Evan Priestley, Worked at Facebook from 2007-2011 46 votes by Ricky Elrod, Tom Cook, Andy Bartholomew, (more) Obviously, Stonebraker's competing product, VoltDB, would have been a much better solution. Didn't you read the article? The series of outlandish, unsubstantiated claims it presents make a clear, convincing argument that MySQL is dead and VoltDB is a strictly superior alternative.
MySQL has never made a secret that it favors speed over 100% compliance. But, for applications that just need to write and read data, without any complex requirements, it's perfectly fine. For example: Facebook. Nothing on Facebook is really all that important. It doesn't need something with all of the extra functionality and data checking and other stuff.
Take a banking institution as an opposite example. They would need a database system that is very compliant and is extremely picky about data types and has excellent support for triggers, transactions, super high availability, etc., etc., etc. With all those features comes a cost of performance but, in their case, it's quite worth it for what they need.
MySQL, like PostgreSQL, like Oracle, like MS Access, is a tool. Part of being a good engineer / developer / artist is using the right tool for the job. People who run around and scream that their product is the best product for every situation no matter what are delusional.
I am amused in particular that he wants you to "prove" who you are on the internet - because, you know, it's totally impossible for someone else to use my computer, or steal (or emulate) my little key fob which has my unique identifier, or whatever. There is simply no way to guarantee with 100% certainty that anyone is who they claim to be when using an electronic medium. A "secure internet" is doomed to fail because people will make too many assumptions about just how secure it is.
A single blown-up airplane would cause many people to cancel their flights, causing a lot of damage to the flight and travel industries. It would also scare the populace. A scared populace is less likely to spend money on anything. If the people aren't willing to spend money, then investors likewise will be tighter with their purse strings. The general populace and investors not spending money is bad for the economy.
The security theater is about money and little else.
One thing that people often forget is that you can get very individualized plans, and these can cut the costs dramatically.
Instead of general health insurance, ask for catastrophic health insurance. As in: You pay out of pocket for all regular doctor visits and medication. Get insurance for things like "I cracked my head open and my brain is exposed." Telling doctors that you are paying in cash, out of pocket, will often reduce your costs as well.
One reason that insurance rates are so stupidly high is the free doctor visits. This causes people who get the smallest sniffle to run to the doctor because, oh my god, surely I cannot survive a few days with a minor cold! There are people out there who are like this. I know many of them.
Car analogy: You don't get car insurance for a burnt out headlight. You get car insurance for a major crash.
Insurance is costly but it can be less so with a few changes in the contract.
In the past, such periods have coincided with lower-than-expected temperatures on Earth. The most famous example is the Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots from 1645 to 1715. Average temperatures in Europe sank so low during that period that it came to be known as "the Little Ice Age."
So which is it? Does the sun affect the temperature or not? Some say yes, others say no. To me common sense says yes, because the sun is the biggest influx of energy to our planet. This whole thing is a gigantic WTF.
This is interesting because it is the complete opposite of what I was taught back in college. The professor was a complete left-wing nut case about global warming, but even he brought out charts and evidence that showed how the temperature of our planet was related to solar cycles. He wasn't the only one either.
So now, once again, I have multiple scientists and scholars and armchair philosophers telling me two totally different things based on their perfect irrefutable evidence.
This makes me not buy into or disbelieve the whole man-made global warming issue. It just makes me throw up my arms and say, "Fuck it, I just don't care anymore. Be reasonable about pollution (which we all should be regardless of the global warming thing) and leave me out of it. I'm done."
Playing Serious Sam reminded me a lot of Duke3D in many ways: Lots of weapons, lots of hidden stuff to find, witty one-liners from an over the top tough guy, some very cool map areas, huge and epic (and sometimes ridiculous) fights, and it's fun. The best all-out shooter I have ever played.
It doesn't have the puerile humor that Duke3D has, but titty jokes aren't what makes a game worth playing.
