Now having read the article, browsed the website and analysed the legal documents, I can see this software does not only seem inferior to cdrdao, but it is actually proprietary software with DRM. Click the EULA link after following the NeroLINUX link in the story before you pollute your Free and Open system with proprietary restrictions and Microsoft DRM. See the paragraph C-1-a:
C. TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLICABLE TO ALL LICENSES
I. Third Party Disclaimer and Limitations
a.) WM-DRM: Content providers are using the Microsoft digital rights management technology for Windows Media distributed with this Software ("WM-DRM") to protect the integrity of their content ("Secure Content") so that their intellectual property, including copyright, in such content is not misappropriated. Portions of this Software and other third party applications use WM-DRM to play Secure Content ("WM-DRM Software"). If the WM-DRM Software's security has been compromised, owners of Secure Content ("Secure Content Owners") may request that Microsoft revoke the WM-DRM Software's right to copy, display and/or play Secure Content. Revocation does not alter the WM-DRM Software's ability to play unprotected content. A list of revoked WM-DRM Software is sent to your computer whenever you download a license for Secure Content from the Internet. Microsoft may, in conjunction with such license, also download revocation lists onto your computer on behalf of Secure Content Owners. Secure Content Owners may also require you to upgrade some of the WM-DRM components distributed with this Software ("WM-DRM Upgrades") before accessing their content. When you attempt to play such content, WM-DRM Software built by Microsoft will notify you that a WM-DRM Upgrade is required and then ask for your consent before the WM-DRM Upgrade is downloaded. Non-Microsoft WM-DRM Software may do the same. If you decline the upgrade, you will not be able to access content that requires the WM-DRM Upgrade; however, you will still be able to access unprotected content and Secure Content that does not require the upgrade. WM-DRM features that access the Internet, such as acquiring new licenses and/or performing a required WM-DRM Upgrade, can be switched off. When these features are switched off, you will still be able to play Secure Content if you have a valid license for such content already stored on your computer. [emphasis added]
Just make sure you fully understand all of the implications before you put this trojan horse in the mouth. This is proprietary software with an EULA that uses "intellectual property" newspeak. This is always a bad sign. Such an agreement may be OK for typical ignorant Windows users or software "pirates" but is certainly unacceptable for any conscious GNU/Linux users, so please be bery careful. I would recommend sticking to cdrdao and cdrecord until this software is released under more reasonable conditions.
Have you followed the animation link? There is something at the bottom that looks like a tiny tinfoil hat that appears and disappears and reappears ad nauseam! Just thinking about it I have whirlwinds in my head... I need to get some sleep.
What benefits and/or difficulties did you have in using an XML database, as opposed to its relational counterpart?
Benefits: XML is new and trendy.
Difficulties: Ignorance of the decades of scientific research and engineering experience in the field of relational database management systems, relational algebra, set theory and predicate calculus; lack of real atomicity of transactions, lack of guaranteed consistency of data, lack of isolated operations, lack of real durability in the ACID sense, and in short, the lack of relational model; scalability, portability, SQL standard, access to your data after two years and after twenty years; to name just a few.
How large of a learning curve should be expected with a product like this?
Certainly smaller than a real, relational database.
Do XML databases really live up to the hype?
No.
I believe that you are confusing an RDBMS with an object store. You should read this excellent comment posted almost three years ago by Frater 219. I understand that you may be inexperienced but you should not be ignorant. Literally decades of scientific research has been put into relational database management systems. Of course you are perfectly free to forget about computer science, jump on the bandwagon and choose whatever buzzword is trendy these days (yesterday it was OOP, today it is XML, tomorrow it will be.NET) but then you have to realise that you are gambling with your data that may be rendered inaccessible in few years (and that is if you are lucky and don't lose its consistency before) and those unfortunate enough to inherit the responsibility of maintenance of your system will curse you to no end wishing you were dead, and not without a reason. You can be fancy with your applications and front-ends, but RDBMSs are probably the most mature computer systems known to man. Ignoring it is foolish, to say the very least. You may say: but my application will always be the only front-end to that data and it will always be an optimal way to work with it! To which I say: Kids these days!
