I agree. I think this is what makes Slashdot somewhat unique on the internet. It is what brings me back.:) It is also why I believe that most people here, as much as they have strong opinions, are not as close minded as they may think (myself included sometimes). Either that or we're all masochists here and like the aggravation.
I see where you are coming from. You are right, opinions shouldn't change your mind, however the facts behind why a person has those opinions should be able to. A better way to say might be that if you are sometimes open to listening to someone's opinions you then have the opportunity to examine why they have them. And if possible do it in the way Descartes proposed. Leave your own beliefs for a minute so that you objectively check the facts behind what they are talking about. Facts. Facts and the conclusions they lead to can and should be able to change your own opinion. I'm not saying it has to, but being fact it should be able to if you think it merits it. That is, if you haven't become so entrenched in your beliefs that you can't look at facts objectively enough to open up new ideas or thoughts on a subject.
This is where I see the trouble with the internet can be. It can *focus* people into their beliefs by allowing them to not have to look outside them. I believe the primary way that we get information is to listen to others (even reading a book is listening to others... long hand:-). If a person gets to the point that they don't want to listen any more because they think anyone who has opposing thoughts is 'an idiot' they chop off a major source of new information (I don't know many people who do original research as a hobby). As soon as you start thinking that all other view points are idiotic you are also falling into the trap that nothing the other viewpoint has is of any merit (I call this the Rush Limbaugh Syndrome). You will fail to look for new information that might back or refute their viewpoint. That just leads to purely dogmatic belief with no reason behind it. Kind of like how the ancient Greeks didn't do real science. I think this then leads to further isolating yourself amongst similar thinkers increasing polarization. Social networking allows so much better the ability for this to happen; and I think we are seeing this happen today. Granted I'll admit it isn't only the internet. The discontinuation of the 'fairness doctrine' in the Regan era has also been leading us to the current polarization, but the internet and social networking has been accelerating it.
As for morality, I've had my mind changed on some items both by experience and by reasoned arguments by others. But I agree that this is something that is much more difficult to change, mainly I think because certain beliefs are so institutionalized and indoctrined in us from birth. But I don't believe moral code is irrevocable. As an example, we see many older folks who were raised on institutionalized racism who through the years have learned better. There are those who when younger took it for granted that it was morally OK to have separate water fountains for whites and 'coloreds', who now understand this was foolishness. And we can see from the old news reels and footage that most of these people fought against this new reality, sometimes violently. Of course, not all were convinced, but that is human nature that not all old dogs can learn new tricks. Regards.
Unless it can connect directly to the central nervous system it isn't any better than current electro-stimulation. Possibly it is worse if you also need to genetically modify a person. Instead of genetically modifying cells with light receptors from other organisms (this is just rehashing previous gene splicing), they should focus on finding mechanisms to regrow nerves in humans so they can rebuild the original neural architecture that was damaged in the person. That and finding a way to trigger the ability that generally goes dormant in humans within days after birth to allow us to regrow say a lost finger... or leg, or....
repeating the same old tired arguments on why the author is an idiot
I wouldn't call myself old, but I think young folks wouldn't call me young. I watched the moon landings on TV when I was really young... give you an idea?
Granted there are times when we all encounter opposing points of view and have this feeling. It is just plain sad when that is all a person believes whenever they see an opposing opinion. Generally I believe that means that person is either incapable of or will have a great deal of difficulty learning anything new; mainly because I think in this case the mind really is like a muscle: if it can no longer flex, it isn't really good for much. Rene Descarte said that if you are about to learn a subject of which you know a little, to try to pretend you don't know the subject at all. Otherwise the tendency is to miss many specific things you really didn't know because you wanted to skip over general subjects that you thought you knew. That requires mental flexibility. Otherwise this leads to ignorance which leads to hard times for a country. And BTW, I'm not saying anything about you. Being willing to wade through slashdot comments means you have to be open minded at least a bit. (But I also believe
Slashdot is one of those rare internet forums where (occasionally almost violently) divergent thinkers come together. But I think that means we have to have at least something in common to keep coming back... kind of like a bunch of golfers...).;-)
Now I know that I can generally hold strong opinions, however knowing that I can be stubborn I sometimes try to take a second look at things to make sure that I was correct in my viewpoint/assumptions and not just being stupidly stubborn. I don't always succeed in doing this, but I think it helps. I think that sometimes one side or the other won't have anything positive to offer (e.g. I can't find anything good to say about Pol Pot or Hitler), but generally either side of a position generally will have a few things positive that you can say about them, regardless of your position. I will still pick one side over another however. I know there are those who don't believe this as evidenced by them being so polar they never have one good thing to say about those with different viewpoints (e.g. I have never heard Rush Limbaugh say anything good about the democrats). These are the people that that will induce me to say "idiot". I feel they invalidate their arguments by being so closed minded they almost literally will cut off their nose to spite their face (i.e. they will ignore good ideas just because they come from the other camp while convincing themselves they were bad ideas just because they were from the other camp). But I also believe that makes them not really intelligent enough to bother with too... this is where I admit I am closed minded.:-) . Cheers.
