Knaddison.com

Have you ever wanted to create a backup (aka dump) file of all databases on a server on a regular basis.

Well, here's an easy way to do that:

I had heard weeks ago from chatting with Mike Hostetler that he was working on a code repository for jQuery plugins which got me quite excited. Historically getting specific versions of jQuery plugins has been a little difficult. Now there's a great jQuery Plugin Repository that replaces the Wiki. The recent jQuery Blog post discusses the new system:

Let's say you need to drop all tables in a mysql database. How do you do that?

You could use a gui, but that's not fun.

You're a shell jockey so you want a commandline:

 mysql -u uname dbname -e "show tables" | grep -v Tables_in | grep -v "+" | \
gawk '{print "drop table " $1 ";"}' | mysql -u uname dbname

(that's all one line, but if I do it as a line then it screws up my theme - go figure).

This assumes that you are running in passwordless mode. See "man mysql" for tips on how to pass in passwords in another manner.

What this does is

I was recently sent a link to this petition from MoveOn.org and asked what I thought about it. I'll quote a section from the petition:

Use the public airwaves for the public good, or turn them over to big companies who will stifle competition, innovation, and the wireless Internet revolution. We're urging the FCC to mandate that whoever wins the auction cannot stifle competition and innovation.

First, I generally dislike MoveOn.org because they water down the issue into platitudes so that you have to agree with their position in the petition. Who wants to support anticompetitive regulations? Who wants to stifle innovation? Obviously I should be in favor of their position, right? But they water down the issue in such a way that you can't research it either the issue or their actual position. What is the issue? What is their actual position on the issue?

I don't know so, here's what I have to say in broader terms.

Researching Geek Topics and Spectrum Use

When it comes to geek topics, the place that has the best articles, news, and commentary weighing boths sides is generally slashdot. I went to their page for Communications Articles which shows this was discussed exactly zero times over the last 30 articles which goes back to December of 2006. So, not discussed at all. MoveOn doesn't scoop slashdot. So this is apparently unimportant to slashdot which means I don't care either.

Background on the Numbers

The lowest level that registered in Analog this month was 113. So, if your project or release was downloaded fewer than 113 times it won't register. I say project OR release because it's possible that the 5.x-1.20 release of your module was quickly followed by the 5.x-1.21 release - the 5.x-1.20 version may not register even if the module is fairly popular. So, 1) the numbers are inherently flawed a little bit 2) project maintainers should only create new releases when there has been a significant enough change to warrant it. Doing so on every new commit to the project is a waste of your time, your users time, and reduces the quality of these metrics.

That said, on with the report...

And not just terms they'll understand, but terms they probably have memorized!

Ok, so this is just plain awesome. Generally speaking I don't like blogging and just linking to something else, but I have to give it to Laura on this one: Disney fairy tales deconstructed (and reconstructed) to explain copyright, public domain, fair use, and a little history of the related laws. It's a parody, it's news, it's criticism, it's small compared to the cited works, it has no commercial impact on Disney's original works, and it is absolutely, 100% brilliant.

Go watch it. Take the five minutes, it's worth it. (If you're like me and using some crazy operating system try the vlc media player).

Now, here's what I have to say. Copyright is a big deal. Trademarks are a big deal. Patents are big deal. And yes in general intellectual property rights are a really big deal. We really need to protect them. Like, really protect them. Without the guarantee of profit from protected intellectual property rights we won't have (much) investment in new music, arts, performance, technology, gadgets, and, perhaps most importantly, drugs. We like music, arts, and gadgets. We need new drugs. But we need old drugs too. And we need them at a reasonable price.

With PC World declaring Microsoft Demands Royalties for Open-Source Software we've now got a repeat of the RIAA's sue our customers strategy!