Great, so two irrelevant branches of an obsolete architecture are once again pin-compatible. But what about better architectures? What I would like to see is an architecture-independent motherboard so I wouldn't have to lock myself in the world of endless register spilling (do they have four general purpose registers already?) and 16-bit bootstrap process from the stone age every time I buy a half-decent motherboard. What I would like to see is a good implementation of MMIX with 256 general-purpose 64-bit registers that each can hold either fixed-point or floating-point numbers, i.e. a real 64-bit platform, not a fake one like those from Intel and AMD. That is something I will pay some extra $$$ for. (Do you hear me, Intel? Do you hear me, AMD? I said extra $$$!)
Another reason for the EU, China and Korea to finally abandon Micro$oft software altogether. Now it is not only a risk of ordinary corporate lock-in but actually a treat to national security and sovereignty of Asian and European States (excluding Middle East states which are hardly sovereign to begin with) because it means that the US government (CIA, NSA and other *AA) will be able to easily reverse engineer Micro$oft patches and exploit the patched vulnerabilities in the parts of the world where there are no patches available so not only stupid people will have vulnerable systems but actually everyone. We can only hope that our European and Asian brothers and sisters are wiser than their American counterparts who will hopefully jump on the bandwagon as well and stop using Micro$oft software. That should mean a great increase in Linux market share during the first quarters of 2006, 2007 (such a serious transition is never done overnight, there are no miracles, we have to be patient). So paradoxically this is actually a good news because it will inevitably hurt Micro$oft in the long run. Instead of overreacting we should stay calm, discuss its implications maturely, and see what it means and how the rest of the world reacts. The most important parts of the world to focus on are: Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, South America and Canada. Only time will tell what that decision really means and which F/OSS O/S will benefit the most where the national security is the top priority.
Ignoring their users? That is completely inexcusable. If I was one of their paying customers I would certainly--oh, wait a minute... Maybe those users should just stop bitching when they get something for free? Fork up or shut up, that's just how free software works, you know. Do you want anything changed? I am sure that the developer whom you have hired to add your features will do it in no time. Oh, you don't want to pay any money? Tough luck then, because GNU is free as in freedom, not free as in cheap-ass-users-love-to-bitch-and-moan. Welcome to the Real World.
Have you signed the letter? I have. It took me five seconds. But there were only 30000 signatures when it was delivered. Slashdot alone has hundreds of thousands of members, for crying out loud! All of us waste time posting idiotic flames in every signle story about software patents, but how many of us have devoted five miserable seconds of our pathetic lifes to actually do something about it? 1%? 0.5%? 0.1%?
What have you done for the democracy, liberty and human rights? Yes, I mean you! If all you do is write on Slashdot then you have done nothing. that's what! People, when will we finally wake up? When will we understand that we, the people, have the responsibility for that failure? When will we understand that we are the ones who have the real power? When will we finally do something instead of bitching all day? When will we finally open our eyes? When?
How do we know that he is good now? Because he spent few years in US prison and we know that all of the people, especially con artists after being imprisoned for years with violent criminals, always become honest, happy and completely "resocialised," never seeking any revenge? This is a serious question. I am not asking whether Mitnick should still be in jail. I am asking why are we so naïve to automatically assume that a mastermind con artist who believes to have been raped by the federal government and free press must be honest when he says he wants to help everyone (including said federal government) to improve their security. Is it wise to believe a self proclaimed "master of deception" so easily? Mitnick basically says: "I am a master of con artists and a computer hacker god. I never helped anyone before, never posted any patches, never written any useful software, but then I was unfairly put in jail with the most dangerous serial killers and psychopathic rapists, therefore I must be good now and I want to help people. Do you want me to increase your security?" To which we all gladly reply: "Of course! Here's my password!" Isn't that at least a little bit infantile in its naïvette? Because as much as I always said that Kevin was mostly a harmless kid before and during the foolish panic and the pathetic hunting, I am less sure about it now because I doubt there are a lot of harmless kids among those unfortunate enough to be unjustly deprived of their freedom and exposed to the most cruel and outrageous acts of violence, surely having to make a lot of deals with the most dangerous criminals and mafia to save their life and dignity. It makes me sick that people joke about rape in jail and not realise that violence and torture is not only a problem in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, but also in The Land Of Free. There are serious problems with the US penitentiary system and I believe that a master of con artists unfairly put into this horror who says that it made him good and honest and happy, is the last person in the world we should believe. That is my opinion.
