Come on slashdot-folks I expected better than all these comments about tin-foil hats.
It's bad enought that I have to put up with this any time I talk to any non-techie about the fact that I work for an RFID company and no I am not evil and do not wish to track their every move and alert someone that they are using the bathroom too much.
--Now for the Facts--
There are two main categories for RFID systems on the market today. These are near field systems that employ **inductive coupling** of the transponder tag or Smart Label to the reactive energy circulating around the reader antenna, and far field systems that couple to the real power contained in free space propagating electromagnetic plane waves.
The passports are (repeat after me) *inductive* which means that they are activated by a magnetic field which is amplified by that metal loop you see to provide power to read the memory on the chip. The claims that someone could build a reader to read your tag from even 10 or 20 feet away is ridiculous. It would require the creation of such a big magnetic field that it would probably zap all magnetic material (such as hard drives, floppy discs, usb keys) that I am sure someone would notice. Also in order to read the reflection of the magnetic field which is what determines the response (RFID works like an echo you yell at something and wait for the echo to figure out what the id is) you would need such a big receiver (note this is still for 10 - 20 feet only) that you would literally look like someone out of the verizon commercial.
I know us techies are generally oblivious to the outside world but I think if you saw someone like this within 10 feet you should generally notice. Also you should run because that magnetic energy will probably fry your nads among with other crucial body parts you may never use (sorry couldn't resist).
The only real danger is that some hot woman with an rfid reader decides to bump into you and just happen to place her hand where your passport is. If you foresee that happening a lot then I suggest you get a tin-foil cover. However if that happens to you a lot then you are probably not on slashdot and reading this anyways.
Sorry but I am a little sick and tired of hearing about all these security concerns by people who don't know how these systems actually work. Can you tell?
I think the best way to get into robotics is actually with Lego's you can start putting them together and gradually working in mechanical capabilities into them. When you are comfortable putting together mechanical movement devices then you know you are ready to move to the next level.
Mindstorms and also the Vex robotics kit are great though they require a lot of work and need someone dedicated.
But really all it takes is some interest and a little bit of time and money and you are on your way. The first step is asking slashdot but don't spend all your time reading the replies. Go out there and get one.
Then when you are ready you can tackle building a BattleBOT!!
Wow this is a really great breakthrough at least as far as the article describes it but there are a lot of unanswered questions.
The mechanism is basically built by connecting the way other nerves and muscles in the body operate when you do a voluntary action such as clenching your hand or flexing your arm. However this is just the muscle patterns and nerve synapses of one man.
If there is one thing I learned from my failed pre-med career it was that all human bodies interact differently. How will this work then for the masses? Would this have to be custom made for every person? Some kind of custom AI module or custom firmware that is uploaded based on your user profile or based off motion capture on your other arm.
Also from a tech side, what kind of chips do they use to do the processing of this. TFA doesn't mention the stuff we really want to hear.
The article is a little misleading though because the arm doesn't actually listen to the brain it listens to other portions around the arm based on a certain programmed sequence of events. I was really excited because I thought that they had made a device that responds to ECG waves from the brain and actually knows how to recognize certain patterns.
Even though I come off negative I must say that this is a great step in the right direction. The better AI and integration with the brain will surely come with time.
I just hope the AI arms don't decide to overthrow the arm owner or worse a la Doc. Octavius.
I am glad to actually get a comment before the masses of Slashdot jump on their new favorite villain Google.
But let's be honest. The "Don't be Evil" motto was made when Google was a startup of 50 or less people. Everything is based off an ideal in a startup because you want to change the world. In order to do that you need passionate and idealistic people. It was the same in the two startups I have worked for as well and it will be the same in my current startup. Nobody changes the world without some ideals. Nobody wants to work like crazy without a sense that you are going to be doing something profound, something worthy. Everybody wants to be a knight in shining armor. Maybe that is a bad side effect from the amount of RPG's good software developers play.
The unfortunate part of it is when you become a big corporation you are pulled in a lot of directions and sometimes the ideals you were founded on take a back-seat. This becomes especially true when you are publicly traded and have wall street to deal with. The fact is Google is now headed by more than just the two founders as a matter of fact I think they are probably just content to sit back and do what they do best develop new technologies. The actual Google is run by a bunch of savvy businessman who are there to leverage every single aspect of the company and a large part of that is lobbying.
Software patents - check Using their user's information for competitive advantage - check Being secretive about changes to their product - check Being one of the most secretive but somehow comes across open and sharing company - check
I think it's time to take the "Don't be Evil" slogan for what it is, just clever marketing. There is simply nothing most of us can do. I am tied into Google probaby more than others and I don't care because if it wasn't them it would be somebody else who is analyzing my data, hosting my emails, storing my chat's, selling me viagra (oh wait not that last part).
I noticed that you have broken out the Server and Desktop into CentOS and Fedora.
What are your plans for the future? Where does Fedora plan to live and how can people go from Fedora into CentOS or RHEL like you will be able to with Ubuntu?
