The impression that I got, from reading the blog, is that Microsoft fully intends to comply with all web standards -- eventually. They just have a LONG list of other bugs to fix that are higher priority.
Here is a typical example of what I have to deal with all the time: many of our tables include a numeric ID field that must be unique and is a key reference for other tables. Naturally, it should be an auto-incremented value.
In MySQL, you would implement this simply by assigning an auto-increment attribute to the numeric column. Inserting a new row involves setting all necessary columns -except- the ID, which the database takes care of for you. You can make another call to fetch the new ID.
In Oracle, you must use a "sequence number" that exists in a separate system table. So inserting a row consists of fetching the next sequence number, then assigning that value to the ID field when you insert the row.
There isn't a simple, ANSI-standard SQL statement which will handle both of these cases.
IMO, Dartmouth BASIC and its derivatives were the only versions of BASIC truly made for beginners. There was no structuring to worry about beyond line numbers, and the language was interpretive rather than compiled so you didn't even need line numbers -- you'd just tell the computer what to do and it would do it! The instant feedback helps train the user, like Pavlov's classical conditioning, in the relationship between command and action (and also what happens if a command is given incorrectly).
In fact, I like the old school BASIC language so much that I starting writing my own BASIC interpreter for unix. Haven't gotten around to finishing it, though.
I'd love it if database management systems were compatible enough to allow that. The trouble is, it seems only the most basic query syntax has been standardized. Several other aspects, such as table creation, column types, auto-increment variables, and stored procedures, have varying degrees of differences or support between the various databases such that in any sufficiently complex application you would need to write a separate copy of db interface code for every DBMS that you want to support.
Will the consumer once again have to someday replace their iTunes track just like they had to replace their LP, cassette, and CD only to get their music on their hot new non Apple mp3 phone of the future?
That sounds like saying an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will "sometimes" type out a Shakespearean play. You just don't know when and which one.
I don't play video games that much and never owned a gaming console, but the rumors about the new Revolution are enough to make me seriously consider getting one. If I do, there are just a few N64 games I've played that I would definitely want to see on the new system (whether emulated or ported):
Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Super Mario 64 Mario Golf Mario Kart Monopoly
Of those titles, Monopoly is the one I've played the most. I enjoy games that don't have a large learning curve and that can be completed in a single evening.
I would also like to see Super Mario from the SNES on the Revolution. I kind of got addicted to that many years ago.
Around 2-4 hours for the restoration itself, plus an hour to shut down the applications that are using the database during the restore and to restart them afterward, plus up to 8 hours for the discovery of the attack and to organize the restoration procedures, and if the attack were discovered at night or on a weekend you'd need even more time to wake up or track down the DBA, CTO, and/or VP of IS.
I already got into these types of rounding a decade ago. For a really good read on an FPU implementation, try to find a copy of the Motorola 68881/2 Programmer's Reference Manual.
3 miles is pretty long, and 10 cubic yards isn't very much. Assuming the flow rate has been constant for the last 15 months, I estimate it would have spit out 130 million cubic yards, and there are 5.45 billion cubic yards in a cubic mile. Just how 'narrow' is it?
I stopped watching television over a year ago. I dropped my cable service, and broadcast signals don't work in my area. I don't miss it at all. Now I rent movies and old TV series from GreenCine, so I can watch just the shows I want to, commercial-free. As an added benefit, it lets me preview DVD's I'm thinking of buying to make sure they're not 'evil' (e.g. forced ads). My DVD purchases have increased dramatically in the last year.
allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies
If the data is simply being passed from one intelligence agency to another, and all of these agencies are part of the federal government, then my question is this: Why haven't they been sharing information with each other in the first place?
Oh, I'm not obsessed with cracking OS X in particular, but copy-protected programs in general. And it's not for the sake of getting free software, but 1) the technical challenge (being a software developer), 2) being able to make working backup copies of software I bought (SynCalc being one, which unfortunately I never was able to successfully back up, and I'm sure thy 5.25" floppy it's on has outlived its shelf life by now), and 3) being able to reinstall and run software years after I bought it without the annoyance of registration and activation codes which may have gotten lost or misplaced.
My first reaction to this subject was "there is no code which cannot be cracked, given enough time and determination."
After looking over the article, the method reminds me of Synapse Software's SynCalc (and related) programs for the 8-bit Atari computers. They had some real good code obfuscation, and they managed to do it in less that 48K of RAM! I never did get as far as figuring out whether they were using more than one level of a virtual machine, code obfuscation, or what have you.
