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AHHHHHHHH.
We’ve seen teaser after teaser, but the first full length trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is here.
Ready to watch it on loop for the rest of the night?
Here you go:
Story updating probably. Read More
via TechCrunch
Here’s The First Full Length Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer
The third and final trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is here. Now, before you watch, take a deep breath, make sure everything is quiet, and get ready, because it’s fantastic.
We finally get to learn a bit about Rey (Daisy Ridley). She’s hiding from something, and talking to Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong’o). Finn (John Boyega) is also confused about his place in the galaxy and, together, they’re both confused about the old ways. The stories. Sith, Jedi, oh man. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) tells them they’re real and we get some amazing action with Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron, a shot of Leia. There’s so, so much great stuff here.
Even some J.J. Abrams lens flares.
We’ll have more soon but, you can read our break downs of last year’s first teaser, and this spring’s second trailer at those links. Then, check back in the morning for our shot by shot break down of this insanity.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens December 18 and, as of this moment, tickets are on sale.
Contact the author at germain@io9.com.
via Gizmodo
Secrets Are Revealed and Worlds Collide in the Final Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer
As promised, we have the latest trailer for the new Star Wars movie, which just aired during halftime of Monday Night Football. Giving us a two and a half minute look at the seventh entry in the series, it’s embedded after the break, but if you’re already sure you want to see it opening night, ticket pre-orders are open on sites like Fandango and MovieTickets.com. If you’re not having any luck there, try hitting up your local cinema directly, or just enjoy the trailer and wait for the extra show times that will inevitably be added in the next two months before its premiere December 18th.
Source: Star Wars (YouTube)
via Engadget
New ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer debuts during MNF
For nearly 50 years, Star Trek has been one of the most dominant forces in pop culture. Trek’s history stretches beyond the shows themselves, because Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future has inspired generations and broken boundaries. Want to learn more before next year’s anniversary? Look no further.
Welcome back to the io9 Guide series, where we take an introductory but comprehensive look at the most important universes of science fiction and fantasy. These guides are aimed at lay-people in search of a quick refresher, as well as seasoned fans who want to debate the meaning and essential knowledge of a subject.
Star Trek is a franchise that now covers five different television series, 12 movies (with another on the way), an animated cartoon and countless games, books, and comics. And it’s about the captains and crews of an interplanetary organization called the United Federation of Planets, which explores the galaxy and tries to keep the peace.
The first series, simply called Star Trek (but later referred to as “The Original Series” or “TOS”), had an opening credits sequence that lays out the mission pretty simply: “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”.
Even before it became an icon, Star Trek was determined to depict a universe that was more than just humans battling aliens in outer space. At a time when the world was still recovering from the Second World War and under the long shadow of the Cold War, its creator, Gene Roddenberry, wanted to depict a future that was full of hope rather than fear.
Star Trek depicted a future where the Earth was free of the problems of the 20th and 21st centuries—a united planet with no war, no struggle for resources or money. A world where men and women of all races and nationalities were treated equally (as well as an alien in Mr. Spock, Star Trek’s first crew featured both a Black woman, Nyota Uhura, and an Japanese man, Hikaru Sulu). The Enterprise’s main mission was for exploration and to gain scientific knowledge, not to battle monsters. Roddenberry envisioned a future where humanity’s problems weren’t just gone, but a distant memory, replaced by a utopia in the stars.
After Roddenberry’s death in 1991, part of that utopian vision was gone: Deep Space Nine, the first series to be made after his passing, explored a darker side of Star Trek and showed that the Federation was far from a perfect society as it found itself in a costly war against an alien Empire called the Dominion. But even as Star Trek began to dabble in the greyer aspects of itself, it was still defined by optimism and the pursuit of a better universe for everyone, regardless of their background—along with a thirst for knowledge and the joy of exploration.
Star Trek’s boundless optimism didn’t just restrict itself to the confines of the TV show. It influenced the people who worked on it, and the legions of fans who were inspired to learn about science and influenced by its lessons of co-operation, respect, and equality.