That's what I was thinking. It's an easy way to discredit someone. Jump onto an anonymous service like Wikipedia, make a bunch of dumb edits, then claim it is on the behalf of someone you want to make look bad.
When Anonymous (or its derivatives) goes after Big-Corp, we all stand beside the hackers and shout out chants of "Yea, they're finally getting what's coming to them!"
Maybe you did, but I didn't. Never have. A crime is a crime. It doesn't matter if the organization is the one you love or hate, the end result is the same: People get hurt, be it reputation, financially, data exposure, data loss, etc., etc. Actions have consequences.
If it becomes "okay" to do something bad to Company I Hate, then how long before it becomes "okay" to do the same to Company I Love? Pretty soon it just becomes "okay" to do it to anyone. Just like people think it is okay to break into a system and poke around, maybe pull a harmless prank. Once that becomes okay, then people decide, "Well, it's okay to do that, what not do this too..." And then it continues to escalate.
You are mature enough to own up to the double standard and change your thinking. That is 100% awesome and I wish more people would think this way.
Sadly Slashdot is too full of trolls and "I, too, welcome..." meme monkeys.
There is one good thing about this story. I have finally seen the tag "idiocracy" applied to a country that isn't my own. Maybe there is hope yet that here on Slashdot it can be cool to hate a country that isn't the USA!
This is not a fair practice. It's pretty crummy. It has also been around for a long time.
Books here in America and Canada have, ever since I can remember, two prices listed on the back cover. One for US Dollars, one for Canadian Dollars. The Canadian price was generally about 30% more, because their money wasn't worth as much. However, due to recent events, the Canadian and American dollar are about equal now. The extra 30% for Canada's money, however, hasn't changed. I believe that CDs and DVDs have a similar pricing scheme, but I haven't bought one of those in a very long time.
The best way to change this is with your wallet. Don't buy the product unless the pricing is fair. Yeah, a new game might be cool, but principles are a lot more important.
I will never agree with levying higher taxes on those who make more money. We have the same deal here in the states - the more you make, the higher percentage you pay in taxes. Punishing the successful and hard working just doesn't make sense to me. I really wish we would go to a simple flat tax. That is fair to everyone.
Whatever the politics are, I'm glad that things like this are being streamed over the Internet. I wish that there was more streaming (like a 24/7 stream of the floor of the House and Senate), hopefully that will happen in the future.
I disagree that quality sci-fi material is expensive to produce. The quality of a show is based on the writing and the production. I have found that SciFi fans are very, very forgiving when it comes to special effects and acting. We're okay with bad acting and cheesy special effects as long as the story is a good one and told well.
Example: The original Dr. Who series, produced by the BBC, on a shoestring budget. The stories were interesting, with plenty of social commentary, a lot of "what if", things that made you think and wonder.
What about The Twilight Zone? Although it wasn't all strictly science fiction, there was enough of that, and the show was a remarkable success. That show barely used special effects at all and hell, sometimes it only had one or two actors for an episode.
While better acting and special effects might have made those shows a bit better, I'm not entirely convinced. The concepts presented in those stories were, and always will be, the most important and vital part.
I tried to play HL2 demo via Steam, but it keeps screwing up on my machine (Linux)
I hope you're not surprised by this. Next time please try it on the platform it was designed for.
I agree with you on the point of consoles though (far too expensive just for the machine), and also that of old, but good, games. I don't buy a lot of games but the ones I do buy are played to death. An active modding community really helps longevity and adds value, too. I bought the original Half-Life, enjoyed the long single player experience, and then spent the next four, five, six(?) years playing some of the incredible 3rd party mods that were released. Talk about value!
Often the modding community would double or even triple the gameplay you got from your original purchase...
I bought the original Half-Life not long after it was released. Five years later I was still playing it because of the modding community. TFC, CS, Natural Selection... Then all of the smaller, lesser-known mods on top of that.
Making a game open and friendly to modding is a very easy and free way for any company to add lots of value to their product. If the original product is good enough to attract a lot of attention, then you just sit back and let the rest of the world do the rest. Sales will increase, too. I know a lot of people that bought a copy of Half-Life just to play the CounterStrike mod.
