>
The x86 ISA may not be the most elegant or clean but it is kicking the snot out of everything except maybe Power. Sure it can be seen as kludge on kludge but yet no one seems to be able to come out with something that beats it for perfomance without costing many times more.
You never heard of the wages of monopoly and economies of scale?
Give RISC the same engineering and manufacturing resources and it will be cheaper, faster, smaller, more energy-efficient, hands tied.
>
m68k was in macs, amigas, atari, the sega genesis, sun, sgi workstations
Hmm... let's see. Amigas had just died, or were about to; Atari had already went the way of the dodo. Sega Genesis never made much of a splash, Sun had already gone SPARC, SGI was already MIPS. And Apple wanted a future proof RISC system, which the M68K, while better than x86, certainly wasn't, especially in the absence of Intel's monopoly's wages.
Yes, it was. It had some pretty sweet machines as far as PCs go. BTW, did you never notice post-merger Compaq desktops and notebooks had more DEC heritage than Compaq's own?
>
by hiring a decent DBadmin who has experience with both types of RDBMs and can write a script to convert all that pretty Oracle specific SQL into ANSI-92 compliant SQL and feed it into whatever server you like without shovelling hundreds of thousands of dollars into Larry's/IBM's/Msoft's pockets
You obviously never worked with data?
The problem with Oracle isn't the SQL commands. It is data types. Rewriting the application is bad enough, but migrating to ANSI SQL data types can be a nightmare.
>
there isn't anything close to Oracle when it comes to availability/reliability
Yes, there is: IBM DB2. And NCR Teradata, BTW.
>
even if there was IT managers would not go for it for some years because it's not proven in the enterprise
IBM DB2 not proven in the enterprise? Perhaps the new generation in the golf club isn't old enough to appreciate IBM quality when they see it...
>
it's reputation is well deserved
You mean, the reputation of being a resource hog, difficult to manage, too expensive, and not SQL compliant? There is a point to be made that complexity hinders reliability, performance, etc.
Why pointless? Do you realise how much is wasted in expensive fabs, chip real state, and consequently energy, not to mention technological progress itself, plus so much noise, because there is a herd mentality that, coupled with binary-only software, keeps the inefficient x86 architecture around?
Intel is no better than MS. They have been doing all they can to kill competitors, from suing AMD to buying the Alpha only to kill it.
I will end up buying an used Apple Cube, or assembling my own AmigaOne or ARM machine.
Thank you, but what I hoped for was something along the lines of Digital's Alpha vs IA-64 -- not who's faster now, but who has the potential to be faster.
Because just as with MS vs open systems, the Intel vs RISC comparision is heavily biased due to the monopoly position. Intel's economies of scale allow it to produce a tremendously inefficient processor relatively cheaply and in high-performing parts; but I am still under the impression that, had any RISC processor access to the market as Intel has, the world would have faster computers, pay less, and use less energy.
>
indeed LoTR is a trilogy and therefore is entitled to consist of three films. But that doesn't change the fact that Return of the King will be far from a new concept. That's my beef.
So what do you propose? Launching a trilogy all at the same time? Not launching but one movie?
You know so little about TLoTR that you didn't realise that if it weren't for the market expediency, seven movies would be much better than three: one for the Hobbit and for each TLoTR book (not volume).
>
Star Wars, there may have been hints and murmers from the beginning of making the original films part of something bigger, but there would have been no trilogies had the first ones not been so sooo so successful.
You could not have been more wrong. Never wondered why Star Wars was _Chapter IV_?
What about comparing things that are in the same level?
MySQL doesn't do as much as MS SQL Server, forcing much logic onto the application and not scaling as well. The valid comparision would have been PostgreSQL.
>
if a country could not support the huge population explosion that would result.
Generally as people become richer, they have less children. The thing that keeps people multiplying, surprinsingly enough, is poverty, lack of education and of perspectives.
