I put together some rather monster spreadsheets with database sources for some sample analysis last year.
I'm not sure exactly how many records we used, but I believe it was in the 6 figure range. It was most certainly no less than 100 k, and I did it all using OO.org Base(with MySQL) / OO.org Spreadsheet.
The problem is that Microsoft prevents the commodization of software products through abusive monopoly practices and proprietary protocols.
That's the "issue" the EC is trying to fix.
Rather than legislating compatibility while MS laughs at the EC, it makes more sense to commit the EC to making substantial purchases of competitors prodcuts, using government fiat to procure protocol documentation in order for the competition to build in this interoperability.
The goal here is not to fnd the best solution given the current market which has been contorted by microsofts monopoly (this is not a matter for debate, both the us and eu have found this to be true). The goal is insure a acompetitive market in which there are multiple vendors producing interoperable, commodity software.
600 million euros is a good start, but there's a better solution if the EC wants to solve the MS monopoly (and yes, i know that the decision equires documented protocols).
It's simple; the EC should require that a certain (large) percentage of government computers should run alternate OSes. Microsoft shall be required to supply all docs needed for vendors to create interoperability. The power of the government purchasing vastly exceeds the power of fines.
Show me a miracle! Not just a long shot chance, but an honest to god miracle (this means not someone who was resuscitated 5 minutes after death, or 1 hour after being frozen underwater. I'm talking about ashes->living. I'm talking about buried->talking)
I want evidence, or better yet, a "proof". A proof of miracles, or God, would be fine.
Barring proof, highly suggestive evidence, something that can be tested via the scientific method, would be good too.
You see, I can conduct all kinds of experiments that point at evolution, and I can dig up core samples with fossils that suggest it as well. I can do DNA analysis that point to it as well, and given enough time, I can develop an observational methadology to prove evolution going forward.
Do that for me with God. Or Miracles.
That's the difference between faith and science. Faith relies upon, "well, you can't prove it isn't true." Science relies upon, "All the evidence points in that direction, so lets test it."
It's stupid to base an argument on the impossibility of proving a negative result; yet thats what most creationists do. In this sense, as Richard Dawkins would say, religion is nothing more than a mental virus. A piece of intellectual stupidity that seems to resonate with people as an intellectual comfort blanket, no different than the ostrich sticking his head in the sand (or up his rear).
That's not to say there isn't value to spirituality. But creationism, and fundamentalist beliefs in the "reality" of the bible? Hogwash.
Average developer or administrator? Your system will be more "stable" under heavy loads, with fewer/no processes starved for CPU cycled. The new scheduler (building on Kovilas work in an unfriendly fashion) better divides up processor time among multiple tasks.
Average user? Multimedia tasks will not skip or stutter while the system is under load. The opposite of Vista's network performance taking a nose dive while playing MP3s, Linux systems with the new scheduler will see little/no impact from background/normal operations on their gaming, music, and video. Your mouse won't skip around while the system is loaded, and responsiveness will remain high except in situations involving super-heavy I/O usage (I/O starvation is more difficult to solve than CPU starvation).
It actually makes a substantial difference, and the system is much more fun to use.
here's an update: checking whether Wine could be a factor in your problem i just tested latest CFS against latest SD with a 3D game running under Wine: v2.6.22-ck1 versus v2.6.22-cfsv19 (to get the most comparable kernel), using Quake 3 Arena Demo under Wine (0.9.41). Here are the results in a pretty graph: http://people.redhat.com/mingo/misc/cfs-vs-sd-wine-quake.jpg or, in text
Quake3-under-Wine behavior under SD/-ck: framerate breaks down massively during any kind of load. The game is completely unusable with 1 CPU loop running already!
Quake3-under-Wine behavior under CFS: framerate goes down gently with load, gameplay remains smooth. Framerate is still pretty acceptable and the game is playable even with a 500% CPU overload. The graph looks good and the framerate reduction goes roughly along the expected 1/n 'fairness curve' - so it all looks pretty healthy. [Note: quake3 keeps its fully 41 fps even with 1 competing loop running on the CPU due to "sleeper fairness".]
Even on the cable/FiOS networks, and switch to "switched" (or packet) video entirely.
Think of it this way; how many hours of the content that is streamed out to the population actually gets watched, versus the number of hours pumped onto the airwaves, or into cable/fiber networks?
On Comcast, I get 20+ HD channels, 200+ regular channels, with the bandwidth of ONE regular (non-digital) channel allocated to my ENTIRE NODE for internet access (50-400 people, give or take).