I think having the system automatically personalize your news based on prior viewing history is bad for society. Right now in both Canada and the U.S.A. there is increasingly extreme polarization between conservatives and liberal (R versus D in the 'States). Granted people view what is of interest to them but when they are served ONLY news pages based on the articles they normally view, they never get the chance to see a different view point. Sure they can search for it if they want, but out of sight generally means out of mind. This can only lead to increasing polarization.
I believe one of the insidious dangers of the web is that it allows people to not only associate with those of like ideas, but to focus those ideas/ideals. science fiction author Gordon R. Dickson explored this idea in his Dorsai books. His idea was that if man were to be able to migrate to different star systems, those with like minds would choose to locate together. In his books, there ended up being planets of mostly agnostic scientists, mostly philosophers, religious fanatics, etc. And all with strong feelings towards their own doctrines. As they isolate themselves, the stronger their ideologies become. I see the internet facilitating this on our one and only planet and within countries, and often pan-nationally. People with like interests form groups on the internet, associate with proportionally more people in those groups on the internet, and become very entrenched in those ideas (i.e. closely interact proportionally more with internet friends than than they would with real people they meet in the 'real world') . Before the internet we had no choice but to interact only with real people who generally had a wider range of ideas and ideals.
While the internet is generally a good thing, I think the biggest danger of it is the polarization of society. Helping people to only see one view point is only contributing to this negative aspect. I wonder if it would help to instead of only choosing similar news viewpoints to what people normally look at, to make sure the system automatically presents at least a few news stories reflecting something different. i.e. Provide choices of what people generally view, but always show a few alternatives so that perhaps they might choose them occasionally and the system doesn't spiral the viewer into say radical right or radical left wing only ideologies in the news that is presented to them.
And like I said in another comment, what he really said amounted to the exact same thing. He said the regime (Israel)occupying Jerusalem must be vanished from the face of time. Please, tell me how that differs from wiped from the face of the map. They both mean 'annihilate Israel'. He wants the destruction of Israel. Stop being so pedantic. If someone were to say another person should be 'rubbed out' or 'wacked' or 'capped', would you argue if someone else were to interpret that as 'they should be killed'? They mean the same thing.
"the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time
As if this doesn't mean the same thing as wipe Israel from the map. And just last week this guy tried to tell the world that the U.S. was responsible for flying the planes into the world trade centre. And he is the president of a country, not just a normal citizen.
Bullshit? Go fuck yourself. That is a good enough response to someone who name calls because he can't stand the truth. Even the former Syrian president from 1948 admitted it was a mistake to tell the Palestinians to leave. Stick with your populist bullshit, moron.
Martin van Creveld is a Israeli historian and researcher
Yes he is. That is, he is a citizen and is a historian and researcher, and is entitled to his own opinion. Let me say the key part again, *his own opinion*. He is not part of the Israeli government. And in case you forgot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said "Israel should be wiped off the map", well he IS the PRESIDENT of Iran. It sounds like you are not clear on or don't understand the subtleties of a citizen making a statement and the head of state of a country making a similar statement. There are many people who advocate turning "Iran into a glass parking lot." Just do a Google search for that last phrase that I put in quotes. You'll find many (although not exclusively) are Americans. However, as citizens of America, the weight we put behind what they say is far, far less than if The President of the U.S.A. were to say it. So even if you are correct as to what Creveld said, it is not rational to assume that it is the Israeli government's position. However I don't doubt that the Israelis would retaliate in kind if they were attacked, against their attackers. Netanyahu said, 'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'. Since I haven't seen any Israeli suicide bombers and no Israeli jihads, nor Israeli hijackers flying into buildings lately, I tend to believe this is true.