Also are there any Fedora initiatives for Mobile Devices? Any kind of WinCE alternative planned? You would be the best to do it as you are also involved in the OLPC project.
That is good news but there are still lots of challenges to this. I remember reading that they need 10 million to even be able to produce them. They are still a long way off.
Now I am usually an optimist and i do believe that the OLPC project is at its core a good project but the competition is heating up with China, AMD and Intel with their own programs and china's project being almost competitive on price. Also the OLPC project relies on AMD and indirectly china's production capabilities to make it a reality.
Also in my opinion (and mine only - don't want to start a flameware) it is too much of a one man crusade. I think that there is way too much emphasis and publicity surrounding Negroponte and what he thinks that people (like me) will start to wonder if this is really a group effort or just one man's dream. There are times that the distinction between non-profit and corporation are blurred and the line between philanthropy and publicity are not clear.
However I think idea is sound and I think that the OLPC project has served notice to corporations that there is a very underserved market that can further the adoption of computers and thus overall help everyone out (like the Intel's and AMD's of the world). I think that a few years from now the lasting legacy of the OLPC project may be the fact that it spurred companies to serve this market.
And regardless of what people may say about computers and learning it does let me slack off and post on slashdot all day so they can't be so bad.
Yes I have heard the same about opera as one of our other developers swears by it.
However as a web developer the key matter is that you are coding for what your client base will have and thus even if you code everything according to standards this doesn't help you one bit if your client is all IE.
That is the frustrating aspect especially when you do heavy CSS work as many times we generate bad css just so it works on IE but is broken on Firefox.
So though Opera might be great you have to go with the one that strikes a good compromise between market share and features (ie the Fox)
Wel actually XUL itself is very powerful and a great standard but the support of it is what I am talking about.
It is a Pro and Con simultaneously.
While XUL is really Mozilla shining star for the future it is also not very standardized and there is too much variance between platforms.
XAML is also another competitor to this and doesn't seem to easily compatible.
These are some of the issues but they don't do the full XUL topic justice.
As a person who has done some personal testing on the same matter except for Opera I have some comments. It is nice to see the results on a more formal article but I am afraid the depth isn't there. Firefox 2.0 beta is not the same kind of release that IE 7 is. Where as FFox2.0 has been in the works for 6 months. They have been working on IE 7 for what 2 years now. So in that way not really a fair comparison. A better comparison would be to look at the nightly builds and ahead to version 3.0 which will arrive much sooner than any updates to IE7 will.
But I digress. My testing is as follows. Please note that I am currently using Firefox and Flock.
IE 7 ------- Pros: Much better improvement over IE 6 Tabbed browsing is done very well and better than firefox IMO Security remains to be seen but hopefully better RSS integration and better search integration
Cons: CSS is still broken - IE6 was horrible, IE 7 is just bad Supports Active X - this continues to be the main reason for their flaws and I don't see how this will change things Similar load times to IE 6 (isn't this supposed to be better) Tabs take up more memory Not liking the New UI (personal)
FF 2.0 ------- Pros: Like the article says incremental improvements - better search ui, better buttons, rss glow Better Security until IE 7 is tested worse -> bad memory management
Cons: Firefox was at 1.x releases forever and now they decide to do huge jumps Memory Management is still bad All Firefox browsers are still part of the same process so when one dies everything dies XUL, XUL, XUL
So overall IE seems to have fired a good shot but falls short in some aspects especially more complex site rendering. Firefox is good as always and the changes are incremental and good.
So I don't expect too many sweeping changes. IE may get to keep some people who were sick of IE 6 and considering a move but it is not likely to attract the Firefox crows. This could stop some of Firefox's market share gains that it has been enjoying but we will have to see what Firefox 3 does.
So many creative slashdotters and not one of them thought that maybe if Microsoft bought Yahoo then it would be a good way for them to offload their sinking MSN division to Yahoo. This would be much better than a spinoff of the division. Also this way it would not attract Antitrust Attention while Microsoft still controls a large portion of the industry and can subtly promote Microsoft services through it.
I have always thought that microsoft needs to diversify and get rid of some units to be more agile. This would be the perfect way to do that. Also in general MSN users would not be harmed as much by the move to yahoo as yahoo users would be with a move to MSN.
Think about it Microsoft, if you could pull this off you would have a much larger portion of the search business. Of course now it doesn't prominently feature the Microsoft name but is that really so important.
Powering things in the background and pulling sinister strings without people knowing is where it's at.
Now I am not saying that microsoft would have the insight nor would Ballmer be humble enough to follow this strategy. But if they did then the possibilities would be much better then the other way around.
Any thoughts on this strategy? What would be the downsides of this? I can never think of downsides to my own ideas but that is what slashdotters are so good at.
