Not so fast. This was obviously written by a partisan hack from the democrat side. How do I know?
1. Republicans do not yet control the senate. Despite having a good election and winning the majority of seats in the senate, they will not be seated until JANUARY 2015. We are in a lame duck congress, meaning the only thing that has changed from before the election is some senators know they are going home soon. The names have not yet changed on the office doors. Democrats are still in control.
2. This bill passed the Republican controlled house, meaning it had to receive at least SOME Republican support.
3. A number of Republican Senators voted for cloture on the bill which required 60 votes. This means there where democrats that DID NOT vote for cloture.
So, Why would Slashdot engage in something so obviously partisan and blame Republicans? Shame on you. This bill's fate was decided by both sides, not just one.
The article is misleading. Some Republican Senators voted for cloture. This bill also was passed by the Republican controlled house. It's failure to proceed was bipartisan, and included a number of democrats not voting for cloture. Like it or not, Republicans are NOT YET in control of the Senate. The new congress is not seated until January 2015.
Look, either go full 100% electric and just put in chargers everywhere, or use CNG
If you're going to talk about existing distribution infrastructure, why not choose Option C: Propane autogas? It's #3 in the States (behind gas and diesel) as well as the most common alternative fuel worldwide...
Works for me, propane is a bit more expensive than CNG, but why not? It's been used for a long time as a motor fuel too. Hydrogen is still just a stupid idea though.
Where, pray tell, are you going to get burnable hydrogen? From Water? Have fun with that.
You obviously don't understand what it takes to convert water into hydrogen fuel. HINT: Lots and LOTS of electricity, which, despite what you might think, cannot be produced for free. Windmills and solar cells cost money and harm the environment. Industrially, Hydrogen is currently produced FROM Natural Gas, not water.
But never mind all that.... Try this one. Using hydrogen as a method to "store energy" is a stupid approach. You would be better off using currently available battery technologies (lead acid, Li-Ion etc) by nearly 10 times.
As I posted previously, where do you suppose we get hydrogen now? For industrial supplies we reform natural gas, which involves steam and fairly high temperatures. Processing and storage of hydrogen is harder than for natural gas. So, hydrogen will be more expensive, it simply has to be. Start with Natural gas, process by adding heat to get hydrogen, suffer larger losses in the storage and distribution of hydrogen and it will ALWAYS be more expensive.
And before you start down the "just use solar/wind power to split hydrogen" understand that neither of these technologies are cost effective and doing what you suggest is much less efficient than even Lithium Ion batteries.
Again, just in case it wasn't clear from my first response. Who is concerned about Hydrogen's safety? Hydrogen Gas is no less safe than Natural Gas and I'm not debating this aspect.
What I AM saying is that Hydrogen is a stupid idea when you consider the engineering efficiency of the whole system. Just burn Natural Gas as a motor fuel, it's easier and more efficient (and cheaper as a result).
You have to start somewhere. If we required the full infrastructure to be in place first then we would never advance at all.
This may or may not end up working in the long term, but could theoretically have the advantages of gas (i.e. pour some liquid into your car every few miles) and the advantages of electric vehicles (efficiencies of scale by generating large amounts of power instead of all the cars generating small amounts inefficiently).
Why do the hydrogen canard then? Why not burn Compressed Natural Gas? Nearly all the benifits and CHEAP fuel too...
Oh, and before you start into the "Using free solar electricity to disassociate hydrogen from water at home" exercise, let me remind you that even solar power costs (both in money and environmental damage), the process is wildly inefficient and currently the industrial source of hydrogen today is reforming natural gas.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway... Oh, and gas stations that sell CNG already exist.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway...
Use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Getting Hydrogen from water and electricity is wildly inefficient and thus extremely expensive. It's also not a very good motor fuel because it takes some pretty major modifications to existing motors.
Do you know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..
Look, either go full 100% electric and just put in chargers everywhere, or use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Hydrogen is hard to obtain and store and there is no existing distribution infrastructure to speak of.
Does anybody here know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..
A few years back there was no shortage of competitors who claimed to do everything MS Office did (or Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) at 1/10 or 1/100 or 1/10**6 of the price.
Guess what product most people want to use today? Sounds like Amazon's Oracle killer is another OpenOffice or "Yeah, Write".
