Usually, when someone says "mission critical" they mean something like avionics, where if the software fails, someone could die. You wouldn't run anything truly mission-critical on Windows and VB. But I guess it's a matter of degree; a VB program can be essential to the operation of a business, though if the OS it's running on crashes, it's not a big deal as long as you can just reboot it and continue. I still wouldn't call it "mission critical", however, because I reserve that phrase for things like avionics, Apollo systems, Mars lander software, etc.
Anyway, yeah, if your business-essential VB program runs great on WINE, why not just switch over to Linux? It's cheaper and easier than messing around with Microsoft's treadmill. Just make sure to do plenty of testing to make sure everything works, but after that, you can continue to use it as-is forever, even if you upgrade the Linux OS you're using. You don't have to worry about MS changing things so it won't work any more, like everyone does every time a new Windows OS comes out and breaks things.
How on earth do you find Android more "annoying" than Win3.1, MacOS, OS X, or any Linux distro?
That's like saying you find a bicycle more annoying than a motorboat. It's a nonsensical comparison, because you don't use them for the same thing, or in the same places.
The comparison to iOS is the only one that makes any sense.
An old dual processor 3 ghz board with is going to kick ass for quite some more time...
Just as long as it isn't using Pentium 4 (or its Xeon variant with Netburst architecture) CPUs. That POS was such a power hog, it's worth it to upgrade to something newer as you'll recoup your savings on your electric bill shortly.
All those specialty business applications and "mission critical" visual basic programs seem to only run on Windows XP, based on the various doctors' offices and other businesses I've seen computers running in. Now with XP being EOLed, I expect to see all kinds of havoc.
I think I kinda said that. Obviously, replacing American politicians with Swedish politicians isn't going to improve things much, as long as Duck Dynasty viewers are making the selection at the polls; we'd just wind up with the most corrupt or idiotic Swedish politicians possible. What we need is Swedish politicians, chosen by Swedish voters, to run our government.
See, (again I'm speaking from a position of relative ignorance here) it seems like the RDMBS should be intelligent enough to figure this stuff out automatically, instead of requiring an in-house expert. It should be adaptive and learn from the current usage patterns, in relation to the data it stores. So if, for instance, breaking the query up and using temp tables speeds things up, the DB should figure this out and do it automatically. It wouldn't work for one-time queries, but if the same kind of queries are being done over and over, it should recognize the common queries, and behind-the-scenes look for ways of speeding up these queries, so that when they're done in the future, it can apply these improved methods and deliver much faster results.
This might be a stupid question as I'm not a DB expert, but isn't the problem of badly-written SQL something that could be mitigated by improvements in the SQL parser of a RDMBS? Other programming language compilers are frequently designed to optimize output code despite non-optimal constructs written by programmers. It seems to me that some of the improvements you talk of could be automated, especially moving oft-used queries to stored procedures.
Democracy works fine in some other countries, like Norway and Switzerland. If it isn't working in your country, it's because there's something wrong with the people there, or maybe because the country is too large and diverse.
So what's the answer then? Having dozens of different currencies in one region causes huge problems because of the cost of currency exchange, which is why the Euro was devised in the first place. There's been a lot of benefit to so many countries sharing a common currency. Yes, they could just unite into a single country with a single monetary policy, but considering how different their cultures all are, that's likely to result in a ridiculous amount of squabbling and infighting.
It sounds like France needs to be broken apart as well then.
How about Germany? You don't hear too much about conflicts within Germany.
If the Euros could make the EU work (perhaps with some major tweaks), it'd be better all around if various countries broke apart so that ethnic groups like the Basques and Corsicans can have their own small country and autonomy, while still enjoying the economic benefits of being part of a larger trade union.
We tried that back in the late 1700s, and it didn't work. That's why we have the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't allow things to be left to the states; you'd need to get rid of the Bill of Rights to do that. If you're going to define the BoR as being individual rights (free speech, freedom of religion, etc.) which the States can't legislate against, then you have to also accept that issues like abortion are going to be decided at the Federal level as well.
It'd probably make a lot more sense for California to join with a bunch of the neighboring states of the western US and make their own country, rather than CA trying to be an independent country all by itself. CA (and the rest of the western US) doesn't need the east coast states.
As for food, the US already depends a lot on Mexico for its food, and that's a foreign country (it also gets a lot of food from even farther south). Being separate countries doesn't mean there wouldn't be trade between them. The eastern side of the country (which includes the midwest) certainly grows a lot of its own food too. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but I imagine there's a lot of movement of food back and forth because some things grow better in some places than others, and during different seasons. California probably doesn't grow many apples or corn for instance, while New York probably doesn't grow many melons or oranges.
