point taken, but that's the government trying to organize, which is specifically what I was trying to prevent.
Also, I said members would share in the copyright, therefore fees would only go for future R&D on new createive works, i.e. new patches and so forth. If you're a member when an OS is made, you can use it as much as you want.
Yeah, ultimately vouchers just won't be effective.
School vouchers, while some might disagree with the idea, at least makes sense. You can measure, to some degree, whether the school is teaching students facts, or just blowing it all on pizza parties. With art, no can do. The whole point of art is that it can't really be measured, so you can't certify someone as an "artist" and deny to someone who's just giving the money to their friend (directly or indirectly).
This really would just create a "buddy system" where everyone registered with the feds and everyone exchanges with their friend.
We live in a demand-based economy. Demand is measured with money. It's really hard to determine the demand for something creative with money, because it's not exclusive property. It's not worth $1M to me to develop some some software to use, but it's worth $1 to 1M people to have the software available.
The solution to me seems to be large groups supporting the system by agreement and pledges. Some people equate this like a government with taxes, but I don't think that's the right approach. The problem with that approach is that the powers we've conceded to the government were designed to protect us against more substantial harm, like someone stealing from us or hurting us physically.
Maybe the copyright idea will work, but we need to organize into large groups. Maybe the techies organize a software group that develops software, and anyone inside the group has copyright, but has to apy a yearly fee. No legislative changes, just citizens acting in an organized way.
We don't want to get the government involved with laws an so forth... they will skew demand, and they have powers entirely unnecessary for this type of situation (i.e. jail time and guns aren't really appropriate for this type of situation). The government will still have to enforce the copyrights to encourage people to join these groups (and pay the fees that support, e.g. software), but it's going to be an entirely different scene, I can promise that.
U.S. citizens need to stop relying on the federal government to perform every citizen organizational function. We're free, and we need to excercize our freedom to associate. If we let the government in on this one any more, they're just going to screw it up even more.
I wonder if he understands that the majority of the software he uses has at least a little part that has been borrowed from the realm of hackers. Look at Kerberos, GZip, TCP/IP, the list goes on and on.
The way I look at free software is basically published research. Sometimes it's just about ready for use right off the FTP site, and sometimes it takes a commercial entity to bring it to the masses. Software is more likely to work stright off the FTP site than, say, quantum mechanics, but it's a similar issue.
Software either holds up to the tests (i.e. netcraft uptimes, business successes, longevity, failure rate, etc) or it doesn't, just like scientific research.
The logic of the guy writing the article is flawed: would he criticize a mad scientist working out of his garage if he ended up curing cancer?
So, if you look at software as research, most of the FUD just disappears. Free software is just the collection of public knowledge about software, and commercial companies can only exist when standing on the shoulders of these giants.
He wants quality control, version control, accountability? Well, there's nothing about free software in contradiction to that idea. Pay commercial companies for what they're good at (or what they are theoretically better at, the reality of quality control in mainstream free software projects is amazing), not whatever proprietary algorithm that they think they're the first to implement. I'm sure commercial companies will eventually be just there to integrate the software with your business processes, more like consultants.
I can understand some temporary measures by the government to make sure MS doesn't, for example, require all OEMs to not sell anything else.
However, it seems to me to get VERY rediculous when the federal government is dictating the behavior of software on such a detailed level.
I think it's pretty much impossible to really solve the problem without making consumers aware of what they're buying into. Consumers, for the most part, don't understand exactly how a car works, but they certainly understand that they need to buy a car with interchangable parts so that they aren't controlled by the manufacturer. Why is software so different? The media never emphasizes interoperability in software, and I think that's the problem.
Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby... Thats four object orientated languages without strong typing
Python is a strongly typed language with extremely late binding.
Variables can change type at runtime, which means it's late binding.
Strong typing just means that variables definately do have a type (even if it can be easily changed) and you can't apply an illegal operator. For example:
>>> one = '1' >>> two = '2' >>> two / one Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in ? TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for/: 'str' and 'str' >>> one = int(one) >>> two = int(two) >>> two / one 2 >>>
so, you can change a variable's type, but it still does have a type, and as long as it has that type it's enforced strictly.
The way I see the first amendment is that Congress shouldn't recognize religion at all. Congress doesn't need to protect religion, freedom itself protects religion (except for religions that involve sacrificing virgins, etc, which we don't want anyway).
The question that people should be asking is: why are we making kids stand up and recite something in the first place? Teachers should be presenting facts and explaining concepts (hopefully in a balanced way, but that's hard to enforce), not encouraging partiotism.
IMO, it's better to block everything anyway, then open up ports as needed.
