At first I thought they were talking about the TV waves they beam into the plate on my head, amplified by my tinfoil hat. Then I realized that the submitter is just celebrating Eastern Orthodox April Fool's Day.
I don't want to beat this issue to death, as we're all really expressing different valuation of the different factors in the different products' support realities, according to our individual requirements. But I did say that
"even the contributors to the Postgres source who can be hired directly don't have access to Oracle's professional services management structure and its resources for customer care",
which classes Oracle's support beyond the reach of Postgres. And beyond the needs of most users, who will probably be just as well served by 3rd party Postgres support as by Oracle's basic (and affordable) support.
As I mentioned, Postgres' open source offers the extreme advantage when dealing with a bug in the released RDBMS. However, it is possible for the right price to get an Oracle support person who is not only extremely qualified, who has access to the RDBMS developers, who has access to the source, but who will work on my premises. That kind of support is not available for Postgres - even the contributors to the Postgres source who can be hired directly don't have access to Oracle's professional services management structure and its resources for customer care.
The choice isn't quite as clear as it could be - which generally is in Postgres' favor. In extreme environments, like the ones on Wall Street where I've earned the largest share of my own income, Oracle and its support means "minimizing the risks", while Postgres means "economical risk mitigation". That's good enough for most people, and a testament to Postgres' value, especially per dollar.
Those are all potentially good options. Certainly better than nothing. None of them have the reputation Oracle has in supporting its own core product. The "email lists" option is exactly the part that I want to call Oracle with: a "guaranteed" solution to my problem, whenever/wherever/whatever.
Have you any reason to believe that Fujitsu support for Postgres is as good as Oracle support for Oracle? I've got lots of reasons to believe it's not, starting with Fujitsu's lack of brand equity dependence on Postgres quality.
I like how I can call Oracle and get the best developers/DBAs/integrators/troubleshooters to solve my problem, and it requires only money. I like how I can look at the Postgres source code, so I don't have to call anyone to solve my problem - or I can choose who I call.
Virtualization works around the problem that all the different apps each require their own specific OS. Since OS'es are sold by the most competitive corporations in the world, that landscape isn't going away so soon. And virtualization also offers lots of other advantages in stability and administration. But I do think that unifying the GUI APIs (if not the GUIs) will solve the remaining problem: different GUI skills for different desktops, even with virtualization.
Once any app can write to a single GUI API, and all major OS'es run on all the most popular hardware, the "platform defragmentation" will see apps choosing which OS to require based on merit rather than marketing (primarily vendor lockin). Some apps might even call multiple OS'es, but I expect that the entire OS layer will become open, at least within encapsulated APIs, with components from several OS'es combining for the most popular platforms.
Just getting different OS apps onto the same screen at once is the biggest hurdle, because that's the main difference to users. Virtualization gets us there, though just barely. The unification momentum that jump creates will force us the rest of the way.
Since Mac virtualization looks pretty strong, Windows Vista will include virtualization, and virtualization is becoming standard fare on Linux, Boot Camp might just be the "entry level" method for running both Mac and Windows apps "on the same computer". Simultaneous execution in multiple windows under virtualization is a much bigger step, but dual-booting is much easier for the normals to understand. And it gets us down the road to a bigger technical step, but a nearly seamless migration (and great relief) for the normals: Mac/Windows apps running in the same desktop, with IPC/clipboard integration across "OS" boundaries as tight as across mere app boundaries.
How long before the OS is just another app, along with any other OS'es required to run other apps? Just a library collection, running on a "nanokernel": the virtualization SW? And which OS will best run the virtualization: Windows, Linux, or some RTOS?
I'm glad that you're satisfied. We need less cars, especially Indian cars with worse pollution than American ones. But some of us need cars. Since not all of us can have them, I'm glad you don't need them.
I want a car that parks itself far away from where it drops me off. I have no need for a car that parks itself far away from where it drops you off.
I can't believe we're still talking about this insane SCO bullshit. Years into it, and we're still at the stage IBM demanding SCO make a public claim of specific damage beyond "IBM is teh ghey". But then, I just watched Congressmember Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) on TV saying his House subcommittee just started translating documents that he claims will prove that Saddam Hussein had WMD. We shouldn't be required to listen to these lying lawyers anymore. But I'm sure we'll be paying them to control the country and the news until we're out of Iraq, or maybe just forever.
How about the implicit question: how does this OSDL initiative reflect on the existing FD project, that it needs a new project to do what the existing project hasn't yet?
Another clue: not every question is a rhetorical one.
