Well, as somebody who installed much of the GNU userspace on a VMS (4.7 - as in the orange wall, thank you) system, I can say it was worth at least the price of admission. GNU Emacs alone was a joy compared to the included DEC editors and gcc made much of the open source software (before the "free as in whatever we want it to mean" meme became so contagious) compilable. All that, and we still got to keep a good security architecture and a decent structured filesystem.
Freakin' Unix weenies, determined to forget the lessons of the past...
I don't think it's news that Michael Stonebraker (a great name, by the way), co-founder and CEO of a company that (surprise!) happens to develop column store database software, thinks that column store databases are going to be the Next Big Thing. Right or wrong, his opinion can't exactly be considered unbiased.
People love to chain things together like this, and it's deceptive and unfair. Why assume that he didn't think about the topic before deciding what to work on? Instead, try this:
Having concluded that column store databases are going to be the Next Big Thing, it's no surprise that Michael Stonebraker co-founded a company to develop column store database software. He seems to be putting his money where his mouth is.
That wouldn't be a problem if he didn't take money from anybody. The SEC complaint is that he builds hype and then goes looking for investors to take him the last step before he gets listed on the NYSE - which never seems to happen...
Getting back to your original question, assuming isotropy and homogeneity, there can obviously be no center of the universe, because it would have to stand out from other points.
In other words, in single hot big bang model there can be no center of the universe because we assume that to be the case (for many reasons, many of which boil down to, "it sounds good and it makes the math easier").
Which is kind of a problem. It holds up under the current crop of observations, but it really isn't iron-clad.
One strategy that strikes me as really sketchy has become commonplace in the Mac OS X world. People create a UI that can only call a specific GPLed program to do the heavy lifting and then distribute it with that GPLed program. They either keep the source to the UI part to themselves - or worse, all too often they charge for it as nickel-and-dime-ware.
At the very least, it's pretty scummy - even if technically legal (and I would guess that would turn upon the untested question of what makes a work derivative).
The article is badly written. If you look elsewhere at the data, it's 5.6% of all computers in the US (desktops and laptops), it really is 1 in 6 of just US laptops.
I, for one, can't think of a single upside of "Software as Service"
Well, there are some but they're few and far between - and few apply to home desktop users.
Effortless Backup - I don't have to worry about a hurricane destroying my data
Effortless simultaneous upgrades - If done correctly, I'm always running the latest and greatest and I don't have to worry about upgrading all of the desktops in my organization
Seamless integration into centralize database - This is more a question of how smart a client you need, but many apps make good use from close integration with a database maintained by the service provider.
Accounting - There are situations where one would rather pay a service fee than put money into a capital expense.
Most of this is very easy to manage on an individual basis (using other lower level services, like.Mac's off-site storage) or if you're large enough to have an IT department, but if you're running an organization with 5-25 people I can see some attraction to service providers. When I ran a software company, we looked very closely at using Salesforce.com. In the end we used a homebrew PHP/Postgresql CRM, but it wasn't an easy call.
All that said, I don't think that it's a good tradeoff very often considering the security and denial of service risks, but there are upsides that are attractive in some situations - I just think that it's insane to try to impose this upon the end-user desktop market as a whole.
Considering that there are fewer than 7 billion humans alive, quite a bit I would say - if either party represented tens of percent of humanity that would be staggering and they would in fact be the only sides worth mentioning. Or are readers supposed to be psychic and guess that you meant a small number instead of a large number?
In point of fact, I would be surprised if either party represented in close approximation the beliefs of many more than a few dozen million humans, a much smaller percentage than even your "corrected" completely made up guess. There were (for example) 44.8 million self-described Republicans in the US in 2004, or roughly.7% of humanity and roughly 15% of Americans (which is around 1/7th).
But hey - it's just numbers, right, and can't be as important as rhetoric?
Feel free to visit some day and drink from the tap.
When I lived there in the early 1990s, there were periodic warnings from the New York City government that people doing so in particular areas would be in danger from cryptosporidium.