In the short term, you block the latest worm. In the long term, you just forced everyone to use an alternative protocol tunneled through an accessible port. Why? Because the internet is successful because almost any computer can send almost any computer almost any digital message in an efficient way. If you feel like complaining about the dumb users on the network, think about the alternative: what if we all grew up where all we had was web/email on a thin client? If you give everyone a "smart" network and a dumb client, you end up with television. I'll take my smart linux box on a dumb network, thanks. (heck, even a windows box is smarter than a dumb client. Some assembly required. Or at least winperl.)
So, if you firewall off 99% of the ports, and then some smart users need to innovate and they tunnel over the last 1%, you have a new, slower network stack that will require a new, slower firewall for the new type of protocol. Not to mention that most of that innovation just won't happen when you make it so difficult.
I just don't see restrivtive firewalling as a long-term solution. The real long-term solution is to install a desktop OS that doesn't ship with network services running by default.
Oops, a little unclear. I just meant that you can manipulate the data through SQL and stored procedures before sending it to the application. The basic idea is that you only get the data you need immediately in the application. This also means that the way your application sees your data can be entirely different from the way it's actually laid out in tables (i.e. maybe you have a view).
This method is in contrast with the method of reading more data than you need (or data in a different format than you need) and processing the data further within the application. It's common in MySQL to do something like this because there aren't subselects or constraints, or a few other things that would help people process the data in the DB server.
I just had the thought that this software will make people who just need object persistence "wake up" and figure out that they don't need to carry around a big RDBMS if all they have is a straightforward app that needs persistence.
I think there are a lot of MySQL users out there that could get by with just a persistence system like this. That statement isn't made to reflect poorly upon MySQL (disclaimer: I don't like mysql), but that MySQL has a tendency to market their database, and position it, for similar tasks. They can't have that large a market share without some people using it for the wrong reasons.
An RDBMS: * Allows a wide variety of applications to operate on the data, in a wide variety of languages, at different times or simultaneously. * Allows you to manipulate the data inside the database before you get it. * Allows for a lot more storage, which is sometimes important when you need the memory for some other task.
What I like about an RDBMS (like postgres) is that my requirements constantly change. I try something for a while, then we have better ideas, but we need to work with our existing data. An RDBMS allows me a huge amount of flexibility with my data (also the reason I don't use MySQL...) and I've been able to drastically change the way my application works while still making use of the data that I have.
Maybe this is an OK database for some applications where you have the entire thing laid out in a perfect spec with no chance of a change. However, when I need to get at my data with another language, or it takes up more space than I thought, or I figure out that my application needs to change the way it works, I have no clue where to begin with a huge collection of "objects" that now happen to be obsolete. If I have relations, I have a solid representation of my data that an RDBMS can manipulate efficiently according to a fairly mature mathematical model. I'll take that over a collection of persistant objects any day.
That said, I think this has application in areas where you just need some persistent objects, and they need to be fast, and they don't take up much room. I don't encounter that very often, and when I do I usually just use postgres because it seems fast enough when the tables are cached. I suppose if the objects are really intricate this would be a nice system, because you wouldn't have to spend so much code on a mapping. It just seems so much more narrow as far as usefulness.
It seems to me to violate the whole idea of law to be subject to legislation passed in an unrelated place.
Why should someone who doesn't live in California be subject to these laws? They had no representation in the passing of these laws.
California can say that companies who do business in California are subject to fines for spamming, that makes sense. But if you reject business from California on your web site, I would think you'd be OK.
I think that's a good policy: if you want California's business (which is huge) than you can't spam Californians (or you'll get fined). I figure if you really want to spam, you have to reject shipping or billing addresses in California.
Exceptions are required for enterprise quality applications.
I don't think that they're required, look at perl & C.
PHP definitely has some issues.
* By the time you're done coding it right, it's as long as similar C code * Exceptions are a very nice way to handle things properly and concisely, and die() is certainly not a solution. * Not easy to contrain variables to a type (type contraints are essential for any good database, why not for a language?), i.e. you can't cast a variable without doing something ugly like settype($x,"integer"), which modifies the argument. * Not good class/object support, no namespaces * Include()/require() are weak
Let's face it: PHP's strength is not the language, it's not the library, it's the platform!
PHP makes a nice template language that helps you organize simple web apps in a simple way, quickly. It's nice for a sysadmin of a virtualhost (it allows safe mode operation and enforces it's own limits on RAM & CPU). PHP knows what it takes to write a web app, and it puts everything right in front of you, and that's what's good about it, the platform.
