Well, my comment was meant to be taken strictly tongue in cheek. Evidently the moderators take these things pretty seriously. What in the world was I doing, thinking about hobbits?
I see an analogy between AMD/Intel and Middle Earth. It seems like AMD represents the free peopls against the mighty weight of Saruon (Intel). Saruon's victory was assured, but at the last moment he realized the enemy had the ring (desktop 64 bit computing).
Two years ago AMD's doom seemed assured. However a number of enterprising moves and stupid decisions by Intel (epscially Itanic) have given a glimmer of hope to the embattled company. Is it possible for AMD to displace Intel as the next major market player? My personal feeling is that Prescott is delayed because of dissapointing performance.
While I have no love for Verisign, they have the political clout to make this a reality. As long as the system is open, fair, and available to public scrutiny, it is a good thing, and thus improves democracy.
Merlin
Open source top 5 best contributions
on
Samba 3.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Every once in a while, a post of this nature appears on Slashdot. I haven't like at the Prevayler project recently, but as I understand it, it is more of a supped up object streamer than a database. These projects and the ideas that drive them are fueled by college students who overdosed on OO theory in college and try to fit information into their carefully defined view. XML has similar issues. OO streaming and XML have real applications, but IMO are absolutely no threat to 'Relational' Databases in the business world. While OO is a useful and interesting branch of programming, its application is orthogonal to database principles and information storage. True and correct information storage is based on logic, not on efficient language bindings. Since stored data is really just information, or more technically, a sum of all constraints, it can describe anything, including 'objects'.
This is nothing new. In Microsoft's.net platform, I can use the built in serializers to stream objects to XML with very little programming. With some XSLT and some more programming, a general approach could be used with some features (i.e. querying) of a crude DBMS. While the performance can be stellar for writing and reading (Microsoft's XML serializer can a achieve 10 mb/sec output on cheap hardware), concurrency is a nightmare and scalability is worse. While this seems attractive to OO programmers who are put off by brokering objects in and out of a non OO storage, any type of useful data mining with this approach is realistically impossible. Even with infinite computer resources, the weakly defined logical model of serialized objects contrasts unfavorably to the SQL model (and SQL contrasts unfavorably to the relational model, but I'm nitpicking!).
Imagine database objects serialized to XML and stored in Postgres as blob objects (but without mvcc and atomicity) and you have something similar to Prevayler. Obviously, since you cant make a useful index out of a blob object, ad hoc queries are impossible unless you introduce a 'meta parsing' stage for indexing, relating (such as it is) and performance optimization -- now destroying the 'generalness' of the storage. In SQL, all you have to do is type in 'create index', what sane db administrator wants to give that up?
Generally, Postgres is more suitable in business environment in almost every way, but the common misunderstandings about databases (urban myths?) in the IT industry are so widespread that newcomers to the field must have terrible trouble getting correct information.
Borland C++ Builder was, for a time, the best C++ development environent available. C++ Builder 3 was an amazing product that was very tight, quick, and feature packed. Unfortunately after that Borland went into the long black Inprise period and has had some serious quality control isssues with their products.
Also, MS released Visual Studio 6.0 which was a better compiler for non visual programming (most C++ is non visual programming these days). IMO, this will be a better development environemnt than MFC or Java (at least on windows). The question is, will it be better than VS 7.0/C# for application development?
I think you do not understand relational databases very well. You are confusing data organization with presentation.
create table folder
(
id int, parent_id int
);
Hierarchal databases at best are very slightly better than R databases when asking for data in a preset implementation and much worse at everything else (ad hoc queries for example).
The problem with 'relational' databases are mostly due to limitations of SQL (especially recursive querying), not form relational organization. The 2 dimensional presentation of result data is an artifact of SQL, not relational technology.
I noticed the protest yesterday on this site although it appears the protest has been removed today. I was thinking about asking him what it was all about. PicoSQL seems to be the home of an up and coming open source SQL server.
Most record deals with emerging artists ususally take around 70-90% of the profits from album sales (after artificially inflated production costs). TLC, one of the biggest acts of the early 90's sold over 10 million copies of their album 'waterfalls' and walked away with about 170k$ each (do the math).