As mentioned above, Star Trek’s cast itself was very diverse for the 1960s—but diversity also happened behind the camera as well: Desilu Studios, the production company that originally made Star Trek, was run by Lucille Ball, and it was Ball who convinced NBC to pay for a second pilot episode after the first was rejected.
One of the show’s most prominent writers, script editor D.C. Fontana, who wrote some of the best stories in Star Trek’s three-year run, was a woman. Later series like Deep Space Nine and Voyager were known for putting both a black man and a woman in the lead role of Captains, respectively. Star Trek’s diversity is so important to its core, it’s even been turned into television legend: Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura’s kiss in “Plato’s Stepchildren” is often repeated as the first interracial kiss in American television history, despite being preceded by several others.
But Star Trek didn’t just pioneer diversity, but new kinds of technology as well. Several of its most iconic gadgets were originally conceived as production cost-savers—instead of having to film shots of the characters flying down from the Enterprise to a planet, the Transporter was created, “beaming” characters to another location in an instant shimmer of light—something scientists are already working to do on a molecular scale today. There’s the classic phaser pistol, a beam of concentrated energy that could stun, kill, or disintegrate—inspiration for the foundation of the laser-based weapons technology in early stages today.
The communicator, a dazzlingly futuristic piece of technology at the time, became our mobile telephones. The tricorder, a catch-all device that could scan geographical locations, detect signals on a variety of wavelengths, and perform medical diagnoses, inspired things like Google Maps and many of the apps on our smartphones—and every few years, you see news reports declaring that scientist are working on “real tricorders”.
Even the replicator, which could create anything you wanted with a single voice command, is being copied, with tools like 3D printers. Scientific advancement and Star Trek have gone hand-in-hand since the very beginning—from the cast of the show attending the unveiling of the NASA Shuttle Enterprise in 1976, to Nichelle Nichols observing the SOFIA telescope in space earlier this year.
Originally envisioned by Gene Rodenberry, Star Trek was a show set in the 23rd century that followed the crew of the latest ship to bear the name U.S.S. Enterprise: a highly advanced spaceship carrying hundreds of members of a peaceful organization called Starfleet on a five-year-long mission into unknown space.
When it aired in 1966, there wasn’t really a show quite like Star Trek, and for the next three years, audiences followed the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew. But the series was never all that popular when it aired on NBC, and was ultimately cancelled after three seasons. The three seasons were enough, however, for the show to be syndicated, where it thrived as a new cult classic—and became monstrously popular during the 70s.
Given the series’ newfound fame, when its producers wanted a science fiction movie franchise to capitalize on the revived interest in the genre thanks to Star Wars, they turned to Star Trek. The original cast reunited for a series of movies that were released throughout the 1980s, and the success of these films meant that by 1987 a whole new television show was on the way: Star Trek: The Next Generation, set a century after the original series.
By now, Star Trek became a truly global phenomenon: its cult status had already welcomed it into our pop-culture lexicon, but after Next Generation, its future was solidified. Still under Roddenberry’s guiding hand (until his death in 1991) Star Trek expanded with six films and seven hugely popular seasons of The Next Generation. These, in turn, led to another four films focusing on the crew of Next Generation, and two further TV series in the 1990s, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Star Trek: Voyager. A fifth show called Star Trek: Enterprise, a prequel that takes place 100 years before the original series, followed in 2001.
After Enterprise came to an end in 2005, the franchise lay dormant again—until director J.J. Abrams rebooted the franchise, with two movies offering an alternate origin to the crew of the very first Star Trek series. With a third movie in the new series planned for release next year in time for the 50th anniversary, Star Trek—a show that, for all intents and purposes, failed when it first aired in the 60s—remains an unstoppable force in pop culture.
With over 500 hours of television and movies under its belt, Star Trek is a monstrously daunting franchise to get into for the first time—but as the vast majority of it is standalone, it’s simply a matter of picking which series interests you the most and jumping in. Here’s our quick field guide to each series!