One of the nice things about the British system of measurement (which pretty nearly only the Americans use officially, though with a few changes) is that the units are exactly the sort of thing you often want about one of. A pint of beer, a gallon of kerosene, a bale of hay, a pint of milk...
Not only that.
For example, when I want to buy a pair of shoes and the
merchant asks me about their size, I say: 1' each.
How many centimetres would it be? I have no idea.
I have been using self-signed SSL certificates for twelve years and I have yet to see any significant (i.e. higher than 0.01%) number of people who reject them when warned by their browsers. So I just stopped paying for them and saved a fortune. And they really costed a fortune back then, now they cost pennies in comparison but even less people bother verifying them today, so it is in fact even more pointless to pay for them (rejected percentage to price ratio is even lower). Let's face it, the whole idea of selling integers was a scam from the beginning. Do we have to pay for our SSH keys? Or GPG keys? Of course not! But HTTPS is an "e-commerce" protocol so it is somehow justified to pay for the privilege of using certain integers. This is just a legacy of dot-com era when everything "e-lectronic" was worth millions and everyone was happy to pay for it because it was a sure way to earn millions. Now it is just silly.
I am having some pretty severe shooting pains from the base of my neck down to my left wrist. Coupled with a strange "squeezing" in my chest, and shortness of breath, I'm a little worried.
And you should be worried
because those shooting pains in your wrist sound
like a carpal tunnel syndrome.
Try to use your keyboard mostly with your right wrist while
the pain is stronger and do some exercises
every fifteen minutes or so (push-ups are great
for stretching wrists).
The shortness of breath has nothing to do with
carpal tunnel and is a normal symptom of being overworked.
But keep in mind that while few nice shots of espresso will
help you stabilise your breath and feel less tired,
only proper exercises can help your overworked wrists.
Only a couple more hours of work. I might hop out and see the doc then.
You should try to use your right wrist
for the hardest jobs,
do a lot of exercises,
and if the symptoms don't disappear
in few weeks or months at most you should probably see a doctor.
I wish you good luck and I hope your wrist
problems will not stop you from posting on Slashdot.
In this light; is SQLLite really any faster than either MySQL or PostgreSQL in real-life, production situations?
The short answer is: no.
The long answer is: it depends on what you mean by
real-life, production situations.
The real question is: should you worry about it
before it starts to be a problem?
Or a better question:
what do you have to do when it starts to be a problem?
And if your applications are designed correctly,
the answer is:
shell$ sqlite old-db.dump | psql new-db
and update data sources in your applications.
You only have to use abstraction layers in your programs,
like DBI in Perl, and all you will have to change is
one argument to DBI->connect() and the rest will
just work, because PostgreSQL supports a superset of
SQLite features. I'm not sure with MySQL, so you'd have to
do some research. But the point is that the most important
things one should consider while choosing a RDBMS
(other than ACID)
is the question how easy is it to get your data
out of the database and insert it somewhere else,
because then the question which database is better
in the long run
is not so important,
for you can always change it later if you want.
The keyword is: abstraction layers.
This is an interesting question.
The databases you ask about don't have
MySQL gotchas,
that's for sure.
Nor do they have PostgreSQL gotchas. They don't have SQLite gotchas either. Or Oracle gotchas, for that matter.
But one thing is sure, trust me, they most certainly do have gotchas of their own. Do you know them? Can you work around them? Will they silently corrupt your data? Will it be easy to migrate your data to other RDBMS without changing your applications? How do they scale?
Do they fully support SQL92? SQL99? Can you afford them not to?
Are their transactions truly
atomic?
Is your data always guaranteed to be in a
consistent state?
Are the operations on your data
isolated?
Are the transactions durable?
What is the developers' relation to the decades of scientific research and engineering experience in the field of relational database management systems? Do they fully understand it? Do they know why you need ACID? Or would they rather tell you that you don't?
Those are the questions that you have to answer. When it comes to relational databases, it is always a question of which gotchas are you ready to face. And of course, as I have already written,
you will be unable to answer that question without
at least some basic
understanding of relational algebra,
set theory and predicate calculus.
Those fields are essential to understand what the relational model is all about.
Just what I thought. Next thought was man these people are clueless, how can such great software experiments have been forgotten?
Exactly my first impression.
I thought that this research must be not interesting at all
because there is no reference to Tierra,
but fortunately I was proved wrong.
