We ARE joking about ADD here. Perhaps someone with a weird sense of humor posted something from the wrong forum due to a deficit in their attention span. Maybe a moderator even got the joke and is screwing with you guys?
It is my choice to make those areas private. If I don't want you or anyone else seeing those parts that is the end of the discussion as far as I am concerned. This constitutes a violation of your basic human rights. I choose to not let you see this. PERIOD. Who cares what societal norms are. Even if nudity is more or less accepted if I choose to not be nude that is my choice. Its a pretty simple case to me. You could even argue that this violates your fourth amendment rights (unreasonable searches and seizures).
I'm not a devout Christian at all and I can see through your comment at the end. God is considered the creator/ultimate father. Its not so embarassing to have an omnipotent type guy that created you see you naked as it is Joe Q Public down the street.
The needs of the many vs. the needs of the few. Sure any death is tragic. Any one death is VERY tragic due to these kind of circumstances where the killer wants to see your entire way of life ended. Lets be realistic here. They were five guys with box cutters. At some point if they keep killing people on the airplane there WILL be fighting back. It is the threat of death and maybe doing it once that shocks people into not fighting back. "Well I don't want that to be ME.". If they just kept killing people with their box cutters the inevitable would have become much more obvious to those on the flight with the hi-jackers.
That said, you would be willing to let 300 people possibly live so someone could repeat 9-11? THe point is if the door can't be opened in the first place it greatly deters them from trying, and if they do the worst case scenario is the people in the cabin dying. MUCH better than hundreds upon hundreds and a disruption of our entire economy.
We may not understand or comprehend the grisly realities you describe. Fortunately we don't have to. Its not something that is required to balance the choice of having a tamper proof/no entry from the outside cockpit door. I just don't see your point. The girl may be right outside the door, but there are thousands of those ready to be made if you open that cockpit door and you didn't have to. In this case we would sacrifice 300 to save 400. (All human lives being equal here). If some Islamic terrorists get control of another plane... EVER: take it out of the sky before firuging out what they intend to do.
I have a lot of Java programming experience and I have no problem getting Java programs running on pretty much any environment there is a sane JRE. I also have no trouble getting this or that program compiled from source. Its really not that hard. You need a JRE, usually higher than some version as specified by the program. Then you need to have an environment variable or two set up (some time) and thats about it. Most Java programs come WITH most of their library dependencies. These dependencies are VERY easy to separate from other Java programs eliminating library versioning issues as well.
It can be a little daunting at first. If you spent half the time you spent learning to compile and manage programs from source you would think Java was pretty easy to set up as well.
One of the greatest faults anyone can possess is an inflated view of ones self. It is REALLY common. If you read about many people who have performed amazing works you will find they don't think to much of it. They are just doing their best. There are some people who are smart and they both know and act like it.
I think the best strength/flaw in human existence is TRULY knowing where you stand as a strength and thinking more highly of yourself than you actually are as a flaw. Its quite insidious because in America you MUST make yourself truly valuable and sell yourself as valuable after developing marketable skills. So you get used to promoting yourself. Unfortunately most people don't understand where to stop with the self promotion and they develop a much higher view of themselves than they should. It is really hard to keep yourself grounded, but if you pay attention life regularly serves up humility:)
Jeremy
Re:Using a new language is usually not an option
on
Perl Medic
·
· Score: 1
Honestly... there are so few problems that absolutely have to be solved in Lisp that I think you are just trying to let your inner geek come out. You don't need a particular software language to ferret out an "algorithmic aha!". You just need to anaylze the problem.
You talk about some sort of linear searching and really slow performance. It could even be O(n^2) performance. I am willing to guess a little algorithm analysis and a little bit of creativity will yield data structures that can make the software run orders of a magnitude or two quicker.