Seasons: 3
Captain: James T. Kirk (William Shatner)
The Gist: The U.S.S. Enterprise begins a five-year mission to explore the galaxy beyond the known space of the United Federation of Planets, in the hopes of finding new worlds, new races to negotiate with, and discover strange new forms of life. Along the way they do all that, while they also battle the sneaky Romulans and the warlike Klingons.
Highlights: The original series has many iconic moments that went on to inform Star Trek as a whole—but aside from that, there are many spectacular episodes. Including Hugo-winning stories like “City on the Edge of Forever” or “The Menagerie.” The thrilling “Balance of Terror”, a tense episode about the Enterprise facing an invisible Romulan warship, might just be the best episode of Star Trek ever.
Lowlights: By the time of the third season rolled around, Star Trek faced many budget cuts, and much of the season is largely considered to be of a poorer standard in comparison to earlier episodes. Also, as a general warning, Star Trek is still very much a product of its time—it’s usually interesting enough to distract you from the 1960s production values, but if you’re not entirely familiar with watching older television, it can be a bit jarring. Part of that is the fun, but a word of warning just in case.
Seasons: 7
Captain: Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart)
The Gist: 70 years after Captain Kirk’s legendary mission, a new Enterprise and a new crew set out to explore the galaxy, and face new challenges and complications that have developed since Kirk’s time—like a tricky alliance with the Klingons, or horrifying new threats like the bio-mechanical Borg.
Highlights: Just as iconic, if not more so, than its predecessor, The Next Generation has fantastic episodes that are powerful (such as “Darmok”, featuring Captain Picard attempting to communicate with a stranded alien incapable of speaking the same language) and epic on a grand scale (“The Best of Both Worlds”, a two part story that sees the crew face off in a battle for Earth with the Borg). It consistently improves throughout, with even its very last episodes counted among the best in the franchise.
Lowlights: Much of the first season of the show is considered skippable, as the cast and writers struggled to find their footing. The popular fan refrain for TNG usually comes into play here: if Jonathan Frakes (who plays first officer William Riker) doesn’t sport a beard—i.e, the entire first season—don’t watch.
Seasons: 7
Captain: Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks)
The Gist: After the death of his wife in a fight against the Borg, Benjamin Sisko is named the Commanding Officer of a space station. Sisko and his part-Starfleet, part-Bajoran crew are tasked with observing the reformation of the nearby and newly-independent planet Bajor (as well as attempting to get them to join the Federation). Matters are further complicated when Sisko and his crew find themselves on the front line of a war that could destroy the Federation altogether.
Highlights: The “Dominion War” storyline that occupies much of the series in its latter half, is Star Trek at its grimmest, as the Federation faces the reality of a war it stands to lose, and our heroes compromise their ethics for a chance to save the galaxy. It’s compelling, intense stuff, and while it’s not Star Trek at its most optimistic, it is Star Trek at its most complex.
Lowlights: Unfortunately, the early half of the show, which dealt with the local Bajorans struggling to mediate with the Federation, is nowhere near as engaging as the later Dominion storyline—but it’s worth slogging through to be familiar with the characters for later.
Seasons: 7
Captain: Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew)
The Gist: Interference from a powerful energy wave displaces the Starship Voyager, in pursuit of an insurrectionist ship, into the Delta Quadrant—70,000 light years away from Earth. Faced with a 75 year journey back to their home, the ship teams up with the remaining Maquis subversives to not only find ways to get home, but be the first Federation ship to chart the unexplored regions of space along the way.
Highlights: Some of Voyager’s best episodes actually rely on alternate “what ifs”—literally, such as the two-parter “Year of Hell”, which sees the stranded ship take beating after beating against a nearly overwhelming foe, or figuratively, as in “Equinox”, where the crew discovers another Federation ship stranded, but one that’s far more ethically compromised. Episodes that focus on Seven of Nine, and her struggle with accepting her Borg past, are also ones to watch out for.
Lowlights: Voyager is at best, wildly inconsistent—at its shakiest, it is home to some of the worst Star Trek ever. Although early on there are some good stories, the show gets markedly better after the arrival of Jeri Ryan as de-assimilated Borg Seven of Nine in Season 4.
