TSS/360 is dead and gone. You can actually download (some of?) the source for TSS/370, which was a sort-of successor. The TSS/360 installation at Carnegie Mellon University was turned off right about the time I left there, and I think it was either the last or the next-to-last TSS/360 running.
I've been happily married 27 years, thanks to those two little words.
Supposedly there was a study run by a bunch of marriage counselors some years back, looking to prove that couples that actively communicate have the happiest marriages. To their dismay, it turned out that the happiest marriages were the ones where the husband did pretty much whatever the wife told him to do. (One has to assume that the wife doesn't overly abuse her position here.) I don't know if the story is true or not, but it certainly matches my experience, and the experience of most of my happily married friends.
I'd say it depends on what you see yourself doing. If you want to be a deep thought thinker in an R&D department, or if you want to stay at least semi academic, get the Masters.
If you want to be a programmer, engineer, or whatever you want to call it, I'd say get the experience. I've been directly involved in any number of hiring decisions over the last 20 years, and I can't recall a single instance where the existence of a masters degree made the slightest difference in our decision.
Indeed. That was the conclusion I came to a few years back.
It might be different if one could eliminate CACM as part of the deal, as CACM became completely worthless about 20 years ago. I asked, and was told that I could suppress the CACM subscription... for zero reduction in dues. Whatever.
Ah. Like the almost-universally hated original IBM PC keyboard, which "made you a better typist"...
While AlgolW was a pleasant enough language, calling it "object oriented" is wildly optimistic. Perhaps the language Hoare envisioned was very different from the one I actually used,long ago.
RTFA. This was a *Customs* system. Not LAX, not airlines. The only blame that the airlines can (and should) get for this is not shining the big light on Customs and Border Patrol from the very start. I think it's time that the airlines started putting public and private pressure on CBP and TSA to get the hell out of the way. It's not as if they are actually securing anything.
CBP deserves a punch in the nose for not having a proper network design with redundancy; and another punch in the nose for not having any clue what to do in an outage. They should have a reduced-service backup plan, and a manual backup plan, and a diversion backup plan. There's no excuse for federal officials to sit there like idiots waiting for things to magically get fixed. Oh wait, I guess some of them ARE idiots.
I've had good luck with Retrospect both at home and in a small non-profit office. It's pretty simple to set up and supports encryption. Make sure that it supports your tape drive, though. www.emcinsignia.com
I've had some success illustrating the challenges of programming to the more visual or artistic types with this. Then you tell them to multiply that by tens of thousands, at least.
Just going after the IP? Nonsense. If you're going to do that, you buy the IP without any of the people. Ingres Corp is going to consist of essentially the entire complement of developers and support staff who worked on Ingres at CA. The new company IS a technology company.
As far as "why bother", I could argue why would anyone bother with PostgreSQL now that Ingres is available and open source. After all, Ingres is *already* an enterprise class DBMS that runs any number of very large, mission critical databases, and its codebase is just as new (or old) as PostgreSQL's. The argument in both directions is kind of silly because the two DBMS's aren't directly comparable. (But I understand it's way more fun to speculate without being bothered by any facts! and I certainly wouldn't expect a slashdotter to actually LOOK at the code bases before talking about them, goodness no precious.)
As it happens, many Ingres sites are long-termers. I don't deny that there were some crazy CA moves in the mid-90's, but it turned out that if you were large enough, or had a compliant salesman, you could beat down the fees to something reasonable.
Ingres was totally rewritten in the late 80's and early 90's. Not "improved", rewritten completely. There is essentially no similarity left between the Ingres and PostgreSQL code lines, as anyone who could be bothered to look would tell you. Nor is there any similarity worth mentioning between Ingres today and the Ingres of the early research projects, or indeed the Ingres that RTI sold.
This hoary claim about the "difficulty of developing for multiple Unixes" was ca-ca back when the trade mags first thought it up on a slow-news day; and it's still ca-ca now.
If you're a sysadmin, the variations between Unixes were tedious, annoying, and entirely surmountable. If you're a developer, and have any rudimentary skills at all, the variations are insignificant.
Plus, what's up with this "one Windows platform" bs? We spend WAY more time trying to figure out why something works on XP Professional SP 2 but fails on W2003 Oshkosh edition, than we do dealing with Unix variants. One Windows, my arse.
I wonder if that 50% means projects with no version control at all, or just none of the usual alphabet-soup SCC products. I've worked on (and run) several entirely successful projects without CVS, RCS, SCCS, whatever. That doesn't mean that we didn't have version control, it just wasn't fancy or formalized. In all cases, we had a bunch of guys all within shouting distance; we had some kind of informal check-in/check-out that left some kind of trail; and we made damn sure that the nightly backups worked, every night. If someone screwed up and stepped on someone else's work, we were all right there, and we could have a little come-to-Jesus meeting.
Obviously, for larger or geographically distributed teams, or projects where back versions need support for an extended time, something more formalized becomes increasingly necessary.