So, I say scrap the language! Just steal perl or python or ruby or any combination of the above! Use their syntax, their libraries, their speed, their developers, their object models, everything. Why did they need a new language? Who in there right mind thinks that PHP is on the cutting edge of syntax, or consistency, or standard libraries, or OOP, or anything like that? Embed some other language into the platform.
Think if all of the PHP developers time was spent coding something like mod_python|perl|ruby. Maybe they could even allow any language per coding page or something cool like that.
instead of just the simple "function definitions" they have now
what would you like them to do? PostgreSQL already has "table functions" that return result sets, and has normal functions, aggregate functions, and they can all be done in a lanugage of your choice.
You can also do prepared queries which take parameters (which can be somewhat like a table function or a view).
What functionality or flexibility is missing?
They need to just bite the bullet and be compliant. Even if they have to fork into a new development branch.
We may like them to, but that doesn't mean that they need to. Think about it this way, what does compatibility gain mySQL? They aren't exactly converting people away from Oracle (as postgres is). As far as their concerned, they're doing just fine with the lock-in strategy. It makes other databases look like something's missing also when you try to convert an app to something like postgres. Once I got a sql error saying that postgres didn't like a command starting "INSERT IGNORE". The first thing I though was the same as you probably are thinking now: what the hell is "INSERT IGNORE"?! It turns out to be, as you might expect, a totally useless extension that causes nothing but confusion and inconsistency. If you use it you're probably confused about how your application works. However, it is a good example of MySQL's embrace-and-extend development process that makes it hard for people to use their data with any other software.
My point is that they aren't going to go out of their way to help their competitors. The PostgreSQL developers seem to be more interested in working well with other software (like in a mixed database environment) by being as compatible as possible and not adding too many strange features. After all, the end goal is (or should be) to help people manage their data best.
Here's what I don't understand about multi-master database clusters:
In a multi-master situation, if you connect to either database it should give you exactly the same results. Well, it can't do that unless all masters are online with respect to the other masters.
So, for any multi-master it seems almost as if you have to trade some kind of reliability.
And let's say you have two databases and both are up, but neither one can see the other. How are you supposed to provide an answer from either one? If it's an INSERT, it certainly can't commit, no?
I'll just add that the idea of seperating a military technology from a technology in general is a waste of time. It's an even greater waste of time to seperate military technology into a "good" column and a "bad" column.
If you are a scientist, researching for a military organization seems to make sense if the opportunity presents itself. After all, if you like the country, wouldn't you want to help to provide for the common defense? And if you don't like it, why are you living there?
And I'll add another news flash: dollars mean that the house of representatives have passed a bill allowing spending. It's not as though the people have no say.
Yeah, in the U.S. you need a lot of ID (including SSN) to get a bank account, a credit card, or a job (you don't always need it to get a job though, but most you do).
I think that most American cops would behave the same way. You can actually get away with a lot here unless you're rude to the cop. I still don't like the idea that a cop could ask for ID at any time though. I think it's for the same reason US citizens don't like to be searched without a warrent (or probable cause, depending on situation).
Theoretically, nobody should mind a search if they've done nothing bad. However, Americans are generally the type of people to break a law if it doesn't seem wrong to do so. For instance, people under 21 years old drink here all the time, even though it's illegal (I read s statistic that at least 20% of alcohol consumption is by people under 21). So, I wouldn't want a cop asking for my ID at that time! I think there are some instances that they can anyway, but I think they have to have probable cause. Same with searches, I wouldn't want a cop to search my car if I'm pulled over for speeding, and then see alcohol. They can look in an see if it's in plain sight, but they can't make me to open the trunk (they can ask though).
I think it's good in a society to have the rules in place that make it difficult for the government to stop all law-breaking. A certain ability to break the law (if you're smart enough not to be caught) keeps the bad laws that are inevitably passed in check. Unfortunately, it also allows police too much discretion, since pretty much everyone breaks the law somehow or another.
The parents ultimately have the most influence and bear the brunt of the responsibility...
No, the kids bear the most responsibility. They should be in prison like any other murderers. A 14 year old and a 16 year old both know what a gun is, and that it hurts people in front of it when fired (I knew that a long time before I was 14!).
The whole blaming parents thing doesn't do a thing for me. What if the parents blame their parents, or their community, or their parents' parents? You keep up witht that and nobody gets punished.
You are passing the buck. These kids are murderers and committed random acts of violence with no justification whatsoever. They should be punished severely.
What is an example of a person you would like to see in prison? Who can't blame their parents?
Who is going to pay these costs? The costs for certification and increased education are high, and will undoubtedly increase the cost of developing software.
