Actually, it can be claimed that cost of nuclear power is made artificially more expensive by ridiculous amount of red tape and excessive requirements for storage of even lowest grade (by radiation) material. But basically cost of nuclear power is mostly due to all the after-production commitments; and it certainly is not subsidised by tax payers, especially compared to other energy production alternatives.
And from disaster/catastrophe viewpoint nuclear energy is about as good as it gets with proven long track record. With 50s technology has been very safe; and with current technology would be even safer.
And for what it's worth, there aren't very big corporations supporting it because industry has mostly been starved (outside of france, maybe russia, china) by lack of investment for past 2 decades.
Yeah. One freaking accident, killing relatively small number of people. Number of people that die on annual basis on oil-production related accident exceeds that number.
You, sir/madam are a very good example of said "anti-nuke wackos"
Not that there aren't more elaborate anti-nuclear-power people, with sometimes somewhat valid concerns. But this isn't one of them.
Whilst increasing fuel economy is good, trying to force everyone to drive a small econobox is pure social engineering and nothing to be proud of. If you want to get real about this kind of thing go after large freighters and coal power plants.
And why is that? You make a claim, but not provide justification for it. Why exactly is this bad? Is there some religious principle (free economy?) that is being violated, or is the term itself inherently evil?
Bullshit. The main reason why light cars are more vulnerable is that there are big bulky Hummers out there; that is, discrepancy between masses of colliding objects.
Other than having to be heavier than the other guy, big cars are not safer than well-designed small cars. Beetles and Minis are rather safe in collisions, unless there are big ugly SUVs involved.
Considering all the fanboy'ism towards private enterprises as saviours of space travel, yes, it is pretty cool that society-run programs have been, are, and possibly will be superior to for-profit enterprises. Especially considering that NASA did in 60s what others are trying to do in 2010.
I know several people who had surgeons tell them surgery was their only recourse, only to have a chiropractor fix them good as new.
I am not going to claim this could not be true, or purely placebo effect. But studies of similar things like intentionally bogus knee surgeries have shown that there can be medium-term placebo-like effect from many physical operations.
Knee surgery in question was explained in "Predictably Irrational" (great book): and end result proved that certain surgery that had high success rate could be replaced by simple bogus operation (in which patient was led to believe something was done, with anesthesia, fake wound etc), with similarly good success rate for reducing pain. Downside for both was that it only lasted for about 6 months.
One interesting thing was that this research was vehemently attacked by many credible (and sincere) medical professionals, who had done the surgery (with understanding that it would actually solve the problem). Even when presented with evidence. And these are individuals who should have as good a scientific view and understanding than anyone else -- if they would be capable of such denial, it's no wonder "lay-men" are prone to doing so too.
But perhaps the most interesting question here is this: by exposing that operation is useless can negate its effects. So: is it better to think that what is being done is effective, and get at least temporary (6 months is a LONG time to enjoy, for someone suffering from chronic pain) relief; or not to get even that relief?
I'm not sure this is true -- there are plenty of no-sql alternatives written in other languages (erlang (CouchDB), c++ (mongo),...).
I think choice has to do with somewhat more powerful model Cassandra has (compared to other choices that are simpler), or its good distribution (others only support limited sharding, not true distribution, AFAIK CouchDB has this issue).
Is there really a huge issue with rdbms speeds? Well if there is something there, that's what needs to be looked at. If RDBMSs are not fast enough, that's just an opportunity to work more on them to speed them up.
What makes you think this has not been done? Sometimes combination of arrogance and ignorance here is amazing. Very bright minds are working on all kinds of approaches; and of course Oracle (et al) are working on their set of tools to improve them as well.
In reality it is ALL about different compromises. RDBMS pay hefty price for ACID, and that is ok if that is what you absolutely need. But there is no way to horizontally scale them efficiently (or, after some point, at all). This can be solved by rethinking what your actual requirements are -- if you can loosen some of the requirements by adopting "eventual consistency", you can get much better scalability and availability. You can not just add more boxes to your Oracle cluster: you need bigger box(es). Period. But you can easily add new hosts on your no-sql clusters (depends on system, for some its easier than others; but this is big focus for all of them).
It is not even so much about speed (of individual requests) but throughtput, and ability to incrementally increase it as needed.
