And by the way, just to answer your absurd assertion about child labor, do you know why Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol? It was because of what he witnessed with his own eyes, and he wanted to change the world. From Wikipedia (this article is well referenced, if you don't trust Wikipedia):
Dickens was keenly touched by the lot of poor children in the middle decades of the 19th century. In early 1843, he toured the Cornish tin mines where he saw children working in appalling conditions. The suffering he witnessed there was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several London schools set up for the education of the capital's half-starved, illiterate street children.[11] Inspired by the February 1843 parliamentary report exposing the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon poor children called Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Dickens planned in May 1843 to publish an inexpensive political pamphlet tentatively titled, "An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child" but changed his mind, deferring the pamphlet's production until the end of the year.[12] He wrote to Dr. Southwood Smith, one of four commissioners responsible for the Second Report, about his change in plans: "[Y]ou will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force – twenty thousand times the force – I could exert by following out my first idea." The pamphlet would become A Christmas Carol.[13]
To imply that children never suffered and that child labor laws and education laws weren't needed is just ignorance of the highest order.
Gotta love Libertarian nerd rage. Socialists hate too much wealth power, but ignore the abuse of government power. Libertarians hate too much government power, but ignore the abuse of wealth power.
I'm a free marketer, but yes, sometimes regulation is not evil. Proof? Easy. Child labor laws and its sibling, compulsory education. We could also talk about paying poor miners in scrip and forcing them to buy goods at inflated pricing at Company Stores.
That is only one definition of "the cloud." The context here is ChromeOS, which specifically eschews native apps, and wants all applications running in the browser. Yes, in either case, the data is hosted on a remote server, but this discussion thread is the idea that native applications have no place in a browser-based world, and that's the view I'm taking issue with.
I don't think it's the language the UI is written or the way you download the code the difference between the "cloud" or locally-running apps.
The platform does matter. JS is a horrible language to do sophisticated things in. A binary with full access to the native API is going to typically be much more responsive than an application running in a browser.
Who knows, maybe we'll see browser-based web sites get better as we get better tools that can take advantage of HTML 5 (which I still maintain is a crude, horrible platform compared to native APIs). But at this point, a native app is far and away better than a browser app.
Where are this people moving from the "cloud" to locally based applications and services?
While I agree with your basic premise that average people aren't sitting around raging about cloud services, I do disagree somewhat with the above. Speaking for myself, I very often choose to use the Amazon or eBay apps on my iPad rather than using the web sites. Let's face it, web sites SUCK compared to traditional applications. We tolerate it because we were drunk with the mass variety of web sites, but when you come right down to usability and responsiveness, HTML (yes, even 5) is a crude, crude, CRUDE tool.
Using a local binary app on the iPad is just so much better than using the respective web site. Maybe we'll see better web technology in the future, but it's hard to compete with a locally running application for responsiveness.
You are right you are in idiot. They have a decreasing cost as even damn blurb said so "price of consumer lithium-ion cells has fallen 6 to 8 percent annually since their 1989 launchprice of consumer lithium-ion cells has fallen 6 to 8 percent annually since their 1989 launch" Seriously wtf did you put any effort in your ideas at all?
Love that Nerd Rage. Do you realize that 8% (best case) over 21 years is about.37% per year? That's not exactly setting the economic world on fire. And there's not a lot of hope that there's going to be a sudden acceleration (ha ha) in that rate.
One place where "conservatives" and "libertarians" agree is that the "free market" is better suited to protecting the environment...
The free market *could* be better at protecting the environment, if protecting the environment was built into the cost of products (e.g., mandatory disposal services). Unfortunately, the latter idea is usually rejected as "socialism" by these same conservatives and libertarians.
I'm economically conservative and a free marketer, but I have to disagree about health care. There is no free market solution that can work. Health care is fundamentally different than any other service, because 1) your life depends on it, and thus cost decisions are secondary (are you going to shop for the cheapest heart surgeon?), and 2) the concept of insurance removes the visibility of pricing and cost decisions (medical savings accounts are too weak of a concept). I'm oversimplifying for the sake of a Slashdot post, but I'm actually convinced that medical care needs to be a government service like roads and water works. It's one of the Great Exceptions to the rule that privatization is generally better than public works (see also: medical research, but that's another subject).
I believe the OP's point was trying to force kids to do things they have no interest in. Not everyone has to be an engineer. Find out what a kid is interested in, and help develop their imagination, even if it's in an area that you don't care about.
The GPL is the most important license or legal construction In the history of computing. Easily. It's not even close.
No. Whoever invented the EULA and figured out that software should be licensed instead of sold was a far more important legal construction. That move changed the entire industry to such an extent that almost no software is sold these days. The GPL is only modestly important compared to that monumental legal change.
