If anything the (in your opinion) overcritical evaluation of Amazon overall should be extra reason to consider the stuff he actually praises.
Criticism of something from its fans, or praise from its critics is generally far more valuable than the opposite.
Personally I would've probably ignored praise of Amazons Service Oriented Architecture from someone who fawned over everything else Amazon does.
You're making the mistake of assuming the whole point was just a critical rant about Amazon and didn't pay enough attention to the interesting and insightful bit because you got too caught up in the background context.
The sadly far too common attitude of "I stopped reading when..." is always a good way to miss the overall point or value of something.
It doesn't matter how wrong you think he was about what Amazon supposedly does badly, that was just setting the scene for what he thought Amazon did and does right.
It was about how Google needed to follow Amazons example of creating a service oriented platforms rather than standalone products.
I wasn't saying there was any scientific controversy over it.
I was saying that going back a few years it was a much more common refrain from the 'skeptics' than it is now. I can remember plenty of cranks and crackpots refusing to believe that atmospheric CO2 could have any effect at all, and their views were getting repeated a lot.
These days it seems the anti science crowd is playing in a smaller corner of the pool. A lot of their old arguments are just too ridiculous to repeat these days.
So you personally don't have a problem with the actual science? You just don't like the "solutions" based on economic arguments? ie you think the economic analysis of costs/benefits etc from proponents of these solutions is faulty.
Fair enough.
I was just ranting against those that can't actually separate the validity of the science (ie studying what's actually happening) with the politics of the "solutions".
The number of people who claim that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas is a tiny group of crackpots.
It may be now, but I seem to remember that 10yrs back that was one of the common points of contention. Even as far as refuting the existence of the greenhouse effect period.
There wasn't any scientific content at all. It was all about economics and politics.
Here's a tip for those who have issues with 'climate change'... don't conflate the scientific debate (which is generally about understanding the problem) with the political debate (which is generally around what to do about it).
Whether or not the science is valid has nothing at all to do with what Al Gore says or does, carbon credits, taxes etc etc. Railing against the science purely because you don't like the political ramifications is not rational (this happens right across the political spectrum), as is trying to refute the science by claiming the Rev Al Gore will be a carbon billionaire - so what? How the hell does that affect the science?
If you have a problem with the science, debate the science itself.
I think you're overstating how much an earth centric universe was backed up by observations.
Geo-centrism wasn't so much a scientific therory as an underlying assumption that people went to incredible lengths to try and fit within.
All the way back to the ancient greeks (and no doubt other early observers) they had observations that didn't really fit. But instead of coming up with a more elegant theory they kept complicating the movements of the other planets more and more to try and fit the data.
Since Boeing and Airbus (as well as the military demand) raised demand for carbon fibre so much in recent years, wood has been getting more use in composite construction. eg windsurfers have been using wood laminates a lot (still in combination with carbon) in the last 5+yrs, and it works pretty well for impact resistance compared to carbon.
Using the ISA is a strange way of defining "not different" in the context of actual hardware that IBM ships and what they're capable of compared to what Intel ships.
That would be kinda like saying an x86_64 Atom is not different from a Xeon 7xxx.
Well if somebody just read the linked article and didn't watch the youtube video or go to the game site, they'd probably think the game was based on Java too. It was the original article that made that mistake.
I am a civil engineer, mind you, and although I (and other civil engineers) know more about technical such as how to design proper public sanitation networks, structural systems and even the building processes, knowing how to properly define spaces and to adequately plan the urban space are entirely different beasts. That's the job for an architect, and they tend to do it very well.
Exactly. I initially started doing an Architecture degree before changing to Civil Engineering after realising it was a better fit for my analytical personality.
I had a profound respect for good architects and it was great to work with them on the rare projects where the client actually let them do their stuff properly. On these sorts of projects the architects and engineers work together collaboratively during the design rather than just handing a design off to the engineers for checking.
