As long as he wants to "kill Unix", I don't think there's any other company out there who needs him. The only non-Unix operating system I know of in development is Be, and I don't think he'd like the Gassee co-existance philosophy. After reading 'Showstopper', I can almost hear him scream "Coexistance is for wimps!"
Of course the good news is that he's pretty rich now from Microsoft stock options, so he could always retire. But what then? I don't see him sitting around playing golf.
I hate to say it, but from a consumer's point of view, this is an awfully cool feature. I spent some time playing around with it, and I can see a definite value here.
I'm sure they are in fact aggregating data by domain name - but that's nothing new, anyone looking seriously should know that they're aggregating data on an individual level. That's where all those nice handy "Recommendations" come from. The problem is, well, can I be frank? They're pretty darn useful. That's why they're there. That's why these new features are there.
As long as there's no way of disaggregating it to an individual level, I think this feature is harmless fun. I think that if they put a more aggressive minimum on the number of people aggregated (say 1,000), it would be entirely unobjectionable. I'm sure there are still plenty of groups that big.
I have to say that I'd hate to see this feature go, even though I have a single-person domain name. I don't think we single-person domain holders have anything to worry about, though - a "bestseller" on our list is the sale of a single copy of a single book, and that's not going to get these folks excited.
Seriously, Irix is going to be around for a long time to come, since SGI is not planning on moving their MIPS hardware to Linux - just their new Intel stuff.
Microsoft founded Sidewalk - it was a Bill creation since Day One. I never liked it - I thought it was a soulless version of the Yellow Pages.
But it was Bill's.
Nonetheless, in spirit I agree with you - Microsoft has done little of genuine interest in the online world, and the news is filled with their retreats. Sidewalk, for instance, is now mainly folded into former competitor CitySearch.
mySQL was designed to be a low-overhead database that you could use when speed was more important than ultimate data integrity. Thus, no features like transactions, rollbacks, triggers, stored procedures and so on.
Oracle was designed to be a database to use when data integrity was more important than speed. If you were a bank, and you had to make sure the balance and transaction tables were correctly updated whenever a deposit or withdrawl was made, you would use Oracle.
Since Slashdot does not require this kind of multiple table update, upgrading to Oracle would not help with Slashdot's actual troubles. Obviously, using a speed-oriented database is the correct decision in this instance, as it is for many other web sites.
More hardware and a fatter pipe are more likely to fix the problems - and I think they're both on the way.
Disclaimer: I don't use mySQL under Windows, but I don't think the API is much different.
The big advantage of mySQL is that it's a very low-overhead database. There is no GUI; the user interface is a program that lets you type SQL statements at a command prompt. If you're comfortable with that, I think mySQL's superior performance would win you over.
The mySQL API is easy to learn but it could be easier to use. At least in the raw form, you can't refer to fields by name. Here's how it works:
[Disclaimer: Code is likely to contain errors; I presently have an icky case of the flu and might miss something important. Proper code indentation is removed by the HTML interpreter:-(. But it should give you a flavour for it anyway].
Access
db = opendatabase("foo") rs = db.openrecordset("select id, first, last from clients")
while not rs.eof debug.print rs!id, rs!first, rs!last rs.movenext wend
As you can see, the biggest difference is having to use numbers instead of character strings to reference field names. You could probably write a function that would search the list of returned fields for a string, but it would slow things down a bit.
It can be very confusing to remember which field goes with which number, especially when you have a query with lots of fields. I find this is by far the most common problem I have, and it's certainly not anything that happens under Access.
I think, however, that you can use interpreted languages like Perl or Python and fix that problem. Performance should still be better than with Access.
Second thought: "Microsoft takes care of its own" - Rick B supported the NT strategy in support of MS, it didn't work, Microsoft gave him a position.
Third thought: What kind of position is this? Would you want to be put in charge of MSN et al? It may be an important position from Bill's point of view, and it probably pays pretty well, but frankly I don't think anyone human could fulfill Bill's expectations for the unit.
In the end, this is an unproductive line of thought.
Right now, do you think the general public would rather live in single-family houses or the massive multi-family housing blocks required by policies such as the New Urbanism?
Do we want to make it so that the preferred way of life for most people - the single family residence - becomes so expensive virtually nobody can afford one?
I think the answer is clear. And I think the increased housing costs that are part and parcel of the new urbanist design are not going to make it any friends.
