Betamax didn't die because porn adopted VHS. It died because it offered such low running times, not even long enough for a standard hour-and-a-half movie. People switched to the VHS format when they realized they could record at 8 hour just by lowering picture quality slightly.
I think it's more like porn adopted VHS because consumers were adopting VHS. I think people just like the idea of porn driving technology as some sort of humorous irony, but I don't think it's quite as true as they want it to be.
Actually, most do. This is based on what Taco has said in the past as well as the logs of sites that get linked in story articles or comments. Not really that surprising.
The more I learn about MySQL (from the perspective of someone who was initially gung-ho about PostgreSQL), the more I realised the shortcomings of MySQL weren't really shortcomings. They were misunderstandings.
It's hard not to misunderstand MySQL's bizarre handling of NULL/NOT NULL or their lovely silent truncation.
If the DB rejects it, what are you going to do with it?
Fix the code that's sending the invalid data? This "data integrity should entirely be in the app" argument is ridiculous. No matter how much data validation you do in code, your database should be checking the input sent to it. A database should not silently insert 0000-00-00 if you submit an invalid date, nor should it silently truncate your data. It should throw an error so you'll catch it in code (you should always be checking for an error after every query).
Data validation in code is the first line of defense, but database input validation is the last, essential line of defense, because if your code screws up (humans aren't perfect) and bad data gets sent to a database like MySQL, it could silently go in without your knowing.
What sort of toy program passes invalid variables/values?
What sort of toy database silently accepts them?
Humans are imperfect and don't write perfect code You need the database to throw those warnings so you can know where you're submitting invalid data and fix the problem.
I will never understand this--MySQL fans continue to argue that it's completely okay for the database to silently accept any data, even truncating it without telling you. This is why MySQL continues to be considered a toy database.
there are these nasty things called sql injection attacks and other nastiness. as a developer you should never, never throw data in the DB and see what sticks.
Which makes MySQL's liberal acceptance of any data all the more dangerous.
if you REALLY need the logic to reject things like blank inputs in web forms then you should be doing that in your application logic anyway....
This is ridiculous. You want your database to give you warning about your invalid input so you can correct it in your code instead of silently corrupting your data.
or if you really don't care all that much you probably just want to accept the submission quietly.
That's the problem, MySQL will always just accept it quietly. Humans are imperfect, and if your code has a bug, who knows how long it would be before you noticed invalid data showing up in the database...or, your database could have warned you so your code could check for it in the first place, and you could fix the input you're feeding the database.
For me, I use MySQL mainly for website backends (as do LOTS of other people).
MySQL is pretty much used exclusively in the non-essential, "dynamic homepage" market where data isn't important. I would not use MySQL in cases where data matters. Incidentally, I care about the data on my site and don't use MySQL there, either.
- having to have an internet connection to play the single player game, and spending several hours waiting for it to decrypt when I bought it release day
Agree with you about decryption, but anyone who continues to say you have to connect to play singler player is simply an idiot. Offline Mode has existed for over a year.
- how they first required both steam activation AND a dvd check for the store-bought version
Take it up with the publisher, not Valve, who demanded it. Valve later removed the check.
- that when steam goes belly-up, I can't play (had that problem at a LAN party, massive counter-strike problems for lots of people as the net connection couldn't handle steam logins for 200 ppl)
So play in Offline Mode.
- if valve goes out of business, I lose the ability to play the game I paid for
No, they would most likely release a patch to remove Steam.
- mandatory patches tying up my internet connection unexpectedly, a real problem for dialup users
So play in Offline Mode.
- piracy protection that does nothing to stop hacked copies showing up on torrent sites, but makes me jump through hoops
Ha, those pirated copies can't update and often crash.
-randomly losing my installed game files, forcing me to spend hours downloading and reinstalling the game via steam (happened to me twice now)
Nonetheless, bugs exist because humans are imperfect, and I'd rather the database actually not silently corrupt its own data and instead at least give me a little warning to check for in code so I know something is wrong, instead of just quietly truncating my numbers or happily accepting February 31st as a valid date.
You don't rely on the database to validate your data, but you do expect it to refuse the statements and let you know when your code is trying to enter invalid data, so that you can fix the code and not be corrupting your database unknowingly.
I see, you're a SQL purist. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that I come at things from a bit of a different perspective.