For the record, I'm neither a democrat nor republican, but I can't say I'm equally disgusted with both sides here. In fact, that would be statistically very unlikely, and to say that both of these parties, who represent billions of people, are *equal* is pretty much admitting that you're full of shit.
Speaking of being informed...
We're talking about US political parties. You do know that there are only about 300 million people in the US, right?
Here's the thing: if you're a pilot, UAVs are scary things.
We're already trained to look for birds, which are bad enough bad at least have the courtesy to move in a way that attracts the eye naturally. But UAVs are very hard to see and do not talk on the radio to let other aircraft know where they are ("I see you about 2 miles off my wing"). They can't even look around to see what other VFR aircraft (who are not required to carry anything more complex than eyeballs to avoid collisions) they might be nearing and steer clear.
Outside of controlled airspaces, these things are deathtraps waiting to happen unless very clear rules govern their deployment, just as there are rules for other moving hazards like sykdivers ("sykdivers in the air from x-thousand feet in the area imediately south of mumblefrotz airfield, traffic steer clear"). Too many, and they're be the only things in the sky. Too few, and there won't be enough general awareness of their use in VFR airspaces.
It's truly ironic that in the US, we live in the most philosophically Darwinian society on Earth - while being the only industrialized country to have a substantial number of people who question the basic notion of evolution.
I see you've played Rolemaster (Arms Law, especially) and Aftermath! What can beat 40 different hit locations on the body and a separate table for shotgun shell types?
There are some other half-assed attempts, like the iTunes Music Store and Amazon Unbox, all of which require me to run proprietary, Windows-only software to make the purchase,
Amazon Unbox does not require Windows (nor, of course, does iTunes). TiVos can be set to download content bought from Amazon via joe-blow browser (I don't do Windows, but took them up on a free trial offer). Perhaps you meant "proprietary or Windows-only software" (we won't quibble about whether TiVo is proprietary, it quacks like a duck).
The downside is that the Amazon Unbox movies expire form the TiVo after what I consider a distastefully short amount of time. I'll have to really want to see a movie in order to take that route (I do respect intellectual property for movies, so Bittorrent isn't an option).
While this is, true, I certainly hope that we will be in the next "hundreds of years, if not thousands or even millions."
Many SF scenarios have a way of becoming history. I'll be disappointed if we're not moving asteroids in my life time.
Of course, there's no reason for you you to be so fucking hostile: my quip should back up the point about Star Wars not being necessary, not attack it - we'll be moving asteroids well before any forseeable time frame in which we need to worry about natural asteroid disasters.
These days, it feels to me as if Mozilla is starting to blend into the corporation scene just like any other evil corporation
Somehow you edited out the rest of this sentence. Here, I'll fix it for you:
These days, it feels to me as if Mozilla is starting to blend into the corporation scene just like any other evil corporation who gives away their source code for free.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm betting that most of the people commenting against this haven't been to Gainesville, FL.
If they can taser one UF student, why can't they taser them all?
Well, as somebody who installed much of the GNU userspace on a VMS (4.7 - as in the orange wall, thank you) system, I can say it was worth at least the price of admission. GNU Emacs alone was a joy compared to the included DEC editors and gcc made much of the open source software (before the "free as in whatever we want it to mean" meme became so contagious) compilable. All that, and we still got to keep a good security architecture and a decent structured filesystem.
Freakin' Unix weenies, determined to forget the lessons of the past...
Having concluded that column store databases are going to be the Next Big Thing, it's no surprise that Michael Stonebraker co-founded a company to develop column store database software. He seems to be putting his money where his mouth is.
It's too bad that Pournelle didn't stay kicked off of the 'net.
"Fuck it. Flush him."
I fear that we'll soon have a market for "Kirk shot first!" T-shirts.
That wouldn't be a problem if he didn't take money from anybody. The SEC complaint is that he builds hype and then goes looking for investors to take him the last step before he gets listed on the NYSE - which never seems to happen...
Which is kind of a problem. It holds up under the current crop of observations, but it really isn't iron-clad.