I'm not saying suburbia is perfect. Of course it isn't! I am saying that any new policy should accomodate, in some way or another, the very human desire for personally owned single-family homes.
SGI has a lot of problems, but I think reports of their demise are exaggerated.
The former CEO bet his chairmanship on the NT workstations. I see him leaving as a positive move - they know NT hasn't worked, and they have to pick another strategy.
We live in very different parts of the world - but you wouldn't understand the situation in Los Angeles if you hadn't seen the outcome of an urban riot. I was here during the 1992 riots, and after the smoke cleared, I went down to South Central. The damage was horrible and awesome. Trust me, if you saw it, you would never, but ever, even dream of living in South Central.
I have a friend who ran a prosperous real estate management business - he had a lot of properties in South Central before the 1965 riots. Well, he doesn't have them anymore, and that pushed him straight down the financial ladder, from a gorgeous house overlooking the city lights to a horrible boring condo in Chatsworth.
A certain amount of paranoia is, sad to say, justified. I can understand your point of view, because your town isn't my town, but in many places fear of the urban world is perfectly justified.
Did you realize that there have been more stories about SGI on Slashdot over the last few months than there have been on Sun?
For all the company has gone through, there is an incredibly loyal base of people who want to buy their Next Cool Thing (and I number myself among them).
All they need to do is product a good workstation that runs some kind of Unix (Irix or Linux, their pick [*]), sell it at a reasonable price (say about the same price point as the VWS), and the customers will come running back.
If they can just get their management problems under control, I see a bright future. It's kinda like Apple - they have too many customers who love their products for them to fail. Their mistake in embracing NT was to disappoint those customers.
D
[*] Irix might be preferable; if Linux, include ports of their Alias|Wavefront packages so we have something to run on the shiny new machine.
Bear in mind that the existing MIPS-based businesses were doing better than expected, and you'd probably say there are a lot of folks over there saying "I told you so".
A strategy based on Linux support for their hardware plus porting their Alias | Wavefront software to Linux strikes me as a far better bet than depending on the dubious alliance offered by Microsoft. If their advantage in workstations dries up, Alias is still a viable business, and I think there would always be a market for hardware/software bundles using a specifically optimized Alias.
I think what the world really wants from SGI are not semi-generic NT systems, but real workstations at a more reasonable price point. That's still the lifeblood of the company, as far as I can see.
To some extent, money is always an object. But a couple of weekends ago, I visited the cheapest house in LA - which costs all of $ 21,000, in a city where the average home is close to $ 200,000. Clearly, if money was everything, I should have been over to the realtor, checkbook in hand, to pick up that great bargain, right?
Well, no.
You're not going to convince me that people didn't stay in the cities because they could get houses loads cheaper in the suburbs. If that was all it was, homes in the cities would shrink in value until they were competitive. I've found a remarkable equivalent to this in my explorations of Los Angeles - as prices in the Hollywood Hills skyrocketed, prices in the nearby but not as nice neighborhoods did likewise, to the extent that an equivalent house in both areas costs about the same now!
No, prices adjust themselves quite nicely. The historical problem with the city is fear - and if you think that's entirely unjustified, talk to some of the property owners who lost millions in the 1965 and 1992 riots in South Central.
If you want to make the cities popular again, eliminate the fear. This process, too, is going on quite successfully in Los Angeles - in Silver Lake, the arty folks started coming in, and the yuppies followed. So now Silver Lake is pleasant and affluent, while it was all but a slum 5-10 years ago. Venice, near the ocean but with a fearsome reputation for crime problems, went through the exact same process in the early 90s. Crime is down, professionals are in, the area is safe again.
People aren't as scared of the city as they used to be. That's why cities are undergoing a revival now. But that doesn't mean there weren't good reasons to leave at the time suburban expansion started.
Since there are so many forces involved, I don't think I'd accuse my parents of racism because they bought a snazzy suburban house. There were better public schools, a massive front and back yard, and oodles of space. Those are all major advantages having nothing to do with racism.
At any rate, I think the real reason to move to the suburbs was to get away from the perceived dangers of the inner city. Imagine if there were no blacks, but there were white gangs who were running around making life hazardous. Would people not move out under those circumstances as well?
Now, I will admit there was some racism in that suburbs tried to prevent blacks from moving in. This was due to fear. If there had been white gang members terrorizing the cities, I am convinced that the same thing would have happened. Suburbanites would have tried to pass laws preventing gang members from moving in.
