"...Great programmers aren't satisfied until they understand each little nook of their core language, exactly what it means, does..."
I'll have to call you out on this. Great programmers understand algorithms. Mediocre programmers are obsessed with their tools, which is what a programming language is.
"...Why would anyone choose that over Bittorrent..."
Unless something is extremely popular on Bittorrent and/or has a lot of seeders, it can take days to download. And in cases of lack of seeds, not downloadable at all.
You must not live in California. In California policemen, and firemen, make between $60K and $120K a year and have some of the best public service benefits anywhere in the U.S.
"A virus that can propagate through an entire enterprise's array of servers, and then wipe out all data?...Getting a program to run on all of them..."
Here's the code to wipe-out a database. Generic SQL version: drop database fanny_mae;
MSSQL2005 version: alter database fanny_mae set single_user with rollback immediate; go; drop database fanny_mae; go;
Any server level triggers to block or log this would also have to be disabled prior to issuing these commands, which is pretty trivial if you've got admin access which the guy did.
"Microsoft is building a $300 million dollar research campus in Beijing, with employment for 5,000."
LOL! Just think of all the trojans and backdoors that will be hidden in M$ software then. I recently read that members of the U.S. gov't are theorizing that the Chinese are putting backdoors and trojans in hardware being sold to the U.S.
You have a valid point on old hardware. I tried to install CentOS 4 on a Pentium I/120 with 32 megs of RAM. CentOS 4 croaked. However, Redhat 6.2 works perfectly fine on that box, and that box is used as a Samba file/print server with 4 printers attached. It seems that the 2.6.x kernels need at least 128mb of RAM to run reliably, while the 2.2.x kernels run happily 24x7x365 with 32mb of RAM.
"...Pull up your average PHP/.Net/Java SQL tutorial and odds are that it will be concatenating strings..."
That and I run into programmers who have over ten years working in the field who absolutely refuse to work with databases any other way. They freak out when you tell them data access is via parameterized stored procedures.
"...the language is criticized for lack of a promised cross-platform function because of its ties to MS SQL server, which only runs on Windows..."
At one time Sybase and SQL Server used to be compatible. I would use MS SQL Server ODBC drivers to connect to Sybase running on *nix systems. I would also use the open source TDS software from http://www.freetds.org/ software to allow *nix machines to pull data from SQL Server running on Windows machines. Granted MS and Sybase seem to have forked the TDS protocol which both databases use.
"...You can compile them, then plug them into a running kernel (and this is the astonishing part) without needing to reboot..."
I've done this, you've done this. The problem is 99.7% of the population has trouble tying their shoelaces and balancing their checkbook. Asking these same people to compile a module and plug it into a running kernel is like asking these same people to extract blood from a rock.
"...bringing up the price of exchange...It might be that the shop would like to keep a Unix-only shop in the server room..."
In that case, I'd go with Kerio mail server http://www.kerio.com/kms_home.html It runs on Redhat, SUSE, Mac OSX, Win2k/XP/2k3/Vista, seems to be a drop in replacement for Exchange server (with better support for Mac clients) and for a 30 user workplace, costs about 33% less than the "open source" Zarafa. Kerio also comes with Spamassasin built-in and you can get a version with McAfee antivirus for chump change. I don't see where Zarafa has integrated anti-spam or anti-virus features.
Now, if only I could convince the owner of the company to go with Kerio instead of M$ Exchange server. In the meantime, we're still running the Linux/sendmail/Dovecot combo with Outlook clients.
"...Was Microsoft trying to make SQL Server be this uber thing that did web services, parsed XML, and served data..."
Answer: Yes.
In SQL2005, M$ allowed DBAs to create HTTP endpoints for URLs that exposes stored procedures over the web. You have to configure your web server to let it know that SQL2005 is the handler for that URL. Also in SQL2005 are native XML datatypes and XML columns (which have to be well-formed - you cannot store XML data in a SQL2005 XML column if an end tag is missing or the case does not match). Within SQL2005, if you're querying an XML column you have to use XQuery. And yes, select statements can return results formatted in XML.
