> Considering you are posting under a pseudonym, your non-support for free speech is interesting.
why is it interesting?
and besides, there was no indication that he was against free speech, just against people that think that freedom of speech is also freedom from responsibility. You are free to say what you want, but you have to accept the responsibility for your actions.
Most (decent) people don't use psudonyms or screen names in forums to allow them to escape responsibility, they do it to raise the barrier to random arseholes looking them up and harrasing them.
The fact that he posted using a logged in account means that he is willing to take responsibility for his words, otherwise he would have posted anonymously.
4- well what DO you expect? "yes we'll have it in a future release, but we understand that because you've asked for it that it should automatically be available _right now_, so we'll click the magic 'include it in the current release with all bugs fixed and functionality complete button' just for you, afterall the only reason we haven't already done that is purely because we'd hate for you to have a lack of anything to complain about'
However, responses 1-3 are valid complaints and depressingly common....
I'm right handed but I use the mouse in my left hand. I started doing that when the mouse started killing my right arm. I don't swap the buttons, I just trained myself to use the middle finger for left and index finger for right, that way I can switch back to right hand whenever I need to give the left a break (although I still can't use it in the right hand for more than a few minutes) I never have a problem using someone else's computer - I just pick up the mouse and put it on the left. No problem.
The only time using the mouse on the left becomes a problem is when I want to do a bunch of copy and pasting, because I'd usualy use the left hand for CTRL+C / CTRL+V.
try looking for "Third Normal Form" or database normalisation instead, though that in itself has little to do with the dynamic table creation situation.
There are some types of applications in which you cannot know at the time of writing the application what data is needed to be stored beyond a few common fields - say you're creating an inventory system and you need to be able to have it expand to contain information about new products and can't know in advance what special information you might need beyound the common stuff for those products.
In that case you've got three options - 1. create a table with the common fields and a fixed number of extra fields - extrainfo1, extrainfo2, extrainfo3...extrainfon 2. use a generic database format where you create one table with the common fields and another that effective contains name value pairs and a foreign key reference back to the main table 3. Create a separate table for each product type on the fly when the product is initialiy defined in your system, and use a product type to table name / definition mapping to locate which table to use.
Each of those approaches is perfectly valid for certain jobs and each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
1 allows you to avoid dynamic SQL and the complexity of extra joins but is the most limited in flexibility - you're stuck with the data definition you used at the time of writing and if a product type has more extra information than you allowed for or information of differing types or lengths then you're out of luck.
2 is more flexible as it allows any number of extra fields for a product but it adds complexity to your queries (although that can be aleviated with a view - but if you know enough about your data to create a view then you know enough not to require this approach in the first place) it is also harder to enforce data integrity and still suffers from the problem of differing data types and lengths. There are also potential performance problems due to causing the creation of a table with a potentially huge number of records (number of products * average number of extra information records) However, I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes in practice. Effective indexing is also more troublesome, as you either have to index everything or nothing.
3 is more complicated than 1 but simpler to write queries against than 2. It requires dynamic SQL but allows the enforcement of data integrity constraints, it allows you to use the appropriate data type for each field rather than storing everything as a varchar and lets you choose the right lengths and precisions for text and numeric fields. You also have the flexibility to choose how you index the table on a per field basis - exactly as if you'd hard coded the definition in advance.
Of the three of them I think that 2 would be the most likely to make a DBA throw up.
and they don't so much care about it, as install some piece of shit filter, leave all the defaults on no matter how idiotic they are in the sense of the buisness they are "protecting", and feel happy in the knowledge that someone else is worrying about security for them (not bitter, honest)...
you cannot run dual athlon 64s - not even the FXs. you need to use Opterons, and you also say you just made the numbers up. What the hell was the point of even posting?
XBox seems pretty damned successful over here in Australia, it definitely hasn't outsold the PS2, or probably come close, but it doesn't look like its flopped. If anything's flopped, it's the Gamecube....
You just need to take a look in an EB to see - a long wall dedicated to PS2 games, a short wall dedicated to XBox games, and a tiny little dark corner somewhere with cobwebs growing on it dedicated to the cube...
I'm considering buying a couple to use as small quiet headless servers to replace the two loud, large, ugly x86 boxes I currently have serving that purpose.