I would call that "justified fear" as much as racism.
This is exactly what Christopher Alexander ("A Pattern Language", "A Timeless Way of Building", etc) says in his own books. I think the new urbanists took some of their ideas from him, but didn't follow through with the ultimate logic of his books.
What he says is that, if the members of a community collectively agree on certain "patterns", the community can then be built flexibly and spontaneously using them. The difference between this and zoning laws is that the patterns are extremely flexible. No two buildings constructed through the patterns are alike, because the patterns and the way they interact change depending on the building's use and the site on which it exists.
His scheme would absolutely prohibit any kind of development where buildings were designed as interchangeable units.
I think he's right in most of what he says, but I also believe his ideas to be totally incompatible with the way we build now.
First, I would certainly agree that current zoning laws should be changed - they are way too rigid.
I don't see a great suburban conspiracy here. I don't see government, zoning authorities and so on trying to rope people in and imprison them in suburban homes. I see several factors that made suburbia popular:
- Virtually everyone would like to own their own home.
- Most people would like a little outdoor space to call their own.
- City life was crowded, nasty, brutish and short. Because people had to be crammed tightly together, disease spread more easily than it did now.
- With people of different social classes living close at hand, crime became a significant problem.
These factors were all mentioned in a book that vigourously advocated the New Urbanist vision. Zoning laws came about because the residents of these places wanted to protect them from becoming like the city.
Now, I understand your dislike for suburbs - as you point out, they are virtual jails for people without cars. But I think that the suburbs cannot be successfully reformed until the reasons for their success are understood. I'd like to see planners take a more balanced view, considering what's good about suburbia as well as reacting to what they find distasteful.
What the high prices in New Urbanist communities indicate are that many of the elites of our country like them. Certainly in the case of Celebration, the Mouse's cachet helped as well. This does not mean the ideas would work on a citywide scale, where people with $ 10,000 incomes have to be accomodated as well as those with $100,000 incomes. People with the high incomes feel authentic fear of those with low incomes. If you visit a low-income slum (as I have), you'll see that there are reasons for this prejudice.
Incidentally, my own personal taste is for the Hollywood Hills or Malibu, neither of which are traditional suburbs. They are also as expensive to live in as Celebration. If not more so.
I don't know what's going on here, but for some reason I can't put links in my comments any more, even when I make them "HTML Formatted". Could some kind soul let me know how to do it?
Anyway, here's Randal O'Toole's article I wanted to reference:
I'm wondering if New Urbanists ever asked people in suburbs why they are there. The whole movement feels arrogant, in the tone of "We know how you should live and you don't". The general prescription is higher density, a much larger role for public transportation, and old-fashioned neighborhoods where neighbors are encouraged to meet.
At first, the idea seems cool. But remember this: For some reason, people have chosen overwhelmingly to live in suburbs, not in cities. Why? I don't know the full story, but I can give you a few useful guesses.
First, people want to feel they have some land to call their own.
Second, people want to feel safe, and that means living with people similar to themselves. For an idea of the strength of this desire, I refer you to Claritas, the "You are where you live" market research folks.
Third, people like their cars and don't want to take public transportation because of its tremendous inflexibility.
The first move in producing the New Urbanism is to block off sprawl by making development illegal outside of a certain ring. Then, they change zoning to allow for more development within the ring. The result is more apartments and fewer single family homes; exactly what people hate. The secondary result is that land becomes much more expensive inside the ring. As the population increases, more and more people find themselves priced out of single family homes, and even apartments become dear. The final result is far more traffic, and therefore much more traffic congestion - exactly what the New Urbanism claims to want to avoid. Actually, to them, this is an excellent result because it forces you to shop at local stores instead of driving to the supermarket, and to use public transport instead of driving your car. An interesting reference for this is Randal O'Toole's article in Reason magazine.
If that's what you want, this is fine. But I don't think it's what the bulk of the public wants. At present, I believe the public doesn't fully understand the implications of the New Urbanism, and it certainly has been well promoted.
Of course Celebration and Seaside are both "from the ground up" developments, and should be able to overcome the problems associated with taking a whole city and switching it into a new mode. Before thinking they are realistic prototype communities, take a look at home prices there. Ouch. Both communities have average home prices in excess of $ 400,000. This is a lot for South Florida; I was there a couple of years ago, and you could get a nice waterfront home (on the intercoastal, not the ocean front) for $ 279,000, and a typical boring suburban home sold for $ 150k. I'm sure these communities will make plenty of money for the developers, but I'm not convinced that they are sound investments, nor that they are any kind of prototype that will help us solve our nagging housing affordability problem. In fact, we have seen that the New Urbanism is going to make housing more expensive overall; there's no way to avoid that and still capture the supposed benefits.
