Well, I guess if you want to get that picky about the semantics, sure. But I was focusing mainly on the fact that Google does not appear to be employing anti-competitive practices, and that I don't see how the Google/Yahoo deal would either, and I don't see what the DOJ can do about it. My other point was that the DOJ's reaction is not surprising, considering how big and influential Google is (and influential does not mean anti-competitive).
One person's waste is another person's resource. In the case of data centers, heat is a disastrous problem that must be dealt with. There's not much to do with it besides push it out of the room. Could a system be built to push that heat back to a boiler and heat water so we don't need a gas or electric hot water heater? I guess so. But that begs the question: who will pay for the research to do so? Companies run on profits, not "eco-friendliness". No company will ever say "Hey, let's reuse some heat from the servers to boil water in the break rooms. That will be profitable!" Sorry. Reality sucks. But it's here to stay.
I agree. This will be just another way for executives to tell IT to do "more with less", or sometimes "everything with nothing". It's bad enough that people want IT to stuff 100gb of data into 10gb of storage, but now you have to do it eco-friendly, too. The problem is that getting more eco-friendly means changing out some fundamental infrastructure, such as the air conditioning to keep the server room cool. How do you get rid of that? Buy a big block of dry ice and run a fan over it? Or do you get an air conditioner that runs on... what, wind power? Hydrogen? Fine, but that will cost some investment in research, which companies will NOT do.
Please do not confuse market share with monopoly. Microsoft has the majority of the market share of the desktop world. But that is not what makes them a monopoly. Where they can be deemed a monopoly is using their position of dominance to suffocate other competitors, such as forcing computer manufacturers to install only Microsoft Office products under the threat that if they don't comply that Microsoft will yank their Windows licenses. And of course any desktop manufacturer that can't include Windows can't sell desktops.
The Google/Yahoo thing MAY be different. So far, Google has not shown that it is using its dominance from forcing an unfair anti-competitive edge against its rivals. That is a huge difference.
Re:Creature Creator: Issue with Video Card
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
That's different. That is a versioning, where the game was designed for a specific version of the console. However, the newer console should be backward compatible to play the older games (but thats another story).
We are talking about a modular system, where one can build their own components. If there was a problem with my video card, give me a warning and allow me choice to continue or not. Don't just make the decision for me.
This was inevitable. Eventually, Google was going to take some steps forward in some area, and somebody was going to panic that it was a "monopolistic" move. Any sufficiently huge company has to deal with that (even Disney had that problem years ago). It will be interesting how it plays out, however. Antitrust suits usually hinge on making sure that the customer is not ripped off. In this case, the customer is not the end-user who surfs the web. The customer is actually the advertiser, since that is where these guys make their money. And the advertisers can still advertise on both Google and Yahoo equally and increase visitor coverage, so it will be hard to prove that the customer has suffered damages.
Re:Creature Creator: Issue with Video Card
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
Well, then it should have told me that. Instead, the software just says "No".
Look, I'll be the first one to admit that you can't expect all software to run on all hardware. But its the way it was handled that irks me. Just crappy bedside manner!
Re:Creature Creator: Issue with Video Card
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
It's on my kid's computer. It is an nVidia 5500.
Re:Creature Creator: Issue with Video Card
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
Give me a warning or a heads up, fine. Flat out to refuse to install? I don't think so. They should give the user the CHOICE! It is my computer! And since they don't, they can stick it!
Creature Creator: Issue with Video Card
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 0
I'm not even going to bother buying Spore. I downloaded their trial of Creature Creator and tried to install it. It instantly told me the model of my video card was not sufficient, and it simply did not allow me to install. It said that if I wanted to install it on that machine, I had to upgrade my video card. WHAT NERVE! If I want to install it on a machine with a lower model video card, who's business is it besides my own? So what if my game runs slower! Does EA have some sort of arrangement with ATI and NVIDIA to force people to upgrade video cards? I'm not about to pay for some company to stick their nose in my computer where it doesn't belong. They can keep their damn game, no matter how good it is.