I have noticed though that good architects and engineers have much more respect for each others respective professions than mediocre ones tend to. And I think this is partially due to the kinds of projects they can attract. It's hard to really judge someone elses ability when you don't get to work with them.
But because so many projects don't allow that kind of teamwork, most architects and engineers don't end up working collaboratively together to gain each others respect. Most projects just have the clients and/or their project managers handing work to architects and engineers in isolation with minimal time for design and nobody really gets an insight into the concerns and design objectives of the other groups.
Since I've moved to IT/software, I've seen the same dynamics happening here too. eg developers, designers and sysadmins not really respecting each others work when they get handed it in stages by project managers rather than working together during the design stages.
What I fear, is that the proposed shorter release cycles are going to make Ubuntu break too often. That will turn off users, and they cannot afford to lose even more users after the 11.04 release.
I thought the same thing, but after reading the plan it makes good sense to me. He does a good job explaining the problems with the current cycle.
After all originally Ubuntu's 6 month schedule was there to match GNOME, and they don't use that anymore.
This isn't a Firefox like schedule, if anything it is moving to be more like Debians development/testing process.
See, in EXT3, unless im mistaken, you cannot give a user write access or ownership to a file and still prevent them from executing the content-- they can just chmod a+x the file.
Partially correct - just having write access isn't enough, you need to own the file to change its permissions.
Also you need to be root to change ownership of files.
That's because a 5.9 doesn't "feel" like a specific amount of shaking. The 5.9 quoted is the Magnitude of the quake not the Intensity. The Intensity is a measure of what you'd feel.
Looking at the USGS info, in DC the intensity was roughly MM IV which isn't much to worry about, but towns closer to the epicenter felt MM VII which is a fairly big scary shake - especially for people not used to it and buildings not designed for it.
Even though Linux 3.0 is only slightly different from the last 2.6.39, the major version number jump makes some executives worry unnecessarily. They start to think that what's nothing more than a routine upgrade is more risky than it is.
This confuses me. Why would executives care about the Linux kernels version number?
Surely you are using Foobar Enterprise Linux 5.x and whatever kernel they are supporting as stable? And you and your executives only need to worry about big disruptive changes when you move to Foobar EL 6.0?
Isn't that the whole point of distros and support contracts?
Would your executives care what the NT Kernel version number is, or would they just look at the actual Windows version being released (2000, XP, Vista, 7 etc)?
Obviously that Windows versioning example is so much more helpful than these "dumbass games" (your words) the open source projects are playing. How about both Windows and SQL Server have had versions numbered 7 and 2000, but they both came out in a very different sequence.
Or when Solaris/SunOS dropped the first digit from its version number. Or how about Java? We have 1.6.0 meaning Java 6 or vice versa in different contexts - JRE vs JDK etc. And 1.2 being known as Java2, then subsequent versions being known as J2SE 1.3, 1.4 (is this still Java2?), then J2SE 5.0 (huh? Is this Java 2 still or Java 5? The internal bits are still 1.5.0_x), then Java SE 6 (no.0 anymore, and inside it is still 1.6.0_x) etc. Yikes - no wonder enterprises stayed away from Java.
Your company must really struggle with those kind of games going on with proprietary or 'enterprise' software version numbers. It makes most open source projects look far more meaningful. I'm not sure how this is an example of the importance version numbers are to an enterprise.
Anyway, the new Linux versioning is correcting the misleading numbering the previous system had. Each new release was in no way a very minor patch on the 2.6.0 release. 2.6.29 bears very little resemblance to 2.6.0, and large chunks of it have been rewritten in that time. So the kernel is moving towards the kind of system you want - not away from it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I know it was long, but did you actually read it? You seem to have a bunch of it 180 degrees backwards.
Your analogy doesn't match this situation at all.
If anything the (in your opinion) overcritical evaluation of Amazon overall should be extra reason to consider the stuff he actually praises.