I'm not an SQL purist, I'm a data integrity purist. Did you read the "Gotchas" site I linked to? MySQL silently inserted an empty value for a NOT NULL field. There are an alarming number of cases where data is truncated silently, zeros are entered silently, and NULL fields leads to weird assumptions on MySQL's part--all silently. I like my databases to let me know when they're making assumptions or doing anything automatically so I can respond to it in code.
I do have one follow up question for you. You mention that you don't like having to get the PK after an insert into an auto_increment field, but I still didn't see any reason why this system doesn't work. Do you have an example where it's necessary to get the PK before the insert? Or is this just a matter of preference?
Not only do I like to be able to associate user-uploaded files with content they may be editing but haven't yet published and submitted to the database, but MySQL's auto_increment leads to situations where 0 equals 1. MySQL just ignores what you give it sometimes without warning and does its own thing. I can't trust that, not for what I do.
Now, sure, I could walk around it all and conform my code to compensate, but I think it's the job of the database to be protecting its integrity, not me.
Maybe you should have been teaching your students a more SQL-compliant database anyway. I still shake my head at MySQL's poor handing of NULL/NOT NULL and auto-sequences.
In SQL NULL represents the the absence of a value. In MySQL an explicit NULL may also represent the next value of a pseudo-sequence and an implicit NULL may represent an implicit default value (a zero or empty string) determined by MySQL. See here and this Wikipedia article for more info.
Why do think that this is better? In one case you call the function and then use the value, and in the other case you insert the row and then ask what the new PK is. I'm not sure how one is better than the other. Could you explain?
If you're wanting to know your next ID number before inserting data, you're screwed in MySQL. MySQL uses "auto_increment" fields that just add one to the previous row's value, while PostgreSQL uses what are called sequences which are guaranteed to always return a unique value, and you use those for your ID fields. In MySQL, there's no way of finding out the next value in an auto_increment sequence until you've committed a row to the database, while PostgreSQL lets you peek at the next value in the sequence.
Details please? I'm not trying to pick on you here. I'm just trying to figure out what your complaint is. The MySQL manual is huge, so you can't expect everyone to know what you're talking about.
Here you go. The old manual criticized foreign key constraints and transactions using bizarre reasoning.
For what it's worth, MySQL has some features that we really love, like the binary logs. We have yet to lose a single row because of database corruption.
The issue with MySQL isn't database corruption, it's data integrity. A lot of things in MySQL will happen and not give you any warnings, whereas other databases are very strict about giving you a warning or even refusing the statement with an error so you can respond to it in your code. There are an alarming number of conditions where MySQL inserts things like zeros into fields without telling a single thing. You can't fully trust MySQL.
Re:We could re-do Myst...better, even!
on
Cyan Worlds Closes
·
· Score: 1
Play Myst IV sometime. No OSS community effort is going to match that.
Honestly? I don't know why someone would use MySQL over something like PostgreSQL. From numerous data integrity issues (just look at how they handle null fields) to things like this, I'm glad I chose to go with PostgreSQL last year instead of MySQL for my app. Beyond the ubiquitousness of MySQL due to great marketing, I don't see any advantages over the alternatives. It sure is nice being able to just call a simple function to get the next value in an automatic sequence, unlike MySQL and its "auto_increment" behavior.
If someone is a MySQL fan, they may regard this as a troll, but hey. MySQL has long been criticized as both a database and as an organization by many other people besides me.
Plus, they'll never live down their discouraging remarks about foreign keys in the old MySQL manual.
Re:We could re-do Myst...better, even!
on
Cyan Worlds Closes
·
· Score: 1
These days, any one of us could crank out Myst classic inside a month on our desktop.
Wrong. The state diagram alone would be weeks of work, as would creating worlds of textures and modelling, rendering each point of view shot in each required state, and tracking everything to make sure they're seamless when you stitch the images together.
If it was really so easy, it would have been done.
It's not piracy when it's Fair Use; just because I don't use their approved methods doesn't mean it's not Fair Use--piracy is about theft and stealing. And it is never stealing, since I'm not taking anything from them nor trying to sell something that doesn't belong to me.
Fair Use means making personal backups, not distributing them across the net. Yes, it is stealing, just like it's "stolen" GPL code when someone violates the GPL copyright.
Is it piracy when you lend a movie or book to your friend?
You're not "lending" MP3s.
Is it theft when your neighbor borrows your water hose?
You're not "borrowing" MP3s.