I know it is currently popular to jump on the Israeli bashing bandwagon. But remember, if the Arab leaders in 1948 hadn't told the Palestinians to leave Israel so that the surrounding countries could attack Israel, we wouldn't have this situation to begin with. Read documented history and not propaganda. There never was a country with a distinct government called Palestine, ever.
Bullshit. Holy fucking rube Batman, how naive can you get?! Publishers are BUSINESSES. They are in it to make money. If they weren't they would publish any piece of shit that an "artistic author" submits. Newsflash: they don't. They only publish books that they think will make them money. The only time they will even approach being anti-censorship is to support a book that will make them a LOT of money. In this case, I am willing to bet money that the publisher actually wants want the Pentagon to buy up books and destroy them for at least one of two reasons: 1) Once destroyed they can print more of the books and the Pentagon will buy those and destroy them too (i.e. they make money on the complete sale of both (or more) book runs); or 2) The suppression by the Pentagon initiates a 'Streisand Effect' creating more interest in the book and even greater sales once the Pentagon gives up (assuming they don't find some quasi-legal way to block printing altogether). In neither case is the publisher interested in art. They are only interested in revenue. Their shareholders can't eat art, or buy a new car on a dividend of art. To most shareholders only portraits of people like Benjamin Franklin, or better yet Grover Cleveland count as true art.
Crashing the patent troll party makes a much more powerful statement, imo.
Not when the crasher looks like a bum. Stallman would get more credibility from people if he presented himself better at places like that. For example, clean shaven, haircut, and a suite. Asperger victims think it doesn't matter, but to the people who actually sign the cheques... and the legislation, it matters a lot. The way Stallman looked there, I doubt anyone in that meeting took him seriously. Especially with the 60's era magic marker signs.
If Linux Had Modern Corporate Marketing maybe it would be in wider use. You make fun of it, but the masses of people respond to this kind of marketing. And by 'respond to it', I mean they buy more of the product that the bullshit marketing is, well, marketing. Microsoft does well because of it marketing. Apple does well because of its 'a light will shine out of your ass if you use Apple' marketing. Make a product look cool to use and people will come. The masses are like small children who watch a commercial for some hard plastic doll that is made to look cool and how you will be cool if you have one, and when you get it home it is just a piece of hard plastic. But they will learn to make it cool because no one wants to admit they just bought a hard plastic doll that doesn't do anything. If marketing were done to change the image of Linux from being the OS of glasses with tape between the eyes wearing pocket protector Asperger geeks, to the OS of rock star cool surfer dude hollywood shaker, more people would use it. The more people use it, the more money will go into it. So make fun of Oracle if you want, but this might be the kind of approach needed. After all OS2 in its day was far better than Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, and we all see what marketing it to the 1337 techies and "IT professionals" got it. If you never heard of OS2 then you *really* get my point. And Windows 95 was marketed using music from the Rolling Stones, and we were all told we would fart rose petals if we bought it... and it was a hit from day one; even if IBM/OS2 had a ton of time to capitalize on MS's major delay on the 95 release date... good/sleazy marketing sells.
Oh and also, I tend to think of triggers as being small since I don't really approve of them and want to see them as minimalist as possible if used. I think they make trying to follow the business logic in the code much, much more difficult, especially if they contain a lot of the logic. As well, when they are allowed in a project, they are often abused. I would rather see logic on the application side and not the database. But if they are used (and sometimes they are really necessary and do provide a best solution to a problem), I really only want to see very few lines of code in them.
I have seen and been involved in debugging old production code... many years old... and seen fixes delayed because someone had decided to use a trigger that would update values in only certain cases. I generally look to see if there are triggers on tables when I first look at a database, but some people who are very application (as opposed to database) centric do not. And since you don't call a trigger they are hidden to them unless they do look. Recipe for SNAFU.
I wish there was more information available on the performance of a Postgres trigger to evaluate this versus the built in code without having to test it, which I don't have time for. My thinking for this came from my understanding of Oracle select statements. They are implicit cursors, i.e. a select statement is translated into a cursor internally. So my thinking was that once a stored proc is compiled, its plan and query tree are already done and there really is very little interpreting being done at this stage. That is, possibly similar to Oracle (i.e. you don't save much time if any running a 'regular' select statement versus opening a cursor) in this case possibly the engine in Postgres might not be any faster than if/else/case statements. Internally it has to be doing something similar to the trigger. That is, the engine has to determine that a change has happened on the table (say an update), and then search for that change to make sure it is or isn't on the column you are interested in. And if it is on that column, I would really expect that you would only be interested in the specific tupple(s) that changed (that is the column for the particular row that was changed). And it has to be doing these checks on the parsed/rewritten (by the engine) statements in the transaction. As for the code: I don't think the code is going to be that much cleaner. You make it sound like there are hundreds of lines involved in doing things the old way, when there likely would only be one or two lines/conditions to do a check. In any case, I don't think the performance advantage will be really great enough to warrant using this. But hey, if it floats your boat... I am curious though, is there a slight performance effect from a new trigger type in that the database will now always have to check to see if there is a column trigger on the tables involved on every transaction that is run now? BTW, back to Oracle for interests sake, at one time with Oracle IIRC, writing an explicit cursor instead of using a select statement was actually faster... I am pretty sure it doesn't make any difference now.
