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Linux Foundation says Its time to ditch Microsofts Fat

Posted by on Thursday, 9 April, 2009

According to http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/linux-foundation-says-its-time-to-ditch-microsofts-fat.ars

Because Microsoft and TomTom have settled their dispute. Apparently TomTom used the Linux kernel for their GPS, which contains FAT support which is a no-no slap in the face for M$.

TomTom Counter sued M$ based on the fact that they stole some navigation like stuff. TomTom now has paid to license Microsoft’s patents, including those covering FAT, However they are going to weed it out and remove it in the next couple of years.

Although the settlement has ended the conflict between Microsoft and TomTom, questions still remain about the implications for FAT in the broader Linux ecosystem. Microsoft has previously stated that this lawsuit represents an isolated issue and that the company does not intend to broadly sue Linux users. Upstream kernel developers could potentially adopt TomTom’s code changes in order to avoid future patent disputes with Microsoft over FAT.

But being a paranoid people we (linux users) are they are going to try weeding such old and out dated filesystems out of the kernel in the not too distant future.

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mysql –i-am-a-dummy

Posted by on Thursday, 9 April, 2009

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it, but the MySQL command line client has this option where you can actually tell it you’re stupid:

 mysql --i-am-a-dummy -uroot test

Otherwise known as --safe-updates , this option prevents MySQL from performing update operations unless a key constraint in the WHERE clause and / or a LIMIT clause are provided, e.g.:

mysql> DELETE FROM bigtable;
ERROR 1175: You are using safe update mode and you
tried to update a table without a WHERE that uses a 
KEY column

This would wipe out bigtable – unless bigtable is an InnoDB table and the command is wrapped in a transaction. (If you don’t use transactions, you should have a lot more to worry about anyway).

See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/safe-updates.html.

Note that the --safe-updates / --i-am-a-dummy option causes the following statement to be issued on connection:

SET SQL_SAFE_UPDATES=1,SQL_SELECT_LIMIT=1000,
SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE=1000000;
From the man page
–safe-updates, –i-am-a-dummy, -U
Allow only those UPDATE and DELETE statements that specify which rows to modify by using key values. If you have set this option in an option file, you can override it by using –safe-updates on the command line. See the section called MYSQL TIPS, for more information about this option.
Found at : http://sql-info.de/mysql/notes/I-am-a-dummy.html
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Google App Engine opens up to Java

Posted by on Wednesday, 8 April, 2009

http://code.google.com/appengine/

App Engine is unveiling its second language: Java. Today’s release includes an early look at our Java runtime, integration with Google Web Toolkit, and a Google Plugin for Eclipse, giving you an end-to-end Java solution for AJAX web applications. Our support for the Java language is still under development and we’re eager to get your help and input. For now, access will be limited to the first 10,000 developers who sign up, but we’ll be including more as soon as possible. Give it a try and send us your feedback.

(Thanks to @talios for this gem)

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