Answering my own question, lynx isn't older than Mosaic, but there were other programs, both GUI and text mode, before Mosaic. Looks like the Web is actually 13 years old.
In fact, I was around in 1,994, and remember that Mosaic was greeted as the first easy-to-use browser, succeeding less user-friendly antecessors.
>
Any particular timeframe or groups I whould look at to get a better idea of how poitics operate in the region besides the Palastinian/Israel conflict?
Due to the current politically correct climate, it is hard to get a feeling of how it is with Muslims and Jews short of having direct experience. In general the Muslim press and sites are all but useless, due to widespread censorship and brutal repression; but their point of view is widely defended in the European press and sites. The Israeli press, for example The Jerusalem Post and sites are better due to freedom and education, but right now they are more biased than usual, as they are reacting defensively to European bashing and siding with their enemies.
Some very informative books exist, the problem is finding them. One I remember well is _Oh, Jerusalem_, that gives some background from an Israeli point of view. Perhaps the more useful would be to read and compare good editions of the Old Testament of the Bible (Tanach) and the Koran, the difference is striking.
>
because XML is a pretty widely-used standard format?
That buys us precisely what? It is nothing but text markup. To me it is but an instance of "if all you know is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Even if one thinks XML is useful for some particular task, the real juice is the XML DTD or schema designed.
>
I've never heard of Tutorial D or D4
Sad... take a look at Alphora Dataphor for a taste of a relational system, it is proprietary but it is the only one out there. There is also a free software C library at Darwen's site.
>
You should talk to this guy
Yes, I know tablizer. Last I checked he still didn't grokked the relational model, he thought it had something to do with xBase...
Nice effort to compare x86 processors, but what I would really love would be a comparision to RISC (UltraSPARC, POWER, ARM) processors and VLIW (EPIC: IPF) ones. After all, x86 is supposed to go away and x86-64 will have to battle VLIW and RISC, not x86-32.
I did say I was sorry, and did explain why I didn't care to read into the page referred, and I did correct my negligence. What else do you want, chest thumping?
>
you feel it's your place to make judgement calls on the value of words
And why not? Do you think Marketspeak isn't misleading, or that it is useful or beautiful?
>
I'm not familiar with "relational prescriptions and proscription"
I would refer you first to Christopher J Date's and Hugh Darwen's The Third Manifesto there isn't much on the site, I point it to you more as a reference to the book. I keep some more links at DMoz, and if you have a tough skin you can try Chris J Date's and Fabian Pascal's Database Debunkings.
Sorry about not doing a write-up, but on one hand I am looking for a job now and on the other I don't think Slashdot is the place to do education (as opposed to discussion).
>
What if you could easily generate the SQL from the XML, or vice versa?
Well, assume that the XML schema did convey all the possible information in SQL. SQL is the standard, why create yet another language? Now assume the XML schema can convey even more information than SQL. In this case, I would rather use something terser, clearer, more straightforward such as Tutorial D or D4 or any other declarative D.
>
Torque can automatically generate the XML from an existing database, though it's not flawless yet. So you don't have to duplicate your effort, if you started with SQL.
That would be kinda OK, if I can continue keeping my SQL and just regenerate the changes incrementally and transparently.
But I fool myself: I don't actually like OO, I would rather program functionally. The real problem isn't to have something to interface SQL and OO, but something to replace SQL that would be fully relational and thus satisfy OO requirements.
>
You obviously haven't paid attention to what I was describing.
Sorry. No, I didn't. After all, persistence & framework are two no-value-added hyping buzzwords for storage & libraries; as you didn't describe Torque, only mentioned it with Marketspeak, I was lead into error.
>
The data is still kept in a relational database, easily accessed by users and tools who need to bypass the object persistence layer and get at the data itself.
More seriously, do you realise Torque works with SQL, not relational databases? There is a reason why all this OO BS endures, and it is people frustrated with SQL arbitrary limitations and lack of power without realising that's because of violating the relational prescriptions and proscription.
