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Apple Announces Penryn Mac Pros and Xserves
[Quote:]
The new Mac Pro features the latest Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors based on 45nm Intel Core (Penryn) microarchitecture running up to 3.2 GHz, each with 12MB of L2 cache per processor. According to Apple, the 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory achives a 61 percent increase in memory throughput.
One week before the expo. That can only mean there’s more than enough new consumer stuff coming next week to fill a keynote address.
Do You Listen To Radio While You Work?
[Quote:]
If you are involved in long hours producing predominately image based work, and you like a bit of engaging radio to occupy your other hemisphere, you might be interested in this: A visual radio tuner, called Tun3r.com
Cartoons
US leads on deaths from treatable disease
[Quote:]
More patients die in the US from diseases that could be treated by timely intervention than in any other leading industrialised country, a study by senior health academics showed on Monday.
[..]
“If the US performed as well as the top three countries in the study” – France, with 65 deaths per 100,000, and Japan and Australia, both with 71 per 100,000 – “there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year,” the authors write in the journal Health Affairs.
If the goal of your insurance system is to protect the profits of the insurance companies, this is what you get.
Mysql comparison of DATE of 0000-00-00 to NULL
It’s not equal to null.
It’s not not equal to null.
It’s not greater than null.
It’s not less than null.
It’s not rlike null.
It’s not <> null……
It’s….. something altogether different…..
mysql> create table foobar (test123 date);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> describe foobar;
+---------+------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------+------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| test123 | date | YES | | NULL | |
+---------+------+------+-----+---------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> insert into foobar values("0000-00-00");
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> insert into foobar values("0000-00-00");
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar;
+------------+
| test123 |
+------------+
| 0000-00-00 |
| 0000-00-00 |
+------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar where test123 = NULL;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar where test123 != NULL;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar where test123 > NULL;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar where test123 < NULL;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar where test123 rlike NULL;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from foobar where test123 <> NULL;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
There are two kinds of human beings
|
If Huckabee Loses New Hampshire, Is That God’s Will Too?
[Quote:]
It was just a month or so ago that Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher and Arkansas governor, claimed that the hidden hand of God was behind the surprising success of his candidacy:
MIKE HUCKABEE: There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped the little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people. And that’s the only way our campaign could be doing what it’s doing. I’m not being facetious, nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much. And it has. And it defies all explanation. It has confounded the pundits, and I’m enjoying every minute of their trying to figure it out. And until they look at it from an experience just beyond human they’ll never figure it out. And that’s probably just as well.
That’s honestly why it’s happening.
[..]
If Huckabee comes in third in New Hampshire today, it would be nice to think that a reporter would ask him to explain why it was God’s will for him to lose in the Granite State. Don’t hold your breath, of course.
First view of restored Roman emperor’s palace
[Quote:]
Italian experts have spent decades, and millions of pounds, restoring the palace of ancient Rome’s first Emperor, Augustus. It reopens to the public in March next year.
Orwell on nationalism
[Quote:]
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by “our” side.– George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”, 1945
Ring any bells?
Iraq in 2007
Declassified letter exposes Democratic Party complicity in CIA torture
[Quote:]
Last week, the CIA declassified a February 2003 letter from Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California discussing the planned destruction of videotapes depicting the interrogation and torture of prisoners held by the CIA.
Harman requested that the CIA release the letter in order to show her supposed criticism of the agency’s plans to destroy the evidence. In a statement on the letter, Harman said that it “makes clear my concern about possible destruction of any tapes.” In fact, the letter only underscores the fact that the Democratic Party was aware of and supported the CIA’s secret policy of torture.
Democrats knew of plans to destroy evidence of interrogations, but made no serious attempt to stop it or inform the American people. Indeed, Harman’s “concern” was in effect an indication to the CIA that the Democrats would not challenge a decision to destroy the tapes and would not expose the agency if it did so.
Some Free Speech On Mayor’s Words
[Quote:]
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani discussed his philosophy of what freedom means in a democracy yesterday at a forum on urban crime, and his remarks left a civil libertarian puzzled and worried.
The Mayor, a former United States Attorney in Manhattan, said New Yorkers were inclined to “see only the oppressive side of authority.”
“What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be,” he said at the forum, sponsored by The New York Post. “Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”
And War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Taser unleashes leopardskin C2 and MP3 holster
[Quote:]
Taser International yesterday used CES in Las Vegas to unleash the last word in must-have, non-lethal fashion accessories – a leopardskin Taser C2 which can be rather splendidly carried in a new one-gig “Music Player Holster” (MPH).
I’m a bit disappointed they didn’t call it the “iProd”.
Sony BMG to sell DRM-free music downloads through stores
[Quote:]
Sony BMG Music Entertainment will crack open the door to its music vaults on Jan. 15, taking the DRM copy-prevention wrapper off a limited selection of downloadable tracks.
The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM (digital rights management), from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada.
The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card’s covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears’ “Blackout” and Barry Manilow’s “The Greatest Songs of the Seventies.”
Holy fuck, they even manage to fuck up the sale of non-DRM music – Sony is really, really brilliant.
So, to recap:
to buy any physical CD:
step 1. go to store
step 2. pay for CD
to buy any non-DRM mp3 on, say, amazon:
step 1. log on to site
step 2. download CD
But for Sony:
step 1. go to store
step 2. buy a plastic card with a scratch of number
step 3. scratch number
step 4. go home
step 5. log on to site
step 6. enter the number
step 7. download CD.
I wonder. Do you have to study to be THAT stupid, or is it something you’re born with…
Dear Sony:
(and in case you hadn’t seen the above picture before, the first in the series is this)
Myyeeeesssss? Did you have an annoying debugging session recently, or….?
As you no doubt know, this is a general SQL issue that’s not specific to MySQL–IS NULL is part of the SQL standard and you’re encouraged to use it. (Or to design your schema to eliminate NULL values.)
mysql> CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE test ( d DATE NOT NULL );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.04 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO test VALUES (0000-00-00);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM test WHERE d IS NULL;
+------------+
| d |
+------------+
| 0000-00-00 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
So far, so good… and now:
mysql> SELECT * FROM test WHERE d IS NOT NULL;+------------+
| d |
+------------+
| 0000-00-00 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Lovely, innit?
Yeah, THAT is completely screwy. (Uh, unlike three-valued logic? No, let’s not go there.
MySQL.com sez:
“If you want MySQL to check all dates and accept only legal dates (unless overridden by IGNORE), you should set sql_mode to “NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,NO_ZERO_DATE”.”
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/using-date.html
Uh, unlike three-valued logic? No, let’s not go there
Oh, but please, let’s!
#!/usr/bin/perl
my $eyes;
theGoggles->doNothing();
Presuming that the date ’0000-00-00″ is equivalent to a NULL date value, your test is bogus! In ANSI SQL you cannot test against null except using the IS or IS NOT operations. If you compare a null value with any other value or even null, you still get an empty set. This shows that MySQL functions correctly, provided the query “select * from test where test123 is null” returns two rows.
bboyle, you might want to read the comments posted ahead of yours.