Why not regulate that everything has to be perfect? Some M&M candies are a little lopsided, so let's pass some regulations and make the employees get a license. That way nobody will have to eat another lopsided M&M, they'll all be made to a 10nm spec.
How about instead we just let consumers decide what's acceptable, and what prices they're willing to pay for higher design costs or other quality control.
Now, if the vendor is making false claims, that can be handled under existing laws. If they say it has feature X and it's so buggy that it's unreasonably difficult to use feature X due to bugs, than you should have a right to some kind of refund.
However, in the case of Microsoft software, most people KNOW how much it crashes/fails and KNOW that it may have to be rebooted frequently. MS makes no pretenses about perfect software. And MS software generally works, I can't (offhand) think of an advertised feature that is so dysfunctional that it should be called false advertising.
Sure... it sounds great: software that's well-tested, secure, and stable.
But at what cost? Nobody seems to ask this obvious question. Software like that costs money, who's willing to pay that cost? The average consumer may rather just have unstable software than pay that extra cost.
Why should the average consumer have to pay extra costs just for the sake of the/. sysadmins who don't like buggy software?
The real reason for bugs is simple: developers develop until the software reaches some level of functionality that will be tolerated by most of the consumers, then they sell the product. If you want them to develop longer, you have to pay those costs, not the person that was happy enough with cheap, buggy software.
For a bridge to be tolerable, it needs to have near zero design flaws. But for an email client to be tolerable to most people, it can appearently have as many flaws as outlook express. By "tolerable" I mean that it's good enough that most people would rather have the product as-is than pay more for additional design.
It's a fact that a capitalist society cannot self-regulate...
It's a fact? According to what source?
I am not suggesting that pure capitalism is always the answer, however there are inherent forces keeping it in line, in my opinion.
For instance, older industries tend to consolidate, while newer industries develop and spin off eachother. Innovation usually causes new upstarts and breaks industries apart.
For example, if you look at a Network World magazine you see a lot of small companies with a very specific product line (i.e. and Intrusion Detection System vendor). As the technology matures, larger companies start to offer a similar technology, and eventually the startup has made it's money and the investment moves to the next idea.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with consolidation. The "failures" of capitalism are due, in large part, to inadequate knowledge by consumers to control the situation. For instance, if a monopoly is making so much money, doesn't that mean that it would be a wise investment to start competing with that monopoly? Wouldn't a bank be happy to loan you money to compete so long as they were sure you had enough capital to truly compete with the monopoly? I wouldn't loan you $1000 to compete with Microsoft, because I would lose all $1000. But, if I had the money, it might be wise of me to loan you $100,000,000,000 or whatever is necessary to compete with them.
Is money really that bad? She speaks of companies like it's evil to look out for your own revenue.
Move to a socialist country... wait a minute... maybe I should move to a conservative state!
However, there are good beaches here, so I'm staking this out as my turf, and I'll try to defend it against the socialists as long as possible.
A republican bought the election? How about the voter grassroots support? I don't even dislike Davis that much, except for the fact that he doesn't have the interests of California at heart. I just want this state to get in the habit of firing people until we get somebody scared enough to do a good job.
Oh, and I hate to burst your bubble, but Marijuana is against FEDERAL law. Maybe you should address issues that have to do with the STATE. I'm all for legalization, but talk to the right level of government. I can't start a movement in LA to legalize murder in that city, because it's against state law.
I'd much rather have someone who surrounded themselves with knowledgable people than "diverse" people. I wwould use advisors for facts, and I make my own conclusions.
Here are two ideas I would like, and would certainly pay for: (1) A radio like service where I can listen at any time and choose preferences about music type. Then, when I heard something I like, I can save it at high bitrate (higher than the streaming radio, or perhaps even CD quality) for a fixed price with a "one-click" kind of interface. Maybe it could cost a fixed price per month ($5-$10) and then maybe $0.50 - $1.00 per song that I keep. This is obviously the more complicated system, but I think it's just about ideal.
(2) A website where I can sample songs (maybe a part at low bitrate) and get intelligent recommendations. Then I just buy what I want. I would prefer to not have a monthly cost, since sometimes I tire of a service and I don't like to have to go through a cancellation. But, I would be willing to pay up-front (like 5 or 10 songs) and then choose the ones I want later (I know that saves on transaction costs for the merchant).
Slashdot Mirror
point taken, but that's the government trying to organize, which is specifically what I was trying to prevent.
Also, I said members would share in the copyright, therefore fees would only go for future R&D on new createive works, i.e. new patches and so forth. If you're a member when an OS is made, you can use it as much as you want.
Yeah, ultimately vouchers just won't be effective.