There are certainly cases where you'd rather want full ACID set for authoritative data. And then there are many cases -- not just read-only/caching -- where it is acceptable to have intermediate inconsistent states. For Amazon Dynamo was used for shopping carts, for example. Oracle database was not cost-effective, and by cost I don't mean license costs, but maintenance (and license, h/w etc). It was designed to solve a specific problem. Other companies are building similar solutions.
Expanding number of lanes is not a silver bullet, but in this particular case, yes, I-520 bridge replacement could actually achieve much improved mass transit.
I don't think you can run a light rail underwater, so you need a bridge of some kind. And there is no capacity on current one. Not to mention that the current bridge may become so-called sunken bridge in not-so-distant future.
So I wouldn't use the boiler-plate disclaimer to describe this situation -- this is quite different from, say, adding highway lanes in mid-west, where what you describe is definitely common outcome.
So Microsoft is Anti-Envriomentalist because it doesn't want to add public transit that most people wont use.
Go ahead and read the article... the whole spin is absurd. Microsoft is generally positive wrt. mass transit projects, and in this case specifically wants to avoid further delays in replacing the dang bridge. The new bridge will be an improvement for mass transit; the degree in which it is depends on design. But at this point changes to design do delay its construction, regardless of whether changes would be improvements or not (which is another issue altogether).
It is sad that whereas there are plenty of corporations-as-bad-guys real life stories out there, these non-stories are reported instead.
2/Having to store waste for over 100000 years is not what someone with any common sense would call 'green'.
And why the hell would anyone store any of nuclear waste for 100k years?
Go and read basic physics courses on how nuclear material decay actually works, and pay close attention to what high and low radioactivity means in practical terms. Brief summary: high activity level is more dangerous AND has short(er) half-life, meaning it decays fast to lower levels of activity.
This "thousands of years to store this crazy dangerous stuff" argument is one of strawmen arguments that keeps on coming over and over again, not based on facts but based on primal fear against things that are dangerous but non-concrete. Like radiation, and its half-life.
Amen. I am not quite 59 (still 3x years young). But I hear what you are saying... and while being a "code sanitation engineer" is a dirty job, it pays nicely.
My compensation is "only" at most 3x entry-level (considering stock grants etc), but I am worth every penny, and being able to change job at will.
The only thing I would add is that there are combinations of two stereotypes you mention, but I guess that goes without saying -- there are people with lengthy alleged experience, who yet manage to mostly draw block diagrams, do some buzzword bingo, and crush when eventually being forced to try to implement something functional.
Most enjoyable actual good co-workers are... actually, there is no single pattern. Talented well-rounded young ones are joy to work with; ditto for mid-career, late career. About the only common theme is that they tend to be much less assuming, down-to-earth individuals. Could it be that they know their worth, without having to try so hard to prove it?
Good points, but I don't completely buy your list. Points (e), (f) and (g) have never been an issue for me (well, (f) has happened to me exactly once -- but with compensation associated).
I know they are issues for others, but my experience here (yea yeah, my slashdot is not short enough to qualify me as much past 12 years here, but that'll have to do) suggests that you only bend as far down as you want to. You don't have to flat refuse to do things, but you do have to define and keep boundaries; and let others with softer spine to bend over further. Not surprisingly, abusive managers (co-workers, CxOs etc etc) tend to take path of least resistance and find their victims elsewhere.
Although I guess I may be barking up the wrong tree: you said that if you want to see you go there; not that you couldn't go there without having to take all bs mentioned.:)
but this study isn't the only reason for the debate.
Sure -- there are no studies proving aliens at area51, and yet there is "debate"; nor are there studies on various other crackpot schemes.
But this was the only somewhat credible (or so it was thought...) piece of research suggesting any correlation. That is why it is important, since without such research, claims for vaccination-induced autism does not rise above level of "jesus-on-tortillas" schemes.
Part of the problem is here is that this is related to a very big problem (of child becoming autistic), and the other part due to human brain developing "analogitis" (finding cause/consequence relationships in noise). Come to think of that, the tortilla folks are not all that far removed from autism-vaccination folks; it's just that "think of children" is replaced with religion.
Now, space tourism will likely make them the most money...
