but even then, "for 2 years thereafter" which is part of the clause that someone pointed to here, is not acceptable. who knows what you do in 1 year, and who your next customer is.
luckily, in many european countries any clause that may limit the ability of a person to get a job is automatically illegal and void. many companies have you sign some clause for non-competition, e.g. you may not quit and take a new job in a similar company within x miles distance for 2 years etc. you can sign but plainly ignore such clauses, should it come to a lawsuit you will always win and the clause will always be found illegal and void.
never use integers if you're not going to calculate with them i don't think one is ever going to add zipcode1 to zipcode2, so use a string here. b.t.w. in many countries, zip codes may contain characters.
However, this should not lead to using decimal arithmetic in all cases. Just be sure you know about the rounding errors and deal with them.
There are a number of programming languages in use in financial institutions (cobol, pl/1) that offer built-in support for decimal arithmetic. It makes sense in some cases, but also has a drawback: e.g. the type 'decimal fixed(15,6)' always has 15 positions of which 6 are after the decimal point. This type always automatically rounds, constantly, which may lead to inaccuracies just as well.
As we know from primary school, multiplication adds the the number of digits of the arguments, dividing potentially leads to an infinite amount of digits.
The problem with decimal numbers is that the location of the decimal point is fixed (e.g. in the 15,6 case, there are always 9 places before and 6 after the decimal dot. The dot doesn't "float". In floating point numbers at least, the precision is just as limited (though quite high for doubles) but the decimal point location always floats to the optimal position.
Imagine calculating with decimal fixed for a while, and in some intermediate result you get some amount of only 0.01. Now since the dot is fixed, you're left with only 4 significant places in your intermediate result, and any result afterwards only has this amount of precision as well. I claim there are way more programming problems due to this than due to floating point representation inaccuracy.
Java and some other libraries represent decimal numbers (BigDecimal) by a string and a scale factor (how much of the number is after the decimal dot) that can be infinitely big but remain totally accurate except for divisions. A multiplication B1 * B2 generally will add the number of digits of the both, so the memory requirement of the result will be that of B1 and B2 together. For a division, you'll have to specify how many digits remain, so you'll still have rounding problems here. As you can imagine, a single number easily can get 1MB in size, and operations with these are extremely slow to the point of not being practical anymore for many purposes.
Even with financial calculations, floating point numbers often are the best and only choice. Your algorithm will have a known accuracy even if you have very small or big intermediate results. You can only use BigDecimals if you have very litte calculations and no divisions (except for scale chances, e.g. division by 100). However, be aware of the rounding and accuracy, and take care when comparing numbers. We use some simple library that compares doubles to 0, taking into account some small margin, within this margin the number is considered to be 0. You must round sometimes in between (usually there are official rules for when and how intermediate results of financial calculations have to be rounded to, e.g. one cent).
I've been using dvdshrink too. I think it is not an mpeg encoder, but a transcoder. It compresses mpeg2 to mpeg2 which is an entirely different (simpler) process. So you cannot compare it with tools that encode some other format into mpeg2.
If MSFT blatantly blackmails the EU by violating the law and to just ignore the consequences, you can be sure that governments shall be scared of the stranglehold that a single private company appears to have on them. This is not acceptable. In the short term this blackmail may work, in the long term this must mean that they'll do everything they can to get rid of this dependancy situation as possbile, something that MSFT has always been trying to avoid by all means.
Once a single non trivial entity (e.g. a complete state) proves that it can do without MSFT, the house of cards may collapse.
They new IN ADVANCE that not being compliant from this date onwards would lead to this fine, 2.51 PER DAY. They chose themselves to be not compliant, and wait and see. MSFT has become used to getting away with illegal practices, and up to now never gave a damn about law and justice, they think special rules exist for them.
What choice does the EU commission have? It was all known in advance, MSFT is to blame themselves for not complying but to go to court instead.
Do not forget that Windows NT is based on VMS. VMS lost long long ago from Unix, and for a reason. In the 70s and eary eighties, Digital shipped their hardware with VMS. Even though the operating system came with the hardware, many users replaced it with Unix because they liked it better.
I have been unfortunate enough to have to work with VMS (system programming) myself, and I can tell you that it was a nightmare. Yes it was stable (Unix also) and still has a good reputation for that. But VMS, and Windows NT also, are so extremely inelegant, just plain ugly that it hurts your eyes if you have to deal with it at the system call level.