School vouchers, while some might disagree with the idea, at least makes sense. You can measure, to some degree, whether the school is teaching students facts, or just blowing it all on pizza parties. With art, no can do. The whole point of art is that it can't really be measured, so you can't certify someone as an "artist" and deny to someone who's just giving the money to their friend (directly or indirectly).
Agreed!
This really would just create a "buddy system" where everyone registered with the feds and everyone exchanges with their friend.
We live in a demand-based economy. Demand is measured with money. It's really hard to determine the demand for something creative with money, because it's not exclusive property. It's not worth $1M to me to develop some some software to use, but it's worth $1 to 1M people to have the software available.
The solution to me seems to be large groups supporting the system by agreement and pledges. Some people equate this like a government with taxes, but I don't think that's the right approach. The problem with that approach is that the powers we've conceded to the government were designed to protect us against more substantial harm, like someone stealing from us or hurting us physically.
Maybe the copyright idea will work, but we need to organize into large groups. Maybe the techies organize a software group that develops software, and anyone inside the group has copyright, but has to apy a yearly fee. No legislative changes, just citizens acting in an organized way.
We don't want to get the government involved with laws an so forth... they will skew demand, and they have powers entirely unnecessary for this type of situation (i.e. jail time and guns aren't really appropriate for this type of situation). The government will still have to enforce the copyrights to encourage people to join these groups (and pay the fees that support, e.g. software), but it's going to be an entirely different scene, I can promise that.
U.S. citizens need to stop relying on the federal government to perform every citizen organizational function. We're free, and we need to excercize our freedom to associate. If we let the government in on this one any more, they're just going to screw it up even more.
I wonder if he understands that the majority of the software he uses has at least a little part that has been borrowed from the realm of hackers. Look at Kerberos, GZip, TCP/IP, the list goes on and on.
The way I look at free software is basically published research. Sometimes it's just about ready for use right off the FTP site, and sometimes it takes a commercial entity to bring it to the masses. Software is more likely to work stright off the FTP site than, say, quantum mechanics, but it's a similar issue.
Software either holds up to the tests (i.e. netcraft uptimes, business successes, longevity, failure rate, etc) or it doesn't, just like scientific research.
The logic of the guy writing the article is flawed: would he criticize a mad scientist working out of his garage if he ended up curing cancer?
So, if you look at software as research, most of the FUD just disappears. Free software is just the collection of public knowledge about software, and commercial companies can only exist when standing on the shoulders of these giants.
He wants quality control, version control, accountability? Well, there's nothing about free software in contradiction to that idea. Pay commercial companies for what they're good at (or what they are theoretically better at, the reality of quality control in mainstream free software projects is amazing), not whatever proprietary algorithm that they think they're the first to implement. I'm sure commercial companies will eventually be just there to integrate the software with your business processes, more like consultants.
I can understand some temporary measures by the government to make sure MS doesn't, for example, require all OEMs to not sell anything else.
However, it seems to me to get VERY rediculous when the federal government is dictating the behavior of software on such a detailed level.
I think it's pretty much impossible to really solve the problem without making consumers aware of what they're buying into. Consumers, for the most part, don't understand exactly how a car works, but they certainly understand that they need to buy a car with interchangable parts so that they aren't controlled by the manufacturer. Why is software so different? The media never emphasizes interoperability in software, and I think that's the problem.
Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby... Thats four object orientated languages without strong typing
/: 'str' and 'str'
Python is a strongly typed language with extremely late binding.
Variables can change type at runtime, which means it's late binding.
Strong typing just means that variables definately do have a type (even if it can be easily changed) and you can't apply an illegal operator. For example:
>>> one = '1'
>>> two = '2'
>>> two / one
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in ?
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for
>>> one = int(one)
>>> two = int(two)
>>> two / one
2
>>>
so, you can change a variable's type, but it still does have a type, and as long as it has that type it's enforced strictly.
The way I see the first amendment is that Congress shouldn't recognize religion at all. Congress doesn't need to protect religion, freedom itself protects religion (except for religions that involve sacrificing virgins, etc, which we don't want anyway).
The question that people should be asking is: why are we making kids stand up and recite something in the first place? Teachers should be presenting facts and explaining concepts (hopefully in a balanced way, but that's hard to enforce), not encouraging partiotism.
IMO, it's better to block everything anyway, then open up ports as needed.
In the short term, you block the latest worm. In the long term, you just forced everyone to use an alternative protocol tunneled through an accessible port. Why? Because the internet is successful because almost any computer can send almost any computer almost any digital message in an efficient way. If you feel like complaining about the dumb users on the network, think about the alternative: what if we all grew up where all we had was web/email on a thin client? If you give everyone a "smart" network and a dumb client, you end up with television. I'll take my smart linux box on a dumb network, thanks. (heck, even a windows box is smarter than a dumb client. Some assembly required. Or at least winperl.)