I give it a week, and somebody will crack this silly DRM. Probably with some "virtual USB drive", or something else that simply strips the DRM-ness right out of the file. They can't stop it. They can't see it. They don't know what it is, or where it comes from, but it hits them every day. It's called freedom.
The Constitution was put in place, first and foremost, to protect the people from a tyrannical government. And now that is what we have.
I'm starting to feel that if we don't force a change in direction, then the US will be the next Nazi Germany. After WWII, we asked "how could we have let that happen?" Now we know...
It's back again folks. It's time we stand up and make a change.
I feel a lawsuit coming on! I (unfortunately) use Comcast. And when I signed up, I signed up for UNLIMITED ACCESS!! I have to live up to the terms of agreement, and so does Comcast! They go back on it, then I will be cancelling my service, demanding a refund, and filing a class action lawsuit.
It's time to take back the internet.
The optimizer in an Oracle database (and others, I'm sure) actually determines "access path" based on resource cost. It automatically generates many different access paths, and based on known statistics about the underlying objects in question, determines the cost in resources to execute that path (CPU, memory, disk I/O, etc, etc), then chooses the one with the least cost. It's not always correct 100% of the time, but you can influence the optimizer through configuration parameters at the database level as well as "hints" in the SQL statement itself as specially coded comments. Oracle supports parallel inserts/updates/deletes across multiple partitions, as well as parallel reads.
Whether you use partitioning in a relational database vs data sharding across multiple machines will depend on what you intend to do with that data. If you only plan to simply use a given value to do a lookup (is the word "car" in that page?), then sharding may be the way to go, since it easily creates a wide and flat surface to lay out your data for quick lookup. If you plan on joining that data or doing any kind of complex analysis, then a relational database is the way to go. So it all still comes back to business requirements for the system.
Understood. My point was that while I somewhat agree that requirements outpaced capability, it is still ultimately up to the government to get it right. Even now that they are looking at version 2 of this thing, it STILL looks like its going to be a bigger blunder than version 1, and this time they had time to think about it. All I'm saying is that a company only has dollars to lose, but in this case the risk is on American's liberties. Anybody on that list is a "terrorist". Period. No ifs, ands, or buts, and almost no chance of getting your name off the list. So if getting on that list will ruin your life, I bet you would want to make damn sure that the government is capable of responsibly managing that list. So far it has done a terrible job. And version 2 doesn't look to be much better!
And you keep pointing back to one small item in my post and trying to refute my comments based on that (although it comes down to semantics. I said "professionals", not somebody who knows how to spell "Oracle".) But all that aside, it's hard to argue that the government still screwed up. I don't care who designed it, whether they drew it on a napkin or brought in an outside consultant. Without proper oversight, it doesn't work. And the one to blame is the one that owns it after its said and done. And you can't compare this to a corporate environment. If a company screws up a project, they lose money. If the government screws up, it messes with innocent people's liberties. Now go cover your own ass.
So you're saying we should forgive the government because they rushed the job? Or should we hold them accountable for botching up a system that now impacts innocent lives?
And I did read the other article that states most of the problems were related to bad contractor management and misused money that was allocated to the project. Defend all you want. This still falls on the government's shoulders!
This is a shot at Google Adwords! Marketing agencies put their customers' ads on Adwords, and use tracking pixels to capture ad performance. No tracking pixel means no ad, which means no revenue for Google!
Again, Microsoft using its technology position in one area to gain an unfair advantage in another area, and in the end only hurting its customers (yes, small business owners that advertise on Google are probably Microsoft users, too!)
Here's a possible solution, but you may not like it, because it will involve quite a bit of work for you. Whether or not you do this will depend on how much you really care, and whether or not you view this as an opportunity to make an impact (which it is).
I would write a point paper that discusses a comparison of doing nothing vs doing it the "right" way. Make sure you include information about best practices, increased efficiency, improved productivity, and most importantly, how it will save money. Executives really only think about one thing: money. You start throwing dollar signs around and people will pay attention.
