It implied that I asserted some proof of God's existence. Removing a paradox is not a claim of proof.
Umm, no. Your claim was that "God must be a 5-dimensional creature (or higher)." As one-dimensional systems (a modern computer) can simulate three-dimensional systems (as any fps gamer can trivially demonstrate for you), such a property is not required.
"Intelligent designer" is more hip slang these days, so pardon me if I don't use the formal Agnus Dei. I mean nothing more with it.
Modern science demands that we be more flexible with our definition of an Intelligent Designer and our relationship with such a being. A cursory examination of the fossil record makes impossible a literal belief in Adam & Eve and Original Sin - and if this is so, then why would a Messiah be necessary? Still, a sober analysis of the human race indicates that there truly are fundamental problems with who we are and how we behave, and these problems might require a great expression of tolerance if the ID were ever to willingly put up with us on a long-term basis... perhaps something along the lines of a Messiah. Who knows?
In any case, don't be part of the problem. The line between proselytizing and fascism is very thin indeed.
Since it is commonly accepted that God would transcend the Universe, his conciousness would be at least five-dimensional.
I don't buy this. Computer memory is one-dimensional, but is capable of accurately modeling three-dimensional phenomena, and is also capable of moving such simulations through time.
In theory, a zero-dimensional system (a single point), capable of sufficient variation of state (not implying time?), would be capable of simulating an arbitrary number of dimensions.
The formula for a circle is x^2 + y^2 = r^2; for the sphere it is x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = r^2. What happens with the sum of x[n]^2 + x[n-1]^2 + x[n-2]^2... = r^2 as n approaches infinity?
Conceiving of dimensional equations does not necessarily mean participating in them. AFAIK, we can draw no conclusions of an "intelligent designer" from this line of reasoning.
...that my enterprise systems running on HP-UX 10.20, Oracle 7 and Entera are the equivalent of shopping in the Goodwill that is in the back of the KMart?
I guess that I won't be attending any Paris fasion shows anytime soon.
Seriously, core business logic seems to get implemented and STAY implemented. Just ask the COBOL guys.
No, it's not, because you are locked into the vendor. Also, AFAIK, the DB2 kernel is only fully instrumented on the mainframe (z-series) platform - if you have severe performance problems, extensive diagnosis can only be done if you move to a z-series system. I'm certain that UDB lacks proper instrumentation, and my documentation says that z-series is the only place where proper performance statistics can be gathered.
I don't like being locked into Oracle either. The security is bad and the sales staff are sharks, but they have the best technology (featureset) hands down. If Oracle wasn't an option, I would look to the many free databases before I'd consider DB2.
AFAIK, DB2 didn't get triggers until v5, which was released in the late 90's. Oracle had triggers probably 15 years ahead of IBM.
DB2 has been roadkill for Oracle for a long, long time. If Oracle hadn't a) bet on Itanium and b) mouthed off about IBM benchmarking Oracle on POWER in preference to DB2, Oracle would still be the #1 TPC-C performer (and Oracle still beats DB2 on the same hardware, AFIAK).
DB2 is cheap, but I would never recommend it to a non-IBM shop. You end up on an AS/400 before you know it, and that is not a nice place to be.
...for RIM to announce a one-day shutdown of all US service as a "test measure" prior to the injunction?
What sort of contractual problems would RIM face in selectively shutting down the US market before the injunction takes effect? Would the resultant uproar be sufficient for a more flexible stance from the judiciary? Might the supreme court decide to get involved after all?
If Rose was able to destroy the Daleks by simply having a long look at the TARDIS core, then why did the entire Gallifreyian species die out in the Dalek conflict? Were none of them able to do the same? Why was the Doctor able to survive the exposure?
If the captured Dalek destroyed itself because of the contamination from Rose, then why did the God Dalek consent to use humans as raw material?
Why did Rose choose the words "Bad Wolf?" Why were they significant? Was there any useful meaning?