Criticism of something from its fans, or praise from its critics is generally far more valuable than the opposite.
Personally I would've probably ignored praise of Amazons Service Oriented Architecture from someone who fawned over everything else Amazon does.
You're making the mistake of assuming the whole point was just a critical rant about Amazon and didn't pay enough attention to the interesting and insightful bit because you got too caught up in the background context.
The sadly far too common attitude of "I stopped reading when..." is always a good way to miss the overall point or value of something.
I think you missed the entire point of it.
It doesn't matter how wrong you think he was about what Amazon supposedly does badly, that was just setting the scene for what he thought Amazon did and does right.
It was about how Google needed to follow Amazons example of creating a service oriented platforms rather than standalone products.
I wasn't saying there was any scientific controversy over it.
I was saying that going back a few years it was a much more common refrain from the 'skeptics' than it is now. I can remember plenty of cranks and crackpots refusing to believe that atmospheric CO2 could have any effect at all, and their views were getting repeated a lot.
These days it seems the anti science crowd is playing in a smaller corner of the pool. A lot of their old arguments are just too ridiculous to repeat these days.
So you personally don't have a problem with the actual science? You just don't like the "solutions" based on economic arguments? ie you think the economic analysis of costs/benefits etc from proponents of these solutions is faulty.
Fair enough.
I was just ranting against those that can't actually separate the validity of the science (ie studying what's actually happening) with the politics of the "solutions".
It may be now, but I seem to remember that 10yrs back that was one of the common points of contention. Even as far as refuting the existence of the greenhouse effect period.
I suppose you could say things are improving :)
I curious... how was his post insightful?
There wasn't any scientific content at all. It was all about economics and politics.
Here's a tip for those who have issues with 'climate change'... don't conflate the scientific debate (which is generally about understanding the problem) with the political debate (which is generally around what to do about it).
Whether or not the science is valid has nothing at all to do with what Al Gore says or does, carbon credits, taxes etc etc. Railing against the science purely because you don't like the political ramifications is not rational (this happens right across the political spectrum), as is trying to refute the science by claiming the Rev Al Gore will be a carbon billionaire - so what? How the hell does that affect the science?
If you have a problem with the science, debate the science itself.
Nah, that would be more appropriate if (just for example) Hibernates website was exploited via SQL injection.
SQL injection isn't generally regarded as a database flaw.
I think you're overstating how much an earth centric universe was backed up by observations.
Geo-centrism wasn't so much a scientific therory as an underlying assumption that people went to incredible lengths to try and fit within.
All the way back to the ancient greeks (and no doubt other early observers) they had observations that didn't really fit. But instead of coming up with a more elegant theory they kept complicating the movements of the other planets more and more to try and fit the data.
Since Boeing and Airbus (as well as the military demand) raised demand for carbon fibre so much in recent years, wood has been getting more use in composite construction. eg windsurfers have been using wood laminates a lot (still in combination with carbon) in the last 5+yrs, and it works pretty well for impact resistance compared to carbon.
Rock is an unprocessed mix of glass and metal :)
It seems you don't quite understand the definition of the word "cure".
Using the ISA is a strange way of defining "not different" in the context of actual hardware that IBM ships and what they're capable of compared to what Intel ships.
That would be kinda like saying an x86_64 Atom is not different from a Xeon 7xxx.
POWER and PowerPC are two different things.
Maybe you meant "nothing runs Mac OS 9 like PowerPC"? Or "nothing can hold up Steve Jobs plans like PowerPC"?
Well if somebody just read the linked article and didn't watch the youtube video or go to the game site, they'd probably think the game was based on Java too. It was the original article that made that mistake.
You can't really blame Slashdotters this time.
Exactly. I initially started doing an Architecture degree before changing to Civil Engineering after realising it was a better fit for my analytical personality.