I bet that if you asked a dozen people in their 30s what makes an electric motor work, you'd be lucky to get one who was even close to understanding the basics of how it works.
Define "works". I'm willing to bet that very VERY few people really understand how an electric motor actually works. Sure, some could say "it uses brushes that switch on/off electromagnets at synchronized times," but *HOW* does it work? What is an electromagnet actually doing to convert electrical energy into physical movement? What is a magnetic field? Why does it cause certain metals to move?
My point is that you lament that certain people don't even know about brush and electromagnets, while a physicist might lament that you have very little idea what is actually happening with electromagnetic forces. Now, you might reply, "I don't need to know Deep Physics to have a basic understanding of how a motor works!"
And I would say, "exactly." We are all ignorant, just different levels of ignorance. It really doesn't matter how a motor works to most people's lives. Sure, it's interesting, but then, so is knowing how to shoot a proper jump shot in basketball.
But since you've never looked back, it may not, and is likely, no longer true.
It may have improved. But who cares? Why would I go back when what I have works well? I generally don't rip out entire database infrastructures unless I have a reason to do it.
This alone should be reason enough to wonder why that might possibly be.
I know the reason(s). It's one of: a) Have never used it, b) Have a vague memory that it doesn't support transactions (which has been wrong for a long time), c) It doesn't support (Feature X) that has nothing to do with reliability.
Google AdWords uses MySQL. If it's good enough for a huge volume, critical task like that, it's good enough for you and anyone else.
The only reason people dislike MySQL is simple ignorance.
There's a difference. Patent advocates are in the business of conspiring against the public to line their own pockets. The FSF represents public interests and has nothing to hide.
Not saying I'm for or against software patents, but you do realize that "patent advocates" are citizens of the public, too, right? And that owners of corporations are citizens? They have exactly as much right as the FSF to argue what the interests of the public are.
I love Chrome, and don't miss Firefox at all (and especially don't miss my system being brought to its knees by the constant memory leaks that seemingly can't be fixed), but I wish they would focus less on whiz-bang features, and focus more on filling in the gaps in the core features. Things like "Print Preview" and "Properties" when you right-click an image come to mind.
If you heard someone bragging about using x because its faster than y, despite y now being much better than x almost immediately after the selection x, you would enjoy the humor.
IF that's true. I highly doubt you have exhaustive metrics to prove it. And even if it is true, performance was only one reason we switched over. It was the right decision for us.
My broader point was not to knock PostgreSQL, only to make the point that MySQL does not deserve the reputation it has in certain quarters, particularly among PostgreSQL advocates.
How often do you spend time dealing with a mysql blowup that's not HW related?
In the couple of years we've been running MySQL (after converting from PostgreSQL), 10s of millions of rows, 21 gigabytes of data, we've never had any hiccups with MySQL of any kind. It Just Works. And I've never heard of anyone else having a non-hardware-related problem.
To now hear you brag that you've never looked back at a superior and faster database because of your steadfast and likely false belief that MySQL is faster, is rather amusing.
You clearly have little experience with MySQL. Look, I understand your smugness and arrogance. I used to feel the same way, based on what I "knew" about MySQL, which is pretty much based on its early reputation.
When I'm talking about speed, I'm talking about real world performance on a REAL application -- our own. It was ridiculously faster. And when we considered switching, I was pleasantly surprised by how much MySQL had grown up into a full-featured database.
In short, these are all excellent products these days that can all do the job. I'm not knocking PostgreSQL. I'm sure it has improved, just like they've all likely improved. But at the time, we had some good reasons for switching. It's fine to prefer PostgreSQL, but your snobbery regarding MySQL is simply out of date.
We used to be on on PostgreSQL. We switched to MySQL about 2 years ago, and never looked back. PostgreSQL had a few features that were nice, but MySQL was SO much faster and easier to deal with. And best of all, it's in the mainstream, so there are oodles of resources out there for it. And yes, we use full transaction processing.
I suspect your knowledge of what MySQL can and can't do is out of date.
This constant paranoia over pedophilia has gotten insane. While it is a terrible crime, the odds of your kid getting killed by an SUV dwarf the odds that they will get molested by a stranger(some studies suggest that the child knows the perpetrator about 90% of the time).
Ah, the amusing irony of lamenting the unreasonable paranoia about pedophilia, and then using the unreasonable paranoia about SUVs in your point.
