For me personally, Google Checkout is useless until: 1. It supports merchants outside the USA. 2. It supports buyers outside the USA.
I've been looking for Paypal alternatives for years now but I've yet to find one which satisfies the above requirements, is cheap enough *and* is trusted by enough people.
What gave you the idea that hosting a part in the Netherlands is a good idea? Here, there's an organization called BREIN who's comparable to the MPAA. We hear news about BREIN sueing MP3 uploaders all the same.
Why launch material into the sun? Suppose some day we find out that solar wind (or something) blows back the material to us. Then we have a big problem. Why not launch the material to Pluto?
Wikipedia already has a credibility problem, but this?
It's funny how Slashdotters always say that you can't trust Wikipedia, yet more and more people actually use Wikipedia regardless of all the complaints.
BACKUP DATABASE [dbname] TO [Name of Backup Device Created in SQLSvr]
I figured that out too. But I wanted the system to make backups automatically, with no human intervention, and I wanted the backups to be sent to a remote server so that if this server crashes my data is still intact. Running the BACKUP DATABASE command easy, but automating the whole thing is not.
3. I've never had any problem with SQL Server's performance. Its generally been pretty good actually. Why on earth were you running a database on a server that had 100% CPU usage? That is a really bad idea, regardless of what database you're using, if you actually care about being able to access that data.
I wasn't talking about SQL Server's performance, but the Query Analyzer's performance. As I wrote in my post, the Perl script I write could perform a query in a fraction of the time that Query Analyzer could.
This is the reason why I ran the database server on a machine with 100% CPU usage: 1. I already had 2 server machines. 66.6% of the game server was run on server A, while the other 33.3% of the game server and SQL Server ran on server B. 2. Both machines were dual core. On server B, core 1 would be running the game server program, and core 2 would be running the SQL Server. 3. The game itself ran just fine, and the Perl script that I wrote could perform queries very quickly, so I know the machine can handle it. The problem lies in the *Query Analyzer*, not SQL Server. Query Analyzer needed 2 minutes for a simple query while my Perl script needed 2 seconds.
5. If you want to automate things in SQL Server, use SQL Server Agent. That's one of the things its there for. And if you really want to, you can use Task Scheduling in Windows to run a batch script or something automatically. I use task scheduler to automatically delete the file that my SQL Server backs its databases up to after BackupExec backs it up. I don't know what you were trying to do, but it sort of seems like you're wanting to do everything like you would on *nix. You sort of have to think differently and use different features to accomplish tasks on Windows. You're not going to be able to think about everything in the same way.
Yes, I realized that. Making Agent make the backups is not hard. But I also want to automatically compress the backups and send it to a remote Linux server, preferably by ssh. The backup server is not on the same network.
Agent made things more complex by running commands as the SYSTEM user. If any of the commands need user input, then I'm screwed, and the entire command will freeze, because the user input window is never displayed to the user. Windows is highly graphical in nature so it's hard to find any tools that are non-interactive. I couldn't find any non-graphical scp tools for Windows, except Cygwin ssh (in combination with ssh public keys), so that's all I could use. But then I found out that Cygwin ssh would look in the SYSTEM user's home folder for the ssh keys, and the SYSTEM user doesn't have a home folder! In the end I had to write a Perl script that periodically checks the backup folder for new backups. This Perl script is run every time a user logs in (I put it in the Startup folder).
The guy who took over the server setup ODBC for Unix. And how he makes backups by sending the BACKUP command from the backup (Linux) server to the database server. He then copies the backup from the database server to the backup server through ssh (a Cygwin ssh daemon was running on the database server).
Is there a better way than this?
My conclusion is that SQL Server may work for large enterprises that have expensive and trained database administrators, but for small users (like me, who just want to setup a non-commercial game server, and who don't have tons of money to waste), SQL Server is way too complex and phrone.
Laugh all you want, but MS is one of the leaders in the database world with SQL Server for Windows, and have been for a while now. SQLS is by a long, long shot the best software product Microsoft has ever released, IMHO, and keep doing, right to the latest version. It works great.