Yeah, the fabulously lucrative business opportunity of space tourism... (insert sarcasm tags in there if that's not obvious enough)
If this is where the most money is to be found, it is no wonder private corporations have rather little interest in "space business", save for corporations where individuals (sir Richard, and other smaller ones, funded by Jeff B et al) can spend money on their own interests.
No, I do not believe that private corporations can be the driving force in this segment of human enterprise. I think it is good to harness their power in appropriate areas (mass-producing rockets, say; as sub-contractors), but as helpers, not drivers.
The reason Europe and Japan don't have huge armies is that the US does it for the, with bases all over the world, populated by US personnel.
I call bullshit. European countries, Japan et al have perfectly capable REGIONAL armies. They can well defend their own countries (and to assist members of defensive groups). They don't mind extra assistance and assurance, but it is at most a nice-to-have, and at worst a political problem (with domestic leftist parties).
What US has more so than any other country, is large globally-mobile army that can be made to "off-shored". UK has something similar (with smaller scale of course), some other countries too, but nothing comparable to US.
Your view seems to be based on outdated data from cold war era; when there was need by western Europe and Japan, due to existence of the other super power (with global reach comparable to US). But this has not been the situation for 2 decades now. And arguably, soviet thread was overblown even in 80s. But there is absolutely no defensive need for US troops in, say, Germany.
What scam was that again? The "controversy" over couple of email by overeager researchers? Like "controversy over evolution", and claims against Earth being spherical instead of vertically challenged?
As to war on science, I don't think that will reappear soon; at earlier it could happen in 2012 if ignorant voters bring back an ignorant president. Bush was more succesful with his war on science than in any other alleged war.
And now they add the only thing to it, that in even more horrible? Agile?? Or in other words: Spaghetti coding with the motto: “If perfect planning is impossible, maybe not planning at all will work.”
This is not meant as a flame, but I don't think you have a clue as to what Agile here means. Possibly because term has been abused a lot by people who just want to get rid of all processes -- nonetheless, agile does not mean "no process". Just a light-weight common-sense process that most mature developers would follow anyway.
It is also true that agile methodology is a meta thing ("abstract methodology"). So it is bit silly to argue about it, as opposed to concrete implementation thereof like Scrum. But I assume you were referring to class of methodologies, all of which allegedly would be just excuses of not thinking through anything. And that is a false statement.
It should come as no surprise that people LIKE being paid for working
I think that "for working" is unnecessary in there.:-)
Beyond that, I agree in that this is a normal and healthy development. But I do disagree in "holding them accountable" being necessary -- I strongly believe that developers who work on open source (including myself) have more stringent standard for something they rest their (our) reputation on, rather than on something you are being paid to develop but that is "anonymous", in that it's used in-house, or sold by company as its (not your) product.
Individual variation in productivity is huge, but I think it has little to do with accountability aspect. If you are committed to OS development, you tend to be productive. If not, you are free to walk away. Why would you waste time on something you are not good at doing? And esp. without monetary incentives, hey, there are lots of other things to do in life.
It is much more problematic for regular employment, and there accountability obviously matters. Mostly due to nature of transaction: generally, I am being paid to do things I would NOT do without such payment (it is rather rare you also get paid for what you'd do anyway -- happens, but not often enough to matter for this discussion).
Consider this: best code I have (and probably will) write is open source, since I can spend exactly as much time and effort on creating GREAT code (useful for intended use, maintainable, something I need not be ashamed of when others review it).
Corporate code is much more disposable: good enough for use case, economically created, maintainable enough to prevent my having to spend too much time supporting it. I am not ashamed of it, either, but for the most part, if it was to be OS'ed, I would preferably rewrite it, make it better.
That must be why Oracle went bankrupt with their inferior database...
Seriously, it had more to do with trying to market the thing for end users instead of companies. The idea of a DB as application was bad one -- granted, some companies did ok with those for a bit (and MS more so, but mostly due to actual apps that can use it, not because of Access being good as an app) -- but in general it just is not such a good idea. Using parsed language is a much more minor point, as well as other technical aspects.
Google is hardly alone with these calculations. Most US corporations are very concious of risks associated with operating in China. One fortune-500 corp, for example, had their china it systems completely isolated from rest of the corp infrastructure to reduce risks of govt seizing their services (i.e. if that subsidiary was essentially nationalized, loss would be compartmentalized). And this is a company with hundreds of megabucks in revenue within china. This is similar how operations are done for other high-risk, volatile emerging (economically) nations like, say, Russia. Anything can happen, and both risks and rewards are high. One day, you may get a note from local govt stating that all your base are belong to them... and there's little you can do. Better rake in profits before that happens.