It turns out that the only people who are ignorant of Tierra are
the story submitter, editor and the author of the linked article.
As soon as you find the website of this project (not directly linked in the story) and click
the first link called
Introduction and Background you will read five paragraphs about the Tierra project as well as information about even earlier research based on Core Wars called Core World, in the section History of digital life, which I will take the liberty to quote here:
The most well-known intersection of evolutionary biology with computer science
is the genetic algorithm or its many variants (genetic programming,
evolutionary strategies, and so on). All these variants boil down to the same
basic recipe: (1) create random potential solutions, (2) evaluate each
solution assigning it a fitness value to represent its quality, (3) select a
subset of solutions using fitness as a key criterion, (4) vary these solutions
by making random changes or recombining portions of them, (5) repeat from step
2 until you find a solution that is sufficiently good.
This technique turns out to be an excellent method for solving problems, but
it ignores many aspects of natural living systems. Most notably, natural
organisms must replicate themselves, as there is no external force to do so;
therefore their ability to pass their genetic information on to the next
generation is the final arbiter of their fitness. Furthermore, organisms in a
natural system have the ability to interact with their environment and with
each other in ways that are excluded from most algorithmic applications of
evolution.
Work on more naturally evolving computational systems began in 1990, when
Steen Rasmussen was inspired by the computer game ``Core
War'' [Dewdney84]. In this game, programs are written in a simplified
assembly language and made to compete in the simulated core memory of a
computer. The winning program is the one that manages to shut down all
processes associated with its competitors. Rasmussen observed that the most
successful of these programs were the ones that replicated themselves, so that
if one copy were destroyed, others would still persist. In the original Core
War game, the diversity of organisms could not increase, and hence no
evolution was possible. Rasmussen then designed a system similar to Core War
in which the command that copied instructions was flawed and would sometimes
write a random instruction instead on the one intended [Rasmussen90].
This flawed copy command introduced mutations into the system, and
thus the potential for evolution. Rasmussen dubbed his new program ``Core
World'', created a simple self-replicating ancestor, and let it run.
Unfortunately, this first experiment failed. While the programs seemed to
evolve initially, they soon started to copy code into each other, to the point
where no proper self-replicators survived---the system collapsed into a
non-living state. Nevertheless, the dynamics of this system turned out to be
intriguing, displaying the partial replication of fragments of code, and
repeated occurrences of simple patterns.
The first successful experiment with evolving populations of self-replicating
computer programs was performed the following year. Thomas Ray at the
University of Delaware designed a p
I don't know what is more frightening: a genetically engineered part-human hybrid or the idea that it could be patented... In any case this seems like a very big step for science. The question is: is it a step in the right direction? Do we have a right to play God? The answer seems to be positive, but the unforeseen consequences are unimaginable.
Will we create Frenkenstein? Will we patent Frenkenstein? Will he have to pay licensing fees for his offspring? Will his descendants have to pay? Will their owners have to pay? Will it mean a race of sub-human slaves? Is it moral to enslave those creatures even if they don't have a soul or consciousness as we know it? If we become Creators or indeed gods does it mean we have an absolute power over our creation?
These are all fascinating questions. We are lucky to live in the age of such an amazing research. The only problem is that this very research seems to umdermine all of the established moral and ethical systems, not to even mention religion. Only time will tell whether it was wise to play God. Hopefully we will live long enough to discover the answer. Frightening and fascinating perspective.
Sounds like Tierra from the early 1990s, written by Thomas S. Ray. Artificial life, artificial intelligence, evolution, this is trully fascinating stuff. I hate it when so called "creation scientists" jump into threads like this only to force their superstitious mambo jumbo upon our throats saying that digital life couldn't have possibly evolved, it is complex therefore it must have been designed by an intelligent designer. *cough*ockham's*razor*cough*
Cisco is certainly a very experienced and knowledgeable company. The question is: would I trust someone who has built the greatest machine of censorship and oppression in the history of human kind to manage my "security"? Only an idiot would! Remember kids: some people may be experts in their field, but when they are so outrageously immoral you should never trust them. Never. Because one day those greedy bastards will gladly betray you as soon as they see even a slightest possibility of profit. Cisco is happy to collaborate with oppressive regimes helping to take away the last pieces of liberty from their citizens. Only a naïve child would think that they would not help the CIA and FBI to violate your privacy. Hiring Cisco as a security company would be an utterly foolish idea.