So, if you firewall off 99% of the ports, and then some smart users need to innovate and they tunnel over the last 1%, you have a new, slower network stack that will require a new, slower firewall for the new type of protocol. Not to mention that most of that innovation just won't happen when you make it so difficult.
I just don't see restrivtive firewalling as a long-term solution. The real long-term solution is to install a desktop OS that doesn't ship with network services running by default.
Oops, a little unclear. I just meant that you can manipulate the data through SQL and stored procedures before sending it to the application. The basic idea is that you only get the data you need immediately in the application. This also means that the way your application sees your data can be entirely different from the way it's actually laid out in tables (i.e. maybe you have a view).
This method is in contrast with the method of reading more data than you need (or data in a different format than you need) and processing the data further within the application. It's common in MySQL to do something like this because there aren't subselects or constraints, or a few other things that would help people process the data in the DB server.
Agreed.
I just had the thought that this software will make people who just need object persistence "wake up" and figure out that they don't need to carry around a big RDBMS if all they have is a straightforward app that needs persistence.
I think there are a lot of MySQL users out there that could get by with just a persistence system like this. That statement isn't made to reflect poorly upon MySQL (disclaimer: I don't like mysql), but that MySQL has a tendency to market their database, and position it, for similar tasks. They can't have that large a market share without some people using it for the wrong reasons.
I'm not about to give up PostgreSQL.
An RDBMS:
* Allows a wide variety of applications to operate on the data, in a wide variety of languages, at different times or simultaneously.
* Allows you to manipulate the data inside the database before you get it.
* Allows for a lot more storage, which is sometimes important when you need the memory for some other task.
What I like about an RDBMS (like postgres) is that my requirements constantly change. I try something for a while, then we have better ideas, but we need to work with our existing data. An RDBMS allows me a huge amount of flexibility with my data (also the reason I don't use MySQL...) and I've been able to drastically change the way my application works while still making use of the data that I have.
Maybe this is an OK database for some applications where you have the entire thing laid out in a perfect spec with no chance of a change. However, when I need to get at my data with another language, or it takes up more space than I thought, or I figure out that my application needs to change the way it works, I have no clue where to begin with a huge collection of "objects" that now happen to be obsolete. If I have relations, I have a solid representation of my data that an RDBMS can manipulate efficiently according to a fairly mature mathematical model. I'll take that over a collection of persistant objects any day.
That said, I think this has application in areas where you just need some persistent objects, and they need to be fast, and they don't take up much room. I don't encounter that very often, and when I do I usually just use postgres because it seems fast enough when the tables are cached. I suppose if the objects are really intricate this would be a nice system, because you wouldn't have to spend so much code on a mapping. It just seems so much more narrow as far as usefulness.
Agreed!
It seems to me to violate the whole idea of law to be subject to legislation passed in an unrelated place.
Why should someone who doesn't live in California be subject to these laws? They had no representation in the passing of these laws.
California can say that companies who do business in California are subject to fines for spamming, that makes sense. But if you reject business from California on your web site, I would think you'd be OK.
I think that's a good policy: if you want California's business (which is huge) than you can't spam Californians (or you'll get fined). I figure if you really want to spam, you have to reject shipping or billing addresses in California.
Well... that's what happens when you have a high-end hardware company write a programming language: They're drumming up some business!
Exceptions are required for enterprise quality applications.
I don't think that they're required, look at perl & C.
PHP definitely has some issues.
* By the time you're done coding it right, it's as long as similar C code
* Exceptions are a very nice way to handle things properly and concisely, and die() is certainly not a solution.
* Not easy to contrain variables to a type (type contraints are essential for any good database, why not for a language?), i.e. you can't cast a variable without doing something ugly like settype($x,"integer"), which modifies the argument.
* Not good class/object support, no namespaces
* Include()/require() are weak
Let's face it: PHP's strength is not the language, it's not the library, it's the platform!
PHP makes a nice template language that helps you organize simple web apps in a simple way, quickly. It's nice for a sysadmin of a virtualhost (it allows safe mode operation and enforces it's own limits on RAM & CPU). PHP knows what it takes to write a web app, and it puts everything right in front of you, and that's what's good about it, the platform.
So, I say scrap the language! Just steal perl or python or ruby or any combination of the above! Use their syntax, their libraries, their speed, their developers, their object models, everything. Why did they need a new language? Who in there right mind thinks that PHP is on the cutting edge of syntax, or consistency, or standard libraries, or OOP, or anything like that? Embed some other language into the platform.
