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Are you saying that the Argentine Peso (AGP) isn't a real currency because of the currency board?
No, it is just that it isn't convertible. This is designed to keep the Peso higher valuated than it would otherwise be, or in other words to keep Argentina's reserves from exhaustion.
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EQP isn't traded at currency exchanges, AGP is. EQP has no currency board, AGP does.
The effect is the same: higher valuation than otherwise.
No, but there are proportionally much more Engineer CEOs in Germany than in the US. And apart from that, engineers have much more influence in companies than in the US, usually having a proeminence over the administrative people.
Try to buy any other currency or commodity with it. You can't. The only way is first selling it.
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unless you are talking about non-floating currency such as China's RMB
Conversibility is a non-intuitive Economics concept. China's RMB is exactly a non-convertible currency: you have to go to a currency board set by China's government to be able to exchange it.
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Perhaps I am taking this too seriously, but some people sure do have too much time in their hands.
The article fails to take into account that those EQ platinums aren't conversible. Meaning, you can auction them off in eBay, but only a minority will ever be. If they were a real currency, not necessarily the US dollar, then they would be convertible and these measurements and comparisions would make sense.
In that case, the value of the EQ platinum as a commodity would be much, much lower.
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Bleeding money off shore through outsourcing until the common guy on the street can't get a job is not going to help scientists and engineers innovate.
Yes, it will. Because service will become better and cheaper.
In fact that's one of the striking differences between America (not only the US) and Europe: due to less protectionism and higher birth rates, service in America is already much better, cheaper, faster than in Europe, and correspondingly standards of living higher for the same incomes. This helps qualified people get their work done instead of trying to save doing something best left to someone else.
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you will simply bring the standard of your own country down closer to the level of the countries you outsource to.
Are you assuming money just evaporates? No, it is just that wealth get less concentrated. Better yet, more wealth is created, and specially if you consider poorer countries have lower costs, the rise of standards of living in poorer countries is more than proportional than the rich countries' loss.
Call that social justice thru globalised economy.
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Outsourcing to another place where people work like slaves for peanuts just to keep themselves from starving is evil
Translation: I don't want to sacrifice my car and have to take a bus just to keep Indian children from starving to death. Perhaps I will give them some charity, but don't expect me to allow them to live by their own work. They must be kept dependent on my goodwill.
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Everyone who genuinely wants to work should be able to make a living.
I wonder why this must true for Europe and the Anglo-Saxon countries but must be denied everyone else.
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Do you seriously believe that these "engineer-CEOs" in Germany lack people skills?
You are putting words in my mouth, therefore I won't even waste my time reading the rest of your post...
But just to clarify, I never said that, and I never said that one needs to be a crook to have people skills. What I did imply is that the MBA types usually have a very poor understanding of the technical side, and are usually incapable of adequately evaluate it. There are certainly exceptions, as the current CEO of IBM.
I do know for a fact that at least one German Swiss CIO I knew was a total jerk. But that is quite another story.
These are not theories, but best practices which we ignore to our own loss.
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it makes sense to divert smart people (i.e. programmers) to work with the business analysts and systems analysts.
This is the typical arrogant suit mistake. Loose good technical people in order to get lousy management or otherwise business workers. Business suffers, for it has neither competent systems or business analysts nor good techies.
There are different kindas intelligence. Get over it. One can't force everyone to be smart his own way. There is a cost of doing business, and a cost of having technology. One can't save administrative costs by automation, and then screw automation by trying to force techies out of their natural shape.
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any kid can code one up in VB or PHP and connect it to a database.
Yes, and they are lousy at it. These 'kids' usually don't understand human interface, don't understand databases, and are too arrogant to learn. Then you try to hire real professionals, and they are too expensive. Or if you want to pay you can't, for you lack a Y-shaped career path. Ah, you have some, but suits are ruining them trying to recreate them at their own image, and now they are unavailable to do real work, and generally just demotivated. You can't get people from outside, because protectionist laws have effectively barred immigration unless it's illegal or over-qualified PhDs. You can't outsource, because it is a political problem and you get communication problems. Everyone looses, natives as foreigners, and the wealth of nations is wasted.
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A database designer who doesn't understand the business can't do it, a developer who refuses to talk to users can't do it.
The problem here is deeper. Most DB designers today don't even know that SQL is not relational, nor understand properly the relational model or the separation of physical and logical levels.
But remember, we were talking engineers in general, not only IT types. The situation is much worse and more general than society dares reckon with.