This is not to say that our current world is perfect, or that we shouldn't continue to try and improve it. But this kind of top-down vision strikes me as dangerous. The works of Christopher Alexander are an interesting ancestor of the New Urbanism which adds the inherent desire for flexibility and freedom to the mix. I think his own top-down ideas are just about as impossible as the New Urbanism, but I really like his bottom-up, incrementalist thinking. By all means check out 'A Pattern Language' and 'The Timeless Way of Building'.
D
PS Discouragingly enough, Disney has used lousy contractors before, and with similarly dismal results. They had a joint venture with a contractor to develop and sell some land. Customers, relying on the solid gold character of the Disney name, flocked to the venture. The contractor couldn't build homes fast enough, and wound up cutting corners. So when Hurricane Andrew came, the homes self-destructed. Oops. (This information is from Carl Hiiassen's book 'Team Rodent'). ----
When you type a ' or a " into Microsoft Word, the "Smart Quotes" feature kicks in that converts them into supposedly better looking characters. The idea is to get an effect like this ``The Associated Press used to use two single quotes, like this'' instead of the uglier "This is the pathetic old way".
As long as you view the file on a Windows(tm) system, all looks fine. But if you happen to be using Unix(tm) or Linux(tm), it doesn't understand the funny character code and renders it as "?".
I must agree that Jon really should fix this one. Speaking of which, anyone know what happened to his attempts to embrace Linux?
Geeks are a lot like a separate species - we have different habitats than the average, we do different things to survive, and so on. So when there is no balance of sexes within the geek world, there is no joy in geekdom. We could, of course, mate outside of our species by trying to attract, say, girls in the more female friendly arts. But that's outside of our native habitat, and it's hard to not feel like a fish out of water when visiting the clubs and what-not where people normally congregate to meet members of the appropriate sex.
Probably the best way to improve this alarming situation is to recruit more females into our ranks. I would argue that this is not purely a gender equity situation; consider it an attempt to ensure the survival of the species by allowing us to reproduce with those of our own kind. Otherwise, geek traits are bound to die out, and it will be our own fault.
This is way offtopic, but since it's already been moderated down, I see no reason not to respond.
You're referring to Costa Mesa in Southern California's Orange County, right?
Unfortunately, I fear that without illegal aliens, there would be nobody to empty your trash, wait on you in fast food restaurants or fix your car. (Most car repair shops I've seen are run by a english-speaking front man who hires spanish speakers to do the actual work).
Illegal aliens may not speak my language, but they're incredibly hard workers and deserve a chance at success. I support them in their courageous efforts to make a life in a new, bewildering country.
I think this system would be quite a bit cheaper than you think. Something like this (prices from memory)
Cheapest blue and white G3: $ 1,600 Free upgrade to 128mb RAM Radius EditDV without hardware 400 17" Monitor 500 Total 2,500
Canon XL1 MiniDV Camcorder 4,000
Total $ 6,500
If you need to save a few bucks, get a GL1 or TRV900 instead of the XL1 - you should be able to find one for about $2,000-$2,500, thus reducing the price to around $4,500-5,000.
Not bad, especially since I paid about $ 9,000 for my equivalent setup (with the XL1).
One thing you do need that's not on that list is a small TV or video monitor - you'll want it to play back the video while you're editing. Video playback on the computer is hopeless; video playback through the firewire using your camera is great. That adds between $200 and $500 to the price.
If you haven't seen it already, my DV FAQ is at http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html .
Slashdot Mirror
As long as he wants to "kill Unix", I don't think there's any other company out there who needs him. The only non-Unix operating system I know of in development is Be, and I don't think he'd like the Gassee co-existance philosophy. After reading 'Showstopper', I can almost hear him scream "Coexistance is for wimps!"
Of course the good news is that he's pretty rich now from Microsoft stock options, so he could always retire. But what then? I don't see him sitting around playing golf.
D
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I hate to say it, but from a consumer's point of view, this is an awfully cool feature. I spent some time playing around with it, and I can see a definite value here.