Hey, I use Open Office all the time on my Windows laptop... But I'm a confirmed penny pincher who has some IT experience.
But I think you miss the point that we are discussing infrastructure level stuff that the end user NEVER sees. So your example doesn't really wash. MS Office is entrenched because it's what people know and use at work, it's what they are used to. Who knows what relational database the application uses? Not the end user.
What's actually happening is Oracle is falling out of favor in new development. There are cheaper options that do the job just as well. So Oracle is facing a declining user base as they loose market share. It may take decades to die, but Oracle is done unless they can start to capture more of the new development market share. The end user doesn't care what database is the application uses, as long as it works.
I'm a bit of a DB n00b, but know my way around MySQL. What's the difference between Oracle and MySQL for example. In my experience Oracle DBs tend to be a lot faster, than open source implementations. But is this inherently true, or is it all in the implementation, are there things you can do in Oracle that you can't do in MySQL, or MSSQL?
What's the difference?
Mainly, for most customers, PRICE is the only real difference.
It's not support, it's not functionality, it's not even performance (usually), it's about what you pay.
For some customers, there are some unique features that Oracle brings or performance increases they have, but you pay though the nose for it. Usually the people that need these features can afford to buy from Oracle so that's what they do. There is some name recognition that gets your product into some place it wouldn't go otherwise, but that doesn't happen all that much.
Apart from that, it's about money and Oracle fleecing people who could get a database and support cheaper from other vendors using other products..
So... What are you going to do in the YEARS of time this will take and how are you going to come up with the THOUSANDS of dollars this will cost to "protect your good name?"
If you really go to Duke.... I suggest that if you cheated in CS 102 you turn yourself in...
Aside from that, I think you picked the wrong NC school. Stay away from anything blue in that state and pick the red school. (Howl)
I wonder if my The Mythical Man-Month book is still valid from the mid (19)90s.
It was actually written (some of it) in the late 60's and YES it is still valid and IMHO should be read by anybody involved in doing or managing any kind of engineering effort. My favorite chapter is the one the book's title comes from "The Mythical Man Month" where Brooks explains why it is that adding people to a project makes it take longer and cost more. It's a Classic.
LOL... Well, I DID do the toggle switch thing a few times, but I didn't build the system myself, nor was it vacuum tube based... It had a heck of a lot of 7400 series chips and a huge 5V supply that all came packaged in a box about the size of your fridge....
In my nearly 30 years at this, I've only ever had to crack open the compiler/assembler once to track down a bug. Usually these "bugs" are avoided by turning off (or controlling) the automatic optimizations. I would suggest you leave the compiler debugging to the compiler experts because what *you* describe as stupid may actually have a larger purpose behind it. (Full disclosure, yes, I've written assembly code and even had to drop into assembly in the middle of a C Function from time to time.)
I've known programmers who have NEVER seen assembly and wouldn't know a "Jump To Subroutine" instruction from a "Load Program Counter" who I greatly respect. They may not be thinking bits, bytes and how there data is arranged in memory, but they can produce some pretty amazing things anyway. Don't sell somebody short, just because they don't understand something you cut your teeth on. Everybody has their own strengths.
But that's just the point, some don't need to know what's going on underneath.
Look, Just because the programming model (that virtual picture in your head that represents what you are programming) is different between various programming languages, it doesn't mean it doesn't take skill to ply the programming craft. Who cares how to most efficiently sort some array if you depend upon a library to do the sorting for you? Maybe the data doesn't actually exist in the computer memory like you think? Usually a list of data is kept in a database and it get's sorted there. The application programmer doesn't need to be concerned with sorting it and likely shouldn't do such things anyway. The DBA should be doing that, coding the SQL and laying out the tables and indexes.
It's not really changed, even if the details of what we do has... Sure, you are the experienced one who has had to think about all that stuff before, but that doesn't mean the others are less capable.
Slashdot Mirror
How about the ability to make a reliable phone call first?
If you'd just stop moving that mobile phone, it would work fine.
REPUBLICANS did this?
Not so fast. This was obviously written by a partisan hack from the democrat side. How do I know?
1. Republicans do not yet control the senate. Despite having a good election and winning the majority of seats in the senate, they will not be seated until JANUARY 2015. We are in a lame duck congress, meaning the only thing that has changed from before the election is some senators know they are going home soon. The names have not yet changed on the office doors. Democrats are still in control.