I love Lisp as much as the next geek, but really.. what you are talking about is just good ole algorithm and data structure design. First get a clear mental picture of the data and the data structures you will represent the data with to accomplish whatever data processing you need. Sounds like you could trade off some memory for processing speed and not be to bad off. Chances are good you don't need to compare each record to the million others;)
I say your not nuts. You just need to do sound analysis of the program. Just top down designing it in Lisp won't solve the problem any quicker than sitting there with a pencil and paper and puzzling it out. And its highly possible you could end up coding just 30-60 lines of code to take out the nastiest of the linear searching inside of a loop and completely solve the problem if. (Versus rewriting it from scratch at hundreds and hundreds of line of cost). I am making a lot of assumptions about your problem, but it doesn't sound like any sort of really difficult problem so I am asking about the more basic ideas here versus ask for more information.
But hey.. who am I to stop someone from coding in Lisp?
The particular TT stang I am thinking about is geared with a standard ford AOD (its not a stock transmission by any measure but the gearing ratios are not changed). Its the same combination of gearing that in my car yielded about 25mpg. minus about 300hp.
Its the torque! You can rev a mustang so much lower because of the power output at the lower RPMS;-). So while most cars are choking in OD at the bottom 40% of their RPM range 5.0s just trundle along not even lugging the engine.
Good tip with the acetone. I have heard of that before, never tried it.
I know people love to slag american made cars but I would truly love to see many other cars stand up to the abuse my 5.0 sees on a daily basis. I think I took the drive it like you stole it mantra a little to close to heart;-)
Thats interesting. I have a 5.0 as well (1990 LX, Hatch). Had an AOD with mostly stock everything else. Would easily pull 25mph at 80. 80 put it right at 2K rpms.
Then I converted to 3.73 gearing in the rear end. My fuel economy dropped down to about 22 mpg. On the Interstate I was at 2500 RPM@65. I have since converted it to a manual with some mods. I hold a steady 65mph@2K RPMS w/20mpg. If I rev it more than that it just sucks down fuel like no tomorrow.
Part of the reason for this is that 5.0 V8s in mustangs make peak torque at 3K rpms, and its a LOT of torque (300ft lbs, a lot for a car that makes about 100hp less than the torque ft lbs!). So at 2K rpms you are still have plenty of torque. so you aren't lugging the engine. The trouble with the 5.0s is that (in stock configuration) when they are hitting peak torque they are only 1000 RPMS from peak HP so they are really chewing through the fuel. You can actually get even better gas mileage with a 6 speed and a slightly more conservative gearing (I have seen 28-30mpg on relatively stock cars).
And then.... on the other end I have seen twin turboed 5.0s (Stock bottom end) that easily pull low 11s and high 10s making 25mph on the interstate and like 20mph in the city. Expertly tuned, but its not every day you see a 500HP car getting mileage like that!
This rambling, tangental post brought to you by someone who should be doing something more productive.
My co-worker has a think geek shirt with that saying on it. It is quite fun when you are out at lunch and someone exclaims, "Only ten people, why aren't they listed on the shirt?".
Tragic really. I have seen it as well. I always held CS people to a higher standard for coding.. what with the hours of courses you spend just learning how to design and implement basic things like data structures. How do people make it out of college without being able to code these things? It always amazes me.
This is a concept I am going to try and explain in simple and eloquent terms that even the most humorless slashdotter can understand. I know, being a crowd of logically minded folk the responses tend to be well thought out and analyzed from every angle to ensure that nothing but the highest quality ideas and posts make it to this site. With that in mind, I do believe the original poster was attempting this odd thing known as 'humor' This is an act where one makes a statement that is very outlandish and silly. It is typically an attempt to make others 'laugh' or 'smile'.
Unfortunately it is *NOT* the same. The usage and principle of it may be the same but the way its done IS different. Its not just a simple rename. RH treats it completely different on the business side. Commercial vendors won't support FC. So its treated differently by RH, its treated differently by other commercial vendors...
Its not about needing an enterprise system. If you want to use RedHat's more stable product offerings then you have to pay. While Fedora Core is a nice operating system it is referred to as a "Test Bed" by RedHat. "Test Bed" operating system and "Production Environment" don't go toghether in my mind. With the end of RH 9 there isn't a freely available OS from RH anymore. You have to pay. So if you are familiar with and or like RedHat you have to compile from source if you don't want to pay. This is especially interesting when you have software that only runs on one of the commercial operating systems and you have been using RH for years as it was one of the supported OSes. $345 / year * 10 boxes. That is not an insignificant cost. Across 5 years that is ~$20,000.
