The mathematicisns (and computing pioneers) Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann are reported to have had conversations about the acceleration of human history -- and to have used the term "singularity" to describe such a point in the near future -- in the 1950's.
Will they omit the part of the movie where the highly trained scientist/engineer's job is shipped off to India? Or will they just cut to the chase and produce the movies themselves in Bollywood?
Your comment is humorous, but the phenomenon is real in defense procurement.
You obviously have no grasp of economics. Free trade works BECAUSE countries are not equal. A country should specialize according to its comparitive advantage.
I wrote this before, but I'll try again.
For a refutation of the Ricardian-era "comparative advantage" argument mentioned above, refer to Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, by Ralph E. Gomory, William J. Baumol, and recent work by Paul Samuelson.
If, in addition to the agriculturally-inspired assumptions that Ricardo made, we assume: (1) economic scaling, and (2) the ability of rival economies to "learn", then the conclusion (enshrined in folklore) that free trade maximizes everyone's wealth is blown away.
The authors are working precisely within the mainstream of classical economic theory. Samuelson's credentials don't need to be listed here.
Thus, the arguer from "comparative advantage" must maintain not only that his early-1800s simplistic model is the best guide to technology policy in 2005, but also that it is truer than a slightly-less-simplistic model.
Well said, and needs to be said more. The faith, common among software people and often buttressed with simplistic economic theory, that services can be detached from their underlying physical production, must be dispelled.
I recommend the book Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma is Destroying American Prosperity, by Eamonn Fingleton. He addresses exactly this subject.
It's easy for a technical person to catch Fingleton on details (he misspells Codd's name and makes a mistake while referring to to RISC) but he is an economic writer covering the whole range of industrial production. He makes it very clear where our priorities need to be.
Seems as if they're trading on the principle of 'comparative' advantage, something that makes perfect sense. Software in India, hardware in China. Now, I understand that we're going to see some misguided anti-Globalisation backlash on this site. Overall, firms will then get lower prices for their tech products. Everybody will win from this.
For a refutation of the Ricardian-era "comparative advantage" argument mentioned above, refer to Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, by Ralph E. Gomory, William J. Baumol, and recent work by Paul Samuelson.
If, in addition to the agriculturally-inspired assumptions that Ricardo made, we assume: (1) economic scaling, and (2) the ability of rival economies to "learn", then the conclusion (enshrined in folklore) that free trade maximizes everyone's wealth is blown away.
The authors are working precisely within the mainstream of classical economic theory. Samuelson's credentials don't need to be listed here.
Thus, the arguer from "comparative advantage" must maintain not only that his early-1800s simplistic model is the best guide to technology policy in 2005, but also that it is truer than a slightly-less-simplistic model.
I'd like to draw the topic's attention to a very recent book: "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", by Jared Diamond (whom many may know as the author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel.") He treats many of these ideas in detail and at length.
It's truly a visually spectacular film. It draws a lot of influence from the 1930s/1940s, and the art just blows my mind. Everything about it is beautiful. It's a shame that the characters seemed shallow and the plot was a bit thin. Sure, it's probably intentional to some degree; it's supposed to be a beautiful action film and it succeeds in this area. I really feel that a lot more could have been done with it though. Neat ideas, but might have benefited from some better writing (and maybe a better actress than Paltrow). In the end, the movie seems almost like an anime movie with real actors - drawing influence from WW2 movies, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, comic book scifi, and classic love stories.
That's exactly what it is. Thin plot? There were gaping holes in the ridiculous plot, and they were put there lovingly. It's a gorgeous movie, a real work of art, and part of the artistry is the incredibly detailed truth to its comic book sources.
This ain't about competition in the database market, it's about competition for ERP software. These work on top of a database, and many ERP packages allow you to choose the underlying database.
Well, but do you think Oracle will let ex-Peoplesoft customers stay with their non-Oracle DBMSs?
I think this is a dreadful decision, Oracle's ERP offering is horrid, and the intent is simply to kill a competitor.
Most Free software developers care about two things. Keeping people who appreciate their software happy, and making more people appreciate their software. This means hopefully to accommodate the second desire they will eventually make it easier for the masses to use.
"We are not here to give users what they want."
