Those companies are almost certainly giving up ground to more efficient companies. I used to have much more confidence in the efficiency of the free market until I worked for actual, real-life companies. Then I saw that Dilbert wasn't the "jaded employee's view" of companies, it was the reality in a lot of places.
But the average person doesn't see the impact of efficiency on the company - a company can take a long while to go from slower growth to stagnancy to decline to eventual destruction. It's a lot like watching the Titanic in terms of the length of time it takes from cause to effect.
Never hearing the term before, it very succinctly communicates the situation. I must say the mental image is also quite pleasant. Well done! ~the chemical engineering student who uses numerical methods to solve large problems
I suspect that the term "blow up" would be just as apt, though a little less British in the degree of understatement.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
The difference between that and the mistake of a pilot is a potential several hundred lives.
By deciding to weight the gene pool in favor of irresponsible, yeast-like humans by not breeding? Only in the short term. In the longer term the population growth rate will increase. Long term problems don't get solved by short-term thinking.
The government is corrupt and amoral and just as batshit insane as any religious nutter. If you look at the amount of effort you put into raising a kid well, no one is taking "one for the team" by having just 2 children. It'll actually give you a chance to enjoy the one or two you have if you don't have a whole line of them vying for your time.
I know my personal quality of life may take a hit with more kids. For me, life's about more than immediate or even long-term pleasures, especially of the senses. YMMV. I'm concerned about how my kids will fare in the world that they are going to end up in. To some extent it is also a numbers game. If unchecked exponential growth is going to turn the country into a favela, a purely high-investment parenting style will be trumped by thuggery. Someone with 6 stupid and aggressive kids who end up killing or causing the 2 carefully nurtured kids of a high-investment parent to move away "wins" genetically speaking, even if 2 of his kids end up dead or in jail.
Want to know what you can do to stop fucking the environment? No you don't need to fucking eat Fido. Don't have more than 2 kids in your lifetime. Want to be really good? Have just one.
Choosing to be the lone martyr is as effective as being the lone yeast cell in the bottle of sugary water that doesn't reproduce. Individually deciding not to have kids won't work. Population control needs enforcement from government. No way I'm taking one for the team while the free riding asshole over the road has 17 kids because his god wills it, or if the government of the day decides to import someone new (through laws or lax border security) for every child I decide not to have.
As a matter of fact, the actual "accent" or "dialect" we possess, or rather the lack of an accent or dialect
Yes, after all those thousands of years English has been evolving and mutating, it finally finds perfect expression without accent or dialect in, of all places, Minnesota, USA. Coincidentally, where you were born and raised. What are the chances? How lucky you are!
p.s. when your bridge gets fixed, consider a road trip.
The point is, they didn't make a policy decision that "zomg, F/OSS ftw!"
Sure, that's the way it works in theory. But how do you really know that a PHB looking to leverage some synergies didn't hand down this decision from on high? It's not like the private sector has a monopoly on incompetent management. (Yes, I know this applies equally well and probably moreso to "zomg $PROPRIETARY_SYSTEM ftw!" and even more likely to "zomg $SYSTEM_OWNED_BY_COMPANY_I_OWN_SHARES_IN ftw!")
The backup strategy that you are using on your database server is to have your data professionally recovered after a disk crash?
For a bonus point, name the RDBMS he is using to store his data (5 letters). For an extra two bonus points, name the small aquatic mammalian mascot of said RDBMS.
I get the advantages of ubuntu on the desktop but on there server why would you want to switch from CentOS to Ubuntu?
I've used both Centos and Ubuntu desktop. I wouldn't see much point in moving from Centos to Ubuntu unless you were starting a new project. I'm considering using Ubuntu server for a project because I have a lot of experience with Ubuntu now, having used the desktop for over 2 years now. I figure it will be easier if I'm not having to mentally adjust from Ubuntu to RH ways of doing things all the time. This should cut down on the mistakes I might otherwise make. I've never found a problem with anything CLI based in Ubuntu, i've only ever had audio and GUI issues. I figure it will be similar on the server. Of course, I'll read a lot of reviews prior to embarking down that path.
A few years ago I came across a study in relative difficulty of learning languages. It ranked all of the world's major languages on a difficulty scale, measuring things like regularity and similarity to other languages.
It's kinda hard to play real-time interactive games when you're dealing with round-trip signal times of up to 40 minutes... I think that would knock out MMO games.
Posting to slashdot would still work well enough, although you'd cop more -1 redundants than normal. Otherwise I guess you could play single player games. Like System Shock, or Doom for example. What could possibly go wrong?
This is all about momentum, marketing, and market share
With all the ridicule that "Linux on the Desktop" has gotten over the years, I still feel that linux going mainstream is inevitable. I notice with a lot of things, I early-adopt and a surprising number of them go mainstream. Whether it is music, software, ways of doing things, interests, games... I often find that I get involved with something because something about it is really cool, or works really well (mostly because I obsessively research and try a lot of things). Several years later, I find that whatever it is I have ultimately decided on doing/using/enjoying has gone mainstream, or at least grown hugely. It seems to happen unnervingly often, to the point where I really should start to invest in these things when an opportunity presents itself - I'm sure on balance it would be financially rewarding for me to do so. Does anyone else here look back on their life and see the consistency with which they have backed such "winners"?
