Look, if Afghanistan was more accessible, it would be an entirely different story for that whole countries history.
Aw, diddums, are the big bad mountains making things difficult?
You can arm chair General all you want, but the facts remain, a man hunt take time, intelligence, and resources to execute them.
That's why time, itelligence and resources were diverted to Iraq right? To help catch Osama Bin Laden?
Bush's policies as Commander and Chief of the military made sure the military was there to find the people we are looking for.
No so far.
I call bullshit on your CIA training thing. Well then, you don't know a thing.
How much training does it take to strap a bomb to yourself and blow up a bus? Terror is fairly low tech and it doesn't take CIA training to figure it out.
Lots. Training on how to construct the bomb and trigger. Psychological training on how to recruit martyrs. Training on insertion so you make it over the border and on to the bus. And that's just for suicide bombings. There's more training to be had for other operations too.
Ha! Saddam is captured. One of many heavy weights has been lifted from the Iraqi people today, and all you can do is rain on the parade. I'm sorry if all the pundits have to rewrite their speeches especially the part "and Bush can't even find Saddam".
Saddam Hussein is the former commander in chief of a sovereign nation, and as such has certain rights and expectations under the Geneva convention. So far these have not materialised.
Unlike the left, atleast some of what the right says comes true. You mean like the right said they were going into Iraq, and they did!! Wow, you are right, the right-wing all truth tellers after all!
I'm young and I should be a democrat, but the entire party is too fragmented, too disorganized, and needs to get it's damn shit together before I invest a vote that way. Like it or not....that's where I come out.
It's not about left and right. It's about money and power. Follow the money, and you will see who is in power.
Actually, Iraq has more electricity now than it did before the war.
Interesting link, however it only shows total output, not distribution. I imagine that the CPA uses quite a lot of power, while until recently the lights went out at 9pm in most Bhagdad suburbs. Suitable for curfew conditions anyway.
Close examination of the satelite photo shows that it is only the center of the city, not the surrounding suburbs.
If only it were so simple. If there was a specific nation that was responsible, I guarantee there would be a declaration of a war.
I thought Iraq was a specific nation, silly me. Or are you talking about terrorism. Then wouldn't that be Osama Bin Laden. Oh wait a minute, didn't Bush claim that the US would catch him 'dead or alive'. Or did that prove beyond the capabilities of the US military? Much easier to invade a country that has had an economic stanglehold over it for 10 years.
Instead we had to throw down the gauntlet to would-be terrorist and the nations that harbor them.
I call bullshit. Half of the world's terrorists were trained, armed and supported by the CIA, but I don't see the Pentagon sending the B52's to Langley, Virginia. Now that we have the 'War on Terror', a piece of Orwellian genius, the US can selectively decide who are terrorists and who are 'freedom fighters'. Terrorists are anyone who disagrees with US policy or who would prefer more equitable terms of trade so that their people are not economic slaves to US businessmen. 'Freedom fighters'on the other hand are murdering scumbag death squads fighting against the tyranny of communism. Like the Albanians in Kosovo.
Yeah, I do mean them, and by them I mean them as a group of people with the power to vote.
They already did vote, but the elections were declared invalid by the Coalition Provisional Authority. What Iraqi's didn't realise is that they were supposed to vote for the people the Americans like.
You're right. It's going to take a while. Trust me. It'll be better.
a) Why should I trust you? (b) Better for whom?
As for the bringing about another government party line...rig the next election? Gore was a loser. He couldn't even win his own state. He couldn't even win Florida decisively.
Well, there's the facts. Well researched, comprehensive, but not well publicised. And then there are opinions like the one above, mass marketed through a compliant media, but bullshit none-the-less.
Yet, Bush in spite of his pundits claims "has found Saddam" through his current policies.
Oh really, how old are you? The US Army found Saddam Hussein, and quite frankly So Fucking What? It seems to be the American way to get so excited about frivolous things while the important issues get swept under the carpet in the hysteria.
If my points seem insane, it's because they're not filled with conspiracy theories, rhetoric, and strawman arguments.
Your points don't seem insane, just ignorant, ill-informed, nonsensical and stupid, but not insane.
In fact, your points are entirely sane ie. they represent the government line perfectly, they are just completely wrong.
Let me refresh your memory in case you forgot...no one declared war on us at 9/11.
Correct, but the United States does not declare war either, and has not since 1945. There are very specific reasons for this, theory of limited warfare, declaration of war would require the use of all neccessary force (eg. nuclear weapons) and other political reasons too long to go into here.
They did try to destroy our Government through our mail system. Remember, the anthrax trick they tried to pull.
Who is 'they'. The Anthrax investigation stalled and then stopped when the trail led to a government building.
Finally, we want them to control their own land. Who is 'them', and which is 'their' land. Do you mean Sunnis, Kurds, Shia, secular moderates or fanatical clerics? . Do you mean go forward with the current artificial boundary known as 'Iraq' or 'Iraq' and 'Kurdistan'. Or 'Iraq', 'Kurdistan' and 'Persia'. Or 'Ottoman Empire'?
