Comment Wood, smood - try knives from other materials. (Score 1) 91
This guy makes knives not only from wood, but also chocolate, eggs, cucumbers, etc.
Paul Allen Lends Personal ROV To Study Coelacanths 32
crudmonkey writes "It took a custom-made submarine, billionaire Paul Allen, and a tenacious desire lasting well beyond two decades to unveil enigmatic details about the life of the coelacanth—the primitive fish that invariably hooks researchers. A study published earlier this year in the journal Marine Biology summarizes 21 years of coelacanth population research."
Comment The Secret Life of the Fax Machine (Score 1) 835
Get to know your fax machine! Classic geek examination of this device, from the TV series "The Secret Life of Machines".
http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/secret_life_of_the_fax_machine.shtml
Watch the video: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/SLOM_0301-The_FAX_Machine.m4v
Comment GNU's dirty little secret about Tcl (Score 1) 425
Despite some harsh words about Tcl, Tcl is alive and well in certain GNU projects, including one of the more prominent GNU projects - GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection. GCC's test suite is run with the DejaGnu testing framework, which written in Tcl. So the next time you use gcc to compile code, be assured that Tcl has helped to make your executable run as you coded it.
http://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/trunk/gcc/testsuite/README?view=co
In Australia, An Ebay Sale is a Sale 267
syousef writes "An eBay sale is a sale says an Australian New South Wales State Judge in a case where a man tried to reneg on the Ebay sale of a 1946 World War II Wirraway aircraft. The seller tried to weasel out of the deal because he'd received a separate offer $100,000 greater than the Ebay sale price. The buyer who had bid the reserve price of $150,000 at the last minute took him to court. 'It follows that, in my view, a binding contract was formed between the plaintiff and the defendant and that it should be specifically enforced,' Justice Rein said in his decision." I haven't found anything like this in previous discussions; have there been similar decisions like this handed down in the US, Canada, or Europe?
Comment Re:Performance? (Score 1) 147
SQLite is actually very fast and capable of handling large amounts of data, but you do have to be careful to optimize your queries. SQLite doesn't do much query optimization for you, and can make a huge difference in execution. Fortunately, it's not hard to optimize SQLite queries. The pitfalls are documented (if you bother to RTFM), and tools exist to help find the dogs.
I personally built a custom ELT solution using SQLite, where the database grew up to 45gb in size. I also ran benchmarks using other database engines, including MySQL and PostgreSQL. SQLite was 2x faster than MySQL for my use.
If SQLite is ever anything but screaming fast, you either need to a) add appropriate indexes, or b) re-order your queries.
I personally built a custom ELT solution using SQLite, where the database grew up to 45gb in size. I also ran benchmarks using other database engines, including MySQL and PostgreSQL. SQLite was 2x faster than MySQL for my use.
If SQLite is ever anything but screaming fast, you either need to a) add appropriate indexes, or b) re-order your queries.
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