Where Unix has tried to make things simple (e.g. the paradigm "everything is a file") and orthogonal, VMS is brute force (just like NT) and has special system calls for everything with multitudes of parameters and very complex structures. Just a simple example, in Unix a tape streamer behaves just like a file, the handful of file-related system calls, each with just a few parameters, apply to many devices including tapes. VMS has special system calls for tapes, for disks, for files, for terminals etc. etc.
No wonder that the full potential of the NT architecture has never been utilized: it is too complex and overloaded. It is so inelegant and agly that it is hardly possible to actually use the full potential in practice. For me, NT was the return of a nightmare, with the only positive side that it has been hidden deeply under various API layers (win32 +.net lately) so you don't have to deal with NT directly.
There are many libertarians (including myself) that have a different opinion, see http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf and many other articles on www.mises.org. The article is a fascinating read on the subject.
In fact, the concept of culture is to copy and improve, to make variations. To learn and spread knowledge, not to restrict it. I think the concept of intellectual property in all its forms is a horrific abberration and completely opposed to culture. Alas many have been brainwashed and believe, without any proof, that somehow copyrights and the like are necessary to provide incentive for innovation.
In almost the complete human history people were allowed to copy any idea, method or product they saw, except less and less for the last 200 years in western culture. It is the biggest threat for human liberty and basic rights.
Just let the market sort it out: do NOT grant companies protection for patents, copyrights, reverse engineering. Then the problem will solve itself.
Many people are against monopolies, including myself. In fact I think monopolies are one of the few areas where state intervention is needed in the economy. However, even most monpolies only come to life and continue to exist not because the state doesn't do something against them, but because the state SUPPORTS them. They are supported by laws regarding patent, copyright, trade restrictions (e.g. against imports) and lately even against reverse engineering. Without such harmfull state intervention in the market, not many monopolies would survive for long.
The EU need only abolish copyrights, and the problem shall be quickly solved.
Most european countries have a constitution, just like the US. Great Brittain is a rare exception of a country without a constitution (very archaic). The EU constitution technically isn't a constitution at all, but a treaty. They just named it constitution to give it more appeal, the contrary was reached however.
Do not forget who is pathetic: it is microsoft (mainly Ballmer) who are always making a big deal of their enemies, and are constantly launching hate campaigns against almost anyone but themselves, and especially against Linux. So do not be surprised that product choices of this company are judged with a microscope.
There were 9 founding members. I can't remember many initiatives from belgium actually. However I do hope that this sets a precedent for other EU states.
I use azureus regularly while downloading at 500KB/s on 40 trackers, very complex screen with lots of updates, charts and the like. I know of no native client that comes even close.
Re:Developers and SQL
on
The Art of SQL
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Slashdot is not handling really important data. any sane DBA (I'm not a DBA but mainly a developer) of a DBMS of any importance will normalize, must normalize. A DBMS lives for many generations of application programs, you cannot tell in the future how the data will be read. What counts is that the data is logically structured with minimum chance for inconsistencies, and duplicate data (which is what denormalized essentially is) always leads to inconsistencies sooner or later, or at least to maintenance nightmares.
You can speed things up by using materialized views or maybe derived tables (denormalized) for special (reporting) purposes.
so then if there are no alternatives, then let this market of DRM offerings die out, then no online music. any way to sabotage it would be good. the sooner these criminal companies go bankrupt, the sooner alternatives will appear. the least you can do is to not help them to reach their evil goals.
if politics sees succesful economic development using DRM schemes, they have no reason to think it is bad. if they see it failing they might in the end give in and admit that sharing information instead of making it a property is inevitable. the sooner this happens, the less casualties will have to fall on the way towards it.
If only it were this simple, DRM left to the free market.
However, with the current protection (after having been paid) from the state to DRM business models: anti-circumvention laws, draconic punishment, no action against cartels and especially ignorant consumers I'd say there is no free market at all.
What is needed at least is that consumers are informed about the dangers of DRM, and that is exactly what the FSF is doing. The only means is a very practical one: not just saying it, but restricting software using their license. Only that way the people will feel effects and have a chance to become aware.
no no, they demand state protection for their business model, and even accept any violation on basic human rights as "collateral damage". sorry, even if they produce nice work, I equate them to traitors of human civilisation and guilty of high treason (taking the dismantling of democracy by buying layws and bribing politicians as necessary to reach their goals). should I ever have something to say politically, i'd lock all of them away for a long time.
Usually I don't think much of one issue parties, however I feel that in western democracies the whole discussion on "intellectual property" in all its forms is a crucial one. If it continues to go this way, without counterforces, our democracy is soon dead and replaced by nightmares as depicted in books like 1984. Those that have a "moderate" position forget that the proponents are pushing so hard, advocating such draconic measures and accepting all kind of "collateral damage" that a moderate position is no option.
