This made me laugh. Having written programs in most of the languages living people have heard of, Perl is the one language I can write something in and 15 minutes later can't figure out what it does! I always called Perl the perfect write only language.
Having said that... I could write a Perl program in 5 lines that I would spend HOURS trying to figure out how to do in just about anything else.... but if it's obscure I better add a comment to say what it is supposed to do. Because given problem 'x' I would be like 'I can do it like this' but a year later with no context it's... 'What the hell is this supposed to do??? It's worse if it involved Perl's RegEx extensions and you don't remember what the incoming string contains. Just looking at the line makes you want to jump off of a bridge instead of trying to parse it in your head.
Why do we cave to people who want to use ancient unsupported stuff? Microsoft does not even support this stuff any more, and it's only used in places like banks where some idiot is in charge of IT and insists on 'standardizing' on something that is unsupported and a security nightmare. I support a VERY large application that is designed for Fortune 500 companies, and we simply tell them old IE is unsupported because it is not HTML5 compliant. Use Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. We get one second of pushback until they fire up IE and the page looks like crap and EVERY OTHER BROWSER renders perfectly. Then they install a real browser and I no longer need to support garbage. We just removed Flash support in the most recent version, and nobody noticed.
People use IE because they THINK it's the standard browser. as soon as they see that it is fundamentally broken, they switch.
Nobody will know what it is unless you tell them, and even then some people will not be able to see it... but maybe the laptop will be so dreadful nobody will ever NEED to see the logo.
Bear in mind that quite a bit of Tesla profits are going into the Gigafactory, which is going to make them the largest producer of batteries in the world. So the cost for batteries for them go WAY down, and they can sell batteries to other companies for a profit. This is a big part of their plan. Their cars get cheaper to manufacture if they don't have to buy their batteries from third parties at a premium because they are sucking up a HUGE part of the market. If I want 70% of the batteries in the world, and others want those batteries, the battery manufacturer is going to charge me a premium for eating such a huge chunk of their capacity.... and even more if they know I am using my profits to eventually compete with them. Also, if I am a battery manufacturer I want to please LOTS of customers, so while I like the idea of selling lots of batteries to one guy, it costs me customers. If I am a Lithium mine operator, I don't care. My customers are middle men. If I can sell everything I can mine to one guy and my life gets simpler. I don't care if it hurts some other middleman.
The Gigafactory is going to change the economy of scale for Tesla.
My brother in law has a Model S, and he has never had problems with range anxiety. He lives in southern England (Kent) and travels to London and Peterborough frequently and says it isn't a problem. From my point of view living in Southern Florida, there are charging stations all up I75 and Across the I10, so I could visit my parents in Houston without an issue. We have driven there several times, and we stop in the gas stations and truck stops and usually spend 20 minutes or so getting drinks, hitting the restroom, or grabbing a sandwich, so the charging time would not be a huge issue. Maybe a slight inconvenience if I have to waste another 10 or 15 minutes, but for the fuel savings I would gladly do it.
Most of us wear a watch anyway, so the concept of a smartwatch is a good idea. The problem with smartwatches and startups like Pebble is that the technology is too new and the benefit is too small. Everyone has a smartphone and a watch. Smartphones took off quickly because it was like moving from a horse and buggy to an automobile. A smartwatch is like moving from a desktop computer to a portable. The 'Compaq' was the first reasonable portable, and it was essentially a desktop monster with a keyboard for a lid to protect the screen and keep dirt out. People did not flock to this because it weighed almost 30 pounds and was less capable than their desktop. Today's laptops weigh something like 6 pounds and are about as powerful as their desktops and everyone has one. People would replace their broken watch with a smartwatch and leave their phone in their pocket if the technology was mature. Even Apple has this problem. The Apple Watch is a good idea, but everyone wants Apple Watch 2, or maybe even Apple Watch 3 before they buy one. Wait until the device matures. Apple can wait for that. Pebble can't.
I assume I will own a smartwatch... someday. But probably not for a couple of generations from now....and Pebble will probably not be around by then.
I have been a computer guru for 40 years, and the problem with this is... I don't even know how to do this anymore. Sure I have been messing with Linux since it came on disks in PC Magazine, and downloaded distributions from BBS sites. Have compiled kernels and configured X. I have even written X based software. Sure, I could figure out how to do it.
But I don't care!
I installed Mint Cinnamon, and I'm done. I don't want a minimal install, because then I have to spend hours in apt-get or Synaptic or something looking for everything that should be there and isn't. Hard disk space is cheap. I install about everything and just turn off what I don't want to use. If I want it later, it's there and already partially configured.
