I made a lot of mistakes that I would not have made with MySQL, mostly with privileges.
Can you elaborate? The complaint that I saw most often was that there was no good way to manage the permissions for a lot of objects. In 9.0, that was addressed with GRANT/REVOKE IN SCHEMA.
Also, keep in mind that the standard has a lot to say about the privilege system, so postgresql won't want to stray too far from that.
but if MySQL works for you...cheaper...and easier, why not use it?
Of course, go for it.
Just don't let inertia keep you from learning something that might really be an improvement. "Works" is not binary -- some things work better than others. SVN works. Git works better. Notepad and GEdit work. Emacs and vim work better.
not all autism is crippling. It can have a fairly broad spectrum
I'm skeptical when I hear things like that. Broad-spectrum conditions that are diagnosed through subjective tests (especially mental/social tests) leave a lot of room for misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis.
In the US, this is a particular problem because there is a financial incentive to both the individual and perhaps to the school if the diagnosis is autism. For instance, the thought process might be something like "well, we're not really sure, but if we don't say it's autism, then we don't get any money to treat it".
Also, it's far from clear that "mild cases" are really a problem at all.
Money is a good incentive when there is a direct and immediate relation between your paycheck and your output
I think this misses the point. Money (and other incentives) work well to encourage inputs. For those tasks where there is a direct connection between inputs and outputs, money can improve outputs (like with your widget example). However, if the connection between inputs and outputs is looser, such as a task that requires creativity rather than brute force, incentives generally don't work as well.
It's not "I should get paid", it's more like "I give something to the community for free, but I don't want to starve while doing it".
I don't see how those two things are different; nor do I see how either of those represent reality. Both of those sentiments seem to push the responsibility of feeding you onto someone else (who?).
But developers spent time developing the software. So, if their time is not free, then how did the software come to be free in the first place?
Someone paid them to spend time on it?
If you have free software, you're free to modify and distribute it as you please.
If you want free software, you can:
1. Write it yourself; or 2. convince someone who already has the software to provide it to you under a free software license (perhaps by paying them); or 3. convince someone to write it and provide it to you under a free software license (perhaps by paying them).
1. There *are* open standards. 2. There *is already* an open database, OpenStreetMap. 3. As someone already pointed out, that open database uses open standards. 4. It seems bizarre to value open standards so much more than an open database. An open database is likely to become an open standard, or be converted if another open standard takes hold. The reverse does not hold true though -- proprietary information is likely to remain proprietary regardless of the existence of open standards (for instance, google maps is a proprietary database).
[OpenStreetMap does] not have the infrastructure to handle a twitter like traffic load.
OSM is a database, not a hosted service where you can't access the data. There is no reason to throw a lot of traffic at their servers. Download the data and host it yourself.
In contrast to MySQL and OpenSolaris, PostgreSQL is one of the most open communities around. The core members are spread among several companies, it's BSD licensed with no requirement to assign copyright, and the community is made up of a wide variety of people. Not only that, they have established, effective, and written policies for release management, patch review/acceptance, etc.
In other scientific fields, the problem is not nearly as severe because: (a) There is not such a huge difference in the amount of money scientists receive for one result versus the opposite result; or (b) The field is not as politically charged; or (c) The ultimate accuracy of a theory is seen more decisively in a shorter period of time.
Even with other money-charged scientific fields, like medicine, the results ultimately play out in clinical trials and then general availability. The truth will reveal itself relatively soon, serious investigations will follow any serious problem, and the consequences to anyone who violates the rules are severe.
However, with climate scientists, just like with economists, they can always claim their theories are correct throughout their entire lifetimes regardless of the outcomes. They just say that some "other, unforeseen factor" changed the outcome without contradicting their theory. And serious investigations are much less likely -- note that "ClimateGate" was the result of hacking rather than systematic review or investigation.
None of this means that the climate isn't changing. But it does mean that we will have a major problem getting accurate information, making useful predictions, and crafting effective policy regarding climate change (that is, if policy is the correct approach at all).