Well I have a macbook pro as well and I just recently converted from a lifetime of pc's and windows. Some of what you say is absolutely correct. It is without fail a very versatile machine, I currently run Mac OSX and Windows via Boot Camp and Linux via Parallels. For what I need and the different OS's I need to test my products on it is absolutely without peer. Also it is the most stunning laptop ever made I think. I get compliments all the time.
However I do not agree with the rest of your reasoning. The reason people complain about Mac's and any defects is because you could have the same computer for much less. As a matter of fact my MBP is almost 1,000 more than a similarly configured Dell or IBM Thinkpad (I get an employee discount). Also it is marketed as being better than a regular pc in every way. It has a whole section devoted to design and they talk about how much R&D they spend on the actual hardware design and use of the product.
For that kind of money is it bad to expect things to work great. My MBP is very hot. Much hotter than any other laptop I have ever used to this day. My co-worker got an IBM thinkpad that runs so cool and it has the exact specs and components and runs just as fast. Also there are other issues as well that give you a slightly sour feeling when you realize that you spend so much more than you normally would have.
And also the reason that you hear so many complaints is because there are more people using the Mac than ever before. A little while ago the Mac was a niche product and everybody who used it knew exactly what they wanted and have probably used mac's all their life. So they would ignore the problems or not be so vocal about it.
But now the Mac's are selling better than they ever have. Also they are attracting a lot of PC geeks such as myself that are used to getting excellent value for the money. Also us geeks are a very tough critic and when we spend our hard earned money and feel slighted you better believe that we are going to tell the whole world.
That is why people complain now and that is why the issue of yellow macbooks is significant. After owning 12 laptops in my time I have never had an issue like this in years of use much less in a span less than a week. And I am a sweaty beast.
Apple finally has a product that can be judged fairly against the competition. They have always been able to say we are so different (Power PC etc) so that is why you pay so much for what you get. They can no longer do that and now they have real competition to compare to.
---------------- Slashdotter (def) - A person who claims to program but just writes on forums all day
Finally, A linux subject that the slashdot crowd is silent about. Since it references debian the ubuntu comments were inevitable.
In reality this goes far beyond a debian discussion and is actually great news for the business of linux. In general Carrier Grade OS's is a way of saying that the OS used for certain carrier/telecom applications must follow a certain set of rules and standards.
This is important because carrier grade linux has to support a ridiculous feature set in order to achieve guaranteed uptime status. The more distributions there are with these features the more they become into mainstream kernels.
Another key advantage is that most carrier grade OS's charge you an arm and a leg such as montavista, sun and others. This prevents the smaller players from really being able to get into the carrier business and offer services because of the exorbitant costs of such applications. However this doesn't really figure into most of the current American telecom companies but where it really does make an impact is in third world/developing countries. The telecom's there are either government run or private institutions that can only offer their services to the wealthy.
Combine a platform like this with an open source SIP server like http://www.sipfoundry.org/ and you have the makings of some lower priced and more ubiquitous VOIP solutions for developing countries.
I think that steps such as these are what will make linux such a key component in other countries where the infrastructure is not yet built and can be based upon the matureness of open source technologies.
Overview -------- The OSDL CGLWG (Carrier Grade Linux Working Group - whoo thats a mouthful) defines three main types of applications that carrier-grade Linux will support -- gateways, signaling servers, and management.
Categories ---------- To build an effective specification for the applications above, the CGLWG is working on seven categories: standards, platform, availability, serviceability, tools, performance, and security. Work within each of these categories is broken down into three priority levels: level 1 defines first release requirements, level 2 defines second release requirements, and level 3 defines future release requirements.
Category 3: High Availability - Hmm pretty self explanatory
Category 4: Serviceability On the serviceability front, the CGLWG is currently trying to define requirements for resource monitoring, kernel crash dump and analysis features, structured kernel messages, dynamic kernel probing, hardware error logging, and remote access to the event log.
The best feature of CGL in my opinion
Category 5: Tools Priority 1 in the tools category will focus on the development of debugger support for threaded programs, kernel debugger support, and a kernel crash dump analysis tool.
Second best feature
Category 6: Performance In the performance category, priority 1 performance features required include millisecond real-time (less than 10-ms worst case latencies), pre-emptible kernel, RAID 0 (striping), application pre-loading, and a scaling analysis and report to identify scaling bottlenecks.
Category 7: Security The current version (V1.0) of the carrier-grade Linux specification does not have any requirements for security, but this will be addressed in a future version of the document. Security is recognized by the CGLWG as a key component of high availability.
YIKES!!
So there it is CGL 101. It will enable small development teams to offer real solutions in the behemoth telecom field.
I am against this bill to the very core since the internet takes up all my non-vital living functions but would this really mean there are no solutions. Could this bill encourage the large companies to provide a different solution. Let's look into the ways this bill could potentially help.
Imagine this! Microsoft and Google team together (GASP) to form a free internet service for anybody. It could be packaged into ie and firefox so that they can automatically establish a software dsl using your phone line or in the future (wifi/wimax) as the medium. Then they can call this great network or something ubiquitous like SkyNet. Also since they control the bandwith now they can also control what sites you go to and what kind of searches you can execute.