I'm sure they are in fact aggregating data by domain name - but that's nothing new, anyone looking seriously should know that they're aggregating data on an individual level. That's where all those nice handy "Recommendations" come from. The problem is, well, can I be frank? They're pretty darn useful. That's why they're there. That's why these new features are there.
As long as there's no way of disaggregating it to an individual level, I think this feature is harmless fun. I think that if they put a more aggressive minimum on the number of people aggregated (say 1,000), it would be entirely unobjectionable. I'm sure there are still plenty of groups that big.
I have to say that I'd hate to see this feature go, even though I have a single-person domain name. I don't think we single-person domain holders have anything to worry about, though - a "bestseller" on our list is the sale of a single copy of a single book, and that's not going to get these folks excited.
D
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Because Irix people like glossy stuff :-).
Seriously, Irix is going to be around for a long time to come, since SGI is not planning on moving their MIPS hardware to Linux - just their new Intel stuff.
D
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Microsoft founded Sidewalk - it was a Bill creation since Day One. I never liked it - I thought it was a soulless version of the Yellow Pages.
But it was Bill's.
Nonetheless, in spirit I agree with you - Microsoft has done little of genuine interest in the online world, and the news is filled with their retreats. Sidewalk, for instance, is now mainly folded into former competitor CitySearch.
D
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mySQL was designed to be a low-overhead database that you could use when speed was more important than ultimate data integrity. Thus, no features like transactions, rollbacks, triggers, stored procedures and so on.
Oracle was designed to be a database to use when data integrity was more important than speed. If you were a bank, and you had to make sure the balance and transaction tables were correctly updated whenever a deposit or withdrawl was made, you would use Oracle.
Since Slashdot does not require this kind of multiple table update, upgrading to Oracle would not help with Slashdot's actual troubles. Obviously, using a speed-oriented database is the correct decision in this instance, as it is for many other web sites.
More hardware and a fatter pipe are more likely to fix the problems - and I think they're both on the way.
D
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Disclaimer: I don't use mySQL under Windows, but I don't think the API is much different.
:-(. But it should give you a flavour for it anyway].
The big advantage of mySQL is that it's a very low-overhead database. There is no GUI; the user interface is a program that lets you type SQL statements at a command prompt. If you're comfortable with that, I think mySQL's superior performance would win you over.
The mySQL API is easy to learn but it could be easier to use. At least in the raw form, you can't refer to fields by name. Here's how it works:
[Disclaimer: Code is likely to contain errors; I presently have an icky case of the flu and might miss something important. Proper code indentation is removed by the HTML interpreter
Access
db = opendatabase("foo")
rs = db.openrecordset("select id, first, last from clients")
while not rs.eof
debug.print rs!id, rs!first, rs!last
rs.movenext
wend
rs.close
mySQL
socket = mysql_connect(NULL, "localhost", "id", "password");
mysql_select_db(socket, "database_name");
if (mysql_query(socket, "select id, first, last from clients") 0) {
printf("Query didn't work: %s\n", query);
exit(0);
}
result = mysql_store_result(socket);
while (row = mysql_fetch_row(result)) {
printf("%s %s %s", row[0], row[1], row[2]);
}
mysql_free_result(result);
mysql_close(socket);
As you can see, the biggest difference is having to use numbers instead of character strings to reference field names. You could probably write a function that would search the list of returned fields for a string, but it would slow things down a bit.
It can be very confusing to remember which field goes with which number, especially when you have a query with lots of fields. I find this is by far the most common problem I have, and it's certainly not anything that happens under Access.
I think, however, that you can use interpreted languages like Perl or Python and fix that problem. Performance should still be better than with Access.
D
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First thought "Traitor, begone!" :-)
Second thought: "Microsoft takes care of its own" - Rick B supported the NT strategy in support of MS, it didn't work, Microsoft gave him a position.
Third thought: What kind of position is this? Would you want to be put in charge of MSN et al? It may be an important position from Bill's point of view, and it probably pays pretty well, but frankly I don't think anyone human could fulfill Bill's expectations for the unit.
Maybe Rick just got what he deserved.
D
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In the end, this is an unproductive line of thought.
Right now, do you think the general public would rather live in single-family houses or the massive multi-family housing blocks required by policies such as the New Urbanism?
Do we want to make it so that the preferred way of life for most people - the single family residence - becomes so expensive virtually nobody can afford one?
I think the answer is clear. And I think the increased housing costs that are part and parcel of the new urbanist design are not going to make it any friends.