Well, it depends on what you talka bout when you refer to complexity. Machine Language is the most simple programming can get. You only have to know 1 and 0;-)
Assembly attaches english-like names to opcodes (and does a host of other nice things when compared to machine language) and moves you one step away from the machine. Languages that are one step above assembler, such as C, as a step above that. Each language is more complicated than the next. Each level of complexity in the language allows us to express *problems* less complicated.
Assuming an English language speaker a compiler that could process a non ambigious sentence as one programming statement would be the ideal form of expression for communicating to other english speakers. Unfortunately the complexity of implementing such a language that truly worked well would be quite difficult and would border on requiring artificial intelligence to understand the semantics of what you are saying. The only way to make it work for a computer would be to enforce rules on your english and thus creating a syntax. And, just like a book, the more complicated the ideas you express the more you must organize and the more difficult programming in natural language becomes without adding *more* rules. The whole point is that humans can interpret an ambigious statement, relate it to an incredibly subtle set of contextual hints and infer the proper meaning. Computers can't do that yet. Contextual meaning is some of what makes natural language so powerful.
In my mind you end up with something that rather closely resembles a programming language that has vestiges of English in there. Maybe you would end up with something like:
Technically if you have a staging environment to test on your development environment can stand to be a little different as long as sufficient QA is performed on your staging systems where QA should be testing anyhow. I see nothing wrong with developing a clean version and then running a post-coding process and then testing that on your development system. Who is to say that he didn't test it throughly in the processed/compressed format?
I manage a small bevy of at least a dozen Linux servers to include Linux servers that are firewalls and routers. To be sure the availability of Linux firewalls and routers eliminated the need for commercial products when Linux is there.
Owning a copy of Oracle means nothing in context of our discussion. Im talking features and capabilities here. MySQL is popular, but far weaker than Postgres in ANSI compatability and other major RDBMS players. Thats my point. No one will refute it to any large extent. Most people don't NEED oracle, but when you do there isn't anything comparable from the OSS communities exclusively.
Embedded apps are always nice. A place where operating system branding and name means little to nothing and what it can do means everything. I don't follow the embedded markets, but I bet the majority of DVD players don't use Linux.
I manage a couple of CISCO routers so I think its a little unfair to say I don't realize they are computers. They are von Neumann architecture machines that have the same basic components that pretty much every general computing device out there has. They are specalized and designed to do ONE thing, and they tend to do it very well. Linux can't compete feature for feature with IOS. It can do MOST of it well enough and scaleable enough to meet many needs. When linux is routing a significant percentage of Internet traffic through core backbones of the Internet I will be impressed. Until then the OSS alternatives are just not comparable to high end enterprise level solutions. Its great that linux is used on more and more routers, but I don't believe that it out does IOS.
I am a huge fan of Linux and OSS software. I can come up with big name references where it is used all day long just like you can. That just means it fit some particular needs well enough. What you can't do is show me Linux and OSS software taking over a majority of these niche markets where well established high end operating systems and software products are quite entrenched. Nibbling yes. Taking over and outdoing, not quite yet. In time it will happen.
Seriously, your attitude is what can make software projects fail. Software projects that already think they have nothing left to improve or that they are already outdoing the competition can fail to continually innovate. I have seen it happen many times in my relatively short decade in IT. Introspect on your views of Linux and think bigger picture. Its great Linux is making inroads and taking over smaller markets, thats what leads to the high end. Don't lose sight of what it takes to GET to the high end by assuming you already have them beat. To paraphrase Paul Grahm, the OSS community may be able to outcode oracle with one frotnal lobe tied behind their collective backs, but they can't outsell their sales people. Think about that.