They can write off these expenses because these customers are much more valuable than a regular customer since their internet view is solely controlled by what the company wants them to see. I mean what if you could force a customer to only do online shopping through msn shopping(shudders).
Hmm this seems to be like it could be a very promising solution for both. It could be the start of a new era in computing. You could coin a term like access community and you could even trade people between access communities. Hey my dad surfs as part of the MicroGoo network and I am in the AmazEbay network. Can I trade my geeky linux friend to the MicroGoo community for my dad?
I would assume that SQLLite and HSQL would compare similarly. HSQL was faster than MySQL as well in the pole position benchmarks and in ours too but not entirely fair since it runs in memory.
If you know how SQLLite compares to HSQL then let me know and you will have your answer to a certain extent.
Our evaluation phase is over so I can't justify doing any tests on SQL Lite but I may try it if I ever get some spare time as I am sure I could just use the HSQL tests against SQLLite as well
There are several things wrong with your statement regarding the comparison of the two database. The first is that you assume that a database has to be relational in order to promote reusability. There can be many ways of promoting reusability including OODB and even the old ISAM model. BDB offers a very unique model of reusability and there are no constructs or foreign key relationships that are not possible to implement in BDB. Case in point MySQL can use BDB as it's underlying data mechanism.
The real questions is what kind of developer are you. If you have been used to developing with SQL then you will definitely find BDB's implementation hard to use. However if you think in terms of developing programmatic structures then BDB is actually pretty intuitive and you can do quite powerful things with it. We have api's that we have developed using the binding mechanisms that can do anything a sql database can with much less overhead of the query and row mechanism. Also reusability and sharing of tables has not been compromised in any way. Simply put BDB maps much better into an Object Oriented way of developing data vs. the Relational way of developing data. I don't want to start a religious war and claim one is better but I obviously have shown my bias towards the OO model.
However, I am in no way questioning the usefulness of SQL. It is merely a standard which developer can adhere to and be able to use a tool quickly. However that in itself does not measure the usefulness of a DBMS.
The way I look at is this and it sums up what I have researched in the course of building our embedded RFID devices.
- If you are looking for an embedded solution you want two things - performance, footprint and memory mgmt. The leader in this at least from our benchmarks so far has been BDB hands down. - If you want a non-embedded solution then you need to take into account all the other features like failover, transactions, warehousing yada yada and for this I would rather go with something full featured like Postgre, EDB or <gasp> oracle
- If you don't feel like developing and just want something that does the embedded portion of your requirements then the myriad of embedded sql db's should suffice.
But when performance is an issue I haven't found anything that you can get to run faster than BDB (taking into account what is needed for small memory/limited results type applications)
My company has been using Berkeley DB for quite some time and I must say that is indeed quite a good product. Sleepycat has great support and the tool itself is very stable. The java version is fairly new and doesn't have the features of the C version but works great as object storage.
However it is not very user friendly and also not very programmer friendly. It doesn't have any single protocol like JDBC for access because you can literally program it to do anything. Also the documentation is very sparse and there is only one GUI admin tool as opposed to about a jillion ones for SQL DB's. However BDBXMLAdmin from the java.net project is quite good and though its not quite a phpmysql competitor it is adequate https://bdbxmladmin.dev.java.net/. What it makes up in difficulty it absolutely makes up for in terms of raw speed and portability it just can't be beat and we have benchmarked it vs. HSQL and MySQL running in ISAM mode.
It looks like the oracle acquisition may actually be paying off as they were generally very slow in new releases and I don't know about the size of their development team but I would have thought they would have produced more for the time and the apparent caliber of the management team (bunch of Phd's that worked on the initial product). I hope that oracle can bring some muscle and polish to their product and maybe this will be one that they don't kill off with their questionable ideals.
Here's to hoping that BDB gets the recognition it deserves and I predict that with the right involvement it will be a strong player in the embedded applicaitons space, something oracle could never hope to compete in without a tool like this.
We are currently building a product for embedded devices in the RFID space and some of the things that need to be done can't be done with any other embedded db period. It really is so great to work with and handles Java and XML storage quite well.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on slashdot-folks I expected better than all these comments about tin-foil hats.
It's bad enought that I have to put up with this any time I talk to any non-techie about the fact that I work for an RFID company and no I am not evil and do not wish to track their every move and alert someone that they are using the bathroom too much.
--Now for the Facts--
There are two main categories for RFID systems on the market today. These are near field systems that
employ **inductive coupling** of the transponder tag or Smart Label to the reactive energy circulating around the reader antenna, and far field systems that couple to the real power contained in free space propagating electromagnetic plane waves.