I'm not saying suburbia is perfect. Of course it isn't! I am saying that any new policy should accomodate, in some way or another, the very human desire for personally owned single-family homes.
D
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I have a default 2, so it's all my fault :-(.
SGI has a lot of problems, but I think reports of their demise are exaggerated.
The former CEO bet his chairmanship on the NT workstations. I see him leaving as a positive move - they know NT hasn't worked, and they have to pick another strategy.
D
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We live in very different parts of the world - but you wouldn't understand the situation in Los Angeles if you hadn't seen the outcome of an urban riot. I was here during the 1992 riots, and after the smoke cleared, I went down to South Central. The damage was horrible and awesome. Trust me, if you saw it, you would never, but ever, even dream of living in South Central.
I have a friend who ran a prosperous real estate management business - he had a lot of properties in South Central before the 1965 riots. Well, he doesn't have them anymore, and that pushed him straight down the financial ladder, from a gorgeous house overlooking the city lights to a horrible boring condo in Chatsworth.
A certain amount of paranoia is, sad to say, justified. I can understand your point of view, because your town isn't my town, but in many places fear of the urban world is perfectly justified.
D
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Whenever I buy one, I update the FAQ. :-)
Still have the Indigo2 I bought, still happy as a clam with it.
D
[ http://www.amazing.com/internet/old-sgi-faq.html ]
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Did you realize that there have been more stories about SGI on Slashdot over the last few months than there have been on Sun?
For all the company has gone through, there is an incredibly loyal base of people who want to buy their Next Cool Thing (and I number myself among them).
All they need to do is product a good workstation that runs some kind of Unix (Irix or Linux, their pick [*]), sell it at a reasonable price (say about the same price point as the VWS), and the customers will come running back.
If they can just get their management problems under control, I see a bright future. It's kinda like Apple - they have too many customers who love their products for them to fail. Their mistake in embracing NT was to disappoint those customers.
D
[*] Irix might be preferable; if Linux, include ports of their Alias|Wavefront packages so we have something to run on the shiny new machine.
----
Bear in mind that the existing MIPS-based businesses were doing better than expected, and you'd probably say there are a lot of folks over there saying "I told you so".
A strategy based on Linux support for their hardware plus porting their Alias | Wavefront software to Linux strikes me as a far better bet than depending on the dubious alliance offered by Microsoft. If their advantage in workstations dries up, Alias is still a viable business, and I think there would always be a market for hardware/software bundles using a specifically optimized Alias.
I think what the world really wants from SGI are not semi-generic NT systems, but real workstations at a more reasonable price point. That's still the lifeblood of the company, as far as I can see.
D
----
To some extent, money is always an object. But a couple of weekends ago, I visited the cheapest house in LA - which costs all of $ 21,000, in a city where the average home is close to $ 200,000. Clearly, if money was everything, I should have been over to the realtor, checkbook in hand, to pick up that great bargain, right?
Well, no.
You're not going to convince me that people didn't stay in the cities because they could get houses loads cheaper in the suburbs. If that was all it was, homes in the cities would shrink in value until they were competitive. I've found a remarkable equivalent to this in my explorations of Los Angeles - as prices in the Hollywood Hills skyrocketed, prices in the nearby but not as nice neighborhoods did likewise, to the extent that an equivalent house in both areas costs about the same now!
No, prices adjust themselves quite nicely. The historical problem with the city is fear - and if you think that's entirely unjustified, talk to some of the property owners who lost millions in the 1965 and 1992 riots in South Central.
If you want to make the cities popular again, eliminate the fear. This process, too, is going on quite successfully in Los Angeles - in Silver Lake, the arty folks started coming in, and the yuppies followed. So now Silver Lake is pleasant and affluent, while it was all but a slum 5-10 years ago. Venice, near the ocean but with a fearsome reputation for crime problems, went through the exact same process in the early 90s. Crime is down, professionals are in, the area is safe again.
People aren't as scared of the city as they used to be. That's why cities are undergoing a revival now. But that doesn't mean there weren't good reasons to leave at the time suburban expansion started.
D
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Since there are so many forces involved, I don't think I'd accuse my parents of racism because they bought a snazzy suburban house. There were better public schools, a massive front and back yard, and oodles of space. Those are all major advantages having nothing to do with racism.