Where exactly does mySQL excel compared to Oracle. Once you take away ease of use, a large point I will grant you, you are left to compare features. Oracle wins hands down. MySQL only recently qualifies, by default, as a RDBMS. And some would still disagree that it is a true RDBMS (pesky ACID compliance and all that).
Linux as a core might excel as a SERVER. Windows, still wins as far as ease of use on a desktop goes. Cisco vs Linux powered routers? Heh. Ok. There is a reason Cisco is on top. Dell... err.. they ship with No OS and Linux at your request on the server side where Linux makes most of its sales anyway. So, no, these are just competitors that see Linux nibbling away at sales because the Linux and open source alternatives to most of what is needed. But its not like they excel or are so much better than the commercial alternatives you compare them to. Id love to use Oracle over mySQL if cost weren't an issue. If cost is no issue the competitors products are quite compelling because once you work past the learning curve the products are quite good and in many cases more flexible and just plain better than the OSS alternatives. (Windows being a notable exception in a lot of cases).
Breeding ground of intelligent discussion for almost a decade;-)
My entire post is open to interpretation. Thats just one possible scenario. I thought it would be fun to point it out. You can argue both ways but I hate the presumption that we are outright denying these guys rights. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. How can we really judge since we don't even know who most of these terrorists or would be terrorists, or maybe terrorists, or "folks" as GWB puts it are? I am just saying, the Geneva convention doesn't instantly apply because we have them detained at Gitmo.
There will always be collateral damage. My heart goes out to the truly illegally detained. Its a messy world. How can we possibly make everyone happy?
And a pretty good argument can be made that the terrorists we have down there are outside of the Geneva convention as they aren't members of any regular army backed by a real country. They are terrorists.
Article 4. Section 2.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
Slashdot Mirror
We ARE joking about ADD here. Perhaps someone with a weird sense of humor posted something from the wrong forum due to a deficit in their attention span. Maybe a moderator even got the joke and is screwing with you guys?
Jeremy
Heh. Don't worry. The teeming hordes of Slashdot aren't likely to unleash themselves to the unsuspecting public any time soon.
Jeremy
It is my choice to make those areas private. If I don't want you or anyone else seeing those parts that is the end of the discussion as far as I am concerned. This constitutes a violation of your basic human rights. I choose to not let you see this. PERIOD. Who cares what societal norms are. Even if nudity is more or less accepted if I choose to not be nude that is my choice. Its a pretty simple case to me. You could even argue that this violates your fourth amendment rights (unreasonable searches and seizures).
Jeremy
I'm not a devout Christian at all and I can see through your comment at the end. God is considered the creator/ultimate father. Its not so embarassing to have an omnipotent type guy that created you see you naked as it is Joe Q Public down the street.
The needs of the many vs. the needs of the few. Sure any death is tragic. Any one death is VERY tragic due to these kind of circumstances where the killer wants to see your entire way of life ended. Lets be realistic here. They were five guys with box cutters. At some point if they keep killing people on the airplane there WILL be fighting back. It is the threat of death and maybe doing it once that shocks people into not fighting back. "Well I don't want that to be ME.". If they just kept killing people with their box cutters the inevitable would have become much more obvious to those on the flight with the hi-jackers.
That said, you would be willing to let 300 people possibly live so someone could repeat 9-11? THe point is if the door can't be opened in the first place it greatly deters them from trying, and if they do the worst case scenario is the people in the cabin dying. MUCH better than hundreds upon hundreds and a disruption of our entire economy.
We may not understand or comprehend the grisly realities you describe. Fortunately we don't have to. Its not something that is required to balance the choice of having a tamper proof/no entry from the outside cockpit door. I just don't see your point. The girl may be right outside the door, but there are thousands of those ready to be made if you open that cockpit door and you didn't have to. In this case we would sacrifice 300 to save 400. (All human lives being equal here). If some Islamic terrorists get control of another plane... EVER: take it out of the sky before firuging out what they intend to do.
Jeremy
I have a lot of Java programming experience and I have no problem getting Java programs running on pretty much any environment there is a sane JRE. I also have no trouble getting this or that program compiled from source. Its really not that hard. You need a JRE, usually higher than some version as specified by the program. Then you need to have an environment variable or two set up (some time) and thats about it. Most Java programs come WITH most of their library dependencies. These dependencies are VERY easy to separate from other Java programs eliminating library versioning issues as well.