I had a profound respect for good architects and it was great to work with them on the rare projects where the client actually let them do their stuff properly. On these sorts of projects the architects and engineers work together collaboratively during the design rather than just handing a design off to the engineers for checking.
I have noticed though that good architects and engineers have much more respect for each others respective professions than mediocre ones tend to. And I think this is partially due to the kinds of projects they can attract. It's hard to really judge someone elses ability when you don't get to work with them.
But because so many projects don't allow that kind of teamwork, most architects and engineers don't end up working collaboratively together to gain each others respect. Most projects just have the clients and/or their project managers handing work to architects and engineers in isolation with minimal time for design and nobody really gets an insight into the concerns and design objectives of the other groups.
Since I've moved to IT/software, I've seen the same dynamics happening here too. eg developers, designers and sysadmins not really respecting each others work when they get handed it in stages by project managers rather than working together during the design stages.
I thought the same thing, but after reading the plan it makes good sense to me. He does a good job explaining the problems with the current cycle.
After all originally Ubuntu's 6 month schedule was there to match GNOME, and they don't use that anymore.
This isn't a Firefox like schedule, if anything it is moving to be more like Debians development/testing process.
Based on your surname, I'm suspecting you probably have some personal experience of this?
No, Orcon reported a 10% drop in P2P traffic not total traffic. And other large ISPs reported either no drop in traffic or a slight drop in traffic.
The only reporting I've heard that said 10% of total traffic was on Ars Technica and they misquoted the article they linked to.
Not so. Linux at first was hard coded for the 386. Its cross platform capability came later.
Partially correct - just having write access isn't enough, you need to own the file to change its permissions.
Also you need to be root to change ownership of files.
That's because a 5.9 doesn't "feel" like a specific amount of shaking. The 5.9 quoted is the Magnitude of the quake not the Intensity. The Intensity is a measure of what you'd feel.
Looking at the USGS info, in DC the intensity was roughly MM IV which isn't much to worry about, but towns closer to the epicenter felt MM VII which is a fairly big scary shake - especially for people not used to it and buildings not designed for it.
You'd know all about a Magnitude 5.8 at 6km depth if you were nearby.
An MM intensity of VII is nothing to sneeze at - luckily most heavily populated areas were far enough away to only feel MM IV.
Both - it can be a bit hit or miss ;)
This confuses me. Why would executives care about the Linux kernels version number?
Surely you are using Foobar Enterprise Linux 5.x and whatever kernel they are supporting as stable? And you and your executives only need to worry about big disruptive changes when you move to Foobar EL 6.0?
Isn't that the whole point of distros and support contracts?
Would your executives care what the NT Kernel version number is, or would they just look at the actual Windows version being released (2000, XP, Vista, 7 etc)?
Obviously that Windows versioning example is so much more helpful than these "dumbass games" (your words) the open source projects are playing. How about both Windows and SQL Server have had versions numbered 7 and 2000, but they both came out in a very different sequence.
Or when Solaris/SunOS dropped the first digit from its version number. Or how about Java? We have 1.6.0 meaning Java 6 or vice versa in different contexts - JRE vs JDK etc. And 1.2 being known as Java2, then subsequent versions being known as J2SE 1.3, 1.4 (is this still Java2?), then J2SE 5.0 (huh? Is this Java 2 still or Java 5? The internal bits are still 1.5.0_x), then Java SE 6 (no .0 anymore, and inside it is still 1.6.0_x) etc. Yikes - no wonder enterprises stayed away from Java.
Your company must really struggle with those kind of games going on with proprietary or 'enterprise' software version numbers. It makes most open source projects look far more meaningful. I'm not sure how this is an example of the importance version numbers are to an enterprise.
Anyway, the new Linux versioning is correcting the misleading numbering the previous system had. Each new release was in no way a very minor patch on the 2.6.0 release. 2.6.29 bears very little resemblance to 2.6.0, and large chunks of it have been rewritten in that time. So the kernel is moving towards the kind of system you want - not away from it.