Why would the Autons, the Rift, the Slovenes, the gas creatures, and Rose's home all be in Cardiff? I'd never heard of this place before; the coincidence strains credulity.
More attention seems to have been paid to continuity in the old series. It needs better plots.
If your example is the best you can come up with in refuting my assertion that using different DB back ends can be transparent to the user then I would have to say you failed miserably.
Oh really? Let's have a little test, shall we?
SQL Server's "BEGIN TRANSACTION" is critical, but it can be ignored in Oracle. This is a key difference in the behavior of the servers. Why? What is the penalty of using it incorrectly?
What is Oracle's equivalent of SQL Server's "Clustered" index? How does this relate to the primary key? When can using such a cluster diminish performance?
Where are temporary tables a good idea, and where are they not so good?
If you issue DDL, what will this do to an open transaction?
You modified one of your queries by using a function on an indexed column in the WHERE clause. Performance has suddenly tanked. Why?
Understanding the above is the bare minimum in building a cross-platform, scalable system (at least between the Sybase derivatives and Oracle). Developers who ignore their DBAs build unscalable junk.
People who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by the people doing it.
Someone who tries to do everything does nothing well. You lack basic knowledge of the SQL dialects, so you are unaware of the pitfalls. Your success is probably due to blind luck.
Consider this example... try it in SQL Server. Oracle will not enforce a UNIQUE constraint on a NULL, while SQL Server will.
SQL create table test (x int unique);
Table created.
SQL insert into test values (null);
1 row created.
SQL insert into test values (null);
1 row created.
SQL insert into test values (null);
1 row created.
SQL insert into test values (1);
1 row created.
SQL insert into test values (1); insert into test values (1) * ERROR at line 1: ORA-00001: unique constraint (SYS_C0023760) violated
Also, your comment seems to me like you are taken a position of a technology zeolot. This technology is better, or this technology we got to have. Technology is there to solve problems not create them.
Zealot? No, hard experience. For example, take "SELECT * FROM TAB WHERE X IS NULL" - this is something that all databases will do, but will kill you in Oracle, since for the most part NULLs will never be indexed and will force a full table scan (nulls are recorded in bitmap and composite indexes). You do this in any volume with your app and it's dead.
And there are a LOT of applications that absolutely, positively, cannot live without triggers.
You must have a huge list of forbidden database procedures in your entry-SQL92 lexicon. But yes, you probably have the ability to run under Postgres and MySQL, which would be a tremendous benefit (letting you do to the DB vendor what Oracle has done to commercial UNIX). It comes at a cost, though.
As a programmmer, writing queries to DB A is pretty darnd exactly like writing queries for DB B.
Not true. Modern databases have wildly different architectures, and highly tuned code on one platform will bring another to its knees.
Some features won't port - Oracle has long-supported DECODE, which locks in much SQL to Oracle. Or how about synthetic keys, implemented in Sybase/SQL Server with an "IDENTITY" column, or in Oracle with a "SEQUENCE?" This is basic functionality which must be recoded in a db port. And we will leave trigger syntax right out - there was never a standard for it.
Some databases support locks on only a whole page, while some allow locking individual rows (but even in Oracle, if your INITTRANS and MAXTRANS are not appropriate and/or the block is full, your table will behave as if only page locks are available).
Many databases have an in-memory table for row-locks; when the table gets full, lock-promotion occurs. Oracle has no in-memory table, and there is never a lock promotion (but there is lock escalation).
PostgreSQL uses a transaction model that is essentially identical to Oracle's, even though it's implemented differently.
The big difference appears to me to be the storage of undo information. Oracle records row changes in a special location (either a newer "undo" tablespace or the older "rollback segments").
Postgres (AFAIK) actually marks the row as deleted, then writes a new copy of the row with the modifications, so the undo information is integrated into the associated table(space), much as the older dBase products did. These old copies of rows allow database "time travel" to see previous versions of the data (this feature was added to Oracle 9 as "flashback query"). One advantage of Oracle's implementation is that the undo/rollback will mostly clean itself up, while Postgres tables must be periodically "vacuumed" to remove the old rows.