It can be a little daunting at first. If you spent half the time you spent learning to compile and manage programs from source you would think Java was pretty easy to set up as well.
Jeremy
I thought that too. Notice how quickly they slowed down as well?
Jeremy
One of the greatest faults anyone can possess is an inflated view of ones self. It is REALLY common. If you read about many people who have performed amazing works you will find they don't think to much of it. They are just doing their best. There are some people who are smart and they both know and act like it.
:)
I think the best strength/flaw in human existence is TRULY knowing where you stand as a strength and thinking more highly of yourself than you actually are as a flaw. Its quite insidious because in America you MUST make yourself truly valuable and sell yourself as valuable after developing marketable skills. So you get used to promoting yourself. Unfortunately most people don't understand where to stop with the self promotion and they develop a much higher view of themselves than they should. It is really hard to keep yourself grounded, but if you pay attention life regularly serves up humility
Jeremy
Honestly... there are so few problems that absolutely have to be solved in Lisp that I think you are just trying to let your inner geek come out. You don't need a particular software language to ferret out an "algorithmic aha!". You just need to anaylze the problem.
;)
You talk about some sort of linear searching and really slow performance. It could even be O(n^2) performance. I am willing to guess a little algorithm analysis and a little bit of creativity will yield data structures that can make the software run orders of a magnitude or two quicker.
I love Lisp as much as the next geek, but really.. what you are talking about is just good ole algorithm and data structure design. First get a clear mental picture of the data and the data structures you will represent the data with to accomplish whatever data processing you need. Sounds like you could trade off some memory for processing speed and not be to bad off. Chances are good you don't need to compare each record to the million others
I say your not nuts. You just need to do sound analysis of the program. Just top down designing it in Lisp won't solve the problem any quicker than sitting there with a pencil and paper and puzzling it out. And its highly possible you could end up coding just 30-60 lines of code to take out the nastiest of the linear searching inside of a loop and completely solve the problem if. (Versus rewriting it from scratch at hundreds and hundreds of line of cost). I am making a lot of assumptions about your problem, but it doesn't sound like any sort of really difficult problem so I am asking about the more basic ideas here versus ask for more information.
But hey.. who am I to stop someone from coding in Lisp?
Jeremy
The particular TT stang I am thinking about is geared with a standard ford AOD (its not a stock transmission by any measure but the gearing ratios are not changed). Its the same combination of gearing that in my car yielded about 25mpg. minus about 300hp.
Jeremy
Its the torque! You can rev a mustang so much lower because of the power output at the lower RPMS ;-). So while most cars are choking in OD at the bottom 40% of their RPM range 5.0s just trundle along not even lugging the engine.
;-)
Good tip with the acetone. I have heard of that before, never tried it.
I know people love to slag american made cars but I would truly love to see many other cars stand up to the abuse my 5.0 sees on a daily basis. I think I took the drive it like you stole it mantra a little to close to heart
Jeremy
Thats interesting. I have a 5.0 as well (1990 LX, Hatch). Had an AOD with mostly stock everything else. Would easily pull 25mph at 80. 80 put it right at 2K rpms.
Then I converted to 3.73 gearing in the rear end. My fuel economy dropped down to about 22 mpg. On the Interstate I was at 2500 RPM@65. I have since converted it to a manual with some mods. I hold a steady 65mph@2K RPMS w/20mpg. If I rev it more than that it just sucks down fuel like no tomorrow.
Part of the reason for this is that 5.0 V8s in mustangs make peak torque at 3K rpms, and its a LOT of torque (300ft lbs, a lot for a car that makes about 100hp less than the torque ft lbs!). So at 2K rpms you are still have plenty of torque. so you aren't lugging the engine. The trouble with the 5.0s is that (in stock configuration) when they are hitting peak torque they are only 1000 RPMS from peak HP so they are really chewing through the fuel. You can actually get even better gas mileage with a 6 speed and a slightly more conservative gearing (I have seen 28-30mpg on relatively stock cars).