Seasons: 4
Captain: Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula)
The Gist: 10 years before the Federation was founded, Earth creates the experimental ship Enterprise, the first human spaceship capable of Interstellar travel at speeds beyond Warp 5. With allies and mentors in the alien Vulcans, the crew sets out to explore reaches of space that no human has gone to before.
Highlights: A show that struggled with its own identity endlessly, the series has two particular highlights: the early half of season three, telling a continuous story about a devastating terrorist attack on Earth, and much of season 4, which embraces the show’s prequel connections to the Original Series to explore the foundations of concepts and characters that appeared there.
Lowlights: Much of the first two seasons are relatively aimless, standalone episodes. A loose arc is attempted throught with a “Temporal Cold War” that sees the crew battling with forces trying to change the past, never hits its highs, leading to a bland introduction for the series.
As well as the TV series, there are currently 12 Star Trek movies that can be roughly divided into 3 different categories: The six “Original Series” movies, starring the crew of the original Star Trek, the four “TNG” movies, featuring the crew of The Next Generation, and the two “JJverse” movies, set in an alternate 22nd century and focusing on the origins of young James Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise.
As with the show, there are great highs—such as the perennial fan-favorite Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—or great lows—the turgid Generations, or the disappointing Into Darkness. Ideally before delving into the movies it’s best to at least be familiar with the corresponding series they’re related two, as each saga is set after the events of the television shows they’re based on—but you can largely treat them as bonus chances to see more of a cast you already like, rather than essential viewing.
The two current reboot films, Star Trek (sometimes referred to as Star Trek XI) and Star Trek Into Darkness, require little to no knowledge of the series to dive into—although experience with the original series may help understand the many nods and shout-outs. More action-focused than the diplomatic and talkative TV shows, in general the two films are fun, if not outstanding, action films—but if you’re looking to experience what Star Trek is usually about beyond action, you’re better off looking to the TV shows first.
An ambitious maker has built a partly 3D-printed railgun that can fire aluminum or graphite projectiles at over 250 meters per second (560 mph). No, this isn’t Quake, but it’s no janky, all-plastic gun, either. The "handheld" weapon houses six capacitors that weigh 20 pounds and deliver over 1,800 joules of energy per shot. And it indeed works just like a full-sized railgun, using parallel electrodes to fire an "armature" bullet. The creator, David Wirth, added an Arduino Uno R3 to monitor charging levels, temperature and other factors, and tweaked the rails after he noticed "plasma damage."
The resulting design was complex enough that he even made a 3D CAD drawing that would do DARPA proud (above). The test shots with graphite and aluminum projectiles were far less lethal than a regular gun, as you can see in the videos below. Nevertheless, the aluminum "bullet" still put a half-inch dent in the steel-backed plywood target, and the graphite projectile "probably just vaporized," according to the Wirth.
Update: The post originally said that the gun fires 3,000 kilojoule shots, but the correct number is 1,800 joules.
Via: Kotaku
Source: Xtamared (Imgur)
The big trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn’t due until tomorrow, but ESPN is now running teasers for the main event. Here’s one snippet that has some new footage.
Here’s another, where we see Fin and Po meet up:
And another, with Ren looking into the skies:
Update: a new clip with BB-8 has been posted:
via Gizmodo
The Force Awakens Trailer Teasers Are Now Running On TV [Updated]
Recently I blogged about identifying necessary index changes when changing the character set for a MySQL database. In this follow-up post I want to talk about general schema changes that you should consider when changing your character set from latin1 to utf8, from utf8 to utf8mb4, etc. The main issue is with long VARCHAR columns and columns with columns with length limits that are enforeced in bytes rather than characters.
The manual points out the main areas where you may have trouble:
A TINYTEXT column can hold up to 255 bytes, so it can hold up to 85 3-byte or 63 4-byte characters. Suppose that you have a TINYTEXT column that uses utf8 but must be able to contain more than 63 characters. You cannot convert it to utf8mb4 unless you also change the data type to a longer type such as TEXT.