Don't confuse our occupation as run of the mill hostile occupation. We're setting them up to run the place, but better than before...
Funny that. After Gulf War I, even with economic sanctions and the 'food for oil program', the Iraqi's under Saddam Hussein managed to rebuild more than 140 bridges, resume oil production, law and order, a food distribution programme, and even the hospitals (although without most medicines as they were unable to import them due to the sanctions).
Certainly you are setting them up, but 'better than before' still remains to be seen. Bang up job so far. Most of Bhagdad is still on limited electricity, clean running water.
However, to be fair, the Macarthur Administration was in Japan until 1952, about 6.5 years after the cease of hostilities, so it probably unreasonable for the MTV generation to expect Iraq to be a shining beacon of prosperity and democracy before the Shrub Administration needs to rig the next election. Of course, during the occupation of Japan the US Army wasn't an employee of Haliburton...
1. The technological world moves fast, this is its nature. To slow any portion of it down is to kill it. If you force a technology to wait on slower social systems like justice the world moves on without it. 3. Is this what we're seeing with SCO? Freeze up the linux community just long enough and the world will pass them by. Are the same actors involved? Does SCO get money from Microsoft? Bill's a smart man, why not loose a battle to win the war?
This only works in commercial models, ie. when you need sales for money for continuing development for continuing sales. But the Linux model doesn't work that way (something MS doesn't seem to get yet, but it takes a while for an old dog to learn new tricks). Linux development does not require an income stream to continue it's momentum like Netscape, Go and all the other innovative companies that Microsoft has killed with this tactic.
Of course, this might have been a play against Red Hat and SuSE, rather than Linux as a whole. These companies DO need sales to continue doing business. But Linux as a whole will continue developing and improving and taking share.
Actually, not much harder to prove, because the records will be there for audit. If the auditors find that 75% of the speeders are black, 23% are hispanic, and the remaining 2% are white, then it's obvious something is wrong.
Actually, it sounds like an opportunity for some Southern Demogoguery.... "After the figures were released Wille Horton Jnr was quoted as saying 'That's why we need to track black people where-ever they go'"
That's the great thing about statistics, you can attach any meaning you like to them. Some may say it's racial profiling, others might say that it's them brown/black people causing all the accidents on the road.
"Without regard to individual circumstance" can also mean fairly and without bias. You're not more likely to get pulled over for speeding because you're black, or because you drive a fancy sports car. If you go over the speed limit, you get a ticket.
Hmmm, yes the driving while being black offense so common in your country. However, machines can also be programmed to be racist. Face recognition/profiling, licence plate identification and even the EZTag ID, linked to your personal profile { if (type == "African American") then autofine(this);}
Much harder to prove as well, unless of course the source code is open for public scrutiny.
"Speed check by Radar" "Unmarked patrol cars" "Speed check from Aircraft"
How is "Speed check by EZPass" much different?
It's different because it doesn't require any effort on the part of the Government. Meaning it is the start of a slippery slope towards an automated police state. Machines just do what they are programmed to do without regard to individual circumstance, and without being able to offer any assistance in true emergencies (like rushing someone to the hospital).
1. Doesn't play well on a network 2. Doesn't scale all that great
Long ago I spent nearly three years building and maintaining Access databases/front ends.
Generally, with the network access/record locking, performance died after about ten concurrent users.
And with scaling, there were a great number of problems once the table size was greater than 1 million records, which of the 20 systems I built, only one reached this number, after which we moved to SQL server for the data, and kept Access for the front-end.
As you say, for small office applications, it can't be beat. Best RAD reporting tool I have ever used bar none(CR sucks), plus truly rapid development. Excellent for prototyping client/server systems as well.
My only problem with Access was MicroSoft. Shitty tech support. Forever changing licencing arrangements for runtimes and a number of critical bugs in data integrity and security that MS never fixed.
Yet, what a big difference such a belittled feature makes. In the tens of thousands of departments in all the companies in the world, it's FileMaker Pro's and Access' form creation abilities that interests the secretaries who put in requisitions for these products and support Microsoft and FileMaker/Apple.
PowerBuilder's powerful query building tool is nearly everything a database application developer could ask for (minus the stupid syntax within the larger Powerbuilder scripting language). But, where is Powerbuilder, on a secretary's desk or on a developer's desk? I'll tell you something, there are more secretaries in the world than there are developers, and hence there are more Access installations than there are Powerbuilder installations.
I think that is two of the most succintly insightful paragraphs I have ever read on Slashdot.
I would also add that many people begin their journey into computer programming by beginning with Access or Filemaker. This gives them confidence to then seek further instruction in more powerful languages.
I know many snooty purists think this is bad, but there is not much one can do about snooty purists.
Now think about this. How are Supreme Court members appointed? And how is that President elected? And how many votes will the President really get? And how many places now use un-auditable electronic voting?