I play it on a regular basis. Tetris, Pac Man, Tron, Xonix, Sokoban, Bourdel Dash, River Raid, Net Hack, they don't make games like this any more so it is essential to port them to new platforms so they don't get forgotten. Today sex and blood is all kids want, no wonder that the society slowly turns into a sociopathic dystopia. We need to preserve the games that stimulated intelligence instead of only lust, aggression and mindless clicking speed. This leads to a society of pornography, violence and car chases, i.e. a boring society with no higher values. Have you noticed the games on the cell phones? No Tetris, no Sokoban, no Xonix. Why is that? Anyway, kudos for the DesktopMen for making this game! I like the screenshot in this article. It looks like a time bomb! And who doesn't like a little dose of adrenaline while playing Tetris? In fact, I think I'll play some Gnometris right now (with my custom manually drawn blocks, no less!). This is the research I can fully sopport. Making games that make people more intelligent instead of wasting the open source resources on making yet another mp3 player so people could listen to Britny Spears. Bravo. The next should be Sokoban or Tron-like game.
Slashdot Mirror
Software Engineering at a K-5 Career Fair?
Of course it is. Why shouldn't it be fair?
Now having read the article, browsed the website and analysed the legal documents, I can see this software does not only seem inferior to cdrdao, but it is actually proprietary software with DRM. Click the EULA link after following the NeroLINUX link in the story before you pollute your Free and Open system with proprietary restrictions and Microsoft DRM. See the paragraph C-1-a:
C. TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLICABLE TO ALL LICENSES
I. Third Party Disclaimer and Limitations
a.) WM-DRM: Content providers are using the Microsoft digital rights management technology for Windows Media distributed with this Software ("WM-DRM") to protect the integrity of their content ("Secure Content") so that their intellectual property, including copyright, in such content is not misappropriated. Portions of this Software and other third party applications use WM-DRM to play Secure Content ("WM-DRM Software"). If the WM-DRM Software's security has been compromised, owners of Secure Content ("Secure Content Owners") may request that Microsoft revoke the WM-DRM Software's right to copy, display and/or play Secure Content. Revocation does not alter the WM-DRM Software's ability to play unprotected content. A list of revoked WM-DRM Software is sent to your computer whenever you download a license for Secure Content from the Internet. Microsoft may, in conjunction with such license, also download revocation lists onto your computer on behalf of Secure Content Owners. Secure Content Owners may also require you to upgrade some of the WM-DRM components distributed with this Software ("WM-DRM Upgrades") before accessing their content. When you attempt to play such content, WM-DRM Software built by Microsoft will notify you that a WM-DRM Upgrade is required and then ask for your consent before the WM-DRM Upgrade is downloaded. Non-Microsoft WM-DRM Software may do the same. If you decline the upgrade, you will not be able to access content that requires the WM-DRM Upgrade; however, you will still be able to access unprotected content and Secure Content that does not require the upgrade. WM-DRM features that access the Internet, such as acquiring new licenses and/or performing a required WM-DRM Upgrade, can be switched off. When these features are switched off, you will still be able to play Secure Content if you have a valid license for such content already stored on your computer. [emphasis added]
Just make sure you fully understand all of the implications before you put this trojan horse in the mouth. This is proprietary software with an EULA that uses "intellectual property" newspeak. This is always a bad sign. Such an agreement may be OK for typical ignorant Windows users or software "pirates" but is certainly unacceptable for any conscious GNU/Linux users, so please be bery careful. I would recommend sticking to cdrdao and cdrecord until this software is released under more reasonable conditions.
How is it better than cdrdao?
Have you followed the animation link? There is something at the bottom that looks like a tiny tinfoil hat that appears and disappears and reappears ad nauseam! Just thinking about it I have whirlwinds in my head... I need to get some sleep.
What benefits and/or difficulties did you have in using an XML database, as opposed to its relational counterpart?
.NET) but then you have to realise that you are gambling with your data that may be rendered inaccessible in few years (and that is if you are lucky and don't lose its consistency before) and those unfortunate enough to inherit the responsibility of maintenance of your system will curse you to no end wishing you were dead, and not without a reason. You can be fancy with your applications and front-ends, but RDBMSs are probably the most mature computer systems known to man. Ignoring it is foolish, to say the very least. You may say: but my application will always be the only front-end to that data and it will always be an optimal way to work with it! To which I say: Kids these days!
