We run an off-the-shelf application that handles this problem nicely. Their database layer has a query object that takes a "cache timeout" value for each query issued.
This layer replaces all whitespace in the query with single spaces, then hashes the SQL query, and stores the results in the filesystem (as XML or plain text, depending on the nature of the result set(s)). The hash becomes the filename (e.g. "704A94757A794ABB8DEFCB48E86B97B1-cache.tmp"). Every time the same query is issued again, the cached file is used instead of a database connection, until the timeout age of the result set has passed. After the timeout has elapsed, the query is re-issued to the database, and the results are re-cached.
Now, this application has everything stored in the DB - the position of controls on forms, application logic, permissions, etc. This new caching system they recently added drastically reduced the load on our DB servers. By 50% or more. But all the flexibility of having DB-defined forms and workflow is still present.
This app is built in C# on.NET, and I'm not sure if these kewl caching features are built into ADO.NET or not. This is the only.NET app I've ever seen built with this sort of "universal" DB caching. But I think it's a very cool way to make an efficient but still entirely DB-driven app.
Do you have a 1080i native display? I'll bet you don't - cause they're still pretty damned expensive.
No they're not. My 42" Mitsubishi CRT rear-projection set is native 1080i and it cost $1300 at Tweeter.
Now, 1080p-native plasmas, DLPs, and LCDs are very rare and expensive, but rear-projection CRTs are very common. In fact, they're probably the most common HD-ready sets in the marketplace.
T-Mobile and Cingular both gave me the unlock codes for my GSM phones when I asked. I was able to use prepaid SIM cards while travelling in Europe. A new SIM card is all that is necessary to switch providers with the same handset in the US, so clearly this can be done.
In fact, the GSM-enabled U.S. carriers are probably happy to take you onto a contract without buying a new phone... they take a loss on the handset anyway, and make up the loss over the life of the service contract. Having you bring your existing phone into the mix equals more profit for the carrier, assuming the service price is the same.
And this is exactly why the market is failing in this case.
The free market is failing because it produces an outcome you personally don't agree with? Maybe the market is failing you but it is not failing as a whole.
The free market has no particular obligation to your whims. Consumers are not being ripped off, most are quite happy with the value they get from their Nikons, despite this RAW format issue. There are trade-offs with everything, and so Nikon cameras remain popular.
Do not expect an UniMog when you pay for a Honda Accord. And don't buy a Honda Accord when you really want/need a UniMog. That's the free market.
Not if your dictionary is big enough. If you have a 25,000 word dictionary, use two words, and a three digit number, thats about 40 bits of entropy. Throw in some random capitalization or increase the number size, and you can easily get 56+ bits of real entropy.
This compares very favorably with the those "first letters of a sentence" style passwords that so many people recommend. These have very questionable entropy in my opinion, considering the known-low entropy of English text at around 1.5 bits per character. It seems to me that the shortened password created from an english sentence has at most the entropy in the original English text, and probably much less because T, S, etc. letters are so common as "starting" letters for words in English.
First of all, who said anything about the customers being "unwitting"?
I find your moral paradigm fascinating... is it a sin to make money from your labors? And if not, why is it evil to do so through the vehicle of a collection of individuals with a common cause (i.e. a corporation)?
1) It's arguably not creative, and therefore not copyrightable. 2) It's arguably not a work of authorship, and therefore not copyrightable.
Well, okay, poor example. Say the fart is part of one of my poems I'm reading alound.
3) It's not fixed in a tangible medium, and therefore not copyrightable. (Unless 1101 applies, which is dubious with regards to facts and the law)
Huh? Isn't your tape the fixed and tangible medium? Where does the law say the author has to do the fixing? IANAL, but US Code Title 17, Ch 11 - 1101 seems pretty clear-cut to me. How could it not apply (assuming the fart were part of my poem, and not a random act of nature)? Hasn't 1101 been around for a very long time, and seen many challenges? Surely 1101 itself is not legally "dubious"?