You've got to be kidding. I used SQL Server 2003 a year ago on a game server, and it was horrible. Just to name a few things: 1. Near-incomprehensible administration panel. The fact that they gave it a fancy name ("Enterprise Manager" or something like that) didn't help. The usability of it absolutely sucks. 2. Bad documentation. All I want is to automatically make database backups every night at 3 AM and upload it to a remote server in encrypted form. With Linux, MySQL and SSH, I can write such a script in 30 minutes. With Windows 2003 and MS SQL Server, I spent 1 to 2 weeks. The documentation told me that it's important to have a backup plan, and that every business should have a backup plan, and more of that nonsense, but nowhere did it mention HOW to actually make a backup! Only after days of searching did I finally find the command to make a backup, but I couldn't find any commandline tools like mysqldump! Eventually I found out that something can be done with the SQL server scheduler (I think it was called MS SQL Agent). I spent more than a week trying to figure out how their scheduler works and writing non-graphical tools to upload the backup to a remote server. 3. Bad, bad performance. While the game server was running (which used 100% CPU; the game server software sucks but that's another story), the SQL Query Analyzer's performance dropped to near zero. It took 2 minutes to execute a simple "SELECT * FROM foo WHERE bar = 2". One day I wrote a tool in Perl (using DBI and ODBC) to automate some database actions. And guess what? Running the same select statement in the Perl tool was almost instantaneous! I have no idea what SQL Query Analyzer is doing to make the query literally 100 times slower. 4. One day I noticed that the server ran out of disk space. It turned out that the database transaction log (not the database itself!) grew to 120 GB! The database itself was only about 100 MB. The documentation told me everything that I don't want to know, but it didn't tell me how to clear the transaction log. I spent 2 days searching Google on how to clear the transaction log, but I didn't find anything useful. Eventually I managed to clear it anyway by playing with the Enterprise Manager for an entire day. I don't remember how I did it, but it was absolutely non-intuitive. 5. It runs on Windows. It's hard to automate things. It doesn't have a good shell like Unix. Yes I know Cygwin exist, but scripts cannot run in the background and always need to have a DOS window. Yes there are tools to hide the DOS window but I don't want to add yet more bandaids to the fact that Windows's shell absolutely sucks. I ended up having to write nearly everything, while on Unix nearly everything is already there.
I'm sure someone will tell me that points 1 and 2 say I'm an incompetent database administrator. Well, this isn't a multi-million dollar business and I don't want to waste money on a database administrator which costs me more than $1000 per month! I just want to run the damn game server! I'm competent in SQL. On Linux I don't need a database administrator to maintain a database of this size, so why should I with Windows?
Seriously, this is not a troll. Yes I know I sound frustrated, but that's because I am. This is my own experience with Win2003 and MS SQL Server. This, together with other Windows quirks which I will not mention in this post, have convinced me that maintaining a Windows is an absolute nightmare.
Is USB a good charging mechanism? USB only provides 5 volts, and according to Wikipedia it may only give 500 mA to a device. Isn't that a bit too little to charge mobile phones and laptops?
Re:Standard geek viewpoint == standard geek proble
on
Why Vista Took So Long
·
· Score: 1
That's not the point. The point is, the GTK file dialog removed it, therefore giving less choice to the user, and therefore it should be better. Yet people still complain about it.
Re:Standard geek viewpoint == standard geek proble
on
Why Vista Took So Long
·
· Score: 1
Not to most people.
Oh give me a break. In GNOME/GTK, they removed the location bar in the open file dialog several years ago, thus giving the user less choice and making the dialog simpler. It looks like this. Notice that it looks very similar (almost identical) to the MacOS X file dialog, and we all know that people only praise OS X.
And guess what happens? People complain about the GTK file dialog! Specifically, about that they can't use the (nonexistant) location bar. What was that again about less choice being good?
"Listen to bug reports"? Do you really mean "listen to bug reports" or "fix every possible bug report that people have ever posted"? If it's the former, do you really think Firefox listens to absolutely no bug report? Or maybe, just maybe, it's because they can't fix everything and have to prioritize things? If it's the latter, please show me a single company that has the resources to fix all reported bugs.
I am a Firefox user. And I don't think 'better use something else'. What am I supposed to use besides Firefox? IE 7? Opera? The fact that Opera has even less market share than Firefox despite that there are less people complaining about Opera says a lot.