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People skills really do matter [...] I would say that for a good programmer, 25% is coding skills, 75% is a mixture of domain knowledge and people skills
This is where you and most suits go wrong. You mix different roles that can't be performed well by 95% of people, no matter where they come from or their formation.
Classical (ie, sane) software engineering requires systems analysts and programmers as separate roles by separate people. Thus systems analysts bridge business analysts who need to know no tech with programmers who need to stand no stupidity.
Now what we have is this ill-defined developers or programming analysts that can't quite understand the business and aren't quite technically good, at least not at the same time.
Thus this plethora of supposedly business-critical systems based on MS mistechnologies, this mountain of data in badly-modelled, non-relational databases, this general frustration by both techies and users.
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When I talk to CEOs about the career paths of the engineers in their companies, they say that many reach a career plateau very early, often after only five years. This happens not because of any technical deficiency, but because of a lack of "people" skills such as communication and teamwork.
No news here. These are MBA-type CEOs that love to ruin people's lives because they can't lie enough to keep customers happy but screwed. The kinda guy who thinks he's a success because he's filthy rich, and who can't understand he needs people. He can't grok that people want to do something instead of bloodsucking like him. So his company lacks an Y-shaped career path.
Contrast this to Germany where CEOs are engineers.
Not playing games, I was still interested in the workstation. As it seems the Cell processor is some variant of PowerPC, and given the current state of GNU/Linux in both Sony entertainment and IBM, it seems like a sure bet that this workstation will mark one more step by IBM in trying to validate GNU/Linux on the PowerPC as a general purpose platform rivalling Wintel.
Were I still in Europe I would hopefully already have an IBM POP-based Pegaso or A1 system running Debian GNU/Linux on the PowerPC. Sony seems to base their PS2 port of GNU/Linux on Red Hat. Perhaps the Sony Cell workstation will reach my country before the POP systems do.
While a port rivalling Wintel can only be a good thing, and perhaps may help validate GNU/Linux as a platform and give it a better competitive advantage agains MS, it still remains to be seen how much freedom will benefit, given the doubtful records of Sony (DRM, crippled PS2 GNU/Linux) and IBM (soft patents).
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'Relational Database' typically refers to something like DB2 or MSSQL that support features like foreign keys and referential integrity, allowing one to create relations between tables.
There are some misunderstandings here.
First, both IBM DB2 and MS SQL Server are based on the SQL standard -- actually IBM DB2 defined the standard --, and SQL is in frontal violation of serveral fundamental characteristics of the relational model. It does, however, incorporates some relational ideas and is generally saner than alternatives like XML, MV, OO DBs.
Second, foreign keys are constraints to enforce referential integrity. This does not 'create relations between tables', it documents and enforces some relationships, and does that non-exclusively. The user is free to query the data and find any other relationships.
Third, relation has a very definite mathematical meaning. It is the defining feature of the relational model, and corresponds to what SQL calls tables -- only that relations are sets, while tables are bags.
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I don't understand how you are suggesting it be organized
One can still have a hierarchy, but it would be just one way of accessing files, not the way. The position(s) of a file in the hierarchy would be just yet another attribute of it.
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For me and I think a lot of the world for right or wrong SQL=A Relational Database
Yeah, IBM brainwashed the world on that some twenty years ago, together with Oracle. That was one of the reasons for Dr Codd, the creator of the relational model, to leave IBM.
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While this logical model works it still leaves out the nuts and bolts of the database/filesystemDatabase
That's the beauty of it. By fixing an interface language at the logical level, the implementors have total freedom at the physical level. They can use tables, hiearchies, pointers, hashes, indexes, whatever, as long as only relations and constraints appear to the userland.
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Would that entire blob have to be read into memory when you did a seek.
Not necessarily... perhaps, but then perhaps the file contents could be parsed for the search engine's benefit when the file was created or every early morning or whatever. This wouldn't be much different than today's systems.
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It make an interesting project to create a file system for Linux that uses a postgres or maybe SapDB server as a back end just to get a feel for it.
That's Gnome Storage for you. But SQL has way too much limitations, the real thing would be something like Opus, Duro, Dataphor or the like at the backend.
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I was wondering how do you map files and directories to tables and tuples?
First, it is relations, not tables. SQL has tables, but it is not relational.
Then, remember a directory is also a file. Just a special type of file.
In a very simple logical model, one would have a relation Files (name, type etc), and another Hierarchy (name, name_father). The Hierarchy relation would have just the pairs of files and their parents. The parentless file is the root directory.
This is done everyday all over the world, even if SQL lacks proper support.
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maybe it's just me but I remember everypoint of every piece of data
It is just you. Or you're not quite truthful.