She wouldn't wait 3 days to make a public statement after a bombing attempt on an airplane.
What's with this irrational overly elevated response to something that, in grand scheme of things, is not all that important an event?
The main reason for all this hell being raised for one botched attempt is that human beings are scared shitless for flying through the air in a metal tube; and anything related to it possibly going wrong. Not the element of intentional sabotage (although it certainly elevates hysteria). Given how rare these incidents are, it is ridiculous to spend this much time focusing on incidents: even if this and couple of others succeeded on annual basis, flying would still be safer mode of transportation than, say, driving (or even re, biking). In fact: if only general public was not all this jumpy about plane bombings, you wouldn't need much security -- terrorists try to damage planes just because that seems to generate maximum amount of terror. Go figure. Remove incentive and effort would be redirected somewhere else. Sort of like end of 30s liquor sales ban removed practically all crime involved. If only you could get surgically inject rationality into thick skulls.
At most I wish Obama had downplayed significance of this incident; as well as start driving down war in Afganistan. What a colossal waste of money.
And the reason is, of course, politics -- people in this country are not changed a lot since 50s commie scare: same headless chicken panicky reactions to imagined or vastly overstated bogeymen lurking in shadows.
The way the state and feds are increasingly taxing the hell out of the citizens of the US
Which US are you talking about? One I live in has ridiculously low tax rates all around, compared to other industrial countries.
I almost feel ashamed to see the low tax bracket I am in. If only money that is collected wasn't wasted on all these military operations around the world...:-/
Funny. You think some scientists go for the oil and gas money, but the others don't go for government money to fund research?
You need to recognize that BOTH sides do EVERYTHING they do for money.
Hmmh? Govt doing everything for money? No, I don't think so. Generally politicians have many agendas, but few of them are targeted at making money. For money there are better paths -- politics is about power (to have power to do XYZ), and while money is useful for getting power, it's not the end goal.
Or maybe you are claiming all researches do everything for money? That is equally silly. No, researchers are humans with various goals in their lives -- but I doubt many are in it for money. As with politicians, there are easier and more certain ways to get wealthy. In fact, research scientist ranks rather low in this area.
Researchers can and do often live symbiotic life: but generally as a way to be able to do research that they believe in; not vice versa. Claiming they do certain research just for money is misguided and ignorant.
But hey: you are right wrt the remaining group: in fact, companies (including oil and coal, as well as all other) do in fact do it for money. Unfortunately that makes your claim at best a half-baked half-truth.
Prior to Hitler invading the USSR, remember that they were allies themselves
I think it is pretty well-established by historians (based on investigation, documents, correspondence archives etc. etc.) that neither side considered this anything more than temporary truce, maybe for few years at most. Hitler wanted "expansion space" from the east (an old plan he didn't invent, just recycled teutonic knights' ideas etc); and Stalin thought he'd wait until western allies and Germany have duked it out, and then expand Soviet territory wherever applicable.
But both thought it a good idea to first avoid confrontations, split the loot (eastern europe), and see how things evolve before bigger moves.
So term "allies" is bit of an over-statement even on short term, and it is all but certain that this state of affairs would not have lasted for very long, even if Hitler hadn't invaded in -41.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it can be claimed that cost of nuclear power is made artificially more expensive by ridiculous amount of red tape and excessive requirements for storage of even lowest grade (by radiation) material. But basically cost of nuclear power is mostly due to all the after-production commitments; and it certainly is not subsidised by tax payers, especially compared to other energy production alternatives. And from disaster/catastrophe viewpoint nuclear energy is about as good as it gets with proven long track record. With 50s technology has been very safe; and with current technology would be even safer. And for what it's worth, there aren't very big corporations supporting it because industry has mostly been starved (outside of france, maybe russia, china) by lack of investment for past 2 decades.
You, sir/madam are a very good example of said "anti-nuke wackos"
Not that there aren't more elaborate anti-nuclear-power people, with sometimes somewhat valid concerns. But this isn't one of them.