Running with NO version control of any kind, not even safe backups, is nuts. I wouldn't even do that for at-home toy projects.
And what exactly makes you think that postgresql (*NOT* postgres, clown, which is something different) is more advanced than Ingres? Postgresql has some interesting features, like MVCC. Ingres has a bunch of features that Postgresql doesn't, like parallel query, partitioned tables, parallel sort, and so on.
If you want specific feature answers, why don't you try reading the respective manuals? Greenblatt's a Linux and Open Source strategist for CA, not an Ingres guru. Or, try asking your questions on the Ingres opensource forums at opensource.ca.com.
Short answer? Heck yes. There has been all sorts of silly speculation as to why CA went open-source with Ingres (product EOL and stupid nonsense like that). One of the many real reasons is that there is lots to do and not enough CA hands to do it. We're doing a lot to Ingres, but N+1 beats N every time. Which is why *I* am happy that Ingres has been open sourced.
I can answer a couple of these (unofficially, mind you; I'm just a peon).
CA licensed spatial objects from a third party and doesn't have the right to open source that feature without their permission.
The visual stuff depends on a third party tool for porting and I imagine that there were issues there that could not be resolved in the desired timeframe.
"The current version of Ingres, usually known as OpenIngres II 2.x (which says something about the power of marketing divisions) is essentially the same as 6.4/05 which was in use in the mid 90's."
Maybe for small values of "current" and "essentially".
It hasn't been OpenIngres for a good 6 years.
Some of the underlying architecture is similar to 6.4/05, but there have been major feature advances since then, not even counting the r3 stuff.
Uh, you might try reading the post. It's *open source*. You don't need to do any business with CA unless you want support. I can think of any number of reasons for wanting CA support, but you don't *have to*.
I think you miss the point. Remember, DFW isn't writing for a mathematician, he's writing for the (above?)average Joe and Jane who, I am willing to bet dinner, really do at some level see infinity as *a* really large number. Sure, we all know better intellectually, but the gut says "how much larger than 10^10^10^10 can infinity be?"
I haven't read the book, but I very much suspect that his approach is valid. Get 'em thinking first, then lay out the details. I'm looking forward to reading this one.
Slashdot Mirror
TSS/360 is dead and gone. You can actually download (some of?) the source for TSS/370, which was a sort-of successor. The TSS/360 installation at Carnegie Mellon University was turned off right about the time I left there, and I think it was either the last or the next-to-last TSS/360 running.
Two simple words:
"Yes, Dear."
I've been happily married 27 years, thanks to those two little words.
Supposedly there was a study run by a bunch of marriage counselors some years back, looking to prove that couples that actively communicate have the happiest marriages. To their dismay, it turned out that the happiest marriages were the ones where the husband did pretty much whatever the wife told him to do. (One has to assume that the wife doesn't overly abuse her position here.) I don't know if the story is true or not, but it certainly matches my experience, and the experience of most of my happily married friends.
I'd say it depends on what you see yourself doing. If you want to be a deep thought thinker in an R&D department, or if you want to stay at least semi academic, get the Masters.
If you want to be a programmer, engineer, or whatever you want to call it, I'd say get the experience. I've been directly involved in any number of hiring decisions over the last 20 years, and I can't recall a single instance where the existence of a masters degree made the slightest difference in our decision.
Indeed. That was the conclusion I came to a few years back.
It might be different if one could eliminate CACM as part of the deal, as CACM became completely worthless about 20 years ago. I asked, and was told that I could suppress the CACM subscription ... for zero reduction in dues. Whatever.
Ah. Like the almost-universally hated original IBM PC keyboard, which "made you a better typist"...
While AlgolW was a pleasant enough language, calling it "object oriented" is wildly optimistic. Perhaps the language Hoare envisioned was very different from the one I actually used,long ago.
RTFA. This was a *Customs* system. Not LAX, not airlines. The only blame that the airlines can (and should) get for this is not shining the big light on Customs and Border Patrol from the very start. I think it's time that the airlines started putting public and private pressure on CBP and TSA to get the hell out of the way. It's not as if they are actually securing anything.
CBP deserves a punch in the nose for not having a proper network design with redundancy; and another punch in the nose for not having any clue what to do in an outage. They should have a reduced-service backup plan, and a manual backup plan, and a diversion backup plan. There's no excuse for federal officials to sit there like idiots waiting for things to magically get fixed. Oh wait, I guess some of them ARE idiots.
I've had good luck with Retrospect both at home and in a small non-profit office. It's pretty simple to set up and supports encryption. Make sure that it supports your tape drive, though. www.emcinsignia.com
I've had some success illustrating the challenges of programming to the more visual or artistic types with this. Then you tell them to multiply that by tens of thousands, at least.
It's part of the deal. See www.ingres.com.