OK, let's see: 1. Firefox has issues. 2. People complain about the issues, yet these people do not want to or can't fix the issues. 3. The people who *can* fix the issues either don't want to, or don't have enough time/resources to fix all of them.
So basically, people expect a quality product for free, without any effort from their side, not even in the form of money. Don't you think there's something very wrong with this?
Imagine yourself being a Firefox developer, and you have to deal with these complaints on a daily basis. What would you think?
A recent issue of Scientific American explored the possibility of using magnets to deflect raditation. The conclusion was that it would require way too much energy for it to be feasible.
"Excuse me? When you said, and I quote: "How do you want to objectively define "evil" if not by the law?", that is EXACTLY what you said."
That is what I asked. I asked whether the parent has a way to objectively define evil, a way which does not equal the law. I never said that the law is a way to define evil. If I ask you "do you have a ball that's not yellow" then does that mean that everything yellow is automatically a ball? Of course not!
"It seems you are more willing to push your own agenda than actually pay attention to the content of your communication, much less listen to someone else."
Speak for yourself. You accuse Google of being evil no matter what they do.
No, I never said that laws can define evil objectively. Yet you people still call Google evil, no matter what they do. That is exactly what the thread starter said: no matter what Google does, you people call him evil. Well, how do you expect Google to be un-evil when you don't let them be un-evil? How can they do good if no matter what they do, they're evil? Yet you don't even feel for them despite the fact that you're the ones who mark Google as evil no matter what they do. That's hypocracy!
That is not the point of the grandparent. His point is that *anything* does involves intervention is evil. Regardless of whether most people consider child pornography immoral, by the grandparent's definition the police is evil if they do something about it.
OK, so let's see. You're evil if you distribute child pornography. But the police is also evil for interfering with the child pornographer. Then what the hell do you people want? Until you agree with what exactly is evil you have no right to call Google evil because right now they're evil no matter what they do. How would you feel if you're called evil if you eat meat? If you're called evil when you don't eat meat? If you're called evil when you walk on street? If you're called evil when you don't walk on street? If you're called evil no matter what you do?
By whose morals? Are Google evil just because YOU say so? What if others don't agree? What if the half of the population agrees and the other half does not? Who has the final say on what is evil or not?
So if I put child porn pictures on Google Blog and they remove it and turn me in to the police, then they're being evil too? After all, they are interfering.
This is the perfect example that your definition is not universal nor objective. Freedom can be highly subjective. Can the "freedom" to watch child porn be called freedom at all? What about the "freedom" to murder people? If the police interfere with me killing people then they're evil by your definition.
That is rediculous. How do you want to objectively define "evil" if not by the law? Do you have a revolutionary, unambiguous, objective measurement of "evil"?
Slashdot Mirror
For me personally, Google Checkout is useless until:
1. It supports merchants outside the USA.
2. It supports buyers outside the USA.
I've been looking for Paypal alternatives for years now but I've yet to find one which satisfies the above requirements, is cheap enough *and* is trusted by enough people.
Doh, typo. "same"="time".
What gave you the idea that hosting a part in the Netherlands is a good idea? Here, there's an organization called BREIN who's comparable to the MPAA. We hear news about BREIN sueing MP3 uploaders all the same.
Why launch material into the sun? Suppose some day we find out that solar wind (or something) blows back the material to us. Then we have a big problem. Why not launch the material to Pluto?
It's funny how Slashdotters always say that you can't trust Wikipedia, yet more and more people actually use Wikipedia regardless of all the complaints.
I wasn't talking about SQL Server's performance, but the Query Analyzer's performance. As I wrote in my post, the Perl script I write could perform a query in a fraction of the time that Query Analyzer could.
This is the reason why I ran the database server on a machine with 100% CPU usage:
1. I already had 2 server machines. 66.6% of the game server was run on server A, while the other 33.3% of the game server and SQL Server ran on server B.
2. Both machines were dual core. On server B, core 1 would be running the game server program, and core 2 would be running the SQL Server.
3. The game itself ran just fine, and the Perl script that I wrote could perform queries very quickly, so I know the machine can handle it. The problem lies in the *Query Analyzer*, not SQL Server. Query Analyzer needed 2 minutes for a simple query while my Perl script needed 2 seconds.