My experience is that Linux tends to tolerate faulty hardware better than Windows. I run http://www.memtest.org/ on a machine for 24 hours. If there are no errors, then it will run WinXP and will be extremely stable. If there are minor non-repeatable errors then I know that I can safely run Linux on it, but not Windows.
To me, it sounds like the COBOL app was coded so that there is a limit on how often and how much a salary can be changed. In other words, no immediate global changes down to minimum wage and no immediate restorations from minimum wage to the original pay once the budget impasse is over.
"...Wouldn't another solution be to sneak past the entire recompression process by submitting a.flv video..."
Last time I submitted a video, about six to eight months ago, Youtube did not accept.flv or.swf formats, even though that is the format that they use to stream. Youtube wanted mpg, divx or mov formats. That sucked because my original was done in swf. First I had to convert the swf to divx which I uploaded to Youtube. Converting from swf to divx resulted in a big quality degradation. Youtube then converted the divx back to flv which resulted in a second quality degradation with the audio being completely out of sync with the video.
"...Unless you guys want to pay to see the source code, this just turns me off any of the GPL variants more..."
Richard Stallman and his GPL fans want to force everything to be open and public, yet at the same time is pushing Clipperz for keeping things private. Sounds like RS and his FSF fanbase have a bit of bipolar personality disorder.
"...Java will probably be the COBOL of our generation..."
This should be written as: "Java will probably be the COBOL *and* Visual Basic of our generation"
I've seen some expensive commercial applications that use a combo of VB6, VB.Net and Java within a single app. The client installer installs the.NET 1.1 redistributable, then it installs a Java runtime and finally it installs the VB6 runtime files.
Once a leecher has downloaded a full copy of the file and then shares that file, they become a seeder. On a 3Mbs DSL connection, a leecher can become a seeder in less than one minute.
The RIAA is taking the vacuum cleaner approach and sucking up everyone who is sharing the same file. The only way for the RIAA to find the person who created the rip would be if the person doing the ripping added metadata that linked them to the ripped file.
Microsoft, like Ford and General Motors, thought that everyone wanted a fully loaded gizmo with all the bells and whistles. Since consumers have been dealing with price inflation in food and energy for quite a number of months, consumers have to cut back somewhere. Microsoft, like Ford and GM, finally realizes, begrudgingly, that they need a product for the budget conscious person.
I agree with blocking.ru I'd add.am to the list of blocked TLDs. Never go to a.am or.ru site using Internet Explorer. However, Opera or Firefox with Java and Javascript disabled, and the Flash plugin disabled, is reasonably safe for.am and.ru TLDs.
"...If Prince didn't ask if it was ok to perform it, and if Radiohead still owns the copyrights, then it sounds like Radiohead gets to say what happens to any recordings made, even if Prince (or anyone else) made them..."
You're wrong on this.
Radiohead owns the songwriting copyright. Having a songwriting copyright does not entitle the songwriters (Radiohead) to distribution or production rights over musicians (Prince) who cover their material in a performance. Prince needs to get the permission of the songwriters (Radiohead) if he tries to commercialize his performance of the song that Radiohead wrote. That usually comes down to paying royalties.
The people who shot the videos own their videos but because they do not have the permission of Prince to redistribute Prince's performance, the DMCA take down notice, whether you like it or not, is legally correct since Youtube is located within the territorial boundaries of the U.S. and therefore must abide by U.S. laws.
"PHP is badly organized, has a long history of importing third party components for what should be included in the base..."
You clearly do not get it or you are a noob. PHP acts as a very thin wrapper to alot of C libraries for Linux/posix systems. Why reinvent the wheel when many of the parts already exist?
Whereas.NET obfuscates its Win32 API DLL hell heritage by creating a Java-like neat and tidy class heirarchy, PHP gives you access to the other libraries as if you were writing the app in C. Hence, no learning curve for those coming from a C/Linux/Unix/Posix background. While.NET does a nice job of organizing things into a clean class heirarchy, the truth is.NET is simply a cleaned up interface to many of the dozens of different APIs that Microsoft has introduced over the years.