And then.... on the other end I have seen twin turboed 5.0s (Stock bottom end) that easily pull low 11s and high 10s making 25mph on the interstate and like 20mph in the city. Expertly tuned, but its not every day you see a 500HP car getting mileage like that!
This rambling, tangental post brought to you by someone who should be doing something more productive.
J
lol yeah.
My co-worker has a think geek shirt with that saying on it. It is quite fun when you are out at lunch and someone exclaims, "Only ten people, why aren't they listed on the shirt?".
J
Tragic really. I have seen it as well. I always held CS people to a higher standard for coding.. what with the hours of courses you spend just learning how to design and implement basic things like data structures. How do people make it out of college without being able to code these things? It always amazes me.
Jeremy
So... what would someone with a computer science degree and an MBA represent in your universe?
A business person masquerading as a computer scientist?
A paradox?
The end of the world?
J
This is a concept I am going to try and explain in simple and eloquent terms that even the most humorless slashdotter can understand. I know, being a crowd of logically minded folk the responses tend to be well thought out and analyzed from every angle to ensure that nothing but the highest quality ideas and posts make it to this site. With that in mind, I do believe the original poster was attempting this odd thing known as 'humor' This is an act where one makes a statement that is very outlandish and silly. It is typically an attempt to make others 'laugh' or 'smile'.
Well then. I feel better now.
Jeremy
Unfortunately it is *NOT* the same. The usage and principle of it may be the same but the way its done IS different. Its not just a simple rename. RH treats it completely different on the business side. Commercial vendors won't support FC. So its treated differently by RH, its treated differently by other commercial vendors...
JEremy
Its not about needing an enterprise system. If you want to use RedHat's more stable product offerings then you have to pay. While Fedora Core is a nice operating system it is referred to as a "Test Bed" by RedHat. "Test Bed" operating system and "Production Environment" don't go toghether in my mind. With the end of RH 9 there isn't a freely available OS from RH anymore. You have to pay. So if you are familiar with and or like RedHat you have to compile from source if you don't want to pay. This is especially interesting when you have software that only runs on one of the commercial operating systems and you have been using RH for years as it was one of the supported OSes. $345 / year * 10 boxes. That is not an insignificant cost. Across 5 years that is ~$20,000.
Jeremy
Well, it depends on what you talka bout when you refer to complexity. Machine Language is the most simple programming can get. You only have to know 1 and 0 ;-)
Assembly attaches english-like names to opcodes (and does a host of other nice things when compared to machine language) and moves you one step away from the machine. Languages that are one step above assembler, such as C, as a step above that. Each language is more complicated than the next. Each level of complexity in the language allows us to express *problems* less complicated.
Assuming an English language speaker a compiler that could process a non ambigious sentence as one programming statement would be the ideal form of expression for communicating to other english speakers. Unfortunately the complexity of implementing such a language that truly worked well would be quite difficult and would border on requiring artificial intelligence to understand the semantics of what you are saying. The only way to make it work for a computer would be to enforce rules on your english and thus creating a syntax. And, just like a book, the more complicated the ideas you express the more you must organize and the more difficult programming in natural language becomes without adding *more* rules. The whole point is that humans can interpret an ambigious statement, relate it to an incredibly subtle set of contextual hints and infer the proper meaning. Computers can't do that yet. Contextual meaning is some of what makes natural language so powerful.
In my mind you end up with something that rather closely resembles a programming language that has vestiges of English in there. Maybe you would end up with something like:
while(someVariableIsTrue) {
doSomethingUseful();
}
Nah.. it seems to far fetched we could ever come up with something like that.
Jeremy
I guess it all depends on which prisoners we are talking about if they qualify as regulars?
And would the "insurgents" really respect our soldiers "rights" as layed out in the Geneva convention if they managed to capture our guys?