God, imagine if you could get people to think about that. Well, I guess the dismantling of democracy will go smoothly and without a hitch.
... I bet there are a lot of employees who are not happy being assigned to the boring tedious job of auditing old code, hunting down security flaws, and so on. These people have gottne used to adding useless features without any concern for reality, and that was fun. Dredging the muck for security holes is not. I wonder how many employees are bailing because the work has changed.
In the current job market? I'd say very few. If the tech sector were to rebound however, they may lose some developers. On the other hand, they have plenty of money to make it financially worthwhile to stay.
Netscape around version 2 and three were much better than IE 2 and 3. The 4.x versions where more or less equal with IE edging out in speed. From 5.x, the battle was over, IE won because Netscape became bloated and IE was faster.
While I agree that IE was faster from 5.x, there are good reasons for this, and not all of them are to do with Netscape becoming bloated.
Mozilla is a bloated mess. Why do you think Apple chose KHTML to serve as the foundation for its Safari browser, which I use now.
Yes, Apple fans have been getting all gooey over Safari, which still lags behind Opera in terms of functionality. Personally, Opera is the best browser I have used (using it now in fact). Not the most stable browser I have ever used, it still crashes more often than even IE (at least it recovers where you were). But despite the fact that Opera is a clearly superior browser than IE, IE still owns the market. Not through technical prowess, but through monopoly leverage. This was the point I was trying to make.
Yes, some websites out there only cater to MSIE users and I don't go to those site. Why? at some point a bad consultant or lazy programmer decided that if 5% of the market can't view our site, not that big of a loss. I work as a tech consultant and I hear that more than you can believe. Then I remind them that there are 5% of the market that will go else where to buy whatever it is, that makes them think.
Interesting that it makes them think, does it make them change their position?
BSD is good after creating that 5000th version of Hangman in your javascript class and there is no other great use than maybe a few people will DL and learn javascript or use it on their web site and you just want to have a bit of an ego trip.
Not 100% sure what you mean by that. But I will interpret it something like this. BSD, and the BSD licence have been around for a long time, and yet GNU/Linux/GPL software has been proliferating at an incredible rate where it now greater outnumbers BSD in terms of choice, availability and functionality. What this says to me is that something in the whole Linux/GPL equation led to greater choice, whereas BSD did not, even after having a nearly ten year head start. Now, it MAY NOT have been the GPL licence, but I personally believe that it was.
I am starting to see the down side to opensource technology. I had one office switch to RH 9 for their desktop about four months ago, only for the announcement by Red Hat about how support for RH 9 is going away.
Hmmm, isn't Redhat a company? Redhat != Open Source. Just because Redhat doesn't support RH9 any more doesn't mean that nobody else can. Unlike the proprietary software model, you or I could support RH9 if we had the knowledge and they had the bucks.
Open Source is not just a licencing model, it's a paradigm shift. Don't like the software, change it. Can't get vendor support, find it somewhere else. Open Source is about ending unhealthy dependecies, and giving you (the user/customer/supplier) options to take a different path, rather than groan, whinge and suck it up.
I was attempting to convence two other offices that Linux was the way to go, but with Novell's purchase of SuSE yesterday I had to make two phone calls today and say its either Apple or Dell and M$ to purchase this round of computers.
What a strange correlation. Novell purchases SuSE and you throw in the towel. Seems to me that you are selling boxes, not solutions.
Now its been pretty easy to get Linux and *BSD into server rooms and even some OSS applications like Openoffice onto people's machines, but entire platforms is a hard sale and with uncertainty...well that just killed linux on the desktop for now.
There was a time when there were more important things than how many boxes you could move. Things like providing solutions, solving problems, partnering with your clients to ensure their success, and thus yours. As long as people see Linux as a product rather than a set of tools with which you can create solutions, there is going to be a lot of anguish.
btw I am starting to forget how this conversation started, and what point we are trying to make?
In a nutshell. MS has a monopoly on the desktop.
MS has a history of killing competing technologies by 'incorporating technology into the operating system'. In other words, uses it's monopoly power to restrict choice.
Restricting choice is generally considered to be A Bad Thing(tm).
MS needs to spend lots of money (development/aquire, marketing/evangelisation, spin/fud) to destroy it's competition, thus the money MS spends is it's ONLY BARRIER TO DESTROYING COMPETING TECHNOLOGIES.
Ergo, removing that barrier by providing free code will eventually lead to 99.99999% market dominance instead of 96% market dominance (in my opinion, following the logic to it's enevitable conclusion).
Therefore, you believe that no choice is A Good Thing and I believe that no choice is A Bad Thing, and that is where we disagree.
.... under the BSD more companies could thereby increasing the chances of it becoming a standard.
Tell that to Netscape communications. According to your theory, Mozilla, Konqueror et all should have become the standard browser by now. When you effectively control 96% of the market, and you build new technology into the release of the operating system, then that technology becomes the de-facto standard. It doesn't matter how many other companies make a competing technology.