And why is that? You make a claim, but not provide justification for it. Why exactly is this bad? Is there some religious principle (free economy?) that is being violated, or is the term itself inherently evil?
Bullshit. The main reason why light cars are more vulnerable is that there are big bulky Hummers out there; that is, discrepancy between masses of colliding objects. Other than having to be heavier than the other guy, big cars are not safer than well-designed small cars. Beetles and Minis are rather safe in collisions, unless there are big ugly SUVs involved.
Considering all the fanboy'ism towards private enterprises as saviours of space travel, yes, it is pretty cool that society-run programs have been, are, and possibly will be superior to for-profit enterprises. Especially considering that NASA did in 60s what others are trying to do in 2010.
I am not going to claim this could not be true, or purely placebo effect. But studies of similar things like intentionally bogus knee surgeries have shown that there can be medium-term placebo-like effect from many physical operations. Knee surgery in question was explained in "Predictably Irrational" (great book): and end result proved that certain surgery that had high success rate could be replaced by simple bogus operation (in which patient was led to believe something was done, with anesthesia, fake wound etc), with similarly good success rate for reducing pain. Downside for both was that it only lasted for about 6 months.
One interesting thing was that this research was vehemently attacked by many credible (and sincere) medical professionals, who had done the surgery (with understanding that it would actually solve the problem). Even when presented with evidence. And these are individuals who should have as good a scientific view and understanding than anyone else -- if they would be capable of such denial, it's no wonder "lay-men" are prone to doing so too.
But perhaps the most interesting question here is this: by exposing that operation is useless can negate its effects. So: is it better to think that what is being done is effective, and get at least temporary (6 months is a LONG time to enjoy, for someone suffering from chronic pain) relief; or not to get even that relief?
I'm not sure this is true -- there are plenty of no-sql alternatives written in other languages (erlang (CouchDB), c++ (mongo), ...).
I think choice has to do with somewhat more powerful model Cassandra has (compared to other choices that are simpler), or its good distribution (others only support limited sharding, not true distribution, AFAIK CouchDB has this issue).
What makes you think this has not been done? Sometimes combination of arrogance and ignorance here is amazing. Very bright minds are working on all kinds of approaches; and of course Oracle (et al) are working on their set of tools to improve them as well.
In reality it is ALL about different compromises. RDBMS pay hefty price for ACID, and that is ok if that is what you absolutely need. But there is no way to horizontally scale them efficiently (or, after some point, at all). This can be solved by rethinking what your actual requirements are -- if you can loosen some of the requirements by adopting "eventual consistency", you can get much better scalability and availability. You can not just add more boxes to your Oracle cluster: you need bigger box(es). Period. But you can easily add new hosts on your no-sql clusters (depends on system, for some its easier than others; but this is big focus for all of them). It is not even so much about speed (of individual requests) but throughtput, and ability to incrementally increase it as needed.
There are certainly cases where you'd rather want full ACID set for authoritative data. And then there are many cases -- not just read-only/caching -- where it is acceptable to have intermediate inconsistent states. For Amazon Dynamo was used for shopping carts, for example. Oracle database was not cost-effective, and by cost I don't mean license costs, but maintenance (and license, h/w etc). It was designed to solve a specific problem. Other companies are building similar solutions.
So I wouldn't use the boiler-plate disclaimer to describe this situation -- this is quite different from, say, adding highway lanes in mid-west, where what you describe is definitely common outcome.
Go ahead and read the article... the whole spin is absurd. Microsoft is generally positive wrt. mass transit projects, and in this case specifically wants to avoid further delays in replacing the dang bridge. The new bridge will be an improvement for mass transit; the degree in which it is depends on design. But at this point changes to design do delay its construction, regardless of whether changes would be improvements or not (which is another issue altogether).
It is sad that whereas there are plenty of corporations-as-bad-guys real life stories out there, these non-stories are reported instead.
And why the hell would anyone store any of nuclear waste for 100k years?
Go and read basic physics courses on how nuclear material decay actually works, and pay close attention to what high and low radioactivity means in practical terms. Brief summary: high activity level is more dangerous AND has short(er) half-life, meaning it decays fast to lower levels of activity.
This "thousands of years to store this crazy dangerous stuff" argument is one of strawmen arguments that keeps on coming over and over again, not based on facts but based on primal fear against things that are dangerous but non-concrete. Like radiation, and its half-life.
