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Comment: Second machine and rsync (Score 1) 942

by dbrower (#46470803) Attached to: How Do You Backup 20TB of Data?
Get another machine with equivalent capacity and rsync between the two using gigE. The first copy will take a while (a day), but subsequent updates will be quick, being only the changes.

Even with windows you can run rsync if you install Cygwin and it's sshd.

If you can put the second machine in a distant room (garden shed, detached garage) that's unlikely to go up in the fire, that's better.

Comment: Re:Managers and Management (Score 1) 252

by dbrower (#44504425) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is Development Leadership Overvalued?

Gregory Peck's role in 12 O'Clock High is also a good example of effective management.

Leadership, on the other hand is much over-rated.

Only if one believes in the mission above all else, including personal sanity. That's a pretty doubled edged example, there, Mr. Conspiracy! (Which is why it's a great story and film.) And I think most people would rate it as leadership first, management second. It's the General above Savage who is doing the managing.


Comment: Re:LOGO / Turtle Graphics (Python has it) (Score 1) 525

Python has a built in LOGO library so I'll add that as another reason Python is a great language to start off with. It's easy to get started with yet powerful enough to write useful programs. I started as a wee lad with Apple's BASIC which is pretty much useless these days but if Python was around back then, I'm sure it would have been on my radar.

Input Devices

+ - A Kinect Dancing Musical Sculpture ->

Submitted by mikejuk
Link to Original Source

Ozzy Osbourne's Genome Reveals Some Neanderthal Lineage 151

Posted by samzenpus
from the born-to-rock dept.

Hiding Backdoors In Hardware 206

Posted by Soulskill
from the hamster-escape-route dept.

IE6 Addiction Inhibits Windows 7 Migrations 470

Posted by Soulskill
eldavojohn writes "As anyone in the industry will tell you, a lot of money went into developing web applications specific to IE6. And corporations can't leave Windows XP for Windows 7 until IE6 runs (in some way) on Windows 7. Microsoft wants to leave that non-standard browser mess behind them, but as the article notes, 'Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won't run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus, many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.' Support for XP is going to end in April 2014. In order to deal with this, companies are looking at virtualizing IE6 only (instead of a full operating system) so that it can run on Windows 7 — even though Microsoft says this violates licensing agreements. IE6 is estimated to have roughly 16% of browser market share, and due to mistakes in the past it may never truly die."

Comment: Here's a few books that I would strongly recommend (Score 1) 291

by dpranke (#32847778) Attached to: Good Database Design Books?

I've read a lot of database books in my time, and been around some of the biggest rdbms instances on the net. Here's probably my top three:

1) If you don't know SQL, O'Reilly's _Learning SQL_ is the best intro I've seen. This doesn't sound like what you're looking for, though.

2) If you know SQL reasonably well, but you want to get much better, I can't recommend O'Reilly's Theory In Practice book _The Art of SQL_ highly enough. I don't have it in front of me to remember precisely why I liked it so much, but it's outstanding. If you're going to get one book, get this one.

3) To really get the theory of databases, one of CJ Date's books is good. Someone else recommended _Databases in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners_, and I recall that looking pretty good when I skimmed it once. I would also recommend _Foundation for Object / Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto_, which I found to be very educational. You need to be careful with Date, though, because he tends to advocate how things "should work", not how databases actually work, and so you may find him advising you to do things that are actually bad ideas on your database of choice, so balance this off against good books for your specific DB


4) If you need to build large data warehouses (doesn't sound like you, yet), then Ralph Kimball's _The Data Warehouse Toolkit_ is all you will need to understand the theory. Unfortunately, effective warehousing is especially tied to your database of choice, so you'll want to hit the product manuals even harder here.

5) If you need to do OLAP (also not likely), there's only one generic book that's particularly good at all for the concepts, _OLAP Solutions_ by Erik Thomsen, and even that is not that generic. Unfortunately most OLAP and BI stuff is highly vendor-specific.

Joe Celko's books are also pretty good, in my experience, but I wouldn't buy them before the above.


Valve Delays Portal 2, Squashes Duke Nukem Rumors 135

Posted by Soulskill

Doctor Slams Hospital's "Please" Policy 572

Posted by samzenpus
from the paging-doctor-manners dept.

Comment: What is wrong with reusing content too? (Score 1) 252

by dbrower (#31944864) Attached to: How I Saved the Gaming Industry
Vogel speaks of the book/author analogy, but doesn't carry it as far as he should. Using a BadAnalogy for the sake of the audience, requiring new art content in every game would be like telling Terry Pratchett he was wrong to keep re-using the Discworld as a setting, because we're owed "new everything" in every book. Or saying that Intel/AMD/ARM are cheating by not introducing new instruction sets with every generation of processor.

I've got no problem re-using engines, artwork, characters or anything else in games, as long as the narrative and situations are interesting.


Comment: Re:Design (Score 1) 284

by sjames (#31919068) Attached to: Volcano Futures

Alas, most prop planes are turboprops these days, so they have the same problems. The size of plane that has actual piston engines would need 50 flights just to get one jetliner worth of people home.

They also require a different fuel that probably isn't available at the large airports that are prepared for large numbers of passengers milling around.

Comment: Re:"I reject notion of separation of church and st (Score 1) 999

by dbrower (#31460038) Attached to: Texas Approves Conservative Curriculum


Oh boy.

He is probably pulling the "amendments aren't part of the constitution" gambit, by which the validity of the Equal Protection clause and the Income Tax is also "refuted." -dB
