I'm a developer for The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/ ) - a UK newspaper not owned by Murdoch, which doesn't have any intention of becoming invisible any time soon - rather than erecting a paywall, we've spent the last year putting together a content API that allows anyone to explore our content using search terms, faceting, etc - and then build your own application upon it. Check it out here:
The implementation, written in Scala and based on Apache Solr/Lucene stack was pretty good fun (we plan to opensource it within a few months) - slides with some of the implementation details are here :
Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, recently gave a pretty deep lecture on the 'open vs closed' & 'authority vs involvement' questions raised by the spectre of paywalls:
Vernor Vinge well deserves his reputation - the guy is a fantastic writer with bona-fide science knowledge and some Transcendent ideas.
For some reason, here in the UK, you're lucky to find even one book by him on the shelves of the major bookstores (Waterstones, Blackwells, etc). It's been the case for a while that several of his books have been either out of print or, in the case of the new True Names book, delayed somewhat. Publishers should be fighting each other off with big sticks for the right to sell Vinge, I can only assume that they're seeing low sales volumes and steering clear.
Just to verify Vinge's appeal, I've taken to occasionally buying his books for friends. One of my mates raved over it- seeing Marooned in Realtime as the best murder-mystery he'd ever read! My girlfriend, on the other hand, has yet to read hers... can't win 'em all I guess, hey ho.
Assuming your message isn't a troll, you do seem to be using some software that is a quite substancially out of date in the Java world. Here's a few pointers:
- JSDK 2.0 is a reference implementation of a servlet dev kit by Sun. It's old. Sun has handed the servlet engine writing over to the guys at jakarta.apache.org , and they're putting out a servlet/JSP engine called Tomcat that's pretty damn good. Get Tomcat version 4.0.1 from
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/binindex.html
On a decent spec machine you should definitely experience more snappyness from Tomcat 4's improved engine - and it's a decent web server too. It's pure Java.
- Tomcat runs best on Java2SE version 1.3 . Assuming you have Mac OX X (your iBook is only a month old, right?) it should be preinstalled on your laptop. For other platforms get it from the java web site at java.sun.com. You really do not need to be using JDK 1.1.7, that's old. J2SE v1.3 might have a slightly bigger memory footprint but overall is definitely worth it.
-You mention that the bottle neck is at the database. You say you're using JDBC, but JDBC is just a connection protocol, what's your actual database? On windows, Sun provides some useful but non-production JDBC drivers for linking to ODBC data sources. They would definitely be a slow down factor, but if you get a decent database, the supplied JDBC drivers should make that go away. Try MySql from mysql.org, there are proper JDBC drivers available for that. Oracle is a good DB but possibly a bit too expensive!
Good luck with the site. Have fun and keep learning!
Roberto
each iPod has unique ID - possible hook for SDMI?
on
Apple releases iPod
·
· Score: 1
At the bottom of page 3 of the iPod faq on the Apple site:
there's a question about using more than one iPod with a Mac. The reassuring answer is that each iPod has a unique ID, so no clashes occur- but presumably the ID can also be used in a DRM context- don't play any MP3 that hasn't been signed for this particular device, etc.
This question is possibly already redundant but what are the chances of Linux support? I can't get to the apple site but the linked News article said there was no windows support at the moment- Apple 'might' get round to doing it later.
Man, this looks like a damn fine playa! I have a (damn fine) transmeta-based viao, with fire wire link, and I'd love to link it to an iPod - but if windows support is a way off, then I'd be more than happy with a Linux port from the OS X version.
Does anyone have any have idea if this iPod device will use some kind of standardised format for it's fire wire link - like the mass-storage profile many things follow with USB?
You want cheap RH disks- I'm sure they do them! I bought Redhat's 'Garage Edition' of RH 7.1 when it came out from PC bookshop in Holborn, London. The pleasantly geeky box contains 6 CDs and not much in the way of dead trees. Can't remember exact price, think 'x' where 10 x 25 GBP.
I make text message- I've got no reception so the text bounces off a few phones and ends up at a Fred's phone that has reception and sends it to the message centre. Does Fred pay the bill for that or do I?
Re:Slashdot on WAP
on
WAP Bashing
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Try this url:
http://wmlproxy.google.com/h=en/g=@26amp@3bwmlmo de =url/u=slashdot.org@2Fpalm
this uses Google's html2wml filter to give all the functional goodness of slashdot's Palm Pilot offering (including the top ten comments with each story) in a reasonable WML format.