Actually, it'd probably make more sense if the far eastern parts of those states merged with Idaho instead. Check out the 38 State map for reference. It also adds western Montana and a piece of Wyoming to Idaho, but then chops off the southeast corner and gives that to Mormon-land, since that corner of Idaho has a strong Mormon presence.
How idiotic. Why would separate nations need to squabble? You think we aren't squabbling now? We can't stop fighting about all kinds of issues, such as abortion, contraception, gun control, immigration, drug legalization, and gay marriage. Most of that would die down after the country is broken apart.
Wars? Europe hasn't had any wars in ages, and they had far worse divisions and animosity than us back in those days (and today too, probably). Why on earth would there be a war? Big, foreign powers? You think the US military is going to disappear overnight? You mean like how Russia was invaded after the USSR fell? Oh right, it wasn't. You don't think the new countries wouldn't form a defensive pact like NATO? As for trade, you don't think they wouldn't form a free trade zone, like we already have across north america?
It sounds like you're the hothead who doesn't bother to think.
Other than the Basques, it doesn't sound like France's various regions have too much trouble getting along, so there's likely no issue there. The Basques should probably have their own country; their region straddles the France-Spain border, and they've had separatist tendencies for a long time. Spain is definitely not a good example, with 4 different languages, and two of those regions wanting separation (Basque and Catalan). But most other European countries don't have these problems. You mention some other small minority languages like the Saamis, but again that's just like our Amish people speaking Pennsylvania Dutch: they're such a small minority they don't really matter that much, nor do they have too much trouble getting along with the rest of the country or learning the national language (I don't think there's any Amish people who don't speak English). You usually get problems when you have very large groups of people not speaking the same language, having clashing cultures, and trying to live in the same country together. With very small minorities, they usually recognize they're better off as a part of the larger nation, as long as they aren't being oppressed and can mostly do their own thing in peace. I've never heard of Samoans complain about being part of the US, and Puerto Ricans seem to like their US territory status; they get economic benefits from being US territories instead of independent nations with such small populations.
Why the hell should CA be on the hook for those? CA didn't force all the rest of the states to vote for ObamaCare or any wars. You all voted for Obama and Bush all by yourselves. Hell, if anyone is to blame, it's Illinois for Obama and Texas for Bush. As for illegals, all the states have them now, and the lack of action to keep them out is again the fault of all the voters, for voting for Bush and Obama.
Is he better off sitting back for a while while KDE again refactors its framework for KDE 5?
According to what the KDE team has said, they're not refactoring anything for KDE5. It's only going to be a simple port from Qt4 to Qt5. Qt5 isn't much different from Qt4 anyway, so it's probably not going to amount to much change.
If CA seceded from the union, they'd have more tax money to work with, and their budget would be balanced (assuming they didn't come up with new things to spend the money on). CA gives a lot more money to the Federal government than they get back, so CA is in effect subsidizing the red states.
The answer is different for different people, and is also affected by how much their time is worth, how much it costs them to commute, how much they're getting paid, and how much cheaper it is to live farther away. If you would get paid twice as much for a job that requires a 1-hour commute, you might just take it, for instance. Businesses in places with extremely high housing costs have to pay their employees more, or else be understaffed or suffer from high turnover.
I never said Oregon and Washington should join with California into a single state, with only county divisions separating them. They should stay separate, and in fact California should break up into separate states in a plan like this, so that CA isn't too large compared to the other states. After that, however, the states (or at least some of them, from the northern half of old CA) could join with the states of WA and OR and perhaps a few others into a single country.
Seriously, given a choice, would you rather be in a country with states formed from what used to be the northern half of CA, or would you rather be in a country with places like Florida, Texas, or Louisiana? Considering the strong tech industries in the Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle, you'd think those three regions would want to stick together.
And they're currently busy creating a new country called the European Union. Should we extrapolate from your words that they'll see a drop in standards of living once that is actualized?
It won't be realized. The southern European countries are having massive economic problems because of the union. The Italians are talking about revolution right now. The EU is probably going to break apart in the next 5 years, or at least break into different parts, with the northern countries becoming separate (or having separate currency) from the southern countries.
This shows the problem of trying to unite regions with extremely different cultures. And at least in the EU, they're only mostly trying to make an economic union, rather than making broad laws that affect everyone (such as laws governing social issues).
We have the one with the same sort of internal bickering that other countries in the world have.
I seriously doubt there's any serious disagreement in Iceland over any issues the way we have here in America.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, because it's impossible that a man would initiate that sexual encounter?
Without a time machine or some kind of wormhole device to view the past, we'll never know for sure.
Or that monkeys do the same thing, no marketers involved:
You're obviously a racist. Just because someone's not human doesn't mean they aren't doing marketing.