Basically, artists could sell about 1/10th (or less) of the records online as they normally would through normal channels and make more money!
This guy reminds me of most philosophers I read about in college: I guess back then you could impress women with big words and get laid, I don't think he gets laid very much!
I have an interesting anecdote that is related to this. I am being spammed from the most amazing site: sourceforge (sister site to slashdot). I was running a project on sourceforge and was fiddling around with setting up a mailing list. Somehow, the mailing list software malfunctioned (and continues to malfunction) and does not allow me to log in with administrator rights. Shortly after, that web casino site (you know who it it is) requested access to be able to post to the list.
Since that time, sourceforge has been spamming me EVERY DAY, asking me to deal with the mailing list request. I am unable to log in and deny the request, even using the mailing list admin password that I am spammed with once a month. Does anybody else see the irony here?
I'm not sure if you will ever read this, but your assertion is 100% incorrect. Programs written in.net have no win32 API code in them whatsoever. In fact, it is virtually impossible to introduce api code into a.net program because it is 'unmananged' and requires inelegant marshalling of C structures.
.net programs access the Common Language Runtime, the CLR. This is a set of classes which define how an operating system should behave as opposed to an operating system defining how your program should behave. It includes abstractions for all basic os operations, including file i/o, windowed graphics, database i/o, web scripting, sockets, and everything.
Mono is about 1/3 the way through implementing the CLR. If you write programs that use that 1/3 (the most important third), you will be able to drop an.exe compiled in windows to a linux computer and run it.
The biggest reason to use win32 api code was directx, but with the introduction of directx9, we have CLR classes for those as well (on this single point I am not sure). Writing win32 api code is in fact strongly discouraged in the way the platform is constructed.
"Which is just what you can't do with.net - or can you send me a binary I can run on my Mac, Linux box and Win2K box?"
Yes I can. With the mono project, you can run.net binaries native because you are running off the CLI. Same for Mac, if they make something like mono for mac (same philosophy as JRE, but better implementation).
"From what I've heard its almost impossible to write anything in.net without using the Windows API as well."
Go look at the mono project before making such broad assertions.
Well, as a developer, I think.net is pretty good. My happiness with.net goes up with the implementation of mono..net is standardized, and open source is built on portability.
There is nothing more portable than being able to run a binary (sort of) on a host of different machines. C# is pretty good all around, it got right a lot of the things java got wrong, and choosing.net for your (windows) database app is never a bad decision, even if it may not be the best one. In a way its a lot like xml: there's a lot of hype, but the overall philosophy is good. Very unmicrosoftian in implementation.
When they get generics I will probably write all my own personal stuff in C#.
While this is a very informative article, I get a very 'preaching to the choir' felling about it. The bias seeps through and undermines the effectiveness of the article. I think the best advocacy of open source software could be realized through:
1. case studies of successful industry/governemnt deployment of oss.
2. summary of development/use of open source superstars like apache, postgres, etc.
of course, its always fun to pick at ms, but the idea is to change minds, not appear dogmatic.
NVidia's future looks quite uncertain. It appears they might be headed for a free fall. You can blame their problems with some bad business decisions, like backing AMD, but the real problem is that ATI's tech team is pulling ahead. The 9700 simply had a better designed core.
Their position is remarkably similar to that of 3dfx during the introduction of the tnt2. The handwriting was on the wall, and there was nothing they could do about it, having sunk millions into technology consumers were just not interested in.
Your tax dollars (a lot of them) are being used for a judge, swarms of US customs officials, and a bunch of lawyers to sit around and try and figure out the true nature of a bunch of action figures.
What a country!
Re:Your links say the opposite.
on
.NET for Apache
·
· Score: 1
Look at his links again and you will see that the best databases top out at 600 pages/sec, and the.net server hits 900 on the same hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
When was the last time you were outside?
:)
Well, my comment was meant to be taken strictly tongue in cheek. Evidently the moderators take these things pretty seriously. What in the world was I doing, thinking about hobbits?