I've been hearing myself say that for years, and it's been true. But we're increasingly concentrating more on our data and, the people with whom we exchange it, than on the applications we use to do that. The maturity of "personal computing" has evolved a short list of apps which resemble each other regardless of developer, with similar UIs. But a diversity of architectures, from phones to notebooks to desktops to big iron, often several of which participate in any one transaction across the network. Yet the app paradigm inherently creates boundaries across which people must communicate, which often doesn't work and is always complex - even when "integrated". While cross-platform Web apps and inclusion of millions of "unsophisticated" users create a demand for things to "just work", without requiring "computer" skills in addition to those required by the actual task at hand.
In short, "personal computing" is getting to be like driving: most people can use most cars more or less the same, with different performance and convenience, on standardized roads, to get where we're going - mostly to get to other people. Applications are like cars, desktops are like dashboards, OS'es are like transmissions, networks are like fuel types, and our data is like the open road. MIME and desktop integrations are making that data the center of user activity. So the question is decreasingly whether "the" app you need is available under an OS on given HW. Rather, whether an app more or less automatically is available to work with your data, on whatever OS/HW is available and connected to the Internet. Since most of that data is for working with other people, convergence of voice and other data will make a lot of idiosyncratic SW, and unique skills using it, go the way of the Model T.
You are the obnoxious Anonymous American Coward whining about too much luxury in a thread about self-parking cars. You're supporting the bad name that Anonymous Cowards have.
My post gave various reasons why using a private car is better than the alternatives here in NYC. Which I decided several years ago when I got an apartment with included parking spot, right when cabbie culture became largely intolerable.
So I have my preferences. All you have is an obnoxious inferiority superiority complex to match your passive aggression. Stop crying and stay silent, preferably at home.
I've visited The City in London several times, including taxis to work. And I live in NYC. though I do avoid traffic most of the time.
My "land speed record" in Manhattan is just under an hour (maybe 55 minutes) to go one block: W55St from 5Av to 6Av at 7:30PM one early 1990s fall evening. If I weren't having sex with my girlfriend in the back of the cab, I'd have walked, or let plate tectonics rush us there instead.
I used the Manhattan rules of "20 blocks to the mile, 4x across", which mainly apply to cab travel. That's (5280 / 20) * 2 + (5280 / 5) * 2 = 2640, which I rounded to 3K. By plan, the actual blocks are 922x200', perimeter 2244. But I overestimated car size, especially in Manhattan - it's closer to 12'. The two margins of error mostly cancel.
No, the regulation does work, except when lobbyists destroy the legislation with a huge loophole. Fortunately, closing those loopholes makes for a simple, immediate solution to the problem.
Overall American car gas mileage plummeted solely because SUVs are "light trucks", which have emissions/mileage loopholes. They became popular when Detroit exploited the loophole, created in negotiations between Detroit and Congress to allow exception to that very small, but economically important kind of vehicle which was often the biggest capital investment for a laborer. Once secured, Detroit created and marketed "family cars" in that class, under those rules, multiplying the engines operating without restriction many times over. They offered seductive financing to a newly debt-oblivious America, leveraging first the Red Staters whose agricultural economy made debt their way of life. But then they even got Congress to offer tax credits for buying SUVs.
The actual history of "American mileage" shows that we have artificial legislation creating the huge waste that's killing us. More history shows that Americans have continued to buy these wasteful SUVs despite gas prices tripling since Bush took power. Compared to those costs, taxes are little disincentive. Especially to the rich people who can afford it, who waste more than anyone else because they can afford that.
The legislation failed only when manipulated by Detroit capitalists to exploit foolish American (capitalist) consumers. We can fix the legislation by dropping the tax incentives, closing the emissions/mileage loopholes, and enhancing the legislative baseline with stricter "fleet emissions" requirements to make up for time lost to the extra pollution over the past shameful decade.
There's only so much "around the block", and unlimited cars. In midtown Manhattan, where I parked this afternoon (for $45 for 3 hours), "around the block" is about 3K'. Cars are about 15' including "bumper room", so that's about 200 cars, or maybe 800-1000 people. Buildings are about 50 storeys high, with about 1000 people per storey for 50K people. More than 50x the circling car capacity.
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At first I thought they were talking about the TV waves they beam into the plate on my head, amplified by my tinfoil hat. Then I realized that the submitter is just celebrating Eastern Orthodox April Fool's Day.
I don't want to beat this issue to death, as we're all really expressing different valuation of the different factors in the different products' support realities, according to our individual requirements. But I did say that
"even the contributors to the Postgres source who can be hired directly don't have access to Oracle's professional services management structure and its resources for customer care",
which classes Oracle's support beyond the reach of Postgres. And beyond the needs of most users, who will probably be just as well served by 3rd party Postgres support as by Oracle's basic (and affordable) support.