An offhand negative comment with no explanation at all doesn't mean much. That could mean anything from a real problem to forgetting a WHERE clause on your DELETE statement.
Most web apps are very read-heavy, and this is where SQLite shines.
Saying that SQLite is good at reads is misleading. It may be good at very narrow read cases, such as fetching a record given the primary key, but beyond that it can't do much. For instance, it can't even do a hash join or merge join (it doesn't have a planner, so how would it know when to do it?), so it's going to be much slower for a lot of queries. To be fair though, MySQL can't, either.
Well, for existing MySQL users, they have the following options:
1. Rely on Oracle to support MySQL 2. Rely on a MySQL community to develop outside of Oracle 3. Jump to another DBMS, like PostgreSQL
If the cost for #3 is reasonable, that's probably the wisest choice. If not, #2 is probably the wise choice. And Monty will be an important player in #2 because he is a leader, whether you like it or not.
That's not to say that he won't join Drizzle (good leaders can follow and lead at the same time), for instance. I think that might very well happen, because trying to launch two DBMS communities from scratch seems unlikely to succeed.
The argument doesn't really make sense, because Oracle is vulnerable to the same tactic. What would happen if IBM offered even $1m to each of Oracle's top database programmers to quit?
That would cause a problem for any organization, of course. But both Oracle and PostgreSQL have established policies and lots of historical precedent that guide new developers and project leaders while they are getting up to speed and filling empty roles. For instance, what happens when a significant patch hits the pgsql-hackers list that implements a new feature? Discussion begins, and then it goes on a public commit-fest page (http://commitfest.postgresql.org). When the commitfest begins, everyone stops work on their own patches, reviewers get assigned to patches, and after it passes review then a committer reviews it again and potentially commits it.
With policies like that in place, as a few developers are hired away it's much easier for new developers to take their place. You don't get lopsided efforts. How does postgresql find enough reviewers? Reviewing is that much fun? No. If you don't review at commit fest time, then your patch is either ignored or at the back of the line.
What happens when a patch hits the mysql list from a random contributor? Well, we don't really know, because MySQL isn't really a community project. They only know how to get patches committed and releases out the door from within MySQL AB (and that could obviously be questioned as well, seeing how long they went without a release, and the problems that happened when they did release, like Monty saying it wasn't ready).
It's much easier to cause major damage to a disorganized project like MySQL.
I believe MariaDB and Drizzle are both attempting to establish a real community project (notice I didn't say "re-establish"). I hope they succeed for the sake of MySQL users. But new users would be wise to count on a real organization like the PostgreSQL Global Development Group and it's established policies (or Oracle, for that matter).
By your argument, PostgreSQL is fragile because the top 20 developers could be bought out by Oracle.
One thing about PostgreSQL is that the leadership have developed a lot of policies, standards, traditions, practices, style, tools, and other organized structures. In the recent past this has been much more conscious -- for instance the commit-fests are a great way for new developers to join in by submitting patches and reviewing others' patches.
This makes it easier for newer developers and leaders to step up to the plate even without a long history in the project. Is this patch good enough? Well, has it been reviewed by two people (reviewer and committer) as required by the commitfest policy?
Of course hiring developers away will slow down development. But it won't be a death blow, because new people can always get involved and they know what to do. They know what roles need to be filled, they know what constitutes a good patch, they know how to make a release, and they know the general principles to maintain high quality. They also know what to do when a random patch hits the list by an unknown developer, so they can make progress and rebuild the community.
PostgreSQL 8.4 supports partial vacuum, meaning that old data usually doesn't need to be VACUUMed. That alleviates many of the complaints surrounding VACUUM.
It's not that they are not specific, but that people's confidence is lower for the more specific projections. The climate is complex, so that would be expected.
Without both specificity and confidence, there is plenty of room outside of the science itself for lots of disagreement on policy -- and that's not even taking into account people's different political leanings.