"I gave a gallon of gas to a guy stranded on the side of the road--does an act become illegal because it was mostly anonymous?
Improving the picture quality of a television is logical for a television. The point was that phones are adding so many non-phone features that the features are poor quality crap, instead of focusing on and improving the features of a phone. Color is an obvious television feature.
I just wish Slashdot stopped posting summaries like that. We're adults; we don't need rhetoric spoonfed to us.
First there was the mother, Patricia Santangelo, who has refused to roll-over to RIAA demands to pay their extortion fee because they claim to have identified her IP address as involved in Kazaa file sharing.
"Extortion fee?" They identified an IP address from her computer that was infringing on their copyrighted materials, and so they legally went after her. I don't see "extortion" thrown around when people are demanding to sue companies that violate the copyright of the GPL.
I just think people use the RIAA as a scapegoat too often just to justify piracy. Five years ago, Slashdot, editors included, were ADVOCATING that they go after individual downloaders and lay off the companies like Napster. Five years later, they're doing just that, and suddenly that's wrong too.
A far superior site is Digg.com. Users decide what gets posted, and just a scan of today's front page reminds me of the old Slashdot frontpage of yesteryear.
There's even an interview with one of the Mythbusters! Cool.
Normal reporting on an exciting company is one thing, but a lot of Slashdot's articles are "Google Rumored To Be Making OS" or "Google Rumored To Be Making Browser." A ton of it is just filler to get Google on the front page for more page hits.
What do I expect from people who thrive on tech news? Actual tech news. There is tons going on in the world beyond what's getting posted to Slashdot these days. Five years ago, you saw a lot more great science and technical articles on the front page, but no longer.
MP3s, WMAs, OGGs are all lossy. Your MP3 is not going to sound as good as the CD no matter whether you ripped it from CD or from the master.
I hate to break it to you, but CDs are lossy too. Yes, ripping from the master tapes sounds better than ripping from the CD. Particularly, there is clearer stereo separation and more high-end, and a general loudness/punchiness that isn't there when ripping from CD.
Ripped from the master will not make a lossy format any less lossy than one ripped from CD.
Slashdot Mirror
Betamax didn't die because porn adopted VHS. It died because it offered such low running times, not even long enough for a standard hour-and-a-half movie. People switched to the VHS format when they realized they could record at 8 hour just by lowering picture quality slightly.
I think it's more like porn adopted VHS because consumers were adopting VHS. I think people just like the idea of porn driving technology as some sort of humorous irony, but I don't think it's quite as true as they want it to be.
Actually, most do. This is based on what Taco has said in the past as well as the logs of sites that get linked in story articles or comments. Not really that surprising.
The more I learn about MySQL (from the perspective of someone who was initially gung-ho about PostgreSQL), the more I realised the shortcomings of MySQL weren't really shortcomings. They were misunderstandings.
It's hard not to misunderstand MySQL's bizarre handling of NULL/NOT NULL or their lovely silent truncation.
MySQL Gotchas
If the DB rejects it, what are you going to do with it?
Fix the code that's sending the invalid data? This "data integrity should entirely be in the app" argument is ridiculous. No matter how much data validation you do in code, your database should be checking the input sent to it. A database should not silently insert 0000-00-00 if you submit an invalid date, nor should it silently truncate your data. It should throw an error so you'll catch it in code (you should always be checking for an error after every query).
Data validation in code is the first line of defense, but database input validation is the last, essential line of defense, because if your code screws up (humans aren't perfect) and bad data gets sent to a database like MySQL, it could silently go in without your knowing.
what's the point of arguing with a script?
To see if you actually had a valid reason for calling it a script.
What sort of toy program passes invalid variables/values?
What sort of toy database silently accepts them?
Humans are imperfect and don't write perfect code You need the database to throw those warnings so you can know where you're submitting invalid data and fix the problem.
I will never understand this--MySQL fans continue to argue that it's completely okay for the database to silently accept any data, even truncating it without telling you. This is why MySQL continues to be considered a toy database.
there are these nasty things called sql injection attacks and other nastiness. as a developer you should never, never throw data in the DB and see what sticks.
Which makes MySQL's liberal acceptance of any data all the more dangerous.
if you REALLY need the logic to reject things like blank inputs in web forms then you should be doing that in your application logic anyway....
This is ridiculous. You want your database to give you warning about your invalid input so you can correct it in your code instead of silently corrupting your data.
or if you really don't care all that much you probably just want to accept the submission quietly.