It is interesting to see Oracle add a few innovations that first seemed to appear in Postgres. The most notible of these enhancements was SQL support for regular expressions.
...let alone me. I remember professors desperate for tenure videotaping themselves in class, while reviewers in the rear of the room openly laughed at the (lack of) classroom communication skills - such a gracious display of tact.
I remember professors in screaming tirades hurling materials at students, all over the question of where a final would be held.
Where was the concern about my education in this? Where was the focus on my learning to think? As far as I know, it was nonexistant.
Perhaps you are imagining things, and the degree is more of a line item than you would like to admit.
I know that we didn't go to the same college... are you sure that we even went to the same school?
p.s. The only time the issue of my GPA is raised is when an interviewer is trying to talk down my salary - it is a sure sign to head for the door.
The author is spot on in quite a few respects - engineering is more a test of endurance than intelligence. Professors are assigned courses that have nothing to do with their areas of research, and it shows. Most TAs hate their jobs and constantly attempt to unionize because of poor working conditions.
Shortly before I started engineering, a crazed physics TA went on a shooting rampage through my campus, killing seven people before he turned the gun on himself. Yes, being a TA at a major university can be a very bad career move.
Get as much education as you can from a community college, where teaching is the main goal and not a sideline. It will do wonders for your GPA.
University Professors take a liking to students for the flimsiest of reasons - in my case, after compiling twm for hpux and replacing vue, my 68000 assembler professor hounded me to enter graduate school (an offer I sanely declined).
The whole system is a sham. Worthless waste of time, just to have a line item on your resume.
yes, you can tell Windows 2000 to not allow incoming connections
How do you do that? Does this still allow bidirectional connections that were initiated by the local system? Can you run Windows Update with this setting in place?
I never use gui tools that ask for root. On the local system, I ctrl-alt-f1, login as root, and do it cli. I'll also do f2 for a login as myself so I'm not burning up excessive memory and cpu with an xterm for something that doesn't need it.
I recently had a critical problem on an Oracle 7 database. We are a big customer, but this release is no longer supported.
The help desk didn't bat an eye; I opened a Java applet that let them see my desktop, and we ended up running CATALOG and CATPROC (fairly sledgehammer approach, but it worked).
The BBC has a lot of content that I like; the few odd series that have made it to US public television that I specifically remember were Doctor Who, Are You Being Served, May to December (was that the name of it?), Mulberry, etc.
There were quite a few others that generated buzz but I never managed to see (Kumars of x Street, Yes Minister, some of the old crufty stuff like Upstairs Downstairs).
Heck, even MTV picked up The Young Ones.
The BBC has a large catalog of shows. Imagine charging an internet license for Bittorrent access to this archive and suddenly doubling their audience.
It was recently very difficult to get the entire Doctor Who 2005 down by bittorrent. If the BBC guarantees a few seeds for everything, then heck I'd pay.
It will be somewhat ironic if the BBC becomes a global media powerhouse while ABC, CBS and NBC go the way of the dinosaur.
Our ancestors killed these dangerous animals for a reason. They have not been part of the ecosystem for the last century.
I don't need to live in Florida and wake up with an alligator in my swimming pool to have a close encounter with death - mountain lions are moving in next door to everybody.
We need to be a little more unrepentant about living at the top of the food chain. These are dangerous creatures; kill them!
There is a nice French restaurant in town... the owner is from Morocco, and his wife is from Switzerland. I started going there with a friend of mine several years ago. We always eat at the bar (yes, we drink, but that isn't necessary), and I know several of the wait staff, the bartender, and the owners pretty well.
Or another... there is a little bar/cinema nearby; I see a lot of indie films there. I know most of the staff pretty well. I've been asked to invest a few times, but the timing was never right.