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If you pull all that apart, and interconnect it then it doesn't have it's place anymore
There is no interconnection. In fact, the relational model does away with pointers (and relationships) and substitutes relations instead.
The point of the relational model is not doing away with hierarchies as ways of presenting and organising data at the user or physical levels, but as ways of managing it at the logical one.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
No, it is just that it isn't convertible. This is designed to keep the Peso higher valuated than it would otherwise be, or in other words to keep Argentina's reserves from exhaustion.
The effect is the same: higher valuation than otherwise.
No, but there are proportionally much more Engineer CEOs in Germany than in the US. And apart from that, engineers have much more influence in companies than in the US, usually having a proeminence over the administrative people.
In which aspects?
How?
I am interested in Cairo, SVG and GNUStep, not Aqua.
It ain't. It has no one behind it enforcing its usage as a way of payments, and the restriction in its usage keeps its value artificially high.
That's exactly the problem. Currency boards exist to try to keep the valuation of a currency higher than it would usually be.
Try to buy any other currency or commodity with it. You can't. The only way is first selling it.
Conversibility is a non-intuitive Economics concept. China's RMB is exactly a non-convertible currency: you have to go to a currency board set by China's government to be able to exchange it.
The article fails to take into account that those EQ platinums aren't conversible. Meaning, you can auction them off in eBay, but only a minority will ever be. If they were a real currency, not necessarily the US dollar, then they would be convertible and these measurements and comparisions would make sense.
In that case, the value of the EQ platinum as a commodity would be much, much lower.
Yes, it will. Because service will become better and cheaper.
In fact that's one of the striking differences between America (not only the US) and Europe: due to less protectionism and higher birth rates, service in America is already much better, cheaper, faster than in Europe, and correspondingly standards of living higher for the same incomes. This helps qualified people get their work done instead of trying to save doing something best left to someone else.
Are you assuming money just evaporates? No, it is just that wealth get less concentrated. Better yet, more wealth is created, and specially if you consider poorer countries have lower costs, the rise of standards of living in poorer countries is more than proportional than the rich countries' loss.
Call that social justice thru globalised economy.
Translation: I don't want to sacrifice my car and have to take a bus just to keep Indian children from starving to death. Perhaps I will give them some charity, but don't expect me to allow them to live by their own work. They must be kept dependent on my goodwill.
I wonder why this must true for Europe and the Anglo-Saxon countries but must be denied everyone else.
You are probably thinking about the NetWinder.
You are putting words in my mouth, therefore I won't even waste my time reading the rest of your post...
But just to clarify, I never said that, and I never said that one needs to be a crook to have people skills. What I did imply is that the MBA types usually have a very poor understanding of the technical side, and are usually incapable of adequately evaluate it. There are certainly exceptions, as the current CEO of IBM.
I do know for a fact that at least one German Swiss CIO I knew was a total jerk. But that is quite another story.
Or rather of lack of fear of God and Justice.
These are not theories, but best practices which we ignore to our own loss.
This is the typical arrogant suit mistake. Loose good technical people in order to get lousy management or otherwise business workers. Business suffers, for it has neither competent systems or business analysts nor good techies.
There are different kindas intelligence. Get over it. One can't force everyone to be smart his own way. There is a cost of doing business, and a cost of having technology. One can't save administrative costs by automation, and then screw automation by trying to force techies out of their natural shape.
Yes, and they are lousy at it. These 'kids' usually don't understand human interface, don't understand databases, and are too arrogant to learn. Then you try to hire real professionals, and they are too expensive. Or if you want to pay you can't, for you lack a Y-shaped career path. Ah, you have some, but suits are ruining them trying to recreate them at their own image, and now they are unavailable to do real work, and generally just demotivated. You can't get people from outside, because protectionist laws have effectively barred immigration unless it's illegal or over-qualified PhDs. You can't outsource, because it is a political problem and you get communication problems. Everyone looses, natives as foreigners, and the wealth of nations is wasted.
The problem here is deeper. Most DB designers today don't even know that SQL is not relational, nor understand properly the relational model or the separation of physical and logical levels.
But remember, we were talking engineers in general, not only IT types. The situation is much worse and more general than society dares reckon with.
This is where you and most suits go wrong. You mix different roles that can't be performed well by 95% of people, no matter where they come from or their formation.
Classical (ie, sane) software engineering requires systems analysts and programmers as separate roles by separate people. Thus systems analysts bridge business analysts who need to know no tech with programmers who need to stand no stupidity.