I'd probably leave the mail and file server one with OS X on it, but I suspect I'd need to install Linux on the firewall / proxy machine. Unless OS X has similar firewall functionality that is, which I simply don't know at the moment (but of course I'd take the time to find out before I actually did it).
You can support the idea of someone being able to do whatever they like with things they have purchased and still be mystified at the choice of things that person does when they excercise that freedom. That's not hypocrisy.
Besides which, by asking the question "Why?", you get the oportunity to maybe learn something. In this case, the advantages of running Linux instead of OS x on a Mac mini.
I notice how everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that "slow", "bloated" Mozilla happened to also beat Firefox on everything except startup time. And even startup time was close.
Well, considering that there's going to be a dedicated graphics chip from nVidia in the PS3 too, I'd imagine that the SPUs are designed specifically with all that stuff in mind...
> Now when I see a newbie book teaching people to pound out their own sql and use old school mysql_connect style functions, I question my judgement. Is it a good idea or a bad idea to try to introduce these kinds of rapid development tools to novices? On one hand, these tools make my life easier on a daily basis. On the other hand, sometimes it's better to know the basics before going off to advanced topics like this. What do you guys think?
Object oriented data access layers can sometimes be useful - but sooner or later you're going to do a complex query spanning multiple tables, and you'll wish you used SQL. Usually the best approach is a combination, and if you design your data access layer correctly the SQL vs ORM decision doesn't have to be system wide. If you're using Java or.NET, then a tool like iBatis seems to be just the right balance between power, abstraction and simplicity. I don't know if something similar exists for PHP.
Abstracting the database is ALWAYS a good thing. Books teaching the use of the mysql_* functions in PHP are simply WRONG, and should not be allowed to be sold. Those books are responsible for every slashdotted and vulnerable PHP site on the net, and contribute to the lack of good design principles.
No, there are no hidden download limits in any Australian ADSL plans (that I know of).
Instead there are upfront and well documented (sometimes part of the plan name itself) limits. Usually fairly small too by North American Cable based broadband standards. But we know they're there, they're not hidden, and you usually choose your plan based on the right combination of speed vs downloads for you.
what on earth makes you think someone's going to have 200 machines with identical requirements?
We're not talking about clusters here, we're talking about a corporate network.
Machine 1. DNS Server Machine 2. Email server Machine 3. File Server Machine 4. Intranet web server Machine 5. Development server Machine 6. Production server for internal software 1 Machine 7. Production server for internal software 2 Machine 8. Database server Machine 9. Public web site ... ...
It's highly unlikely that all, or even most of the machines will have the same purpose, the same software, the same SLA requirements or even the same hardware. So you want a distribution that is least likely to beak stuff, requires the least amount of babying and provides the most amount of central management. You also want one that is certified to work with your third party commercial software - Oracle, Legato, DB2, etc...
You're probably going to end up looking at either RedHat Enterprise Linux or SuSE, or maybe Debian - although that will probably fail the certified by 3rd party commercial vendors requirement.
Being able to get commercial support is probably beneficial too. But that's probably not as important, as apart from the possibility of priority bug fixes OS support is usually pretty worthless. Better to spend that money on better / more admins and better hardware support.
No he's complaining about NEW software. He upgraded the five year old version. It's the new version that he purchased that he's complaining about.
And the $20 was not the upgrade, it's for tech support to tell him how to do something he already knows how to do, and that he should never have to do if the software worked properly in the first place.
so - had old version, worked fine. Forced to upgrade due to critical feature being disabled. New version doesn't work as well as the old one did. Tech Support expensive and worthless.
that's exactly right - but you're forgetting that it's the 50 year olds on their way to prostate exams that like to THINK they're "hip" 20 somethings. So showing the 20 somethings in the ads is exactly the way to get the baby boomers.
A bit like how books aimed at 10 - 13 year olds will have 15 -18 year old protagonists.
Slashdot Mirror
can you not use calcs? (not that I'd ever recommend that for the sake of your sanity) or have they removed that too?
> Considering you are posting under a pseudonym, your non-support for free speech is interesting.
why is it interesting?
and besides, there was no indication that he was against free speech, just against people that think that freedom of speech is also freedom from responsibility.
You are free to say what you want, but you have to accept the responsibility for your actions.
Most (decent) people don't use psudonyms or screen names in forums to allow them to escape responsibility, they do it to raise the barrier to random arseholes looking them up and harrasing them.