The problem with climate change science at this point isn't the science it's that the solutions go against conservative values.
Science doesn't come up with "solutions", (or problems, for that matter) it comes up with theories. It's up to engineers, economists, and politicians to define the implications of a theory as problems, and come up with solutions.
And that's where most of the debate lies: the more specifically we try to define the problem and solution, the more confident we need to be in the more specific theories. But we simply aren't confident in climate theories that have any specificity. A lot of people may agree that "more CO2 means warmer", but without more specific predictions and confidence nobody is going to agree on the problem or the solution.
There's nothing wrong with being skeptical of a politician's "solutions", because there's a lot of judgment required between a scientific theory and a political "solution". Especially when the "solutions" all seem to involve more money and power for all of the scientists and politicians involved (and businesses, like Al Gore's).
"It shows that with freedom to take your own path comes great responsibility, take a wrong turn and forget the consequences of your actions and you may fall to 'evil'"
Did she say that, or did you?
You can interpret things to be benign when they are not at least as easily as you can interpret things to be dangerous when they are not.
I think most people go through their lives without "turning to" people like Mao as a "philosopher". And certainly without calling someone like Mao a philosopher at all.
You may not mind these things. You may appreciate the clever point that she was trying to make. But millions of Americans are troubled by the level of comfort that Obama and his administration have with communists, and the discomfort they have with capitalism.
If there's important context left out that refutes that, I didn't see it in your post. I only see you putting words in her mouth after the fact.
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I made a lot of mistakes that I would not have made with MySQL, mostly with privileges.
Can you elaborate? The complaint that I saw most often was that there was no good way to manage the permissions for a lot of objects. In 9.0, that was addressed with GRANT/REVOKE IN SCHEMA.
Also, keep in mind that the standard has a lot to say about the privilege system, so postgresql won't want to stray too far from that.
but if MySQL works for you...cheaper...and easier, why not use it?
Of course, go for it.
Just don't let inertia keep you from learning something that might really be an improvement. "Works" is not binary -- some things work better than others. SVN works. Git works better. Notepad and GEdit work. Emacs and vim work better.
not all autism is crippling. It can have a fairly broad spectrum
I'm skeptical when I hear things like that. Broad-spectrum conditions that are diagnosed through subjective tests (especially mental/social tests) leave a lot of room for misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis.
In the US, this is a particular problem because there is a financial incentive to both the individual and perhaps to the school if the diagnosis is autism. For instance, the thought process might be something like "well, we're not really sure, but if we don't say it's autism, then we don't get any money to treat it".
Also, it's far from clear that "mild cases" are really a problem at all.
I think this misses the point. Money (and other incentives) work well to encourage inputs. For those tasks where there is a direct connection between inputs and outputs, money can improve outputs (like with your widget example). However, if the connection between inputs and outputs is looser, such as a task that requires creativity rather than brute force, incentives generally don't work as well.
I don't see how those two things are different; nor do I see how either of those represent reality. Both of those sentiments seem to push the responsibility of feeding you onto someone else (who?).
Someone paid them to spend time on it?
If you have free software, you're free to modify and distribute it as you please.
If you want free software, you can:
1. Write it yourself; or
2. convince someone who already has the software to provide it to you under a free software license (perhaps by paying them); or
3. convince someone to write it and provide it to you under a free software license (perhaps by paying them).
This makes zero sense.
1. There *are* open standards.
2. There *is already* an open database, OpenStreetMap.
3. As someone already pointed out, that open database uses open standards.
4. It seems bizarre to value open standards so much more than an open database. An open database is likely to become an open standard, or be converted if another open standard takes hold. The reverse does not hold true though -- proprietary information is likely to remain proprietary regardless of the existence of open standards (for instance, google maps is a proprietary database).
[OpenStreetMap does] not have the infrastructure to handle a twitter like traffic load.
OSM is a database, not a hosted service where you can't access the data. There is no reason to throw a lot of traffic at their servers. Download the data and host it yourself.