Think if all of the PHP developers time was spent coding something like mod_python|perl|ruby. Maybe they could even allow any language per coding page or something cool like that.
instead of just the simple "function definitions" they have now
what would you like them to do? PostgreSQL already has "table functions" that return result sets, and has normal functions, aggregate functions, and they can all be done in a lanugage of your choice.
You can also do prepared queries which take parameters (which can be somewhat like a table function or a view).
What functionality or flexibility is missing?
They need to just bite the bullet and be compliant. Even if they have to fork into a new development branch.
We may like them to, but that doesn't mean that they need to. Think about it this way, what does compatibility gain mySQL? They aren't exactly converting people away from Oracle (as postgres is). As far as their concerned, they're doing just fine with the lock-in strategy. It makes other databases look like something's missing also when you try to convert an app to something like postgres. Once I got a sql error saying that postgres didn't like a command starting "INSERT IGNORE". The first thing I though was the same as you probably are thinking now: what the hell is "INSERT IGNORE"?! It turns out to be, as you might expect, a totally useless extension that causes nothing but confusion and inconsistency. If you use it you're probably confused about how your application works. However, it is a good example of MySQL's embrace-and-extend development process that makes it hard for people to use their data with any other software.
My point is that they aren't going to go out of their way to help their competitors. The PostgreSQL developers seem to be more interested in working well with other software (like in a mixed database environment) by being as compatible as possible and not adding too many strange features. After all, the end goal is (or should be) to help people manage their data best.
Here's what I don't understand about multi-master database clusters:
In a multi-master situation, if you connect to either database it should give you exactly the same results. Well, it can't do that unless all masters are online with respect to the other masters.
So, for any multi-master it seems almost as if you have to trade some kind of reliability.
And let's say you have two databases and both are up, but neither one can see the other. How are you supposed to provide an answer from either one? If it's an INSERT, it certainly can't commit, no?
Agreed.
I'll just add that the idea of seperating a military technology from a technology in general is a waste of time. It's an even greater waste of time to seperate military technology into a "good" column and a "bad" column.
If you are a scientist, researching for a military organization seems to make sense if the opportunity presents itself. After all, if you like the country, wouldn't you want to help to provide for the common defense? And if you don't like it, why are you living there?
And I'll add another news flash: dollars mean that the house of representatives have passed a bill allowing spending. It's not as though the people have no say.
Yeah, in the U.S. you need a lot of ID (including SSN) to get a bank account, a credit card, or a job (you don't always need it to get a job though, but most you do).
I think that most American cops would behave the same way. You can actually get away with a lot here unless you're rude to the cop. I still don't like the idea that a cop could ask for ID at any time though. I think it's for the same reason US citizens don't like to be searched without a warrent (or probable cause, depending on situation).
Theoretically, nobody should mind a search if they've done nothing bad. However, Americans are generally the type of people to break a law if it doesn't seem wrong to do so. For instance, people under 21 years old drink here all the time, even though it's illegal (I read s statistic that at least 20% of alcohol consumption is by people under 21). So, I wouldn't want a cop asking for my ID at that time! I think there are some instances that they can anyway, but I think they have to have probable cause. Same with searches, I wouldn't want a cop to search my car if I'm pulled over for speeding, and then see alcohol. They can look in an see if it's in plain sight, but they can't make me to open the trunk (they can ask though).
I think it's good in a society to have the rules in place that make it difficult for the government to stop all law-breaking. A certain ability to break the law (if you're smart enough not to be caught) keeps the bad laws that are inevitably passed in check. Unfortunately, it also allows police too much discretion, since pretty much everyone breaks the law somehow or another.
The parents ultimately have the most influence and bear the brunt of the responsibility...
No, the kids bear the most responsibility. They should be in prison like any other murderers. A 14 year old and a 16 year old both know what a gun is, and that it hurts people in front of it when fired (I knew that a long time before I was 14!).
The whole blaming parents thing doesn't do a thing for me. What if the parents blame their parents, or their community, or their parents' parents? You keep up witht that and nobody gets punished.
You are passing the buck. These kids are murderers and committed random acts of violence with no justification whatsoever. They should be punished severely.
What is an example of a person you would like to see in prison? Who can't blame their parents?
Who is going to pay these costs? The costs for certification and increased education are high, and will undoubtedly increase the cost of developing software.
Why not regulate that everything has to be perfect? Some M&M candies are a little lopsided, so let's pass some regulations and make the employees get a license. That way nobody will have to eat another lopsided M&M, they'll all be made to a 10nm spec.