The only answer is: radical opposition, smash the concept of intellectual property.
Being optimistic, this is a foreshadow of what is to come if the content industry continue their ways. Sony is merely the forerunner of this way: they really think that the 'pirates' are a small minority that should be locked away, and that the public at large is happy to buy the same content over and over again (in different formats sometimes) and just watch and consume.
Well the news is: that does not work.
If the politicians worldwide continue to criminalize 95% of (young) people, the effect is that no consumers are left. The business models must change, if you like it or not it is unavoidable. Sony is one of the most stubborn players that do not want to face the truth. Maybe this deblacle makes them think, but somehow I doubt it.
The java community is many orders of magnitudes bigger than that of any other product. Also the members of the community themselves are, next to individual developers, the largest software companies in the world. Sun could never be 'responsive' to this community in general, since a lot of its members have conflicts of interest and widely different opinions. I think Sun does quite a good job of reconciliating these interests. But still, forking, when so much money is at stake, remains a very big risk and cannot be prevented by being responsive.
I have a dreambox 7020s and a 7025 (see http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/index.php). Both run on Linux within 64MB ram and with a quite slow mips CPU. Without hard disk b.t.w. (well, the disk is only used for recordings). As others have mentioned, Linux can be stripped down very much, and it has been done for usage in a number of appliances. Yes I would neither use GNOME nor KDE on a $100 laptop. twm would be nice:), or otherwise maybe xfce.
As long as only a small minority is concerned, people in power won't care much. However as soon as they are themselves concerned, directly or indirectly through family, children, friends etc. they might start to think. And that might hopefully lead to a revolution in the thinking about copying, copyrights and the like.
So I am especially pleased when I read that judges and politicians are sued.
Depends, if your goal is professional (I'm in a bit of the same situation, but within my company) I don't think it is a good idea. When a less experienced person has made a design, it may require complete replacement. It may be very disencouraging for the less experienced person to see his design bein diplomatically killed and completely replaced.
Rather I would take the lead in the design, but try to leave some room for the less experienced person to contribute something. However the overall structure, I don't think it is wise to loose control over it.
Slashdot Mirror
but even then, "for 2 years thereafter" which is part of the clause that someone pointed to here, is not acceptable.
who knows what you do in 1 year, and who your next customer is.
luckily, in many european countries any clause that may limit the ability of a person to get a job is automatically illegal and void. many companies have you sign some clause for non-competition, e.g. you may not quit and take a new job in a similar company within x miles distance for 2 years etc. you can sign but plainly ignore such clauses, should it come to a lawsuit you will always win and the clause will always be found illegal and void.
So if you buy the complete album, should they forbid you to skip some tracks?
never use integers if you're not going to calculate with them
i don't think one is ever going to add zipcode1 to zipcode2, so use a string here.
b.t.w. in many countries, zip codes may contain characters.
However, this should not lead to using decimal arithmetic in all cases. Just be sure you know about the rounding errors and deal with them.
There are a number of programming languages in use in financial institutions (cobol, pl/1) that offer built-in support for decimal arithmetic. It makes sense in some cases, but also has a drawback: e.g. the type 'decimal fixed(15,6)' always has 15 positions of which 6 are after the decimal point. This type always automatically rounds, constantly, which may lead to inaccuracies just as well.
As we know from primary school, multiplication adds the the number of digits of the arguments, dividing potentially leads to an infinite amount of digits.
The problem with decimal numbers is that the location of the decimal point is fixed (e.g. in the 15,6 case, there are always 9 places before and 6 after the decimal dot. The dot doesn't "float". In floating point numbers at least, the precision is just as limited (though quite high for doubles) but the decimal point location always floats to the optimal position.
Imagine calculating with decimal fixed for a while, and in some intermediate result you get some amount of only 0.01. Now since the dot is fixed, you're left with only 4 significant places in your intermediate result, and any result afterwards only has this amount of precision as well. I claim there are way more programming problems due to this than due to floating point representation inaccuracy.
Java and some other libraries represent decimal numbers (BigDecimal) by a string and a scale factor (how much of the number is after the decimal dot) that can be infinitely big but remain totally accurate except for divisions. A multiplication B1 * B2 generally will add the number of digits of the both, so the memory requirement of the result will be that of B1 and B2 together. For a division, you'll have to specify how many digits remain, so you'll still have rounding problems here. As you can imagine, a single number easily can get 1MB in size, and operations with these are extremely slow to the point of not being practical anymore for many purposes.