The passports are (repeat after me) *inductive* which means that they are activated by a magnetic field which is amplified by that metal loop you see to provide power to read the memory on the chip. The claims that someone could build a reader to read your tag from even 10 or 20 feet away is ridiculous. It would require the creation of such a big magnetic field that it would probably zap all magnetic material (such as hard drives, floppy discs, usb keys) that I am sure someone would notice. Also in order to read the reflection of the magnetic field which is what determines the response (RFID works like an echo you yell at something and wait for the echo to figure out what the id is) you would need such a big receiver (note this is still for 10 - 20 feet only) that you would literally look like someone out of the verizon commercial.
I know us techies are generally oblivious to the outside world but I think if you saw someone like this within 10 feet you should generally notice. Also you should run because that magnetic energy will probably fry your nads among with other crucial body parts you may never use (sorry couldn't resist).
The only real danger is that some hot woman with an rfid reader decides to bump into you and just happen to place her hand where your passport is. If you foresee that happening a lot then I suggest you get a tin-foil cover. However if that happens to you a lot then you are probably not on slashdot and reading this anyways.
Sorry but I am a little sick and tired of hearing about all these security concerns by people who don't know how these systems actually work. Can you tell?
YES!!
Mindstorms is a great tool to get into Robotics.
I think the best way to get into robotics is actually with Lego's you can start putting them together and gradually working in mechanical capabilities into them. When you are comfortable putting together mechanical movement devices then you know you are ready to move to the next level.
Mindstorms and also the Vex robotics kit are great though they require a lot of work and need someone dedicated.
But really all it takes is some interest and a little bit of time and money and you are on your way. The first step is asking slashdot but don't spend all your time reading the replies. Go out there and get one.
Then when you are ready you can tackle building a BattleBOT!!
I think that forking is one of the most disruptive ways to let your point be known.
It hurts the overall project and also has the potential to lose developers and dilute the name even more and start a project just to make a point.
I think that if OSS developers learned to work well and resolve differences without a fork that would make the projects much more competitive.
NetBSD is one of the oldest BSD's and has really suffered a lot from well publicised forks (Theo) and other corporate involvement.
I think it is better for Charles to rant and take his opinions up on a public forum as opposed to forking what is really an exceptional OS.
Wow this is a really great breakthrough at least as far as the article describes it but there are a lot of unanswered questions.
The mechanism is basically built by connecting the way other nerves and muscles in the body operate when you do a voluntary action such as clenching your hand or flexing your arm. However this is just the muscle patterns and nerve synapses of one man.
If there is one thing I learned from my failed pre-med career it was that all human bodies interact differently. How will this work then for the masses? Would this have to be custom made for every person? Some kind of custom AI module or custom firmware that is uploaded based on your user profile or based off motion capture on your other arm.
Also from a tech side, what kind of chips do they use to do the processing of this. TFA doesn't mention the stuff we really want to hear.
The article is a little misleading though because the arm doesn't actually listen to the brain it listens to other portions around the arm based on a certain programmed sequence of events. I was really excited because I thought that they had made a device that responds to ECG waves from the brain and actually knows how to recognize certain patterns.
Even though I come off negative I must say that this is a great step in the right direction. The better AI and integration with the brain will surely come with time.
I just hope the AI arms don't decide to overthrow the arm owner or worse a la Doc. Octavius.
I am glad to actually get a comment before the masses of Slashdot jump on their new favorite villain Google.
But let's be honest. The "Don't be Evil" motto was made when Google was a startup of 50 or less people. Everything is based off an ideal in a startup because you want to change the world. In order to do that you need passionate and idealistic people. It was the same in the two startups I have worked for as well and it will be the same in my current startup. Nobody changes the world without some ideals. Nobody wants to work like crazy without a sense that you are going to be doing something profound, something worthy. Everybody wants to be a knight in shining armor. Maybe that is a bad side effect from the amount of RPG's good software developers play.
The unfortunate part of it is when you become a big corporation you are pulled in a lot of directions and sometimes the ideals you were founded on take a back-seat. This becomes especially true when you are publicly traded and have wall street to deal with. The fact is Google is now headed by more than just the two founders as a matter of fact I think they are probably just content to sit back and do what they do best develop new technologies. The actual Google is run by a bunch of savvy businessman who are there to leverage every single aspect of the company and a large part of that is lobbying.
Software patents - check
Using their user's information for competitive advantage - check
Being secretive about changes to their product - check
Being one of the most secretive but somehow comes across open and sharing company - check
I think it's time to take the "Don't be Evil" slogan for what it is, just clever marketing. There is simply nothing most of us can do. I am tied into Google probaby more than others and I don't care because if it wasn't them it would be somebody else who is analyzing my data, hosting my emails, storing my chat's, selling me viagra (oh wait not that last part).
I noticed that you have broken out the Server and Desktop into CentOS and Fedora.
What are your plans for the future? Where does Fedora plan to live and how can people go from Fedora into CentOS or RHEL like you will be able to with Ubuntu?
Also are there any Fedora initiatives for Mobile Devices? Any kind of WinCE alternative planned? You would be the best to do it as you are also involved in the OLPC project.