How about instead we just let consumers decide what's acceptable, and what prices they're willing to pay for higher design costs or other quality control.
Now, if the vendor is making false claims, that can be handled under existing laws. If they say it has feature X and it's so buggy that it's unreasonably difficult to use feature X due to bugs, than you should have a right to some kind of refund.
However, in the case of Microsoft software, most people KNOW how much it crashes/fails and KNOW that it may have to be rebooted frequently. MS makes no pretenses about perfect software. And MS software generally works, I can't (offhand) think of an advertised feature that is so dysfunctional that it should be called false advertising.
Sure... it sounds great: software that's well-tested, secure, and stable.
/. sysadmins who don't like buggy software?
But at what cost? Nobody seems to ask this obvious question. Software like that costs money, who's willing to pay that cost? The average consumer may rather just have unstable software than pay that extra cost.
Why should the average consumer have to pay extra costs just for the sake of the
The real reason for bugs is simple: developers develop until the software reaches some level of functionality that will be tolerated by most of the consumers, then they sell the product. If you want them to develop longer, you have to pay those costs, not the person that was happy enough with cheap, buggy software.
For a bridge to be tolerable, it needs to have near zero design flaws. But for an email client to be tolerable to most people, it can appearently have as many flaws as outlook express. By "tolerable" I mean that it's good enough that most people would rather have the product as-is than pay more for additional design.
It's a fact that a capitalist society cannot self-regulate...
It's a fact? According to what source?
I am not suggesting that pure capitalism is always the answer, however there are inherent forces keeping it in line, in my opinion.
For instance, older industries tend to consolidate, while newer industries develop and spin off eachother. Innovation usually causes new upstarts and breaks industries apart.
For example, if you look at a Network World magazine you see a lot of small companies with a very specific product line (i.e. and Intrusion Detection System vendor). As the technology matures, larger companies start to offer a similar technology, and eventually the startup has made it's money and the investment moves to the next idea.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with consolidation. The "failures" of capitalism are due, in large part, to inadequate knowledge by consumers to control the situation. For instance, if a monopoly is making so much money, doesn't that mean that it would be a wise investment to start competing with that monopoly? Wouldn't a bank be happy to loan you money to compete so long as they were sure you had enough capital to truly compete with the monopoly? I wouldn't loan you $1000 to compete with Microsoft, because I would lose all $1000. But, if I had the money, it might be wise of me to loan you $100,000,000,000 or whatever is necessary to compete with them.
I don't understand what you mean. Can you post some SQL code, along with the result compared to what you expect?
Here's what I did:
A: create table foo(i int);
A: insert into foo values(1);
A: insert into foo values(2);
A: insert into foo values(3);
A: BEGIN;
A: delete from foo where i = 2;
A: insert into foo values(5);
B: select * from foo;
A: COMMIT;
and everything went through without errors. I now have a table 'foo' with tuples 1, 3, and 5.
What would you expect?
Jeff
She won't have my vote, and I live in California.
... wait a minute ... maybe I should move to a conservative state!
Is money really that bad? She speaks of companies like it's evil to look out for your own revenue.
Move to a socialist country
However, there are good beaches here, so I'm staking this out as my turf, and I'll try to defend it against the socialists as long as possible.
A republican bought the election? How about the voter grassroots support? I don't even dislike Davis that much, except for the fact that he doesn't have the interests of California at heart. I just want this state to get in the habit of firing people until we get somebody scared enough to do a good job.
Oh, and I hate to burst your bubble, but Marijuana is against FEDERAL law. Maybe you should address issues that have to do with the STATE. I'm all for legalization, but talk to the right level of government. I can't start a movement in LA to legalize murder in that city, because it's against state law.
I'd much rather have someone who surrounded themselves with knowledgable people than "diverse" people. I wwould use advisors for facts, and I make my own conclusions.
Here are two ideas I would like, and would certainly pay for:
(1) A radio like service where I can listen at any time and choose preferences about music type. Then, when I heard something I like, I can save it at high bitrate (higher than the streaming radio, or perhaps even CD quality) for a fixed price with a "one-click" kind of interface. Maybe it could cost a fixed price per month ($5-$10) and then maybe $0.50 - $1.00 per song that I keep. This is obviously the more complicated system, but I think it's just about ideal.
(2) A website where I can sample songs (maybe a part at low bitrate) and get intelligent recommendations. Then I just buy what I want. I would prefer to not have a monthly cost, since sometimes I tire of a service and I don't like to have to go through a cancellation. But, I would be willing to pay up-front (like 5 or 10 songs) and then choose the ones I want later (I know that saves on transaction costs for the merchant).