If all those channels were allocated to data, with packet video streaming through the node, there would be much more room for everything.
It's the same with the airwaves.
Change _everything_ over to MPEG4, make everything packet based, and watch the available bandwidth skyrocket. It's not like the FCC isn't already forcing everyone to change their analog TVs to digital TVs. And it's not even gov't interference in the market; spectrum allocation is already done entirely by the government, and is currently monopolized by regional players.
Miguel should resign, or be fired. Sadly, he is the linchpin on several of these big projects. I hope Novell can find someone to replace him.
Miguel says crap like, "We never made a promise to avoid patents.
BULLSHIT. From Novell's website Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?
No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.
Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.
Of course, it should be understood that under the patent agreement each party will promise not to assert patents against customers. The patent agreement does not cover the development activities of Novell or Microsoft, and Novell has no plans to changes it development policies relating to patents.
Please re-read the bolded section (emphasis added). Someone need to smack Miguel in the face; he's sounding more and more like an MS hack everyday.
This sort of discussion is demonstration that Miguel is nothing more than an MS hack, or simply very, very delusional.
As an observer, nothing makes more sense to me than this point:
You've practically proven, all by yourself, that DIS-29500 isn't at the level of committee draft, much less final ISO submission. One of the basic responsibilities of a technical committee (see, for instance, JEDEC JM-21L) is clearly defining the requirements for conformance and clearing legal rights for those requirements. According to you, that hasn't been done and here we are at the ISO final vote stage. ECMA-376 needs to go back to committee until it's actually ready for prime time.
Miguel's responses have been, "It'll be fixed, it'll be fixed, it'll be fixed!"
Well, if so, why the hell is MS trying to fast track this semi-broken puppy?
Not that we can rest on our laurels, but Firefox has reached the market share level that really matter; "adequate penetration".
Misquoting the Supreme Court, I can't define exactly what that is, but I know it when I see it.
Firefox is a real force in the realm of web browsers. Even if it hovered at 17-18% forever, that would be enough to insure that most websites, and most webapps support Firefox. Even Microsoft's latest web offerings work on Firefox (Windows Live, Silverlight, etc. ..). That's a huge deal.
We don't need to dominate the market (OSS). It's nice when we do, but its not necessary. All that is necessary is for OSS software to have enough of a toehold to remain relevant in the minds of web developers. Few companies are willing to discard 1/5-1/6 of their customers.
If Linux could ever get to 15-17% desktop marketshare, we would see tons of Linux games. Not 100% of games would be ported, but many, many games would be.
Gratz Firefox! Gratz Mozilla Foundation! You did it.
Frankly, its a shame that you can't get the equivalent of a PCI (or PCI-X) "wireless bridge". I would love a DD-WRT box that went into my system, and managed all aspects of my networking for me, addressable via some kind of internal IP address scheme.
This would give you all sorts of cool abilities; control it via your browser or any sort of "internal" application (something like Apple's airport stuff).
Hell, even given basic engineering skills this wouldn't take more than 3-4 chips, one for the "ethernet" card, one for the "bridge", one for RAM, and maybe one for ROM, if you didn't network "boot" the bridge.
For a few years now, as that was the only platform that really, reliably ran Linux.
Intel's been good to us Linux folk, and Nvidia has been easy enough to deal with.
If AMD comes out with an end-to-end Linux solution, CPU, GPU, and a good Linux-friendly partner for chipset, I'll seriously consider switching back to AMD parts.
The PSP, PS2, PS3, N64, GC, Wii, and DS all use OpenGL. Graphics on the PS3 are at least equivalent to the 360 (and I say this as a 360 owner who doesn't own a PS3). The architecture might be more difficult to program for (crazy CPU, etc . . . )) but how does that demonstrate that OpenGL is inferior?
We're in the chemicals business, and we regularly get applicants that have an incredible resume, and a well respected Phd or Masters degree.
Sadly, they often can't answer the basic, first-line interview questions. It's really hit-or-miss, and we've been much better served with people who are less qualified, and less set in their ways.
*grin* We also do well poaching people from some of our contractors:)
Companies don't just say "hey, it's been three years, time to give you a 30% raise". Instead, the person goes to another company for the increase. Therefore, companies see that behavior as subsidizing the training for the competition, ignoring the fact that replacing the person that just left will cost more than giving them the raise in the first place.
This is idiotic. I do not understand why companies are not willing to grow their workforce organically.