HONEYPOT
As I mentioned, Postgres' open source offers the extreme advantage when dealing with a bug in the released RDBMS. However, it is possible for the right price to get an Oracle support person who is not only extremely qualified, who has access to the RDBMS developers, who has access to the source, but who will work on my premises. That kind of support is not available for Postgres - even the contributors to the Postgres source who can be hired directly don't have access to Oracle's professional services management structure and its resources for customer care.
The choice isn't quite as clear as it could be - which generally is in Postgres' favor. In extreme environments, like the ones on Wall Street where I've earned the largest share of my own income, Oracle and its support means "minimizing the risks", while Postgres means "economical risk mitigation". That's good enough for most people, and a testament to Postgres' value, especially per dollar.
Those are all potentially good options. Certainly better than nothing. None of them have the reputation Oracle has in supporting its own core product. The "email lists" option is exactly the part that I want to call Oracle with: a "guaranteed" solution to my problem, whenever/wherever/whatever.
Have you any reason to believe that Fujitsu support for Postgres is as good as Oracle support for Oracle? I've got lots of reasons to believe it's not, starting with Fujitsu's lack of brand equity dependence on Postgres quality.
I can buy a support contract directly from Oracle without having bought the Oracle product directly from Oracle.
That is also one of the reasons VARs/ISVs design Oracle into their products: they can offer direct Oracle support to customers without being Oracle.
I like how I can call Oracle and get the best developers/DBAs/integrators/troubleshooters to solve my problem, and it requires only money. I like how I can look at the Postgres source code, so I don't have to call anyone to solve my problem - or I can choose who I call.
Virtualization works around the problem that all the different apps each require their own specific OS. Since OS'es are sold by the most competitive corporations in the world, that landscape isn't going away so soon. And virtualization also offers lots of other advantages in stability and administration. But I do think that unifying the GUI APIs (if not the GUIs) will solve the remaining problem: different GUI skills for different desktops, even with virtualization.
Once any app can write to a single GUI API, and all major OS'es run on all the most popular hardware, the "platform defragmentation" will see apps choosing which OS to require based on merit rather than marketing (primarily vendor lockin). Some apps might even call multiple OS'es, but I expect that the entire OS layer will become open, at least within encapsulated APIs, with components from several OS'es combining for the most popular platforms.
Just getting different OS apps onto the same screen at once is the biggest hurdle, because that's the main difference to users. Virtualization gets us there, though just barely. The unification momentum that jump creates will force us the rest of the way.
Moderation -2
50% Offtopic
30% Interesting
20% Flamebait
BaitFlaming TrollMods say "Offtopic". I say the topic is the endless lawyering of total lies into whole industries of destruction.
Since Mac virtualization looks pretty strong, Windows Vista will include virtualization, and virtualization is becoming standard fare on Linux, Boot Camp might just be the "entry level" method for running both Mac and Windows apps "on the same computer". Simultaneous execution in multiple windows under virtualization is a much bigger step, but dual-booting is much easier for the normals to understand. And it gets us down the road to a bigger technical step, but a nearly seamless migration (and great relief) for the normals: Mac/Windows apps running in the same desktop, with IPC/clipboard integration across "OS" boundaries as tight as across mere app boundaries.
How long before the OS is just another app, along with any other OS'es required to run other apps? Just a library collection, running on a "nanokernel": the virtualization SW? And which OS will best run the virtualization: Windows, Linux, or some RTOS?
I'm glad that you're satisfied. We need less cars, especially Indian cars with worse pollution than American ones. But some of us need cars. Since not all of us can have them, I'm glad you don't need them.
I want a car that parks itself far away from where it drops me off. I have no need for a car that parks itself far away from where it drops you off.
I can't believe we're still talking about this insane SCO bullshit. Years into it, and we're still at the stage IBM demanding SCO make a public claim of specific damage beyond "IBM is teh ghey". But then, I just watched Congressmember Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) on TV saying his House subcommittee just started translating documents that he claims will prove that Saddam Hussein had WMD. We shouldn't be required to listen to these lying lawyers anymore. But I'm sure we'll be paying them to control the country and the news until we're out of Iraq, or maybe just forever.
Those are all good clues.
How about the implicit question: how does this OSDL initiative reflect on the existing FD project, that it needs a new project to do what the existing project hasn't yet?
Another clue: not every question is a rhetorical one.