"Find a copy of Q&A for DOS ver 4, it runs under WINE...Another great product is Paradox Dos 3.5 or 4.0, published by Borland..."
Why does one need to run WINE to run a DOS app? Dosemu is a low overhead DOS emulator that is far better suited to running DOS apps on Linux with minimal resource/configuration overhead.
It took many years for websites to dump Windows media streaming, Real media streaming and Apple Quicktime streaming media in favor of Flash. It seems Youtube was the tipping point to switch to Flash. Once Youtube took off, many sites dumped WM, Real and Quicktime for Flash.
Microsoft is a slow learner. It took many years until.NET finally took off. It seems that M$ doesn't get it right until the third release of their product is launched. Silverlight 1.0 will bumble, stumble, and crawl along. Silverlight 1.1 will probably be reasonably okay for some early adopters. Silverlight 2.0 will be a good product. Silverlight 3.0 will be a very good product. Silverlight 3.5 will probably be as good if not better than Flash 9.0.
I am not a fan of M$. All one has to do is look at the history of Windoze, M$ Office, SQL Server,.Net, and Visual Studio to see that M$ almost always borks the early versions.
"...PHP is good enough for scripting and Java useful for more extensive development (as a rule of thumb, not a law),.."
Pretty much anything that can be done in Java can be done in PHP5. The problem with PHP is that most of the literature on PHP is written in PHP3 style, which is utterly 1997, predates.NET and is chronologically equivalent to Java 1.1
With PHP 4.3 and higher, you can do your OO programming and wrap your objects into classes, however most PHP books treat OO and classes as if they were radioactive. Blame the authors of many PHP books for being stuck in the PHP3 mindset and passing on bad/archaic programming and design techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
"...Great programmers aren't satisfied until they understand each little nook of their core language, exactly what it means, does..."
I'll have to call you out on this. Great programmers understand algorithms. Mediocre programmers are obsessed with their tools, which is what a programming language is.
"...The project took another year to implode...300+ people, 3 years, half a billion dollars..."
Sounds like a typical government project.
"...Why would anyone choose that over Bittorrent..."
Unless something is extremely popular on Bittorrent and/or has a lot of seeders, it can take days to download. And in cases of lack of seeds, not downloadable at all.
You must not live in California. In California policemen, and firemen, make between $60K and $120K a year and have some of the best public service benefits anywhere in the U.S.
"A virus that can propagate through an entire enterprise's array of servers, and then wipe out all data?...Getting a program to run on all of them..."
Here's the code to wipe-out a database.
Generic SQL version:
drop database fanny_mae;
MSSQL2005 version:
alter database fanny_mae set single_user with rollback immediate;
go;
drop database fanny_mae;
go;
Any server level triggers to block or log this would also have to be disabled prior to issuing these commands, which is pretty trivial if you've got admin access which the guy did.
"Microsoft is building a $300 million dollar research campus in Beijing, with employment for 5,000."
LOL! Just think of all the trojans and backdoors that will be hidden in M$ software then. I recently read that members of the U.S. gov't are theorizing that the Chinese are putting backdoors and trojans in hardware being sold to the U.S.
You have a valid point on old hardware. I tried to install CentOS 4 on a Pentium I/120 with 32 megs of RAM. CentOS 4 croaked. However, Redhat 6.2 works perfectly fine on that box, and that box is used as a Samba file/print server with 4 printers attached. It seems that the 2.6.x kernels need at least 128mb of RAM to run reliably, while the 2.2.x kernels run happily 24x7x365 with 32mb of RAM.
"...Pull up your average PHP/.Net/Java SQL tutorial and odds are that it will be concatenating strings..."
That and I run into programmers who have over ten years working in the field who absolutely refuse to work with databases any other way. They freak out when you tell them data access is via parameterized stored procedures.