I, on the other hand, was disappointed when Sprint was mentioned. I closed my account with them two years ago to switch to Verizon. When I closed my account, I asked the (very kind) representative on the line if I owed them any more money for any reason. I was told that my account was completely paid off and that I would receive no further billing; everything is good to go.
Four months later I start getting calls from collections agencies for money that I can't possibly owe them. What really pisses me off is that Sprint made no attempts to contact me before dumping my account into the collections pool.
I have contacted Sprint and these collections hounds to no avail. I have no recourse.
A) Borrow assets (stock in a company) at the current price. B) Wait a period of time. C) Return those assets to the original owner at the new current price. D) Keep the difference (or lose money).
Now, if you are shady, you can do what is called "Naked Short Selling", in which you perform this trick with assets that don't actually exist. This American Life did a great episode called Enforcers - the second half deals with Naked Short Selling and describes the process in detail. TAL has done several fantastic episodes on the financial crisis, well worth the time to give them a listen.
These paper mill "schools", ITT, DeVry, etc., they're not a very good value for your money. So, they have a few choices here:
A) Bust their butts and make their schools better. B) Eventually go out of business.
Charter schools are the same. They either do well or they are shut down and replaced with something else. If school vouchers were provided and parents were allowed to choose where their kids went to school then I don't think that people would willingly send their kids to a dump. Good schools would thrive, the bad ones would die out.
Public schools only very rarely ever face shut downs - when they do, it seems to be budget oriented or political and not related at all to the education being provided. A terrible public school will remain there, teaching poorly, and sucking up your tax dollars while it does so.
You mentioned gaming the system - I'm certain that charter schools do it, but so do public schools. They all do it. That doesn't make it right of course - it means there needs to be more transparency in the entire process. Keep the bastards honest. Allow schools to throw out bad teachers (Dear Teacher's Union: Because of you I suffered big time throughout high school).
Most importantly though, the parents need to start caring.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't want to follow the link:
MySQL has never made a secret that it favors speed over 100% compliance. But, for applications that just need to write and read data, without any complex requirements, it's perfectly fine. For example: Facebook. Nothing on Facebook is really all that important. It doesn't need something with all of the extra functionality and data checking and other stuff.
Take a banking institution as an opposite example. They would need a database system that is very compliant and is extremely picky about data types and has excellent support for triggers, transactions, super high availability, etc., etc., etc. With all those features comes a cost of performance but, in their case, it's quite worth it for what they need.
MySQL, like PostgreSQL, like Oracle, like MS Access, is a tool. Part of being a good engineer / developer / artist is using the right tool for the job. People who run around and scream that their product is the best product for every situation no matter what are delusional.
I am amused in particular that he wants you to "prove" who you are on the internet - because, you know, it's totally impossible for someone else to use my computer, or steal (or emulate) my little key fob which has my unique identifier, or whatever. There is simply no way to guarantee with 100% certainty that anyone is who they claim to be when using an electronic medium. A "secure internet" is doomed to fail because people will make too many assumptions about just how secure it is.
Bees also don't billions in economic damage.
A single blown-up airplane would cause many people to cancel their flights, causing a lot of damage to the flight and travel industries. It would also scare the populace. A scared populace is less likely to spend money on anything. If the people aren't willing to spend money, then investors likewise will be tighter with their purse strings. The general populace and investors not spending money is bad for the economy.
The security theater is about money and little else.
The best overview of the players' concerns that I have seen.
Briefly:
The high cost of goods in the Noble Market.
Captain’s Quarters.
Performance issues with Incarna.
“Greed is good”
Communication issues
One thing that people often forget is that you can get very individualized plans, and these can cut the costs dramatically.
Instead of general health insurance, ask for catastrophic health insurance. As in: You pay out of pocket for all regular doctor visits and medication. Get insurance for things like "I cracked my head open and my brain is exposed." Telling doctors that you are paying in cash, out of pocket, will often reduce your costs as well.