Usually, when someone says "mission critical" they mean something like avionics, where if the software fails, someone could die. You wouldn't run anything truly mission-critical on Windows and VB. But I guess it's a matter of degree; a VB program can be essential to the operation of a business, though if the OS it's running on crashes, it's not a big deal as long as you can just reboot it and continue. I still wouldn't call it "mission critical", however, because I reserve that phrase for things like avionics, Apollo systems, Mars lander software, etc.
Anyway, yeah, if your business-essential VB program runs great on WINE, why not just switch over to Linux? It's cheaper and easier than messing around with Microsoft's treadmill. Just make sure to do plenty of testing to make sure everything works, but after that, you can continue to use it as-is forever, even if you upgrade the Linux OS you're using. You don't have to worry about MS changing things so it won't work any more, like everyone does every time a new Windows OS comes out and breaks things.
Because the context here is its use as a desktop OS.
iOS and Android aren't desktop OSes. Trying to use them as such makes as much sense as using bicycle to cross the ocean.
How on earth do you find Android more "annoying" than Win3.1, MacOS, OS X, or any Linux distro?
That's like saying you find a bicycle more annoying than a motorboat. It's a nonsensical comparison, because you don't use them for the same thing, or in the same places.
The comparison to iOS is the only one that makes any sense.
An old dual processor 3 ghz board with is going to kick ass for quite some more time...
Just as long as it isn't using Pentium 4 (or its Xeon variant with Netburst architecture) CPUs. That POS was such a power hog, it's worth it to upgrade to something newer as you'll recoup your savings on your electric bill shortly.
We can thank the morons at Canonical (Ubuntu/Unity) and GNOME for that.
All those specialty business applications and "mission critical" visual basic programs seem to only run on Windows XP, based on the various doctors' offices and other businesses I've seen computers running in. Now with XP being EOLed, I expect to see all kinds of havoc.
I think I kinda said that. Obviously, replacing American politicians with Swedish politicians isn't going to improve things much, as long as Duck Dynasty viewers are making the selection at the polls; we'd just wind up with the most corrupt or idiotic Swedish politicians possible. What we need is Swedish politicians, chosen by Swedish voters, to run our government.
See, (again I'm speaking from a position of relative ignorance here) it seems like the RDMBS should be intelligent enough to figure this stuff out automatically, instead of requiring an in-house expert. It should be adaptive and learn from the current usage patterns, in relation to the data it stores. So if, for instance, breaking the query up and using temp tables speeds things up, the DB should figure this out and do it automatically. It wouldn't work for one-time queries, but if the same kind of queries are being done over and over, it should recognize the common queries, and behind-the-scenes look for ways of speeding up these queries, so that when they're done in the future, it can apply these improved methods and deliver much faster results.
Python can be compiled.
This might be a stupid question as I'm not a DB expert, but isn't the problem of badly-written SQL something that could be mitigated by improvements in the SQL parser of a RDMBS? Other programming language compilers are frequently designed to optimize output code despite non-optimal constructs written by programmers. It seems to me that some of the improvements you talk of could be automated, especially moving oft-used queries to stored procedures.
Democracy works fine in some other countries, like Norway and Switzerland. If it isn't working in your country, it's because there's something wrong with the people there, or maybe because the country is too large and diverse.
So what's the answer then? Having dozens of different currencies in one region causes huge problems because of the cost of currency exchange, which is why the Euro was devised in the first place. There's been a lot of benefit to so many countries sharing a common currency. Yes, they could just unite into a single country with a single monetary policy, but considering how different their cultures all are, that's likely to result in a ridiculous amount of squabbling and infighting.
It sounds like France needs to be broken apart as well then.
How about Germany? You don't hear too much about conflicts within Germany.
If the Euros could make the EU work (perhaps with some major tweaks), it'd be better all around if various countries broke apart so that ethnic groups like the Basques and Corsicans can have their own small country and autonomy, while still enjoying the economic benefits of being part of a larger trade union.
We tried that back in the late 1700s, and it didn't work. That's why we have the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't allow things to be left to the states; you'd need to get rid of the Bill of Rights to do that. If you're going to define the BoR as being individual rights (free speech, freedom of religion, etc.) which the States can't legislate against, then you have to also accept that issues like abortion are going to be decided at the Federal level as well.
It'd probably make a lot more sense for California to join with a bunch of the neighboring states of the western US and make their own country, rather than CA trying to be an independent country all by itself. CA (and the rest of the western US) doesn't need the east coast states.