In contrast to MySQL and OpenSolaris, PostgreSQL is one of the most open communities around. The core members are spread among several companies, it's BSD licensed with no requirement to assign copyright, and the community is made up of a wide variety of people. Not only that, they have established, effective, and written policies for release management, patch review/acceptance, etc.
To what end? So they don't travel a century back in time to bury their weapons ever again?
Maybe they should also have some military official today apologize for someone else burying weapons in the distant past.
I believe this is a case of personifying the government as a 200-year-old, which leads to ridiculous statements, and worse, ridiculous policy.
Do you also think it is the same with sciences?
In other scientific fields, the problem is not nearly as severe because:
(a) There is not such a huge difference in the amount of money scientists receive for one result versus the opposite result; or
(b) The field is not as politically charged; or
(c) The ultimate accuracy of a theory is seen more decisively in a shorter period of time.
Even with other money-charged scientific fields, like medicine, the results ultimately play out in clinical trials and then general availability. The truth will reveal itself relatively soon, serious investigations will follow any serious problem, and the consequences to anyone who violates the rules are severe.
However, with climate scientists, just like with economists, they can always claim their theories are correct throughout their entire lifetimes regardless of the outcomes. They just say that some "other, unforeseen factor" changed the outcome without contradicting their theory. And serious investigations are much less likely -- note that "ClimateGate" was the result of hacking rather than systematic review or investigation.
None of this means that the climate isn't changing. But it does mean that we will have a major problem getting accurate information, making useful predictions, and crafting effective policy regarding climate change (that is, if policy is the correct approach at all).
Access is really not bad for what it is. I think it's actually underrated among tech people. I'd take it over MySQL in many situations.
The only problem with it is that it's slow. It's REALLY slow.
I have seen Postgres going horribly wrong
An offhand negative comment with no explanation at all doesn't mean much. That could mean anything from a real problem to forgetting a WHERE clause on your DELETE statement.
Most web apps are very read-heavy, and this is where SQLite shines.
Saying that SQLite is good at reads is misleading. It may be good at very narrow read cases, such as fetching a record given the primary key, but beyond that it can't do much. For instance, it can't even do a hash join or merge join (it doesn't have a planner, so how would it know when to do it?), so it's going to be much slower for a lot of queries. To be fair though, MySQL can't, either.
Well, for existing MySQL users, they have the following options:
1. Rely on Oracle to support MySQL
2. Rely on a MySQL community to develop outside of Oracle
3. Jump to another DBMS, like PostgreSQL
If the cost for #3 is reasonable, that's probably the wisest choice. If not, #2 is probably the wise choice. And Monty will be an important player in #2 because he is a leader, whether you like it or not.
That's not to say that he won't join Drizzle (good leaders can follow and lead at the same time), for instance. I think that might very well happen, because trying to launch two DBMS communities from scratch seems unlikely to succeed.
The argument doesn't really make sense, because Oracle is vulnerable to the same tactic. What would happen if IBM offered even $1m to each of Oracle's top database programmers to quit?
That would cause a problem for any organization, of course. But both Oracle and PostgreSQL have established policies and lots of historical precedent that guide new developers and project leaders while they are getting up to speed and filling empty roles. For instance, what happens when a significant patch hits the pgsql-hackers list that implements a new feature? Discussion begins, and then it goes on a public commit-fest page (http://commitfest.postgresql.org). When the commitfest begins, everyone stops work on their own patches, reviewers get assigned to patches, and after it passes review then a committer reviews it again and potentially commits it.
With policies like that in place, as a few developers are hired away it's much easier for new developers to take their place. You don't get lopsided efforts. How does postgresql find enough reviewers? Reviewing is that much fun? No. If you don't review at commit fest time, then your patch is either ignored or at the back of the line.