All of this stuff was fun once. I would spend DAYS getting it just the way I wanted it, and then some new release would come out I wanted, which wouldn't install because I had changed stuff so that the installer got confused, or some bug was uncovered and something I needed didn't work. After you get used to something and then stuff doesn't work anymore because some patch you needed put stuff back to the default settings, or broke a dependency.
So for me, Ubuntu is broken and I don't want to fix it. I use Mint as a desktop, Ubuntu as a development server because it always has current stuff, and Cent OS for Enterprise reliability because it's bulletproof.
Do they? Gnome has lost popularity, Ubuntu has lost popularity, Microsoft has lost popularity, Mint and Apple have gained popularity. Idiots decide they know what the world needs, and dumb down the world because they think they know best, and the world votes with it's choices.
Now if someone would just shoot Jony Ive so that I don't have to buy a $3k computer with 5k resolution and billions of colors to stare at flat monochrome graphics because Jony thinks it is beautiful simplicity, or some such nonsense.
Nothing. When Microsoft decided to throw away decades of experience and dumb down the user interface to make it "easy to use", Canonical jumped on the band wagon and made a dreadfully stupid user interface called 'Unity'... It's lame and cannot be customized. This spawned Mint Linux, which is a fork of Ubuntu to make a distribution with a useful user interface since the Gnome idiots broke Gnome, then Canonical broke Ubuntu.
In my mind, it's all an exercise in stupidity since my 88 year old Father used Windows 7 just fine. When his computer broke, he went to buy a new one, looked at the latest Windows, and bought a Mac instead. So... like the current presidential election, the "brains" designing User Interfaces are competing in a race to the bottom of the usability ladder.
I live on a street called a 'Terrace'... when I first moved here, and changed all of my magazine subscription addresses... one of them came next month addressed to "S.E. Terrorist"....
It is not true that there are no indices. What this statement means is that Indices do not span tables. If you put an index on the parent, that index ONLY applies to the parent. You can put the same index on the child.
We use inheritance like this: components
\ interfaces - constraint = Interfaces only
\ ports - constraint = Ports only
\ memory - constraint = Memory only...
I can select from 'components' and find everything, but I can select from interfaces and not see ports... Smaller tables, faster access, and yet a report can select from components to find all types of things.
The Ask toolbar is not a gray area. It's malware. Oracle knows it's malware, but they don't care. I don't even believe Talos security researchers are confused about the Ask Toolbar. They are simply afraid to go against a 600 lb. Gorilla in the industry. It takes Microsoft to force Oracle to do the right thing.
A better solution is the solution proposed. This is EXACTLY the same situation as the SCO lawsuit where white collar criminals have taken a song they have nothing to do with. Warner has simply taken a song that has been in the public domain for years, hired a bunch of lawyers to find some way to make a claim to it, and then demand royalties. People don't want to hassle with the lawsuit, so they pay the ransom.
This case should be another to go to the Supreme Court, and the rampant song theft needs to be stopped. Paul McCartney does not even own his own songs because these big corporations take pride in stealing music.
Happy Birthday is the poster child for this case. The song has been in the public domain until 1935 when the criminal du jour Preston Ware Orem was able to falsely copyright a song that existed before he was born, then Warner bought him out, and now you can technically be sued for singing it to your child on their birthday.
Can someone... ANYONE! Explain to me why in the era when we have 4k (and with iMAC 5K) displays with almost unmeasurable performance, we have to make our GUIs all flat and ugly like some kind of Windows 3.0 desktop? iPad came out, and Microsoft misread the tea leaves and instead of realizing that the PC market was a replacement market, and the table market was a new expanding market, decided the world wanted everything to be tablets,... So as Microsoft's market share starts to drop, everyone starts to copy them with dumbed down GUIs and THEIR market share drops too (Hello Gnome and Ubuntu). Then Microsoft who still can't read tea leaves, dumbs down their flying window to make it a flat ugly square and takes away all 3D effects... So now even Apple is copying this silly trend.
I like pretty windows with 3D icons. I don't like this new "flat" look at all. It's boring and ugly. What's next gray scale? Maybe ACSII graphics!
None of this matters to me. Windows is fundamentally broken on so many levels. They used the universal escape character for the path separator. You cannot assess an open file, even to read it, so you have to shut things down to do ANYTHING. The logs can only be accessed using an API, and unless you register all kinds of crazy garbage, the EventLog has a bunch of empty columns. Creating a Service is the most complicated process imaginable three layers deep. Even the Help system has been rewritten so may times, it never works right. The shell is broken and stupid unless you use the PowerShell... and again. It's 10 pounds of technology for a 1 pound problem. PowerShell is a complete pain to deal with. The Registry is a mess. All kinds of system files are just dumped into system32.