He is saying that the data integrity of Oracle and DB2 type RDBMS engines is far superior to MySQL. I think you will find many IT people who believe this in billion dollar companies who are concerned about maintaining database integrity. And so is the integrity of Postgres's engine. I think where Postgres falls down is with 'high availability'. It now has its new hot standby feature, but this new feature still doesn't support reasonable failover functionality. And in fact, after watching an EnterpriseDB webinar about the new hot standby feature, my impression is that it is still rather kludgy. I think a few more iterations and improvements are necessary, and they might have to change the way the transaction logs are captured/stored in order to make it really useful. I could be wrong, it happens, but it doesn't pass my own sniff test with respect to 'ready for prime time'.
Agreed. With the exception that I have seen some applications where the volume of transactions is so high (telecom), the cost for the database to check for referential integrity is high enough that the key columns were indexed but not with primary key or unique constraints. This is so the DB wouldn't have to eat up time checking for uniqueness. It was up to the application to ensure referential integrity. Since most applications will never see this volume of transactions, yes it is best left to the DB for referential checking etc, but not always. And as far as business logic, for sure you will make maintaining your applications more complicated if you splash your business logic across various platforms including triggers and stored procs on the database. The hardest thing to debug is not syntax, but the logic. If your business logic is split up all over the place, it is more of a pain to debug these kinds of issues. The larger the project and/or the larger the app, the more so (I'm talking about something enterprise-like, requiring from dozens to hundreds or more programmers, analysts, etc.). Not to mention the performance hit it can cause. Better to let the app handle the business of business logic. IMHO, stored procs and triggers are useful but should be used sparingly if at all. Too many are mesmerized by the siren song of marketing and consultants and college instructors who haven't worked on big systems who will tell you how good triggers and stored procs are.
This means, in many cases, the trigger will never be called
Whether a trigger is called or not, on an update, something has to check to see if the column was updated. What is the difference between you checking with an IF 'OLD.column1 != NEW.column1' THEN (pseudo code... so don't flame me) or the database engine checks to see if a column was updated? I think this just adds more things to learn with little added value. This could be achieved with an if statement ON UPDATE. Keep it simple applies to "don't add more unnecessary stuff to learn if you don't need to", too. You state that with this change, one won't have messing if/then statements when you are interested in more than one column. But it isn't that much cleaner since you still have to tell it to look for a change for the various columns you are interested in. You just do it using a slightly simpler syntax at the cost of having more things to remember in order to maintain code. Personally, I like having less things to remember. Don't get me wrong... I like postgres and have pushed for its use at most places where I have worked (when Oracle isn't mandated or needed for its very mature failover capabilities... flame me if you want, but I am not a fan of MySQL). And really, this is not that big a deal. I probably won't use it though.
I've flown on old Bell Huey Helicopters with the doors wide open (I guess the helicopters themselves weren't that old at the time). When the pilot makes a hard turn the whole body goes perpendicular to the ground, and if you are say, on the right side of the helicopter when it is making a right turn, you are stuck to the floor by centrifugal force and are staring straight down at the ground with nothing between you and it but air. A little unnerving at first. And if you happen to be carrying a lot of weight, it is best to hold on to the posts or better yet buckle in to a harness. A buddy of mine almost slid out.
Do you have a panic attack thinking about tripping and falling when walking in the park? Or is with respect say to tripping and falling off the edge of a building? A high building. I can fall anywhere and I am not afraid of it unless it is from somewhere high. So if you are just afraid of falling, then you are afraid of falling. If you are afraid of falling from somewhere high, then simply put, you are afraid of heights. Stop making it complicated. It isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I think this is what makes Slashdot somewhat unique on the internet. It is what brings me back. :) It is also why I believe that most people here, as much as they have strong opinions, are not as close minded as they may think (myself included sometimes). Either that or we're all masochists here and like the aggravation.