As it stands now, Microsoft has to spend money to create these technologies such as Internet Explorer, to maintain it's monopoly on the desktop. This takes the form of either buying a small company with the new technology and then have developers 'skin' the new software with the MS look. Or, if the small company won't sell up, then it needs to pay developers to build a competing product, then it rolls it up into the Operating system and amortizes the cost over the many millions of OEM licences it sells.
What you are proposing is that open source developers make this process even easier for Microsoft by eleminating the cost of obtaining the technology. Something Microsoft would be very gratefull to you for.
"In fact, it undermines the whole proprietary software business model. "
Which is why I don't like the GPL. Nor the ideals behind it.
And neither would I in an ideal world. An ideal world is one in which the greatest number of participants in an industry have the widest range of choice. That situation does not currently exist in the software industry. The software industry (for PC's) is currently dominated by a single company with a long history of unethical behaviour and abuse of it's monopoly position. That situation needs to be undermined to allow a decentralisation of power and control in order to return choice to the participants in the software market. The consumers (both corporate and retail), the developers, the ISVs and the hardware manufacturers.
Your logic about moving to BSD being a disater makes no sense. Only in the short term. Think long term and it makes perfect sense. Why would I care what MS does with the software. If they took my BSD licensed ftp server(no I don't have one) dork it up only allowing windows clients to connect why would I care? I still have the orginal code.
Because if they change the FTP protocol so that you can no longer connect and download from your client which is AOSOTW (An Operating System Other Than Windows), then after that future inevitable time, when you want to connect and download something from a server that happens to be a windows box, you are going to have shell out your tax to buy the client from Microsoft.
In other words, all your hard work in developing your software achieved was to give MS another way to shaft you. But to see that requires a long term vision. It is short term thinking and greed that gave MS the position they enjoy today.
Why do people seem to think that Opensource and GPL are one in the same?
If the GPL is shot down in court people will just move to BSD type licenses.
If that happens Ballmer and Gates would dance a jig and shout hooray!! Afterall, the codebase they have been stealing for 15 years is drying up. The chicken farmers have wised up to the fox, and now MS has run out of "innovations", which is the MS term for outright stealing someone else's idea.
The GPL undermines their (MS) whole business model. In fact, it undermines the whole proprietary software business model. Have you noticed that companies such as IBM and Apple, who have embraced opensource to varying degrees (IBM with the GPL, and Apple with Apple Public License and BSD) are HARDWARE companies. And they want to go back to the days of juicy HARDWARE margins, and bundle as much quality software with their customer's purchases, so as to increase the value proposition of the expensive HARDWARE??
A move to BSD type licences would be a disaster. MS would simply steal your hard work, profit from it, and eventually turn it into bug-ridden, bloated crapware. And you don't see a dime. And you don't get the source code back from MS so you can fix their fuck-ups and make it work right.
Sheesh!! Who wants that??
Re:Good database design is still essential
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Bitter EJB
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· Score: 1
The big lie with EJB, and all the OO RDBMS mapping and access tools, is that you don't need to learn anything about relational databases, modeling or theory in order to use them successfully.
Having successfully designed relational databases for nearly 15 years, I am now looking at some of the Object Databases such as Jade and Cache.
While I find them interesting, I still feel as though the OO paradigm and the database world are a strange marriage. The real problem is that instead of implementing pointers in the database world, they implement OO style relationships in the ODBMS, which kind of makes a mish-mash of OO/relational without ever being one or the other.
Every failed EJB based system (and many failed non-EJB systems) that I've seen had poor database schema design at their heart. In almost every case, engineers familiar with OO design, didn't really bother to learn anything about RDBMS, perhaps because they felt them to be old-fashioned, and tried to ignore the database as much as possible, and put too much logic outside of the database.
Actually, I think the problem is pointers. Programmers I know from the OO world are used to using pointers, either as data members or as parameters, and there is just no easy way to reconcile pointers with the relational database world.
There's a lot to EJBs, sure. But you first have to learn the basics of good database design, for without that, you are hosed.
To which I would add, you also need to be able to map OO models to relational models, or you are doubly hosed.
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Look, if Afghanistan was more accessible, it would be an entirely different story for that whole countries history.
Aw, diddums, are the big bad mountains making things difficult?
You can arm chair General all you want, but the facts remain, a man hunt take time, intelligence, and resources to execute them.
That's why time, itelligence and resources were diverted to Iraq right? To help catch Osama Bin Laden?
Bush's policies as Commander and Chief of the military made sure the military was there to find the people we are looking for.
No so far.
I call bullshit on your CIA training thing.
Well then, you don't know a thing.
How much training does it take to strap a bomb to yourself and blow up a bus? Terror is fairly low tech and it doesn't take CIA training to figure it out.