Benefits: XML is new and trendy.
Difficulties: Ignorance of the decades of scientific research and engineering experience in the field of relational database management systems, relational algebra, set theory and predicate calculus; lack of real atomicity of transactions, lack of guaranteed consistency of data, lack of isolated operations, lack of real durability in the ACID sense, and in short, the lack of relational model; scalability, portability, SQL standard, access to your data after two years and after twenty years; to name just a few.
How large of a learning curve should be expected with a product like this?
Certainly smaller than a real, relational database.
Do XML databases really live up to the hype?
No.
I believe that you are confusing an RDBMS with an object store. You should read this excellent comment posted almost three years ago by Frater 219. I understand that you may be inexperienced but you should not be ignorant. Literally decades of scientific research has been put into relational database management systems. Of course you are perfectly free to forget about computer science, jump on the bandwagon and choose whatever buzzword is trendy these days (yesterday it was OOP, today it is XML, tomorrow it will be
Great, so two irrelevant branches of an obsolete architecture are once again pin-compatible. But what about better architectures? What I would like to see is an architecture-independent motherboard so I wouldn't have to lock myself in the world of endless register spilling (do they have four general purpose registers already?) and 16-bit bootstrap process from the stone age every time I buy a half-decent motherboard. What I would like to see is a good implementation of MMIX with 256 general-purpose 64-bit registers that each can hold either fixed-point or floating-point numbers, i.e. a real 64-bit platform, not a fake one like those from Intel and AMD. That is something I will pay some extra $$$ for. (Do you hear me, Intel? Do you hear me, AMD? I said extra $$$!)
Another reason for the EU, China and Korea to finally abandon Micro$oft software altogether. Now it is not only a risk of ordinary corporate lock-in but actually a treat to national security and sovereignty of Asian and European States (excluding Middle East states which are hardly sovereign to begin with) because it means that the US government (CIA, NSA and other *AA) will be able to easily reverse engineer Micro$oft patches and exploit the patched vulnerabilities in the parts of the world where there are no patches available so not only stupid people will have vulnerable systems but actually everyone. We can only hope that our European and Asian brothers and sisters are wiser than their American counterparts who will hopefully jump on the bandwagon as well and stop using Micro$oft software. That should mean a great increase in Linux market share during the first quarters of 2006, 2007 (such a serious transition is never done overnight, there are no miracles, we have to be patient). So paradoxically this is actually a good news because it will inevitably hurt Micro$oft in the long run. Instead of overreacting we should stay calm, discuss its implications maturely, and see what it means and how the rest of the world reacts. The most important parts of the world to focus on are: Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, South America and Canada. Only time will tell what that decision really means and which F/OSS O/S will benefit the most where the national security is the top priority.
Seriously, what next? Binary packages in .deb format?
Ignoring their users? That is completely inexcusable. If I was one of their paying customers I would certainly--oh, wait a minute... Maybe those users should just stop bitching when they get something for free? Fork up or shut up, that's just how free software works, you know. Do you want anything changed? I am sure that the developer whom you have hired to add your features will do it in no time. Oh, you don't want to pay any money? Tough luck then, because GNU is free as in freedom, not free as in cheap-ass-users-love-to-bitch-and-moan. Welcome to the Real World.
I think that comparing Mac and CherryOS is basically comparing apples and pears.
Have you signed the letter? I have. It took me five seconds. But there were only 30000 signatures when it was delivered. Slashdot alone has hundreds of thousands of members, for crying out loud! All of us waste time posting idiotic flames in every signle story about software patents, but how many of us have devoted five miserable seconds of our pathetic lifes to actually do something about it? 1%? 0.5%? 0.1%?
What have you done for the democracy, liberty and human rights? Yes, I mean you! If all you do is write on Slashdot then you have done nothing. that's what! People, when will we finally wake up? When will we understand that we, the people, have the responsibility for that failure? When will we understand that we are the ones who have the real power? When will we finally do something instead of bitching all day? When will we finally open our eyes? When?
January 2005: "A Firefox developer talks about the project's controversial invitation-only developer recruitment policy and explains why Firefox will never grow up."