One reason that insurance rates are so stupidly high is the free doctor visits. This causes people who get the smallest sniffle to run to the doctor because, oh my god, surely I cannot survive a few days with a minor cold! There are people out there who are like this. I know many of them.
Car analogy: You don't get car insurance for a burnt out headlight. You get car insurance for a major crash.
Insurance is costly but it can be less so with a few changes in the contract.
Here we go, perfect example in this article:
So which is it? Does the sun affect the temperature or not? Some say yes, others say no. To me common sense says yes, because the sun is the biggest influx of energy to our planet. This whole thing is a gigantic WTF.
This is interesting because it is the complete opposite of what I was taught back in college. The professor was a complete left-wing nut case about global warming, but even he brought out charts and evidence that showed how the temperature of our planet was related to solar cycles. He wasn't the only one either.
So now, once again, I have multiple scientists and scholars and armchair philosophers telling me two totally different things based on their perfect irrefutable evidence.
This makes me not buy into or disbelieve the whole man-made global warming issue. It just makes me throw up my arms and say, "Fuck it, I just don't care anymore. Be reasonable about pollution (which we all should be regardless of the global warming thing) and leave me out of it. I'm done."
Serious Sam.
Playing Serious Sam reminded me a lot of Duke3D in many ways: Lots of weapons, lots of hidden stuff to find, witty one-liners from an over the top tough guy, some very cool map areas, huge and epic (and sometimes ridiculous) fights, and it's fun. The best all-out shooter I have ever played.
It doesn't have the puerile humor that Duke3D has, but titty jokes aren't what makes a game worth playing.
That's what I was thinking. It's an easy way to discredit someone. Jump onto an anonymous service like Wikipedia, make a bunch of dumb edits, then claim it is on the behalf of someone you want to make look bad.
> a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100
And a 50% chance of it not rising by more than 4C degrees by 2100.
When Anonymous (or its derivatives) goes after Big-Corp, we all stand beside the hackers and shout out chants of "Yea, they're finally getting what's coming to them!"
Maybe you did, but I didn't. Never have. A crime is a crime. It doesn't matter if the organization is the one you love or hate, the end result is the same: People get hurt, be it reputation, financially, data exposure, data loss, etc., etc. Actions have consequences.
If it becomes "okay" to do something bad to Company I Hate, then how long before it becomes "okay" to do the same to Company I Love? Pretty soon it just becomes "okay" to do it to anyone. Just like people think it is okay to break into a system and poke around, maybe pull a harmless prank. Once that becomes okay, then people decide, "Well, it's okay to do that, what not do this too..." And then it continues to escalate.
You are mature enough to own up to the double standard and change your thinking. That is 100% awesome and I wish more people would think this way.
Sadly Slashdot is too full of trolls and "I, too, welcome..." meme monkeys.
There is one good thing about this story. I have finally seen the tag "idiocracy" applied to a country that isn't my own. Maybe there is hope yet that here on Slashdot it can be cool to hate a country that isn't the USA!
This is not a fair practice. It's pretty crummy. It has also been around for a long time.
Books here in America and Canada have, ever since I can remember, two prices listed on the back cover. One for US Dollars, one for Canadian Dollars. The Canadian price was generally about 30% more, because their money wasn't worth as much. However, due to recent events, the Canadian and American dollar are about equal now. The extra 30% for Canada's money, however, hasn't changed. I believe that CDs and DVDs have a similar pricing scheme, but I haven't bought one of those in a very long time.
The best way to change this is with your wallet. Don't buy the product unless the pricing is fair. Yeah, a new game might be cool, but principles are a lot more important.
I will never agree with levying higher taxes on those who make more money. We have the same deal here in the states - the more you make, the higher percentage you pay in taxes. Punishing the successful and hard working just doesn't make sense to me. I really wish we would go to a simple flat tax. That is fair to everyone.