Lots. Training on how to construct the bomb and trigger. Psychological training on how to recruit martyrs. Training on insertion so you make it over the border and on to the bus. And that's just for suicide bombings. There's more training to be had for other operations too.
Ha! Saddam is captured. One of many heavy weights has been lifted from the Iraqi people today, and all you can do is rain on the parade. I'm sorry if all the pundits have to rewrite their speeches especially the part "and Bush can't even find Saddam".
Saddam Hussein is the former commander in chief of a sovereign nation, and as such has certain rights and expectations under the Geneva convention. So far these have not materialised.
Unlike the left, atleast some of what the right says comes true.
You mean like the right said they were going into Iraq, and they did!! Wow, you are right, the right-wing all truth tellers after all!
I'm young and I should be a democrat, but the entire party is too fragmented, too disorganized, and needs to get it's damn shit together before I invest a vote that way. Like it or not....that's where I come out.
It's not about left and right. It's about money and power. Follow the money, and you will see who is in power.
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/essential_services/electri city.html
Actually, Iraq has more electricity now than it did before the war.
Interesting link, however it only shows total output, not distribution. I imagine that the CPA uses quite a lot of power, while until recently the lights went out at 9pm in most Bhagdad suburbs. Suitable for curfew conditions anyway.
Close examination of the satelite photo shows that it is only the center of the city, not the surrounding suburbs.
If only it were so simple. If there was a specific nation that was responsible, I guarantee there would be a declaration of a war.
I thought Iraq was a specific nation, silly me. Or are you talking about terrorism. Then wouldn't that be Osama Bin Laden. Oh wait a minute, didn't Bush claim that the US would catch him 'dead or alive'. Or did that prove beyond the capabilities of the US military? Much easier to invade a country that has had an economic stanglehold over it for 10 years.
Instead we had to throw down the gauntlet to would-be terrorist and the nations that harbor them.
I call bullshit. Half of the world's terrorists were trained, armed and supported by the CIA, but I don't see the Pentagon sending the B52's to Langley, Virginia. Now that we have the 'War on Terror', a piece of Orwellian genius, the US can selectively decide who are terrorists and who are 'freedom fighters'. Terrorists are anyone who disagrees with US policy or who would prefer more equitable terms of trade so that their people are not economic slaves to US businessmen. 'Freedom fighters'on the other hand are murdering scumbag death squads fighting against the tyranny of communism. Like the Albanians in Kosovo.
Yeah, I do mean them, and by them I mean them as a group of people with the power to vote.
They already did vote, but the elections were declared invalid by the Coalition Provisional Authority. What Iraqi's didn't realise is that they were supposed to vote for the people the Americans like.
You're right. It's going to take a while. Trust me. It'll be better.
a) Why should I trust you? (b) Better for whom?
As for the bringing about another government party line...rig the next election? Gore was a loser. He couldn't even win his own state. He couldn't even win Florida decisively.
Well, there's the facts. Well researched, comprehensive, but not well publicised. And then there are opinions like the one above, mass marketed through a compliant media, but bullshit none-the-less.
Yet, Bush in spite of his pundits claims "has found Saddam" through his current policies.
Oh really, how old are you? The US Army found Saddam Hussein, and quite frankly So Fucking What? It seems to be the American way to get so excited about frivolous things while the important issues get swept under the carpet in the hysteria.
If my points seem insane, it's because they're not filled with conspiracy theories, rhetoric, and strawman arguments.
Your points don't seem insane, just ignorant, ill-informed, nonsensical and stupid, but not insane.
In fact, your points are entirely sane ie. they represent the government line perfectly, they are just completely wrong.
Let me refresh your memory in case you forgot...no one declared war on us at 9/11.
Correct, but the United States does not declare war either, and has not since 1945. There are very specific reasons for this, theory of limited warfare, declaration of war would require the use of all neccessary force (eg. nuclear weapons) and other political reasons too long to go into here.
They did try to destroy our Government through our mail system. Remember, the anthrax trick they tried to pull.
Who is 'they'. The Anthrax investigation stalled and then stopped when the trail led to a government building.
Finally, we want them to control their own land.
Who is 'them', and which is 'their' land. Do you mean Sunnis, Kurds, Shia, secular moderates or fanatical clerics? . Do you mean go forward with the current artificial boundary known as 'Iraq' or 'Iraq' and 'Kurdistan'. Or 'Iraq', 'Kurdistan' and 'Persia'. Or 'Ottoman Empire'?
Don't confuse our occupation as run of the mill hostile occupation. We're setting them up to run the place, but better than before...
Funny that. After Gulf War I, even with economic sanctions and the 'food for oil program', the Iraqi's under Saddam Hussein managed to rebuild more than 140 bridges, resume oil production, law and order, a food distribution programme, and even the hospitals (although without most medicines as they were unable to import them due to the sanctions).
Certainly you are setting them up, but 'better than before' still remains to be seen. Bang up job so far. Most of Bhagdad is still on limited electricity, clean running water.