Slashdot Mirror
And by the way, just to answer your absurd assertion about child labor, do you know why Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol? It was because of what he witnessed with his own eyes, and he wanted to change the world. From Wikipedia (this article is well referenced, if you don't trust Wikipedia):
Dickens was keenly touched by the lot of poor children in the middle decades of the 19th century. In early 1843, he toured the Cornish tin mines where he saw children working in appalling conditions. The suffering he witnessed there was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several London schools set up for the education of the capital's half-starved, illiterate street children.[11] Inspired by the February 1843 parliamentary report exposing the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon poor children called Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Dickens planned in May 1843 to publish an inexpensive political pamphlet tentatively titled, "An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child" but changed his mind, deferring the pamphlet's production until the end of the year.[12] He wrote to Dr. Southwood Smith, one of four commissioners responsible for the Second Report, about his change in plans: "[Y]ou will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force – twenty thousand times the force – I could exert by following out my first idea." The pamphlet would become A Christmas Carol.[13]
To imply that children never suffered and that child labor laws and education laws weren't needed is just ignorance of the highest order.
Gotta love Libertarian nerd rage. Socialists hate too much wealth power, but ignore the abuse of government power. Libertarians hate too much government power, but ignore the abuse of wealth power.
Both are evil and both must be fought.
I'm a free marketer, but yes, sometimes regulation is not evil. Proof? Easy. Child labor laws and its sibling, compulsory education. We could also talk about paying poor miners in scrip and forcing them to buy goods at inflated pricing at Company Stores.
If it's $600, he takes them to small claims court. It doesn't matter how many lawyers they have.
That is only one definition of "the cloud." The context here is ChromeOS, which specifically eschews native apps, and wants all applications running in the browser. Yes, in either case, the data is hosted on a remote server, but this discussion thread is the idea that native applications have no place in a browser-based world, and that's the view I'm taking issue with.
I don't think it's the language the UI is written or the way you download the code the difference between the "cloud" or locally-running apps.
The platform does matter. JS is a horrible language to do sophisticated things in. A binary with full access to the native API is going to typically be much more responsive than an application running in a browser.
Who knows, maybe we'll see browser-based web sites get better as we get better tools that can take advantage of HTML 5 (which I still maintain is a crude, horrible platform compared to native APIs). But at this point, a native app is far and away better than a browser app.
Where are this people moving from the "cloud" to locally based applications and services?
While I agree with your basic premise that average people aren't sitting around raging about cloud services, I do disagree somewhat with the above. Speaking for myself, I very often choose to use the Amazon or eBay apps on my iPad rather than using the web sites. Let's face it, web sites SUCK compared to traditional applications. We tolerate it because we were drunk with the mass variety of web sites, but when you come right down to usability and responsiveness, HTML (yes, even 5) is a crude, crude, CRUDE tool.
Using a local binary app on the iPad is just so much better than using the respective web site. Maybe we'll see better web technology in the future, but it's hard to compete with a locally running application for responsiveness.
Oops. :)
You are right you are in idiot. They have a decreasing cost as even damn blurb said so "price of consumer lithium-ion cells has fallen 6 to 8 percent annually since their 1989 launchprice of consumer lithium-ion cells has fallen 6 to 8 percent annually since their 1989 launch" Seriously wtf did you put any effort in your ideas at all?
Love that Nerd Rage. Do you realize that 8% (best case) over 21 years is about .37% per year? That's not exactly setting the economic world on fire. And there's not a lot of hope that there's going to be a sudden acceleration (ha ha) in that rate.
One place where "conservatives" and "libertarians" agree is that the "free market" is better suited to protecting the environment...
The free market *could* be better at protecting the environment, if protecting the environment was built into the cost of products (e.g., mandatory disposal services). Unfortunately, the latter idea is usually rejected as "socialism" by these same conservatives and libertarians.
I'm economically conservative and a free marketer, but I have to disagree about health care. There is no free market solution that can work. Health care is fundamentally different than any other service, because 1) your life depends on it, and thus cost decisions are secondary (are you going to shop for the cheapest heart surgeon?), and 2) the concept of insurance removes the visibility of pricing and cost decisions (medical savings accounts are too weak of a concept). I'm oversimplifying for the sake of a Slashdot post, but I'm actually convinced that medical care needs to be a government service like roads and water works. It's one of the Great Exceptions to the rule that privatization is generally better than public works (see also: medical research, but that's another subject).
I believe the OP's point was trying to force kids to do things they have no interest in. Not everyone has to be an engineer. Find out what a kid is interested in, and help develop their imagination, even if it's in an area that you don't care about.
I knew someone would knock the Harry Potter series because of being too popular.
The GPL is the most important license or legal construction In the history of computing. Easily. It's not even close.
No. Whoever invented the EULA and figured out that software should be licensed instead of sold was a far more important legal construction. That move changed the entire industry to such an extent that almost no software is sold these days. The GPL is only modestly important compared to that monumental legal change.
I bet that if you asked a dozen people in their 30s what makes an electric motor work, you'd be lucky to get one who was even close to understanding the basics of how it works.
