how many porn companies trade publically? (i know PRIVATE does, it's listed on the NASDAQ as Prvt i think).
porns a relatively big business-but it's so decentralized, the analogy doesn't work. the only "big" games like vivid make $$$ value-added-posh sets and better looking stars, but even then, "gonzo" low-rent crap where they deal in cash is probably near half the industry.
GOOGLE is the best at what they do (sorry TEOMA). but it isn't rocket science. if they started charging, everyone would swamp TEOMA or one of the other search engines with their neat little algorithims that will *almost* as well as GOOGLE.
i can think of a time when maybe that might charge a nominal fee. i think most people would pay say $30 for access to the GOOGLE database. but i suspect there'd be a lot of fraud.
also, i would cut down on initial usage, and the thing about GOOGLE is they've been all word of mouth. they'd have to take out ads and change their whole philosophy
well, apache has a huge market share, but seems to not have the enormous security holes that IIS has.
now, some have said it's complexity and perhaps hacker malevolence towards MS. probably that's part of the reason.
but my background is the life sciences (biochemistry)-and i've always wondered how to model the situation in the software world by analogy with nature.
with open source you have tens of thousands of people scrutinizing the source code-kind of DNA repair mechanisms that keep on the molecular level. you have a plethora of distributions, variations on a general model.
the closed-source projects have fewer people checking problems on the small scale. and since they are backed by huge companies with good marketing departments and moderately well paid programmers you have a few overly complicated applications to choose from, not a plethora of distributions.
so open source has better proofing mechanisms on the small close, a better DNA repair system so to speak. on the large scale of populations, it has a strong tendency toward being shaped by natural selection (a friend of mine once told me LINUX was easy to screw with because you could spot holes in the security just be looking at the code-but this is a strength, because the hole will be spotted EVENTUALLY and you might as well patch it sooner than later).
closed source projects have spottier records when it comes to proofing, because they don't have the numbers, even if the ones that do it are full-time in their endevours. they don't have the immediate penalties for having security holes either, so they built up over time like deleterious mutations. in addition, a closed source company isn't going to produce multiple versions of the same application, so there isn't the same level of natural selection. of course, you do have rival operating systems like the MacOS, windowz, and OS/2 or what not, but there aren't a dozen windowz distributions floating around-you're basically stuck with XP or 98 or whatever you have.
ok, i don't feel as stupid asking now-how DO you pronounce PostgreSQL?
Oracle, Informix, DB2, MySQL, SQL server, etc. etc. are all so much easier to roll off the tongue-and they don't make CIS PhDs as stupid sound as well probably:)
the lack of transactions suck, that's for sure. i'm working on a small-scale e-commerce site with MySQL-it'll do fine, not a big volume of traffic at all.
i have several clients i'm doing stuff for, and it seems that all the hosters are providing MySQL as the RDBMS.
so it's free, i get it, but so is PostgreSQL. how come they don't use that? is MySQL that much easier to use? currently my only d.b. experience is with MySQL, so i have no point of comparison.
people have mentioned the Native American "kill-off" that probably happened after the arrival of Clovis (or possibly pre-Clovis people too-that might have been exterminated/absorebed by the ancestors of todays Native Americans).
But the Australian Aborigines and their trustee pet the dingo elimated much of the mega-fauna of Australia. The thylacine only resided on Tasmania because the Tasmanians didn't bring the dingo from what I remember.
i don't really know if you need an advanced degree. my roomate last year was a rather lackluster biologist who barely got his degree because he nearly flunked a biochemistry course. it seems he was a mediocre programmer, though he knew enough PERL to get by. the short of it is this-he got a job at Cold Harbor Springs Lab, run by Dr. Waston of Watson & Crick fame.
Anyway, he had only had a BS degree in biology from an OK but not sterling school (the University of Oregon-which does have a good molecular bio program). Cold Harbor was his best job offer, but he had many of them-and this was at the beginning of the economic slowdown.
myself, I've got a degree in biochemistry and am working on web development right now but will get to learning some of the bioinformatics modules that are around. i think you have to make differention between "soft biologists" and "hard biologists" when you talk about how computer-savy they are. biochemists and cell biologists tend to be more techy in my experience, we work with instrumentation and computer models all the time. ecologists and anatomists and stuff are obviously more touchy-feely kinds, less inclinded to be geeky. but you know, even they have to work with statistical models.
these days biology majors have to take calculus-and many are taking differential equations and multivariate calculus because of population biology
cheers
-razib
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how many porn companies trade publically? (i know PRIVATE does, it's listed on the NASDAQ as Prvt i think). porns a relatively big business-but it's so decentralized, the analogy doesn't work. the only "big" games like vivid make $$$ value-added-posh sets and better looking stars, but even then, "gonzo" low-rent crap where they deal in cash is probably near half the industry.
