A nifty tool to scale your web apps

memcached by Brad Fitzpatrick (the creator of LiveJournal where my blog is also hosted)
memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.
Brad understands perfectly that for some data storage needs, scaling has nothing to do with the power [...]

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Silly query of the day

SELECT …. ORDER BY REVERSE(RAND()) LIMIT 10
Reverse (a string function!) random ordering…. ohwell why not!
It will even work, in the strict sense of the word.

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Free Software Magazine

Check out the Free Software Magazine project, available on paper and in electronic format. It’s only just started, but it seems to be doing some good work.
Have a look, and tell me what you think of it!

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Special discounts for the MySQL User Conference

From http://www.mysqluc.com/pub/w/35/register.html
Special Discounts (for the MySQL User Conference)
You may combine a special discount (see below) with the Early Registration Pricing during the Early Registration period to save even more!

Full Time Student
65% off with proof of status, a copy of ID & class schedule.

Academic Instructor
50% off with proof of full time academic instructor status on organization [...]

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Funny query of the day

User asks about
SELECT … ORDER BY RAND() DESC
As to why you would want random ordering to be descending, and how that might jive, I have no idea

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Roadster – GPS mapping with MySQL

A fully GPL project: http://linuxadvocate.org/projects/roadster/
Roadster implements free GPS mapping, using MySQL with R-Trees as back-end.
On the front-end it’s GNOME with Cairo.
It can use maps directly from the US Census Bureau, other countries that have free road maps (I’ve been told Australia has, also) will work too.
I understand the product is not yet ready for the [...]

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Patenting an IsNot operator

IS NOT OPERATOR (application with USPTO). I believe it’s been filed on behalf of some Microsoft employees, who are heavily encouraged to come up with as many patentable ideas as possible. Never mind real R&D
So what is this magical new invention?
A system for determining if two operands point to different locations in memory, [...]

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Last week of early registration for MySQL Users Conference!

Ok, better hurry… early registration prices for the 2005 MySQL Users Conference end February 28. The conference will take place April 18 -21, 2005 in Santa Clara, California. http://www.mysqluc.com/registration
As I mentioned recently, the complete minute-by-minute schedule of the daytime program is on-line, so you can pick and choose which talks you want to attend: http://www.mysqluc.com/pub/w/35/grid.html
I [...]

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More on licensing… closed source

I got an excellent comment about yesterday’s entry (about the 58 open source licenses), relating the story to closed source licensing. While compatibility is generally not an issue there, some standardisation would of course be nice so that users of closed source software can easily assess whether a license or EULA is suitable for them.
Take [...]

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OSI Urged To Reform Open-Source Licensing

That’s the running debate reported at http://www.technewsworld.com/story/40672.html
OSI being the Open Source Initiative which is the organisation that tests prospective licenses with the fundamentals of the Open Source definition and approves. Of course people are free to license how they see fit, but this is a nice benchmark.
The problem of course is that there are now [...]

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