However, to be fair, the Macarthur Administration was in Japan until 1952, about 6.5 years after the cease of hostilities, so it probably unreasonable for the MTV generation to expect Iraq to be a shining beacon of prosperity and democracy before the Shrub Administration needs to rig the next election. Of course, during the occupation of Japan the US Army wasn't an employee of Haliburton...
1. The technological world moves fast, this is its nature. To slow any portion of it down is to kill it. If you force a technology to wait on slower social systems like justice the world moves on without it.
3. Is this what we're seeing with SCO? Freeze up the linux community just long enough and the world will pass them by. Are the same actors involved? Does SCO get money from Microsoft? Bill's a smart man, why not loose a battle to win the war?
This only works in commercial models, ie. when you need sales for money for continuing development for continuing sales.
But the Linux model doesn't work that way (something MS doesn't seem to get yet, but it takes a while for an old dog to learn new tricks).
Linux development does not require an income stream to continue it's momentum like Netscape, Go and all the other innovative companies that Microsoft has killed with this tactic.
Of course, this might have been a play against Red Hat and SuSE, rather than Linux as a whole. These companies DO need sales to continue doing business. But Linux as a whole will continue developing and improving and taking share.
Actually, not much harder to prove, because the records will be there for audit. If the auditors find that 75% of the speeders are black, 23% are hispanic, and the remaining 2% are white, then it's obvious something is wrong.
.... "After the figures were released Wille Horton Jnr was quoted as saying 'That's why we need to track black people where-ever they go'"
Actually, it sounds like an opportunity for some Southern Demogoguery
That's the great thing about statistics, you can attach any meaning you like to them. Some may say it's racial profiling, others might say that it's them brown/black people causing all the accidents on the road.
"Without regard to individual circumstance" can also mean fairly and without bias. You're not more likely to get pulled over for speeding because you're black, or because you drive a fancy sports car. If you go over the speed limit, you get a ticket.
Hmmm, yes the driving while being black offense so common in your country. However, machines can also be programmed to be racist. Face recognition/profiling, licence plate identification and even the EZTag ID, linked to your personal profile { if (type == "African American") then autofine(this);}
Much harder to prove as well, unless of course the source code is open for public scrutiny.
Repeat after me, I am not the products I buy.
You are not a beautiful, individual snowflake, you are decaying organic matter.
"Speed check by Radar"
"Unmarked patrol cars"
"Speed check from Aircraft"
How is "Speed check by EZPass" much different?
It's different because it doesn't require any effort on the part of the Government. Meaning it is the start of a slippery slope towards an automated police state. Machines just do what they are programmed to do without regard to individual circumstance, and without being able to offer any assistance in true emergencies (like rushing someone to the hospital).
How would they know that Christ was going to be born in ~44 years? Hmmm?
It was a retrospective patent.
On the topic of Paradroid, there are two links you absolutely, desperately need to see:
Thanks for that. Already downloaded.
Surely you mean Uridium
Uh, yup.
Probably one of the most addictive games for me was also one of the simplist: Gridrunner.
..... hmmm
I remember Gridrunner being an Amiga game. Has my brain gone muddled
Bruce Lee
Archon / Adept
Bubble Bobble
M.U.L.E
California Games
Winter Games
Ghostbusters
Galaxian
Paper Boy
Pitstop 2
Beach Head
To which I would need to add
Forbidden Forest
Paradroid
Iridium
It's primary limitations are:
1. Doesn't play well on a network
2. Doesn't scale all that great
Long ago I spent nearly three years building and maintaining Access databases/front ends.
Generally, with the network access/record locking, performance died after about ten concurrent users.
And with scaling, there were a great number of problems once the table size was greater than 1 million records, which of the 20 systems I built, only one reached this number, after which we moved to SQL server for the data, and kept Access for the front-end.
As you say, for small office applications, it can't be beat. Best RAD reporting tool I have ever used bar none(CR sucks), plus truly rapid development. Excellent for prototyping client/server systems as well.
My only problem with Access was MicroSoft. Shitty tech support. Forever changing licencing arrangements for runtimes and a number of critical bugs in data integrity and security that MS never fixed.
Yet, what a big difference such a belittled feature makes. In the tens of thousands of departments in all the companies in the world, it's FileMaker Pro's and Access' form creation abilities that interests the secretaries who put in requisitions for these products and support Microsoft and FileMaker/Apple.
PowerBuilder's powerful query building tool is nearly everything a database application developer could ask for (minus the stupid syntax within the larger Powerbuilder scripting language). But, where is Powerbuilder, on a secretary's desk or on a developer's desk? I'll tell you something, there are more secretaries in the world than there are developers, and hence there are more Access installations than there are Powerbuilder installations.
I think that is two of the most succintly insightful paragraphs I have ever read on Slashdot.
I would also add that many people begin their journey into computer programming by beginning with Access or Filemaker. This gives them confidence to then seek further instruction in more powerful languages.