At any rate, I think the real reason to move to the suburbs was to get away from the perceived dangers of the inner city. Imagine if there were no blacks, but there were white gangs who were running around making life hazardous. Would people not move out under those circumstances as well?
Now, I will admit there was some racism in that suburbs tried to prevent blacks from moving in. This was due to fear. If there had been white gang members terrorizing the cities, I am convinced that the same thing would have happened. Suburbanites would have tried to pass laws preventing gang members from moving in.
I would call that "justified fear" as much as racism.
D
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This is exactly what Christopher Alexander ("A Pattern Language", "A Timeless Way of Building", etc) says in his own books. I think the new urbanists took some of their ideas from him, but didn't follow through with the ultimate logic of his books.
What he says is that, if the members of a community collectively agree on certain "patterns", the community can then be built flexibly and spontaneously using them. The difference between this and zoning laws is that the patterns are extremely flexible. No two buildings constructed through the patterns are alike, because the patterns and the way they interact change depending on the building's use and the site on which it exists.
His scheme would absolutely prohibit any kind of development where buildings were designed as interchangeable units.
I think he's right in most of what he says, but I also believe his ideas to be totally incompatible with the way we build now.
D
----
but you can't force someone to use it.
People still picked suburbia out of their own free will.
I don't know anything about the redlining, though. What was the banks' reason for it?
D
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First, I would certainly agree that current zoning laws should be changed - they are way too rigid.
I don't see a great suburban conspiracy here. I don't see government, zoning authorities and so on trying to rope people in and imprison them in suburban homes. I see several factors that made suburbia popular:
- Virtually everyone would like to own their own home.
- Most people would like a little outdoor space to call their own.
- City life was crowded, nasty, brutish and short. Because people had to be crammed tightly together, disease spread more easily than it did now.
- With people of different social classes living close at hand, crime became a significant problem.
These factors were all mentioned in a book that vigourously advocated the New Urbanist vision. Zoning laws came about because the residents of these places wanted to protect them from becoming like the city.
Now, I understand your dislike for suburbs - as you point out, they are virtual jails for people without cars. But I think that the suburbs cannot be successfully reformed until the reasons for their success are understood. I'd like to see planners take a more balanced view, considering what's good about suburbia as well as reacting to what they find distasteful.
What the high prices in New Urbanist communities indicate are that many of the elites of our country like them. Certainly in the case of Celebration, the Mouse's cachet helped as well. This does not mean the ideas would work on a citywide scale, where people with $ 10,000 incomes have to be accomodated as well as those with $100,000 incomes. People with the high incomes feel authentic fear of those with low incomes. If you visit a low-income slum (as I have), you'll see that there are reasons for this prejudice.
Incidentally, my own personal taste is for the Hollywood Hills or Malibu, neither of which are traditional suburbs. They are also as expensive to live in as Celebration. If not more so.
D
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I don't know what's going on here, but for some reason I can't put links in my comments any more, even when I make them "HTML Formatted". Could some kind soul let me know how to do it?
h tml
Anyway, here's Randal O'Toole's article I wanted to reference:
http://www.reason.com/9901/fe.ro.densethinkers.
You can visit Claritas, home of "You are where you live" at:
http://www.claritas.com/
or look up your zip code at
http://yawyl.claritas.com/
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At first, the idea seems cool. But remember this: For some reason, people have chosen overwhelmingly to live in suburbs, not in cities. Why? I don't know the full story, but I can give you a few useful guesses.
First, people want to feel they have some land to call their own.
Second, people want to feel safe, and that means living with people similar to themselves. For an idea of the strength of this desire, I refer you to Claritas, the "You are where you live" market research folks.
Third, people like their cars and don't want to take public transportation because of its tremendous inflexibility.
The first move in producing the New Urbanism is to block off sprawl by making development illegal outside of a certain ring. Then, they change zoning to allow for more development within the ring. The result is more apartments and fewer single family homes; exactly what people hate. The secondary result is that land becomes much more expensive inside the ring. As the population increases, more and more people find themselves priced out of single family homes, and even apartments become dear. The final result is far more traffic, and therefore much more traffic congestion - exactly what the New Urbanism claims to want to avoid. Actually, to them, this is an excellent result because it forces you to shop at local stores instead of driving to the supermarket, and to use public transport instead of driving your car. An interesting reference for this is Randal O'Toole's article in Reason magazine.
If that's what you want, this is fine. But I don't think it's what the bulk of the public wants. At present, I believe the public doesn't fully understand the implications of the New Urbanism, and it certainly has been well promoted.