I see where you are coming from. You are right, opinions shouldn't change your mind, however the facts behind why a person has those opinions should be able to. A better way to say might be that if you are sometimes open to listening to someone's opinions you then have the opportunity to examine why they have them. And if possible do it in the way Descartes proposed. Leave your own beliefs for a minute so that you objectively check the facts behind what they are talking about. Facts. Facts and the conclusions they lead to can and should be able to change your own opinion. I'm not saying it has to, but being fact it should be able to if you think it merits it. That is, if you haven't become so entrenched in your beliefs that you can't look at facts objectively enough to open up new ideas or thoughts on a subject.
This is where I see the trouble with the internet can be. It can *focus* people into their beliefs by allowing them to not have to look outside them. I believe the primary way that we get information is to listen to others (even reading a book is listening to others... long hand :-). If a person gets to the point that they don't want to listen any more because they think anyone who has opposing thoughts is 'an idiot' they chop off a major source of new information (I don't know many people who do original research as a hobby). As soon as you start thinking that all other view points are idiotic you are also falling into the trap that nothing the other viewpoint has is of any merit (I call this the Rush Limbaugh Syndrome). You will fail to look for new information that might back or refute their viewpoint. That just leads to purely dogmatic belief with no reason behind it. Kind of like how the ancient Greeks didn't do real science. I think this then leads to further isolating yourself amongst similar thinkers increasing polarization. Social networking allows so much better the ability for this to happen; and I think we are seeing this happen today. Granted I'll admit it isn't only the internet. The discontinuation of the 'fairness doctrine' in the Regan era has also been leading us to the current polarization, but the internet and social networking has been accelerating it.
As for morality, I've had my mind changed on some items both by experience and by reasoned arguments by others. But I agree that this is something that is much more difficult to change, mainly I think because certain beliefs are so institutionalized and indoctrined in us from birth. But I don't believe moral code is irrevocable. As an example, we see many older folks who were raised on institutionalized racism who through the years have learned better. There are those who when younger took it for granted that it was morally OK to have separate water fountains for whites and 'coloreds', who now understand this was foolishness. And we can see from the old news reels and footage that most of these people fought against this new reality, sometimes violently. Of course, not all were convinced, but that is human nature that not all old dogs can learn new tricks. Regards.
Unless it can connect directly to the central nervous system it isn't any better than current electro-stimulation. Possibly it is worse if you also need to genetically modify a person. Instead of genetically modifying cells with light receptors from other organisms (this is just rehashing previous gene splicing), they should focus on finding mechanisms to regrow nerves in humans so they can rebuild the original neural architecture that was damaged in the person. That and finding a way to trigger the ability that generally goes dormant in humans within days after birth to allow us to regrow say a lost finger... or leg, or ....
I wouldn't call myself old, but I think young folks wouldn't call me young. I watched the moon landings on TV when I was really young... give you an idea?
Granted there are times when we all encounter opposing points of view and have this feeling. It is just plain sad when that is all a person believes whenever they see an opposing opinion. Generally I believe that means that person is either incapable of or will have a great deal of difficulty learning anything new; mainly because I think in this case the mind really is like a muscle: if it can no longer flex, it isn't really good for much. Rene Descarte said that if you are about to learn a subject of which you know a little, to try to pretend you don't know the subject at all. Otherwise the tendency is to miss many specific things you really didn't know because you wanted to skip over general subjects that you thought you knew. That requires mental flexibility. Otherwise this leads to ignorance which leads to hard times for a country. And BTW, I'm not saying anything about you. Being willing to wade through slashdot comments means you have to be open minded at least a bit. (But I also believe Slashdot is one of those rare internet forums where (occasionally almost violently) divergent thinkers come together. But I think that means we have to have at least something in common to keep coming back... kind of like a bunch of golfers...). ;-)
Now I know that I can generally hold strong opinions, however knowing that I can be stubborn I sometimes try to take a second look at things to make sure that I was correct in my viewpoint/assumptions and not just being stupidly stubborn. I don't always succeed in doing this, but I think it helps. I think that sometimes one side or the other won't have anything positive to offer (e.g. I can't find anything good to say about Pol Pot or Hitler), but generally either side of a position generally will have a few things positive that you can say about them, regardless of your position. I will still pick one side over another however. I know there are those who don't believe this as evidenced by them being so polar they never have one good thing to say about those with different viewpoints (e.g. I have never heard Rush Limbaugh say anything good about the democrats). These are the people that that will induce me to say "idiot". I feel they invalidate their arguments by being so closed minded they almost literally will cut off their nose to spite their face (i.e. they will ignore good ideas just because they come from the other camp while convincing themselves they were bad ideas just because they were from the other camp). But I also believe that makes them not really intelligent enough to bother with too... this is where I admit I am closed minded. :-) . Cheers.