The only thing I would add is that there are combinations of two stereotypes you mention, but I guess that goes without saying -- there are people with lengthy alleged experience, who yet manage to mostly draw block diagrams, do some buzzword bingo, and crush when eventually being forced to try to implement something functional.
Most enjoyable actual good co-workers are... actually, there is no single pattern. Talented well-rounded young ones are joy to work with; ditto for mid-career, late career. About the only common theme is that they tend to be much less assuming, down-to-earth individuals. Could it be that they know their worth, without having to try so hard to prove it?
Although I guess I may be barking up the wrong tree: you said that if you want to see you go there; not that you couldn't go there without having to take all bs mentioned. :)
Sure -- there are no studies proving aliens at area51, and yet there is "debate"; nor are there studies on various other crackpot schemes.
But this was the only somewhat credible (or so it was thought...) piece of research suggesting any correlation. That is why it is important, since without such research, claims for vaccination-induced autism does not rise above level of "jesus-on-tortillas" schemes.
Part of the problem is here is that this is related to a very big problem (of child becoming autistic), and the other part due to human brain developing "analogitis" (finding cause/consequence relationships in noise). Come to think of that, the tortilla folks are not all that far removed from autism-vaccination folks; it's just that "think of children" is replaced with religion.
Yeah, the fabulously lucrative business opportunity of space tourism... (insert sarcasm tags in there if that's not obvious enough)
If this is where the most money is to be found, it is no wonder private corporations have rather little interest in "space business", save for corporations where individuals (sir Richard, and other smaller ones, funded by Jeff B et al) can spend money on their own interests.
No, I do not believe that private corporations can be the driving force in this segment of human enterprise. I think it is good to harness their power in appropriate areas (mass-producing rockets, say; as sub-contractors), but as helpers, not drivers.
I call bullshit. European countries, Japan et al have perfectly capable REGIONAL armies. They can well defend their own countries (and to assist members of defensive groups). They don't mind extra assistance and assurance, but it is at most a nice-to-have, and at worst a political problem (with domestic leftist parties).
What US has more so than any other country, is large globally-mobile army that can be made to "off-shored". UK has something similar (with smaller scale of course), some other countries too, but nothing comparable to US.
Your view seems to be based on outdated data from cold war era; when there was need by western Europe and Japan, due to existence of the other super power (with global reach comparable to US). But this has not been the situation for 2 decades now. And arguably, soviet thread was overblown even in 80s. But there is absolutely no defensive need for US troops in, say, Germany.
What scam was that again? The "controversy" over couple of email by overeager researchers? Like "controversy over evolution", and claims against Earth being spherical instead of vertically challenged?
As to war on science, I don't think that will reappear soon; at earlier it could happen in 2012 if ignorant voters bring back an ignorant president. Bush was more succesful with his war on science than in any other alleged war.
This is not meant as a flame, but I don't think you have a clue as to what Agile here means. Possibly because term has been abused a lot by people who just want to get rid of all processes -- nonetheless, agile does not mean "no process". Just a light-weight common-sense process that most mature developers would follow anyway.
It is also true that agile methodology is a meta thing ("abstract methodology"). So it is bit silly to argue about it, as opposed to concrete implementation thereof like Scrum. But I assume you were referring to class of methodologies, all of which allegedly would be just excuses of not thinking through anything. And that is a false statement.
I think that "for working" is unnecessary in there. :-)
Beyond that, I agree in that this is a normal and healthy development. But I do disagree in "holding them accountable" being necessary -- I strongly believe that developers who work on open source (including myself) have more stringent standard for something they rest their (our) reputation on, rather than on something you are being paid to develop but that is "anonymous", in that it's used in-house, or sold by company as its (not your) product.
Individual variation in productivity is huge, but I think it has little to do with accountability aspect. If you are committed to OS development, you tend to be productive. If not, you are free to walk away. Why would you waste time on something you are not good at doing? And esp. without monetary incentives, hey, there are lots of other things to do in life. It is much more problematic for regular employment, and there accountability obviously matters. Mostly due to nature of transaction: generally, I am being paid to do things I would NOT do without such payment (it is rather rare you also get paid for what you'd do anyway -- happens, but not often enough to matter for this discussion). Consider this: best code I have (and probably will) write is open source, since I can spend exactly as much time and effort on creating GREAT code (useful for intended use, maintainable, something I need not be ashamed of when others review it). Corporate code is much more disposable: good enough for use case, economically created, maintainable enough to prevent my having to spend too much time supporting it. I am not ashamed of it, either, but for the most part, if it was to be OS'ed, I would preferably rewrite it, make it better.