Almost everything In Windows is a mess. I don't want anything to do with it.
My niece came to me crying because her Windows 7 PC was reinstalling its video driver every other day, the sound didn't work half the time. It wouldn't boot sometimes. One day it just died. Wouldn't boot. I did not have a Windows 7 license around, and she couldn't do her homework. To allow her to do her homework, I put Linux Mint on it. Installed Libre Office, Skype, and a handful of teen related things she might want. I figured after a few days we would have to sort her out. and find a Windows to install.
That was a year and a half ago. You would have to pry that machine out of her cold dead hands. No viruses, no crashes, battery lasts longer than it EVER did running Windows. Her Videos work, her music works, Libre Office works. She wants nothing at all to do with Windows. She says Mint is perfect. everything works, it's responsive and nothing she needs to do is missing. She can find a tool in Linux to do anything she needs, and most of it is as good as the Windows version. I asked her the other day if she misses windows... She said she misses Windows at least as much as cancer.
If Apple was in trouble (and they weren't) it has been saved by Microsoft. Thanks to Windows 8, my father bought a Mac when his XP system died. He went to Best-Buy, and the Apple store, and even though it cost more, he liked the Mac better; said Windows 8 looked like a phone to him. Indiana now issues Macs to the students. Of all my friends and family who bought computers recently, 5 of them bought Macs, and only one bought a Windows 8 system... and he HATES IT!... says he wishes he would have switched to a Mac.
As a side note, my niece had a cheap Windows 7 Laptop that kept dying. She brought it to me, and I couldn't fix it. I even re-installed Windows 7, and it lasted 3 weeks before it started crashing again. she couldn't afford a new PC, and she was crying because she couldn't do her homework. I put Linux Mint on it to tide her over until she could get a new laptop. That was a year ago. She LOVES Mint, and says she never want's to use Windows ever again.
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This made me laugh. Having written programs in most of the languages living people have heard of, Perl is the one language I can write something in and 15 minutes later can't figure out what it does! I always called Perl the perfect write only language.
Having said that... I could write a Perl program in 5 lines that I would spend HOURS trying to figure out how to do in just about anything else. ... but if it's obscure I better add a comment to say what it is supposed to do. Because given problem 'x' I would be like 'I can do it like this' but a year later with no context it's ... 'What the hell is this supposed to do??? It's worse if it involved Perl's RegEx extensions and you don't remember what the incoming string contains. Just looking at the line makes you want to jump off of a bridge instead of trying to parse it in your head.
Why do we cave to people who want to use ancient unsupported stuff? Microsoft does not even support this stuff any more, and it's only used in places like banks where some idiot is in charge of IT and insists on 'standardizing' on something that is unsupported and a security nightmare. I support a VERY large application that is designed for Fortune 500 companies, and we simply tell them old IE is unsupported because it is not HTML5 compliant. Use Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. We get one second of pushback until they fire up IE and the page looks like crap and EVERY OTHER BROWSER renders perfectly. Then they install a real browser and I no longer need to support garbage. We just removed Flash support in the most recent version, and nobody noticed.
People use IE because they THINK it's the standard browser. as soon as they see that it is fundamentally broken, they switch.
ahh! Suzanne Vega Reference there!
* Research funded by the petroleum industry cooperative.
Look at Donald Trump... We already are.
... unless you are a gorilla.
Nobody will know what it is unless you tell them, and even then some people will not be able to see it. .. but maybe the laptop will be so dreadful nobody will ever NEED to see the logo.
The guys at Ford can feel comfortable knowing they are no longer the only suckers in the room.
Bear in mind that quite a bit of Tesla profits are going into the Gigafactory, which is going to make them the largest producer of batteries in the world. So the cost for batteries for them go WAY down, and they can sell batteries to other companies for a profit. This is a big part of their plan. Their cars get cheaper to manufacture if they don't have to buy their batteries from third parties at a premium because they are sucking up a HUGE part of the market. If I want 70% of the batteries in the world, and others want those batteries, the battery manufacturer is going to charge me a premium for eating such a huge chunk of their capacity. ... and even more if they know I am using my profits to eventually compete with them. Also, if I am a battery manufacturer I want to please LOTS of customers, so while I like the idea of selling lots of batteries to one guy, it costs me customers. If I am a Lithium mine operator, I don't care. My customers are middle men. If I can sell everything I can mine to one guy and my life gets simpler. I don't care if it hurts some other middleman.
