You're not getting my point. This is not about government regulations or statistical trends. This is about personal choices and some people choose to drive a thrifty car, and other people choose to move closer to work. Blaming the SUV as a group is just stereotyping, and if you look that up, you'll see the first meaning "A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image". Oversimplified, as in 'SUVs are to blame for this' focussing on one overall statistic and forgetting that miles driven matter too and that not all SUVs use more gas than all cars.
Statistics don't prove any specifics, they help to simplify reality, that's all they do. You yourself are abusing the statistics to basically say that that cadillac is better than that escape, because it falls in a group with a better CAFE. But if they made a group for the cadillac, it would have a lower CAFE than a group for the CAFE.
The SUV+driver combination may well be more efficient than the car behind it if the driver behind it has a 60 minute commute and the SUV driver a 10 minute commute.
Not this escape which gets 23/28 MPG using less than 522 gallons on 12000 miles in the city...
Too bad they haven't gotten the hybrid escape in yet, its promised 40 MPG urban beats the non-hybrid civic (all right, the hybrid civic beats that again at 46 MPG urban). So then any non-hybrid car will be labeled gas guzzler?
So what if the average MPG of SUVs is worse, that doesn't make the guzzling little cadillac better than the 4cyl escape.
The 11/21 MPG for the viper is pretty close to the 13/17 of the Hummer H2, but that's not even that much lower than 14/18 of the age-old Suburban, which chassis was used for the hummer, and which got 13/17 itself seven years and longer ago, but didn't get such a reaction then... What is so new now?
All right, the rotten apples make the batch stink. It's just a bit upsetting if you're driving one of the more nimble and fuel efficient SUVs, and not even a lot of miles per year on it, to see people badmouthing SUVs as gas guzzling swervers. I actually had a Stealth before, a fun sports car to drive, accelerated extremely well. But it got a worse MPG than my current compact SUV... Plus, the rear-seat was visible, but not useful.
Well he most probably at least drove it off the lot where he bought it, and there is only a slight chance that he lives less than a mile from that place and the ramp of the cargo plane, so it's pretty save to say he drove more than zero miles with it...
But for the rest: Yes it is speculation how much he drove in it. And that's just what I'm saying. Driving 20k miles per year in a civic uses much more gasoline than driving 12k miles in a escape.
It's speculation to equate 'SUV' to 'high volume gasoline waster' when many non SUVs get worse milage than many compact SUVs. And it is also indifferent to condemn SUVs without looking at people's driving habits. I feel a "How long is your commute" bumper sticker coming up.
Perhaps he should blow up a car that he pulled by donkey from the local automobile graveyard. Otherwise it's like a murderer preaching the fifth commandment to his victim-to-be 'thou shalt not kill' (hypocrisy), or possible like a rear bumpersticker that says 'You are speeding' (sarcasm).
"Around here we have people who complain about urban sprawl and the elimination of farm land. Guess where they live? Yup. In suburban housing developments built on former farms."
Hmm. I'm wondering if that is irony, hypocrisy, or just stupidity. Perhaps they realize it and is it actually sarcasm.
"we're going to blow up my Nissan Pathfinder." "a tribute to gas guzzlers, a dying trend (we hope)"
Emphasis mine. So he's basically protesting his own SUV, maybe even after putting 100k miles on it in just three years. Talk about hypocrisy.
The people protesting gas guzzlers should also protest people that don't move closer to work to reduce their long daily commutes. The "M" in MPG stands for miles you know...
Plus why all the focus on SUVs as a whole? Let's look at the facts: Sure, there are some SUVs out there that are plain rediculous, but there are a lot of Sport sedans, minivans and pickup trucks too that are bigger gas guzzlers than many compactSUVs.
I suddenly realize that I read (for example here) that it is common belief that blue is a soothing, relaxing color that makes people underestimate how much time passes by.
Blue skies, Blue ocean, no problems around...
Hmm, the standard windows desktop background is blueish too...
"(but nowhere near the complexity of a JPEG or MPEG decoder!)"