Now what we have is this ill-defined developers or programming analysts that can't quite understand the business and aren't quite technically good, at least not at the same time.
Thus this plethora of supposedly business-critical systems based on MS mistechnologies, this mountain of data in badly-modelled, non-relational databases, this general frustration by both techies and users.
Sorry, I can understand no German. English, Portuguese, Spanish, French plus dialects such as Galician, Catalan whatnot...
No news here. These are MBA-type CEOs that love to ruin people's lives because they can't lie enough to keep customers happy but screwed. The kinda guy who thinks he's a success because he's filthy rich, and who can't understand he needs people. He can't grok that people want to do something instead of bloodsucking like him. So his company lacks an Y-shaped career path.
Contrast this to Germany where CEOs are engineers.
I for one don't want to be near a MS WNT-run vehicle, much less such a lethal one.
Not playing games, I was still interested in the workstation. As it seems the Cell processor is some variant of PowerPC, and given the current state of GNU/Linux in both Sony entertainment and IBM, it seems like a sure bet that this workstation will mark one more step by IBM in trying to validate GNU/Linux on the PowerPC as a general purpose platform rivalling Wintel.
Were I still in Europe I would hopefully already have an IBM POP-based Pegaso or A1 system running Debian GNU/Linux on the PowerPC. Sony seems to base their PS2 port of GNU/Linux on Red Hat. Perhaps the Sony Cell workstation will reach my country before the POP systems do.
While a port rivalling Wintel can only be a good thing, and perhaps may help validate GNU/Linux as a platform and give it a better competitive advantage agains MS, it still remains to be seen how much freedom will benefit, given the doubtful records of Sony (DRM, crippled PS2 GNU/Linux) and IBM (soft patents).
There are some misunderstandings here.
First, both IBM DB2 and MS SQL Server are based on the SQL standard -- actually IBM DB2 defined the standard --, and SQL is in frontal violation of serveral fundamental characteristics of the relational model. It does, however, incorporates some relational ideas and is generally saner than alternatives like XML, MV, OO DBs.
Second, foreign keys are constraints to enforce referential integrity. This does not 'create relations between tables', it documents and enforces some relationships, and does that non-exclusively. The user is free to query the data and find any other relationships.
Third, relation has a very definite mathematical meaning. It is the defining feature of the relational model, and corresponds to what SQL calls tables -- only that relations are sets, while tables are bags.
One can still have a hierarchy, but it would be just one way of accessing files, not the way. The position(s) of a file in the hierarchy would be just yet another attribute of it.
Yeah, IBM brainwashed the world on that some twenty years ago, together with Oracle. That was one of the reasons for Dr Codd, the creator of the relational model, to leave IBM.
That's the beauty of it. By fixing an interface language at the logical level, the implementors have total freedom at the physical level. They can use tables, hiearchies, pointers, hashes, indexes, whatever, as long as only relations and constraints appear to the userland.
Not necessarily... perhaps, but then perhaps the file contents could be parsed for the search engine's benefit when the file was created or every early morning or whatever. This wouldn't be much different than today's systems.
That's Gnome Storage for you. But SQL has way too much limitations, the real thing would be something like Opus, Duro, Dataphor or the like at the backend.
Because there is nothing else good enough.
Because there is not quite such a thing... all are actually worse, lacking the fundamentals.
It is a 30-years throwback to pre-relational systems.
You are thinking SQL. The relational model really can map anything.
Pick is MV, not relational. Check news:comp.databases.theory for more on that, or DBDebunk.
Like in Mathematics. Really this is not the place to teach that, I recommend Chris J Date's books as listed at DBDebunk.
Am not.
Old Portuguese tradition, plus my mother didn't want me to have troubles with sharing the same name. Really.
Why is that a problem?
I won't do anyone's homework.
First, it is relations, not tables. SQL has tables, but it is not relational.
Then, remember a directory is also a file. Just a special type of file.
In a very simple logical model, one would have a relation Files (name, type etc), and another Hierarchy (name, name_father). The Hierarchy relation would have just the pairs of files and their parents. The parentless file is the root directory.
This is done everyday all over the world, even if SQL lacks proper support.
MS only enters hardware when they feel there isn't anything good enough there to help sell MS Windows. Now there is, so the pull off.
Exceptions are mice. Probably they make too much money to pull off.
It is just you. Or you're not quite truthful.
There is no interconnection. In fact, the relational model does away with pointers (and relationships) and substitutes relations instead.
The point of the relational model is not doing away with hierarchies as ways of presenting and organising data at the user or physical levels, but as ways of managing it at the logical one.