I've been hearing myself say that for years, and it's been true. But we're increasingly concentrating more on our data and, the people with whom we exchange it, than on the applications we use to do that. The maturity of "personal computing" has evolved a short list of apps which resemble each other regardless of developer, with similar UIs. But a diversity of architectures, from phones to notebooks to desktops to big iron, often several of which participate in any one transaction across the network. Yet the app paradigm inherently creates boundaries across which people must communicate, which often doesn't work and is always complex - even when "integrated". While cross-platform Web apps and inclusion of millions of "unsophisticated" users create a demand for things to "just work", without requiring "computer" skills in addition to those required by the actual task at hand.
In short, "personal computing" is getting to be like driving: most people can use most cars more or less the same, with different performance and convenience, on standardized roads, to get where we're going - mostly to get to other people. Applications are like cars, desktops are like dashboards, OS'es are like transmissions, networks are like fuel types, and our data is like the open road. MIME and desktop integrations are making that data the center of user activity. So the question is decreasingly whether "the" app you need is available under an OS on given HW. Rather, whether an app more or less automatically is available to work with your data, on whatever OS/HW is available and connected to the Internet. Since most of that data is for working with other people, convergence of voice and other data will make a lot of idiosyncratic SW, and unique skills using it, go the way of the Model T.
How "express" could it be if it requires a book in two parts to learn how to do it?
Isn't that Linux desktop unification what FreeDesktop.org is supposed to do?
You are the obnoxious Anonymous American Coward whining about too much luxury in a thread about self-parking cars. You're supporting the bad name that Anonymous Cowards have.
My post gave various reasons why using a private car is better than the alternatives here in NYC. Which I decided several years ago when I got an apartment with included parking spot, right when cabbie culture became largely intolerable.
So I have my preferences. All you have is an obnoxious inferiority superiority complex to match your passive aggression. Stop crying and stay silent, preferably at home.
I've visited The City in London several times, including taxis to work. And I live in NYC. though I do avoid traffic most of the time.
My "land speed record" in Manhattan is just under an hour (maybe 55 minutes) to go one block: W55St from 5Av to 6Av at 7:30PM one early 1990s fall evening. If I weren't having sex with my girlfriend in the back of the cab, I'd have walked, or let plate tectonics rush us there instead.
I used the Manhattan rules of "20 blocks to the mile, 4x across", which mainly apply to cab travel. That's (5280 / 20) * 2 + (5280 / 5) * 2 = 2640, which I rounded to 3K. By plan, the actual blocks are 922x200', perimeter 2244. But I overestimated car size, especially in Manhattan - it's closer to 12'. The two margins of error mostly cancel.
I do, because I grew to hate the cabbies who took over in the 1990s. I'd rather cut them off in traffic than put my life exclusively in their hands.
"Asshole driving", NYC style, ought to be a Summer Olympics sport: "Urban slalom".
We have that in NYC, too. Lots of "multimodal" transit integrations. The buses still don't stop at the doors of most of our offices.
No, the regulation does work, except when lobbyists destroy the legislation with a huge loophole. Fortunately, closing those loopholes makes for a simple, immediate solution to the problem.
Overall American car gas mileage plummeted solely because SUVs are "light trucks", which have emissions/mileage loopholes. They became popular when Detroit exploited the loophole, created in negotiations between Detroit and Congress to allow exception to that very small, but economically important kind of vehicle which was often the biggest capital investment for a laborer. Once secured, Detroit created and marketed "family cars" in that class, under those rules, multiplying the engines operating without restriction many times over. They offered seductive financing to a newly debt-oblivious America, leveraging first the Red Staters whose agricultural economy made debt their way of life. But then they even got Congress to offer tax credits for buying SUVs.
The actual history of "American mileage" shows that we have artificial legislation creating the huge waste that's killing us. More history shows that Americans have continued to buy these wasteful SUVs despite gas prices tripling since Bush took power. Compared to those costs, taxes are little disincentive. Especially to the rich people who can afford it, who waste more than anyone else because they can afford that.
The legislation failed only when manipulated by Detroit capitalists to exploit foolish American (capitalist) consumers. We can fix the legislation by dropping the tax incentives, closing the emissions/mileage loopholes, and enhancing the legislative baseline with stricter "fleet emissions" requirements to make up for time lost to the extra pollution over the past shameful decade.
I think I've seen those here in NYC.
There's only so much "around the block", and unlimited cars. In midtown Manhattan, where I parked this afternoon (for $45 for 3 hours), "around the block" is about 3K'. Cars are about 15' including "bumper room", so that's about 200 cars, or maybe 800-1000 people. Buildings are about 50 storeys high, with about 1000 people per storey for 50K people. More than 50x the circling car capacity.
And oil is for plastic, not burning.