Similarly, a very long VARCHAR column may need to be changed to one of the longer TEXT types if you want to convert it from utf8 to utf8mb4.
The point on TINYTEXT is pretty clear. Frankly I’m not sure why anyone uses TINYTEXT to begin with, but if you have TINYTEXT columns in your database and you are changing your character set, this might be a great opportunity to change those columns to a TEXT type that supports longer values, such as MEDIUMTEXT, TEXT, or LONGTEXT.
Long VARCHAR columns can be a problem because MySQL has a row length limit of 65,535 bytes, and one really long VARCHAR or a few relatively long VARCHARs in a multi-byte character set can push your rows past that limit. For example you can have a VARCHAR(20000) in utf8 because it takes up a maximum of 60,000 bytes, but you can’t have a VARCHAR(20000) in utf8mb4 because that requires up to 80,000 bytes of storage.
Here’s my simple recommendation for preparing a MySQL schema for a character set change:
Change all TINYTEXT columns to TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, or LONGTEXT
Change all long VARCHAR columns to TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, or LONGTEXT
Read on for sample queries that generate the necessary DDL to modify the relevant columns, and examples that illustrate the problem.
Generating DDL
The following information_schema query generates ALTER TABLE statements to change all TINYTEXT columns in your database to TEXT:
— change all tinytext columns to text
select concat(‘alter table ‘,t.table_schema,
‘.’,
t.table_name,
‘ modify column ‘,
c.column_name,
‘ ‘,
‘text’,
‘ character set ‘,
character_set_name,
‘ collate ‘,
collation_name,
‘ ‘,
case when c.is_nullable = ‘yes’ then ‘null’ else ‘not null’ end,
case when c.column_default is not null and c.column_default != ” then concat(‘ default ”’,c.column_default,””) else ” end,
‘;’) as ddl
from information_schema.columns c
inner join information_schema.tables t on t.table_schema = c.table_schema and t.table_name = c.table_name
where c.column_type = ‘tinytext’
and t.table_type = ‘base table’
order by t.table_name asc;
The following information_schema query generates ALTER TABLE statements to change all long VARCHAR columns in your database to LONGTEXT. I’m using an arbitrary limit of 2,000 characters to define long VARCHAR columns. You can tweak that number to your own particular use case. Also the choice of LONGTEXT is somewhat arbitrary. Feel free to change that to TEXT or MEDIUMTEXT if that works better for your use case.
— change all varchar columns 2000 characters or longer to longtext
select concat(‘alter table ‘,t.table_schema,
‘.’,
t.table_name,
‘ modify column ‘,
c.column_name,
‘ ‘,
‘longtext’,
‘ character set ‘,
character_set_name,
‘ collate ‘,
collation_name,
‘ ‘,
case when c.is_nullable = ‘yes’ then ‘null’ else ‘not null’ end,
case when c.column_default is not null and c.column_default != ” then concat(‘ default ”’,c.column_default,””) else ” end,
‘;’) as ddl
from information_schema.columns c
inner join information_schema.tables t on t.table_schema = c.table_schema and t.table_name = c.table_name
where c.data_type = ‘varchar’
and c.character_maximum_length >= 2000
and t.table_type = ‘base table’
order by t.table_name asc, c.column_name asc;
Those queries will generate multiple ALTER TABLE statements if more than one column needs to be modified in a given table. In order to avoid gratuitous rebuilds of large tables you may want to combine the multiple statements into a single ALTER TABLE for each relevant table.
Examples
Since TINYTEXT columns can only store 255 bytes, if I try to insert more than (255/N) N-byte characters the value is either silently truncated or the insert fails, depending on sql_mode.
