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Submission + - PostgreSQL 9.0 Released (postgresql.org) 1

Submitted by poet on Monday September 20, 2010 @01:37PM

poet writes: Today the PostgreSQL Global Development Group (PGDG) released PostgreSQL 9.0. This release marks a major milestone in the PostgreSQL ecosystem with added features such as streaming replication (including DDL), Hot Standby and other nifty items such as DO. Get your copy today.

Submission + - Did Google Go Instant Just to Show More Ads? (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn on Monday September 20, 2010 @04:12AM

eldavojohn writes: Google, already the largest search engine in the United States, went instant a few weeks ago. It's a new feature that none of the competitors have and uses an extra five to fifty kilobytes per search. MIT's tech review asks why Google went instant and is skeptical that users actually look at search results before they finish typing their query. Othar Hansson, Google's lead on the initiative, informs them otherwise and claims that Google's traffic monitors didn't even blink at the extra data being sent across — primarily because of its insignificance next to streaming one video on YouTube. Hansson also reveals that Google's search engine is no longer stateless and therefore takes up a little more memory in their server hives. The Tech Review claims that 'sources at the company say Google Instant's impact on ad sales was a primary focus in testing the service. Google only gets paid for an advertisement, or sponsored link, when a user clicks on the ad, and ads are targeted to specific searches. By displaying a search's ads onscreen a couple of seconds sooner, the frequency of users clicking on those ads could only go up.' So money seemed to be the prime motivator and the article also coyly notes that the average length of time a user spends between typing in any two characters is 300 milliseconds — much too fast for old JavaScript engines. So of course you might recall Google's efforts to change all that with JavaScript speed wars. Do you find Google instant to be useful in anyway or does it strike you as just more ad gravity for your mouse?

Postgres Project To Go NoSQL 62

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday April 01, 2010 @05:43PM from the time-to-migrate dept.

TheFuzzy writes "Apparently the PostgreSQL project is caving in to recent trends and going NoSQL next year. This will leave SQLite as the only open source database still supporting SQL."

Why Oracle Can't Easily Kill PostgreSQL 279

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 09, 2010 @10:20AM from the it-will-rise-from-the-dead-to-feast-upon-the-living dept.

ruphus13 writes "Claiming that 'PostgreSQL is a FOSS alternative to MySQL and hence Oracle should be allowed to pursue MySQL' is a specious argument, according to Monty Widenius. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers. The Postgre community has fired back, calling that claim ridiculous. According to the article, 'PostgreSQL as a project is pretty healthy, and shows how vulnerable projects like MySQL are to the winds of change. PostgreSQL could die tomorrow, if a huge group of its contributors dropped out for one reason or another and the remainder of the community didn't take up the slack. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The existing model for PostgreSQL development ensures that no single entity can control it, it can't be purchased, and if someone decides to fork the project, the odds are that the remaining community would be strong enough to continue without a serious glitch.'"

Slimmed Down MySQL Offshoot Drizzle is Built For the Web 370

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 23, 2008 @09:00AM from the now-it-can-be-told dept.

Incon writes "Builder AU reports that Brian Aker, MySQL's director of architecture, has unveiled Drizzle, a database project aimed at powering websites with massive concurrency as well as trimming superfluous functionality from MySQL. Drizzle will have a micro-kernel architecture with code being removed from the Drizzle core and moved through interfaces into modules. Aker has already selected particular functionality for removal: modes, views, triggers, prepared statements, stored procedures, query cache, data conversion inserts, access control lists and some data types."

Comment Quake cheating - nothing new (Score 1) 339

by turnstep on Monday December 27, 1999 @03:30PM (#1442740) Attached to: ESR on Quake 3 Troubles

As the essay points out, there are many ways to cheat at Quake - open source just makes them easier to do, in some ways. My favorite trick is copying some of the object's over each other, such as replacing the "invisible" eyeballs with a Shambler. Since the eyes have no animation to them like a Shambleer does, an invisible player appears as a very strange moving Shambler. :) There are lots of others. I don't use them when playing other people; I have more fun designing levels anyway.

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