GOOGLE is the best at what they do (sorry TEOMA). but it isn't rocket science. if they started charging, everyone would swamp TEOMA or one of the other search engines with their neat little algorithims that will *almost* as well as GOOGLE. i can think of a time when maybe that might charge a nominal fee. i think most people would pay say $30 for access to the GOOGLE database. but i suspect there'd be a lot of fraud. also, i would cut down on initial usage, and the thing about GOOGLE is they've been all word of mouth. they'd have to take out ads and change their whole philosophy
well, apache has a huge market share, but seems to not have the enormous security holes that IIS has.
now, some have said it's complexity and perhaps hacker malevolence towards MS. probably that's part of the reason.
but my background is the life sciences (biochemistry)-and i've always wondered how to model the situation in the software world by analogy with nature.
with open source you have tens of thousands of people scrutinizing the source code-kind of DNA repair mechanisms that keep on the molecular level. you have a plethora of distributions, variations on a general model.
the closed-source projects have fewer people checking problems on the small scale. and since they are backed by huge companies with good marketing departments and moderately well paid programmers you have a few overly complicated applications to choose from, not a plethora of distributions.
so open source has better proofing mechanisms on the small close, a better DNA repair system so to speak. on the large scale of populations, it has a strong tendency toward being shaped by natural selection (a friend of mine once told me LINUX was easy to screw with because you could spot holes in the security just be looking at the code-but this is a strength, because the hole will be spotted EVENTUALLY and you might as well patch it sooner than later).
closed source projects have spottier records when it comes to proofing, because they don't have the numbers, even if the ones that do it are full-time in their endevours. they don't have the immediate penalties for having security holes either, so they built up over time like deleterious mutations. in addition, a closed source company isn't going to produce multiple versions of the same application, so there isn't the same level of natural selection. of course, you do have rival operating systems like the MacOS, windowz, and OS/2 or what not, but there aren't a dozen windowz distributions floating around-you're basically stuck with XP or 98 or whatever you have.
-razib
ok, i don't feel as stupid asking now-how DO you pronounce PostgreSQL? Oracle, Informix, DB2, MySQL, SQL server, etc. etc. are all so much easier to roll off the tongue-and they don't make CIS PhDs as stupid sound as well probably :)
the lack of transactions suck, that's for sure. i'm working on a small-scale e-commerce site with MySQL-it'll do fine, not a big volume of traffic at all. i have several clients i'm doing stuff for, and it seems that all the hosters are providing MySQL as the RDBMS. so it's free, i get it, but so is PostgreSQL. how come they don't use that? is MySQL that much easier to use? currently my only d.b. experience is with MySQL, so i have no point of comparison.
people have mentioned the Native American "kill-off" that probably happened after the arrival of Clovis (or possibly pre-Clovis people too-that might have been exterminated/absorebed by the ancestors of todays Native Americans). But the Australian Aborigines and their trustee pet the dingo elimated much of the mega-fauna of Australia. The thylacine only resided on Tasmania because the Tasmanians didn't bring the dingo from what I remember.
i don't really know if you need an advanced degree. my roomate last year was a rather lackluster biologist who barely got his degree because he nearly flunked a biochemistry course. it seems he was a mediocre programmer, though he knew enough PERL to get by. the short of it is this-he got a job at Cold Harbor Springs Lab, run by Dr. Waston of Watson & Crick fame. Anyway, he had only had a BS degree in biology from an OK but not sterling school (the University of Oregon-which does have a good molecular bio program). Cold Harbor was his best job offer, but he had many of them-and this was at the beginning of the economic slowdown. myself, I've got a degree in biochemistry and am working on web development right now but will get to learning some of the bioinformatics modules that are around. i think you have to make differention between "soft biologists" and "hard biologists" when you talk about how computer-savy they are. biochemists and cell biologists tend to be more techy in my experience, we work with instrumentation and computer models all the time. ecologists and anatomists and stuff are obviously more touchy-feely kinds, less inclinded to be geeky. but you know, even they have to work with statistical models. these days biology majors have to take calculus-and many are taking differential equations and multivariate calculus because of population biology cheers -razib