- Richard Stallman (2001)
> For all well know, the talks leading to that deal could have been going on for months, >and Green certainly would have had inside access to how they were going.
Indeed they have been since July, according to a story in today's WSJ.
An interesting article just appeared by the physicist Steven Weinberg.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17011
Excerpt:
"Looking into the future, we need to ask, what scientific work can be done by astronauts on Mars? They can walk around and look at the terrain, and carry out tests on rocks, looking for signs of water or life, but all that can be done by robots. They can bring back rock samples, as the Apollo astronauts did from the moon, but that too can be done by robots. Samples of rocks from the moon were also brought back to Earth by unmanned Soviet lunar missions. It is sometimes said that the great disadvantage of using robots in a mission to Mars is that they can only be controlled by people on Earth with a long wait (at least four minutes) for radio signals to travel each way between the Earth and Mars. That would indeed be a severe problem if the robots were being sent to Mars to play tennis with Martians, but not much is happening there now, and I don't see why robots can't be left to operate with only occasional intervention from Earth. Any marginal advantage that astronauts may have over robots in exploring Mars would be more than canceled by the great cost of manned missions. For the cost of putting a few people in a single location on Mars, we could have robots studying many different landscapes all over the planet."
He makes a number of interesting points. For the cost of the Hubble repair mission, we could simply have made another Hubble telescope and sent it up, several times over.
Pretty much the only science done that needed human presence in space has been on the effect on humans of living in space. But that can't justify humans going into space, since it would be irrelevant unless they were already going there for some other reason.
Above all, manned space missions would drastically pull funding away from cheaper, and potentially more numerous robotic missions, of the sort that have revolutionized fundamental physics and cosmology in the past few years.
At the end he points out that the whole proposal is possibly just a diversion anyway. At any rate the Bush administration would be gone by the time the bills came due.
But the long term can be very long. [...]
Your arguments work in theory, but not in the real world, where governments act in their own interests. China, for example, has pegged their currency to the dollar at lower-than-the-market-would-have-it. So their goods are cheaper, and they get the jobs.
True. Relevant quotation from John Maynard Keynes:
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Solaris on x86 was never a strategic product for Sun. Two years ago Sun was willing to drop it altogether in favor of Linux, of which there were and are plenty of advocates within the company. Solaris 9 on x86 was cancelled.
There was a loud outcry from a small but determined group of Solaris x86 customers.
It was Sun users who dragged Sun back into the x86 space.
Since then Sun has decided to make a serious go of it. But the facts easily refute the orthodox hobbits-vs.-Sauron story.
Steve Milunovich, the analyst at Merrill, has long been a figure of fun over at The Register, where he is nicknamed "The Loon." Their current story on the conference between Sun management and Wall Street analysts (the origin of the WSJ article as well) has a funny cameo of this fellow.
>Like the subject says, I'm not a DBA, but I know >some pretty heavy-duty ones that say nothing beats >Oracle running on HP Superdomes with EMC storage.
Haven't heard about the recent Sybase benchmark on Superdome? Ask around. But HP doesn't want to antagonize Oracle so it hasn't been released yet.
No, this is not an X-Files, "suppressed UFO report" thing, it's just one of the means by which Oracle maintains its market share. Yes, any benchmark is only a benchmark, but I'd like to see it out there.
>[...]"Gulag Archipelago". It's a while since I read the latter, but I'm pretty sure it's the one that fictionalised Russian scientists working in an "intelligentsia prison".
That one is "First Circle." Readers should try to find the British translation, it's much better than the dull American translation.
If you were an engineer in prison, whose family outside was on the verge of homelessness, and were ordered to design new types of surveillance devices so that more citizens could be arrested, and you were promised freedom and money if you succeeded, what would you do? That question is part of the story.
>Oh yeah, Shakespeare's work was "merely the realm of the fabulously wealthy."
Shakespeare's company was supported by the royal court. (See Alvin Kernan, "Shakespeare, the King's Playwright", for details.) A big Thank You to the royal court from us commoners. Late in his life Shakespeare was able to retire -- he had invested well -- but as a theater director he did need the outside funding.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyrights are particualrly evil
What then of the GPL, which is founded on copyright? And what of certain rather famous
software projects, released under the GPL?
