Unutterably Silly So what are you doing RIGHT NOW?

[LCF]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

For future reference, if something doesn't have drivers for Win 7, equivalent Vista drivers are a safe bet since most of the nuts 'n' bolts of Win 7 are the same. Why it's taking everyone so long to catch up with drivers (or at least a note on the vendor's website stating a workaround) is beyond me.

Yeah, 8/10 Vista drivers worked like a charm, some weren't even needed (WLAN, BT and such). But the 2 that had no desire to work properly took care I don't get too excited from the success with the previous 8.
But all is ok now and I'm making the image today

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

More than just filesystem: it was IBM's top of the line mainframe OS. MVS and UNIX were polar opposites in the way the file system was implemented. UNIX just saw files in a hierarchal file system, and didn't especially care what they were - that was the job of whatever program used the file. MVS did care what a file was, and knew a good deal about the files and their contents and uses. So you got things like ISAM files (Indexed Sequential Access and Maintenance) files suitable for database use, and PDS (Partitioned Data Set) files whose members were what we might think of as individual files.

Yup, everything in *nix is a file. I thought (think?) that was the preferred method of keeping things simple/more efficient, but that will likely depend on specific usage.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Despite mainframe origins, things like ISAM are still widely used. Until recent versions, for example, the ISAM file type (as MyISAM) was the default database file type used by MySQL. (The current default appears to be InnoDB, which looks a lot closer to a true relational database than ISAM is.)

...So I read up on this because, being a slacker, I use phpMyAdmin for MySQL and can choose which backend I use (also, I never paid attention). The choice was always MyISAM since it was always for small non-mission-critical stuff like a class project, my DC++ hub, etc. Oracle had always been my choice when it came to full-blown, monster-resources and damn the torpedoes RDBMS but they're quickly becoming Big Bad as a result of 1) letting OpenSolaris die without so much as a memo, and 2) suing Google over some maybe-or-not Java APIs in Android. I will be studying InnoDB on my own time in the future; thanks for pointing out the difference.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Years back, AT&T was still in the computer business, and entered into a joint venture with Sun Microsystems to create a converged version of UNIX that would marry the best parts of the AT&T System V and BSD flavors, under the direction of Sun R&D VP Bill Joy, who had been chief architect of BSD back when he was a grad student at UC Berkeley.

...who also invented the C shell (csh), the vi editor, the chroot jail, the Network File System (NFS), and probably Skittles just to prove he had a sense of humor. The guy's bio should be required reading for any system designer or programmer.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

USL was later purchased by Novell when Ray Noorda was running the shop, but Novell never seemed to have a clear idea of what to do with it. When Noorda was removed as CEO, Novell sold USL to the Santa Cruz Operation. But they transferred the UNIX trademark to the X-Open Group. X-Open published a set of specifications called "Spec 1170" that defined what a UNIX system was, and any OS that could pass those tests was entitled to call itself UNIX, regardless of its origin. (I recall a no longer extant Linux distro actually spent the time and money to pass Spec 1170 and get that right.)

The Open Group now maintains it and sets the standard for the Single UNIX Specification, while SCO vanished into bankrupt obscurity as a lesson learned when you mess with the big boys, and Novell got in bed with Microsoft.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It was theoretically possible for IBM to modify MVS so that it would pass Spec 1170, and could be called UNIX. I was deeply amused when IBM did (though their goal was POSIX compatibility to make the Federal Government which was requiring POSIX in systems it purchased happy.)

As a famous rock band once said, you gotta give the people what they want.

[kindlekitten]

I just made two fancy collars for the kitties that I am going to have to remake, oh well. learning curve.

getting ready to go have sushi

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I just made two fancy collars for the kitties that I am going to have to remake, oh well. learning curve.

getting ready to go have sushi

Hmmm? They don't fit or ?

[LCF]

Done
3 a.m. here - pretty decent time for finishing playing with computers...
Sleep on the menu for the next hours.