That's the problem, MySQL will always just accept it quietly. Humans are imperfect, and if your code has a bug, who knows how long it would be before you noticed invalid data showing up in the database...or, your database could have warned you so your code could check for it in the first place, and you could fix the input you're feeding the database.
For me, I use MySQL mainly for website backends (as do LOTS of other people).
MySQL is pretty much used exclusively in the non-essential, "dynamic homepage" market where data isn't important. I would not use MySQL in cases where data matters. Incidentally, I care about the data on my site and don't use MySQL there, either.
- having to have an internet connection to play the single player game, and spending several hours waiting for it to decrypt when I bought it release day
Agree with you about decryption, but anyone who continues to say you have to connect to play singler player is simply an idiot. Offline Mode has existed for over a year.
- how they first required both steam activation AND a dvd check for the store-bought version
Take it up with the publisher, not Valve, who demanded it. Valve later removed the check.
- that when steam goes belly-up, I can't play (had that problem at a LAN party, massive counter-strike problems for lots of people as the net connection couldn't handle steam logins for 200 ppl)
So play in Offline Mode.
- if valve goes out of business, I lose the ability to play the game I paid for
No, they would most likely release a patch to remove Steam.
- mandatory patches tying up my internet connection unexpectedly, a real problem for dialup users
So play in Offline Mode.
- piracy protection that does nothing to stop hacked copies showing up on torrent sites, but makes me jump through hoops
Ha, those pirated copies can't update and often crash.
-randomly losing my installed game files, forcing me to spend hours downloading and reinstalling the game via steam (happened to me twice now)
Never had a problem, so can't help you there.
Laptops are overtaking desktop sales. Mobile computing and lower power consumption is the future as devices get smaller and faster.
In other words, you have no counterargument to any of his points?
Nonetheless, bugs exist because humans are imperfect, and I'd rather the database actually not silently corrupt its own data and instead at least give me a little warning to check for in code so I know something is wrong, instead of just quietly truncating my numbers or happily accepting February 31st as a valid date.
You don't rely on the database to validate your data, but you do expect it to refuse the statements and let you know when your code is trying to enter invalid data, so that you can fix the code and not be corrupting your database unknowingly.
I see, you're a SQL purist. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that I come at things from a bit of a different perspective.
I'm not an SQL purist, I'm a data integrity purist. Did you read the "Gotchas" site I linked to? MySQL silently inserted an empty value for a NOT NULL field. There are an alarming number of cases where data is truncated silently, zeros are entered silently, and NULL fields leads to weird assumptions on MySQL's part--all silently. I like my databases to let me know when they're making assumptions or doing anything automatically so I can respond to it in code.
Here's another article--MySQL Oddities.
I do have one follow up question for you. You mention that you don't like having to get the PK after an insert into an auto_increment field, but I still didn't see any reason why this system doesn't work. Do you have an example where it's necessary to get the PK before the insert? Or is this just a matter of preference?
Not only do I like to be able to associate user-uploaded files with content they may be editing but haven't yet published and submitted to the database, but MySQL's auto_increment leads to situations where 0 equals 1. MySQL just ignores what you give it sometimes without warning and does its own thing. I can't trust that, not for what I do.
Now, sure, I could walk around it all and conform my code to compensate, but I think it's the job of the database to be protecting its integrity, not me.
Maybe you should have been teaching your students a more SQL-compliant database anyway. I still shake my head at MySQL's poor handing of NULL/NOT NULL and auto-sequences.
Would you care to elaborate?
In SQL NULL represents the the absence of a value. In MySQL an explicit NULL may also represent the next value of a pseudo-sequence and an implicit NULL may represent an implicit default value (a zero or empty string) determined by MySQL. See here and this Wikipedia article for more info.
Why do think that this is better? In one case you call the function and then use the value, and in the other case you insert the row and then ask what the new PK is. I'm not sure how one is better than the other. Could you explain?
If you're wanting to know your next ID number before inserting data, you're screwed in MySQL. MySQL uses "auto_increment" fields that just add one to the previous row's value, while PostgreSQL uses what are called sequences which are guaranteed to always return a unique value, and you use those for your ID fields. In MySQL, there's no way of finding out the next value in an auto_increment sequence until you've committed a row to the database, while PostgreSQL lets you peek at the next value in the sequence.
