paired together with computer-based/automated facial recognition, all this monitoring is going to make life really hard for dissidents eventually. at some point they're really going to be forced to live/hide out in the sewers, if they're going to remain in built-up areas.
considering Orwell was British (and the widespread deployment of CCTVs seems to have begun there), it makes sense that resistance to this pervasive monitoring began there, but even with these (generally fringe) groups, it's still happening. You've got to wonder if the reason the totalitarian regimes we've had crumble, is because the technology wasn't available yet. What happens when it IS available?
The reason for that is that Sun had? has? an explicit "binary forwards compatibility" guarantee in that the binary you have now is supposed to run on the next/future versions of Solaris. This doesn't always work out 100% (there are always changes in things that will cause issues for any non-trivial app).
Just to play devil's advocate, linux runs any X11 app and that goes back decades and decades... there are other operating systems that achieve similar or greater (in the case of linux) backwards compatibility to their predecessors.
in my experience it's not quite that straightforward, in that even if you want to run older apps, you can run into all sorts of library/dependency issues. it wouldn't be a problem if that app was the ONLY thing you wanted to run, but it's a real bitch if an old app wants a particular library version while a newer app that you want to live on the same machine, doesn't
there are often little inconsistencies between behaviour of different versions...
I've been told by a friend that this is also one of the reasons why Sun was losing customers - they EOL-ed Solaris 8, and (Sun's forwards-binary-compatibility-guarantee notwithstanding) the customers decided if they weren't going to be able to just "keep the old stuff going" (what with new SPARC hardware not being able to run older versions of Solaris), and were going to have to move off Solaris 8 (or even 7), they may as well move to linux/windows/anything-other-than-Solaris.
this makes a big difference because of the number of Sun customers during the Solaris 7-8 days...
I'd think MySQL is one of the reasons Oracle bought Sun. Whatever its failings, MySQL is the "default" choice for most new (small) deployments (I mean, to the extent there's the LAMP acronym for it), the ones that are too small for Oracle to care about.
Now that Oracle has it, they're in a position to "upsell" them once they get far enough. They now control both the high end AND the low end ("... the horizontal and the vertical..."). I'd expect an upper limit to the effort put into scaling MySQL up ("we already have a high-end DB, why waste the effort?"), but I don't see them abandoning it.
Being able to sell a complete vertical solution, with their own CPU, OS, and DB system is probably quite appealing to Oracle.
and now, IBM execs are starting to wonder if maybe they shouldn't have walked away
Re:Java is safe, mysql is safe...
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 1
Why would you buy Sun if you didn't want their hardware? It would be a questionable move at best.
Agreed. I think what this means is that Oracle DOES want Sun's hardware. Maybe not SPARC (which I guess they could hive off completely to Fujitsu), but they now can provide every single item in the checklist.
and let's not forget Larry Ellison's foray into network computing...
We're nerds. This is about the functioning of the justice system; law and order. In a society where there are no rules, the ones who will be getting oppressed and exploited are going to be us. The ones who'll be having the rules bent their way are going to be the thugs, not us. News about law and order and freedom, their functioning or lack thereof, is news for nerds.
Now, imagine if you could fetch that 100% oomph when needed from a server farm instead of your own computer...
I think that just shifts the problem from CPU power to bandwidth (which is already a problem area).
this is why PCs evolved in the first place - mainframes were essentially a server with... very poor, very high latency bandwidth (driving to the office to get punched cards... that's a 1 day ping time).
the raw performance figures keep going up, but the relationship shifts back and forth. putting all the smarts in the cloud just makes bandwidth that much more critical. if you can't have the bandwidth, maybe it makes sense to have the smarts at the end nodes.
Second, Creationism is currently operating under the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity. They don't actually want to be 'accepted', they just want to grab as many headlines as possible. They want big, showy, and silly public debates with well-respected scientists.
I'd second that. Creationism seems to appeal to the segment of the religio-fundies that thrive on a "siege mentality", that "everybody is against us". What's useful to them is a large number of people "attacking" them, they don't (and won't) care about the legitimacy or quality of the criticisms of their ideas.