Yep, this is true- stuff like lex (which gets called flex I think) which is used by tons of make/configure scripts is left out, as are all the 'devel' rpms - those rpms aren't unstable development versions, they're actually the source header files which you do quite often seem to need to compile against to Get Anything Done (TM). I think that Mandrake needs to acknowledge the difference between 'Developers' and 'People who compile from source' - tons of stuff is only distributed in source form!
The exclusion of telnet is almost forgiveable, I think they do install ssh, and we all know we shouldn't be using telnet these days(but does your workstation have a ssh client? do all of the servers you remotely access run sshd? Um probably not)
My tip-go to rpmdrake as soon as you install the machine, type 'devel' in the 'find' box, and install anything that looks remotely interesting- and don't forget flex too!
Maybe in the future we will see commercial code being distributed in such a way that parts of the code are compiled on the destination machine as the code gets installed. That way the code vendor can test a variety of complier options and not have to ship 42 different binaries for all the different CPUs in use.
Try OGR, the Optimal Golomb Ruler project. Finding better OGRs is actually a lot more clueful than brute-force cracking encryption keys (we've demonstrated that can be done, enough already!) - these interesting mathematical objects actually have many practical applications in comms, radio astronomy (so you are helping to find the LGMs) and other funky areas. And they even make beautiful necklaces....
look at his user info and you'll see quite a few amusing posts - he invariably claims (in a very sincere manner) to be an expert in whatever field the post relates to- BlueTooth, database design, etc, with
just enough techno-jargon to fool you for a moment- this troll is a bit lame though, apart from the bit where he claims to have traded mail with Linus...
I took a summer job at BT (the british telecoms company) two years ago, writing ASP's and backend code in VB - I have to say I was new to web scripting languages at that point and ASP was a bit of a revelation - it was like, 'yes! Now I can write my web sites in BASIC!'... of course VB isn't great, but it is easy to use (at least until it crashes). Then after graduating I took a job at a web design firm- they were using JSPs - I took one look and realised it was basically ASPs, but with Java, and was very very happy. JSPs perform great (the first time one runs it gets compiled into a servlet, which takes a second or so, after that access is just fine). JSPs have only got better since, though anyone looking at JSP should also think about XSLT, just for an alternative approach...
At my current (dot.com, internet travel) company, I'm writing Java once more, and it's a pleasure- the only problem is that the front end of our site is naked servlets, dating from pre-JSP days, and we use our own propriety template symstem to generate the html- the template system has really starting to creak at the seams and it's not flexible enough to cope with our needs... we'll be swtiching over to JSP (possibly mixed in with some XML/XLST) soon....
Re:Stas Busygin - that's a real name...
on
Does P = NP?
·
· Score: 1
jeez... and I did a preview on that as well! okay, the link was actually this http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices /a-tree/b/Busygin:Stanislav.html
Stas Busygin - that's a real name...
on
Does P = NP?
·
· Score: 1
I admit that logging everything is probably the best open policy- but while using https or ssh will gaurantee users that their exchanges will be kept private, it still means that who/what/where they connect to can still be kept, logged, profiled, etc.
As far as JBuilder goes, putting it on even more platforms should only increase it's quality. The thing's almost entirely written in good 'ole pure and portable Java (see their great exposed API here -writing JBuilder plugins is actively encouraged). When you put a program like that on multiple platforms, you're testing (and, yes, milking) the same code over and over again. The platform hooks take a little effort sure, but it's definitely a win-win for borland- more revenue from multiple platforms coming in to reinvest on their single well-tested codebase.
Incidentally, Borland has done the Java community and themselves a massive favour by making JBuilder Foundation free (as in beer). It's a brilliant fully featured product- highly recommended!
Roberto (Java fanatic, in case you hadn't guessed)
CISC was made to make the assembler programmer's life easier. RISC was made to make the hardware manufacturer's life easier.
Must take issue with that - as a low level coder, gotta say a good RISC instruction set (eg. ARM) is pleasure to use, okay you have a limited set of instructions but you can do anything to anything and it gives you an excellent degree of control. I've programmed CISC too, and I don't really see them making my life any easier - the 80/20 rule says I hardly ever use those fancy CISC instructions anyway!
I think we're going to see a lot more of this - and not just on billboards and the like. How about an imaginary blimp floating in the sky above? Hell, why not just trademark the sky itself?
Re:In the rush for the holliday release.....
on
Opera Beta Released
·
· Score: 1
Actually the problem with the "News For Nerds" image might not be the fault of Opera - I'm browsing under NT using Netscape 4.7, and there are some funny horizontal lines running down the image....