Details please? I'm not trying to pick on you here. I'm just trying to figure out what your complaint is. The MySQL manual is huge, so you can't expect everyone to know what you're talking about.
Here you go. The old manual criticized foreign key constraints and transactions using bizarre reasoning.
For what it's worth, MySQL has some features that we really love, like the binary logs. We have yet to lose a single row because of database corruption.
The issue with MySQL isn't database corruption, it's data integrity. A lot of things in MySQL will happen and not give you any warnings, whereas other databases are very strict about giving you a warning or even refusing the statement with an error so you can respond to it in your code. There are an alarming number of conditions where MySQL inserts things like zeros into fields without telling a single thing. You can't fully trust MySQL.
Play Myst IV sometime. No OSS community effort is going to match that.
Honestly? I don't know why someone would use MySQL over something like PostgreSQL. From numerous data integrity issues (just look at how they handle null fields) to things like this, I'm glad I chose to go with PostgreSQL last year instead of MySQL for my app. Beyond the ubiquitousness of MySQL due to great marketing, I don't see any advantages over the alternatives. It sure is nice being able to just call a simple function to get the next value in an automatic sequence, unlike MySQL and its "auto_increment" behavior.
If someone is a MySQL fan, they may regard this as a troll, but hey. MySQL has long been criticized as both a database and as an organization by many other people besides me.
Plus, they'll never live down their discouraging remarks about foreign keys in the old MySQL manual.
These days, any one of us could crank out Myst classic inside a month on our desktop.
Wrong. The state diagram alone would be weeks of work, as would creating worlds of textures and modelling, rendering each point of view shot in each required state, and tracking everything to make sure they're seamless when you stitch the images together.
If it was really so easy, it would have been done.
It was an obvious joke, mods.
It's not piracy when it's Fair Use; just because I don't use their approved methods doesn't mean it's not Fair Use--piracy is about theft and stealing. And it is never stealing, since I'm not taking anything from them nor trying to sell something that doesn't belong to me.
Fair Use means making personal backups, not distributing them across the net. Yes, it is stealing, just like it's "stolen" GPL code when someone violates the GPL copyright.
Is it piracy when you lend a movie or book to your friend?
You're not "lending" MP3s.
Is it theft when your neighbor borrows your water hose?
You're not "borrowing" MP3s.
"I gave a gallon of gas to a guy stranded on the side of the road--does an act become illegal because it was mostly anonymous?
You're not "giving away" MP3s.
Next.
Improving the picture quality of a television is logical for a television. The point was that phones are adding so many non-phone features that the features are poor quality crap, instead of focusing on and improving the features of a phone. Color is an obvious television feature.
I just wish Slashdot stopped posting summaries like that. We're adults; we don't need rhetoric spoonfed to us.
First there was the mother, Patricia Santangelo, who has refused to roll-over to RIAA demands to pay their extortion fee because they claim to have identified her IP address as involved in Kazaa file sharing.
"Extortion fee?" They identified an IP address from her computer that was infringing on their copyrighted materials, and so they legally went after her. I don't see "extortion" thrown around when people are demanding to sue companies that violate the copyright of the GPL.
I just think people use the RIAA as a scapegoat too often just to justify piracy. Five years ago, Slashdot, editors included, were ADVOCATING that they go after individual downloaders and lay off the companies like Napster. Five years later, they're doing just that, and suddenly that's wrong too.
A far superior site is Digg.com. Users decide what gets posted, and just a scan of today's front page reminds me of the old Slashdot frontpage of yesteryear.
There's even an interview with one of the Mythbusters! Cool.
Normal reporting on an exciting company is one thing, but a lot of Slashdot's articles are "Google Rumored To Be Making OS" or "Google Rumored To Be Making Browser." A ton of it is just filler to get Google on the front page for more page hits.
What do I expect from people who thrive on tech news? Actual tech news. There is tons going on in the world beyond what's getting posted to Slashdot these days. Five years ago, you saw a lot more great science and technical articles on the front page, but no longer.
MP3s, WMAs, OGGs are all lossy. Your MP3 is not going to sound as good as the CD no matter whether you ripped it from CD or from the master.
I hate to break it to you, but CDs are lossy too. Yes, ripping from the master tapes sounds better than ripping from the CD. Particularly, there is clearer stereo separation and more high-end, and a general loudness/punchiness that isn't there when ripping from CD.
Ripped from the master will not make a lossy format any less lossy than one ripped from CD.
100% wrong.