The mathematicisns (and computing pioneers) Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann are reported to have had conversations about the acceleration of human history -- and to have used the term "singularity" to describe such a point in the near future -- in the 1950's.
Will they omit the part of the movie where the highly trained scientist/engineer's job is shipped off to India? Or will they just cut to the chase and produce the movies themselves in Bollywood?
Your comment is humorous, but the phenomenon is real in defense procurement.
You obviously have no grasp of economics. Free trade works BECAUSE countries are not equal. A country should specialize according to its comparitive advantage.
I wrote this before, but I'll try again.
For a refutation of the Ricardian-era "comparative advantage" argument mentioned above, refer to Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, by Ralph E. Gomory, William J. Baumol, and recent work by Paul Samuelson.
If, in addition to the agriculturally-inspired assumptions that Ricardo made, we assume: (1) economic scaling, and (2) the ability of rival economies to "learn", then the conclusion (enshrined in folklore) that free trade maximizes everyone's wealth is blown away.
The authors are working precisely within the mainstream of classical economic theory. Samuelson's credentials don't need to be listed here.
Thus, the arguer from "comparative advantage" must maintain not only that his early-1800s simplistic model is the best guide to technology policy in 2005, but also that it is truer than a slightly-less-simplistic model.
Well said, and needs to be said more. The faith, common among software people and often buttressed with simplistic economic theory, that services can be detached from their underlying physical production, must be dispelled.
I recommend the book Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma is Destroying American Prosperity, by Eamonn Fingleton. He addresses exactly this subject.
It's easy for a technical person to catch Fingleton on details (he misspells Codd's name and makes a mistake while referring to to RISC) but he is an economic writer covering the whole range of industrial production. He makes it very clear where our priorities need to be.
Just in case doesn't get the joke behind that ";)" in the thread title, GM bonds are about to be downgraded to junk.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0425/112.html
Seems as if they're trading on the principle of 'comparative' advantage, something that makes perfect sense. Software in India, hardware in China. Now, I understand that we're going to see some misguided anti-Globalisation backlash on this site. Overall, firms will then get lower prices for their tech products. Everybody will win from this.
For a refutation of the Ricardian-era "comparative advantage" argument mentioned above, refer to Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, by Ralph E. Gomory, William J. Baumol, and recent work by Paul Samuelson.
If, in addition to the agriculturally-inspired assumptions that Ricardo made, we assume: (1) economic scaling, and (2) the ability of rival economies to "learn", then the conclusion (enshrined in folklore) that free trade maximizes everyone's wealth is blown away.
The authors are working precisely within the mainstream of classical economic theory. Samuelson's credentials don't need to be listed here.
Thus, the arguer from "comparative advantage" must maintain not only that his early-1800s simplistic model is the best guide to technology policy in 2005, but also that it is truer than a slightly-less-simplistic model.
That's incisively put.
I'd like to draw the topic's attention to a very recent book: "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", by Jared Diamond (whom many may know as the author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel.") He treats many of these ideas in detail and at length.
Someone post some details. Could Sybase+gambas be a drop-in replacement for VB6+SQL Server?
As an ASE fanboy, that sounds good to me.
Remember, though, that Sybase is releasing PowerBuilder for Linux next year (they've already released the PFC under LGPL).
It's truly a visually spectacular film. It draws a lot of influence from the 1930s/1940s, and the art just blows my mind. Everything about it is beautiful. It's a shame that the characters seemed shallow and the plot was a bit thin. Sure, it's probably intentional to some degree; it's supposed to be a beautiful action film and it succeeds in this area. I really feel that a lot more could have been done with it though. Neat ideas, but might have benefited from some better writing (and maybe a better actress than Paltrow). In the end, the movie seems almost like an anime movie with real actors - drawing influence from WW2 movies, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, comic book scifi, and classic love stories.
That's exactly what it is. Thin plot? There were gaping holes in the ridiculous plot, and they were put there lovingly. It's a gorgeous movie, a real work of art, and part of the artistry is the incredibly detailed truth to its comic book sources.
Well, but do you think Oracle will let ex-Peoplesoft customers stay with their non-Oracle DBMSs?