I claim underrated
Merlin
I see an analogy between AMD/Intel and Middle Earth. It seems like AMD represents the free peopls against the mighty weight of Saruon (Intel). Saruon's victory was assured, but at the last moment he realized the enemy had the ring (desktop 64 bit computing).
Two years ago AMD's doom seemed assured. However a number of enterprising moves and stupid decisions by Intel (epscially Itanic) have given a glimmer of hope to the embattled company. Is it possible for AMD to displace Intel as the next major market player? My personal feeling is that Prescott is delayed because of dissapointing performance.
Merlin
Instead of using partner=GOOGLE, the nice folks at NYT have honored slashdot with a partnership...why not use it??
While I have no love for Verisign, they have the political clout to make this a reality. As long as the system is open, fair, and available to public scrutiny, it is a good thing, and thus improves democracy.
Merlin
Linux/FreeBSD
Apache
Gcc
PostgreSQL
Samba
In that order. Thank you.
Merlin
Every once in a while, a post of this nature appears on Slashdot. I haven't like at the Prevayler project recently, but as I understand it, it is more of a supped up object streamer than a database. These projects and the ideas that drive them are fueled by college students who overdosed on OO theory in college and try to fit information into their carefully defined view. XML has similar issues. OO streaming and XML have real applications, but IMO are absolutely no threat to 'Relational' Databases in the business world. While OO is a useful and interesting branch of programming, its application is orthogonal to database principles and information storage. True and correct information storage is based on logic, not on efficient language bindings. Since stored data is really just information, or more technically, a sum of all constraints, it can describe anything, including 'objects'.
.net platform, I can use the built in serializers to stream objects to XML with very little programming. With some XSLT and some more programming, a general approach could be used with some features (i.e. querying) of a crude DBMS. While the performance can be stellar for writing and reading (Microsoft's XML serializer can a achieve 10 mb/sec output on cheap hardware), concurrency is a nightmare and scalability is worse. While this seems attractive to OO programmers who are put off by brokering objects in and out of a non OO storage, any type of useful data mining with this approach is realistically impossible. Even with infinite computer resources, the weakly defined logical model of serialized objects contrasts unfavorably to the SQL model (and SQL contrasts unfavorably to the relational model, but I'm nitpicking!).
This is nothing new. In Microsoft's
Imagine database objects serialized to XML and stored in Postgres as blob objects (but without mvcc and atomicity) and you have something similar to Prevayler. Obviously, since you cant make a useful index out of a blob object, ad hoc queries are impossible unless you introduce a 'meta parsing' stage for indexing, relating (such as it is) and performance optimization -- now destroying the 'generalness' of the storage. In SQL, all you have to do is type in 'create index', what sane db administrator wants to give that up?
Generally, Postgres is more suitable in business environment in almost every way, but the common misunderstandings about databases (urban myths?) in the IT industry are so widespread that newcomers to the field must have terrible trouble getting correct information.
Regards,
Merlin
Borland C++ Builder was, for a time, the best C++ development environent available. C++ Builder 3 was an amazing product that was very tight, quick, and feature packed. Unfortunately after that Borland went into the long black Inprise period and has had some serious quality control isssues with their products.
Also, MS released Visual Studio 6.0 which was a better compiler for non visual programming (most C++ is non visual programming these days). IMO, this will be a better development environemnt than MFC or Java (at least on windows). The question is, will it be better than VS 7.0/C# for application development?
I hope this turns out to be good!
I think you do not understand relational databases very well. You are confusing data organization with presentation.
create table folder
(
id int,
parent_id int
);
Hierarchal databases at best are very slightly better than R databases when asking for data in a preset implementation and much worse at everything else (ad hoc queries for example).
The problem with 'relational' databases are mostly due to limitations of SQL (especially recursive querying), not form relational organization. The 2 dimensional presentation of result data is an artifact of SQL, not relational technology.
Merlin
Dir Mr. Clarke,
Thank you for your very great contributions to American Society and the internet.
Sincerely,
The American Leauge of Catholic Priests
I noticed the protest yesterday on this site although it appears the protest has been removed today. I was thinking about asking him what it was all about.