Find a place where you like the food and the atmosphere. You don't even have to talk much; just make it a habit, and before you know it, someone will know you.
Yes, there is a lot of arm-twisting to drink in modern social life. Just because I give in doesn't mean that you have to.
Slashdot Mirror
Lossy compression of video implies variable bit rate - in other words, you can guess your bandwidth requirements, but you will never know for sure.
Umm, no. Your claim was that "God must be a 5-dimensional creature (or higher)." As one-dimensional systems (a modern computer) can simulate three-dimensional systems (as any fps gamer can trivially demonstrate for you), such a property is not required.
"Intelligent designer" is more hip slang these days, so pardon me if I don't use the formal Agnus Dei. I mean nothing more with it.
Modern science demands that we be more flexible with our definition of an Intelligent Designer and our relationship with such a being. A cursory examination of the fossil record makes impossible a literal belief in Adam & Eve and Original Sin - and if this is so, then why would a Messiah be necessary? Still, a sober analysis of the human race indicates that there truly are fundamental problems with who we are and how we behave, and these problems might require a great expression of tolerance if the ID were ever to willingly put up with us on a long-term basis... perhaps something along the lines of a Messiah. Who knows?
In any case, don't be part of the problem. The line between proselytizing and fascism is very thin indeed.
Boy, you really missed my point. Please take some algebra. Logic might also help.
I don't buy this. Computer memory is one-dimensional, but is capable of accurately modeling three-dimensional phenomena, and is also capable of moving such simulations through time.
In theory, a zero-dimensional system (a single point), capable of sufficient variation of state (not implying time?), would be capable of simulating an arbitrary number of dimensions.
The formula for a circle is x^2 + y^2 = r^2; for the sphere it is x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = r^2. What happens with the sum of x[n]^2 + x[n-1]^2 + x[n-2]^2... = r^2 as n approaches infinity?
Conceiving of dimensional equations does not necessarily mean participating in them. AFAIK, we can draw no conclusions of an "intelligent designer" from this line of reasoning.
...that my enterprise systems running on HP-UX 10.20, Oracle 7 and Entera are the equivalent of shopping in the Goodwill that is in the back of the KMart?
I guess that I won't be attending any Paris fasion shows anytime soon.
Seriously, core business logic seems to get implemented and STAY implemented. Just ask the COBOL guys.
No, it's not, because you are locked into the vendor. Also, AFAIK, the DB2 kernel is only fully instrumented on the mainframe (z-series) platform - if you have severe performance problems, extensive diagnosis can only be done if you move to a z-series system. I'm certain that UDB lacks proper instrumentation, and my documentation says that z-series is the only place where proper performance statistics can be gathered.
I don't like being locked into Oracle either. The security is bad and the sales staff are sharks, but they have the best technology (featureset) hands down. If Oracle wasn't an option, I would look to the many free databases before I'd consider DB2.
AFAIK, DB2 didn't get triggers until v5, which was released in the late 90's. Oracle had triggers probably 15 years ahead of IBM.
DB2 has been roadkill for Oracle for a long, long time. If Oracle hadn't a) bet on Itanium and b) mouthed off about IBM benchmarking Oracle on POWER in preference to DB2, Oracle would still be the #1 TPC-C performer (and Oracle still beats DB2 on the same hardware, AFIAK).
DB2 is cheap, but I would never recommend it to a non-IBM shop. You end up on an AS/400 before you know it, and that is not a nice place to be.
...for RIM to announce a one-day shutdown of all US service as a "test measure" prior to the injunction?
What sort of contractual problems would RIM face in selectively shutting down the US market before the injunction takes effect? Would the resultant uproar be sufficient for a more flexible stance from the judiciary? Might the supreme court decide to get involved after all?
I haven't really tested it, but the unxutils package includes an ln binary.
Isn't there a POSIX layer for NT that would require symlink ability? This is probably just unused capability that is already built into the OS.