Show them how much money (real money, based on the company's actual revenue and operating costs) is spent on backtracing due to bad software development management. Then show them how much they need to invest to do it "right", along with how much more money they can save, etc, etc.
Remember, everything becomes a "cost", whether its time spent by employees redoing work, faulty products returned due to bad software, along with lost opportunities because the software isn't good enough for your products to enter new markets.
It's a lot of work, but armed with carefully crafted and accurate information, with a sharp recommendation, could get you noticed, might actually get the company to make the change, and you could end up a hero. If they refuse to listen, you have at least learned a ton in the process, and you have something tangible you can show to a new prospective employer about much you care about making a contribution.
As usual, the government has taken taxpayers' dollars and wasted it. I'm sure somebody at the Justice Department decided that this database should be easy to build ("It's just a list!"), and rather than bring in some professionals to design it, they slapped it together on their own. They probably decided that the data is too sensitive to have an outside data architect design it.
Not only is the government messing with private citizen's rights, but they are doing it badly.
The biggest problem here is the Nigerian government. They are well aware that the 409 scams bring in millions of dollars a year into their economy, and is probably one of their biggest revenue streams for the country. Since they have little else to offer the world, they are not about to stop the money flow
Rent a space outside of your home! You can rent office space, meeting space at hotels, etc, etc. Everybody coming is requesting to bring a small "donation", that would cover the cost.
I think you are missing what I am saying. Vista is so bad, that they had to try some underhanded marketing tactic just to get somebody, ANYBODY, to say they liked it. And if you read into the Mojave test, all they did was show the screen to an unsuspecting "user". That person didn't even use it! All they did was watch somebody else use it! And the test itself was choreographed so that the user/spectator did not see any performance issues.
If this was politics, it would have no other name than: Propaganda.
Now you see why Microsoft tried that whole Mojave thing. They simply cannot get around the fact that Vista's is crap! They just simply won't admit it. Sooner or later they will have to swallow that pill, no matter how bad it tastes.
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Well, I guess if you want to get that picky about the semantics, sure. But I was focusing mainly on the fact that Google does not appear to be employing anti-competitive practices, and that I don't see how the Google/Yahoo deal would either, and I don't see what the DOJ can do about it. My other point was that the DOJ's reaction is not surprising, considering how big and influential Google is (and influential does not mean anti-competitive).
One person's waste is another person's resource. In the case of data centers, heat is a disastrous problem that must be dealt with. There's not much to do with it besides push it out of the room. Could a system be built to push that heat back to a boiler and heat water so we don't need a gas or electric hot water heater? I guess so. But that begs the question: who will pay for the research to do so? Companies run on profits, not "eco-friendliness". No company will ever say "Hey, let's reuse some heat from the servers to boil water in the break rooms. That will be profitable!" Sorry. Reality sucks. But it's here to stay.
I agree. This will be just another way for executives to tell IT to do "more with less", or sometimes "everything with nothing". It's bad enough that people want IT to stuff 100gb of data into 10gb of storage, but now you have to do it eco-friendly, too. The problem is that getting more eco-friendly means changing out some fundamental infrastructure, such as the air conditioning to keep the server room cool. How do you get rid of that? Buy a big block of dry ice and run a fan over it? Or do you get an air conditioner that runs on... what, wind power? Hydrogen? Fine, but that will cost some investment in research, which companies will NOT do.
Please do not confuse market share with monopoly. Microsoft has the majority of the market share of the desktop world. But that is not what makes them a monopoly. Where they can be deemed a monopoly is using their position of dominance to suffocate other competitors, such as forcing computer manufacturers to install only Microsoft Office products under the threat that if they don't comply that Microsoft will yank their Windows licenses. And of course any desktop manufacturer that can't include Windows can't sell desktops. The Google/Yahoo thing MAY be different. So far, Google has not shown that it is using its dominance from forcing an unfair anti-competitive edge against its rivals. That is a huge difference.