I think having the system automatically personalize your news based on prior viewing history is bad for society. Right now in both Canada and the U.S.A. there is increasingly extreme polarization between conservatives and liberal (R versus D in the 'States). Granted people view what is of interest to them but when they are served ONLY news pages based on the articles they normally view, they never get the chance to see a different view point. Sure they can search for it if they want, but out of sight generally means out of mind. This can only lead to increasing polarization.
I believe one of the insidious dangers of the web is that it allows people to not only associate with those of like ideas, but to focus those ideas/ideals. science fiction author Gordon R. Dickson explored this idea in his Dorsai books. His idea was that if man were to be able to migrate to different star systems, those with like minds would choose to locate together. In his books, there ended up being planets of mostly agnostic scientists, mostly philosophers, religious fanatics, etc. And all with strong feelings towards their own doctrines. As they isolate themselves, the stronger their ideologies become. I see the internet facilitating this on our one and only planet and within countries, and often pan-nationally. People with like interests form groups on the internet, associate with proportionally more people in those groups on the internet, and become very entrenched in those ideas (i.e. closely interact proportionally more with internet friends than than they would with real people they meet in the 'real world') . Before the internet we had no choice but to interact only with real people who generally had a wider range of ideas and ideals.
While the internet is generally a good thing, I think the biggest danger of it is the polarization of society. Helping people to only see one view point is only contributing to this negative aspect. I wonder if it would help to instead of only choosing similar news viewpoints to what people normally look at, to make sure the system automatically presents at least a few news stories reflecting something different. i.e. Provide choices of what people generally view, but always show a few alternatives so that perhaps they might choose them occasionally and the system doesn't spiral the viewer into say radical right or radical left wing only ideologies in the news that is presented to them.
I think that might be the point the poster is making.
And like I said in another comment, what he really said amounted to the exact same thing. He said the regime (Israel)occupying Jerusalem must be vanished from the face of time. Please, tell me how that differs from wiped from the face of the map. They both mean 'annihilate Israel'. He wants the destruction of Israel. Stop being so pedantic. If someone were to say another person should be 'rubbed out' or 'wacked' or 'capped', would you argue if someone else were to interpret that as 'they should be killed'? They mean the same thing.
As if this doesn't mean the same thing as wipe Israel from the map. And just last week this guy tried to tell the world that the U.S. was responsible for flying the planes into the world trade centre. And he is the president of a country, not just a normal citizen.
Bullshit? Go fuck yourself. That is a good enough response to someone who name calls because he can't stand the truth. Even the former Syrian president from 1948 admitted it was a mistake to tell the Palestinians to leave. Stick with your populist bullshit, moron.
Yes he is. That is, he is a citizen and is a historian and researcher, and is entitled to his own opinion. Let me say the key part again, *his own opinion*. He is not part of the Israeli government. And in case you forgot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said "Israel should be wiped off the map", well he IS the PRESIDENT of Iran. It sounds like you are not clear on or don't understand the subtleties of a citizen making a statement and the head of state of a country making a similar statement. There are many people who advocate turning "Iran into a glass parking lot." Just do a Google search for that last phrase that I put in quotes. You'll find many (although not exclusively) are Americans. However, as citizens of America, the weight we put behind what they say is far, far less than if The President of the U.S.A. were to say it. So even if you are correct as to what Creveld said, it is not rational to assume that it is the Israeli government's position. However I don't doubt that the Israelis would retaliate in kind if they were attacked, against their attackers. Netanyahu said, 'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'. Since I haven't seen any Israeli suicide bombers and no Israeli jihads, nor Israeli hijackers flying into buildings lately, I tend to believe this is true.
I know it is currently popular to jump on the Israeli bashing bandwagon. But remember, if the Arab leaders in 1948 hadn't told the Palestinians to leave Israel so that the surrounding countries could attack Israel, we wouldn't have this situation to begin with. Read documented history and not propaganda. There never was a country with a distinct government called Palestine, ever.