The fact that he posted using a logged in account means that he is willing to take responsibility for his words, otherwise he would have posted anonymously.
4- well what DO you expect?
"yes we'll have it in a future release, but we understand that because you've asked for it that it should automatically be available _right now_, so we'll click the magic 'include it in the current release with all bugs fixed and functionality complete button' just for you, afterall the only reason we haven't already done that is purely because we'd hate for you to have a lack of anything to complain about'
However, responses 1-3 are valid complaints and depressingly common....
I'm right handed but I use the mouse in my left hand. I started doing that when the mouse started killing my right arm. I don't swap the buttons, I just trained myself to use the middle finger for left and index finger for right, that way I can switch back to right hand whenever I need to give the left a break (although I still can't use it in the right hand for more than a few minutes)
I never have a problem using someone else's computer - I just pick up the mouse and put it on the left. No problem.
The only time using the mouse on the left becomes a problem is when I want to do a bunch of copy and pasting, because I'd usualy use the left hand for CTRL+C / CTRL+V.
Mice in general are
try looking for "Third Normal Form" or database normalisation instead, though that in itself has little to do with the dynamic table creation situation.
There are some types of applications in which you cannot know at the time of writing the application what data is needed to be stored beyond a few common fields - say you're creating an inventory system and you need to be able to have it expand to contain information about new products and can't know in advance what special information you might need beyound the common stuff for those products.
In that case you've got three options -
1. create a table with the common fields and a fixed number of extra fields - extrainfo1, extrainfo2, extrainfo3...extrainfon
2. use a generic database format where you create one table with the common fields and another that effective contains name value pairs and a foreign key reference back to the main table
3. Create a separate table for each product type on the fly when the product is initialiy defined in your system, and use a product type to table name / definition mapping to locate which table to use.
Each of those approaches is perfectly valid for certain jobs and each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
1 allows you to avoid dynamic SQL and the complexity of extra joins but is the most limited in flexibility - you're stuck with the data definition you used at the time of writing and if a product type has more extra information than you allowed for or information of differing types or lengths then you're out of luck.
2 is more flexible as it allows any number of extra fields for a product but it adds complexity to your queries (although that can be aleviated with a view - but if you know enough about your data to create a view then you know enough not to require this approach in the first place) it is also harder to enforce data integrity and still suffers from the problem of differing data types and lengths. There are also potential performance problems due to causing the creation of a table with a potentially huge number of records (number of products * average number of extra information records) However, I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes in practice. Effective indexing is also more troublesome, as you either have to index everything or nothing.
3 is more complicated than 1 but simpler to write queries against than 2. It requires dynamic SQL but allows the enforcement of data integrity constraints, it allows you to use the appropriate data type for each field rather than storing everything as a varchar and lets you choose the right lengths and precisions for text and numeric fields. You also have the flexibility to choose how you index the table on a per field basis - exactly as if you'd hard coded the definition in advance.
Of the three of them I think that 2 would be the most likely to make a DBA throw up.
no, it's not stopping you from saying anything, it's just stopping you from using one method to say it.
They don't give a shit about the content of the conversations. It is not censorship. It's not right either, but it's definitely not censorship.
and they don't so much care about it, as install some piece of shit filter, leave all the defaults on no matter how idiotic they are in the sense of the buisness they are "protecting", and feel happy in the knowledge that someone else is worrying about security for them (not bitter, honest)...
didn't you know?
The secret to faster downloads is to keep wiggling the mouse, that way it pushes the data through faster.
you cannot run dual athlon 64s - not even the FXs.
you need to use Opterons, and you also say you just made the numbers up.
What the hell was the point of even posting?
XBox seems pretty damned successful over here in Australia, it definitely hasn't outsold the PS2, or probably come close, but it doesn't look like its flopped.
If anything's flopped, it's the Gamecube....
You just need to take a look in an EB to see - a long wall dedicated to PS2 games, a short wall dedicated to XBox games, and a tiny little dark corner somewhere with cobwebs growing on it dedicated to the cube...
ok, so I'm replying to myself...
10 seconds on google found this, so I guess I probably wouldn't be removing OS X afterall. But I can still definitely see why one would want to.
That's exactly how I see it.
I'm considering buying a couple to use as small quiet headless servers to replace the two loud, large, ugly x86 boxes I currently have serving that purpose.
I'd probably leave the mail and file server one with OS X on it, but I suspect I'd need to install Linux on the firewall / proxy machine.