The third, and biggest problem with Creationism is that it is a concept, not a field of study. You don't grant degrees in 'ideas'. We don't have a degree for perpetual motion machines, proving Goldbach's conjecture, or any other crackpottery you can imagine. A degree is rewarded for a field of study. What exactly are Creationists going to study?
This is soundbite-y but not really meaningful. Being afraid to walk into a cage with a hungry lion in it will keep you alive.
The parent post seem to make a lot of sense, and even if what you're saying is true, it doesn't really answer. That there were a "portion of engineers" who felt that way doesn't necessarily mean that was the final reason why they did it.
And I'm not sure I agree with the "Sun ought to have put everything into the GPL" thing. Why? The GPL and the FSF movement is a wonderful thing, but *Sun* does not *owe* their code to the movement such that they ought to do everything for the benefit of it, without considering other ramifications to things they may also care about.
well, I'm thinking human populations are more effectively limited by other humans (whether chaotically, via war, or through progress, which tends to lead to family planning), the "contribution" of malaria et al seems minimal in comparison. plus its not like ALL mosquitos carry malaria, there are plenty of geographical zones where they're just pests and won't kill you?
actually, when I wrote my original post I did think about smallpox. but as a virus does it count as a "species"?
also, smallpox just affects us, but getting rid of mosquitos would also make things better for other mammals; exterminating smallpox, all the benefits accrue to us. what about mosquitos?
actually, I already know. that's why I said "generally". and, if it whooshed over your head, what I'm curious about is, would it be safe to just exterminate any/all parasites (beginning with the mosquito)?
generally, every life form slots in somewhere in the ecosystem "in balance" - it either keeps something else from overrunning the place (rabbits becoming a pest in Australia due to lack of predators), or is, say, a food supply for something else (rabbits in places where there ARE predators)
what I want to know is, is there such a slot for the mosquito? what "purpose" do they serve? are they a food supply for anybody, or do they just make life miserable for everything else? would there be problems for the ecosystem if the mosquito becomes extinct? because if there isn't, I can't think of a better candidate for extermination than the mosquito. if we could get rid of them, would they be the first species humanity exterminated AND made the world a better place by doing so?
(yes, i know, it's gonna take a LOT of laser-shooting robot drones to rid the planet of 'em... hrm, maybe that's how skynet REALLY comes about:-)
this is a guy you'd know, otherwise you wouldn't have his phone number (and in any case, he wouldn't want to get your MMS if he doesn't know you). if it's an MMS worth sending, why not just call/message him and ask him for his email address? And once you've got it you don't need to ask him again (same as how you got his phone number in the first place)
(there's actually a practical problem here in the iPhone's lack of copy-paste, but that's another matter:-)
Yes, but then if your phone has a well designed address book (like the iPhone) then all you need is one piece â" their name.
That's not what he means. If you know someone's number, but not their email (either on your phone, or at all), then even with the best address book ever (like the Motorola V980), it won't help you.
right; IIRC this was one of the reasons the army's web servers were running on Macs (I don't know if they still are?). you could maybe take them down, but you certainly couldn't penetrate them and deface their sites, since without a command shell there's no way to make code bomb and drop you back to it.
a command shell is only a feature if there're things you WANT to do in it; almost by definition, the people who wanted Macs didn't want to do things with a command line. Automation/etc. tasks were done with hypercard, or (non-command-line) scripting
And, I think its clear their developers did too - they certainly went "over and above the call of duty" for their installer (Lizard?):
for v3.1, I remember, during the stage where other installers would just have a progress bar run through all the files being copied, it launched a solitaire game so you could have something other to do, if you had to sit in front of the terminal during file copy.
This was right before mcbride and gang waltzed in and tore it all down.
it should also be pointed out that it's been a *long* time since any 32-bit-only SPARC machines were available, so 64-bit-only Solaris isn't really leaving anybody behind
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let's also not forget the appropriate response, too - do NOT stop using a chainsaw to behead 'em!
paired together with computer-based/automated facial recognition, all this monitoring is going to make life really hard for dissidents eventually. at some point they're really going to be forced to live/hide out in the sewers, if they're going to remain in built-up areas.
considering Orwell was British (and the widespread deployment of CCTVs seems to have begun there), it makes sense that resistance to this pervasive monitoring began there, but even with these (generally fringe) groups, it's still happening. You've got to wonder if the reason the totalitarian regimes we've had crumble, is because the technology wasn't available yet. What happens when it IS available?