What happens when a patch hits the mysql list from a random contributor? Well, we don't really know, because MySQL isn't really a community project. They only know how to get patches committed and releases out the door from within MySQL AB (and that could obviously be questioned as well, seeing how long they went without a release, and the problems that happened when they did release, like Monty saying it wasn't ready).
It's much easier to cause major damage to a disorganized project like MySQL.
I believe MariaDB and Drizzle are both attempting to establish a real community project (notice I didn't say "re-establish"). I hope they succeed for the sake of MySQL users. But new users would be wise to count on a real organization like the PostgreSQL Global Development Group and it's established policies (or Oracle, for that matter).
By your argument, PostgreSQL is fragile because the top 20 developers could be bought out by Oracle.
One thing about PostgreSQL is that the leadership have developed a lot of policies, standards, traditions, practices, style, tools, and other organized structures. In the recent past this has been much more conscious -- for instance the commit-fests are a great way for new developers to join in by submitting patches and reviewing others' patches.
This makes it easier for newer developers and leaders to step up to the plate even without a long history in the project. Is this patch good enough? Well, has it been reviewed by two people (reviewer and committer) as required by the commitfest policy?
Of course hiring developers away will slow down development. But it won't be a death blow, because new people can always get involved and they know what to do. They know what roles need to be filled, they know what constitutes a good patch, they know how to make a release, and they know the general principles to maintain high quality. They also know what to do when a random patch hits the list by an unknown developer, so they can make progress and rebuild the community.
PostgreSQL 8.4 supports partial vacuum, meaning that old data usually doesn't need to be VACUUMed. That alleviates many of the complaints surrounding VACUUM.
It's not that they are not specific, but that people's confidence is lower for the more specific projections. The climate is complex, so that would be expected.
Without both specificity and confidence, there is plenty of room outside of the science itself for lots of disagreement on policy -- and that's not even taking into account people's different political leanings.
The problem with climate change science at this point isn't the science it's that the solutions go against conservative values.
Science doesn't come up with "solutions", (or problems, for that matter) it comes up with theories. It's up to engineers, economists, and politicians to define the implications of a theory as problems, and come up with solutions.
And that's where most of the debate lies: the more specifically we try to define the problem and solution, the more confident we need to be in the more specific theories. But we simply aren't confident in climate theories that have any specificity. A lot of people may agree that "more CO2 means warmer", but without more specific predictions and confidence nobody is going to agree on the problem or the solution.
There's nothing wrong with being skeptical of a politician's "solutions", because there's a lot of judgment required between a scientific theory and a political "solution". Especially when the "solutions" all seem to involve more money and power for all of the scientists and politicians involved (and businesses, like Al Gore's).
Newtonian Mechanics are valid, just not as accurate as Relativity.
What is "valid" supposed to mean?
Newtonian mechanics were proven wrong, although they still happen to be a useful approximation in some circumstances.
You missed the joke.
Monkey see, monkey do.
So, then a monkey raised by humans would speak a human language? Maybe it will grow up to be a bank teller or a fireman?
"It shows that with freedom to take your own path comes great responsibility, take a wrong turn and forget the consequences of your actions and you may fall to 'evil'"
Did she say that, or did you?
You can interpret things to be benign when they are not at least as easily as you can interpret things to be dangerous when they are not.
I think most people go through their lives without "turning to" people like Mao as a "philosopher". And certainly without calling someone like Mao a philosopher at all.
You may not mind these things. You may appreciate the clever point that she was trying to make. But millions of Americans are troubled by the level of comfort that Obama and his administration have with communists, and the discomfort they have with capitalism.
If there's important context left out that refutes that, I didn't see it in your post. I only see you putting words in her mouth after the fact.
only troubling after Glen Beck sets up his viewers with his bat-shit-insane editorial slant
Obama hired Van Jones, who called himself a communist.
To many people, it's troubling that the president is so comfortable with communists and other leftist radicals.
The "out of context" defense. Predictable.
I'm not buying it. Beck often plays long video or audio clips where the person just digs themselves deeper.