Yup, yup, and yup.
Uhm.. I think Sybase would object to on of their flahship products being called "dead database".
May I add, ASE 12.5 rocks my world.http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/about.htm
> For all well know, the talks leading to that deal could have been going on for months,
>and Green certainly would have had inside access to how they were going.
Indeed they have been since July, according to a story in today's WSJ.
An interesting article just appeared by the physicist Steven Weinberg.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17011
Excerpt:
"Looking into the future, we need to ask, what scientific work can be done by astronauts on Mars? They can walk around and look at the terrain, and carry out tests on rocks, looking for signs of water or life, but all that can be done by robots. They can bring back rock samples, as the Apollo astronauts did from the moon, but that too can be done by robots. Samples of rocks from the moon were also brought back to Earth by unmanned Soviet lunar missions. It is sometimes said that the great disadvantage of using robots in a mission to Mars is that they can only be controlled by people on Earth with a long wait (at least four minutes) for radio signals to travel each way between the Earth and Mars. That would indeed be a severe problem if the robots were being sent to Mars to play tennis with Martians, but not much is happening there now, and I don't see why robots can't be left to operate with only occasional intervention from Earth. Any marginal advantage that astronauts may have over robots in exploring Mars would be more than canceled by the great cost of manned missions. For the cost of putting a few people in a single location on Mars, we could have robots studying many different landscapes all over the planet."
He makes a number of interesting points. For the cost of the Hubble repair mission, we could simply have made another Hubble telescope and sent it up, several times over.
Pretty much the only science done that needed human presence in space has been on the effect on humans of living in space. But that can't justify humans going into space, since it would be irrelevant unless they were already going there for some other reason.
Above all, manned space missions would drastically pull funding away from cheaper, and potentially more numerous robotic missions, of the sort that have revolutionized fundamental physics and cosmology in the past few years.
At the end he points out that the whole proposal is possibly just a diversion anyway. At any rate the Bush administration would be gone by the time the bills came due.
True. Relevant quotation from John Maynard Keynes: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Solaris on x86 was never a strategic product for Sun. Two years ago Sun was willing to drop it altogether in favor of Linux, of which there were and are plenty of advocates within the company. Solaris 9 on x86 was cancelled.
There was a loud outcry from a small but determined group of Solaris x86 customers.
It was Sun users who dragged Sun back into the x86 space.
Since then Sun has decided to make a serious go of it. But the facts easily refute the orthodox hobbits-vs.-Sauron story.
Steve Milunovich, the analyst at Merrill, has long been a figure of fun over at The Register, where he is nicknamed "The Loon." Their current story on the conference between Sun management and Wall Street analysts (the origin of the WSJ article as well) has a funny cameo of this fellow.
I don't dispute your other points, though.
>Like the subject says, I'm not a DBA, but I know
>some pretty heavy-duty ones that say nothing beats
>Oracle running on HP Superdomes with EMC storage.
Haven't heard about the recent Sybase benchmark on Superdome? Ask around. But HP doesn't want to antagonize Oracle so it hasn't been released yet.
No, this is not an X-Files, "suppressed UFO report" thing, it's just one of the means by which Oracle maintains its market share. Yes, any benchmark is only a benchmark, but I'd like to see it out there.
(Some people prefer Ferraris to SUVs.)
>[...]"Gulag Archipelago". It's a while since I read the latter, but I'm pretty sure it's the one that fictionalised Russian scientists working in an "intelligentsia prison".
That one is "First Circle." Readers should try to find the British translation, it's much better than the dull American translation.
If you were an engineer in prison, whose family outside was on the verge of homelessness, and were ordered to design new types of surveillance devices so that more citizens could be arrested, and you were promised freedom and money if you succeeded, what would you do? That question is part of the story.
>Oh yeah, Shakespeare's work was "merely the realm of the fabulously wealthy."
Shakespeare's company was supported by the royal court. (See Alvin Kernan, "Shakespeare, the King's Playwright", for details.) A big Thank You to the royal court from us commoners. Late in his life Shakespeare was able to retire -- he had invested well -- but as a theater director he did need the outside funding.
Jack Williamson, one of the winners, is 94 years old today. Warmest congratulations!