Just have one "wanna be I.T." advanced user of each team (these are the ones that will also help you troubleshoot if functionality is altered
We do this, too, and the best thing is that these "techie" users not only test, they typically intercept and handle about 1/2 of the help desk calls that would have come from their particular department. They do this without me asking, and they probably know more about the functionality of e.g. our accounting applications than my help desk guys do.
We have 150 users and just two help desk guys, so this "user evangelist" system has been a godsend. We identify these people early on in each new application project and they feel like a part of the IT team. They are actually excited to help releive some of the burden off our shoulders. Some of them have even moved into my world with technical roles (development usually).
AFAIK, the artists or promoters hold all copyright to their live performances, whether or not they are published as albums. This is similar to the "No restrasmnission or reproduction of the images or audio of the SuperBowl is allowed, except with express written consent of the National Football Leage". So unless the band specifically allows taping and redistribution of a live performance (like The Grateful Dead or The Dave Matthews Band often do), the artist's copyright is still being violated.
...but since we're a startup without 1999 type funding...
If you have 1999-type funding, you can afford just about anything. Do you have a bunch of those neato Aeron chairs? An open floorplan layout with no cubicles and a bunch of water fountains and shit? And a Foosball table in your main datacenter?
If not, you don't really have 1999-type funding;-)
Maybe they gave up on general AI because the learning process would take too long, even at machine speed with perfect memory. It takes a human something like 13 years to develop just language ability to a reasonably complete level. Even while being immersed in exabytes of aural, visual, and non-verbal training data during those 13 years.
A human brain obviously has more interconnected nodes and memory than anything we can build for the next several decades at least, yet still it takes so long to train.
So maybe the weapons wonks gave up, and went to work on specialized AI systems. Besides, Congressional types like to fund problems that may see a resolution in their (electoral) lifetime.
If you're running production servers with 32 MB of RAM in 2005... well, I'd say you have monetary problems that take precedence over any of your software problems.
Anyway, read my this post about why the presence of the GUI has no meaningful effect on the performance of a Windows server. In my environemnt, it uses less than 0.1% CPU cycles and a few KB of RAM (paged out) unless someone is actually logged in and actively administering the box. And since most management can be done remotely with command-line tools and MMC GUI applets, I find it is rarely necessary to log into a Windows server and interact with the desktop.
The wikipedia text on Godwin's Law states that there are situations where comparisons with Hitler are appropriate and allowable, and I believe this qualifies.
Um... no your analogy does not qualify. That's the whole point of Godwin's Law. The rule stresses that referces to Hitler/Nazis should only be made when discussing WWII or neo-Nazism.
The fact is you used a Nazi reference when talking about computer software. And you weren't joking. You have stepped into the realm of the rediculous.
Do you actually believe Microsoft's aims are the same - or even close to - those of the Third Reich? MS justs wants to make gobs of money, not militarily dominate an entire continent and exterminate millions of people.
Then there are those who will pay $100.00 per month for redundant reliable connections.
Truly reliable hosting costs a lot more than that. We pay $5K per month for a full rack of dedicated servers plus 10 Mbps of bandwidth with a tier-1 hosting provider. The most significant portion of the bill is the 24-hour management of the servers. Management service is cheaper than putting our own staff on 24x7 call, but not exactly cheap at more than $3K per month.
What a great way to make sure nobody ever hires you.
If you were working for me as a web developer and came back with a site that did not work correctly with 90% of web browsers, I certainly wouldn't pay your invoice. I'd also probably try to find a way sue your ass for delaying whatever business initiative I had going.
Windows has had a QoS packet scheduler since 2000. You can set it up to prioritize network control messages like TCP-ACKs using group policy or registry entires. And it even implements an RFC standard (DiffServ) - imagine that. So if your router/ISP honor DiffServ, you'll have prioritization for acks all the way upstream until you reach a peering point.
I would have to assume those mirroring sites also have some sort of connection/contract that does not require them to pay per-byte for traffic. Or they use traffic shaping to keep their total download under their commit level. Hosting a mirror site on a basic connection that uses the standard "95/5" rule forbandwidth metering would be financial suicide.