Even with financial calculations, floating point numbers often are the best and only choice. Your algorithm will have a known accuracy even if you have very small or big intermediate results. You can only use BigDecimals if you have very litte calculations and no divisions (except for scale chances, e.g. division by 100). However, be aware of the rounding and accuracy, and take care when comparing numbers. We use some simple library that compares doubles to 0, taking into account some small margin, within this margin the number is considered to be 0. You must round sometimes in between (usually there are official rules for when and how intermediate results of financial calculations have to be rounded to, e.g. one cent).
I've been using dvdshrink too. I think it is not an mpeg encoder, but a transcoder. It compresses mpeg2 to mpeg2 which is an entirely different (simpler) process. So you cannot compare it with tools that encode some other format into mpeg2.
If MSFT blatantly blackmails the EU by violating the law and to just ignore the consequences, you can be sure that governments shall be scared of the stranglehold that a single private company appears to have on them. This is not acceptable. In the short term this blackmail may work, in the long term this must mean that they'll do everything they can to get rid of this dependancy situation as possbile, something that MSFT has always been trying to avoid by all means.
Once a single non trivial entity (e.g. a complete state) proves that it can do without MSFT, the house of cards may collapse.
They new IN ADVANCE that not being compliant from this date onwards would lead to this fine, 2.51 PER DAY.
They chose themselves to be not compliant, and wait and see. MSFT has become used to getting away with illegal practices, and up to now never gave a damn about law and justice, they think special rules exist for them.
What choice does the EU commission have? It was all known in advance, MSFT is to blame themselves for not complying but to go to court instead.
Do not forget that Windows NT is based on VMS. VMS lost long long ago from Unix, and for a reason. In the 70s and eary eighties, Digital shipped their hardware with VMS. Even though the operating system came with the hardware, many users replaced it with Unix because they liked it better.
.net lately) so you don't have to deal with NT directly.
I have been unfortunate enough to have to work with VMS (system programming) myself, and I can tell you that it was a nightmare. Yes it was stable (Unix also) and still has a good reputation for that. But VMS, and Windows NT also, are so extremely inelegant, just plain ugly that it hurts your eyes if you have to deal with it at the system call level.
Where Unix has tried to make things simple (e.g. the paradigm "everything is a file") and orthogonal, VMS is brute force (just like NT) and has special system calls for everything with multitudes of parameters and very complex structures. Just a simple example, in Unix a tape streamer behaves just like a file, the handful of file-related system calls, each with just a few parameters, apply to many devices including tapes. VMS has special system calls for tapes, for disks, for files, for terminals etc. etc.
No wonder that the full potential of the NT architecture has never been utilized: it is too complex and overloaded. It is so inelegant and agly that it is hardly possible to actually use the full potential in practice. For me, NT was the return of a nightmare, with the only positive side that it has been hidden deeply under various API layers (win32 +
There are many libertarians (including myself) that have a different opinion, see http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf and many other articles on www.mises.org. The article is a fascinating read on the subject.
In fact, the concept of culture is to copy and improve, to make variations. To learn and spread knowledge, not to restrict it. I think the concept of intellectual property in all its forms is a horrific abberration and completely opposed to culture. Alas many have been brainwashed and believe, without any proof, that somehow copyrights and the like are necessary to provide incentive for innovation.
In almost the complete human history people were allowed to copy any idea, method or product they saw, except less and less for the last 200 years in western culture. It is the biggest threat for human liberty and basic rights.
Just let the market sort it out: do NOT grant companies protection for patents, copyrights, reverse engineering. Then the problem will solve itself.
Many people are against monopolies, including myself. In fact I think monopolies are one of the few areas where state intervention is needed in the economy. However, even most monpolies only come to life and continue to exist not because the state doesn't do something against them, but because the state SUPPORTS them. They are supported by laws regarding patent, copyright, trade restrictions (e.g. against imports) and lately even against reverse engineering. Without such harmfull state intervention in the market, not many monopolies would survive for long.
The EU need only abolish copyrights, and the problem shall be quickly solved.
Most european countries have a constitution, just like the US. Great Brittain is a rare exception of a country without a constitution (very archaic).
The EU constitution technically isn't a constitution at all, but a treaty. They just named it constitution to give it more appeal, the contrary was reached however.
Do not forget who is pathetic: it is microsoft (mainly Ballmer) who are always making a big deal of their enemies, and are constantly launching hate campaigns against almost anyone but themselves, and especially against Linux. So do not be surprised that product choices of this company are judged with a microscope.