Some of the best companies out there do this (McDonalds, Walmart, Allstate, AT Kearny), and it radically changes the attitudes of the workers.
Giving a 5% raise to a worker who started out a $30,000 doing crap work, but has grown into managing millions of dollars of sales is moronic, and means the management sucks. Pay your workers what they're worth, give them good benefits, and productivity goes way up, and churn goes way down.
Some of my friends work at companies like that, and I don't get it. Particularly when the company is making oodles of money; why be cheap? You're really only hurting yourself.
The difference between pro-Globalization and anti-Globalization people is that the pro-Globalization people are capable of looking at longer term trends, while the anti people pick up every single news article as an symptom of impending doom.
Free Trade, Globalization, and all that jazz cause economic changes. Not all of these changes are good; many hurt people. Net, however, we see improvement for all parties concerned, which is exactly what is happening.
Americans, Indians, Chinese, European; more jobs, more productivity, cheaper goods, better services. Everybody wins as nations specialize in what they are good at. The economic changes that lead to that can be painful.
It just gives me a giggle to watch the hysterics that surround these tiny macroeconomic changes. Particularly on Slashdot, where _every single_ economic article is full of posts describing impending economic doom where the dollar collapses, destroying every portion of the world economy, nuclear war happens, and we starve to death.
History tends to trend up (or at least it has so far). Most of mankind tends to give a shit about the rest of it. Eliminating borders and opening up trade is good for everybody, because it allows us all to share our technology and resources.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not for you to determine when you are, or are not, a laughing stock.
;)
The subject of a joke does not get to determine whether or not it is funny.
See other poster.
Fuel is definitely not subsidized in the U.S. In my area, we pay Federal, State, County and City fuel taxes.
For an example of subsidized fuel, look at Iran. You can buy gasoline there for approximately $0.15 per gallon.
Yep, seems outdated.
Just pulled up NeoOffice. No problem creating a sheet with 60,000 rows. Not sure what the actual limit is now.
lol I love it :)
:) :) :)
Slashdot doesn't make me giggle out loud very often
I do not believe so.
I put together some rather monster spreadsheets with database sources for some sample analysis last year.
I'm not sure exactly how many records we used, but I believe it was in the 6 figure range. It was most certainly no less than 100 k, and I did it all using OO.org Base(with MySQL) / OO.org Spreadsheet.
The install base of the ODF format plus the user interface of Lotus Notes!
:) )
I can smell success!
(just a joke, I'm actually a fan of both
You're looking at this wrong.
The problem is that Microsoft prevents the commodization of software products through abusive monopoly practices and proprietary protocols.
That's the "issue" the EC is trying to fix.
Rather than legislating compatibility while MS laughs at the EC, it makes more sense to commit the EC to making substantial purchases of competitors prodcuts, using government fiat to procure protocol documentation in order for the competition to build in this interoperability.
The goal here is not to fnd the best solution given the current market which has been contorted by microsofts monopoly (this is not a matter for debate, both the us and eu have found this to be true). The goal is insure a acompetitive market in which there are multiple vendors producing interoperable, commodity software.
600 million euros is a good start, but there's a better solution if the EC wants to solve the MS monopoly (and yes, i know that the decision equires documented protocols).
It's simple; the EC should require that a certain (large) percentage of government computers should run alternate OSes. Microsoft shall be required to supply all docs needed for vendors to create interoperability. The power of the government purchasing vastly exceeds the power of fines.
A challenge:
Show me a miracle! Not just a long shot chance, but an honest to god miracle (this means not someone who was resuscitated 5 minutes after death, or 1 hour after being frozen underwater. I'm talking about ashes->living. I'm talking about buried->talking)
I want evidence, or better yet, a "proof". A proof of miracles, or God, would be fine.
Barring proof, highly suggestive evidence, something that can be tested via the scientific method, would be good too.
You see, I can conduct all kinds of experiments that point at evolution, and I can dig up core samples with fossils that suggest it as well. I can do DNA analysis that point to it as well, and given enough time, I can develop an observational methadology to prove evolution going forward.
Do that for me with God. Or Miracles.
That's the difference between faith and science. Faith relies upon, "well, you can't prove it isn't true." Science relies upon, "All the evidence points in that direction, so lets test it."
It's stupid to base an argument on the impossibility of proving a negative result; yet thats what most creationists do. In this sense, as Richard Dawkins would say, religion is nothing more than a mental virus. A piece of intellectual stupidity that seems to resonate with people as an intellectual comfort blanket, no different than the ostrich sticking his head in the sand (or up his rear).