Yes, I realized that. Making Agent make the backups is not hard. But I also want to automatically compress the backups and send it to a remote Linux server, preferably by ssh. The backup server is not on the same network.
Agent made things more complex by running commands as the SYSTEM user. If any of the commands need user input, then I'm screwed, and the entire command will freeze, because the user input window is never displayed to the user. Windows is highly graphical in nature so it's hard to find any tools that are non-interactive. I couldn't find any non-graphical scp tools for Windows, except Cygwin ssh (in combination with ssh public keys), so that's all I could use. But then I found out that Cygwin ssh would look in the SYSTEM user's home folder for the ssh keys, and the SYSTEM user doesn't have a home folder! In the end I had to write a Perl script that periodically checks the backup folder for new backups. This Perl script is run every time a user logs in (I put it in the Startup folder).
The guy who took over the server setup ODBC for Unix. And how he makes backups by sending the BACKUP command from the backup (Linux) server to the database server. He then copies the backup from the database server to the backup server through ssh (a Cygwin ssh daemon was running on the database server).
Is there a better way than this?
My conclusion is that SQL Server may work for large enterprises that have expensive and trained database administrators, but for small users (like me, who just want to setup a non-commercial game server, and who don't have tons of money to waste), SQL Server is way too complex and phrone.
Are there any SQL databases which can handle large blobs well?
You've got to be kidding. I used SQL Server 2003 a year ago on a game server, and it was horrible. Just to name a few things:
1. Near-incomprehensible administration panel. The fact that they gave it a fancy name ("Enterprise Manager" or something like that) didn't help. The usability of it absolutely sucks.
2. Bad documentation. All I want is to automatically make database backups every night at 3 AM and upload it to a remote server in encrypted form. With Linux, MySQL and SSH, I can write such a script in 30 minutes. With Windows 2003 and MS SQL Server, I spent 1 to 2 weeks. The documentation told me that it's important to have a backup plan, and that every business should have a backup plan, and more of that nonsense, but nowhere did it mention HOW to actually make a backup! Only after days of searching did I finally find the command to make a backup, but I couldn't find any commandline tools like mysqldump! Eventually I found out that something can be done with the SQL server scheduler (I think it was called MS SQL Agent). I spent more than a week trying to figure out how their scheduler works and writing non-graphical tools to upload the backup to a remote server.
3. Bad, bad performance. While the game server was running (which used 100% CPU; the game server software sucks but that's another story), the SQL Query Analyzer's performance dropped to near zero. It took 2 minutes to execute a simple "SELECT * FROM foo WHERE bar = 2". One day I wrote a tool in Perl (using DBI and ODBC) to automate some database actions. And guess what? Running the same select statement in the Perl tool was almost instantaneous! I have no idea what SQL Query Analyzer is doing to make the query literally 100 times slower.
4. One day I noticed that the server ran out of disk space. It turned out that the database transaction log (not the database itself!) grew to 120 GB! The database itself was only about 100 MB. The documentation told me everything that I don't want to know, but it didn't tell me how to clear the transaction log. I spent 2 days searching Google on how to clear the transaction log, but I didn't find anything useful. Eventually I managed to clear it anyway by playing with the Enterprise Manager for an entire day. I don't remember how I did it, but it was absolutely non-intuitive.
5. It runs on Windows. It's hard to automate things. It doesn't have a good shell like Unix. Yes I know Cygwin exist, but scripts cannot run in the background and always need to have a DOS window. Yes there are tools to hide the DOS window but I don't want to add yet more bandaids to the fact that Windows's shell absolutely sucks. I ended up having to write nearly everything, while on Unix nearly everything is already there.
I'm sure someone will tell me that points 1 and 2 say I'm an incompetent database administrator. Well, this isn't a multi-million dollar business and I don't want to waste money on a database administrator which costs me more than $1000 per month! I just want to run the damn game server! I'm competent in SQL. On Linux I don't need a database administrator to maintain a database of this size, so why should I with Windows?
Seriously, this is not a troll. Yes I know I sound frustrated, but that's because I am. This is my own experience with Win2003 and MS SQL Server. This, together with other Windows quirks which I will not mention in this post, have convinced me that maintaining a Windows is an absolute nightmare.