>
Torque doesn't require a change in the schema of the database, either. All Torque does is generate classes that make it easy for the developer to access the data from the application, it doesn't replace the database or even mangle the structure of the data in the database.
From the scant documentation I gathered one has to create a XML schema, instead of much more rationally taking SQL or some valid D, such as Tutorial D or Alphora Dataphor D4, as input. That strikes me as either requiring duplication of effort, or that the XML be the reference schema -- neither option seems desirable.
Slashdot Mirror
You never heard of the wages of monopoly and economies of scale?
Give RISC the same engineering and manufacturing resources and it will be cheaper, faster, smaller, more energy-efficient, hands tied.
Insightful? Wow... the horror, the horror.
Hmm... let's see. Amigas had just died, or were about to; Atari had already went the way of the dodo. Sega Genesis never made much of a splash, Sun had already gone SPARC, SGI was already MIPS. And Apple wanted a future proof RISC system, which the M68K, while better than x86, certainly wasn't, especially in the absence of Intel's monopoly's wages.
Wow. Wrong on all counts.
Not quite. Each has not exactly variants, but have been fully 64 bits for years now. Not even sure you can still get new 32 bits.
And BTW, PPC is 32 bits only, that's why it's the PowerPC. The 64 bits is called POWER. Also, SPARC is 32 bits; the 64 bits is UltraSPARC.
Yes, it was. It had some pretty sweet machines as far as PCs go. BTW, did you never notice post-merger Compaq desktops and notebooks had more DEC heritage than Compaq's own?
You obviously never worked with data?
The problem with Oracle isn't the SQL commands. It is data types. Rewriting the application is bad enough, but migrating to ANSI SQL data types can be a nightmare.
Yes, there is: IBM DB2. And NCR Teradata, BTW.
IBM DB2 not proven in the enterprise? Perhaps the new generation in the golf club isn't old enough to appreciate IBM quality when they see it...
You mean, the reputation of being a resource hog, difficult to manage, too expensive, and not SQL compliant? There is a point to be made that complexity hinders reliability, performance, etc.
That would be delightful! Do you have any references at hand?
Why pointless? Do you realise how much is wasted in expensive fabs, chip real state, and consequently energy, not to mention technological progress itself, plus so much noise, because there is a herd mentality that, coupled with binary-only software, keeps the inefficient x86 architecture around?
Intel is no better than MS. They have been doing all they can to kill competitors, from suing AMD to buying the Alpha only to kill it.
I will end up buying an used Apple Cube, or assembling my own AmigaOne or ARM machine.
OK, this is stylish, just as an Apple.
Now what I want is something RISC, silent and preferrably SCSI.
I would love to get a silent PC... only that I don't want to validate the x86 architecture, but a saner, RISC one.
Is there any option short of buying an used Apple Cube?
Thank you, but what I hoped for was something along the lines of Digital's Alpha vs IA-64 -- not who's faster now, but who has the potential to be faster.
Because just as with MS vs open systems, the Intel vs RISC comparision is heavily biased due to the monopoly position. Intel's economies of scale allow it to produce a tremendously inefficient processor relatively cheaply and in high-performing parts; but I am still under the impression that, had any RISC processor access to the market as Intel has, the world would have faster computers, pay less, and use less energy.
So what do you propose? Launching a trilogy all at the same time? Not launching but one movie?
You know so little about TLoTR that you didn't realise that if it weren't for the market expediency, seven movies would be much better than three: one for the Hobbit and for each TLoTR book (not volume).
You could not have been more wrong. Never wondered why Star Wars was _Chapter IV_?
What about comparing things that are in the same level?
MySQL doesn't do as much as MS SQL Server, forcing much logic onto the application and not scaling as well. The valid comparision would have been PostgreSQL.
Generally as people become richer, they have less children. The thing that keeps people multiplying, surprinsingly enough, is poverty, lack of education and of perspectives.
As far as I know, much before Bill Gates started being worshipped, McKinsey (The Firm) used these questions...