The reason for that is that Sun had? has? an explicit "binary forwards compatibility" guarantee in that the binary you have now is supposed to run on the next/future versions of Solaris. This doesn't always work out 100% (there are always changes in things that will cause issues for any non-trivial app).
Just to play devil's advocate, linux runs any X11 app and that goes back decades and decades ... there are other operating systems that achieve similar or greater (in the case of linux) backwards compatibility to their predecessors.
in my experience it's not quite that straightforward, in that even if you want to run older apps, you can run into all sorts of library/dependency issues. it wouldn't be a problem if that app was the ONLY thing you wanted to run, but it's a real bitch if an old app wants a particular library version while a newer app that you want to live on the same machine, doesn't
there are often little inconsistencies between behaviour of different versions...
I've been told by a friend that this is also one of the reasons why Sun was losing customers - they EOL-ed Solaris 8, and (Sun's forwards-binary-compatibility-guarantee notwithstanding) the customers decided if they weren't going to be able to just "keep the old stuff going" (what with new SPARC hardware not being able to run older versions of Solaris), and were going to have to move off Solaris 8 (or even 7), they may as well move to linux/windows/anything-other-than-Solaris.
this makes a big difference because of the number of Sun customers during the Solaris 7-8 days...
yeah, when I read this:
would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years
I was also wondering, "what's the track record of the people making these predictions"?
well, now that Oracle OWNS Java, the equation as to their level of interest would change, wouldn't it?
MySQL is in a very different niche than Oracle.
I'd think MySQL is one of the reasons Oracle bought Sun. Whatever its failings, MySQL is the "default" choice for most new (small) deployments (I mean, to the extent there's the LAMP acronym for it), the ones that are too small for Oracle to care about.
Now that Oracle has it, they're in a position to "upsell" them once they get far enough. They now control both the high end AND the low end ("... the horizontal and the vertical..."). I'd expect an upper limit to the effort put into scaling MySQL up ("we already have a high-end DB, why waste the effort?"), but I don't see them abandoning it.
Being able to sell a complete vertical solution, with their own CPU, OS, and DB system is probably quite appealing to Oracle.
and now, IBM execs are starting to wonder if maybe they shouldn't have walked away
Why would you buy Sun if you didn't want their hardware? It would be a questionable move at best.
Agreed. I think what this means is that Oracle DOES want Sun's hardware. Maybe not SPARC (which I guess they could hive off completely to Fujitsu), but they now can provide every single item in the checklist.
and let's not forget Larry Ellison's foray into network computing...
Actually. I think it might well go the other way. That Oracle decided to fork/clone Red Hat shows one thing - Oracle WANTS to have an OS.
Now they have one.
We're nerds. This is about the functioning of the justice system; law and order. In a society where there are no rules, the ones who will be getting oppressed and exploited are going to be us. The ones who'll be having the rules bent their way are going to be the thugs, not us. News about law and order and freedom, their functioning or lack thereof, is news for nerds.
Now, imagine if you could fetch that 100% oomph when needed from a server farm instead of your own computer...
I think that just shifts the problem from CPU power to bandwidth (which is already a problem area).
this is why PCs evolved in the first place - mainframes were essentially a server with ... very poor, very high latency bandwidth (driving to the office to get punched cards... that's a 1 day ping time).
the raw performance figures keep going up, but the relationship shifts back and forth. putting all the smarts in the cloud just makes bandwidth that much more critical. if you can't have the bandwidth, maybe it makes sense to have the smarts at the end nodes.
Second, Creationism is currently operating under the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity. They don't actually want to be 'accepted', they just want to grab as many headlines as possible. They want big, showy, and silly public debates with well-respected scientists.
I'd second that. Creationism seems to appeal to the segment of the religio-fundies that thrive on a "siege mentality", that "everybody is against us". What's useful to them is a large number of people "attacking" them, they don't (and won't) care about the legitimacy or quality of the criticisms of their ideas.