Thanks
That is good news but there are still lots of challenges to this. I remember reading that they need 10 million to even be able to produce them. They are still a long way off.
Now I am usually an optimist and i do believe that the OLPC project is at its core a good project but the competition is heating up with China, AMD and Intel with their own programs and china's project being almost competitive on price. Also the OLPC project relies on AMD and indirectly china's production capabilities to make it a reality.
Also in my opinion (and mine only - don't want to start a flameware) it is too much of a one man crusade. I think that there is way too much emphasis and publicity surrounding Negroponte and what he thinks that people (like me) will start to wonder if this is really a group effort or just one man's dream. There are times that the distinction between non-profit and corporation are blurred and the line between philanthropy and publicity are not clear.
However I think idea is sound and I think that the OLPC project has served notice to corporations that there is a very underserved market that can further the adoption of computers and thus overall help everyone out (like the Intel's and AMD's of the world). I think that a few years from now the lasting legacy of the OLPC project may be the fact that it spurred companies to serve this market.
And regardless of what people may say about computers and learning it does let me slack off and post on slashdot all day so they can't be so bad.
Actually,
.... A**hole"
I believe the correct and revised motto was
"Ask Why
This was after Skillings lost it in an investor call where an analyst questioned his earnings and called him that.
It became the unofficial slogan of the company after that.
Ironically enough,
This slogan also fits quite nicely for Slashdot.
Yes I have heard the same about opera as one of our other developers swears by it.
However as a web developer the key matter is that you are coding for what your client base will have and thus even if you code everything according to standards this doesn't help you one bit if your client is all IE.
That is the frustrating aspect especially when you do heavy CSS work as many times we generate bad css just so it works on IE but is broken on Firefox.
So though Opera might be great you have to go with the one that strikes a good compromise between market share and features (ie the Fox)
Wel actually XUL itself is very powerful and a great standard but the support of it is what I am talking about. It is a Pro and Con simultaneously. While XUL is really Mozilla shining star for the future it is also not very standardized and there is too much variance between platforms. XAML is also another competitor to this and doesn't seem to easily compatible. These are some of the issues but they don't do the full XUL topic justice.
As a person who has done some personal testing on the same matter except for Opera I have some comments. It is nice to see the results on a more formal article but I am afraid the depth isn't there. Firefox 2.0 beta is not the same kind of release that IE 7 is. Where as FFox2.0 has been in the works for 6 months. They have been working on IE 7 for what 2 years now. So in that way not really a fair comparison. A better comparison would be to look at the nightly builds and ahead to version 3.0 which will arrive much sooner than any updates to IE7 will.
But I digress. My testing is as follows. Please note that I am currently using Firefox and Flock.
IE 7
-------
Pros:
Much better improvement over IE 6
Tabbed browsing is done very well and better than firefox IMO
Security remains to be seen but hopefully better
RSS integration and better search integration
Cons:
CSS is still broken - IE6 was horrible, IE 7 is just bad
Supports Active X - this continues to be the main reason for their flaws and I don't see how this will change things
Similar load times to IE 6 (isn't this supposed to be better)
Tabs take up more memory
Not liking the New UI (personal)
FF 2.0
-------
Pros:
Like the article says incremental improvements - better search ui, better buttons, rss glow
Better Security until IE 7 is tested
worse -> bad memory management
Cons:
Firefox was at 1.x releases forever and now they decide to do huge jumps
Memory Management is still bad
All Firefox browsers are still part of the same process so when one dies everything dies
XUL, XUL, XUL
So overall IE seems to have fired a good shot but falls short in some aspects especially more complex site rendering. Firefox is good as always and the changes are incremental and good.
So I don't expect too many sweeping changes. IE may get to keep some people who were sick of IE 6 and considering a move but it is not likely to attract the Firefox crows. This could stop some of Firefox's market share gains that it has been enjoying but we will have to see what Firefox 3 does.
So many creative slashdotters and not one of them thought that maybe if Microsoft bought Yahoo then it would be a good way for them to offload their sinking MSN division to Yahoo. This would be much better than a spinoff of the division. Also this way it would not attract Antitrust Attention while Microsoft still controls a large portion of the industry and can subtly promote Microsoft services through it.
I have always thought that microsoft needs to diversify and get rid of some units to be more agile. This would be the perfect way to do that. Also in general MSN users would not be harmed as much by the move to yahoo as yahoo users would be with a move to MSN.
Think about it Microsoft, if you could pull this off you would have a much larger portion of the search business. Of course now it doesn't prominently feature the Microsoft name but is that really so important.
Powering things in the background and pulling sinister strings without people knowing is where it's at.
Now I am not saying that microsoft would have the insight nor would Ballmer be humble enough to follow this strategy. But if they did then the possibilities would be much better then the other way around.
Any thoughts on this strategy? What would be the downsides of this? I can never think of downsides to my own ideas but that is what slashdotters are so good at.