Answering my own question, lynx isn't older than Mosaic, but there were other programs, both GUI and text mode, before Mosaic. Looks like the Web is actually 13 years old.
In fact, I was around in 1,994, and remember that Mosaic was greeted as the first easy-to-use browser, succeeding less user-friendly antecessors.
Then everybody is wrong.
Due to the current politically correct climate, it is hard to get a feeling of how it is with Muslims and Jews short of having direct experience. In general the Muslim press and sites are all but useless, due to widespread censorship and brutal repression; but their point of view is widely defended in the European press and sites. The Israeli press, for example The Jerusalem Post and sites are better due to freedom and education, but right now they are more biased than usual, as they are reacting defensively to European bashing and siding with their enemies.
Some very informative books exist, the problem is finding them. One I remember well is _Oh, Jerusalem_, that gives some background from an Israeli point of view. Perhaps the more useful would be to read and compare good editions of the Old Testament of the Bible (Tanach) and the Koran, the difference is striking.
That buys us precisely what? It is nothing but text markup. To me it is but an instance of "if all you know is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Even if one thinks XML is useful for some particular task, the real juice is the XML DTD or schema designed.
Sad... take a look at Alphora Dataphor for a taste of a relational system, it is proprietary but it is the only one out there. There is also a free software C library at Darwen's site.
Yes, I know tablizer. Last I checked he still didn't grokked the relational model, he thought it had something to do with xBase...
Shouldn't that be 10 years of *GUI* web browsing? Isn't lynx, and the whole web stuff a little bit older?
Nice effort to compare x86 processors, but what I would really love would be a comparision to RISC (UltraSPARC, POWER, ARM) processors and VLIW (EPIC: IPF) ones. After all, x86 is supposed to go away and x86-64 will have to battle VLIW and RISC, not x86-32.
I did say I was sorry, and did explain why I didn't care to read into the page referred, and I did correct my negligence. What else do you want, chest thumping?
And why not? Do you think Marketspeak isn't misleading, or that it is useful or beautiful?
I would refer you first to Christopher J Date's and Hugh Darwen's The Third Manifesto there isn't much on the site, I point it to you more as a reference to the book. I keep some more links at DMoz, and if you have a tough skin you can try Chris J Date's and Fabian Pascal's Database Debunkings.
Sorry about not doing a write-up, but on one hand I am looking for a job now and on the other I don't think Slashdot is the place to do education (as opposed to discussion).
Well, assume that the XML schema did convey all the possible information in SQL. SQL is the standard, why create yet another language? Now assume the XML schema can convey even more information than SQL. In this case, I would rather use something terser, clearer, more straightforward such as Tutorial D or D4 or any other declarative D.
That would be kinda OK, if I can continue keeping my SQL and just regenerate the changes incrementally and transparently.
But I fool myself: I don't actually like OO, I would rather program functionally. The real problem isn't to have something to interface SQL and OO, but something to replace SQL that would be fully relational and thus satisfy OO requirements.
You haven't read enough about dictatorships and the such.
Have you ever heard of the decadence of the West?
Read Bruce Schneier. The more trusted an identificator, the more likely it is to be a target of forgery.
Sun Solaris. Sun only does Solaris (mostly), while HP does several OS's.
Sorry. No, I didn't. After all, persistence & framework are two no-value-added hyping buzzwords for storage & libraries; as you didn't describe Torque, only mentioned it with Marketspeak, I was lead into error.
More seriously, do you realise Torque works with SQL, not relational databases? There is a reason why all this OO BS endures, and it is people frustrated with SQL arbitrary limitations and lack of power without realising that's because of violating the relational prescriptions and proscription.
From the scant documentation I gathered one has to create a XML schema, instead of much more rationally taking SQL or some valid D, such as Tutorial D or Alphora Dataphor D4, as input. That strikes me as either requiring duplication of effort, or that the XML be the reference schema -- neither option seems desirable.