If Rose was able to destroy the Daleks by simply having a long look at the TARDIS core, then why did the entire Gallifreyian species die out in the Dalek conflict? Were none of them able to do the same? Why was the Doctor able to survive the exposure?
If the captured Dalek destroyed itself because of the contamination from Rose, then why did the God Dalek consent to use humans as raw material?
Why did Rose choose the words "Bad Wolf?" Why were they significant? Was there any useful meaning?
Why would the Autons, the Rift, the Slovenes, the gas creatures, and Rose's home all be in Cardiff? I'd never heard of this place before; the coincidence strains credulity.
More attention seems to have been paid to continuity in the old series. It needs better plots.
Oh really? Let's have a little test, shall we?
SQL Server's "BEGIN TRANSACTION" is critical, but it can be ignored in Oracle. This is a key difference in the behavior of the servers. Why? What is the penalty of using it incorrectly?
What is Oracle's equivalent of SQL Server's "Clustered" index? How does this relate to the primary key? When can using such a cluster diminish performance?
Where are temporary tables a good idea, and where are they not so good?
If you issue DDL, what will this do to an open transaction?
You modified one of your queries by using a function on an indexed column in the WHERE clause. Performance has suddenly tanked. Why?
Understanding the above is the bare minimum in building a cross-platform, scalable system (at least between the Sybase derivatives and Oracle). Developers who ignore their DBAs build unscalable junk.
Someone who tries to do everything does nothing well. You lack basic knowledge of the SQL dialects, so you are unaware of the pitfalls. Your success is probably due to blind luck.
Consider this example... try it in SQL Server. Oracle will not enforce a UNIQUE constraint on a NULL, while SQL Server will.
Zealot? No, hard experience. For example, take "SELECT * FROM TAB WHERE X IS NULL" - this is something that all databases will do, but will kill you in Oracle, since for the most part NULLs will never be indexed and will force a full table scan (nulls are recorded in bitmap and composite indexes). You do this in any volume with your app and it's dead.
And there are a LOT of applications that absolutely, positively, cannot live without triggers.
You must have a huge list of forbidden database procedures in your entry-SQL92 lexicon. But yes, you probably have the ability to run under Postgres and MySQL, which would be a tremendous benefit (letting you do to the DB vendor what Oracle has done to commercial UNIX). It comes at a cost, though.
Not true. Modern databases have wildly different architectures, and highly tuned code on one platform will bring another to its knees.
Some features won't port - Oracle has long-supported DECODE, which locks in much SQL to Oracle. Or how about synthetic keys, implemented in Sybase/SQL Server with an "IDENTITY" column, or in Oracle with a "SEQUENCE?" This is basic functionality which must be recoded in a db port. And we will leave trigger syntax right out - there was never a standard for it.
Some databases support locks on only a whole page, while some allow locking individual rows (but even in Oracle, if your INITTRANS and MAXTRANS are not appropriate and/or the block is full, your table will behave as if only page locks are available).
Many databases have an in-memory table for row-locks; when the table gets full, lock-promotion occurs. Oracle has no in-memory table, and there is never a lock promotion (but there is lock escalation).
Mostly apples and oranges.
The big difference appears to me to be the storage of undo information. Oracle records row changes in a special location (either a newer "undo" tablespace or the older "rollback segments").
Postgres (AFAIK) actually marks the row as deleted, then writes a new copy of the row with the modifications, so the undo information is integrated into the associated table(space), much as the older dBase products did. These old copies of rows allow database "time travel" to see previous versions of the data (this feature was added to Oracle 9 as "flashback query"). One advantage of Oracle's implementation is that the undo/rollback will mostly clean itself up, while Postgres tables must be periodically "vacuumed" to remove the old rows.
It is interesting to see Oracle add a few innovations that first seemed to appear in Postgres. The most notible of these enhancements was SQL support for regular expressions.
AMD sells a low power MIPS implementation called "Alchemy". You can read about it here.
