales.
Your analysis isn't quite right. Dickens's works were sold without his permission in the U.S., not because it was a lawless backwater, but because Dickens was a British author. It's not that there were no copyright laws. It's just that there were no international copyright treaties. In the 19th century, British authors who wanted to secure copyright in the United States usually did so by partnering with a U.S. citizen in the publication process, and then registering the work with the U.S. copyright office under the partner's name.
Slashdot Mirror
What would be the purpose of that? Performance gains? I/O is going to be your bottleneck there, and it sounds like it would start to clog up sooner, rather than later.
Vertica isn't using shared data. It's a "shared nothing" database. Each server in the cluster holds only part of the database. Therefore, query processing and data access I/O is distributed equally. FYI, IBM DB2 does clustering this way. By comparison, Oracle RAC is a "shared everything" database. Each server holds a replica of the entire dataset. This makes for a very reliable database, but replicating the data limits the performance of the cluster when compared to a shared-nothing design.
If you're going to get all snotty and superior, why not first try to understand the problem that the product is intended to solve, not just the problem you're imagining people have? This product is targeted at the data warehousing market. If you know a better way to do data warehousing than what Vertica is proposing, it seems like the time you spend posting to Slashdot could be better spent publishing research papers.
This might be the obvious conclusion if Vertica were targeting the mass market and trying to compete directly with Oracle, SQL Server, or DB2, but they are not. TFA says Vertica is targeted at the data warehousing market, which is a very specific application area that can be better served with niche products than with the traditional general-purpose relational RDBMSs. Based on what I've read, it sounds like Vertica is addressing a market similar to that of Greenplum. These guys are trying use open source to go up against the entrenched proprietary players, such as Teradata, that charge literal millions of dollars for software to run big data warehouses.
You are making two erroneous assumptions:
Surely the fact that Microsoft does not include a manual with the product, instead providing the user with a context-sensitive electronic help system, indicates that Microsoft doesn't actually feel that a printed manual is necessary at all?
O'Reilly and Pogue say that the manual is "missing," but remember, they are biased. They are in the business of printing books.
I'm with you, but I'm curious ... 30 seconds seems like a long time inside a computer. Why exactly is Explorer.exe "unlikely" to be compromised? If I was intentionally attacking this security mechanism, isn't compromising Explorer.exe after it obtained authorization exactly the method that I would use?
DESQview? I ran that thing on a 10MHz 8088 and it was pretty killer.
...check the dupe.
Oh yeah ... (replying to my own post to add one more thing) ... the reason we suspect that the avian flu may be capable of mutating into an air-transmissible form is that A.) it's a form of flu virus, and B.) we know that flu viruses exist that are transmissible through the air. We also have at least a good idea what genetic traits a flu virus needs to have to be air-transmissible, and the avian flu is, relatively speaking, very close to having those traits. We're not talking about the possibility of a human being evolving wings and a tail, here. We're talking about a flu virus -- a very simple organism -- mutating in such a way that it has characteristics that are already present in other flu viruses that we see all the time. There is no reason to believe that in order to gain those characteristics the avian flu would have to become less deadly. So it stands to reason that, should the avian flu gain characteristics that make it air-transmissible, it might very possibly remain every bit as deadly to humans as it is now...in which case we'd have a very serious medical problem on our hands. This is why we'd like to have an idea of how to combat such a virus, should such a thing come into existence.
It's not inevitable that it will mutate into that form. But it is inevitable that it will mutate. That's what flu viruses do. Mutations are random. Avian flu could mutate into a form that causes it to cease to be harmful to anything. It could also mutate into a very dangerous disease. That these two potential outcomes are diametrically opposed might be sufficient justification for you to say it's not worth our scientists worrying about. I, on the other hand, am uncomfortable with rolling the dice on the lives of all of humankind when we know that the potential for a very serious threat exists.
