Everything we've heard so far about the X-box seems to indicate that it's going to be an ordinary console with everything that that entails in terms of tight control over software, severe manufacturer-imposed constraints on products, and ridiculously high licensing costs.
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark on the basis of Microsoft's acknowledged ability to create markets for its products, and suggest that in practice the X-box will become the exact opposite of a conventional console. Instead, it will become an entirely open platform, in practice.
Why do I think that this may be so? For a number of reasons:-
First, the console market is already fairly highly subscribed if not totally saturated, so the X-box will have to be pretty special to make a large proportion of gamers reach into their pockets again. All the other popular consoles are closed platforms. A way of becoming "pretty special" is ready and waiting. [The still-to-be-launched Indrema is doing something similar, albeit with a certification hurdle imposed, but hopefully this will not be a substantive barrier.]
Second, it just so happens that virtually all the big players in the console arena either have or will be bringing out new mega-powerful systems within the same time frame, so high technology alone may not be enough, especially since Microsoft is a latecomer to this market. A novel angle may be required to make headway.
Third, Microsoft knows full well that the popularity of Windows stems very largely from the massive buzz that was created by several years worth of unimpeded free-for-all copying of both the O/S and its applications. The official face of Microsoft may protest about "piracy", but unofficially they must know that in reality unconstrained access is an extremely powerful popularizing mechanism, vastly cheaper yet more effective than advertising.
These three things all point in the same direction: Microsoft will either make the platform fully open, or it will create an easy and inexpensive method for all and sundry to write and install games on the X-box, or it will turn a very blind eye to the cracking systems which will appear 2 microseconds after the machine hits the streets. Nothing is gained by restricting what can run on a platform (all the talk of controlling for "quality" is unadulterated rubbish --- people like to decide for themselves, thank you very much), but everything is gained by having thousands of products run on a console rather than merely hundreds.
I hate to say it, but I haven't seen anything under *nix that will do CASE work.
I have experience with only two CASE tools, so my input will be limited, and both work strictly under M$ Windows. I've worked with Popkin's System Architect, and in my experience it is the most bug-ridden PITA program I've ever used, in any category.
I'm currently using Oracle Designer, and I've been highly impressed, with a few reservations.
Designer allows you to draw your ERD, then run a transformer to generate the physical design model. After you run the transformer, you can put in all your code, indexes, triggers, etc.
Then, you press a button, and your DDL scripts come out. Dead easy.
Theoretically, it'll also let you reverse engineer from a connection to a database. I say theoretically because I've not tried it.
Designer (obviously) will work REALLY WELL with Oracle. It'll allow you to generate Oracle-specific code (for versions 6 and up, IIRC) from, basically, soup-to-nuts of your back-end: table creation, constraints, indexes, triggers, and stored procedures -- in both PL/SQL and (theoretically, I haven't attempted it yet) Java.
Designer will also output SQL dialect for other varieties of databases: SQL Server, Sybase, Informix, DB2 are all included, IIRC. But most importantly for you, it will also export in ANSI92 SQL. So, PostgreSQL (I don't have any experience with mySQL) at least will be able to use the generated scripts with (hopefully) minimal by-hand modification.
I have some reservations regarding Designer, in that it seems to have several bugs. I say "seems", because it looks like there may be workarounds (or "the proper way to do things") that I simply haven't figured out yet. I've not found them to be deal-breakers as a tool choice yet, mostly because I can (and do) always go in and edit the resultant scripts by hand to tweak things here and there. However, my volume isn't high, and I don't have an unreasonable time commitment for completion. If you need your generated code to be 100% perfect all the time, well, Designer doesn't do that for me. YMMV.
They're talking about both parallel and concentric layers of gas: the concentric ones are the outer convective layer, the inner radiative layer, and the thin shear layer between them, known as the tachocline. The convective and radiative zones rotate at different speeds (not "opposite directions!"), while the tachocline changes speed periodically; the speeds of the layers above and below the tachocline also change periodically, but in opposite directions (the changes in speed are in opposite directions, meaning one speeds up while the other slows, not opposite rotations) -- which implies that the tachocline is oscillating.
While the radiative zone rotates essentially as a solid body (despite the fact that it's actually a highly-compressed plasma), the convective outer zone doesn't. In fact, the polar regions of the convective zone have a one-year oscillation coupled to the tachocline, while the equatorial regions have a 1.3-year oscillation. These, I think, are the "parallel layers" from the article.
What's entirely unexpected about this is the period: everyone thought it would be connected to the 11-year sunspot cycle, but instead there are two separate periods, 1.0 and 1.3 years, neither of which has any obvious relationship with the sunspot-cycle period. Once again, we find that the simple models aren't a great match for reality -- and science is nowhere near the end of its search for understanding of the universe. (Which is a good thing!)
Lotus Notes Client is excellent to convince managers to let people use an alternative to Windows (I had this problem 2 years ago with a Fortune100 company).
This and StarOffice confirm that Linux slowly gain acceptance as a desktop OS.
LGPL is not bad in this case as IBM is a serious brand.
Choosing Gnome is not a bad point though I hope WDE will be uasable under other environments, though.