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by dreams

I am so far behind that I just gave up trying to catch up.. So, here's what I've figured out...

Everyone's home. Yay! .... h_t and Bilbo1967 are going somewhere. {Have a great time }

Libby, Dennis, and Shell's husband are speaking another language.. Linux or something.

Kenny is majorly artistic and recluse just had a tune-up and reajustment.

Win 7 is exciting and LCF is the new kid with it.

Kitties are great to cuddle and when they are on pj's.

Be careful if you let Catire work on your laptop, but cooking is totally different.... ME! I want some.

Dreams, you need to do that occasionally for me! I need that kind of help...

Catire, I hope I get in line faster next time! mmmm

recluse, I am glad your testicles are on the straight and narrow again instead of listing off to the side. I think. (Did I really read that right??)

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I just made two fancy collars for the kitties that I am going to have to remake, oh well. learning curve.

getting ready to go have sushi

mmm sushi! I'm going to have Thai food- my favorite! what kind of fancy colors? And what went wrong? sizing or the fancy part sticking?

I just finished going through the kids' clothes and separating out too-small clothing to give away to friends or salvation army or something. Four *big* garbage bags almost full. Now my house is messier, but less cluttered?

ETA: ooh, I knew I forgot something! Kenny, you continue to amaze me! In a good way, which is more than I can say for some....

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Hmmm? They don't fit or ?

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

mmm sushi! I'm going to have Thai food- my favorite! what kind of fancy colors? And what went wrong? sizing or the fancy part sticking?

....

Arwen gets burgundy and Strider purple. both have silver and crystal mixed in. they also each have a tiny little spirit bear and their names in silver beads. the guage of wire I got was too thick. I wanted to do a double threading sort of thing and it is too thick. I'll get a better guage tomorrow and re-do. in the mean time, strider has his on and doesn't seem to mind it. Arwen's is WAY too big. oh! and I found these really awesome bells that started the whole project!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

Yup, everything in *nix is a file. I thought (think?) that was the preferred method of keeping things simple/more efficient, but that will likely depend on specific usage.

It was a radical rethinking the the premise. In *nix, as you mention, everything is a file. A file is a high level abstraction. It can be created, opened, read from, written to, closed, and destroyed. It may be a collection of bytes on a disk, or a device like your terminal. It doesn't matter - you use the same semantics.

I remember a letter to one of the trade journals back when from an IBM systems programmer who read the early papers on Unix, went in to his boss, dropped copies on the bosses' desk, and said "How could we be so wrong for so long and nobody told us?"

...So I read up on this because, being a slacker, I use phpMyAdmin for MySQL and can choose which backend I use (also, I never paid attention). The choice was always MyISAM since it was always for small non-mission-critical stuff like a class project, my DC++ hub, etc. Oracle had always been my choice when it came to full-blown, monster-resources and damn the torpedoes RDBMS but they're quickly becoming Big Bad as a result of 1) letting OpenSolaris die without so much as a memo, and 2) suing Google over some maybe-or-not Java APIs in Android. I will be studying InnoDB on my own time in the future; thanks for pointing out the difference.

You're welcome.

Oracle also owns MySQL, as a result of acquiring Sun, and there was concern in MySQL circles about Oracle trying to kill it off. I'm not too worried: the folks who use MySQL in the first place wouldn't be likely to go with Oracle instead, for cost reasons if nothing else, and MySQL is open source. If Oracle tried to kill it, the most likely result would be a fork of the last open source code and a new product under a new name carrying on where it left off.

The problem is "What's an RDBMS?" Relational databases have their foundations in the work of Codd and Date, and ISAM predates that. Earlier databases on mainframes were hierarchal, not relational, and that described ISAM (and VSAM), as well as products like Cullinane's IDMS. Use of SQL as a query language does not an RDBMS make.