As for the cheap 100 Mbps connections, Cogent is the biggest player, competing with Yipes and other so-called "metro ethernet" providers. You need to be in a "lit building" though - meaning the ISP has negotiated access rights with the building owner. If your building is not lit, you generally have to find a few other tenants willing to go with the service or commit to a more expensive deal to get them to light the building.
Our building in the financial district of downtown Chicago is lit by Cogent & Yipes, and both offer huge pipes for $1000 or so. Obviously these providers are continuously expanding their coverage areas. But they've learned from the excesses of the late 90s and are doing it slowly and only connecting sites they know will be profitable.
Many Linux ISO sites are hosted by universities, which typically have huge OC-whatever pipes that are subsidized by Tier-1 carriers as tax breaks.
Still, in many major cities in the US, you can get 100 Mbps of Interenet bandwidth - completely uncapped - for $1000 per month. From more than one provider.
Now, if you actually used enough of that 100Mbps to cause the ISP to have to renegotiate their peering arrangements, you might mysteriously find them unwilling to renew your contract. But the TOS inidcate that the 100 Mbps is really uncapped.
Dude, Exchange has had (virtually seamless) encryption features for years. Since at least v5.5 circa 1997. All you have to do is turn them on. Issuing certificates to clients is even easy, and they automatically deploy. Even escrow is handled automatically.
Granted, it's all based on S/MIME, which is quirky, but at least it's based on an open standard.
And as for your concerns about sysadmins being able to read emails... well, the sysadmins could always install a keystroke logger on the CEO's machine, couldn't they? No encryption technology will save you from that. Even if you use token authentication, the sysadmins probably have rights to reset the CEO's account to use a 'new' token as well. Comapanies simply have to trust their IT people to watch each other, just as they have to trust their accounting people to do the same.
Huh? I have literally dozens of choices for ISPs and phone companies in Chicago. Comcast or RCN cable, 15 DSL providers in addition to SBC, and even the GPRS service from Cingular, Sprint, and other wireless providers.
Now that's competition. Choices are fewer in the suburbs from what I hear, but in downtown Chicago there's plenty of options available for voice, data, and TV.
Slashdot Mirror
We run an off-the-shelf application that handles this problem nicely. Their database layer has a query object that takes a "cache timeout" value for each query issued.
This layer replaces all whitespace in the query with single spaces, then hashes the SQL query, and stores the results in the filesystem (as XML or plain text, depending on the nature of the result set(s)). The hash becomes the filename (e.g. "704A94757A794ABB8DEFCB48E86B97B1-cache.tmp"). Every time the same query is issued again, the cached file is used instead of a database connection, until the timeout age of the result set has passed. After the timeout has elapsed, the query is re-issued to the database, and the results are re-cached.
Now, this application has everything stored in the DB - the position of controls on forms, application logic, permissions, etc. This new caching system they recently added drastically reduced the load on our DB servers. By 50% or more. But all the flexibility of having DB-defined forms and workflow is still present.
This app is built in C# on .NET, and I'm not sure if these kewl caching features are built into ADO.NET or not. This is the only .NET app I've ever seen built with this sort of "universal" DB caching. But I think it's a very cool way to make an efficient but still entirely DB-driven app.
Is that pronounced "fan-BWAH"?
No they're not. My 42" Mitsubishi CRT rear-projection set is native 1080i and it cost $1300 at Tweeter.
Now, 1080p-native plasmas, DLPs, and LCDs are very rare and expensive, but rear-projection CRTs are very common. In fact, they're probably the most common HD-ready sets in the marketplace.
T-Mobile and Cingular both gave me the unlock codes for my GSM phones when I asked. I was able to use prepaid SIM cards while travelling in Europe. A new SIM card is all that is necessary to switch providers with the same handset in the US, so clearly this can be done.
In fact, the GSM-enabled U.S. carriers are probably happy to take you onto a contract without buying a new phone... they take a loss on the handset anyway, and make up the loss over the life of the service contract. Having you bring your existing phone into the mix equals more profit for the carrier, assuming the service price is the same.
The free market is failing because it produces an outcome you personally don't agree with? Maybe the market is failing you but it is not failing as a whole.