That must be why Oracle went bankrupt with their inferior database...
Seriously, it had more to do with trying to market the thing for end users instead of companies. The idea of a DB as application was bad one -- granted, some companies did ok with those for a bit (and MS more so, but mostly due to actual apps that can use it, not because of Access being good as an app) -- but in general it just is not such a good idea. Using parsed language is a much more minor point, as well as other technical aspects.
Google is hardly alone with these calculations. Most US corporations are very concious of risks associated with operating in China. One fortune-500 corp, for example, had their china it systems completely isolated from rest of the corp infrastructure to reduce risks of govt seizing their services (i.e. if that subsidiary was essentially nationalized, loss would be compartmentalized). And this is a company with hundreds of megabucks in revenue within china. This is similar how operations are done for other high-risk, volatile emerging (economically) nations like, say, Russia. Anything can happen, and both risks and rewards are high. One day, you may get a note from local govt stating that all your base are belong to them... and there's little you can do. Better rake in profits before that happens.
What's with this irrational overly elevated response to something that, in grand scheme of things, is not all that important an event?
The main reason for all this hell being raised for one botched attempt is that human beings are scared shitless for flying through the air in a metal tube; and anything related to it possibly going wrong. Not the element of intentional sabotage (although it certainly elevates hysteria). Given how rare these incidents are, it is ridiculous to spend this much time focusing on incidents: even if this and couple of others succeeded on annual basis, flying would still be safer mode of transportation than, say, driving (or even re, biking). In fact: if only general public was not all this jumpy about plane bombings, you wouldn't need much security -- terrorists try to damage planes just because that seems to generate maximum amount of terror. Go figure. Remove incentive and effort would be redirected somewhere else. Sort of like end of 30s liquor sales ban removed practically all crime involved. If only you could get surgically inject rationality into thick skulls.
At most I wish Obama had downplayed significance of this incident; as well as start driving down war in Afganistan. What a colossal waste of money. And the reason is, of course, politics -- people in this country are not changed a lot since 50s commie scare: same headless chicken panicky reactions to imagined or vastly overstated bogeymen lurking in shadows.
Which US are you talking about? One I live in has ridiculously low tax rates all around, compared to other industrial countries. I almost feel ashamed to see the low tax bracket I am in. If only money that is collected wasn't wasted on all these military operations around the world... :-/
You need to recognize that BOTH sides do EVERYTHING they do for money.
Hmmh? Govt doing everything for money? No, I don't think so. Generally politicians have many agendas, but few of them are targeted at making money. For money there are better paths -- politics is about power (to have power to do XYZ), and while money is useful for getting power, it's not the end goal.
Or maybe you are claiming all researches do everything for money? That is equally silly. No, researchers are humans with various goals in their lives -- but I doubt many are in it for money. As with politicians, there are easier and more certain ways to get wealthy. In fact, research scientist ranks rather low in this area. Researchers can and do often live symbiotic life: but generally as a way to be able to do research that they believe in; not vice versa. Claiming they do certain research just for money is misguided and ignorant.
But hey: you are right wrt the remaining group: in fact, companies (including oil and coal, as well as all other) do in fact do it for money. Unfortunately that makes your claim at best a half-baked half-truth.
I think it is pretty well-established by historians (based on investigation, documents, correspondence archives etc. etc.) that neither side considered this anything more than temporary truce, maybe for few years at most. Hitler wanted "expansion space" from the east (an old plan he didn't invent, just recycled teutonic knights' ideas etc); and Stalin thought he'd wait until western allies and Germany have duked it out, and then expand Soviet territory wherever applicable. But both thought it a good idea to first avoid confrontations, split the loot (eastern europe), and see how things evolve before bigger moves.
So term "allies" is bit of an over-statement even on short term, and it is all but certain that this state of affairs would not have lasted for very long, even if Hitler hadn't invaded in -41.