One strategy that strikes me as really sketchy has become commonplace in the Mac OS X world. People create a UI that can only call a specific GPLed program to do the heavy lifting and then distribute it with that GPLed program. They either keep the source to the UI part to themselves - or worse, all too often they charge for it as nickel-and-dime-ware.
At the very least, it's pretty scummy - even if technically legal (and I would guess that would turn upon the untested question of what makes a work derivative).
No...
The article is badly written. If you look elsewhere at the data, it's 5.6% of all computers in the US (desktops and laptops), it really is 1 in 6 of just US laptops .
- Effortless Backup - I don't have to worry about a hurricane destroying my data
- Effortless simultaneous upgrades - If done correctly, I'm always running the latest and greatest and I don't have to worry about upgrading all of the desktops in my organization
- Seamless integration into centralize database - This is more a question of how smart a client you need, but many apps make good use from close integration with a database maintained by the service provider.
- Accounting - There are situations where one would rather pay a service fee than put money into a capital expense.
Most of this is very easy to manage on an individual basis (using other lower level services, likeAll that said, I don't think that it's a good tradeoff very often considering the security and denial of service risks, but there are upsides that are attractive in some situations - I just think that it's insane to try to impose this upon the end-user desktop market as a whole.
Considering that there are fewer than 7 billion humans alive, quite a bit I would say - if either party represented tens of percent of humanity that would be staggering and they would in fact be the only sides worth mentioning. Or are readers supposed to be psychic and guess that you meant a small number instead of a large number?
.7% of humanity and roughly 15% of Americans (which is around 1/7th).
In point of fact, I would be surprised if either party represented in close approximation the beliefs of many more than a few dozen million humans, a much smaller percentage than even your "corrected" completely made up guess. There were (for example) 44.8 million self-described Republicans in the US in 2004, or roughly
But hey - it's just numbers, right, and can't be as important as rhetoric?
We're talking about US political parties. You do know that there are only about 300 million people in the US, right?
Here's the thing: if you're a pilot, UAVs are scary things.
We're already trained to look for birds, which are bad enough bad at least have the courtesy to move in a way that attracts the eye naturally. But UAVs are very hard to see and do not talk on the radio to let other aircraft know where they are ("I see you about 2 miles off my wing"). They can't even look around to see what other VFR aircraft (who are not required to carry anything more complex than eyeballs to avoid collisions) they might be nearing and steer clear.
Outside of controlled airspaces, these things are deathtraps waiting to happen unless very clear rules govern their deployment, just as there are rules for other moving hazards like sykdivers ("sykdivers in the air from x-thousand feet in the area imediately south of mumblefrotz airfield, traffic steer clear"). Too many, and they're be the only things in the sky. Too few, and there won't be enough general awareness of their use in VFR airspaces.
Bleah.
The game hasn't been pure since before 1977, when they created that awful, awful Basic vs. Advanced D&D split.
It's truly ironic that in the US, we live in the most philosophically Darwinian society on Earth - while being the only industrialized country to have a substantial number of people who question the basic notion of evolution.
I'm attacking the darkness!
Ahah!
I see you've played Rolemaster (Arms Law, especially) and Aftermath! What can beat 40 different hit locations on the body and a separate table for shotgun shell types?
In case anybody is wondering (and I was upon reading this), Russians do have strong double jeopardy protections.
The downside is that the Amazon Unbox movies expire form the TiVo after what I consider a distastefully short amount of time. I'll have to really want to see a movie in order to take that route (I do respect intellectual property for movies, so Bittorrent isn't an option).
Close: Jeffrey Sinclair
Obviously, what is needed is a Bluetooth gamepad.
While this is, true, I certainly hope that we will be in the next "hundreds of years, if not thousands or even millions."
Many SF scenarios have a way of becoming history. I'll be disappointed if we're not moving asteroids in my life time.
Of course, there's no reason for you you to be so fucking hostile: my quip should back up the point about Star Wars not being necessary, not attack it - we'll be moving asteroids well before any forseeable time frame in which we need to worry about natural asteroid disasters.