That's different. That is a versioning, where the game was designed for a specific version of the console. However, the newer console should be backward compatible to play the older games (but thats another story). We are talking about a modular system, where one can build their own components. If there was a problem with my video card, give me a warning and allow me choice to continue or not. Don't just make the decision for me.
This was inevitable. Eventually, Google was going to take some steps forward in some area, and somebody was going to panic that it was a "monopolistic" move. Any sufficiently huge company has to deal with that (even Disney had that problem years ago). It will be interesting how it plays out, however. Antitrust suits usually hinge on making sure that the customer is not ripped off. In this case, the customer is not the end-user who surfs the web. The customer is actually the advertiser, since that is where these guys make their money. And the advertisers can still advertise on both Google and Yahoo equally and increase visitor coverage, so it will be hard to prove that the customer has suffered damages.
Well, then it should have told me that. Instead, the software just says "No". Look, I'll be the first one to admit that you can't expect all software to run on all hardware. But its the way it was handled that irks me. Just crappy bedside manner!
It's on my kid's computer. It is an nVidia 5500.
Give me a warning or a heads up, fine. Flat out to refuse to install? I don't think so. They should give the user the CHOICE! It is my computer! And since they don't, they can stick it!
I'm not even going to bother buying Spore. I downloaded their trial of Creature Creator and tried to install it. It instantly told me the model of my video card was not sufficient, and it simply did not allow me to install. It said that if I wanted to install it on that machine, I had to upgrade my video card. WHAT NERVE! If I want to install it on a machine with a lower model video card, who's business is it besides my own? So what if my game runs slower! Does EA have some sort of arrangement with ATI and NVIDIA to force people to upgrade video cards? I'm not about to pay for some company to stick their nose in my computer where it doesn't belong. They can keep their damn game, no matter how good it is.
I give it a week, and somebody will crack this silly DRM. Probably with some "virtual USB drive", or something else that simply strips the DRM-ness right out of the file. They can't stop it. They can't see it. They don't know what it is, or where it comes from, but it hits them every day. It's called freedom.
The Constitution was put in place, first and foremost, to protect the people from a tyrannical government. And now that is what we have. I'm starting to feel that if we don't force a change in direction, then the US will be the next Nazi Germany. After WWII, we asked "how could we have let that happen?" Now we know... It's back again folks. It's time we stand up and make a change.
I feel a lawsuit coming on! I (unfortunately) use Comcast. And when I signed up, I signed up for UNLIMITED ACCESS!! I have to live up to the terms of agreement, and so does Comcast! They go back on it, then I will be cancelling my service, demanding a refund, and filing a class action lawsuit. It's time to take back the internet.
The optimizer in an Oracle database (and others, I'm sure) actually determines "access path" based on resource cost. It automatically generates many different access paths, and based on known statistics about the underlying objects in question, determines the cost in resources to execute that path (CPU, memory, disk I/O, etc, etc), then chooses the one with the least cost. It's not always correct 100% of the time, but you can influence the optimizer through configuration parameters at the database level as well as "hints" in the SQL statement itself as specially coded comments. Oracle supports parallel inserts/updates/deletes across multiple partitions, as well as parallel reads.
Whether you use partitioning in a relational database vs data sharding across multiple machines will depend on what you intend to do with that data. If you only plan to simply use a given value to do a lookup (is the word "car" in that page?), then sharding may be the way to go, since it easily creates a wide and flat surface to lay out your data for quick lookup. If you plan on joining that data or doing any kind of complex analysis, then a relational database is the way to go. So it all still comes back to business requirements for the system.
Yes, its called hash partitioning. Been around since version 7 or 8 about 10 years ago (current release is 11).