To bring it back to the topic, I notice this with Ubuntu - it really has a lot going for it. So much about it just does what I want and surprises me in a good way. The value proposition is hard to beat. If I was starting a business, I'd just put the foot down and say "use it or get another job". You'd lower your costs, increase your control, and by donating you'd have a good chance of getting features of immediate value to your business - something far less likely with something closed source, and also more likely to come with perpetual strings attached.
Games like DeusEx have shown that you actually can combine a FPS with a good interactive narrative, but after DeusEx there just hasn't been all that much new in that area and most games follow the Half Life kind of dragging the player through the narrative by force.
For a brilliant anything, you need a brilliant creator. There aren't many of them. Look at Warren Spector's resume: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector#Credits. Half of those games have probably been referenced in this thread as examples of great games. Miyamoto is responsible for more than his share of gems too.
When you get your chance to make your master work (which is what happened with Spector and Deus Ex), a sequel is probably going to be a little lackluster because you threw all your best ideas out at once to make the original, and probably got burnt out as well. The sequel that is as good as the original is the exception that proves the rule.
(SPOILER ALERT) A good story is a lot of work, especially making a story that allows for many different play-throughs. Every variation requires more thought, and more thought on integrating each different variation into something that works as a whole. Even Deus Ex has only so many different possibilities up until a point. After a while the game forces you to take the "red pill", so to speak. You can't keep killing the rebels forever.
Just wondering, if he donates some of the money he makes (e.g. an amount equivalent to what he might pay for a closed source solution), does that absolve him?
So what you're saying is don't build swimming pools in dry areas?
No, I'm saying if you must build them, make sure that the environment they are in is near enough to being hermetically sealed. E.g. indoor, with walls that don't leak.
As priorities, faddishness, popularity, and most of all, the end user, need to die.
Are you serious? Faddishness, I agree with. Popularity - popularity is something worth considering. Popularity implies community, and with a large community chances are most elements of a given problem have already been coded by someone else. Consider Perl and CPAN - a good reason to use Perl. But popularity is not enough to make me choose MySQL over PostgreSQL for instance.
Lastly - the end user as a priority needs to die? That really depends on who you are writing the software for. If it's an operating system and you want it to compete with a Windows or OSX on some level, considering the end user is unavoidable. A vastly larger feature set and complexity than say, OpenBSD, is also unavoidable. Lack of time to audit the code and remove bugs to the degree that OpenBSD has done is also unavoidable. Maybe this goes some way to explaining the quality of the code and the size of the user base of both operating systems.
Imagine owning a swimming pool with porous walls. In order to use it, we either have to build a new swimming pool with non-porous walls (or hack it somehow), or constantly fill it up with more water. Which makes more sense? Do we have a water efficiency problem, or a water shortage? To improve the analogy a bit, let's say that we live in a very dry area and get new water from an aquifer.
Energy efficiency vs energy shortage is analogous. And when these ultimately short term methods of energy production are exhausted, the poor will die in droves.
Slashdot Mirror
There is justice on slashdot. You have been modded up, finally.
Have you tried directing it to /dev/null? They may be slow in offering up helpful suggestions, but boy are they great listeners!
Those companies are almost certainly giving up ground to more efficient companies. I used to have much more confidence in the efficiency of the free market until I worked for actual, real-life companies. Then I saw that Dilbert wasn't the "jaded employee's view" of companies, it was the reality in a lot of places.
But the average person doesn't see the impact of efficiency on the company - a company can take a long while to go from slower growth to stagnancy to decline to eventual destruction. It's a lot like watching the Titanic in terms of the length of time it takes from cause to effect.
Developers, developers, developers...
I suspect that the term "blow up" would be just as apt, though a little less British in the degree of understatement.
The difference between that and the mistake of a pilot is a potential several hundred lives.
By deciding to weight the gene pool in favor of irresponsible, yeast-like humans by not breeding? Only in the short term. In the longer term the population growth rate will increase. Long term problems don't get solved by short-term thinking.
I know my personal quality of life may take a hit with more kids. For me, life's about more than immediate or even long-term pleasures, especially of the senses. YMMV. I'm concerned about how my kids will fare in the world that they are going to end up in. To some extent it is also a numbers game. If unchecked exponential growth is going to turn the country into a favela, a purely high-investment parenting style will be trumped by thuggery. Someone with 6 stupid and aggressive kids who end up killing or causing the 2 carefully nurtured kids of a high-investment parent to move away "wins" genetically speaking, even if 2 of his kids end up dead or in jail.
Choosing to be the lone martyr is as effective as being the lone yeast cell in the bottle of sugary water that doesn't reproduce. Individually deciding not to have kids won't work. Population control needs enforcement from government. No way I'm taking one for the team while the free riding asshole over the road has 17 kids because his god wills it, or if the government of the day decides to import someone new (through laws or lax border security) for every child I decide not to have.