The free market has no particular obligation to your whims. Consumers are not being ripped off, most are quite happy with the value they get from their Nikons, despite this RAW format issue. There are trade-offs with everything, and so Nikon cameras remain popular.
Do not expect an UniMog when you pay for a Honda Accord. And don't buy a Honda Accord when you really want/need a UniMog. That's the free market.
Not if your dictionary is big enough. If you have a 25,000 word dictionary, use two words, and a three digit number, thats about 40 bits of entropy. Throw in some random capitalization or increase the number size, and you can easily get 56+ bits of real entropy.
This compares very favorably with the those "first letters of a sentence" style passwords that so many people recommend. These have very questionable entropy in my opinion, considering the known-low entropy of English text at around 1.5 bits per character. It seems to me that the shortened password created from an english sentence has at most the entropy in the original English text, and probably much less because T, S, etc. letters are so common as "starting" letters for words in English.
First of all, who said anything about the customers being "unwitting"?
I find your moral paradigm fascinating... is it a sin to make money from your labors? And if not, why is it evil to do so through the vehicle of a collection of individuals with a common cause (i.e. a corporation)?
Well, okay, poor example. Say the fart is part of one of my poems I'm reading alound.
Huh? Isn't your tape the fixed and tangible medium? Where does the law say the author has to do the fixing? IANAL, but US Code Title 17, Ch 11 - 1101 seems pretty clear-cut to me. How could it not apply (assuming the fart were part of my poem, and not a random act of nature)? Hasn't 1101 been around for a very long time, and seen many challenges? Surely 1101 itself is not legally "dubious"?
We do this, too, and the best thing is that these "techie" users not only test, they typically intercept and handle about 1/2 of the help desk calls that would have come from their particular department. They do this without me asking, and they probably know more about the functionality of e.g. our accounting applications than my help desk guys do.
We have 150 users and just two help desk guys, so this "user evangelist" system has been a godsend. We identify these people early on in each new application project and they feel like a part of the IT team. They are actually excited to help releive some of the burden off our shoulders. Some of them have even moved into my world with technical roles (development usually).
AFAIK, the artists or promoters hold all copyright to their live performances, whether or not they are published as albums. This is similar to the "No restrasmnission or reproduction of the images or audio of the SuperBowl is allowed, except with express written consent of the National Football Leage". So unless the band specifically allows taping and redistribution of a live performance (like The Grateful Dead or The Dave Matthews Band often do), the artist's copyright is still being violated.
I believe in the U.S., you do not have to claim copyright on a work, you automatically have copyright "the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device". If I fart on the street corner, you can't tape it and re-distribute it without my explicit permission.
Of course, after posting, I realize that I misread "without 199 type funding" as "with 1999 type funding". So please ignore me.
If you have 1999-type funding, you can afford just about anything. Do you have a bunch of those neato Aeron chairs? An open floorplan layout with no cubicles and a bunch of water fountains and shit? And a Foosball table in your main datacenter?
If not, you don't really have 1999-type funding ;-)
Maybe they gave up on general AI because the learning process would take too long, even at machine speed with perfect memory. It takes a human something like 13 years to develop just language ability to a reasonably complete level. Even while being immersed in exabytes of aural, visual, and non-verbal training data during those 13 years.
A human brain obviously has more interconnected nodes and memory than anything we can build for the next several decades at least, yet still it takes so long to train.
So maybe the weapons wonks gave up, and went to work on specialized AI systems. Besides, Congressional types like to fund problems that may see a resolution in their (electoral) lifetime.
If you're running production servers with 32 MB of RAM in 2005... well, I'd say you have monetary problems that take precedence over any of your software problems.
Anyway, read my this post about why the presence of the GUI has no meaningful effect on the performance of a Windows server. In my environemnt, it uses less than 0.1% CPU cycles and a few KB of RAM (paged out) unless someone is actually logged in and actively administering the box. And since most management can be done remotely with command-line tools and MMC GUI applets, I find it is rarely necessary to log into a Windows server and interact with the desktop.