In implementations such as those, the algorithmic complexity is not specifically the factor slowing it down, but the large ISO/ITU standards documents filled with details written in unreadable wording are the main factor slowing it down. Along with the extreme level of optimizations for speed, memory usage, and (coverage) testing that is (of course not to forget power usage, and implementation in fixed-point with optimized rounding&saturation adds a lot to the time too).
Sure, one can quickly hack up a bunch of lines of code resulting in a JPEG decoder. But it won't be tested very well, it will be slow, need a lot of memory, may have rounding and overflow problems, etc...
As with everything, quality and quantity are interrelated.
In Europe, GM sells the 'Opel' brand of cars. They sell well but they always seem to make each of their models as ugly a possible. This new concept will allow them to explore a whole new field of ugliness that was impossible before.
I tried both a Clie (PalmOS) and a Ipaq (PocketPC) in the store, and could write on the Clie in 1 minute and still couldn't get my name written on the Ipaq... So I bought a Clie (for that, and for the great battery life)
If this Jot thing is anything like what was on that Ipaq, I'm sure somebody will make a graffiti-compatible input for palmos6 or whichever version number they give it.
"the long term goals of the Free Software movement."
AFAIK, there is none. It will go where the tide and waves will take it.
Where do you get it that there is a goal? It may be heading somewhere, but the best anybody can do is guess whereto it is heading.
RMS may have a goal, but that's his personal goal, or maybe the goal of his FSF. He does not get to decide where the Free Software community is heading to. No single person does. Not on the long term, not on the short term. RMS did start much of it with the GNU license, his GNU projects, and the FSF, but the community is bigger than that now, and he is not controlling it.
I'm convinced a lot of Free Software coders think similar to me: When I write code in my own time and then share it, then I dont want somebody to take that and improve it, sell it, and then refuse to give back the result to us. That's not why I'm sharing it. I'm not doing it to let some company sell what I/we made. I'll do that for a paycheck or royalties thank you (I think software companies should not be trying to make software similar to the good commodoty stuff that is available in Open Source form. They should focus on specialized software and custom jobs).
They're welcome to save money by using the code that I shared internally, but when they want to make money selling a modified version, they have to share the source under the same terms I did. When I write something in my own time, I get the copyright, and I get to decide what happens with it. When I share it, I want it to stay shared, even if/after others (people or companies) modify it. That's where the BSD license falls apart for me, somebody can take it, improve it, sell it for a nice profit, and laugh at me for being suckered in doing their grunt work. I want the users to profit from the shared work, not some company in the middle that adds a neat scrollbar and a gui installer. I don't want the end user to be charged for a modified work, I want them and anybody to have and use it. And I want them to be able to improve it, but then I also want to see the improvements shared back. I'll often choose GNU over BSD for that reason. If you don't like it, too bad. Take it or leave it, but I'm not coding for somebody else to grab and run. They can grab, but not run afterwards.
A company can take GPL code, improve it, and use it internally. They only have to make the source available outside the company if they also make the binary/object code available outside the company.
Basically GPL allows companies to save or make money by using GPLed works themselves, and to make money helping (consulting) others to use GPLed works, but they are not allowed to make money by hijacking it.
If you look up how much cash MSFT has and how much other companies keep in cash, and then look up how much of their earnings were paid in dividents by MSFT (none) and the other companies, it should become clearer. The motive for companies is not to make money and stock it in a cash pile like MSFT is doing, but the motive is to use it for growth or if that is not possible to return the profits to the owners.
For one, Viral infections are often much better treatable than cancer currently is, but both are considered a disease. GPL is a license, not a disease.
So instead of calling it 'viral' or 'cancerous', which imply a disease, a term like 'infectious' would already be better, because laughter can be infectuous too. But that term does not fit either, especially when used with lawyers in the room (see the dictionary)...
If an adjective must be used, I suggest using something like 'genuine', or better yet 'free'
(I get a strange sudden urge to make a script that 'A HREF's all words in a text to dictionary.com).