"...the language is criticized for lack of a promised cross-platform function because of its ties to MS SQL server, which only runs on Windows..."
At one time Sybase and SQL Server used to be compatible. I would use MS SQL Server ODBC drivers to connect to Sybase running on *nix systems. I would also use the open source TDS software from http://www.freetds.org/ software to allow *nix machines to pull data from SQL Server running on Windows machines. Granted MS and Sybase seem to have forked the TDS protocol which both databases use.
"...You can compile them, then plug them into a running kernel (and this is the astonishing part) without needing to reboot..."
I've done this, you've done this. The problem is 99.7% of the population has trouble tying their shoelaces and balancing their checkbook. Asking these same people to compile a module and plug it into a running kernel is like asking these same people to extract blood from a rock.
"...bringing up the price of exchange...It might be that the shop would like to keep a Unix-only shop in the server room..."
In that case, I'd go with Kerio mail server http://www.kerio.com/kms_home.html It runs on Redhat, SUSE, Mac OSX, Win2k/XP/2k3/Vista, seems to be a drop in replacement for Exchange server (with better support for Mac clients) and for a 30 user workplace, costs about 33% less than the "open source" Zarafa. Kerio also comes with Spamassasin built-in and you can get a version with McAfee antivirus for chump change. I don't see where Zarafa has integrated anti-spam or anti-virus features.
Now, if only I could convince the owner of the company to go with Kerio instead of M$ Exchange server. In the meantime, we're still running the Linux/sendmail/Dovecot combo with Outlook clients.
"...Was Microsoft trying to make SQL Server be this uber thing that did web services, parsed XML, and served data..."
Answer: Yes.
In SQL2005, M$ allowed DBAs to create HTTP endpoints for URLs that exposes stored procedures over the web. You have to configure your web server to let it know that SQL2005 is the handler for that URL. Also in SQL2005 are native XML datatypes and XML columns (which have to be well-formed - you cannot store XML data in a SQL2005 XML column if an end tag is missing or the case does not match). Within SQL2005, if you're querying an XML column you have to use XQuery. And yes, select statements can return results formatted in XML.
My experience is that Linux tends to tolerate faulty hardware better than Windows. I run http://www.memtest.org/ on a machine for 24 hours. If there are no errors, then it will run WinXP and will be extremely stable. If there are minor non-repeatable errors then I know that I can safely run Linux on it, but not Windows.
To me, it sounds like the COBOL app was coded so that there is a limit on how often and how much a salary can be changed. In other words, no immediate global changes down to minimum wage and no immediate restorations from minimum wage to the original pay once the budget impasse is over.
"...Wouldn't another solution be to sneak past the entire recompression process by submitting a .flv video..."
Last time I submitted a video, about six to eight months ago, Youtube did not accept .flv or .swf formats, even though that is the format that they use to stream. Youtube wanted mpg, divx or mov formats. That sucked because my original was done in swf. First I had to convert the swf to divx which I uploaded to Youtube. Converting from swf to divx resulted in a big quality degradation. Youtube then converted the divx back to flv which resulted in a second quality degradation with the audio being completely out of sync with the video.
"...Unless you guys want to pay to see the source code, this just turns me off any of the GPL variants more..."
Richard Stallman and his GPL fans want to force everything to be open and public, yet at the same time is pushing Clipperz for keeping things private. Sounds like RS and his FSF fanbase have a bit of bipolar personality disorder.
"...Java will probably be the COBOL of our generation..."
This should be written as: "Java will probably be the COBOL *and* Visual Basic of our generation"
I've seen some expensive commercial applications that use a combo of VB6, VB.Net and Java within a single app. The client installer installs the .NET 1.1 redistributable, then it installs a Java runtime and finally it installs the VB6 runtime files.
"...who are seeding and not those leeching..."
Once a leecher has downloaded a full copy of the file and then shares that file, they become a seeder. On a 3Mbs DSL connection, a leecher can become a seeder in less than one minute.