As for food, the US already depends a lot on Mexico for its food, and that's a foreign country (it also gets a lot of food from even farther south). Being separate countries doesn't mean there wouldn't be trade between them. The eastern side of the country (which includes the midwest) certainly grows a lot of its own food too. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but I imagine there's a lot of movement of food back and forth because some things grow better in some places than others, and during different seasons. California probably doesn't grow many apples or corn for instance, while New York probably doesn't grow many melons or oranges.
Actually, it'd probably make more sense if the far eastern parts of those states merged with Idaho instead. Check out the 38 State map for reference. It also adds western Montana and a piece of Wyoming to Idaho, but then chops off the southeast corner and gives that to Mormon-land, since that corner of Idaho has a strong Mormon presence.
How idiotic. Why would separate nations need to squabble? You think we aren't squabbling now? We can't stop fighting about all kinds of issues, such as abortion, contraception, gun control, immigration, drug legalization, and gay marriage. Most of that would die down after the country is broken apart.
Wars? Europe hasn't had any wars in ages, and they had far worse divisions and animosity than us back in those days (and today too, probably). Why on earth would there be a war? Big, foreign powers? You think the US military is going to disappear overnight? You mean like how Russia was invaded after the USSR fell? Oh right, it wasn't. You don't think the new countries wouldn't form a defensive pact like NATO? As for trade, you don't think they wouldn't form a free trade zone, like we already have across north america?
It sounds like you're the hothead who doesn't bother to think.
Other than the Basques, it doesn't sound like France's various regions have too much trouble getting along, so there's likely no issue there. The Basques should probably have their own country; their region straddles the France-Spain border, and they've had separatist tendencies for a long time. Spain is definitely not a good example, with 4 different languages, and two of those regions wanting separation (Basque and Catalan). But most other European countries don't have these problems. You mention some other small minority languages like the Saamis, but again that's just like our Amish people speaking Pennsylvania Dutch: they're such a small minority they don't really matter that much, nor do they have too much trouble getting along with the rest of the country or learning the national language (I don't think there's any Amish people who don't speak English). You usually get problems when you have very large groups of people not speaking the same language, having clashing cultures, and trying to live in the same country together. With very small minorities, they usually recognize they're better off as a part of the larger nation, as long as they aren't being oppressed and can mostly do their own thing in peace. I've never heard of Samoans complain about being part of the US, and Puerto Ricans seem to like their US territory status; they get economic benefits from being US territories instead of independent nations with such small populations.
Why the hell should CA be on the hook for those? CA didn't force all the rest of the states to vote for ObamaCare or any wars. You all voted for Obama and Bush all by yourselves. Hell, if anyone is to blame, it's Illinois for Obama and Texas for Bush. As for illegals, all the states have them now, and the lack of action to keep them out is again the fault of all the voters, for voting for Bush and Obama.
Is he better off sitting back for a while while KDE again refactors its framework for KDE 5?
According to what the KDE team has said, they're not refactoring anything for KDE5. It's only going to be a simple port from Qt4 to Qt5. Qt5 isn't much different from Qt4 anyway, so it's probably not going to amount to much change.
If CA seceded from the union, they'd have more tax money to work with, and their budget would be balanced (assuming they didn't come up with new things to spend the money on). CA gives a lot more money to the Federal government than they get back, so CA is in effect subsidizing the red states.
The answer is different for different people, and is also affected by how much their time is worth, how much it costs them to commute, how much they're getting paid, and how much cheaper it is to live farther away. If you would get paid twice as much for a job that requires a 1-hour commute, you might just take it, for instance. Businesses in places with extremely high housing costs have to pay their employees more, or else be understaffed or suffer from high turnover.
I never said Oregon and Washington should join with California into a single state, with only county divisions separating them. They should stay separate, and in fact California should break up into separate states in a plan like this, so that CA isn't too large compared to the other states. After that, however, the states (or at least some of them, from the northern half of old CA) could join with the states of WA and OR and perhaps a few others into a single country.
Seriously, given a choice, would you rather be in a country with states formed from what used to be the northern half of CA, or would you rather be in a country with places like Florida, Texas, or Louisiana? Considering the strong tech industries in the Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle, you'd think those three regions would want to stick together.
And they're currently busy creating a new country called the European Union. Should we extrapolate from your words that they'll see a drop in standards of living once that is actualized?
It won't be realized. The southern European countries are having massive economic problems because of the union. The Italians are talking about revolution right now. The EU is probably going to break apart in the next 5 years, or at least break into different parts, with the northern countries becoming separate (or having separate currency) from the southern countries.
This shows the problem of trying to unite regions with extremely different cultures. And at least in the EU, they're only mostly trying to make an economic union, rather than making broad laws that affect everyone (such as laws governing social issues).
We have the one with the same sort of internal bickering that other countries in the world have.
I seriously doubt there's any serious disagreement in Iceland over any issues the way we have here in America.