Bullshit. Holy fucking rube Batman, how naive can you get?! Publishers are BUSINESSES. They are in it to make money. If they weren't they would publish any piece of shit that an "artistic author" submits. Newsflash: they don't. They only publish books that they think will make them money. The only time they will even approach being anti-censorship is to support a book that will make them a LOT of money. In this case, I am willing to bet money that the publisher actually wants want the Pentagon to buy up books and destroy them for at least one of two reasons: 1) Once destroyed they can print more of the books and the Pentagon will buy those and destroy them too (i.e. they make money on the complete sale of both (or more) book runs); or 2) The suppression by the Pentagon initiates a 'Streisand Effect' creating more interest in the book and even greater sales once the Pentagon gives up (assuming they don't find some quasi-legal way to block printing altogether). In neither case is the publisher interested in art. They are only interested in revenue. Their shareholders can't eat art, or buy a new car on a dividend of art. To most shareholders only portraits of people like Benjamin Franklin, or better yet Grover Cleveland count as true art.
Not when the crasher looks like a bum. Stallman would get more credibility from people if he presented himself better at places like that. For example, clean shaven, haircut, and a suite. Asperger victims think it doesn't matter, but to the people who actually sign the cheques... and the legislation, it matters a lot. The way Stallman looked there, I doubt anyone in that meeting took him seriously. Especially with the 60's era magic marker signs.
He must watch Fox News a lot. He needs to stop or take stronger meds.
I can picture him shooting his girlfriend when they come back in the bedroom after using the washroom in the middle of the night.
read the article. all things are relative. that is why they mention frame of reference. see pedantic
see centrifugal force within a rotating reference frame.
If Linux Had Modern Corporate Marketing maybe it would be in wider use. You make fun of it, but the masses of people respond to this kind of marketing. And by 'respond to it', I mean they buy more of the product that the bullshit marketing is, well, marketing. Microsoft does well because of it marketing. Apple does well because of its 'a light will shine out of your ass if you use Apple' marketing. Make a product look cool to use and people will come. The masses are like small children who watch a commercial for some hard plastic doll that is made to look cool and how you will be cool if you have one, and when you get it home it is just a piece of hard plastic. But they will learn to make it cool because no one wants to admit they just bought a hard plastic doll that doesn't do anything. If marketing were done to change the image of Linux from being the OS of glasses with tape between the eyes wearing pocket protector Asperger geeks, to the OS of rock star cool surfer dude hollywood shaker, more people would use it. The more people use it, the more money will go into it. So make fun of Oracle if you want, but this might be the kind of approach needed. After all OS2 in its day was far better than Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, and we all see what marketing it to the 1337 techies and "IT professionals" got it. If you never heard of OS2 then you *really* get my point. And Windows 95 was marketed using music from the Rolling Stones, and we were all told we would fart rose petals if we bought it... and it was a hit from day one; even if IBM/OS2 had a ton of time to capitalize on MS's major delay on the 95 release date... good/sleazy marketing sells.
If he is waiting for it on Linux he'll have sour grapes. IT'S A JOKE ALRIGHT!! :)
Oh and also, I tend to think of triggers as being small since I don't really approve of them and want to see them as minimalist as possible if used. I think they make trying to follow the business logic in the code much, much more difficult, especially if they contain a lot of the logic. As well, when they are allowed in a project, they are often abused. I would rather see logic on the application side and not the database. But if they are used (and sometimes they are really necessary and do provide a best solution to a problem), I really only want to see very few lines of code in them.
I have seen and been involved in debugging old production code... many years old... and seen fixes delayed because someone had decided to use a trigger that would update values in only certain cases. I generally look to see if there are triggers on tables when I first look at a database, but some people who are very application (as opposed to database) centric do not. And since you don't call a trigger they are hidden to them unless they do look. Recipe for SNAFU.