I'm in the beginning stages of learning this stuff myself. I just started wondering when I discovered the default file type in MySQL was ISAM how truly relational it was, and what InnoDB might offer that MyISAM doesn't. For the sorts of stuff MySQL gets used for, it doesn't seem to have made
a real difference, and for the real Big Mutha projects where you're managing terabytes of data, Oracle may be the only realistic solution, but it's still a worthy question. There are lots of database products out there. MySQL has the majority of the web based market, but you've got things like Postgresql and Firebird in the open source world, and there are still a few Oracle competitors out there like IBM's DB2, Sybase, and SQL Server.

...who also invented the C shell (csh), the vi editor, the chroot jail, the Network File System (NFS), and probably Skittles just to prove he had a sense of humor. The guy's bio should be required reading for any system designer or programmer.

Yep. I was never all that fond of csh (I preferred the Bourne/Korn shell), but I grew to actually like vi, once I understood the design concepts. Bill talked in an interview back when about trying to create a full screen editor that was usable over the 300 baud dial up modem connection he had from his dorm to the system he was working on, and a lot of vi makes more sense when viewed in that light - minimize what the user has to type to perform actions, and optimize screen updates for low bandwidth.

The Open Group now maintains it and sets the standard for the Single UNIX Specification, while SCO vanished into bankrupt obscurity as a lesson learned when you mess with the big boys, and Novell got in bed with Microsoft.

Yep. The Single Unix Specification is what Spec 1170 turned into.

SCO began as a second source for Microsoft's port of UNIX System III as Xenix, and became the main source when MS decided to wash it's hands off *nix and go entirely with home grown efforts. The growth of Linux savaged them: what they offered was a commercial X86 version of Unix System V, and why buy it when you could get Linux free?

SCO's moves against Linux were apparently prompted by a VC board member who told SCO CEO Darl McBride his real business was intellectual property, and he should go after Linux instead of trying to sell SCO UNIX. I think the hope was IBM would buy SCO, or pay them a lot to shut up and go away. IBM chose to do neither, had a large interest in Linux itself, and chose to fight. The issue isn't quite dead and buried, as the last legal formalities haven't finished playing out, but SCO's claims have been pretty much rejected across the board in court, and the VC board member dumped his holdings and left, so SCO is belatedly getting back to trying to sell and support SCO UNIX. They finally got a new major release out the door and are trying hard to preserve their installed base, but I doubt their long term prospects.

Novell pretty much had to get into bed with someone. Back when Noorda was running it, he acquired Word Perfect and Quattro Pro to compete with MS Word and Excel, got USL to provide an OS that could compete with NT, and already had Novell's core LAN offerings and expertise. He appeared to be trying to build a company that could compete with MS across the board, but never did meld his acquisitions into any sort of coherent whole or seem to have any long term plan about what he would do with them. Noorda got the boot, Corel got WP and Quattro, SCO got USL, and Novell was left defending a shrinking customer base and trying to reinvent itself.

As a famous rock band once said, you gotta give the people what they want.

Assuming you can figure out what that is. Too much these days seems to take the form of Microsoft's "Shove it down the market's throat and do lots of marketing to convince them they want it."
______
Dennis

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Oracle also owns MySQL, as a result of acquiring Sun, and there was concern in MySQL circles about Oracle trying to kill it off. I'm not too worried: the folks who use MySQL in the first place wouldn't be likely to go with Oracle instead, for cost reasons if nothing else, and MySQL is open source. If Oracle tried to kill it, the most likely result would be a fork of the last open source code and a new product under a new name carrying on where it left off.

That was a concern of mine as well; I did not one but 2 articles to that effect on my site (also stressing about the tightening use of Java). Incidentally, just read that Oracle bought the company that makes InnoDB back in 2005; that's where that connection probably comes in.

MySQL as former Sun IP might be Oracle-owned but the source is still GNU GPL'ed, at least for those of us who don't use it on an enterprise level, and it was never really meant for that in the first place (though it scales up surprisingly well, being used by no less than Facebook and Wikipedia). A few forks of MySQL are already in production such as MariaDB which was started by the same guy who founded MySQL (back when it was a standalone company before Sun took it over).