There were 9 founding members. I can't remember many initiatives from belgium actually. However I do hope that this sets a precedent for other EU states.
What must happen? These people should be executed for high treason.
I use azureus regularly while downloading at 500KB/s on 40 trackers, very complex screen with lots of updates, charts and the like. I know of no native client that comes even close.
Slashdot is not handling really important data. any sane DBA (I'm not a DBA but mainly a developer) of a DBMS of any importance will normalize, must normalize. A DBMS lives for many generations of application programs, you cannot tell in the future how the data will be read. What counts is that the data is logically structured with minimum chance for inconsistencies, and duplicate data (which is what denormalized essentially is) always leads to inconsistencies sooner or later, or at least to maintenance nightmares.
You can speed things up by using materialized views or maybe derived tables (denormalized) for special (reporting) purposes.
so then if there are no alternatives, then let this market of DRM offerings die out, then no online music. any way to sabotage it would be good. the sooner these criminal companies go bankrupt, the sooner alternatives will appear. the least you can do is to not help them to reach their evil goals.
if politics sees succesful economic development using DRM schemes, they have no reason to think it is bad. if they see it failing they might in the end give in and admit that sharing information instead of making it a property is inevitable. the sooner this happens, the less casualties will have to fall on the way towards it.
If only it were this simple, DRM left to the free market.
However, with the current protection (after having been paid) from the state to DRM business models: anti-circumvention laws, draconic punishment, no action against cartels and especially ignorant consumers I'd say there is no free market at all.
What is needed at least is that consumers are informed about the dangers of DRM, and that is exactly what the FSF is doing. The only means is a very practical one: not just saying it, but restricting software using their license. Only that way the people will feel effects and have a chance to become aware.
no no, they demand state protection for their business model, and even accept any violation on basic human rights as "collateral damage". sorry, even if they produce nice work, I equate them to traitors of human civilisation and guilty of high treason (taking the dismantling of democracy by buying layws and bribing politicians as necessary to reach their goals). should I ever have something to say politically, i'd lock all of them away for a long time.
Usually I don't think much of one issue parties, however I feel that in western democracies the whole discussion on "intellectual property" in all its forms is a crucial one. If it continues to go this way, without counterforces, our democracy is soon dead and replaced by nightmares as depicted in books like 1984. Those that have a "moderate" position forget that the proponents are pushing so hard, advocating such draconic measures and accepting all kind of "collateral damage" that a moderate position is no option.
The only answer is: radical opposition, smash the concept of intellectual property.
Being optimistic, this is a foreshadow of what is to come if the content industry continue their ways. Sony is merely the forerunner of this way: they really think that the 'pirates' are a small minority that should be locked away, and that the public at large is happy to buy the same content over and over again (in different formats sometimes) and just watch and consume.
Well the news is: that does not work.
If the politicians worldwide continue to criminalize 95% of (young) people, the effect is that no consumers are left. The business models must change, if you like it or not it is unavoidable. Sony is one of the most stubborn players that do not want to face the truth. Maybe this deblacle makes them think, but somehow I doubt it.
The java community is many orders of magnitudes bigger than that of any other product. Also the members of the community themselves are, next to individual developers, the largest software companies in the world. Sun could never be 'responsive' to this community in general, since a lot of its members have conflicts of interest and widely different opinions. I think Sun does quite a good job of reconciliating these interests. But still, forking, when so much money is at stake, remains a very big risk and cannot be prevented by being responsive.
I have a dreambox 7020s and a 7025 (see http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/index.php). Both run on Linux within 64MB ram and with a quite slow mips CPU. Without hard disk b.t.w. (well, the disk is only used for recordings). As others have mentioned, Linux can be stripped down very much, and it has been done for usage in a number of appliances. Yes I would neither use GNOME nor KDE on a $100 laptop. twm would be nice :), or otherwise maybe xfce.
As long as only a small minority is concerned, people in power won't care much. However as soon as they are themselves concerned, directly or indirectly through family, children, friends etc. they might start to think. And that might hopefully lead to a revolution in the thinking about copying, copyrights and the like.
So I am especially pleased when I read that judges and politicians are sued.
Depends, if your goal is professional (I'm in a bit of the same situation, but within my company) I don't think it is a good idea. When a less experienced person has made a design, it may require complete replacement. It may be very disencouraging for the less experienced person to see his design bein diplomatically killed and completely replaced.
Rather I would take the lead in the design, but try to leave some room for the less experienced person to contribute something. However the overall structure, I don't think it is wise to loose control over it.