The RIAA is taking the vacuum cleaner approach and sucking up everyone who is sharing the same file. The only way for the RIAA to find the person who created the rip would be if the person doing the ripping added metadata that linked them to the ripped file.
Microsoft, like Ford and General Motors, thought that everyone wanted a fully loaded gizmo with all the bells and whistles. Since consumers have been dealing with price inflation in food and energy for quite a number of months, consumers have to cut back somewhere. Microsoft, like Ford and GM, finally realizes, begrudgingly, that they need a product for the budget conscious person.
I agree with blocking .ru .am to the list of blocked TLDs. .am or .ru site using Internet Explorer. However, Opera or Firefox with Java and Javascript disabled, and the Flash plugin disabled, is reasonably safe for .am and .ru TLDs.
I'd add
Never go to a
"...If Prince didn't ask if it was ok to perform it, and if Radiohead still owns the copyrights, then it sounds like Radiohead gets to say what happens to any recordings made, even if Prince (or anyone else) made them..."
You're wrong on this.
Radiohead owns the songwriting copyright. Having a songwriting copyright does not entitle the songwriters (Radiohead) to distribution or production rights over musicians (Prince) who cover their material in a performance. Prince needs to get the permission of the songwriters (Radiohead) if he tries to commercialize his performance of the song that Radiohead wrote. That usually comes down to paying royalties.
The people who shot the videos own their videos but because they do not have the permission of Prince to redistribute Prince's performance, the DMCA take down notice, whether you like it or not, is legally correct since Youtube is located within the territorial boundaries of the U.S. and therefore must abide by U.S. laws.
"PHP is badly organized, has a long history of importing third party components for what should be included in the base..."
.NET obfuscates its Win32 API DLL hell heritage by creating a Java-like neat and tidy class heirarchy, PHP gives you access to the other libraries as if you were writing the app in C. Hence, no learning curve for those coming from a C/Linux/Unix/Posix background. While .NET does a nice job of organizing things into a clean class heirarchy, the truth is .NET is simply a cleaned up interface to many of the dozens of different APIs that Microsoft has introduced over the years.
You clearly do not get it or you are a noob. PHP acts as a very thin wrapper to alot of C libraries for Linux/posix systems. Why reinvent the wheel when many of the parts already exist?
Whereas
"Find a copy of Q&A for DOS ver 4, it runs under WINE...Another great product is Paradox Dos 3.5 or 4.0, published by Borland..."
Why does one need to run WINE to run a DOS app? Dosemu is a low overhead DOS emulator that is far better suited to running DOS apps on Linux with minimal resource/configuration overhead.
http://dosemu.sourceforge.net/
It took many years for websites to dump Windows media streaming, Real media streaming and Apple Quicktime streaming media in favor of Flash. It seems Youtube was the tipping point to switch to Flash. Once Youtube took off, many sites dumped WM, Real and Quicktime for Flash.
.NET finally took off. It seems that M$ doesn't get it right until the third release of their product is launched. Silverlight 1.0 will bumble, stumble, and crawl along. Silverlight 1.1 will probably be reasonably okay for some early adopters. Silverlight 2.0 will be a good product. Silverlight 3.0 will be a very good product. Silverlight 3.5 will probably be as good if not better than Flash 9.0.
.Net, and Visual Studio to see that M$ almost always borks the early versions.
Microsoft is a slow learner. It took many years until
I am not a fan of M$. All one has to do is look at the history of Windoze, M$ Office, SQL Server,
"...PHP is good enough for scripting and Java useful for more extensive development (as a rule of thumb, not a law),.."
.NET and is chronologically equivalent to Java 1.1
Pretty much anything that can be done in Java can be done in PHP5. The problem with PHP is that most of the literature on PHP is written in PHP3 style, which is utterly 1997, predates
With PHP 4.3 and higher, you can do your OO programming and wrap your objects into classes, however most PHP books treat OO and classes as if they were radioactive. Blame the authors of many PHP books for being stuck in the PHP3 mindset and passing on bad/archaic programming and design techniques.