2. This bill passed the Republican controlled house, meaning it had to receive at least SOME Republican support.
3. A number of Republican Senators voted for cloture on the bill which required 60 votes. This means there where democrats that DID NOT vote for cloture.
So, Why would Slashdot engage in something so obviously partisan and blame Republicans? Shame on you. This bill's fate was decided by both sides, not just one.
The article is misleading. Some Republican Senators voted for cloture. This bill also was passed by the Republican controlled house. It's failure to proceed was bipartisan, and included a number of democrats not voting for cloture. Like it or not, Republicans are NOT YET in control of the Senate. The new congress is not seated until January 2015.
Oh, and need we point out that Republican votes were required to get it out of the house and all that failed was a cloture vote to cut off debate...
Not to mention that a number of Republicans actually voted FOR cloture...
Look, either go full 100% electric and just put in chargers everywhere, or use CNG
If you're going to talk about existing distribution infrastructure, why not choose Option C: Propane autogas? It's #3 in the States (behind gas and diesel) as well as the most common alternative fuel worldwide...
Works for me, propane is a bit more expensive than CNG, but why not? It's been used for a long time as a motor fuel too. Hydrogen is still just a stupid idea though.
Where, pray tell, are you going to get burnable hydrogen? From Water? Have fun with that.
You obviously don't understand what it takes to convert water into hydrogen fuel. HINT: Lots and LOTS of electricity, which, despite what you might think, cannot be produced for free. Windmills and solar cells cost money and harm the environment. Industrially, Hydrogen is currently produced FROM Natural Gas, not water.
But never mind all that.... Try this one. Using hydrogen as a method to "store energy" is a stupid approach. You would be better off using currently available battery technologies (lead acid, Li-Ion etc) by nearly 10 times.
Oh sure Natural Gas is cheaper, it has to be.
As I posted previously, where do you suppose we get hydrogen now? For industrial supplies we reform natural gas, which involves steam and fairly high temperatures. Processing and storage of hydrogen is harder than for natural gas. So, hydrogen will be more expensive, it simply has to be. Start with Natural gas, process by adding heat to get hydrogen, suffer larger losses in the storage and distribution of hydrogen and it will ALWAYS be more expensive.
And before you start down the "just use solar/wind power to split hydrogen" understand that neither of these technologies are cost effective and doing what you suggest is much less efficient than even Lithium Ion batteries.
Now, where did I leave my keys?
Next to the cell phone.
Again, just in case it wasn't clear from my first response. Who is concerned about Hydrogen's safety? Hydrogen Gas is no less safe than Natural Gas and I'm not debating this aspect.
What I AM saying is that Hydrogen is a stupid idea when you consider the engineering efficiency of the whole system. Just burn Natural Gas as a motor fuel, it's easier and more efficient (and cheaper as a result).
Huh? Who's talking about safety here?
You have to start somewhere. If we required the full infrastructure to be in place first then we would never advance at all. This may or may not end up working in the long term, but could theoretically have the advantages of gas (i.e. pour some liquid into your car every few miles) and the advantages of electric vehicles (efficiencies of scale by generating large amounts of power instead of all the cars generating small amounts inefficiently).
Why do the hydrogen canard then? Why not burn Compressed Natural Gas? Nearly all the benifits and CHEAP fuel too...
Oh, and before you start into the "Using free solar electricity to disassociate hydrogen from water at home" exercise, let me remind you that even solar power costs (both in money and environmental damage), the process is wildly inefficient and currently the industrial source of hydrogen today is reforming natural gas.
You know what the major by-products of combustion of regular gasoline are, right?
Oh stop with all the facts... You are confusing people with the truth.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway... Oh, and gas stations that sell CNG already exist.
Henery? Henery Ford is that you?
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway...
Hydrogen is a stupid idea.
Use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Getting Hydrogen from water and electricity is wildly inefficient and thus extremely expensive. It's also not a very good motor fuel because it takes some pretty major modifications to existing motors.
Do you know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..
Hydrogen is still a stupid idea.
Look, either go full 100% electric and just put in chargers everywhere, or use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Hydrogen is hard to obtain and store and there is no existing distribution infrastructure to speak of.
Does anybody here know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..