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My Sig - it is RFID Enabled
Hmm,
Well I have a macbook pro as well and I just recently converted from a lifetime of pc's and windows. Some of what you say is absolutely correct. It is without fail a very versatile machine, I currently run Mac OSX and Windows via Boot Camp and Linux via Parallels. For what I need and the different OS's I need to test my products on it is absolutely without peer. Also it is the most stunning laptop ever made I think. I get compliments all the time.
However I do not agree with the rest of your reasoning. The reason people complain about Mac's and any defects is because you could have the same computer for much less. As a matter of fact my MBP is almost 1,000 more than a similarly configured Dell or IBM Thinkpad (I get an employee discount). Also it is marketed as being better than a regular pc in every way. It has a whole section devoted to design and they talk about how much R&D they spend on the actual hardware design and use of the product.
For that kind of money is it bad to expect things to work great. My MBP is very hot. Much hotter than any other laptop I have ever used to this day. My co-worker got an IBM thinkpad that runs so cool and it has the exact specs and components and runs just as fast. Also there are other issues as well that give you a slightly sour feeling when you realize that you spend so much more than you normally would have.
And also the reason that you hear so many complaints is because there are more people using the Mac than ever before. A little while ago the Mac was a niche product and everybody who used it knew exactly what they wanted and have probably used mac's all their life. So they would ignore the problems or not be so vocal about it.
But now the Mac's are selling better than they ever have. Also they are attracting a lot of PC geeks such as myself that are used to getting excellent value for the money. Also us geeks are a very tough critic and when we spend our hard earned money and feel slighted you better believe that we are going to tell the whole world.
That is why people complain now and that is why the issue of yellow macbooks is significant. After owning 12 laptops in my time I have never had an issue like this in years of use much less in a span less than a week. And I am a sweaty beast.
Apple finally has a product that can be judged fairly against the competition. They have always been able to say we are so different (Power PC etc) so that is why you pay so much for what you get. They can no longer do that and now they have real competition to compare to.
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Slashdotter (def) - A person who claims to program but just writes on forums all day
Wow,
8 27S0008
Finally, A linux subject that the slashdot crowd is silent about. Since it references debian the ubuntu comments were inevitable.
In reality this goes far beyond a debian discussion and is actually great news for the business of linux. In general Carrier Grade OS's is a way of saying that the OS used for certain carrier/telecom applications must follow a certain set of rules and standards.
This is important because carrier grade linux has to support a ridiculous feature set in order to achieve guaranteed uptime status. The more distributions there are with these features the more they become into mainstream kernels.
Another key advantage is that most carrier grade OS's charge you an arm and a leg such as montavista, sun and others. This prevents the smaller players from really being able to get into the carrier business and offer services because of the exorbitant costs of such applications. However this doesn't really figure into most of the current American telecom companies but where it really does make an impact is in third world/developing countries. The telecom's there are either government run or private institutions that can only offer their services to the wealthy.
Combine a platform like this with an open source SIP server like http://www.sipfoundry.org/ and you have the makings of some lower priced and more ubiquitous VOIP solutions for developing countries.
I think that steps such as these are what will make linux such a key component in other countries where the infrastructure is not yet built and can be based upon the matureness of open source technologies.
Here is my synopsis of what CGL entails. The full article can be found here http://www.commsdesign.com/design_corner/OEG20020
Overview
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The OSDL CGLWG (Carrier Grade Linux Working Group - whoo thats a mouthful) defines three main types of applications that carrier-grade Linux will support -- gateways, signaling servers, and management.
Categories
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To build an effective specification for the applications above, the CGLWG is working on seven categories: standards, platform, availability, serviceability, tools, performance, and security. Work within each of these categories is broken down into three priority levels: level 1 defines first release requirements, level 2 defines second release requirements, and level 3 defines future release requirements.
Category 1: Standards - IPV6, Posix etc etc
Category 2: Platform Requirements - Hot swappable devices, uptime, kernel hardware error correction blah blah
Category 3: High Availability - Hmm pretty self explanatory
Category 4: Serviceability
On the serviceability front, the CGLWG is currently trying to define requirements for resource monitoring, kernel crash dump and analysis features, structured kernel messages, dynamic kernel probing, hardware error logging, and remote access to the event log.
The best feature of CGL in my opinion
Category 5: Tools
Priority 1 in the tools category will focus on the development of debugger support for threaded programs, kernel debugger support, and a kernel crash dump analysis tool.
Second best feature
Category 6: Performance
In the performance category, priority 1 performance features required include millisecond real-time (less than 10-ms worst case latencies), pre-emptible kernel, RAID 0 (striping), application pre-loading, and a scaling analysis and report to identify scaling bottlenecks.
Category 7: Security
The current version (V1.0) of the carrier-grade Linux specification does not have any requirements for security, but this will be addressed in a future version of the document. Security is recognized by the CGLWG as a key component of high availability.
YIKES!!