Here’s an example:
“`
mysql> set names utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> create table if not exists tinytext_test (
-> id int auto_increment primary key,
-> str tinytext
-> ) engine = InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.04 sec)
mysql> — insert 255 one byte characters
mysql> insert into tinytext_test (str) values (repeat(‘$’,255));
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> — change table and column to utf8
mysql> alter table tinytext_test DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> alter table tinytext_test modify column str tinytext CHARACTER SET utf8;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.06 sec)
Records: 1 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> — insert 255 two byte characters
mysql> insert into tinytext_test (str) values (repeat(‘å’,255));
Query OK, 1 row affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
Warning (Code 1366): Incorrect string value: ‘\xC3\xA5\xC3\xA5\xC3\xA5…’ for column ‘str’ at row 1
mysql> — insert 255 three byte characters
mysql> insert into tinytext_test (str) values (repeat(‘€’,255));
Query OK, 1 row affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
Warning (Code 1265): Data truncated for column ‘str’ at row 1
“`
Here’s a query to show how many characters are stored for each row. As expected we get floor(255/N) characters in each row:
mysql> select left(str,1),length(str),char_length(str) from tinytext_test;
+————-+————-+——————+
| left(str,1) | length(str) | char_length(str) |
+————-+————-+——————+
| $ | 255 | 255 |
| å | 254 | 127 |
| € | 255 | 85 |
+————-+————-+——————+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
If I enable strict sql_mode and try to insert 255 multi-byte characters then the INSERT will fail with an error:
“`
mysql> set session sql_mode = ‘STRICT_ALL_TABLES’;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> — insert 255 three byte characters
mysql> insert into tinytext_test (str) values (repeat(‘€’,255));
ERROR 1406 (22001): Data too long for column ‘str’ at row 1
“`
For long VARCHAR columns, if I try to change the character set of the column in a way that will violate the 65,535 byte row length limit MySQL will either silently convert the column to a TEXT data type, or the ALTER TABLE statement will fail.
Here’s an example where a single very long VARCHAR column is converted from VARCHAR to MEDIUMTEXT:
“`
mysql> set names utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> create table if not exists single_varchar_test (
-> id int auto_increment primary key,
-> str varchar(50000)
-> ) engine = InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.05 sec)
mysql> alter table single_varchar_test DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> alter table single_varchar_test modify column str varchar(50000) CHARACTER SET utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.09 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 1
Note (Code 1246): Converting column ‘str’ from VARCHAR to TEXT
mysql> desc single_varchar_test;
+——-+————+——+—–+———+—————-+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+——-+————+——+—–+———+—————-+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| str | mediumtext | YES | | NULL | |
+——-+————+——+—–+———+—————-+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
“`
Here’s an example with several long VARCHAR columns where the ALTER TABLE statement that would push the table past the 65,535 byte row length limit actually fails:
“`
mysql> set names utf8mb4;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> create table if not exists multi_varchar_test (
-> id int auto_increment primary key,
-> str1 varchar(5000),
-> str2 varchar(5000),
-> str3 varchar(5000),
-> str4 varchar(5000)
-> ) engine = InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.04 sec)
mysql> alter table multi_varchar_test DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> alter table multi_varchar_test modify column str1 varchar(5000) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.10 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> alter table multi_varchar_test modify column str2 varchar(5000) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
ERROR 1118 (42000): Row size too large. The maximum row size for the used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. This includes storage overhead, check the manual. You have to change some columns to TEXT or BLOBs
“`
I don’t know why MySQL does the implicit data type change versus throwing an error in some cases, but the last two examples show that both of those benaviors exist.
via Planet MySQL
Preparing your MySQL schema for a character set change
Exactly a month ago to the day, our fragile world was rocked when a Facebook user from the Gujranwala District in Pakistan announced that he was severing ties with his then-former best friend Mudasir in favor of new best friend Salman. Today, however, people from all corners of the globe can breathe easy—Asif and Mudasir are friends once more.
After the original post announcing the split (seen below) picked up steam on the internet, Asif appears to have coped with his sudden internet fame by creating his own celebrity Facebook page, Prince Asif Raza Rana (Official).
The original friendship-disbanding post.
Asif’s latest announcement on the renewed friendship from his official Facebook page.