Woolly Mammoth = Kim Jong Un in a wool sweater?
A few years back there was no shortage of competitors who claimed to do everything MS Office did (or Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) at 1/10 or 1/100 or 1/10**6 of the price.
Guess what product most people want to use today? Sounds like Amazon's Oracle killer is another OpenOffice or "Yeah, Write".
Hey, I use Open Office all the time on my Windows laptop... But I'm a confirmed penny pincher who has some IT experience.
But I think you miss the point that we are discussing infrastructure level stuff that the end user NEVER sees. So your example doesn't really wash. MS Office is entrenched because it's what people know and use at work, it's what they are used to. Who knows what relational database the application uses? Not the end user.
What's actually happening is Oracle is falling out of favor in new development. There are cheaper options that do the job just as well. So Oracle is facing a declining user base as they loose market share. It may take decades to die, but Oracle is done unless they can start to capture more of the new development market share. The end user doesn't care what database is the application uses, as long as it works.
I'm a bit of a DB n00b, but know my way around MySQL. What's the difference between Oracle and MySQL for example. In my experience Oracle DBs tend to be a lot faster, than open source implementations. But is this inherently true, or is it all in the implementation, are there things you can do in Oracle that you can't do in MySQL, or MSSQL?
What's the difference?
Mainly, for most customers, PRICE is the only real difference.
It's not support, it's not functionality, it's not even performance (usually), it's about what you pay.
For some customers, there are some unique features that Oracle brings or performance increases they have, but you pay though the nose for it. Usually the people that need these features can afford to buy from Oracle so that's what they do. There is some name recognition that gets your product into some place it wouldn't go otherwise, but that doesn't happen all that much.
Apart from that, it's about money and Oracle fleecing people who could get a database and support cheaper from other vendors using other products..
So... What are you going to do in the YEARS of time this will take and how are you going to come up with the THOUSANDS of dollars this will cost to "protect your good name?"
If you really go to Duke.... I suggest that if you cheated in CS 102 you turn yourself in...
Aside from that, I think you picked the wrong NC school. Stay away from anything blue in that state and pick the red school. (Howl)
I wonder if my The Mythical Man-Month book is still valid from the mid (19)90s.
It was actually written (some of it) in the late 60's and YES it is still valid and IMHO should be read by anybody involved in doing or managing any kind of engineering effort. My favorite chapter is the one the book's title comes from "The Mythical Man Month" where Brooks explains why it is that adding people to a project makes it take longer and cost more. It's a Classic.
LOL... Well, I DID do the toggle switch thing a few times, but I didn't build the system myself, nor was it vacuum tube based... It had a heck of a lot of 7400 series chips and a huge 5V supply that all came packaged in a box about the size of your fridge....
Shouldn't you be retired by now?
Compilers are just programs.... Bugs happen.
In my nearly 30 years at this, I've only ever had to crack open the compiler/assembler once to track down a bug. Usually these "bugs" are avoided by turning off (or controlling) the automatic optimizations. I would suggest you leave the compiler debugging to the compiler experts because what *you* describe as stupid may actually have a larger purpose behind it. (Full disclosure, yes, I've written assembly code and even had to drop into assembly in the middle of a C Function from time to time.)
I've known programmers who have NEVER seen assembly and wouldn't know a "Jump To Subroutine" instruction from a "Load Program Counter" who I greatly respect. They may not be thinking bits, bytes and how there data is arranged in memory, but they can produce some pretty amazing things anyway. Don't sell somebody short, just because they don't understand something you cut your teeth on. Everybody has their own strengths.
But that's just the point, some don't need to know what's going on underneath.
Look, Just because the programming model (that virtual picture in your head that represents what you are programming) is different between various programming languages, it doesn't mean it doesn't take skill to ply the programming craft. Who cares how to most efficiently sort some array if you depend upon a library to do the sorting for you? Maybe the data doesn't actually exist in the computer memory like you think? Usually a list of data is kept in a database and it get's sorted there. The application programmer doesn't need to be concerned with sorting it and likely shouldn't do such things anyway. The DBA should be doing that, coding the SQL and laying out the tables and indexes.
It's not really changed, even if the details of what we do has... Sure, you are the experienced one who has had to think about all that stuff before, but that doesn't mean the others are less capable.