Ironically, this means that the shuttle is carrying up into space components for Hubble that are much more modern than it's own computer systems - which are amazingly old, for similar reasons of known reliablity.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a developer for The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/ ) - a UK newspaper not owned by Murdoch, which doesn't have any intention of becoming invisible any time soon - rather than erecting a paywall, we've spent the last year putting together a content API that allows anyone to explore our content using search terms, faceting, etc - and then build your own application upon it. Check it out here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform/getting-started
The implementation, written in Scala and based on Apache Solr/Lucene stack was pretty good fun (we plan to opensource it within a few months) - slides with some of the implementation details are here :
http://www.slideshare.net/openplatform/the-guardian-open-platform-content-api-implementation
Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, recently gave a pretty deep lecture on the 'open vs closed' & 'authority vs involvement' questions raised by the spectre of paywalls:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger
cheers,
Roberto
(views my own, not necessarily those of my employer, yack yack yack)
Vernor Vinge well deserves his reputation - the guy is a fantastic writer with bona-fide science knowledge and some Transcendent ideas.
For some reason, here in the UK, you're lucky to find even one book by him on the shelves of the major bookstores (Waterstones, Blackwells, etc). It's been the case for a while that several of his books have been either out of print or, in the case of the new True Names book, delayed somewhat. Publishers should be fighting each other off with big sticks for the right to sell Vinge, I can only assume that they're seeing low sales volumes and steering clear.
Just to verify Vinge's appeal, I've taken to occasionally buying his books for friends. One of my mates raved over it- seeing Marooned in Realtime as the best murder-mystery he'd ever read! My girlfriend, on the other hand, has yet to read hers... can't win 'em all I guess, hey ho.
Roberto
Assuming your message isn't a troll, you do seem to be using some software that is a quite substancially out of date in the Java world. Here's a few pointers:
- JSDK 2.0 is a reference implementation of a servlet dev kit by Sun. It's old. Sun has handed the servlet engine writing over to the guys at jakarta.apache.org , and they're putting out a servlet/JSP engine called Tomcat that's pretty damn good. Get Tomcat version 4.0.1 from
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/binindex.html
On a decent spec machine you should definitely experience more snappyness from Tomcat 4's improved engine - and it's a decent web server too. It's pure Java.
- Tomcat runs best on Java2SE version 1.3 . Assuming you have Mac OX X (your iBook is only a month old, right?) it should be preinstalled on your laptop. For other platforms get it from the java web site at java.sun.com. You really do not need to be using JDK 1.1.7, that's old. J2SE v1.3 might have a slightly bigger memory footprint but overall is definitely worth it.
-You mention that the bottle neck is at the database. You say you're using JDBC, but JDBC is just a connection protocol, what's your actual database? On windows, Sun provides some useful but non-production JDBC drivers for linking to ODBC data sources. They would definitely be a slow down factor, but if you get a decent database, the supplied JDBC drivers should make that go away. Try MySql from mysql.org, there are proper JDBC drivers available for that. Oracle is a good DB but possibly a bit too expensive!
Good luck with the site. Have fun and keep learning!
Roberto
At the bottom of page 3 of the iPod faq on the Apple site:
7 23 /www.apple.com/ipod/pdf/iPod_FAQ-a.pdf
http://a1504.g.akamai.net/7/1504/51/0f06b808e34
there's a question about using more than one iPod with a Mac. The reassuring answer is that each iPod has a unique ID, so no clashes occur- but presumably the ID can also be used in a DRM context- don't play any MP3 that hasn't been signed for this particular device, etc.
Roberto
This question is possibly already redundant but what are the chances of Linux support? I can't get to the apple site but the linked News article said there was no windows support at the moment- Apple 'might' get round to doing it later.
Man, this looks like a damn fine playa! I have a (damn fine) transmeta-based viao, with fire wire link, and I'd love to link it to an iPod - but if windows support is a way off, then I'd be more than happy with a Linux port from the OS X version.
Does anyone have any have idea if this iPod device will use some kind of standardised format for it's fire wire link - like the mass-storage profile many things follow with USB?
Roberto (slightly over-excited)
You want cheap RH disks- I'm sure they do them! I bought Redhat's 'Garage Edition' of RH 7.1 when it came out from PC bookshop in Holborn, London. The pleasantly geeky box contains 6 CDs and not much in the way of dead trees. Can't remember exact price, think 'x' where 10 x 25 GBP.
I make text message- I've got no reception so the text bounces off a few phones and ends up at a Fred's phone that has reception and sends it to the message centre. Does Fred pay the bill for that or do I?