I know many snooty purists think this is bad, but there is not much one can do about snooty purists.
Now think about this. How are Supreme Court members appointed? And how is that President elected? And how many votes will the President really get? And how many places now use un-auditable electronic voting?
God, imagine if you could get people to think about that. Well, I guess the dismantling of democracy will go smoothly and without a hitch.
... I bet there are a lot of employees who are not happy being assigned to the boring tedious job of auditing old code, hunting down security flaws, and so on. These people have gottne used to adding useless features without any concern for reality, and that was fun. Dredging the muck for security holes is not. I wonder how many employees are bailing because the work has changed.
In the current job market? I'd say very few. If the tech sector were to rebound however, they may lose some developers. On the other hand, they have plenty of money to make it financially worthwhile to stay.
Netscape around version 2 and three were much better than IE 2 and 3. The 4.x versions where more or less equal with IE edging out in speed. From 5.x, the battle was over, IE won because Netscape became bloated and IE was faster.
While I agree that IE was faster from 5.x, there are good reasons for this, and not all of them are to do with Netscape becoming bloated.
Mozilla is a bloated mess. Why do you think Apple chose KHTML to serve as the foundation for its Safari browser, which I use now.
Yes, Apple fans have been getting all gooey over Safari, which still lags behind Opera in terms of functionality. Personally, Opera is the best browser I have used (using it now in fact). Not the most stable browser I have ever used, it still crashes more often than even IE (at least it recovers where you were). But despite the fact that Opera is a clearly superior browser than IE, IE still owns the market. Not through technical prowess, but through monopoly leverage. This was the point I was trying to make.
Yes, some websites out there only cater to MSIE users and I don't go to those site. Why? at some point a bad consultant or lazy programmer decided that if 5% of the market can't view our site, not that big of a loss. I work as a tech consultant and I hear that more than you can believe. Then I remind them that there are 5% of the market that will go else where to buy whatever it is, that makes them think.
Interesting that it makes them think, does it make them change their position?
BSD is good after creating that 5000th version of Hangman in your javascript class and there is no other great use than maybe a few people will DL and learn javascript or use it on their web site and you just want to have a bit of an ego trip.
Not 100% sure what you mean by that. But I will interpret it something like this. BSD, and the BSD licence have been around for a long time, and yet GNU/Linux/GPL software has been proliferating at an incredible rate where it now greater outnumbers BSD in terms of choice, availability and functionality.
What this says to me is that something in the whole Linux/GPL equation led to greater choice, whereas BSD did not, even after having a nearly ten year head start. Now, it MAY NOT have been the GPL licence, but I personally believe that it was.
I am starting to see the down side to opensource technology. I had one office switch to RH 9 for their desktop about four months ago, only for the announcement by Red Hat about how support for RH 9 is going away.
Hmmm, isn't Redhat a company? Redhat != Open Source. Just because Redhat doesn't support RH9 any more doesn't mean that nobody else can. Unlike the proprietary software model, you or I could support RH9 if we had the knowledge and they had the bucks.
Open Source is not just a licencing model, it's a paradigm shift. Don't like the software, change it. Can't get vendor support, find it somewhere else. Open Source is about ending unhealthy dependecies, and giving you (the user/customer/supplier) options to take a different path, rather than groan, whinge and suck it up.
I was attempting to convence two other offices that Linux was the way to go, but with Novell's purchase of SuSE yesterday I had to make two phone calls today and say its either Apple or Dell and M$ to purchase this round of computers.
What a strange correlation. Novell purchases SuSE and you throw in the towel. Seems to me that you are selling boxes, not solutions.
Now its been pretty easy to get Linux and *BSD into server rooms and even some OSS applications like Openoffice onto people's machines, but entire platforms is a hard sale and with uncertainty...well that just killed linux on the desktop for now.
There was a time when there were more important things than how many boxes you could move. Things like providing solutions, solving problems, partnering with your clients to ensure their success, and thus yours.
As long as people see Linux as a product rather than a set of tools with which you can create solutions, there is going to be a lot of anguish.
btw I am starting to forget how this conversation started, and what point we are trying to make?
In a nutshell.
MS has a monopoly on the desktop.
MS has a history of killing competing technologies by 'incorporating technology into the operating system'. In other words, uses it's monopoly power to restrict choice.
Restricting choice is generally considered to be A Bad Thing(tm).
MS needs to spend lots of money (development/aquire, marketing/evangelisation, spin/fud) to destroy it's competition, thus the money MS spends is it's ONLY BARRIER TO DESTROYING COMPETING TECHNOLOGIES.
Ergo, removing that barrier by providing free code will eventually lead to 99.99999% market dominance instead of 96% market dominance (in my opinion, following the logic to it's enevitable conclusion).
Therefore, you believe that no choice is A Good Thing and I believe that no choice is A Bad Thing, and that is where we disagree.
So screw all the other companies because you hate MS so much.