The third, and biggest problem with Creationism is that it is a concept, not a field of study. You don't grant degrees in 'ideas'. We don't have a degree for perpetual motion machines, proving Goldbach's conjecture, or any other crackpottery you can imagine. A degree is rewarded for a field of study. What exactly are Creationists going to study?
Does anybody offer a "degree in evolution"?
What all these guys are doing is providing ideas for the next set of worm writers
To make decisions out of fear can kill you.
This is soundbite-y but not really meaningful. Being afraid to walk into a cage with a hungry lion in it will keep you alive.
The parent post seem to make a lot of sense, and even if what you're saying is true, it doesn't really answer. That there were a "portion of engineers" who felt that way doesn't necessarily mean that was the final reason why they did it.
And I'm not sure I agree with the "Sun ought to have put everything into the GPL" thing. Why? The GPL and the FSF movement is a wonderful thing, but *Sun* does not *owe* their code to the movement such that they ought to do everything for the benefit of it, without considering other ramifications to things they may also care about.
heh :-)
well, I'm thinking human populations are more effectively limited by other humans (whether chaotically, via war, or through progress, which tends to lead to family planning), the "contribution" of malaria et al seems minimal in comparison. plus its not like ALL mosquitos carry malaria, there are plenty of geographical zones where they're just pests and won't kill you?
actually, when I wrote my original post I did think about smallpox. but as a virus does it count as a "species"?
also, smallpox just affects us, but getting rid of mosquitos would also make things better for other mammals; exterminating smallpox, all the benefits accrue to us. what about mosquitos?
actually, I already know. that's why I said "generally". and, if it whooshed over your head, what I'm curious about is, would it be safe to just exterminate any/all parasites (beginning with the mosquito)?
y'know....
generally, every life form slots in somewhere in the ecosystem "in balance" - it either keeps something else from overrunning the place (rabbits becoming a pest in Australia due to lack of predators), or is, say, a food supply for something else (rabbits in places where there ARE predators)
what I want to know is, is there such a slot for the mosquito? what "purpose" do they serve? are they a food supply for anybody, or do they just make life miserable for everything else? would there be problems for the ecosystem if the mosquito becomes extinct? because if there isn't, I can't think of a better candidate for extermination than the mosquito. if we could get rid of them, would they be the first species humanity exterminated AND made the world a better place by doing so?
(yes, i know, it's gonna take a LOT of laser-shooting robot drones to rid the planet of 'em... hrm, maybe that's how skynet REALLY comes about :-)
this is a guy you'd know, otherwise you wouldn't have his phone number (and in any case, he wouldn't want to get your MMS if he doesn't know you). if it's an MMS worth sending, why not just call/message him and ask him for his email address? And once you've got it you don't need to ask him again (same as how you got his phone number in the first place)
(there's actually a practical problem here in the iPhone's lack of copy-paste, but that's another matter :-)
Yes, but then if your phone has a well designed address book (like the iPhone) then all you need is one piece â" their name.
That's not what he means. If you know someone's number, but not their email (either on your phone, or at all), then even with the best address book ever (like the Motorola V980), it won't help you.
I'd always thought Chrome was the first step in the declaration of war against MS (Android being the next). I mean... a browser with a task manager?
right; IIRC this was one of the reasons the army's web servers were running on Macs (I don't know if they still are?). you could maybe take them down, but you certainly couldn't penetrate them and deface their sites, since without a command shell there's no way to make code bomb and drop you back to it.
a command shell is only a feature if there're things you WANT to do in it; almost by definition, the people who wanted Macs didn't want to do things with a command line. Automation/etc. tasks were done with hypercard, or (non-command-line) scripting
I loved Caldera OpenLinux.
And, I think its clear their developers did too - they certainly went "over and above the call of duty" for their installer (Lizard?):
for v3.1, I remember, during the stage where other installers would just have a progress bar run through all the files being copied, it launched a solitaire game so you could have something other to do, if you had to sit in front of the terminal during file copy.
This was right before mcbride and gang waltzed in and tore it all down.
it should also be pointed out that it's been a *long* time since any 32-bit-only SPARC machines were available, so 64-bit-only Solaris isn't really leaving anybody behind