The Gigafactory is going to change the economy of scale for Tesla.
My brother in law has a Model S, and he has never had problems with range anxiety. He lives in southern England (Kent) and travels to London and Peterborough frequently and says it isn't a problem. From my point of view living in Southern Florida, there are charging stations all up I75 and Across the I10, so I could visit my parents in Houston without an issue. We have driven there several times, and we stop in the gas stations and truck stops and usually spend 20 minutes or so getting drinks, hitting the restroom, or grabbing a sandwich, so the charging time would not be a huge issue. Maybe a slight inconvenience if I have to waste another 10 or 15 minutes, but for the fuel savings I would gladly do it.
Guys... you jumped the gun. April fools day is tomorrow.
... and stop blaming your phone for your insomnia.
Most of us wear a watch anyway, so the concept of a smartwatch is a good idea. The problem with smartwatches and startups like Pebble is that the technology is too new and the benefit is too small. Everyone has a smartphone and a watch. Smartphones took off quickly because it was like moving from a horse and buggy to an automobile. A smartwatch is like moving from a desktop computer to a portable. The 'Compaq' was the first reasonable portable, and it was essentially a desktop monster with a keyboard for a lid to protect the screen and keep dirt out. People did not flock to this because it weighed almost 30 pounds and was less capable than their desktop. Today's laptops weigh something like 6 pounds and are about as powerful as their desktops and everyone has one.
People would replace their broken watch with a smartwatch and leave their phone in their pocket if the technology was mature. Even Apple has this problem. The Apple Watch is a good idea, but everyone wants Apple Watch 2, or maybe even Apple Watch 3 before they buy one. Wait until the device matures. Apple can wait for that. Pebble can't.
I assume I will own a smartwatch ... someday. But probably not for a couple of generations from now. ...and Pebble will probably not be around by then.
I have been a computer guru for 40 years, and the problem with this is ... I don't even know how to do this anymore. Sure I have been messing with Linux since it came on disks in PC Magazine, and downloaded distributions from BBS sites. Have compiled kernels and configured X. I have even written X based software. Sure, I could figure out how to do it.
But I don't care!
I installed Mint Cinnamon, and I'm done. I don't want a minimal install, because then I have to spend hours in apt-get or Synaptic or something looking for everything that should be there and isn't. Hard disk space is cheap. I install about everything and just turn off what I don't want to use. If I want it later, it's there and already partially configured.
All of this stuff was fun once. I would spend DAYS getting it just the way I wanted it, and then some new release would come out I wanted, which wouldn't install because I had changed stuff so that the installer got confused, or some bug was uncovered and something I needed didn't work. After you get used to something and then stuff doesn't work anymore because some patch you needed put stuff back to the default settings, or broke a dependency.
So for me, Ubuntu is broken and I don't want to fix it. I use Mint as a desktop, Ubuntu as a development server because it always has current stuff, and Cent OS for Enterprise reliability because it's bulletproof.
Do they? Gnome has lost popularity, Ubuntu has lost popularity, Microsoft has lost popularity, Mint and Apple have gained popularity. Idiots decide they know what the world needs, and dumb down the world because they think they know best, and the world votes with it's choices.
Now if someone would just shoot Jony Ive so that I don't have to buy a $3k computer with 5k resolution and billions of colors to stare at flat monochrome graphics because Jony thinks it is beautiful simplicity, or some such nonsense.
Nothing. When Microsoft decided to throw away decades of experience and dumb down the user interface to make it "easy to use", Canonical jumped on the band wagon and made a dreadfully stupid user interface called 'Unity'... It's lame and cannot be customized. This spawned Mint Linux, which is a fork of Ubuntu to make a distribution with a useful user interface since the Gnome idiots broke Gnome, then Canonical broke Ubuntu.
In my mind, it's all an exercise in stupidity since my 88 year old Father used Windows 7 just fine. When his computer broke, he went to buy a new one, looked at the latest Windows, and bought a Mac instead. So ... like the current presidential election, the "brains" designing User Interfaces are competing in a race to the bottom of the usability ladder.
I live on a street called a 'Terrace' ... when I first moved here, and changed all of my magazine subscription addresses... one of them came next month addressed to "S.E. Terrorist"....
I wonder if Larry Wall even still uses PERL...
It is not true that there are no indices. What this statement means is that Indices do not span tables. If you put an index on the parent, that index ONLY applies to the parent. You can put the same index on the child.