Unless OS X has similar firewall functionality that is, which I simply don't know at the moment (but of course I'd take the time to find out before I actually did it).
You can support the idea of someone being able to do whatever they like with things they have purchased and still be mystified at the choice of things that person does when they excercise that freedom.
That's not hypocrisy.
Besides which, by asking the question "Why?", you get the oportunity to maybe learn something. In this case, the advantages of running Linux instead of OS x on a Mac mini.
I notice how everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that "slow", "bloated" Mozilla happened to also beat Firefox on everything except startup time.
And even startup time was close.
Well, considering that there's going to be a dedicated graphics chip from nVidia in the PS3 too, I'd imagine that the SPUs are designed specifically with all that stuff in mind...
As opposed to Windows where all you can do is wait.
I payed $750 for a PS2.
Although that's pretty meaningless because those were 750 Australian dollars....
So no, I guess I wouldn't pay ~ $AU1000+ for a PS3.
That's IBM in court over a contract issue.
That's not Linux in the courts.
hmmm... I'm in Canberra too - how much diet coke for a secret?
> and no, there is no tunnel between parliament house and DSD/DIO/ASIS/ASIO/HQADF etc.
;)
that YOU know of
> Now when I see a newbie book teaching people to pound out their own sql and use old school mysql_connect style functions, I question my judgement. Is it a good idea or a bad idea to try to introduce these kinds of rapid development tools to novices? On one hand, these tools make my life easier on a daily basis. On the other hand, sometimes it's better to know the basics before going off to advanced topics like this. What do you guys think?
.NET, then a tool like iBatis seems to be just the right balance between power, abstraction and simplicity. I don't know if something similar exists for PHP.
Object oriented data access layers can sometimes be useful - but sooner or later you're going to do a complex query spanning multiple tables, and you'll wish you used SQL.
Usually the best approach is a combination, and if you design your data access layer correctly the SQL vs ORM decision doesn't have to be system wide.
If you're using Java or
Abstracting the database is ALWAYS a good thing. Books teaching the use of the mysql_* functions in PHP are simply WRONG, and should not be allowed to be sold. Those books are responsible for every slashdotted and vulnerable PHP site on the net, and contribute to the lack of good design principles.
No, there are no hidden download limits in any Australian ADSL plans (that I know of).
Instead there are upfront and well documented (sometimes part of the plan name itself) limits.
Usually fairly small too by North American Cable based broadband standards.
But we know they're there, they're not hidden, and you usually choose your plan based on the right combination of speed vs downloads for you.
what on earth makes you think someone's going to have 200 machines with identical requirements?
...
...
We're not talking about clusters here, we're talking about a corporate network.
Machine 1. DNS Server
Machine 2. Email server
Machine 3. File Server
Machine 4. Intranet web server
Machine 5. Development server
Machine 6. Production server for internal software 1
Machine 7. Production server for internal software 2
Machine 8. Database server
Machine 9. Public web site
It's highly unlikely that all, or even most of the machines will have the same purpose, the same software, the same SLA requirements or even the same hardware.
So you want a distribution that is least likely to beak stuff, requires the least amount of babying and provides the most amount of central management.
You also want one that is certified to work with your third party commercial software - Oracle, Legato, DB2, etc...
You're probably going to end up looking at either RedHat Enterprise Linux or SuSE, or maybe Debian - although that will probably fail the certified by 3rd party commercial vendors requirement.
Being able to get commercial support is probably beneficial too. But that's probably not as important, as apart from the possibility of priority bug fixes OS support is usually pretty worthless. Better to spend that money on better / more admins and better hardware support.
No he's complaining about NEW software. He upgraded the five year old version. It's the new version that he purchased that he's complaining about.
And the $20 was not the upgrade, it's for tech support to tell him how to do something he already knows how to do, and that he should never have to do if the software worked properly in the first place.
so - had old version, worked fine. Forced to upgrade due to critical feature being disabled.
New version doesn't work as well as the old one did.
Tech Support expensive and worthless.
Yay Intuit!
that's exactly right - but you're forgetting that it's the 50 year olds on their way to prostate exams that like to THINK they're "hip" 20 somethings. So showing the 20 somethings in the ads is exactly the way to get the baby boomers.
A bit like how books aimed at 10 - 13 year olds will have 15 -18 year old protagonists.