...let alone me. I remember professors desperate for tenure videotaping themselves in class, while reviewers in the rear of the room openly laughed at the (lack of) classroom communication skills - such a gracious display of tact.
I remember professors in screaming tirades hurling materials at students, all over the question of where a final would be held.
Where was the concern about my education in this? Where was the focus on my learning to think? As far as I know, it was nonexistant.
Perhaps you are imagining things, and the degree is more of a line item than you would like to admit.
I know that we didn't go to the same college... are you sure that we even went to the same school?
p.s. The only time the issue of my GPA is raised is when an interviewer is trying to talk down my salary - it is a sure sign to head for the door.
The author is spot on in quite a few respects - engineering is more a test of endurance than intelligence. Professors are assigned courses that have nothing to do with their areas of research, and it shows. Most TAs hate their jobs and constantly attempt to unionize because of poor working conditions.
Shortly before I started engineering, a crazed physics TA went on a shooting rampage through my campus, killing seven people before he turned the gun on himself. Yes, being a TA at a major university can be a very bad career move.
Get as much education as you can from a community college, where teaching is the main goal and not a sideline. It will do wonders for your GPA.
University Professors take a liking to students for the flimsiest of reasons - in my case, after compiling twm for hpux and replacing vue, my 68000 assembler professor hounded me to enter graduate school (an offer I sanely declined).
The whole system is a sham. Worthless waste of time, just to have a line item on your resume.
How do you do that? Does this still allow bidirectional connections that were initiated by the local system? Can you run Windows Update with this setting in place?
I never use gui tools that ask for root. On the local system, I ctrl-alt-f1, login as root, and do it cli. I'll also do f2 for a login as myself so I'm not burning up excessive memory and cpu with an xterm for something that doesn't need it.
up2date -u works great with no X.
They were definitely preceeded by the DEC Alpha.
I recently had a critical problem on an Oracle 7 database. We are a big customer, but this release is no longer supported.
The help desk didn't bat an eye; I opened a Java applet that let them see my desktop, and we ended up running CATALOG and CATPROC (fairly sledgehammer approach, but it worked).
The BBC has a lot of content that I like; the few odd series that have made it to US public television that I specifically remember were Doctor Who, Are You Being Served, May to December (was that the name of it?), Mulberry, etc.
There were quite a few others that generated buzz but I never managed to see (Kumars of x Street, Yes Minister, some of the old crufty stuff like Upstairs Downstairs).
Heck, even MTV picked up The Young Ones.
The BBC has a large catalog of shows. Imagine charging an internet license for Bittorrent access to this archive and suddenly doubling their audience.
It was recently very difficult to get the entire Doctor Who 2005 down by bittorrent. If the BBC guarantees a few seeds for everything, then heck I'd pay.
It will be somewhat ironic if the BBC becomes a global media powerhouse while ABC, CBS and NBC go the way of the dinosaur.
Mountain lions attack and kill bikers on nature trails. Alligators drag children and dogs, and even adults to their deaths. Why are we putting up with this?
Our ancestors killed these dangerous animals for a reason. They have not been part of the ecosystem for the last century.
I don't need to live in Florida and wake up with an alligator in my swimming pool to have a close encounter with death - mountain lions are moving in next door to everybody.
We need to be a little more unrepentant about living at the top of the food chain. These are dangerous creatures; kill them!
There is a nice French restaurant in town... the owner is from Morocco, and his wife is from Switzerland. I started going there with a friend of mine several years ago. We always eat at the bar (yes, we drink, but that isn't necessary), and I know several of the wait staff, the bartender, and the owners pretty well.
Or another... there is a little bar/cinema nearby; I see a lot of indie films there. I know most of the staff pretty well. I've been asked to invest a few times, but the timing was never right.
Find a place where you like the food and the atmosphere. You don't even have to talk much; just make it a habit, and before you know it, someone will know you.
Yes, there is a lot of arm-twisting to drink in modern social life. Just because I give in doesn't mean that you have to.