Of course Celebration and Seaside are both "from the ground up" developments, and should be able to overcome the problems associated with taking a whole city and switching it into a new mode. Before thinking they are realistic prototype communities, take a look at home prices there. Ouch. Both communities have average home prices in excess of $ 400,000. This is a lot for South Florida; I was there a couple of years ago, and you could get a nice waterfront home (on the intercoastal, not the ocean front) for $ 279,000, and a typical boring suburban home sold for $ 150k. I'm sure these communities will make plenty of money for the developers, but I'm not convinced that they are sound investments, nor that they are any kind of prototype that will help us solve our nagging housing affordability problem. In fact, we have seen that the New Urbanism is going to make housing more expensive overall; there's no way to avoid that and still capture the supposed benefits.
This is not to say that our current world is perfect, or that we shouldn't continue to try and improve it. But this kind of top-down vision strikes me as dangerous. The works of Christopher Alexander are an interesting ancestor of the New Urbanism which adds the inherent desire for flexibility and freedom to the mix. I think his own top-down ideas are just about as impossible as the New Urbanism, but I really like his bottom-up, incrementalist thinking. By all means check out 'A Pattern Language' and 'The Timeless Way of Building'.
D
PS Discouragingly enough, Disney has used lousy contractors before, and with similarly dismal results. They had a joint venture with a contractor to develop and sell some land. Customers, relying on the solid gold character of the Disney name, flocked to the venture. The contractor couldn't build homes fast enough, and wound up cutting corners. So when Hurricane Andrew came, the homes self-destructed. Oops. (This information is from Carl Hiiassen's book 'Team Rodent').
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When you type a ' or a " into Microsoft Word, the "Smart Quotes" feature kicks in that converts them into supposedly better looking characters. The idea is to get an effect like this ``The Associated Press used to use two single quotes, like this'' instead of the uglier "This is the pathetic old way".
As long as you view the file on a Windows(tm) system, all looks fine. But if you happen to be using Unix(tm) or Linux(tm), it doesn't understand the funny character code and renders it as "?".
I must agree that Jon really should fix this one. Speaking of which, anyone know what happened to his attempts to embrace Linux?
D
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Geeks are a lot like a separate species - we have different habitats than the average, we do different things to survive, and so on. So when there is no balance of sexes within the geek world, there is no joy in geekdom. We could, of course, mate outside of our species by trying to attract, say, girls in the more female friendly arts. But that's outside of our native habitat, and it's hard to not feel like a fish out of water when visiting the clubs and what-not where people normally congregate to meet members of the appropriate sex.
Probably the best way to improve this alarming situation is to recruit more females into our ranks. I would argue that this is not purely a gender equity situation; consider it an attempt to ensure the survival of the species by allowing us to reproduce with those of our own kind. Otherwise, geek traits are bound to die out, and it will be our own fault.
D
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This is way offtopic, but since it's already been moderated down, I see no reason not to respond.
You're referring to Costa Mesa in Southern California's Orange County, right?
Unfortunately, I fear that without illegal aliens, there would be nobody to empty your trash, wait on you in fast food restaurants or fix your car. (Most car repair shops I've seen are run by a english-speaking front man who hires spanish speakers to do the actual work).
Illegal aliens may not speak my language, but they're incredibly hard workers and deserve a chance at success. I support them in their courageous efforts to make a life in a new, bewildering country.
D
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I think this system would be quite a bit cheaper than you think. Something like this (prices from memory)
Cheapest blue and white G3: $ 1,600
Free upgrade to 128mb RAM
Radius EditDV without hardware 400
17" Monitor 500
Total 2,500
Canon XL1 MiniDV Camcorder 4,000
Total $ 6,500
If you need to save a few bucks, get a GL1 or TRV900 instead of the XL1 - you should be able to find one for about $2,000-$2,500, thus reducing the price to around $4,500-5,000.
Not bad, especially since I paid about $ 9,000 for my equivalent setup (with the XL1).
One thing you do need that's not on that list is a small TV or video monitor - you'll want it to play back the video while you're editing. Video playback on the computer is hopeless; video playback through the firewire using your camera is great. That adds between $200 and $500 to the price.
If you haven't seen it already, my DV FAQ is at http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html .
D
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So what happened to the Buz?
I'd heard it was a pretty neat low-end solution.
Was it discontinued due to Iomega's other problems?
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