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The problem is "What's an RDBMS?"...Use of SQL as a query language does not an RDBMS make.

When it's a relational DB? A database that groups tables, fields etc by a particular attribute (i.e. how one table relates to another). RDBMS is the software which enables us to access and work with (i.e. manage) the data. That's my Alex Trebek answer.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm in the beginning stages of learning this stuff myself.

My hunch is you'll love it.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I just started wondering when I discovered the default file type in MySQL was ISAM how truly relational it was, and what InnoDB might offer that MyISAM doesn't. For the sorts of stuff MySQL gets used for, it doesn't seem to have made
a real difference, and for the real Big Mutha projects where you're managing terabytes of data, Oracle may be the only realistic solution, but it's still a worthy question. There are lots of database products out there. MySQL has the majority of the web based market, but you've got things like Postgresql and Firebird in the open source world, and there are still a few Oracle competitors out there like IBM's DB2, Sybase, and SQL Server.

From what I'm finding it's a question of horsepower, really: ISAM is non-relational but faster and easier on resources, and InnoDB is the opposite, which is not to say it's a bad performer (I haven't used it myself but I may invent a reason just to find out).

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Yep. I was never all that fond of csh (I preferred the Bourne/Korn shell), but I grew to actually like vi, once I understood the design concepts. Bill talked in an interview back when about trying to create a full screen editor that was usable over the 300 baud dial up modem connection he had from his dorm to the system he was working on, and a lot of vi makes more sense when viewed in that light - minimize what the user has to type to perform actions, and optimize screen updates for low bandwidth.

BASH FTW. Also, I can see why things are the way they are in vi, but even though I come from a pre-mouse, pre-GUI era I still can't justify (for myself, today) learning all the things which make it so powerful. It appears to me that most of the logic in vi is merely to enable the user to "move around" within the program instead of actually editing text; while this was a major part of the design, it feels more like a hindrance to me now and I tend to use nano any time I have the option.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Novell pretty much had to get into bed with someone. Back when Noorda was running it, he acquired Word Perfect and Quattro Pro to compete with MS Word and Excel, got USL to provide an OS that could compete with NT, and already had Novell's core LAN offerings and expertise. He appeared to be trying to build a company that could compete with MS across the board, but never did meld his acquisitions into any sort of coherent whole or seem to have any long term plan about what he would do with them. Noorda got the boot, Corel got WP and Quattro, SCO got USL, and Novell was left defending a shrinking customer base and trying to reinvent itself.

They're still trying to reinvent themselves; if I was a betting man I'd say watch for a takeover/buyout of Novell within the next 12 months.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Assuming you can figure out what that is. Too much these days seems to take the form of Microsoft's "Shove it down the market's throat and do lots of marketing to convince them they want it."

MS has no need to be that forceful on the desktop; they will in a few years however, unless they can come up with some serious innovation (preferably without ripping off open-source). On the enterprise front, they're pretty much sunk except for the fact that corporations tend to move more slowly when it comes to technology adoption.

Steve Jobs on the other hand appears to be able to sell a Hefty bag to a Greenpeace member.

[phenomshel]

Somebody better give Chris more Karma, fast... I just gave him some for the Steve Jobs/Greenpeace line and then realized that jacked his Karma fortune to say "plays well with others"....ummm... NOT!

[recluse]

For you, anything.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by recluse

For you, anything.

Geez, talk about "ask and ye shall receive"!! Thank you... now he can teach chickens to fly, which is exponentially closer to the truth than "plays well with others" !!

[recluse]

Glad to help.

When do his sedatives wear off?

[happy_terd]

Just finished the seven hour drive back.


Damn I am tired.

[GeoffC]

Just posted a comment about Kenny's drawing - see a few posts back .... a wonderful WIP that took almost as long as the portrait did to age