20 tons doesn't seem like very much. So I'd like to know:
1. How much does an asteroid weigh? (That is, the average size that this 'tractor' is intended for.)
2. How early would the asteroid have to be pulled from its trajectory in order to sufficiently deflect it from the earth? Could we detect such an asteroid headed our way in time? (Okay, so that may be three questions.)
Is there a standard way to create or alter a table? The databases I've worked with (MySQL, Postgres, Oracle) all seem to use similar syntax but have slight variations, besides the fact that they use different names for the various column types, and certain column types only exist in one or a few DBMS's. And that doesn't even take into account certain database abstractions that are DBMS-specific.
I was slightly off. I found this from the O'Reilly book*:
ROWNUM returns a number indicating the order in which the row was retrieved from the table, but this is not always the order in which the row is displayed. For example, if a SQL statement includes an ORDER BY clause, rows will not be displayed in ROWNUM sequence, since ROWNUM is assigned before the sort operation.
MySQL's LIMIT, on the other hand, applies after sorting. This makes LIMIT much more useful for returning pages results (e.g. for a web-based application). To do the same thing in Oracle, you have to retreive the entire result set in a subquery, then use ROWNUM from the outer query to select the range of rows you want.
I disagree regarding college degrees. In my experience, there are many things you can learn in college that you probably wouldn't even think about studying on your own -- especially theoretical principles (design) of a variety of fields as opposed to specific applications (coding). Some of the more difficult studies are also easier to deal with if you can confer with professors and other students.
In addition to the subject matter, colleges can provide you with resources and equipment that would be impossible or impractical to obtain on your own. That may not be as much of an issue today, with cheaper and more powerful computers and oodles of information on the Internet, but before I went to college I had never had a VAX or SGI workstation to play with.
When I went to high school, there was no question about whether computers should be used in education. They used computers in classes where computers were the subject -- for example, computer science, typing, database management (as part of a business class). In all other subjects where kids weren't taught how to use a computer, computers were not used.
Simple.
In college, computers were not used in class at all -- and I was a computer science major. Computers were found only in the lab (and in the library, but those were strictly for writing and printing papers). In the classroom, teachers taught with books.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget: they have to buy the stamps too. At 39 cents per stamp, 100 million letters would cost them ... a LOT of money!
The impression that I got, from reading the blog, is that Microsoft fully intends to comply with all web standards -- eventually. They just have a LONG list of other bugs to fix that are higher priority.
Here is a typical example of what I have to deal with all the time: many of our tables include a numeric ID field that must be unique and is a key reference for other tables. Naturally, it should be an auto-incremented value.
In MySQL, you would implement this simply by assigning an auto-increment attribute to the numeric column. Inserting a new row involves setting all necessary columns -except- the ID, which the database takes care of for you. You can make another call to fetch the new ID.
In Oracle, you must use a "sequence number" that exists in a separate system table. So inserting a row consists of fetching the next sequence number, then assigning that value to the ID field when you insert the row.
There isn't a simple, ANSI-standard SQL statement which will handle both of these cases.
IMO, Dartmouth BASIC and its derivatives were the only versions of BASIC truly made for beginners. There was no structuring to worry about beyond line numbers, and the language was interpretive rather than compiled so you didn't even need line numbers -- you'd just tell the computer what to do and it would do it! The instant feedback helps train the user, like Pavlov's classical conditioning, in the relationship between command and action (and also what happens if a command is given incorrectly).
In fact, I like the old school BASIC language so much that I starting writing my own BASIC interpreter for unix. Haven't gotten around to finishing it, though.
I'd love it if database management systems were compatible enough to allow that. The trouble is, it seems only the most basic query syntax has been standardized. Several other aspects, such as table creation, column types, auto-increment variables, and stored procedures, have varying degrees of differences or support between the various databases such that in any sufficiently complex application you would need to write a separate copy of db interface code for every DBMS that you want to support.
RIAA: YES!!! (ka-Chiing!)
That sounds like saying an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will "sometimes" type out a Shakespearean play. You just don't know when and which one.
This article reminds me of another article which explained why professional Photoshop users don't want to switch to The GIMP.
I don't play video games that much and never owned a gaming console, but the rumors about the new Revolution are enough to make me seriously consider getting one. If I do, there are just a few N64 games I've played that I would definitely want to see on the new system (whether emulated or ported):
Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Super Mario 64
Mario Golf
Mario Kart
Monopoly
Of those titles, Monopoly is the one I've played the most. I enjoy games that don't have a large learning curve and that can be completed in a single evening.