Now, I just want to see how clean the generated code is but until then: Two Thumbs Up, IBM!
Slashdot Mirror
Everything we've heard so far about the X-box seems to indicate that it's going to be an ordinary console with everything that that entails in terms of tight control over software, severe manufacturer-imposed constraints on products, and ridiculously high licensing costs.
:-)
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark on the basis of Microsoft's acknowledged ability to create markets for its products, and suggest that in practice the X-box will become the exact opposite of a conventional console. Instead, it will become an entirely open platform, in practice.
Why do I think that this may be so? For a number of reasons:-
First, the console market is already fairly highly subscribed if not totally saturated, so the X-box will have to be pretty special to make a large proportion of gamers reach into their pockets again. All the other popular consoles are closed platforms. A way of becoming "pretty special" is ready and waiting. [The still-to-be-launched Indrema is doing something similar, albeit with a certification hurdle imposed, but hopefully this will not be a substantive barrier.]
Second, it just so happens that virtually all the big players in the console arena either have or will be bringing out new mega-powerful systems within the same time frame, so high technology alone may not be enough, especially since Microsoft is a latecomer to this market. A novel angle may be required to make headway.
Third, Microsoft knows full well that the popularity of Windows stems very largely from the massive buzz that was created by several years worth of unimpeded free-for-all copying of both the O/S and its applications. The official face of Microsoft may protest about "piracy", but unofficially they must know that in reality unconstrained access is an extremely powerful popularizing mechanism, vastly cheaper yet more effective than advertising.
These three things all point in the same direction: Microsoft will either make the platform fully open, or it will create an easy and inexpensive method for all and sundry to write and install games on the X-box, or it will turn a very blind eye to the cracking systems which will appear 2 microseconds after the machine hits the streets. Nothing is gained by restricting what can run on a platform (all the talk of controlling for "quality" is unadulterated rubbish --- people like to decide for themselves, thank you very much), but everything is gained by having thousands of products run on a console rather than merely hundreds.
We'll see.
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I hate to say it, but I haven't seen anything under *nix that will do CASE work.
I have experience with only two CASE tools, so my input will be limited, and both work strictly under M$ Windows. I've worked with Popkin's System Architect, and in my experience it is the most bug-ridden PITA program I've ever used, in any category.
I'm currently using Oracle Designer, and I've been highly impressed, with a few reservations. Designer allows you to draw your ERD, then run a transformer to generate the physical design model. After you run the transformer, you can put in all your code, indexes, triggers, etc.
Then, you press a button, and your DDL scripts come out. Dead easy.
Theoretically, it'll also let you reverse engineer from a connection to a database. I say theoretically because I've not tried it.
Designer (obviously) will work REALLY WELL with Oracle. It'll allow you to generate Oracle-specific code (for versions 6 and up, IIRC) from, basically, soup-to-nuts of your back-end: table creation, constraints, indexes, triggers, and stored procedures -- in both PL/SQL and (theoretically, I haven't attempted it yet) Java.
Designer will also output SQL dialect for other varieties of databases: SQL Server, Sybase, Informix, DB2 are all included, IIRC. But most importantly for you, it will also export in ANSI92 SQL. So, PostgreSQL (I don't have any experience with mySQL) at least will be able to use the generated scripts with (hopefully) minimal by-hand modification.
I have some reservations regarding Designer, in that it seems to have several bugs. I say "seems", because it looks like there may be workarounds (or "the proper way to do things") that I simply haven't figured out yet. I've not found them to be deal-breakers as a tool choice yet, mostly because I can (and do) always go in and edit the resultant scripts by hand to tweak things here and there. However, my volume isn't high, and I don't have an unreasonable time commitment for completion. If you need your generated code to be 100% perfect all the time, well, Designer doesn't do that for me. YMMV.
Good luck!
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They're talking about both parallel and concentric layers of gas: the concentric ones are the outer convective layer, the inner radiative layer, and the thin shear layer between them, known as the tachocline. The convective and radiative zones rotate at different speeds (not "opposite directions!"), while the tachocline changes speed periodically; the speeds of the layers above and below the tachocline also change periodically, but in opposite directions (the changes in speed are in opposite directions, meaning one speeds up while the other slows, not opposite rotations) -- which implies that the tachocline is oscillating.
While the radiative zone rotates essentially as a solid body (despite the fact that it's actually a highly-compressed plasma), the convective outer zone doesn't. In fact, the polar regions of the convective zone have a one-year oscillation coupled to the tachocline, while the equatorial regions have a 1.3-year oscillation. These, I think, are the "parallel layers" from the article.
What's entirely unexpected about this is the period: everyone thought it would be connected to the 11-year sunspot cycle, but instead there are two separate periods, 1.0 and 1.3 years, neither of which has any obvious relationship with the sunspot-cycle period. Once again, we find that the simple models aren't a great match for reality -- and science is nowhere near the end of its search for understanding of the universe. (Which is a good thing!)
As for flu epidemics, I am not educated.
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For fans of these kinds of pictures, Astronomy Picture of the Day is hard to beat. They have a this same picure for today.
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