Re:SQL is good for some things, but not for others
on
An Alternative to SQL?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I think you are confusing "SQL the language" with "MySQL the broken RDBMS implementation", both Postgres and Oracle can easily do what you want with hierarchies; as for user defined functions, support for those is implicit in most database systems (usually in a variety of languages, both SQL dialects and procedural).
I am not sure what's incosistent about the syntax you mentioned, but maybe that's just me. Though I'd be interested to see in what ways it is "very limited" (especially if those aren't the limitations of a particular databas engine, or relational databases in general).
Quick search on Amazon for "php and mysql": 554 results.
Why on earth do we need another PHP + MySQL book coming out every two weeks? None of this stuff is complicated - PHP is about as simple as a scripting language can get, MySQL is simplistic to the point of being frequently useless; and even the more general field of web application development (which these books rarely go into with any depth) is not all that involved, in the grand scheme of things.
So, why? Why do we need more of these things? Are the five hundred existing books really so crap that they are not enough to learn the arcane arts of PHP and MySQL?
Clearcase provides an entire version-controlled filesystem called MVFS which you mount like a regular FS; it's completely transparent to the tools running on it.
It's actually possible to do something like this with Subversion (in a proof of concept kind of way) - svn can act as a WebDAV backend in apache and a WebDAV client can mount it as a filesystem (such as WebFolders(?) on Windows). At the moment this sucks hard: edits don't exactly work, only adds and deletes (you have to copy a changed version of a file over it to do an "edit") and the speed is rather... sub-optimal. There are also more fundamental problems, for example, each change (even a single file edit) would create a new revision, rendering the whole revision system rather useless.
But the possibility is there, especially if the AV part of WebDAV ever gets sorted out properly.
This sort of thing actually has more general applications than code development. If, for example, I could give such and auto versioning folder to HR for their barrage of ever-changing forms, it would save me a lot of hassle restoring from backups (and especially the usual "I know backups only run nightly, but I just accidentaly saved over a file I created today - is there a way to get it back?")
Incrementally better naming scheme for revisions and branches? I am not sure if he means the per-file vs. per-repository revision numbers, or their tagging and branching systems, but either way the two have nothing in common. It just doesn't get more "non-incremental" than going from CVS's file tagging to svn's copy-to-branch/tag mechanism.
The BDB backend has it's problems (though none of them nearly as drastic as he seems to think), but has he really never heard of the FSFS backend?
The rest of the criticism is so vague that it kinda makes it hard to reply to: "it takes too many steps backward in various areas", oh, "various areas" - of course! I've been noticing that.
I'm in the process of moving to Subversion from CVS (which I agree is deeply broken, by todays standards), and I've yet to encounter a single thing that Subversion is worse at than CVS. And a hell of a lot of things that it does much, much better.
Now if that interview presented the tiniest bit of information about what arch does differently (apart from, you know, not being "teh suck") I would be tempted to check it out.
Billionairres telling me I don't matter, then asking me to fork out $50 for them - really pisses me off.
So what you are saying is that Lucas should think to himself "Hmm, these people work really hard at their jobs - I should make my movies the way they like them!"
Get real, billionare or not, he's got no obligations to you whatsoever, regardless of how hard you work. And no one is "asking" you to do anything, these companies offer their products at certain prices and you are free to purchase them if you like. Just the fact that they are filthy rich in the first place indicates that they are doing something that a lot of people do like.
If enough people decide they don't want to give him their money, he could reconsider his position, but again, that's pretty much his decision. He might prefer the integrity of his artistic vision over simply making more money (boy that's hard to say with a straight face!).
They are distributing some content now so that their servers aren't hit as hard when it's released (you know, so you can get your fucking game faster when it does come).
How's a note on their website a "big paper launch"? There's no paper or launches involved here.
Geez, why would you take their efforts to distribute their server loads so personally?
Try out Yahoo mail - it's really really good, and it's really really 100 MB.
I think they've done quite a good job recently. I've had a yahoo account for a few years and was paying the $20 a year for the 25MB. When the whole gmail thing appeared I was thinking I'll give it a shot when it's out of beta. But then Yahoo went and dumped 2 gigs on me and at the same time the interface improved and became a lot faster; so now it's more like "fuck it - I'm fine with Yahoo".
If what your eyes tell you (you're moving) is out of sync with what your inner ear tells you (you're not moving) a lot of people get nauseous and toss their cookies.
Not exactly true - your inner ear can tell you if you are speeding up or slowing down, not if you are moving. That's why on planes people tend to get sick during take-off and landing, but not during most of the flight (when you are definitely moving, and your eyes only see a fixed environment, but the speed is quite constant).
I think somebody should do the same type of thing, but with intersections of lines that are multiples of ten. I mean, you would still get a reasonably complete view of the world and all of the places in it.
They'll get much better coverage initially this way. More points to visit == more people sending in images. Sure it will take a lot longer for the project to be "complete," but with that many more points scattered around, the chances of someone who lives close by picking up a camera and going there are that much higher.
You do realize that there are, in fact, people already living in all those countries? And it's not all that strange to imagine that they might have cameras and an internet connection.
Have you stopped to think that maybe the point of the project isn't to collect every last damn picture of frozen tundra, but rather to expand their (already absolutely amazing) collection of places that are accessible?
The cynism boggles the mind - they've collected tens of thousnds of images from something like 150 countries, along with precise location and date information; giving you an instant overview of what THE ENTIRE FREAKING GLOBE looks like, and all you can come up with is "they won't be able to get all of Canada"?