March 2005: "In nearly three years, we haven't built up a community of hackers around Firefox, for a myriad of reasons, and now I think were in trouble."
"... ex-hacker done good Kevin Mitnick ..."
How do we know that he is good now? Because he spent few years in US prison and we know that all of the people, especially con artists after being imprisoned for years with violent criminals, always become honest, happy and completely "resocialised," never seeking any revenge? This is a serious question. I am not asking whether Mitnick should still be in jail. I am asking why are we so naïve to automatically assume that a mastermind con artist who believes to have been raped by the federal government and free press must be honest when he says he wants to help everyone (including said federal government) to improve their security. Is it wise to believe a self proclaimed "master of deception" so easily? Mitnick basically says: "I am a master of con artists and a computer hacker god. I never helped anyone before, never posted any patches, never written any useful software, but then I was unfairly put in jail with the most dangerous serial killers and psychopathic rapists, therefore I must be good now and I want to help people. Do you want me to increase your security?" To which we all gladly reply: "Of course! Here's my password!" Isn't that at least a little bit infantile in its naïvette? Because as much as I always said that Kevin was mostly a harmless kid before and during the foolish panic and the pathetic hunting, I am less sure about it now because I doubt there are a lot of harmless kids among those unfortunate enough to be unjustly deprived of their freedom and exposed to the most cruel and outrageous acts of violence, surely having to make a lot of deals with the most dangerous criminals and mafia to save their life and dignity. It makes me sick that people joke about rape in jail and not realise that violence and torture is not only a problem in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, but also in The Land Of Free. There are serious problems with the US penitentiary system and I believe that a master of con artists unfairly put into this horror who says that it made him good and honest and happy, is the last person in the world we should believe. That is my opinion.
This place was discovered by John Perry and Beverly Whipple and named after Ernst Gräfenberg.
Not only that. For example, when I want to buy a pair of shoes and the merchant asks me about their size, I say: 1' each. How many centimetres would it be? I have no idea.
I have been using self-signed SSL certificates for twelve years and I have yet to see any significant (i.e. higher than 0.01%) number of people who reject them when warned by their browsers. So I just stopped paying for them and saved a fortune. And they really costed a fortune back then, now they cost pennies in comparison but even less people bother verifying them today, so it is in fact even more pointless to pay for them (rejected percentage to price ratio is even lower). Let's face it, the whole idea of selling integers was a scam from the beginning. Do we have to pay for our SSH keys? Or GPG keys? Of course not! But HTTPS is an "e-commerce" protocol so it is somehow justified to pay for the privilege of using certain integers. This is just a legacy of dot-com era when everything "e-lectronic" was worth millions and everyone was happy to pay for it because it was a sure way to earn millions. Now it is just silly.
And you should be worried because those shooting pains in your wrist sound like a carpal tunnel syndrome. Try to use your keyboard mostly with your right wrist while the pain is stronger and do some exercises every fifteen minutes or so (push-ups are great for stretching wrists). The shortness of breath has nothing to do with carpal tunnel and is a normal symptom of being overworked. But keep in mind that while few nice shots of espresso will help you stabilise your breath and feel less tired, only proper exercises can help your overworked wrists.
You should try to use your right wrist for the hardest jobs, do a lot of exercises, and if the symptoms don't disappear in few weeks or months at most you should probably see a doctor. I wish you good luck and I hope your wrist problems will not stop you from posting on Slashdot.
There's nothing on Google about any l33t-localised version of Windows.