Though as Asif must surely know, fame and fans are poor substitutes to the life-affirming warmth and fulfillment that only a true, lasting friendship can provide. And according to today’s announcement, not only has he reconciled with the previously denounced Mudasir, but the two reunited friends have even formed something of a best friend triumvirate with Mudasir’s temporary replacement, Salman.
Salman, for his part, is taking the sudden position reversal in stride.
Mudasir commented on the announcement post, confirming what might have once seemed too good to be true to fans of the original duo.
He even took to his own Facebook page to confirm the renewed friendship independently, though with significantly less word art.
As for the previous accusations against Mudasir (and presumably the sole reason for the original split), which saw Asif claiming that “he became very selfish, Proudy, and those who shows me Attitude, I keep them under my Foot…… Huuhhh…….Now SAlman AHmad Naqash is my best friend……Its for information to all,” Mudasir had this to say:
We’ve reached out to both Mudasir and Asif for comment on their renewed friendship, and will update when and if we hear back.
Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.
via Gizmodo
UPDATE: Facebook User, Asif, Regains Friendship With Scorned Ex-Best Friend, Mudasir
You may have heard the news this week that Apple lost a patent lawsuit filed by the University of Wisconsin, and may be on the hook for up to $862.4 million in damages. This news should serve as a reminder that universities are some of the nation’s worst patent trolls, actively ignoring their own stated missions to widely spread academic research and knowledge. For example, the University of Wisconsin’s stated mission is:
The mission of the University of Wisconsin System is to develop human resources, to discover and disseminate knowledge, to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses, and to serve and stimulate society by developing in students heightened intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training, and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the UW System is the search for truth.
Notice how much of that is about sharing knowledge and improving the world. But, of course, when UW had a chance to say "pay me!" it didn’t skip a beat. And many universities are doing the same thing. It’s a massive problem and it’s one caused almost entirely by Congress. We’ve discussed this a few times before, but in 1980, Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which was supposed to incentivize more research at universities by allowing those universities to patent that research. The people who supported this idea were working off the myth that patents are the main way to incentivize innovation and research. This is wrong, and from this initial mistake, lots of serious problems have flowed. The Bayh-Dole Act has been a dismal failure in many, many ways, leading to a world now where many universities have resorted to patent trolling.
What really happened in the wake of the Bayh-Dole Act, was that many universities thought that they’d (1) patent all their professors’ research (2) license it and (3) profit like crazy. The reality was that they did the first part — and then many universities set up "tech transfer offices" to try to license it. And then they ran smack dab into reality, which is that most of their patents sucked and no one wanted to license them. Making matters worse, even when they had a legitimate or interesting patent, the universities massively overvalued those patents, demanding licensing fees that were ridiculous.
The end result was a near total disaster for most universities. Rather than make money, most universities lost a ton of money between all the patent filing and the expensive tech transfer offices that were supposed to be a revenue generator, but turned out to be massive losses for the vast majority of universities that set them up (there are very few exceptions). On top of that, this rush to patent and license resulted in a secondary problem: it actually decreased research and information sharing. Historically, professors would often share research with colleagues and work together on projects. But universities started pushing them not to do that as much, because of the patents. And on top of that, it became riskier to do follow on research over fears around the patents. So the entire intent of the bill backfired drastically.
As a result, many university tech transfer offices followed one of two paths to try to justify their existence: they sold off patent portfolios to patent trolls directly (Intellectual Ventures’ big initial portfolio of patents was mostly them buying junk patent portfolios from desperate universities, who needed to show some sort of return), or they started patent trolling themselves. The University of California at Berkeley became a major patent troll. As did the University of Southern California. And Carnegie Mellon. And, apparently, the University of Wisconsin as well.
This recent ruling is just the latest example of how far we’ve come and just how much damage the Bayh-Dole Act has done. It’s not only diminished university research and important information sharing, it’s now leading these universities to actively attack actual innovators and shake them down for money. If Congress really wants to fix patent trolling, it really needs to roll back the Bayh-Dole Act.
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via Techdirt.
Apple’s Patent Loss To University Of Wisconsin A Reminder That Universities Are Often The Worst Patent Trolls