PicoSQL seems to be the home of an up and coming open source SQL server.
Maybe now they can probabalisticly determine themselves a 64 bit chip with good x86 32 bit compatiblity :)
Most record deals with emerging artists ususally take around 70-90% of the profits from album sales (after artificially inflated production costs). TLC, one of the biggest acts of the early 90's sold over 10 million copies of their album 'waterfalls' and walked away with about 170k$ each (do the math).
Basically, artists could sell about 1/10th (or less) of the records online as they normally would through normal channels and make more money!
IIRC, He also defended Napster (and lost).
Merlin
This guy reminds me of most philosophers I read about in college:
I guess back then you could impress women with big words and get laid, I don't think he gets laid very much!
1. US and USSR never entered into active confict but used deparate or greedy 3rd world countries (SCO) to engage in conflict.
2. Like Communism, MS was based around lofty principles but actually survives by strangling all percieved threats.
3. IBM was earlier in a partnership with MS that turned sour (think US-Soviet relations in WW2).
4. Both empires keep its people distracted from the real facts by spreading FUD about the other side, even if that means undertaking petty wars.
5. The soviet empire eventually came down, killed by its own weight. Will MS suffer the same fate?
All your linux are belong to us.
Since that time, sourceforge has been spamming me EVERY DAY, asking me to deal with the mailing list request. I am unable to log in and deny the request, even using the mailing list admin password that I am spammed with once a month. Does anybody else see the irony here?
Merlin
Mono is about 1/3 the way through implementing the CLR. If you write programs that use that 1/3 (the most important third), you will be able to drop an .exe compiled in windows to a linux computer and run it.
The biggest reason to use win32 api code was directx, but with the introduction of directx9, we have CLR classes for those as well (on this single point I am not sure). Writing win32 api code is in fact strongly discouraged in the way the platform is constructed.
Merlin
"Which is just what you can't do with .net - or can you send me a binary I can run on my Mac, Linux box and Win2K box?"
Yes I can. With the mono project, you can run .net binaries native because you are running off the CLI. Same for Mac, if they make something like mono for mac (same philosophy as JRE, but better implementation).
"From what I've heard its almost impossible to write anything in .net without using the Windows API as well."
Go look at the mono project before making such broad assertions.
Well, as a developer, I think .net is pretty good. My happiness with .net goes up with the implementation of mono. .net is standardized, and open source is built on portability.
There is nothing more portable than being able to run a binary (sort of) on a host of different machines. C# is pretty good all around, it got right a lot of the things java got wrong, and choosing .net for your (windows) database app is never a bad decision, even if it may not be the best one. In a way its a lot like xml: there's a lot of hype, but the overall philosophy is good. Very unmicrosoftian in implementation.
When they get generics I will probably write all my own personal stuff in C#.
While this is a very informative article, I get a very 'preaching to the choir' felling about it. The bias seeps through and undermines the effectiveness of the article. I think the best advocacy of open source software could be realized through: 1. case studies of successful industry/governemnt deployment of oss. 2. summary of development/use of open source superstars like apache, postgres, etc. of course, its always fun to pick at ms, but the idea is to change minds, not appear dogmatic.
NVidia's future looks quite uncertain. It appears they might be headed for a free fall. You can blame their problems with some bad business decisions, like backing AMD, but the real problem is that ATI's tech team is pulling ahead. The 9700 simply had a better designed core. Their position is remarkably similar to that of 3dfx during the introduction of the tnt2. The handwriting was on the wall, and there was nothing they could do about it, having sunk millions into technology consumers were just not interested in.
My fav simpson skil of all time is when they find the real creator of Itchy and Scratchy. There is a remake of 'I'm just a bill' that is really funny.
Your tax dollars (a lot of them) are being used for a judge, swarms of US customs officials, and a bunch of lawyers to sit around and try and figure out the true nature of a bunch of action figures. What a country!
Look at his links again and you will see that the best databases top out at 600 pages/sec, and the .net server hits 900 on the same hardware.