And on a side note, if you are reluctant to spend the "time and money" to combat diseases that can threaten any and all human populations, indiscriminate of their feelings on politics and economics, then I imagine you're absolutely horrified at the amount of time and money we Americans spend on things like invading Iraq and Afghanistan. If we as a society can't stop the second one, then I'd at least hope we can convince ourselves to do the first one. The two may not balance out -- the dollars spent on health research are just a drop in the bucket of the war effort -- but if we could stir ourselves to do just a little bit of good in the world it would make me sleep easier, personally.
Wow, you have made my day. Downloaded it and got it working in about one minute flat. Bye-bye, Cisco.
We're waiting for the eventual mutation that will allow Avian Flu to spread through the air from person to person. So far it can't do that. So far, to get Avian Flu a person needs to eat or have contact with infected birds. Once it goes airborne, though, you will see Avian Flu killing a lot more people than the regular flu does. We're trying to figure out an effective therapeutic regimen before that happens.
That said, Infoseek is a very good search engine. It gives me all the results I need. It's well established as the industry leader in that space. Nobody is going to replace Infoseek just because they have less ads or they return slightly different search results at another site.
And yet, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen seem to agree that you are mistaken.
I think the idea of making some kind of "national sex offender chatroom registry" is pretty silly. But it seems to me that a registered sex offender who, upon getting out of jail, signs up for an online chat service with the same online ID as the one he was using when he committed his original offenses should probably be seen as being in violation of the terms of his probation. Police might want to have a record of what those original IDs were, in that case. For that matter, maybe it's appropriate for someone who uses chatrooms to groom children for abuse to be barred from using any chat service again for (at minimum) a long, long time? These would be decisions for judges to make.
Here's what I don't get: It seems to me that, at least in most of the places I've been in Europe, European businesses are unwilling to turn away purchases from American tourists. Therefore, everyplace that uses the chip and PIN system can also accept American-style swipe-the-card transactions. So if your goal was merely to steal or clone a credit card and buy yourself a nice plate of frogs' legs, wouldn't it be easier to just do it American-style?
Second, do consumers not have credit card loss protection in Europe, the way they do in the U.S.? In the U.S., you're only liable for something like $50 on a fraudulent charge, and rarely do you end up paying even that. I had someone charge something like $950 to one of my cards recently, I spotted it right away, and it took something like a three-minute phone call to have the charge halted. They sent me a form in the mail, which I signed and returned, and that was the last I ever heard about it.
The real problem is not for the consumer and it's not for the credit card company. The problem is for the merchant. Here's how it works, at least in the U.S.: Someone steals my credit card. The thief walks into a Best Buy and purchases a TV. They walk out with the TV. I see the fraudulent charge on my bill. I call up my credit card company. They reverse the charge. Maybe someone investigates to see if they can find the person who made the charge. Let's say they're successful in their investigation (which actually happens more often than you think, mostly because most criminals are either stupid or greedy, or both). Unfortunately, however, the thief has already sold the TV and spent the money on crystal meth. Best Buy now has two options: A.) they can try to sue the thief to cover the cost of the TV; or B.) they can eat the loss and move on. Now let's say it isn't Best Buy. Let's say it's a single mom and pop store that's lost a TV and they have the same options. Sound fair to you?
From the article:
Hey, there's a clever idea! I wonder where they thought up that one? I'm glad to see people aren't spending all their time worrying about Vista's DRM...
Invariably these discussions of DRM and Vista get way out of hand. On a PC at home I use Vista daily as my primary OS. Since upgrading from XP to Vista I have encountered no more DRM than before. None. Zero. I play my music via DRM-free MP3 files, I watch TV shows as DRM-free AVIs. Is all of that strictly legal? No. But that's a different question. You seem to be saying that Vista, which is a computer operating system, has somehow magically removed your ability to use your computer in a DRM-free way. And that's just false.
Sys-Con Media is known for this sort of thing. They whip up publications devoted to the latest trends, then scrap them when the ad dollars dry up.