That's not to say there isn't value to spirituality. But creationism, and fundamentalist beliefs in the "reality" of the bible? Hogwash.
Microsoft should not be designing standard.
MS submits a standard expecting it to get fasttracked. MS bribes decision makers to make this so.
The the standards committee comes back and says, "we need these changes", MS says, "Too late. We've shipped. Take it or leave it."
This is not good behavior.
Average user? Multimedia tasks will not skip or stutter while the system is under load. The opposite of Vista's network performance taking a nose dive while playing MP3s, Linux systems with the new scheduler will see little/no impact from background/normal operations on their gaming, music, and video. Your mouse won't skip around while the system is loaded, and responsiveness will remain high except in situations involving super-heavy I/O usage (I/O starvation is more difficult to solve than CPU starvation).
It actually makes a substantial difference, and the system is much more fun to use.
There are some informal test results (LKML) from kernel trap:
here's an update: checking whether Wine could be a factor in your
problem i just tested latest CFS against latest SD with a 3D game
running under Wine: v2.6.22-ck1 versus v2.6.22-cfsv19 (to get the
most comparable kernel), using Quake 3 Arena Demo under Wine (0.9.41).
Here are the results in a pretty graph:
http://people.redhat.com/mingo/misc/cfs-vs-sd-wine-quake.jpg
or, in text Quake3-under-Wine behavior under SD/-ck: framerate breaks down massively
during any kind of load. The game is completely unusable with 1 CPU loop
running already!
Quake3-under-Wine behavior under CFS: framerate goes down gently with
load, gameplay remains smooth. Framerate is still pretty acceptable and
the game is playable even with a 500% CPU overload. The graph looks good
and the framerate reduction goes roughly along the expected 1/n
'fairness curve' - so it all looks pretty healthy. [Note: quake3 keeps
its fully 41 fps even with 1 competing loop running on the CPU due to
"sleeper fairness".]
I've seen the behavior of being unable to print from Vista to XP-connected printers.
I won't use Windows, but a had a few good guffaws about that.
Even on the cable/FiOS networks, and switch to "switched" (or packet) video entirely.
Think of it this way; how many hours of the content that is streamed out to the population actually gets watched, versus the number of hours pumped onto the airwaves, or into cable/fiber networks?
On Comcast, I get 20+ HD channels, 200+ regular channels, with the bandwidth of ONE regular (non-digital) channel allocated to my ENTIRE NODE for internet access (50-400 people, give or take).
If all those channels were allocated to data, with packet video streaming through the node, there would be much more room for everything.
It's the same with the airwaves.
Change _everything_ over to MPEG4, make everything packet based, and watch the available bandwidth skyrocket. It's not like the FCC isn't already forcing everyone to change their analog TVs to digital TVs. And it's not even gov't interference in the market; spectrum allocation is already done entirely by the government, and is currently monopolized by regional players.
Miguel should resign, or be fired. Sadly, he is the linchpin on several of these big projects. I hope Novell can find someone to replace him.
Miguel says crap like, "We never made a promise to avoid patents.
BULLSHIT.
From Novell's website
Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?
No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.
Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.
Of course, it should be understood that under the patent agreement each party will promise not to assert patents against customers. The patent agreement does not cover the development activities of Novell or Microsoft, and Novell has no plans to changes it development policies relating to patents.
Please re-read the bolded section (emphasis added). Someone need to smack Miguel in the face; he's sounding more and more like an MS hack everyday.
I second that. Mod parent up.
This sort of discussion is demonstration that Miguel is nothing more than an MS hack, or simply very, very delusional.
As an observer, nothing makes more sense to me than this point:
You've practically proven, all by yourself, that DIS-29500 isn't at the level of committee draft, much less final ISO submission. One of the basic responsibilities of a technical committee (see, for instance, JEDEC JM-21L) is clearly defining the requirements for conformance and clearing legal rights for those requirements. According to you, that hasn't been done and here we are at the ISO final vote stage. ECMA-376 needs to go back to committee until it's actually ready for prime time.
Miguel's responses have been, "It'll be fixed, it'll be fixed, it'll be fixed!"
Well, if so, why the hell is MS trying to fast track this semi-broken puppy?
Not that we can rest on our laurels, but Firefox has reached the market share level that really matter; "adequate penetration".
.). That's a huge deal.
Misquoting the Supreme Court, I can't define exactly what that is, but I know it when I see it.