So there it is CGL 101. It will enable small development teams to offer real solutions in the behemoth telecom field.
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Ok,
I am against this bill to the very core since the internet takes up all my non-vital living functions but would this really mean there are no solutions. Could this bill encourage the large companies to provide a different solution. Let's look into the ways this bill could potentially help.
Imagine this! Microsoft and Google team together (GASP) to form a free internet service for anybody. It could be packaged into ie and firefox so that they can automatically establish a software dsl using your phone line or in the future (wifi/wimax) as the medium. Then they can call this great network or something ubiquitous like SkyNet. Also since they control the bandwith now they can also control what sites you go to and what kind of searches you can execute.
They can write off these expenses because these customers are much more valuable than a regular customer since their internet view is solely controlled by what the company wants them to see. I mean what if you could force a customer to only do online shopping through msn shopping(shudders).
Hmm this seems to be like it could be a very promising solution for both. It could be the start of a new era in computing. You could coin a term like access community and you could even trade people between access communities. Hey my dad surfs as part of the MicroGoo network and I am in the AmazEbay network. Can I trade my geeky linux friend to the MicroGoo community for my dad?
The capitalist business models are unlimited
Hmm can you see the possibilities
I would assume that SQLLite and HSQL would compare similarly. HSQL was faster than MySQL as well in the pole position benchmarks and in ours too but not entirely fair since it runs in memory.
If you know how SQLLite compares to HSQL then let me know and you will have your answer to a certain extent.
Our evaluation phase is over so I can't justify doing any tests on SQL Lite but I may try it if I ever get some spare time as I am sure I could just use the HSQL tests against SQLLite as well
Finally!!
A topic I actually know something about.
There are several things wrong with your statement regarding the comparison of the two database. The first is that you assume that a database has to be relational in order to promote reusability. There can be many ways of promoting reusability including OODB and even the old ISAM model. BDB offers a very unique model of reusability and there are no constructs or foreign key relationships that are not possible to implement in BDB. Case in point MySQL can use BDB as it's underlying data mechanism.
The real questions is what kind of developer are you. If you have been used to developing with SQL then you will definitely find BDB's implementation hard to use. However if you think in terms of developing programmatic structures then BDB is actually pretty intuitive and you can do quite powerful things with it. We have api's that we have developed using the binding mechanisms that can do anything a sql database can with much less overhead of the query and row mechanism. Also reusability and sharing of tables has not been compromised in any way. Simply put BDB maps much better into an Object Oriented way of developing data vs. the Relational way of developing data. I don't want to start a religious war and claim one is better but I obviously have shown my bias towards the OO model.
However, I am in no way questioning the usefulness of SQL. It is merely a standard which developer can adhere to and be able to use a tool quickly. However that in itself does not measure the usefulness of a DBMS.
The way I look at is this and it sums up what I have researched in the course of building our embedded RFID devices.
- If you are looking for an embedded solution you want two things - performance, footprint and memory mgmt. The leader in this at least from our benchmarks so far has been BDB hands down.
- If you want a non-embedded solution then you need to take into account all the other features like failover, transactions, warehousing yada yada and for this I would rather go with something full featured like Postgre, EDB or <gasp> oracle
- If you don't feel like developing and just want something that does the embedded portion of your requirements then the myriad of embedded sql db's should suffice.
But when performance is an issue I haven't found anything that you can get to run faster than BDB (taking into account what is needed for small memory/limited results type applications)
My findings only (your results may vary)
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My company has been using Berkeley DB for quite some time and I must say that is indeed quite a good product. Sleepycat has great support and the tool itself is very stable. The java version is fairly new and doesn't have the features of the C version but works great as object storage.
However it is not very user friendly and also not very programmer friendly. It doesn't have any single protocol like JDBC for access because you can literally program it to do anything. Also the documentation is very sparse and there is only one GUI admin tool as opposed to about a jillion ones for SQL DB's. However BDBXMLAdmin from the java.net project is quite good and though its not quite a phpmysql competitor it is adequate https://bdbxmladmin.dev.java.net/. What it makes up in difficulty it absolutely makes up for in terms of raw speed and portability it just can't be beat and we have benchmarked it vs. HSQL and MySQL running in ISAM mode.
It looks like the oracle acquisition may actually be paying off as they were generally very slow in new releases and I don't know about the size of their development team but I would have thought they would have produced more for the time and the apparent caliber of the management team (bunch of Phd's that worked on the initial product). I hope that oracle can bring some muscle and polish to their product and maybe this will be one that they don't kill off with their questionable ideals.
Here's to hoping that BDB gets the recognition it deserves and I predict that with the right involvement it will be a strong player in the embedded applicaitons space, something oracle could never hope to compete in without a tool like this.
We are currently building a product for embedded devices in the RFID space and some of the things that need to be done can't be done with any other embedded db period. It really is so great to work with and handles Java and XML storage quite well.
------- Long time Addict, First Time Poster