Actually, the problem as I understood it was that Ada compilers were required to undergo a strict certification process, managed in part by the U.S. government. This process was very expensive for compiler vendors, therefore the compilers were themselves very expensive. Getting your hands on an Ada compiler cost several thousand dollars, compared to a $150 copy of Turbo Pascal.
Though the Ada language seems destined to be forgotten, at one time the U.S. Department of Defense required that any significant code written for DoD projects be written in Ada.
That is news to me. I dunno how I'd feel about that. I guess I'd feel better if they wanted me to print it out and sign it. But at least it's a document. If a company is planning on monkeying around with the deal, they probably wouldn't want even that kind of a "paper" trail.
You might be right ... but I gotta say, I'd never even heard of "Flushed Away" before this thread. That says something.
That's a pretty sweeping generalization. On paper, predatory pricing may sound like an unstoppable weapon. But in real-world economies, where there's still real money at stake, it's not as if anybody can just decide to use predatory pricing anytime they feel like and get away with it. Pricing your own products below profitability always introduces short-term risk. Usually companies that employ this tactic back it up with a plan to jack the prices back up again, down the road, to make up for profits lost during the price war. If something unforeseen happens -- like the cost of raw materials goes up due to some catastrophe -- the period of predatory pricing can backfire. The longer a company has to raise its prices to offset losses, the more the barrier to entry for competition is lowered, diminishing the advantage given by the earlier, predatory pricing.
In other words, like most things in real-world economics, pricing is complicated. The reason predatory pricing is illegal in countries like the United States is not because it would bring the entire economy to a grinding halt and end society as we know it. It does, however, tend to have side effects that are unpleasant for more people than the number who would normally benefit from the practice.
Meh, it sounds witty but I don't see the evidence. The mere fact that all these works have lasted the ages is evidence that they are not the schlock you're painting them to be. There were other writers working in each of these gentlemen's eras whom you've never heard of.
Example: A contemporary of Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, published the first half of his novel, Don Quixote, in 1605. He wouldn't publish the second half until ten years later. But the first half was such a critical and popular success that it inspired another writer to publish a spurious sequel before Cervantes was able to get out his own conclusion. So I guess, by the standard of mass popularity, you could say Cervantes, like Shakespeare, was "the Britney Spears of his age." And yet I guarantee you that you can find a copy of Cervantes' legitimate second half of Don Quixote in your local library -- possibly several different translations -- but you will not find a copy of the fake sequel. One is timeless literature. The other is forgotten schlock.
Just because something is popular doesn't make it schlock. What makes it schlock, after the roar of the crowd has faded, is whether it's actually any good.
And, that said, I'm not a great fan of the Harry Potter books but I don't know if I'd categorize them as schlock, either. Great literature? No. But they have every indication of standing the test of time and remaining some of our most-loved juvenile fiction.
(Rabid fans, take note: Juvenile fiction.)
I dunno. I seem to remember a mindless schlock treasure-hunt beach novel called The Da Vinci Code, which actually sold so well in hardcover that the publisher delayed the paperback edition for a year or more.
In principle, I agree that anything that gets people to read who otherwise wouldn't is a good thing. It is a little disappointing, though, to see so many people reading just that one thing, and that one thing only, again and again, when that one thing isn't particularly good.
A really great achievement would be to get people to read and then keep them reading. In that respect, I'd actually credit Oprah Winfrey with more literacy in America than J.K. Rowling. Look at the past reading list of Oprah's book club and you'll see what I mean.
Your analysis isn't quite right. Dickens's works were sold without his permission in the U.S., not because it was a lawless backwater, but because Dickens was a British author. It's not that there were no copyright laws. It's just that there were no international copyright treaties. In the 19th century, British authors who wanted to secure copyright in the United States usually did so by partnering with a U.S. citizen in the publication process, and then registering the work with the U.S. copyright office under the partner's name.