Try this url:
o de =url/u=slashdot.org@2Fpalm
http://wmlproxy.google.com/h=en/g=@26amp@3bwmlm
this uses Google's html2wml filter to give all the functional goodness of slashdot's Palm Pilot offering (including the top ten comments with each story) in a reasonable WML format.
Yep, this is true- stuff like lex (which gets called flex I think) which is used by tons of make/configure scripts is left out, as are all the 'devel' rpms - those rpms aren't unstable development versions, they're actually the source header files which you do quite often seem to need to compile against to Get Anything Done (TM). I think that Mandrake needs to acknowledge the difference between 'Developers' and 'People who compile from source' - tons of stuff is only distributed in source form!
The exclusion of telnet is almost forgiveable, I think they do install ssh, and we all know we shouldn't be using telnet these days(but does your workstation have a ssh client? do all of the servers you remotely access run sshd? Um probably not)
My tip-go to rpmdrake as soon as you install the machine, type 'devel' in the 'find' box, and install anything that looks remotely interesting- and don't forget flex too!
Roberto
Distribute with source code? You crazy fool!
Try OGR, the Optimal Golomb Ruler project. Finding better OGRs is actually a lot more clueful than brute-force cracking encryption keys (we've demonstrated that can be done, enough already!) - these interesting mathematical objects actually have many practical applications in comms, radio astronomy (so you are helping to find the LGMs) and other funky areas. And they even make beautiful necklaces....
look at his user info and you'll see quite a few amusing posts - he invariably claims (in a very sincere manner) to be an expert in whatever field the post relates to- BlueTooth, database design, etc, with
just enough techno-jargon to fool you for a moment- this troll is a bit lame though, apart from the bit where he claims to have traded mail with Linus...
A Rice Ball? Is that it?!
Waassat? What's onigiri? Is it related to unagi?
Roberto
I took a summer job at BT (the british telecoms company) two years ago, writing ASP's and backend code in VB - I have to say I was new to web scripting languages at that point and ASP was a bit of a revelation - it was like, 'yes! Now I can write my web sites in BASIC!'... of course VB isn't great, but it is easy to use (at least until it crashes). Then after graduating I took a job at a web design firm- they were using JSPs - I took one look and realised it was basically ASPs, but with Java, and was very very happy. JSPs perform great (the first time one runs it gets compiled into a servlet, which takes a second or so, after that access is just fine). JSPs have only got better since, though anyone looking at JSP should also think about XSLT, just for an alternative approach...
At my current (dot.com, internet travel) company, I'm writing Java once more, and it's a pleasure- the only problem is that the front end of our site is naked servlets, dating from pre-JSP days, and we use our own propriety template symstem to generate the html- the template system has really starting to creak at the seams and it's not flexible enough to cope with our needs... we'll be swtiching over to JSP (possibly mixed in with some XML/XLST) soon....
jeez... and I did a preview on that as well! okay, the link was actually this http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices /a-tree/b/Busygin:Stanislav.html
To my surprise, he does seem to be a genuine person (not an april fool invention, etc) and a bona-fide mathematician. A quick search on google shows he's been around a ... so he really does think he has P=NP!? I have an nice'n'dodgy degree in mathematics, and I have to say I'll believe it when it's been seriously peer-reviewed. Of course, if P=NP, all our trapdoor-encryption starts to look a lot more susceptible...
Dude, it's kind of redundant because this story actually comes from the imagine-a-beow-aww-never-mind dept. And the joke's a little old too...!
I admit that logging everything is probably the best open policy- but while using https or ssh will gaurantee users that their exchanges will be kept private, it still means that who/what/where they connect to can still be kept, logged, profiled, etc.
Incidentally, Borland has done the Java community and themselves a massive favour by making JBuilder Foundation free (as in beer). It's a brilliant fully featured product- highly recommended!
Roberto (Java fanatic, in case you hadn't guessed)
Must take issue with that - as a low level coder, gotta say a good RISC instruction set (eg. ARM) is pleasure to use, okay you have a limited set of instructions but you can do anything to anything and it gives you an excellent degree of control. I've programmed CISC too, and I don't really see them making my life any easier - the 80/20 rule says I hardly ever use those fancy CISC instructions anyway!
I think we're going to see a lot more of this - and not just on billboards and the like. How about an imaginary blimp floating in the sky above? Hell, why not just trademark the sky itself?
Actually the problem with the "News For Nerds" image might not be the fault of Opera - I'm browsing under NT using Netscape 4.7, and there are some funny horizontal lines running down the image....
Ironically, this means that the shuttle is carrying up into space components for Hubble that are much more modern than it's own computer systems - which are amazingly old, for similar reasons of known reliablity.