Whatever the politics are, I'm glad that things like this are being streamed over the Internet. I wish that there was more streaming (like a 24/7 stream of the floor of the House and Senate), hopefully that will happen in the future.
Netflix is already entering the original content market. I fully expect more of this as time goes on.
I disagree that quality sci-fi material is expensive to produce. The quality of a show is based on the writing and the production. I have found that SciFi fans are very, very forgiving when it comes to special effects and acting. We're okay with bad acting and cheesy special effects as long as the story is a good one and told well.
Example: The original Dr. Who series, produced by the BBC, on a shoestring budget. The stories were interesting, with plenty of social commentary, a lot of "what if", things that made you think and wonder.
What about The Twilight Zone? Although it wasn't all strictly science fiction, there was enough of that, and the show was a remarkable success. That show barely used special effects at all and hell, sometimes it only had one or two actors for an episode.
While better acting and special effects might have made those shows a bit better, I'm not entirely convinced. The concepts presented in those stories were, and always will be, the most important and vital part.
I hope you're not surprised by this. Next time please try it on the platform it was designed for.
I agree with you on the point of consoles though (far too expensive just for the machine), and also that of old, but good, games. I don't buy a lot of games but the ones I do buy are played to death. An active modding community really helps longevity and adds value, too. I bought the original Half-Life, enjoyed the long single player experience, and then spent the next four, five, six(?) years playing some of the incredible 3rd party mods that were released. Talk about value!
I bought the original Half-Life not long after it was released. Five years later I was still playing it because of the modding community. TFC, CS, Natural Selection... Then all of the smaller, lesser-known mods on top of that.
Making a game open and friendly to modding is a very easy and free way for any company to add lots of value to their product. If the original product is good enough to attract a lot of attention, then you just sit back and let the rest of the world do the rest. Sales will increase, too. I know a lot of people that bought a copy of Half-Life just to play the CounterStrike mod.
I, on the other hand, was disappointed when Sprint was mentioned. I closed my account with them two years ago to switch to Verizon. When I closed my account, I asked the (very kind) representative on the line if I owed them any more money for any reason. I was told that my account was completely paid off and that I would receive no further billing; everything is good to go.
Four months later I start getting calls from collections agencies for money that I can't possibly owe them. What really pisses me off is that Sprint made no attempts to contact me before dumping my account into the collections pool.
I have contacted Sprint and these collections hounds to no avail. I have no recourse.
Fuck Sprint.
You can make your point without calling someone a "fucking idiot". Just sayin'.
You want to sell short. It works like this:
A) Borrow assets (stock in a company) at the current price.
B) Wait a period of time.
C) Return those assets to the original owner at the new current price.
D) Keep the difference (or lose money).
Now, if you are shady, you can do what is called "Naked Short Selling", in which you perform this trick with assets that don't actually exist. This American Life did a great episode called Enforcers - the second half deals with Naked Short Selling and describes the process in detail. TAL has done several fantastic episodes on the financial crisis, well worth the time to give them a listen.
Thank you for raising children that appreciate knowledge. Too many parents don't seem to give a crap these days.
These paper mill "schools", ITT, DeVry, etc., they're not a very good value for your money. So, they have a few choices here:
A) Bust their butts and make their schools better.
B) Eventually go out of business.
Charter schools are the same. They either do well or they are shut down and replaced with something else. If school vouchers were provided and parents were allowed to choose where their kids went to school then I don't think that people would willingly send their kids to a dump. Good schools would thrive, the bad ones would die out.
Public schools only very rarely ever face shut downs - when they do, it seems to be budget oriented or political and not related at all to the education being provided. A terrible public school will remain there, teaching poorly, and sucking up your tax dollars while it does so.
You mentioned gaming the system - I'm certain that charter schools do it, but so do public schools. They all do it. That doesn't make it right of course - it means there needs to be more transparency in the entire process. Keep the bastards honest. Allow schools to throw out bad teachers (Dear Teacher's Union: Because of you I suffered big time throughout high school).
Most importantly though, the parents need to start caring.