I would also like to see Super Mario from the SNES on the Revolution. I kind of got addicted to that many years ago.
Does anyone else remember that this was reported over a year ago?
Of course, the inclusion of Cell in the PS3 was only a rumor at the time.
Around 2-4 hours for the restoration itself, plus an hour to shut down the applications that are using the database during the restore and to restart them afterward, plus up to 8 hours for the discovery of the attack and to organize the restoration procedures, and if the attack were discovered at night or on a weekend you'd need even more time to wake up or track down the DBA, CTO, and/or VP of IS.
Just a rough estimate.
I already got into these types of rounding a decade ago. For a really good read on an FPU implementation, try to find a copy of the Motorola 68881/2 Programmer's Reference Manual.
3 miles is pretty long, and 10 cubic yards isn't very much. Assuming the flow rate has been constant for the last 15 months, I estimate it would have spit out 130 million cubic yards, and there are 5.45 billion cubic yards in a cubic mile. Just how 'narrow' is it?
I stopped watching television over a year ago. I dropped my cable service, and broadcast signals don't work in my area. I don't miss it at all. Now I rent movies and old TV series from GreenCine, so I can watch just the shows I want to, commercial-free. As an added benefit, it lets me preview DVD's I'm thinking of buying to make sure they're not 'evil' (e.g. forced ads). My DVD purchases have increased dramatically in the last year.
If the data is simply being passed from one intelligence agency to another, and all of these agencies are part of the federal government, then my question is this: Why haven't they been sharing information with each other in the first place?
Oh, I'm not obsessed with cracking OS X in particular, but copy-protected programs in general. And it's not for the sake of getting free software, but 1) the technical challenge (being a software developer), 2) being able to make working backup copies of software I bought (SynCalc being one, which unfortunately I never was able to successfully back up, and I'm sure thy 5.25" floppy it's on has outlived its shelf life by now), and 3) being able to reinstall and run software years after I bought it without the annoyance of registration and activation codes which may have gotten lost or misplaced.
Sorry, I meant to ask "what is the typical mass of an asteroid?"
My first reaction to this subject was "there is no code which cannot be cracked, given enough time and determination."
After looking over the article, the method reminds me of Synapse Software's SynCalc (and related) programs for the 8-bit Atari computers. They had some real good code obfuscation, and they managed to do it in less that 48K of RAM! I never did get as far as figuring out whether they were using more than one level of a virtual machine, code obfuscation, or what have you.
20 tons doesn't seem like very much. So I'd like to know:
1. How much does an asteroid weigh? (That is, the average size that this 'tractor' is intended for.)
2. How early would the asteroid have to be pulled from its trajectory in order to sufficiently deflect it from the earth? Could we detect such an asteroid headed our way in time? (Okay, so that may be three questions.)
Is there a standard way to create or alter a table? The databases I've worked with (MySQL, Postgres, Oracle) all seem to use similar syntax but have slight variations, besides the fact that they use different names for the various column types, and certain column types only exist in one or a few DBMS's. And that doesn't even take into account certain database abstractions that are DBMS-specific.
I was slightly off. I found this from the O'Reilly book*:
MySQL's LIMIT, on the other hand, applies after sorting. This makes LIMIT much more useful for returning pages results (e.g. for a web-based application). To do the same thing in Oracle, you have to retreive the entire result set in a subquery, then use ROWNUM from the outer query to select the range of rows you want.
caveat: it's an old book, for Oracle 8
I thought that you couldn't use 'rowno' in a WHERE clause without using a subquery?
Yeah, but then you have to explain to them what "surfing" means and what a "wiki" is.
I disagree regarding college degrees. In my experience, there are many things you can learn in college that you probably wouldn't even think about studying on your own -- especially theoretical principles (design) of a variety of fields as opposed to specific applications (coding). Some of the more difficult studies are also easier to deal with if you can confer with professors and other students.
In addition to the subject matter, colleges can provide you with resources and equipment that would be impossible or impractical to obtain on your own. That may not be as much of an issue today, with cheaper and more powerful computers and oodles of information on the Internet, but before I went to college I had never had a VAX or SGI workstation to play with.
When I went to high school, there was no question about whether computers should be used in education. They used computers in classes where computers were the subject -- for example, computer science, typing, database management (as part of a business class). In all other subjects where kids weren't taught how to use a computer, computers were not used.
Simple.
In college, computers were not used in class at all -- and I was a computer science major. Computers were found only in the lab (and in the library, but those were strictly for writing and printing papers). In the classroom, teachers taught with books.