Jeremy
Technically if you have a staging environment to test on your development environment can stand to be a little different as long as sufficient QA is performed on your staging systems where QA should be testing anyhow. I see nothing wrong with developing a clean version and then running a post-coding process and then testing that on your development system. Who is to say that he didn't test it throughly in the processed/compressed format?
Jeremy
I manage a small bevy of at least a dozen Linux servers to include Linux servers that are firewalls and routers. To be sure the availability of Linux firewalls and routers eliminated the need for commercial products when Linux is there.
Owning a copy of Oracle means nothing in context of our discussion. Im talking features and capabilities here. MySQL is popular, but far weaker than Postgres in ANSI compatability and other major RDBMS players. Thats my point. No one will refute it to any large extent. Most people don't NEED oracle, but when you do there isn't anything comparable from the OSS communities exclusively.
Embedded apps are always nice. A place where operating system branding and name means little to nothing and what it can do means everything. I don't follow the embedded markets, but I bet the majority of DVD players don't use Linux.
I manage a couple of CISCO routers so I think its a little unfair to say I don't realize they are computers. They are von Neumann architecture machines that have the same basic components that pretty much every general computing device out there has. They are specalized and designed to do ONE thing, and they tend to do it very well. Linux can't compete feature for feature with IOS. It can do MOST of it well enough and scaleable enough to meet many needs. When linux is routing a significant percentage of Internet traffic through core backbones of the Internet I will be impressed. Until then the OSS alternatives are just not comparable to high end enterprise level solutions. Its great that linux is used on more and more routers, but I don't believe that it out does IOS.
I am a huge fan of Linux and OSS software. I can come up with big name references where it is used all day long just like you can. That just means it fit some particular needs well enough. What you can't do is show me Linux and OSS software taking over a majority of these niche markets where well established high end operating systems and software products are quite entrenched. Nibbling yes. Taking over and outdoing, not quite yet. In time it will happen.
Seriously, your attitude is what can make software projects fail. Software projects that already think they have nothing left to improve or that they are already outdoing the competition can fail to continually innovate. I have seen it happen many times in my relatively short decade in IT. Introspect on your views of Linux and think bigger picture. Its great Linux is making inroads and taking over smaller markets, thats what leads to the high end. Don't lose sight of what it takes to GET to the high end by assuming you already have them beat. To paraphrase Paul Grahm, the OSS community may be able to outcode oracle with one frotnal lobe tied behind their collective backs, but they can't outsell their sales people. Think about that.
Jeremy
Where exactly does mySQL excel compared to Oracle. Once you take away ease of use, a large point I will grant you, you are left to compare features. Oracle wins hands down. MySQL only recently qualifies, by default, as a RDBMS. And some would still disagree that it is a true RDBMS (pesky ACID compliance and all that).
Linux as a core might excel as a SERVER. Windows, still wins as far as ease of use on a desktop goes. Cisco vs Linux powered routers? Heh. Ok. There is a reason Cisco is on top. Dell... err.. they ship with No OS and Linux at your request on the server side where Linux makes most of its sales anyway. So, no, these are just competitors that see Linux nibbling away at sales because the Linux and open source alternatives to most of what is needed. But its not like they excel or are so much better than the commercial alternatives you compare them to. Id love to use Oracle over mySQL if cost weren't an issue. If cost is no issue the competitors products are quite compelling because once you work past the learning curve the products are quite good and in many cases more flexible and just plain better than the OSS alternatives. (Windows being a notable exception in a lot of cases).
Jeremy
Ahh /.
;-)
Breeding ground of intelligent discussion for almost a decade
My entire post is open to interpretation. Thats just one possible scenario. I thought it would be fun to point it out. You can argue both ways but I hate the presumption that we are outright denying these guys rights. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. How can we really judge since we don't even know who most of these terrorists or would be terrorists, or maybe terrorists, or "folks" as GWB puts it are? I am just saying, the Geneva convention doesn't instantly apply because we have them detained at Gitmo.
There will always be collateral damage. My heart goes out to the truly illegally detained. Its a messy world. How can we possibly make everyone happy?
Jeremy
Article 4. Section 2.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
Jeremy