We use inheritance like this: ...
components
\ interfaces - constraint = Interfaces only
\ ports - constraint = Ports only
\ memory - constraint = Memory only
I can select from 'components' and find everything, but I can select from interfaces and not see ports. .. Smaller tables, faster access, and yet a report can select from components to find all types of things.
The Ask toolbar is not a gray area. It's malware. Oracle knows it's malware, but they don't care. I don't even believe Talos security researchers are confused about the Ask Toolbar. They are simply afraid to go against a 600 lb. Gorilla in the industry. It takes Microsoft to force Oracle to do the right thing.
A better solution is the solution proposed. This is EXACTLY the same situation as the SCO lawsuit where white collar criminals have taken a song they have nothing to do with. Warner has simply taken a song that has been in the public domain for years, hired a bunch of lawyers to find some way to make a claim to it, and then demand royalties. People don't want to hassle with the lawsuit, so they pay the ransom.
This case should be another to go to the Supreme Court, and the rampant song theft needs to be stopped. Paul McCartney does not even own his own songs because these big corporations take pride in stealing music.
Happy Birthday is the poster child for this case. The song has been in the public domain until 1935 when the criminal du jour Preston Ware Orem was able to falsely copyright a song that existed before he was born, then Warner bought him out, and now you can technically be sued for singing it to your child on their birthday.
Can someone ... ANYONE! Explain to me why in the era when we have 4k (and with iMAC 5K) displays with almost unmeasurable performance, we have to make our GUIs all flat and ugly like some kind of Windows 3.0 desktop? iPad came out, and Microsoft misread the tea leaves and instead of realizing that the PC market was a replacement market, and the table market was a new expanding market, decided the world wanted everything to be tablets, ... So as Microsoft's market share starts to drop, everyone starts to copy them with dumbed down GUIs and THEIR market share drops too (Hello Gnome and Ubuntu). Then Microsoft who still can't read tea leaves, dumbs down their flying window to make it a flat ugly square and takes away all 3D effects... So now even Apple is copying this silly trend.
I like pretty windows with 3D icons. I don't like this new "flat" look at all. It's boring and ugly. What's next gray scale? Maybe ACSII graphics!
None of this matters to me. Windows is fundamentally broken on so many levels. They used the universal escape character for the path separator. You cannot assess an open file, even to read it, so you have to shut things down to do ANYTHING. The logs can only be accessed using an API, and unless you register all kinds of crazy garbage, the EventLog has a bunch of empty columns. Creating a Service is the most complicated process imaginable three layers deep.
Even the Help system has been rewritten so may times, it never works right. The shell is broken and stupid unless you use the PowerShell... and again. It's 10 pounds of technology for a 1 pound problem. PowerShell is a complete pain to deal with. The Registry is a mess. All kinds of system files are just dumped into system32.
Almost everything In Windows is a mess. I don't want anything to do with it.
My niece came to me crying because her Windows 7 PC was reinstalling its video driver every other day, the sound didn't work half the time. It wouldn't boot sometimes. One day it just died. Wouldn't boot. I did not have a Windows 7 license around, and she couldn't do her homework. To allow her to do her homework, I put Linux Mint on it. Installed Libre Office, Skype, and a handful of teen related things she might want. I figured after a few days we would have to sort her out. and find a Windows to install.
That was a year and a half ago. You would have to pry that machine out of her cold dead hands. No viruses, no crashes, battery lasts longer than it EVER did running Windows. Her Videos work, her music works, Libre Office works. She wants nothing at all to do with Windows. She says Mint is perfect. everything works, it's responsive and nothing she needs to do is missing. She can find a tool in Linux to do anything she needs, and most of it is as good as the Windows version. I asked her the other day if she misses windows... She said she misses Windows at least as much as cancer.
If Apple was in trouble (and they weren't) it has been saved by Microsoft. Thanks to Windows 8, my father bought a Mac when his XP system died. He went to Best-Buy, and the Apple store, and even though it cost more, he liked the Mac better; said Windows 8 looked like a phone to him. Indiana now issues Macs to the students. Of all my friends and family who bought computers recently, 5 of them bought Macs, and only one bought a Windows 8 system... and he HATES IT! ... says he wishes he would have switched to a Mac.
As a side note, my niece had a cheap Windows 7 Laptop that kept dying. She brought it to me, and I couldn't fix it. I even re-installed Windows 7, and it lasted 3 weeks before it started crashing again. she couldn't afford a new PC, and she was crying because she couldn't do her homework. I put Linux Mint on it to tide her over until she could get a new laptop. That was a year ago. She LOVES Mint, and says she never want's to use Windows ever again.