Huh? I don't know where that came from. I was talking about redressing an imbalance, but if you want to see it as vengence, be my guest.
Any way Netscape and Mozilla failed because they sucked. Sure at first Netscape was good, but quickly feel behind.
Wha???? Fell behind what? Itself? Internet Explorer is not, and has never been half the browser of either Netscape or Mozilla.
I understand Opera is making a good go at it.
They could be, but there are still sites that Opera doesn't render correctly because the html is full of backdoor MS shit.
And I suspect firebird will soon be gaining ground.
Did your fortune teller tell you that, or are you just making this stuff up as you go along?
I've been patient, but now I see I am wasting my time.
Tell that to Netscape communications. According to your theory, Mozilla, Konqueror et all should have become the standard browser by now.
When you effectively control 96% of the market, and you build new technology into the release of the operating system, then that technology becomes the de-facto standard. It doesn't matter how many other companies make a competing technology.
As it stands now, Microsoft has to spend money to create these technologies such as Internet Explorer, to maintain it's monopoly on the desktop. This takes the form of either buying a small company with the new technology and then have developers 'skin' the new software with the MS look. Or, if the small company won't sell up, then it needs to pay developers to build a competing product, then it rolls it up into the Operating system and amortizes the cost over the many millions of OEM licences it sells.
What you are proposing is that open source developers make this process even easier for Microsoft by eleminating the cost of obtaining the technology. Something Microsoft would be very gratefull to you for.
"In fact, it undermines the whole proprietary software business model. "
Which is why I don't like the GPL. Nor the ideals behind it.
And neither would I in an ideal world. An ideal world is one in which the greatest number of participants in an industry have the widest range of choice. That situation does not currently exist in the software industry. The software industry (for PC's) is currently dominated by a single company with a long history of unethical behaviour and abuse of it's monopoly position.
That situation needs to be undermined to allow a decentralisation of power and control in order to return choice to the participants in the software market. The consumers (both corporate and retail), the developers, the ISVs and the hardware manufacturers.
Your logic about moving to BSD being a disater makes no sense.
Only in the short term. Think long term and it makes perfect sense.
Why would I care what MS does with the software. If they took my BSD licensed ftp server(no I don't have one) dork it up only allowing windows clients to connect why would I care? I still have the orginal code.
Because if they change the FTP protocol so that you can no longer connect and download from your client which is AOSOTW (An Operating System Other Than Windows), then after that future inevitable time, when you want to connect and download something from a server that happens to be a windows box, you are going to have shell out your tax to buy the client from Microsoft.
In other words, all your hard work in developing your software achieved was to give MS another way to shaft you. But to see that requires a long term vision. It is short term thinking and greed that gave MS the position they enjoy today.
Why do people seem to think that Opensource and GPL are one in the same?
If the GPL is shot down in court people will just move to BSD type licenses.
If that happens Ballmer and Gates would dance a jig and shout hooray!! Afterall, the codebase they have been stealing for 15 years is drying up. The chicken farmers have wised up to the fox, and now MS has run out of "innovations", which is the MS term for outright stealing someone else's idea.
The GPL undermines their (MS) whole business model. In fact, it undermines the whole proprietary software business model. Have you noticed that companies such as IBM and Apple, who have embraced opensource to varying degrees (IBM with the GPL, and Apple with Apple Public License and BSD) are HARDWARE companies. And they want to go back to the days of juicy HARDWARE margins, and bundle as much quality software with their customer's purchases, so as to increase the value proposition of the expensive HARDWARE??
A move to BSD type licences would be a disaster. MS would simply steal your hard work, profit from it, and eventually turn it into bug-ridden, bloated crapware. And you don't see a dime. And you don't get the source code back from MS so you can fix their fuck-ups and make it work right.
Sheesh!! Who wants that??
The big lie with EJB, and all the OO RDBMS mapping and access tools, is that you don't need to learn anything about relational databases, modeling or theory in order to use them successfully.
Having successfully designed relational databases for nearly 15 years, I am now looking at some of the Object Databases such as Jade and Cache.
While I find them interesting, I still feel as though the OO paradigm and the database world are a strange marriage. The real problem is that instead of implementing pointers in the database world, they implement OO style relationships in the ODBMS, which kind of makes a mish-mash of OO/relational without ever being one or the other.
Every failed EJB based system (and many failed non-EJB systems) that I've seen had poor database schema design at their heart. In almost every case, engineers familiar with OO design, didn't really bother to learn anything about RDBMS, perhaps because they felt them to be old-fashioned, and tried to ignore the database as much as possible, and put too much logic outside of the database.
Actually, I think the problem is pointers. Programmers I know from the OO world are used to using pointers, either as data members or as parameters, and there is just no easy way to reconcile pointers with the relational database world.
There's a lot to EJBs, sure. But you first have to learn the basics of good database design, for without that, you are hosed.
To which I would add, you also need to be able to map OO models to relational models, or you are doubly hosed.