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I am not sure what's incosistent about the syntax you mentioned, but maybe that's just me. Though I'd be interested to see in what ways it is "very limited" (especially if those aren't the limitations of a particular databas engine, or relational databases in general).
30 books is far more than there is to say about PHP and MySQL.
I'd guess that this ratio is further hampered by the tendency of people who can "use it correctly" to move on to, well, real programming languages.
For whatever reason, PHP just tends to not be as sexy anymore once you know what you are doing.
Why on earth do we need another PHP + MySQL book coming out every two weeks? None of this stuff is complicated - PHP is about as simple as a scripting language can get, MySQL is simplistic to the point of being frequently useless; and even the more general field of web application development (which these books rarely go into with any depth) is not all that involved, in the grand scheme of things.
So, why? Why do we need more of these things? Are the five hundred existing books really so crap that they are not enough to learn the arcane arts of PHP and MySQL?
Personally I find GUI VC front-ends to be a painful barrier to coding, thought I realize some people may feel differently.
Proper IDE integration comes in handy sometimes, but OS integration usually just hurts.
It's actually possible to do something like this with Subversion (in a proof of concept kind of way) - svn can act as a WebDAV backend in apache and a WebDAV client can mount it as a filesystem (such as WebFolders(?) on Windows). At the moment this sucks hard: edits don't exactly work, only adds and deletes (you have to copy a changed version of a file over it to do an "edit") and the speed is rather... sub-optimal. There are also more fundamental problems, for example, each change (even a single file edit) would create a new revision, rendering the whole revision system rather useless.
But the possibility is there, especially if the AV part of WebDAV ever gets sorted out properly.
This sort of thing actually has more general applications than code development. If, for example, I could give such and auto versioning folder to HR for their barrage of ever-changing forms, it would save me a lot of hassle restoring from backups (and especially the usual "I know backups only run nightly, but I just accidentaly saved over a file I created today - is there a way to get it back?")
Could you give me a more specific hint? I'm quite interested to know (but not quite interested enough to go searching their archives.
Oh good, now I'll be able to pick out all those androids that are running around!
Because some of us are rather tired of this collective stroking of Carmack's cock. Especially since Doom3 sucked.
The BDB backend has it's problems (though none of them nearly as drastic as he seems to think), but has he really never heard of the FSFS backend?
The rest of the criticism is so vague that it kinda makes it hard to reply to: "it takes too many steps backward in various areas", oh, "various areas" - of course! I've been noticing that.
I'm in the process of moving to Subversion from CVS (which I agree is deeply broken, by todays standards), and I've yet to encounter a single thing that Subversion is worse at than CVS. And a hell of a lot of things that it does much, much better.
Now if that interview presented the tiniest bit of information about what arch does differently (apart from, you know, not being "teh suck") I would be tempted to check it out.
I've never heard of it before, but after reading that "interview" I already hate it.
So what you are saying is that Lucas should think to himself "Hmm, these people work really hard at their jobs - I should make my movies the way they like them!"
Get real, billionare or not, he's got no obligations to you whatsoever, regardless of how hard you work. And no one is "asking" you to do anything, these companies offer their products at certain prices and you are free to purchase them if you like. Just the fact that they are filthy rich in the first place indicates that they are doing something that a lot of people do like.
If enough people decide they don't want to give him their money, he could reconsider his position, but again, that's pretty much his decision. He might prefer the integrity of his artistic vision over simply making more money (boy that's hard to say with a straight face!).
Sitting there watching the crappy movies?
I thought it was funny... guess I must like masturbation.
You mean against the blue-screen, right?
They are distributing some content now so that their servers aren't hit as hard when it's released (you know, so you can get your fucking game faster when it does come).
How's a note on their website a "big paper launch"? There's no paper or launches involved here.
Geez, why would you take their efforts to distribute their server loads so personally?
I was under the impression that the DVD+/-R debacle was still very much underway, with no "dust settling" over the last couple of years.
I don't know what the answer to the first part of that question is, but I am guessing that the answer to the second is "Not bombed any planes".
I think they've done quite a good job recently. I've had a yahoo account for a few years and was paying the $20 a year for the 25MB. When the whole gmail thing appeared I was thinking I'll give it a shot when it's out of beta. But then Yahoo went and dumped 2 gigs on me and at the same time the interface improved and became a lot faster; so now it's more like "fuck it - I'm fine with Yahoo".
Dude, I just gotta know where it is you work. That's just a very interesting decision on the part of some IT department.
Not exactly true - your inner ear can tell you if you are speeding up or slowing down, not if you are moving. That's why on planes people tend to get sick during take-off and landing, but not during most of the flight (when you are definitely moving, and your eyes only see a fixed environment, but the speed is quite constant).
Out of curiosity - what would you consider a "Large DB"?
They'll get much better coverage initially this way. More points to visit == more people sending in images. Sure it will take a lot longer for the project to be "complete," but with that many more points scattered around, the chances of someone who lives close by picking up a camera and going there are that much higher.
You do realize that there are, in fact, people already living in all those countries? And it's not all that strange to imagine that they might have cameras and an internet connection.
Have you stopped to think that maybe the point of the project isn't to collect every last damn picture of frozen tundra, but rather to expand their (already absolutely amazing) collection of places that are accessible?
The cynism boggles the mind - they've collected tens of thousnds of images from something like 150 countries, along with precise location and date information; giving you an instant overview of what THE ENTIRE FREAKING GLOBE looks like, and all you can come up with is "they won't be able to get all of Canada"?
1) In bed.
2) With a girl.