The short answer is: no. The long answer is: it depends on what you mean by real-life, production situations. The real question is: should you worry about it before it starts to be a problem? Or a better question: what do you have to do when it starts to be a problem? And if your applications are designed correctly, the answer is:
and update data sources in your applications. You only have to use abstraction layers in your programs, like DBI in Perl, and all you will have to change is one argument to DBI->connect() and the rest will just work, because PostgreSQL supports a superset of SQLite features. I'm not sure with MySQL, so you'd have to do some research. But the point is that the most important things one should consider while choosing a RDBMS (other than ACID) is the question how easy is it to get your data out of the database and insert it somewhere else, because then the question which database is better in the long run is not so important, for you can always change it later if you want. The keyword is: abstraction layers.This is an interesting question. The databases you ask about don't have MySQL gotchas, that's for sure. Nor do they have PostgreSQL gotchas. They don't have SQLite gotchas either. Or Oracle gotchas, for that matter. But one thing is sure, trust me, they most certainly do have gotchas of their own. Do you know them? Can you work around them? Will they silently corrupt your data? Will it be easy to migrate your data to other RDBMS without changing your applications? How do they scale? Do they fully support SQL92? SQL99? Can you afford them not to? Are their transactions truly atomic? Is your data always guaranteed to be in a consistent state? Are the operations on your data isolated? Are the transactions durable? What is the developers' relation to the decades of scientific research and engineering experience in the field of relational database management systems? Do they fully understand it? Do they know why you need ACID? Or would they rather tell you that you don't? Those are the questions that you have to answer. When it comes to relational databases, it is always a question of which gotchas are you ready to face. And of course, as I have already written, you will be unable to answer that question without at least some basic understanding of relational algebra, set theory and predicate calculus. Those fields are essential to understand what the relational model is all about.
Exactly my first impression. I thought that this research must be not interesting at all because there is no reference to Tierra, but fortunately I was proved wrong. It turns out that the only people who are ignorant of Tierra are the story submitter, editor and the author of the linked article. As soon as you find the website of this project (not directly linked in the story) and click the first link called Introduction and Background you will read five paragraphs about the Tierra project as well as information about even earlier research based on Core Wars called Core World, in the section History of digital life, which I will take the liberty to quote here:
I don't know what is more frightening: a genetically engineered part-human hybrid or the idea that it could be patented... In any case this seems like a very big step for science. The question is: is it a step in the right direction? Do we have a right to play God? The answer seems to be positive, but the unforeseen consequences are unimaginable.
Will we create Frenkenstein? Will we patent Frenkenstein? Will he have to pay licensing fees for his offspring? Will his descendants have to pay? Will their owners have to pay? Will it mean a race of sub-human slaves? Is it moral to enslave those creatures even if they don't have a soul or consciousness as we know it? If we become Creators or indeed gods does it mean we have an absolute power over our creation?
These are all fascinating questions. We are lucky to live in the age of such an amazing research. The only problem is that this very research seems to umdermine all of the established moral and ethical systems, not to even mention religion. Only time will tell whether it was wise to play God. Hopefully we will live long enough to discover the answer. Frightening and fascinating perspective.
Sounds like Tierra from the early 1990s, written by Thomas S. Ray. Artificial life, artificial intelligence, evolution, this is trully fascinating stuff. I hate it when so called "creation scientists" jump into threads like this only to force their superstitious mambo jumbo upon our throats saying that digital life couldn't have possibly evolved, it is complex therefore it must have been designed by an intelligent designer. *cough*ockham's*razor*cough*
Cisco is certainly a very experienced and knowledgeable company. The question is: would I trust someone who has built the greatest machine of censorship and oppression in the history of human kind to manage my "security"? Only an idiot would! Remember kids: some people may be experts in their field, but when they are so outrageously immoral you should never trust them. Never. Because one day those greedy bastards will gladly betray you as soon as they see even a slightest possibility of profit. Cisco is happy to collaborate with oppressive regimes helping to take away the last pieces of liberty from their citizens. Only a naïve child would think that they would not help the CIA and FBI to violate your privacy. Hiring Cisco as a security company would be an utterly foolish idea.
I play it on a regular basis. Tetris, Pac Man, Tron, Xonix, Sokoban, Bourdel Dash, River Raid, Net Hack, they don't make games like this any more so it is essential to port them to new platforms so they don't get forgotten. Today sex and blood is all kids want, no wonder that the society slowly turns into a sociopathic dystopia. We need to preserve the games that stimulated intelligence instead of only lust, aggression and mindless clicking speed. This leads to a society of pornography, violence and car chases, i.e. a boring society with no higher values. Have you noticed the games on the cell phones? No Tetris, no Sokoban, no Xonix. Why is that? Anyway, kudos for the DesktopMen for making this game! I like the screenshot in this article. It looks like a time bomb! And who doesn't like a little dose of adrenaline while playing Tetris? In fact, I think I'll play some Gnometris right now (with my custom manually drawn blocks, no less!). This is the research I can fully sopport. Making games that make people more intelligent instead of wasting the open source resources on making yet another mp3 player so people could listen to Britny Spears. Bravo. The next should be Sokoban or Tron-like game.