Yes, after all those thousands of years English has been evolving and mutating, it finally finds perfect expression without accent or dialect in, of all places, Minnesota, USA. Coincidentally, where you were born and raised. What are the chances? How lucky you are!
p.s. when your bridge gets fixed, consider a road trip.
Sure, that's the way it works in theory. But how do you really know that a PHB looking to leverage some synergies didn't hand down this decision from on high? It's not like the private sector has a monopoly on incompetent management. (Yes, I know this applies equally well and probably moreso to "zomg $PROPRIETARY_SYSTEM ftw!" and even more likely to "zomg $SYSTEM_OWNED_BY_COMPANY_I_OWN_SHARES_IN ftw!")
For a bonus point, name the RDBMS he is using to store his data (5 letters). For an extra two bonus points, name the small aquatic mammalian mascot of said RDBMS.
What do you mean "might" take off? Who else do you think buys terabyte HDDs?
I've used both Centos and Ubuntu desktop. I wouldn't see much point in moving from Centos to Ubuntu unless you were starting a new project. I'm considering using Ubuntu server for a project because I have a lot of experience with Ubuntu now, having used the desktop for over 2 years now. I figure it will be easier if I'm not having to mentally adjust from Ubuntu to RH ways of doing things all the time. This should cut down on the mistakes I might otherwise make. I've never found a problem with anything CLI based in Ubuntu, i've only ever had audio and GUI issues. I figure it will be similar on the server. Of course, I'll read a lot of reviews prior to embarking down that path.
I never keep an eye out for "insensitive clod" opportunities, you insensitive clod!
This isn't that study, but I did find it interesting. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers
Genius.
Posting to slashdot would still work well enough, although you'd cop more -1 redundants than normal. Otherwise I guess you could play single player games. Like System Shock, or Doom for example. What could possibly go wrong?
With all the ridicule that "Linux on the Desktop" has gotten over the years, I still feel that linux going mainstream is inevitable. I notice with a lot of things, I early-adopt and a surprising number of them go mainstream. Whether it is music, software, ways of doing things, interests, games... I often find that I get involved with something because something about it is really cool, or works really well (mostly because I obsessively research and try a lot of things). Several years later, I find that whatever it is I have ultimately decided on doing/using/enjoying has gone mainstream, or at least grown hugely. It seems to happen unnervingly often, to the point where I really should start to invest in these things when an opportunity presents itself - I'm sure on balance it would be financially rewarding for me to do so. Does anyone else here look back on their life and see the consistency with which they have backed such "winners"?
To bring it back to the topic, I notice this with Ubuntu - it really has a lot going for it. So much about it just does what I want and surprises me in a good way. The value proposition is hard to beat. If I was starting a business, I'd just put the foot down and say "use it or get another job". You'd lower your costs, increase your control, and by donating you'd have a good chance of getting features of immediate value to your business - something far less likely with something closed source, and also more likely to come with perpetual strings attached.
For a brilliant anything, you need a brilliant creator. There aren't many of them. Look at Warren Spector's resume: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector#Credits. Half of those games have probably been referenced in this thread as examples of great games. Miyamoto is responsible for more than his share of gems too.
When you get your chance to make your master work (which is what happened with Spector and Deus Ex), a sequel is probably going to be a little lackluster because you threw all your best ideas out at once to make the original, and probably got burnt out as well. The sequel that is as good as the original is the exception that proves the rule.
(SPOILER ALERT) A good story is a lot of work, especially making a story that allows for many different play-throughs. Every variation requires more thought, and more thought on integrating each different variation into something that works as a whole. Even Deus Ex has only so many different possibilities up until a point. After a while the game forces you to take the "red pill", so to speak. You can't keep killing the rebels forever.
Just wondering, if he donates some of the money he makes (e.g. an amount equivalent to what he might pay for a closed source solution), does that absolve him?
No, I'm saying if you must build them, make sure that the environment they are in is near enough to being hermetically sealed. E.g. indoor, with walls that don't leak.
Are you serious? Faddishness, I agree with. Popularity - popularity is something worth considering. Popularity implies community, and with a large community chances are most elements of a given problem have already been coded by someone else. Consider Perl and CPAN - a good reason to use Perl. But popularity is not enough to make me choose MySQL over PostgreSQL for instance.
Lastly - the end user as a priority needs to die? That really depends on who you are writing the software for. If it's an operating system and you want it to compete with a Windows or OSX on some level, considering the end user is unavoidable. A vastly larger feature set and complexity than say, OpenBSD, is also unavoidable. Lack of time to audit the code and remove bugs to the degree that OpenBSD has done is also unavoidable. Maybe this goes some way to explaining the quality of the code and the size of the user base of both operating systems.
Imagine owning a swimming pool with porous walls. In order to use it, we either have to build a new swimming pool with non-porous walls (or hack it somehow), or constantly fill it up with more water. Which makes more sense? Do we have a water efficiency problem, or a water shortage? To improve the analogy a bit, let's say that we live in a very dry area and get new water from an aquifer.
Energy efficiency vs energy shortage is analogous. And when these ultimately short term methods of energy production are exhausted, the poor will die in droves.
Darling it's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me.
If the 65% number doesn't hold up, investigate the correlation between crime and a diet high in fried chicken and watermelon.