"While another 2345 users are trying to update the same records."
"Think of credit card verification system."
Ok, I will bite...
If that is happening in your credit card verification system, it should block all the 2345 record updates and flag the card as stolen by a mob of 2344 people.
"the vendors might stop shipping us such lousy programs"
Actually, probably a lot would stop shipping any programs. If they didn't, they would see their market suddenly swamped by remarkably similar 'clones' of their software... The lawyers of course would love something like that, more work for them...
If you want to get higher quality programs, get a good support contract with the software maker so that they fix bug on the double when you report them.
If that is not possible with the software make you're eyeing, then switch vendor or accept the software as-is.
Support and warranty for the product that you're buying, that's how it works. There are too many 'release and run away' software releases out there, but that's the 'AS IS' sale, as clearly stated in the license. You can buy a car with a warranty, or buy it off a lot 'AS IS', same for software. You choose.
All probabilities can be used as predictions. Probabilities are calculated done based on system knowledge and observations. Past probabilities still do exist, they help distinguishing between luck and destiny. For example: Given all detailed infomation that we have now about all past launches, what was the probability of a second failure? I'm not asking 'did it fail', because we know that it didn't, but I'm asking were we lucky or were we safe?
That can be calculated too, and it is of something in the past. It's something that you can look at afterwards by re-calculating the probability with all the detailed information that were unknown factors before, such as weather, post-mission equipment inspection results, etc. It is useful because we can use information that was unavailable before those past launches. That may help improve the model used to predict the reliability of future launches, plus it may help finding weak spots.
A way to look at it is: 'assuming we do all those launches again in similar weather and with the equipment, parts, and systems in the same state, would we have a large risk of getting more than one accident'.
The 99% reliability estimation I gave was made based only on the past results. It's still a prediction, albeit maybe not a very reliable one... Given no other information, using the past results can be used as a predictor for the future probability...
Of course I'm forgetting that the shuttles will need more maintenance than when they were new, which may reduce the reliability (just like a car). But then again too, they will have a lot more experience doing things too, or they may be aware of the aging and spend more time doing preventative maintenance which might offset the probability towards a higher reliability.
And since I can only guess (random selection) about those other factors, the best estimate for the future probability that I can make is based on the past results.
Well, STS113 is up in space now, so they launched around 113 shuttles, of which one catastrophic failure. So I'd say they're getting more than 99% right now. Better than all except the soyuz, but AFAIK those aren't launched with people on board each time.
Big part of software development is often communication and interaction with the customer. Now it may be that in some of those countries many programmers will be fairly or very well versed in the languages. But not all will be, plus the distance and time zone problems will add to the communication and interaction problems. You just can't do everything over the phone and email, some things just need the engineers and the customer locked up in a conference room with coffee and a whiteboard, and flying people around the planet costs money and time too.
Sure, you may get cheaper software, but it won't be exactly what you want, or it won't be as effective a product as it could be.
Some jobs will move to the cheap regions, mainly the jobs (usually considered boring) that can be easily written in a spec, or that can be done by a completely separated team with minimal externally driven spec changes. Other jobs will remain available closer to the customer, and that is not just sales.
Basically, aided by the advent of open source software taking the role of commodoty software, this will mean that US and European programmers will relatively do a lot more custom jobs. A lot of the testing and bugfixing (QA), and supporting library development will probably move to the cheaper regions.
Actually, it should make the jobs a lot more fun to the programmers in Europe and the US.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not getting my point. This is not about government regulations or statistical trends. This is about personal choices and some people choose to drive a thrifty car, and other people choose to move closer to work. Blaming the SUV as a group is just stereotyping, and if you look that up, you'll see the first meaning "A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image". Oversimplified, as in 'SUVs are to blame for this' focussing on one overall statistic and forgetting that miles driven matter too and that not all SUVs use more gas than all cars.
Statistics don't prove any specifics, they help to simplify reality, that's all they do. You yourself are abusing the statistics to basically say that that cadillac is better than that escape, because it falls in a group with a better CAFE. But if they made a group for the cadillac, it would have a lower CAFE than a group for the CAFE.
The SUV+driver combination may well be more efficient than the car behind it if the driver behind it has a 60 minute commute and the SUV driver a 10 minute commute.
Not this escape which gets 23/28 MPG using less than 522 gallons on 12000 miles in the city...
Too bad they haven't gotten the hybrid escape in yet, its promised 40 MPG urban beats the non-hybrid civic (all right, the hybrid civic beats that again at 46 MPG urban). So then any non-hybrid car will be labeled gas guzzler?
This little luxury sedan uses more gas than the escape I linked to. There are more like that.
So what if the average MPG of SUVs is worse, that doesn't make the guzzling little cadillac better than the 4cyl escape.
The 11/21 MPG for the viper is pretty close to the 13/17 of the Hummer H2, but that's not even that much lower than 14/18 of the age-old Suburban, which chassis was used for the hummer, and which got 13/17 itself seven years and longer ago, but didn't get such a reaction then... What is so new now?
All right, the rotten apples make the batch stink. It's just a bit upsetting if you're driving one of the more nimble and fuel efficient SUVs, and not even a lot of miles per year on it, to see people badmouthing SUVs as gas guzzling swervers. I actually had a Stealth before, a fun sports car to drive, accelerated extremely well. But it got a worse MPG than my current compact SUV... Plus, the rear-seat was visible, but not useful.
Well he most probably at least drove it off the lot where he bought it, and there is only a slight chance that he lives less than a mile from that place and the ramp of the cargo plane, so it's pretty save to say he drove more than zero miles with it...
But for the rest: Yes it is speculation how much he drove in it. And that's just what I'm saying. Driving 20k miles per year in a civic uses much more gasoline than driving 12k miles in a escape.
It's speculation to equate 'SUV' to 'high volume gasoline waster' when many non SUVs get worse milage than many compact SUVs. And it is also indifferent to condemn SUVs without looking at people's driving habits. I feel a "How long is your commute" bumper sticker coming up.
Perhaps he should blow up a car that he pulled by donkey from the local automobile graveyard. Otherwise it's like a murderer preaching the fifth commandment to his victim-to-be 'thou shalt not kill' (hypocrisy), or possible like a rear bumpersticker that says 'You are speeding' (sarcasm).
"Around here we have people who complain about urban sprawl and the elimination of farm land. Guess where they live? Yup. In suburban housing developments built on former farms."
Hmm. I'm wondering if that is irony, hypocrisy, or just stupidity. Perhaps they realize it and is it actually sarcasm.
I read the article, and it specifically talks about business owners. Individuals don't get that tax break.
"But its gets 27, which I think is mediocre to bad, globally speaking, but its way better than an SUV."
Not always: For example this one gets 28mpg...
"Way more fun to drive"
That is subjective and I'm sure not eveybody will agree with you.
"we're going to blow up my Nissan Pathfinder." "a tribute to gas guzzlers, a dying trend (we hope)"
Emphasis mine. So he's basically protesting his own SUV, maybe even after putting 100k miles on it in just three years. Talk about hypocrisy.
The people protesting gas guzzlers should also protest people that don't move closer to work to reduce their long daily commutes. The "M" in MPG stands for miles you know...
Plus why all the focus on SUVs as a whole? Let's look at the facts: Sure, there are some SUVs out there that are plain rediculous, but there are a lot of Sport sedans, minivans and pickup trucks too that are bigger gas guzzlers than many compact SUVs.
That is just shortsightedness.
I suddenly realize that I read (for example here) that it is common belief that blue is a soothing, relaxing color that makes people underestimate how much time passes by.
Blue skies, Blue ocean, no problems around...
Hmm, the standard windows desktop background is blueish too...
All right. I'll take the challenge. Four years ago: 1999... Lets ask google for some 'proof'.
You learn something new every day uh?
"I have a 2/3 pulldown DVD player which gives me better quality than any PC ever will"
Probably not, especially when used in combination with a projector.
I didn't see a mention of OpenMosix in the article, and the original poster worried specifically about process migration in an openmosix cluster.
"(but nowhere near the complexity of a JPEG or MPEG decoder!)"
In implementations such as those, the algorithmic complexity is not specifically the factor slowing it down, but the large ISO/ITU standards documents filled with details written in unreadable wording are the main factor slowing it down. Along with the extreme level of optimizations for speed, memory usage, and (coverage) testing that is (of course not to forget power usage, and implementation in fixed-point with optimized rounding&saturation adds a lot to the time too).
Sure, one can quickly hack up a bunch of lines of code resulting in a JPEG decoder. But it won't be tested very well, it will be slow, need a lot of memory, may have rounding and overflow problems, etc...
As with everything, quality and quantity are interrelated.
In Europe, GM sells the 'Opel' brand of cars. They sell well but they always seem to make each of their models as ugly a possible. This new concept will allow them to explore a whole new field of ugliness that was impossible before.
I tried both a Clie (PalmOS) and a Ipaq (PocketPC) in the store, and could write on the Clie in 1 minute and still couldn't get my name written on the Ipaq... So I bought a Clie (for that, and for the great battery life)
If this Jot thing is anything like what was on that Ipaq, I'm sure somebody will make a graffiti-compatible input for palmos6 or whichever version number they give it.
I like mplayer too. It uses less CPU than the WMP for playing back videos, plus I love the keyboard shortcuts while viewing.
Time for a PlexPPC, similar to Plex86...
"the long term goals of the Free Software movement."
AFAIK, there is none. It will go where the tide and waves will take it.
Where do you get it that there is a goal? It may be heading somewhere, but the best anybody can do is guess whereto it is heading.
RMS may have a goal, but that's his personal goal, or maybe the goal of his FSF. He does not get to decide where the Free Software community is heading to. No single person does. Not on the long term, not on the short term. RMS did start much of it with the GNU license, his GNU projects, and the FSF, but the community is bigger than that now, and he is not controlling it.
I'm convinced a lot of Free Software coders think similar to me: When I write code in my own time and then share it, then I dont want somebody to take that and improve it, sell it, and then refuse to give back the result to us. That's not why I'm sharing it. I'm not doing it to let some company sell what I/we made. I'll do that for a paycheck or royalties thank you (I think software companies should not be trying to make software similar to the good commodoty stuff that is available in Open Source form. They should focus on specialized software and custom jobs).
They're welcome to save money by using the code that I shared internally, but when they want to make money selling a modified version, they have to share the source under the same terms I did. When I write something in my own time, I get the copyright, and I get to decide what happens with it. When I share it, I want it to stay shared, even if/after others (people or companies) modify it. That's where the BSD license falls apart for me, somebody can take it, improve it, sell it for a nice profit, and laugh at me for being suckered in doing their grunt work. I want the users to profit from the shared work, not some company in the middle that adds a neat scrollbar and a gui installer. I don't want the end user to be charged for a modified work, I want them and anybody to have and use it. And I want them to be able to improve it, but then I also want to see the improvements shared back. I'll often choose GNU over BSD for that reason. If you don't like it, too bad. Take it or leave it, but I'm not coding for somebody else to grab and run. They can grab, but not run afterwards.
A company can take GPL code, improve it, and use it internally. They only have to make the source available outside the company if they also make the binary/object code available outside the company.
Basically GPL allows companies to save or make money by using GPLed works themselves, and to make money helping (consulting) others to use GPLed works, but they are not allowed to make money by hijacking it.
If you look up how much cash MSFT has and how much other companies keep in cash, and then look up how much of their earnings were paid in dividents by MSFT (none) and the other companies, it should become clearer. The motive for companies is not to make money and stock it in a cash pile like MSFT is doing, but the motive is to use it for growth or if that is not possible to return the profits to the owners.
That i$ one reason why...
Both are wrong.
The GPL doesn't start by genetic mutation either.
For one, Viral infections are often much better treatable than cancer currently is, but both are considered a disease. GPL is a license, not a disease.
So instead of calling it 'viral' or 'cancerous', which imply a disease, a term like 'infectious' would already be better, because laughter can be infectuous too. But that term does not fit either, especially when used with lawyers in the room (see the dictionary)...
If an adjective must be used, I suggest using something like 'genuine', or better yet 'free'
(I get a strange sudden urge to make a script that 'A HREF's all words in a text to dictionary.com).
"While another 2345 users are trying to update the same records."
"Think of credit card verification system."
Ok, I will bite...
If that is happening in your credit card verification system, it should block all the 2345 record updates and flag the card as stolen by a mob of 2344 people.
"the vendors might stop shipping us such lousy programs"
Actually, probably a lot would stop shipping any programs. If they didn't, they would see their market suddenly swamped by remarkably similar 'clones' of their software... The lawyers of course would love something like that, more work for them...
If you want to get higher quality programs, get a good support contract with the software maker so that they fix bug on the double when you report them.
If that is not possible with the software make you're eyeing, then switch vendor or accept the software as-is.
Support and warranty for the product that you're buying, that's how it works. There are too many 'release and run away' software releases out there, but that's the 'AS IS' sale, as clearly stated in the license. You can buy a car with a warranty, or buy it off a lot 'AS IS', same for software. You choose.
All probabilities can be used as predictions. Probabilities are calculated done based on system knowledge and observations. Past probabilities still do exist, they help distinguishing between luck and destiny. For example: Given all detailed infomation that we have now about all past launches, what was the probability of a second failure? I'm not asking 'did it fail', because we know that it didn't, but I'm asking were we lucky or were we safe?
That can be calculated too, and it is of something in the past. It's something that you can look at afterwards by re-calculating the probability with all the detailed information that were unknown factors before, such as weather, post-mission equipment inspection results, etc. It is useful because we can use information that was unavailable before those past launches. That may help improve the model used to predict the reliability of future launches, plus it may help finding weak spots.
A way to look at it is: 'assuming we do all those launches again in similar weather and with the equipment, parts, and systems in the same state, would we have a large risk of getting more than one accident'.
The 99% reliability estimation I gave was made based only on the past results. It's still a prediction, albeit maybe not a very reliable one... Given no other information, using the past results can be used as a predictor for the future probability...
Of course I'm forgetting that the shuttles will need more maintenance than when they were new, which may reduce the reliability (just like a car). But then again too, they will have a lot more experience doing things too, or they may be aware of the aging and spend more time doing preventative maintenance which might offset the probability towards a higher reliability.
And since I can only guess (random selection) about those other factors, the best estimate for the future probability that I can make is based on the past results.
Well, STS113 is up in space now, so they launched around 113 shuttles, of which one catastrophic failure. So I'd say they're getting more than 99% right now. Better than all except the soyuz, but AFAIK those aren't launched with people on board each time.
Big part of software development is often communication and interaction with the customer. Now it may be that in some of those countries many programmers will be fairly or very well versed in the languages. But not all will be, plus the distance and time zone problems will add to the communication and interaction problems. You just can't do everything over the phone and email, some things just need the engineers and the customer locked up in a conference room with coffee and a whiteboard, and flying people around the planet costs money and time too.
Sure, you may get cheaper software, but it won't be exactly what you want, or it won't be as effective a product as it could be.
Some jobs will move to the cheap regions, mainly the jobs (usually considered boring) that can be easily written in a spec, or that can be done by a completely separated team with minimal externally driven spec changes. Other jobs will remain available closer to the customer, and that is not just sales.
Basically, aided by the advent of open source software taking the role of commodoty software, this will mean that US and European programmers will relatively do a lot more custom jobs. A lot of the testing and bugfixing (QA), and supporting library development will probably move to the cheaper regions.
Actually, it should make the jobs a lot more fun to the programmers in Europe and the US.