Firefox is a real force in the realm of web browsers. Even if it hovered at 17-18% forever, that would be enough to insure that most websites, and most webapps support Firefox. Even Microsoft's latest web offerings work on Firefox (Windows Live, Silverlight, etc. .
We don't need to dominate the market (OSS). It's nice when we do, but its not necessary. All that is necessary is for OSS software to have enough of a toehold to remain relevant in the minds of web developers. Few companies are willing to discard 1/5-1/6 of their customers.
If Linux could ever get to 15-17% desktop marketshare, we would see tons of Linux games. Not 100% of games would be ported, but many, many games would be.
Gratz Firefox! Gratz Mozilla Foundation! You did it.
You would think so, no? Why not use TCP/IP?
Frankly, its a shame that you can't get the equivalent of a PCI (or PCI-X) "wireless bridge". I would love a DD-WRT box that went into my system, and managed all aspects of my networking for me, addressable via some kind of internal IP address scheme.
This would give you all sorts of cool abilities; control it via your browser or any sort of "internal" application (something like Apple's airport stuff).
Hell, even given basic engineering skills this wouldn't take more than 3-4 chips, one for the "ethernet" card, one for the "bridge", one for RAM, and maybe one for ROM, if you didn't network "boot" the bridge.
For a few years now, as that was the only platform that really, reliably ran Linux.
Intel's been good to us Linux folk, and Nvidia has been easy enough to deal with.
If AMD comes out with an end-to-end Linux solution, CPU, GPU, and a good Linux-friendly partner for chipset, I'll seriously consider switching back to AMD parts.
I think there's a patch for that in CVS.
The exception to this is sufficient lighting.
;-)
If you can blanket an area with enough wide-spectrum lighting (sun-like), I think I would feel safer, both driving and walking.
By sufficient, I mean excessive; like the inside of a shopping mall or something. Enough to make you forget its night time.
Obviously, this doesn't lend itself to energy efficiency
Well done, sir. I was about to go into a tirade, and very neatly make an ass out of myself.
Huh?
Where did that come from?
The PSP, PS2, PS3, N64, GC, Wii, and DS all use OpenGL. Graphics on the PS3 are at least equivalent to the 360 (and I say this as a 360 owner who doesn't own a PS3). The architecture might be more difficult to program for (crazy CPU, etc . . . )) but how does that demonstrate that OpenGL is inferior?
We're in the chemicals business, and we regularly get applicants that have an incredible resume, and a well respected Phd or Masters degree.
:)
Sadly, they often can't answer the basic, first-line interview questions. It's really hit-or-miss, and we've been much better served with people who are less qualified, and less set in their ways.
*grin* We also do well poaching people from some of our contractors
Companies don't just say "hey, it's been three years, time to give you a 30% raise". Instead, the person goes to another company for the increase. Therefore, companies see that behavior as subsidizing the training for the competition, ignoring the fact that replacing the person that just left will cost more than giving them the raise in the first place.
This is idiotic. I do not understand why companies are not willing to grow their workforce organically.
Some of the best companies out there do this (McDonalds, Walmart, Allstate, AT Kearny), and it radically changes the attitudes of the workers.
Giving a 5% raise to a worker who started out a $30,000 doing crap work, but has grown into managing millions of dollars of sales is moronic, and means the management sucks. Pay your workers what they're worth, give them good benefits, and productivity goes way up, and churn goes way down.
Some of my friends work at companies like that, and I don't get it. Particularly when the company is making oodles of money; why be cheap? You're really only hurting yourself.
It's not surprising :)
It's expected.
The difference between pro-Globalization and anti-Globalization people is that the pro-Globalization people are capable of looking at longer term trends, while the anti people pick up every single news article as an symptom of impending doom.
Free Trade, Globalization, and all that jazz cause economic changes. Not all of these changes are good; many hurt people. Net, however, we see improvement for all parties concerned, which is exactly what is happening.
Americans, Indians, Chinese, European; more jobs, more productivity, cheaper goods, better services. Everybody wins as nations specialize in what they are good at. The economic changes that lead to that can be painful.
It just gives me a giggle to watch the hysterics that surround these tiny macroeconomic changes. Particularly on Slashdot, where _every single_ economic article is full of posts describing impending economic doom where the dollar collapses, destroying every portion of the world economy, nuclear war happens, and we starve to death.
History tends to trend up (or at least it has so far). Most of mankind tends to give a shit about the rest of it. Eliminating borders and opening up trade is good for everybody, because it allows us all to share our technology and resources.
Anything else is stupid.