Um... no your analogy does not qualify. That's the whole point of Godwin's Law. The rule stresses that referces to Hitler/Nazis should only be made when discussing WWII or neo-Nazism.
The fact is you used a Nazi reference when talking about computer software. And you weren't joking. You have stepped into the realm of the rediculous.
Do you actually believe Microsoft's aims are the same - or even close to - those of the Third Reich? MS justs wants to make gobs of money, not militarily dominate an entire continent and exterminate millions of people.
Truly reliable hosting costs a lot more than that. We pay $5K per month for a full rack of dedicated servers plus 10 Mbps of bandwidth with a tier-1 hosting provider. The most significant portion of the bill is the 24-hour management of the servers. Management service is cheaper than putting our own staff on 24x7 call, but not exactly cheap at more than $3K per month.
You have been penalized for one violation of Godwin's Law. You have lost this argument. Please go sit in the corner and be quiet.
Since the Americian public, via Congress, gave them the authority back in 1934.
What a great way to make sure nobody ever hires you.
If you were working for me as a web developer and came back with a site that did not work correctly with 90% of web browsers, I certainly wouldn't pay your invoice. I'd also probably try to find a way sue your ass for delaying whatever business initiative I had going.
Windows has had a QoS packet scheduler since 2000. You can set it up to prioritize network control messages like TCP-ACKs using group policy or registry entires. And it even implements an RFC standard (DiffServ) - imagine that. So if your router/ISP honor DiffServ, you'll have prioritization for acks all the way upstream until you reach a peering point.
I would have to assume those mirroring sites also have some sort of connection/contract that does not require them to pay per-byte for traffic. Or they use traffic shaping to keep their total download under their commit level. Hosting a mirror site on a basic connection that uses the standard "95/5" rule forbandwidth metering would be financial suicide.
As for the cheap 100 Mbps connections, Cogent is the biggest player, competing with Yipes and other so-called "metro ethernet" providers. You need to be in a "lit building" though - meaning the ISP has negotiated access rights with the building owner. If your building is not lit, you generally have to find a few other tenants willing to go with the service or commit to a more expensive deal to get them to light the building.
Our building in the financial district of downtown Chicago is lit by Cogent & Yipes, and both offer huge pipes for $1000 or so. Obviously these providers are continuously expanding their coverage areas. But they've learned from the excesses of the late 90s and are doing it slowly and only connecting sites they know will be profitable.
Many Linux ISO sites are hosted by universities, which typically have huge OC-whatever pipes that are subsidized by Tier-1 carriers as tax breaks.
Still, in many major cities in the US, you can get 100 Mbps of Interenet bandwidth - completely uncapped - for $1000 per month. From more than one provider.
Now, if you actually used enough of that 100Mbps to cause the ISP to have to renegotiate their peering arrangements, you might mysteriously find them unwilling to renew your contract. But the TOS inidcate that the 100 Mbps is really uncapped.
Dude, Exchange has had (virtually seamless) encryption features for years. Since at least v5.5 circa 1997. All you have to do is turn them on. Issuing certificates to clients is even easy, and they automatically deploy. Even escrow is handled automatically.
Granted, it's all based on S/MIME, which is quirky, but at least it's based on an open standard.
And as for your concerns about sysadmins being able to read emails... well, the sysadmins could always install a keystroke logger on the CEO's machine, couldn't they? No encryption technology will save you from that. Even if you use token authentication, the sysadmins probably have rights to reset the CEO's account to use a 'new' token as well. Comapanies simply have to trust their IT people to watch each other, just as they have to trust their accounting people to do the same.
Huh? I have literally dozens of choices for ISPs and phone companies in Chicago. Comcast or RCN cable, 15 DSL providers in addition to SBC, and even the GPRS service from Cingular, Sprint, and other wireless providers.
Now that's competition. Choices are fewer in the suburbs from what I hear, but in downtown Chicago there's plenty of options available for voice, data, and TV.
Let me say it loudly for the other non-sysadmins out there:
RAID != BACKUP
You still need backups (stored off-site) to protect you from things like: