... dodge this. Really folks, except for the nifty LAMP acronym what is it that keeps MySQL afloat? There's no reason not to go with PostgreSQL, a neat, cool and scary DBMS. If only those phpBB look alike script packs didn't insist hardcoding MySQL dialects in their code this would be a non story, it's that simple. It's like insisting on using VB just because everyone else does... and PostgreSQL documentation is good, so there's no "I can't figure it out" excuse.
Dude you're wrong. It's not the workers that wrecked your auto industry, it's the management. The USA automotive industry develops mostly for the domestic market and there's no way in hell an american car will ever sell on the worldwide marketplace. Your cars are too focused on your national taste and distant from the EU, developing countries or Asia. US cars are generally speaking gargantuan, auto-drive, semi-trucks; such platforms are impossible to reengineer for foreign markets from which you have more or less cut yourself out. Add up some ferocious competition in a mature, saturated industry and some quality control issues and there is your recipe for disaster. Mind you, I'm italian and we have the exact same problem here with FIAT, rescaled appropriately.
Or just buy any Nokia UMTS smartphone gadget. They all support SMTP & IMAP and all you need is a good data bound contract. Leave the thing always on and let the IMAP IDLE extension notify your client. Now, finding a decent provider that doesn't bleed you dry for mobile data service is the real problem.
I used to think like that, but I bought a smartphone. Yeah, it has a camera but I couldn't care less, on the other hand... it is a general purpose computer. It has a browser, imap, smpt, installable applications, a media player for the odd jpg, mpg, mp3. It's a computer in a pocket, but not in the typical rom based, half assed application bundle sense... a real computer. Geek...
You make the point. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if RedHat or Novell followed the same route and entered the hw market. RedHat computers, not mere hw compatibility lists but real stuff designed in house, kernel modules included, and manufactured by the usual Lenovo, Asustek, whatever. The inescapable closed source parts (nVIDIA, wifi radios) would be managed by the corporate entity that would at this point have a circumscribed platform to develop upon.
Would that completely betray the philosophy of Linux or rather provide a decent compromise to the current deadlock? After all it's what IBM is doing on the lower tier servers and what no established hw manufacturer would ever dare to do for fear of Microsoft's retaliation
I did, I upgraded my laptop drive on my own... wasn't at all difficult, although Apple made quite a design effort squeezing a computer in such a THIN (first of it's kind) enclosure. Of course you can buy a Dell, you're free to do whatever you please with your money, it's none of my business. I do think that Apple hardware is better quality, like a BMW is compared to say, a FIAT. You can take the latter, I'd go for the former, thank you.
Exactly, the argument that Apple is overpriced is a false one. Once you start examining the _quality_hardware_ segment, Apple is competitive. I was actually tempted to go Thinkpad, but eventually chose a Powerbook.
Take a look at the inside of a Powermac G4 or G5. Take a look at the shell of a Powermac G4 or G5. Carefully observe its details, try to imagine why an Apple engineer did it so. Realize how many there are...
Hmm, I guess you've never tried to install Linux on an ASUS notebook. Today, three years later it might be an easier experience but believe me it used to be a royal pain. Wicked broken bioses that wouldn't sleep the machine when the lid closed, nasty bugs that would lock up the gfx hw so badly to require a cold restart, crappy P'n'P that wouldn't enumerate the attached hardware and make linux struggle when looking for it and stinky bioses that wouldn't properly shut down the PIC (or perhaps jitter some "lid open" signal, but that's not sw, it's plain bad hw) and wake windows 2000 when the laptop was sleeping... and presumably inside a bag.
I had to choose between a vertical solution where the same company designed both hardware and software and quickly nailed every single darn bug (not only security gaping maws) or a chaos of different hardwares only loosely following specs and hoping to fix 'em in software workarounds.
I bought an external firewire enclosure; it used to work fine but the damn chipset firmware decided to quit claiming it's fw id as by spec. Os X would refuse to sense the device unless, once in a while the signals would be stable enough to get the firmware to follow procedures. I had to wait for an xp64 fix that incidentally added the necessary firmware workarounds (IE increasing wait states during power up) to get the thing reliable on the mac. Hmm, and that was an add-on... imagine that multiplied for all peripherials in a regular pc. Apple takes the chore out of computing.
Apple is turn key. I bought a bluetooth thingie and the guy at the shop said: "hmm, I don't know, this device is a bit fussy I struggled a weekend and failed on a couple of XPs". I plugged it in, waited for Os X to bring the bluetooth portion alive and synced my address book within 5 minutes. The guy at the counter was close to tears; I was happy to have bought an Apple Powerbook with Os X.
Ok, I could choose a dell, run windows home and follow the program, but I'd be struggling with viruses, spywarez and surrendering 1 GHz and a RAM stick to Norton to get my job done. Or I could run Linux and curse the damn manufacturer for making cheap broken hardware and only provide software fixes for windows.
I still long for open, fully spec'd platforms, properly designed hardware modules and combinations and timely updates to fix deviations from the agreed standard. Today, by a bad approximation, that means using windows. Today, I won't run windows and I will happily pay 100for the privilege of better software bundled to neatly ironed hardware (where linux, btw, is a champ)
Yeah way to go! Rant against some peanuts well spent and back your argument up mentioning cartloads thrown away against useless pursuits. Am I the only one sensing the non sequitur in this reasoning? You should be going after the ass holes that brought your country to WAR with a useless LIE, for an UNETHICAL agenda, rather than bitch about the crumbs given to the enrichment of humanity's knowledge and ultimately progress. Idiot.
Good hardware = good platform = good prerequisite for good software engineering. Software meant to run on every single possible hardware combination is bound to be littered with cheap hacks and workarounds. I won't shed a tear if Os X won't run on some manufacturer's broken firmware configuration; I'll buy a shiny new Powerbook Duo (no I'll never call it Mac*... that's a MacDonald trademark) and enjoy the experience and mourn the loss of Openfirmware.
I've seen timed escalators in Berlin subway stations. The machines would turn on about the time the train left the station and I believe it is done on purpose to encourage healthy people on a rush to take the normal steps, leaving the mechanized aid to the elderly (doh! germans, thank god they don't euthanize those that aren't quick enough! HAR, HAR!... ok, that was a bad joke...)
Your example actually shows how backwards your mobility model is when faced with moderately fair energy prices. The average (cheap) US vehicle is such an unsustainable gas guzzler that it's only economical if fuel prices are forced low; EU vehicles on the other hand, built for a market where fuel is heavily taxed, are much more economical to run in the first place. Imagine how better off would your poorest citizens be if efficient cars could be easily available and affordable over there? But no, you can't get anything less than 2 L engines... sheesh
I can't cite the source but I'm afraid reasonable U sources too are projected to last not much longer than oil. Breeder technology isn't nearly safe as it should be (french Superphoenix was offline for failure most of it's operating life) and do you account for the disposal costs? They should be taken into the equation just like a "super C tax", rather than mopping them under the carpet pretending they don't exist while the government foots the bill (how convenient). Of course there's also the issue about safety, but lets not even take that into account and assume some new engineering will improve safety to satisfactory levels. Essentially nuclear is a just-as-much short term solution, with a burdensome legacy to care for the next 20 generations - at least. Hm, I'm not convinced.
Right, but we all know here that CPU clock frequency is a bad performance metric for computers. We all agree that the P4 is a total design disaster and we're all happy that the industry is moving towards efficient CPUs: same performance, less heat, more battery life.
Analogously, raw energy consumption is a coarse measure of a country's growth and a rich one could substantially increase its overall affluence, innovate, create new markets and improve quality of life if it steered itself to more _efficient_ energy use. In 2004 SE Asia more or less suffocated under a thick smog cloud produced by uncontrolled pollution levels and people died from acute respiratory complications. On the long term such a growth model could potentially lead to ballooning medical costs and a dramatic loss of quality of life. Last year the news brought us the story about millions of chinese people, entire cities, intoxicated by contaminated tap water.
Modern societies base their economies on the assumption that basic needs like nutrients, water and housing are more or less given for granted and providing for non essential "luxury items". What if people are forced to divert most of their income back towards life support? It would be like a war economy and except for selected few, those usually mean impoverishment for society as a whole.
In this case Carbon Tax encourages "efficient use" of a limited resource. Please don't start arguing about poor people getting screwed or I could start ranting about social security, subsidy and all those cute little things that abound in our "socialist Europe". I'm talking about an instrument to govern an abuse that effectively flies in the face of fair access to resources. Do you realize that there's not enough available if emerging countries start devouring energy at the same rate as the USA does? Do you realize that USA foreign policy has _also_ (not _only_, but _also_) been about keeping developing nations in check to prevent them from eating from the same plate?
Exactly... do you realize that 6,7 Km/l (let's use SI please) is unacceptably low performance?! Your attitude is a perfect example of an extremely wasteful habit that can't be broken unless some economic pressure convinces you to switch to a more restrained behaviour. You need to feel the sting in your wallet to consider a vehicle that has the same utility value, but for about 20 Km/l (urban cycle). Hell you can sustain more than 2 small cars on the same energy bill you consume to transport, in most cases a single passenger! Devouring a non renewable source, spilling tons of noxious fumes, for something that is no more than a status symbol?! USA wages wars and people die to cater for this outrageous, bulimic, waste. I would be much less critic of Bush, had he directed the USA towards reasonable fuel economics (and wouldn't have made any objection if that meant better margins and prolonged supply lifetime for oil corporations) instead of encouraging this myopic "all you can eat" attitude. Carbon Tax is a cluestick, so be it! (and sorry if I sound harsh, this is not a personal attack)
A carbon tax is backwards and silly. Why not attempt to correct each and every instance of wasteful energy consumption you enumerated rather than punish people for simple consumption? Remember that some consumers of energy are doing useful things with it, and yet, your tax punishes everyone equally.
Backwards, why? Carbon tax is exactly an attempt to encourage positive behaviour in consumers. It doesn't punish anyone, it simply monetizes in an straightforward way the link between energy consumption and its effects. Correcting the side effects of energy production like: energy industry subsidies (yeah, most of it are... the communists!), pollution, increased sanitation expenses, geopolitical instability, warfare and consequent market depression costs money that would otherwise come from generalized taxation. The taxpayer/consumer wouldn't easily correlate the increased lumped costs with its energy behaviour, merrily burning increasing amount of fuel burned. Carbon tax is a negative feedback control; you wanna drive to the movies on a SUV you'd better pay for the "privilege", I'll have my Smart thanks!
Oh the show director might not get fired, but the whole product development team will get a huge cluestick reminder! Here we're talking about a _production_ high volume device crashing in potentially millions of household living rooms. do you thing distribution (Wal Mart, Media Markt, Euronics, Mediaworld) is ever, ever, ever (again ever) going to accept the defective product return rate? I mean, this is a market where the user isn't pavlovized into downloading fixes or patches, it just returns the device to the retailer for refund or warranty service. Imagine the razor thin margin retailers (with their scheduled profit plans) rushing to install massive patching workflow shops. Do you really thing the distribution analysts felt an itch to sign the supply contracts during the post-demo cocktail party (hostesses not withstanding)
It must have been some error in the DRM key validation procedure between the player and the disc (1). I believe it was quite a successful demo, it shows truthfully the roadmap for the "media consumption devices" of our bright future.
(1) passive media acting as an independent entity? Isn't that strange, isn't the hardware I own omnipotent on the bitstream it receives at its input ports... oh, sorry I just woke into the '00s...
It must have been some error in the DRM key validation procedure between the player and the disc (1). I believe it was quite a successful demo, it shows truthfully the roadmap for the "media consumption devices" of our bright future.
(1) passive media acting as an independent entity? Isn't that strange, isn't the hardware I own omnipotent on the bitstream it receives at its input ports... oh, sorry I just woke into the '00s...
No way this is an ad-hominem. I pretty much feel I've been cornered by a bunch of trolls and that's what I wrote. I don't feel I've won the argument nor do I want to pursue it any further; the other party is just dragging the discussion and I don't really care to convert him either. Enjoy your victory if it makes you feel good, bravo! In the meanwhile, I'll get along with my life quite well, thank you...
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Oh man, you're so right! ;-)
... dodge this. Really folks, except for the nifty LAMP acronym what is it that keeps MySQL afloat? There's no reason not to go with PostgreSQL, a neat, cool and scary DBMS. If only those phpBB look alike script packs didn't insist hardcoding MySQL dialects in their code this would be a non story, it's that simple. It's like insisting on using VB just because everyone else does... and PostgreSQL documentation is good, so there's no "I can't figure it out" excuse.
Dude you're wrong. It's not the workers that wrecked your auto industry, it's the management. The USA automotive industry develops mostly for the domestic market and there's no way in hell an american car will ever sell on the worldwide marketplace. Your cars are too focused on your national taste and distant from the EU, developing countries or Asia. US cars are generally speaking gargantuan, auto-drive, semi-trucks; such platforms are impossible to reengineer for foreign markets from which you have more or less cut yourself out. Add up some ferocious competition in a mature, saturated industry and some quality control issues and there is your recipe for disaster. Mind you, I'm italian and we have the exact same problem here with FIAT, rescaled appropriately.
There's no Karma for Funny mods. Get it over
Or just buy any Nokia UMTS smartphone gadget. They all support SMTP & IMAP and all you need is a good data bound contract. Leave the thing always on and let the IMAP IDLE extension notify your client. Now, finding a decent provider that doesn't bleed you dry for mobile data service is the real problem.
I used to think like that, but I bought a smartphone. Yeah, it has a camera but I couldn't care less, on the other hand... it is a general purpose computer. It has a browser, imap, smpt, installable applications, a media player for the odd jpg, mpg, mp3. It's a computer in a pocket, but not in the typical rom based, half assed application bundle sense... a real computer. Geek...
There are notebooks out there that are way better than Powerbooks (wrt actual quality and support).
Such as? IBM, and...You make the point. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if RedHat or Novell followed the same route and entered the hw market. RedHat computers, not mere hw compatibility lists but real stuff designed in house, kernel modules included, and manufactured by the usual Lenovo, Asustek, whatever. The inescapable closed source parts (nVIDIA, wifi radios) would be managed by the corporate entity that would at this point have a circumscribed platform to develop upon.
Would that completely betray the philosophy of Linux or rather provide a decent compromise to the current deadlock? After all it's what IBM is doing on the lower tier servers and what no established hw manufacturer would ever dare to do for fear of Microsoft's retaliation
I did, I upgraded my laptop drive on my own... wasn't at all difficult, although Apple made quite a design effort squeezing a computer in such a THIN (first of it's kind) enclosure. Of course you can buy a Dell, you're free to do whatever you please with your money, it's none of my business. I do think that Apple hardware is better quality, like a BMW is compared to say, a FIAT. You can take the latter, I'd go for the former, thank you.
Exactly, the argument that Apple is overpriced is a false one. Once you start examining the _quality_hardware_ segment, Apple is competitive. I was actually tempted to go Thinkpad, but eventually chose a Powerbook.
Take a look at the inside of a Powermac G4 or G5. Take a look at the shell of a Powermac G4 or G5.
Carefully observe its details, try to imagine why an Apple engineer did it so. Realize how many there are...
Now, open a Dell. Does that answer your question?
Hmm, I guess you've never tried to install Linux on an ASUS notebook. Today, three years later it might be an easier experience but believe me it used to be a royal pain. Wicked broken bioses that wouldn't sleep the machine when the lid closed, nasty bugs that would lock up the gfx hw so badly to require a cold restart, crappy P'n'P that wouldn't enumerate the attached hardware and make linux struggle when looking for it and stinky bioses that wouldn't properly shut down the PIC (or perhaps jitter some "lid open" signal, but that's not sw, it's plain bad hw) and wake windows 2000 when the laptop was sleeping... and presumably inside a bag.
I had to choose between a vertical solution where the same company designed both hardware and software and quickly nailed every single darn bug (not only security gaping maws) or a chaos of different hardwares only loosely following specs and hoping to fix 'em in software workarounds.
I bought an external firewire enclosure; it used to work fine but the damn chipset firmware decided to quit claiming it's fw id as by spec. Os X would refuse to sense the device unless, once in a while the signals would be stable enough to get the firmware to follow procedures. I had to wait for an xp64 fix that incidentally added the necessary firmware workarounds (IE increasing wait states during power up) to get the thing reliable on the mac. Hmm, and that was an add-on... imagine that multiplied for all peripherials in a regular pc. Apple takes the chore out of computing.
Apple is turn key. I bought a bluetooth thingie and the guy at the shop said: "hmm, I don't know, this device is a bit fussy I struggled a weekend and failed on a couple of XPs". I plugged it in, waited for Os X to bring the bluetooth portion alive and synced my address book within 5 minutes. The guy at the counter was close to tears; I was happy to have bought an Apple Powerbook with Os X.
Ok, I could choose a dell, run windows home and follow the program, but I'd be struggling with viruses, spywarez and surrendering 1 GHz and a RAM stick to Norton to get my job done. Or I could run Linux and curse the damn manufacturer for making cheap broken hardware and only provide software fixes for windows.
I still long for open, fully spec'd platforms, properly designed hardware modules and combinations and timely updates to fix deviations from the agreed standard. Today, by a bad approximation, that means using windows. Today, I won't run windows and I will happily pay 100for the privilege of better software bundled to neatly ironed hardware (where linux, btw, is a champ)
Yeah way to go! Rant against some peanuts well spent and back your argument up mentioning cartloads thrown away against useless pursuits. Am I the only one sensing the non sequitur in this reasoning? You should be going after the ass holes that brought your country to WAR with a useless LIE, for an UNETHICAL agenda, rather than bitch about the crumbs given to the enrichment of humanity's knowledge and ultimately progress. Idiot.
Good hardware = good platform = good prerequisite for good software engineering. Software meant to run on every single possible hardware combination is bound to be littered with cheap hacks and workarounds. I won't shed a tear if Os X won't run on some manufacturer's broken firmware configuration; I'll buy a shiny new Powerbook Duo (no I'll never call it Mac*... that's a MacDonald trademark) and enjoy the experience and mourn the loss of Openfirmware.
I've seen timed escalators in Berlin subway stations. The machines would turn on about the time the train left the station and I believe it is done on purpose to encourage healthy people on a rush to take the normal steps, leaving the mechanized aid to the elderly (doh! germans, thank god they don't euthanize those that aren't quick enough! HAR, HAR!... ok, that was a bad joke...)
Your example actually shows how backwards your mobility model is when faced with moderately fair energy prices. The average (cheap) US vehicle is such an unsustainable gas guzzler that it's only economical if fuel prices are forced low; EU vehicles on the other hand, built for a market where fuel is heavily taxed, are much more economical to run in the first place. Imagine how better off would your poorest citizens be if efficient cars could be easily available and affordable over there? But no, you can't get anything less than 2 L engines... sheesh
I can't cite the source but I'm afraid reasonable U sources too are projected to last not much longer than oil. Breeder technology isn't nearly safe as it should be (french Superphoenix was offline for failure most of it's operating life) and do you account for the disposal costs? They should be taken into the equation just like a "super C tax", rather than mopping them under the carpet pretending they don't exist while the government foots the bill (how convenient). Of course there's also the issue about safety, but lets not even take that into account and assume some new engineering will improve safety to satisfactory levels. Essentially nuclear is a just-as-much short term solution, with a burdensome legacy to care for the next 20 generations - at least. Hm, I'm not convinced.
Right, but we all know here that CPU clock frequency is a bad performance metric for computers. We all agree that the P4 is a total design disaster and we're all happy that the industry is moving towards efficient CPUs: same performance, less heat, more battery life.
Analogously, raw energy consumption is a coarse measure of a country's growth and a rich one could substantially increase its overall affluence, innovate, create new markets and improve quality of life if it steered itself to more _efficient_ energy use. In 2004 SE Asia more or less suffocated under a thick smog cloud produced by uncontrolled pollution levels and people died from acute respiratory complications. On the long term such a growth model could potentially lead to ballooning medical costs and a dramatic loss of quality of life. Last year the news brought us the story about millions of chinese people, entire cities, intoxicated by contaminated tap water.
Modern societies base their economies on the assumption that basic needs like nutrients, water and housing are more or less given for granted and providing for non essential "luxury items". What if people are forced to divert most of their income back towards life support? It would be like a war economy and except for selected few, those usually mean impoverishment for society as a whole.
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In this case Carbon Tax encourages "efficient use" of a limited resource. Please don't start arguing about poor people getting screwed or I could start ranting about social security, subsidy and all those cute little things that abound in our "socialist Europe". I'm talking about an instrument to govern an abuse that effectively flies in the face of fair access to resources. Do you realize that there's not enough available if emerging countries start devouring energy at the same rate as the USA does? Do you realize that USA foreign policy has _also_ (not _only_, but _also_) been about keeping developing nations in check to prevent them from eating from the same plate?
Exactly... do you realize that 6,7 Km/l (let's use SI please) is unacceptably low performance?! Your attitude is a perfect example of an extremely wasteful habit that can't be broken unless some economic pressure convinces you to switch to a more restrained behaviour. You need to feel the sting in your wallet to consider a vehicle that has the same utility value, but for about 20 Km/l (urban cycle). Hell you can sustain more than 2 small cars on the same energy bill you consume to transport, in most cases a single passenger!
Devouring a non renewable source, spilling tons of noxious fumes, for something that is no more than a status symbol?! USA wages wars and people die to cater for this outrageous, bulimic, waste. I would be much less critic of Bush, had he directed the USA towards reasonable fuel economics (and wouldn't have made any objection if that meant better margins and prolonged supply lifetime for oil corporations) instead of encouraging this myopic "all you can eat" attitude. Carbon Tax is a cluestick, so be it! (and sorry if I sound harsh, this is not a personal attack)
A carbon tax is backwards and silly. Why not attempt to correct each and every instance of wasteful energy consumption you enumerated rather than punish people for simple consumption? Remember that some consumers of energy are doing useful things with it, and yet, your tax punishes everyone equally.
Backwards, why? Carbon tax is exactly an attempt to encourage positive behaviour in consumers. It doesn't punish anyone, it simply monetizes in an straightforward way the link between energy consumption and its effects. Correcting the side effects of energy production like: energy industry subsidies (yeah, most of it are... the communists!), pollution, increased sanitation expenses, geopolitical instability, warfare and consequent market depression costs money that would otherwise come from generalized taxation. The taxpayer/consumer wouldn't easily correlate the increased lumped costs with its energy behaviour, merrily burning increasing amount of fuel burned. Carbon tax is a negative feedback control; you wanna drive to the movies on a SUV you'd better pay for the "privilege", I'll have my Smart thanks!
Oh the show director might not get fired, but the whole product development team will get a huge cluestick reminder! Here we're talking about a _production_ high volume device crashing in potentially millions of household living rooms. do you thing distribution (Wal Mart, Media Markt, Euronics, Mediaworld) is ever, ever, ever (again ever) going to accept the defective product return rate? I mean, this is a market where the user isn't pavlovized into downloading fixes or patches, it just returns the device to the retailer for refund or warranty service. Imagine the razor thin margin retailers (with their scheduled profit plans) rushing to install massive patching workflow shops. Do you really thing the distribution analysts felt an itch to sign the supply contracts during the post-demo cocktail party (hostesses not withstanding)
It must have been some error in the DRM key validation procedure between the player and the disc (1). I believe it was quite a successful demo, it shows truthfully the roadmap for the "media consumption devices" of our bright future.
(1) passive media acting as an independent entity? Isn't that strange, isn't the hardware I own omnipotent on the bitstream it receives at its input ports... oh, sorry I just woke into the '00s...
It must have been some error in the DRM key validation procedure between the player and the disc (1). I believe it was quite a successful demo, it shows truthfully the roadmap for the "media consumption devices" of our bright future. (1) passive media acting as an independent entity? Isn't that strange, isn't the hardware I own omnipotent on the bitstream it receives at its input ports... oh, sorry I just woke into the '00s...
No way this is an ad-hominem. I pretty much feel I've been cornered by a bunch of trolls and that's what I wrote. I don't feel I've won the argument nor do I want to pursue it any further; the other party is just dragging the discussion and I don't really care to convert him either. Enjoy your victory if it makes you feel good, bravo! In the meanwhile, I'll get along with my life quite well, thank you...