What? You can natively compile C#? Since when? Care to give a link? I've asked many forums and everybody tells me it's not possible.
Is USB a good charging mechanism? USB only provides 5 volts, and according to Wikipedia it may only give 500 mA to a device. Isn't that a bit too little to charge mobile phones and laptops?
That's not the point. The point is, the GTK file dialog removed it, therefore giving less choice to the user, and therefore it should be better. Yet people still complain about it.
Oh give me a break. In GNOME/GTK, they removed the location bar in the open file dialog several years ago, thus giving the user less choice and making the dialog simpler. It looks like this. Notice that it looks very similar (almost identical) to the MacOS X file dialog, and we all know that people only praise OS X.
And guess what happens? People complain about the GTK file dialog! Specifically, about that they can't use the (nonexistant) location bar. What was that again about less choice being good?
"Listen to bug reports"? Do you really mean "listen to bug reports" or "fix every possible bug report that people have ever posted"?
If it's the former, do you really think Firefox listens to absolutely no bug report? Or maybe, just maybe, it's because they can't fix everything and have to prioritize things?
If it's the latter, please show me a single company that has the resources to fix all reported bugs.
I am a Firefox user. And I don't think 'better use something else'. What am I supposed to use besides Firefox? IE 7? Opera? The fact that Opera has even less market share than Firefox despite that there are less people complaining about Opera says a lot.
OK, let's see:
1. Firefox has issues.
2. People complain about the issues, yet these people do not want to or can't fix the issues.
3. The people who *can* fix the issues either don't want to, or don't have enough time/resources to fix all of them.
So basically, people expect a quality product for free, without any effort from their side, not even in the form of money. Don't you think there's something very wrong with this?
Imagine yourself being a Firefox developer, and you have to deal with these complaints on a daily basis. What would you think?
Then are the complainers willing to pay someone to fix it for them? Are they willing to do anything at all besides complaining?
A recent issue of Scientific American explored the possibility of using magnets to deflect raditation. The conclusion was that it would require way too much energy for it to be feasible.
"Excuse me? When you said, and I quote: "How do you want to objectively define "evil" if not by the law?", that is EXACTLY what you said."
That is what I asked. I asked whether the parent has a way to objectively define evil, a way which does not equal the law. I never said that the law is a way to define evil. If I ask you "do you have a ball that's not yellow" then does that mean that everything yellow is automatically a ball? Of course not!
"It seems you are more willing to push your own agenda than actually pay attention to the content of your communication, much less listen to someone else."
Speak for yourself. You accuse Google of being evil no matter what they do.
No, I never said that laws can define evil objectively. Yet you people still call Google evil, no matter what they do. That is exactly what the thread starter said: no matter what Google does, you people call him evil. Well, how do you expect Google to be un-evil when you don't let them be un-evil? How can they do good if no matter what they do, they're evil? Yet you don't even feel for them despite the fact that you're the ones who mark Google as evil no matter what they do. That's hypocracy!
That is not the point of the grandparent. His point is that *anything* does involves intervention is evil. Regardless of whether most people consider child pornography immoral, by the grandparent's definition the police is evil if they do something about it.
OK, so let's see. You're evil if you distribute child pornography. But the police is also evil for interfering with the child pornographer. Then what the hell do you people want? Until you agree with what exactly is evil you have no right to call Google evil because right now they're evil no matter what they do. How would you feel if you're called evil if you eat meat? If you're called evil when you don't eat meat? If you're called evil when you walk on street? If you're called evil when you don't walk on street? If you're called evil no matter what you do?
Well what else do you expect me to do? You're still dodging my question.
By whose morals? Are Google evil just because YOU say so? What if others don't agree? What if the half of the population agrees and the other half does not? Who has the final say on what is evil or not?
So if I put child porn pictures on Google Blog and they remove it and turn me in to the police, then they're being evil too? After all, they are interfering.
This is the perfect example that your definition is not universal nor objective. Freedom can be highly subjective. Can the "freedom" to watch child porn be called freedom at all? What about the "freedom" to murder people? If the police interfere with me killing people then they're evil by your definition.
That is rediculous. How do you want to objectively define "evil" if not by the law? Do you have a revolutionary, unambiguous, objective measurement of "evil"?
MyTube? Surely you mean iTube.