:-)
I like to bang ideas to see what falls out. Kind of to make sure that I am not using something new just because it is new. :)
I wish there was more information available on the performance of a Postgres trigger to evaluate this versus the built in code without having to test it, which I don't have time for. My thinking for this came from my understanding of Oracle select statements. They are implicit cursors, i.e. a select statement is translated into a cursor internally. So my thinking was that once a stored proc is compiled, its plan and query tree are already done and there really is very little interpreting being done at this stage. That is, possibly similar to Oracle (i.e. you don't save much time if any running a 'regular' select statement versus opening a cursor) in this case possibly the engine in Postgres might not be any faster than if/else/case statements. Internally it has to be doing something similar to the trigger. That is, the engine has to determine that a change has happened on the table (say an update), and then search for that change to make sure it is or isn't on the column you are interested in. And if it is on that column, I would really expect that you would only be interested in the specific tupple(s) that changed (that is the column for the particular row that was changed). And it has to be doing these checks on the parsed/rewritten (by the engine) statements in the transaction. As for the code: I don't think the code is going to be that much cleaner. You make it sound like there are hundreds of lines involved in doing things the old way, when there likely would only be one or two lines/conditions to do a check. In any case, I don't think the performance advantage will be really great enough to warrant using this. But hey, if it floats your boat... I am curious though, is there a slight performance effect from a new trigger type in that the database will now always have to check to see if there is a column trigger on the tables involved on every transaction that is run now? BTW, back to Oracle for interests sake, at one time with Oracle IIRC, writing an explicit cursor instead of using a select statement was actually faster... I am pretty sure it doesn't make any difference now.
He is saying that the data integrity of Oracle and DB2 type RDBMS engines is far superior to MySQL. I think you will find many IT people who believe this in billion dollar companies who are concerned about maintaining database integrity. And so is the integrity of Postgres's engine. I think where Postgres falls down is with 'high availability'. It now has its new hot standby feature, but this new feature still doesn't support reasonable failover functionality. And in fact, after watching an EnterpriseDB webinar about the new hot standby feature, my impression is that it is still rather kludgy. I think a few more iterations and improvements are necessary, and they might have to change the way the transaction logs are captured/stored in order to make it really useful. I could be wrong, it happens, but it doesn't pass my own sniff test with respect to 'ready for prime time'.
Agreed. With the exception that I have seen some applications where the volume of transactions is so high (telecom), the cost for the database to check for referential integrity is high enough that the key columns were indexed but not with primary key or unique constraints. This is so the DB wouldn't have to eat up time checking for uniqueness. It was up to the application to ensure referential integrity. Since most applications will never see this volume of transactions, yes it is best left to the DB for referential checking etc, but not always. And as far as business logic, for sure you will make maintaining your applications more complicated if you splash your business logic across various platforms including triggers and stored procs on the database. The hardest thing to debug is not syntax, but the logic. If your business logic is split up all over the place, it is more of a pain to debug these kinds of issues. The larger the project and/or the larger the app, the more so (I'm talking about something enterprise-like, requiring from dozens to hundreds or more programmers, analysts, etc.). Not to mention the performance hit it can cause. Better to let the app handle the business of business logic. IMHO, stored procs and triggers are useful but should be used sparingly if at all. Too many are mesmerized by the siren song of marketing and consultants and college instructors who haven't worked on big systems who will tell you how good triggers and stored procs are.
Whether a trigger is called or not, on an update, something has to check to see if the column was updated. What is the difference between you checking with an IF 'OLD.column1 != NEW.column1' THEN (pseudo code... so don't flame me) or the database engine checks to see if a column was updated? I think this just adds more things to learn with little added value. This could be achieved with an if statement ON UPDATE. Keep it simple applies to "don't add more unnecessary stuff to learn if you don't need to", too. You state that with this change, one won't have messing if/then statements when you are interested in more than one column. But it isn't that much cleaner since you still have to tell it to look for a change for the various columns you are interested in. You just do it using a slightly simpler syntax at the cost of having more things to remember in order to maintain code. Personally, I like having less things to remember. Don't get me wrong... I like postgres and have pushed for its use at most places where I have worked (when Oracle isn't mandated or needed for its very mature failover capabilities... flame me if you want, but I am not a fan of MySQL). And really, this is not that big a deal. I probably won't use it though.
I've flown on old Bell Huey Helicopters with the doors wide open (I guess the helicopters themselves weren't that old at the time). When the pilot makes a hard turn the whole body goes perpendicular to the ground, and if you are say, on the right side of the helicopter when it is making a right turn, you are stuck to the floor by centrifugal force and are staring straight down at the ground with nothing between you and it but air. A little unnerving at first. And if you happen to be carrying a lot of weight, it is best to hold on to the posts or better yet buckle in to a harness. A buddy of mine almost slid out.
Do you have a panic attack thinking about tripping and falling when walking in the park? Or is with respect say to tripping and falling off the edge of a building? A high building. I can fall anywhere and I am not afraid of it unless it is from somewhere high. So if you are just afraid of falling, then you are afraid of falling. If you are afraid of falling from somewhere high, then simply put, you are afraid of heights. Stop making it complicated. It isn't.