Define "works". I'm willing to bet that very VERY few people really understand how an electric motor actually works. Sure, some could say "it uses brushes that switch on/off electromagnets at synchronized times," but *HOW* does it work? What is an electromagnet actually doing to convert electrical energy into physical movement? What is a magnetic field? Why does it cause certain metals to move?
I'm reminded of this (rather profound) video of Richard Feynman being asked what, exactly, is magnetism and he explains just how difficult these questions are to answer.
My point is that you lament that certain people don't even know about brush and electromagnets, while a physicist might lament that you have very little idea what is actually happening with electromagnetic forces. Now, you might reply, "I don't need to know Deep Physics to have a basic understanding of how a motor works!"
And I would say, "exactly." We are all ignorant, just different levels of ignorance. It really doesn't matter how a motor works to most people's lives. Sure, it's interesting, but then, so is knowing how to shoot a proper jump shot in basketball.
But since you've never looked back, it may not, and is likely, no longer true.
It may have improved. But who cares? Why would I go back when what I have works well? I generally don't rip out entire database infrastructures unless I have a reason to do it.
This alone should be reason enough to wonder why that might possibly be.
I know the reason(s). It's one of: a) Have never used it, b) Have a vague memory that it doesn't support transactions (which has been wrong for a long time), c) It doesn't support (Feature X) that has nothing to do with reliability.
Google AdWords uses MySQL. If it's good enough for a huge volume, critical task like that, it's good enough for you and anyone else.
The only reason people dislike MySQL is simple ignorance.
Citizens own corporations. The corporation's interest is their interest.
There's a difference. Patent advocates are in the business of conspiring against the public to line their own pockets. The FSF represents public interests and has nothing to hide.
Not saying I'm for or against software patents, but you do realize that "patent advocates" are citizens of the public, too, right? And that owners of corporations are citizens? They have exactly as much right as the FSF to argue what the interests of the public are.
The child grows up thinking that physical violence is normal. They'll grow up thinking the showing anger and rage is normal.
Just like sending criminals to jail for bad behavior teaches children that it's okay to kidnap and confine people.
Out of a population of 25 million people, there were only 40 capable of learning something new?
Congratulations. Of all the arguments against the iPad, this one is the most ridiculous.
I love Chrome, and don't miss Firefox at all (and especially don't miss my system being brought to its knees by the constant memory leaks that seemingly can't be fixed), but I wish they would focus less on whiz-bang features, and focus more on filling in the gaps in the core features. Things like "Print Preview" and "Properties" when you right-click an image come to mind.
If you heard someone bragging about using x because its faster than y, despite y now being much better than x almost immediately after the selection x, you would enjoy the humor.
IF that's true. I highly doubt you have exhaustive metrics to prove it. And even if it is true, performance was only one reason we switched over. It was the right decision for us.
My broader point was not to knock PostgreSQL, only to make the point that MySQL does not deserve the reputation it has in certain quarters, particularly among PostgreSQL advocates.
How often do you spend time dealing with a mysql blowup that's not HW related?
In the couple of years we've been running MySQL (after converting from PostgreSQL), 10s of millions of rows, 21 gigabytes of data, we've never had any hiccups with MySQL of any kind. It Just Works. And I've never heard of anyone else having a non-hardware-related problem.
To now hear you brag that you've never looked back at a superior and faster database because of your steadfast and likely false belief that MySQL is faster, is rather amusing.
You clearly have little experience with MySQL. Look, I understand your smugness and arrogance. I used to feel the same way, based on what I "knew" about MySQL, which is pretty much based on its early reputation.
When I'm talking about speed, I'm talking about real world performance on a REAL application -- our own. It was ridiculously faster. And when we considered switching, I was pleasantly surprised by how much MySQL had grown up into a full-featured database.
In short, these are all excellent products these days that can all do the job. I'm not knocking PostgreSQL. I'm sure it has improved, just like they've all likely improved. But at the time, we had some good reasons for switching. It's fine to prefer PostgreSQL, but your snobbery regarding MySQL is simply out of date.
We used to be on on PostgreSQL. We switched to MySQL about 2 years ago, and never looked back. PostgreSQL had a few features that were nice, but MySQL was SO much faster and easier to deal with. And best of all, it's in the mainstream, so there are oodles of resources out there for it. And yes, we use full transaction processing.
I suspect your knowledge of what MySQL can and can't do is out of date.
This constant paranoia over pedophilia has gotten insane. While it is a terrible crime, the odds of your kid getting killed by an SUV dwarf the odds that they will get molested by a stranger(some studies suggest that the child knows the perpetrator about 90% of the time).
Ah, the amusing irony of lamenting the unreasonable paranoia about pedophilia, and then using the unreasonable paranoia about SUVs in your point.