Just going after the IP? Nonsense. If you're going to do that, you buy the IP without any of the people. Ingres Corp is going to consist of essentially the entire complement of developers and support staff who worked on Ingres at CA. The new company IS a technology company.
As far as "why bother", I could argue why would anyone bother with PostgreSQL now that Ingres is available and open source. After all, Ingres is *already* an enterprise class DBMS that runs any number of very large, mission critical databases, and its codebase is just as new (or old) as PostgreSQL's. The argument in both directions is kind of silly because the two DBMS's aren't directly comparable. (But I understand it's way more fun to speculate without being bothered by any facts! and I certainly wouldn't expect a slashdotter to actually LOOK at the code bases before talking about them, goodness no precious.)
As it happens, many Ingres sites are long-termers. I don't deny that there were some crazy CA moves in the mid-90's, but it turned out that if you were large enough, or had a compliant salesman, you could beat down the fees to something reasonable.
Ingres was totally rewritten in the late 80's and early 90's. Not "improved", rewritten completely. There is essentially no similarity left between the Ingres and PostgreSQL code lines, as anyone who could be bothered to look would tell you. Nor is there any similarity worth mentioning between Ingres today and the Ingres of the early research projects, or indeed the Ingres that RTI sold.
This hoary claim about the "difficulty of developing for multiple Unixes" was ca-ca back when the trade mags first thought it up on a slow-news day; and it's still ca-ca now.
If you're a sysadmin, the variations between Unixes were tedious, annoying, and entirely surmountable. If you're a developer, and have any rudimentary skills at all, the variations are insignificant.
Plus, what's up with this "one Windows platform" bs? We spend WAY more time trying to figure out why something works on XP Professional SP 2 but fails on W2003 Oshkosh edition, than we do dealing with Unix variants. One Windows, my arse.
PostgreSQL isn't the only open-source option. Ingres has been supporting many major enterprises for years.
I wonder if that 50% means projects with no version control at all, or just none of the usual alphabet-soup SCC products. I've worked on (and run) several entirely successful projects without CVS, RCS, SCCS, whatever. That doesn't mean that we didn't have version control, it just wasn't fancy or formalized. In all cases, we had a bunch of guys all within shouting distance; we had some kind of informal check-in/check-out that left some kind of trail; and we made damn sure that the nightly backups worked, every night. If someone screwed up and stepped on someone else's work, we were all right there, and we could have a little come-to-Jesus meeting.
Obviously, for larger or geographically distributed teams, or projects where back versions need support for an extended time, something more formalized becomes increasingly necessary.
Running with NO version control of any kind, not even safe backups, is nuts. I wouldn't even do that for at-home toy projects.
And what exactly makes you think that postgresql (*NOT* postgres, clown, which is something different) is more advanced than Ingres? Postgresql has some interesting features, like MVCC. Ingres has a bunch of features that Postgresql doesn't, like parallel query, partitioned tables, parallel sort, and so on.
If you want specific feature answers, why don't you try reading the respective manuals? Greenblatt's a Linux and Open Source strategist for CA, not an Ingres guru. Or, try asking your questions on the Ingres opensource forums at opensource.ca.com.
Short answer? Heck yes. There has been all sorts of silly speculation as to why CA went open-source with Ingres (product EOL and stupid nonsense like that). One of the many real reasons is that there is lots to do and not enough CA hands to do it. We're doing a lot to Ingres, but N+1 beats N every time. Which is why *I* am happy that Ingres has been open sourced.
I can answer a couple of these (unofficially, mind you; I'm just a peon).
CA licensed spatial objects from a third party and doesn't have the right to open source that feature without their permission.
The visual stuff depends on a third party tool for porting and I imagine that there were issues there that could not be resolved in the desired timeframe.
"The current version of Ingres, usually known as OpenIngres II 2.x (which says something about the power of marketing divisions) is essentially the same as 6.4/05 which was in use in the mid 90's."
Maybe for small values of "current" and "essentially".
It hasn't been OpenIngres for a good 6 years.
Some of the underlying architecture is similar to 6.4/05, but there have been major feature advances since then, not even counting the r3 stuff.
Uh, you might try reading the post. It's *open source*. You don't need to do any business with CA unless you want support. I can think of any number of reasons for wanting CA support, but you don't *have to*.
All I know is that it's some sort of legal thing. I have no clue what, though. It wasn't meant as a "let's keep the scum out" thing, that's for sure.
The open-source site has a paper that highlights some of Ingres's features. That would be a good place to start.
I think you miss the point. Remember, DFW isn't writing for a mathematician, he's writing for the (above?)average Joe and Jane who, I am willing to bet dinner, really do at some level see infinity as *a* really large number. Sure, we all know better intellectually, but the gut says "how much larger than 10^10^10^10 can infinity be?"
I haven't read the book, but I very much suspect that his approach is valid. Get 'em thinking first, then lay out the details. I'm looking forward to reading this one.
Verisign runs the shared registry with Oracle, but the registrar-specific data was and still is stored using Ingres.