Understood. My point was that while I somewhat agree that requirements outpaced capability, it is still ultimately up to the government to get it right. Even now that they are looking at version 2 of this thing, it STILL looks like its going to be a bigger blunder than version 1, and this time they had time to think about it. All I'm saying is that a company only has dollars to lose, but in this case the risk is on American's liberties. Anybody on that list is a "terrorist". Period. No ifs, ands, or buts, and almost no chance of getting your name off the list. So if getting on that list will ruin your life, I bet you would want to make damn sure that the government is capable of responsibly managing that list. So far it has done a terrible job. And version 2 doesn't look to be much better!
And you keep pointing back to one small item in my post and trying to refute my comments based on that (although it comes down to semantics. I said "professionals", not somebody who knows how to spell "Oracle".) But all that aside, it's hard to argue that the government still screwed up. I don't care who designed it, whether they drew it on a napkin or brought in an outside consultant. Without proper oversight, it doesn't work. And the one to blame is the one that owns it after its said and done. And you can't compare this to a corporate environment. If a company screws up a project, they lose money. If the government screws up, it messes with innocent people's liberties. Now go cover your own ass.
So you're saying we should forgive the government because they rushed the job? Or should we hold them accountable for botching up a system that now impacts innocent lives? And I did read the other article that states most of the problems were related to bad contractor management and misused money that was allocated to the project. Defend all you want. This still falls on the government's shoulders!
This is a shot at Google Adwords! Marketing agencies put their customers' ads on Adwords, and use tracking pixels to capture ad performance. No tracking pixel means no ad, which means no revenue for Google! Again, Microsoft using its technology position in one area to gain an unfair advantage in another area, and in the end only hurting its customers (yes, small business owners that advertise on Google are probably Microsoft users, too!)
Here's a possible solution, but you may not like it, because it will involve quite a bit of work for you. Whether or not you do this will depend on how much you really care, and whether or not you view this as an opportunity to make an impact (which it is). I would write a point paper that discusses a comparison of doing nothing vs doing it the "right" way. Make sure you include information about best practices, increased efficiency, improved productivity, and most importantly, how it will save money. Executives really only think about one thing: money. You start throwing dollar signs around and people will pay attention. Show them how much money (real money, based on the company's actual revenue and operating costs) is spent on backtracing due to bad software development management. Then show them how much they need to invest to do it "right", along with how much more money they can save, etc, etc. Remember, everything becomes a "cost", whether its time spent by employees redoing work, faulty products returned due to bad software, along with lost opportunities because the software isn't good enough for your products to enter new markets. It's a lot of work, but armed with carefully crafted and accurate information, with a sharp recommendation, could get you noticed, might actually get the company to make the change, and you could end up a hero. If they refuse to listen, you have at least learned a ton in the process, and you have something tangible you can show to a new prospective employer about much you care about making a contribution.
As usual, the government has taken taxpayers' dollars and wasted it. I'm sure somebody at the Justice Department decided that this database should be easy to build ("It's just a list!"), and rather than bring in some professionals to design it, they slapped it together on their own. They probably decided that the data is too sensitive to have an outside data architect design it. Not only is the government messing with private citizen's rights, but they are doing it badly.
The biggest problem here is the Nigerian government. They are well aware that the 409 scams bring in millions of dollars a year into their economy, and is probably one of their biggest revenue streams for the country. Since they have little else to offer the world, they are not about to stop the money flow
Rent a space outside of your home! You can rent office space, meeting space at hotels, etc, etc. Everybody coming is requesting to bring a small "donation", that would cover the cost.
I think you are missing what I am saying. Vista is so bad, that they had to try some underhanded marketing tactic just to get somebody, ANYBODY, to say they liked it. And if you read into the Mojave test, all they did was show the screen to an unsuspecting "user". That person didn't even use it! All they did was watch somebody else use it! And the test itself was choreographed so that the user/spectator did not see any performance issues. If this was politics, it would have no other name than: Propaganda.
Now you see why Microsoft tried that whole Mojave thing. They simply cannot get around the fact that Vista's is crap! They just simply won't admit it. Sooner or later they will have to swallow that pill, no matter how bad it tastes.