A lot of people get in their heads the idea that they are right, and they know they're right, and the only reason everyone on the planet doesn't agree with them is because everyone else is ignorant.
However, the author of the article did simply present the facts, so I can't complain much. I certainly detected a bias toward the idea of central planning though.
In general, I distrust central planning. One person thinking isn't as useful as many, no matter how wise the one person is. In my opinion, that's the primary failing of socialism: the government simply can't allocate resources as effectively as individuals making their own decisions. I don't care how great of a centralized plan you have, it just won't work.
There's no reason why 99% of the daemons out there couldn't be written in Python or Java (with Kaffe even).
UNIX people "hug" C, but not because of performance. It's portability. Python and Java are more of a moving target. They do a good job of maintaining compatibility for the most part, but it's nothing like C.
I don't think we're going to see a serious move in that direction for a while. One thing we need first is a standard VM that's completely free and changes very slowly, and is compatible to many platforms. Basically, I'm talking about a free, cross-platform.NET.
4. Use the firewall built into XP, or install one of the many free (for personal use) 3rd party firewalls, or even better look for an ISP that firewalls sensitive ports for you.
Or, MicroSoft could just turn off the services by default.
But let's get realistic, Microsoft doesn't really have an interest in security, in fact I'd argue they prefer to keep their OS from being "too secure" on purpose.
what is wrong with rewriting the code from the ground-up?
Nothing is wrong with that, as long as your time is worth nothing.
The obvious answer is that if you get some enjoyment out of a rewrite, and you actually do it, then sure, its great. But if you have to trade something more important, than it's bad. What else could you do with your time, and how much enjoyment or productivity would you get out of the alternatives?
When I first started programming, I would always get a vision about how a piece of software should work, and think about rewriting it. But usually the current software is, to an extent, cluttered for a reason. I think it's only worthwhile if you can actually work out the details, and you're still confident. The details are what always cause the problems.
Slashdot itself stimulates the brain a lot more than any TV program. I've noticed that dispite the countless hours I've spent watching the History channel, I somehow end up totally ignorant of the subject (even the stuff that's on all the time, like WW2 stuff).
The internet, being a full-duplex network, is infinately more social and stimulating than T.V., a half-duplex network.
Imagine if a show like "The O'Reilly Factor" was a bunch of stories on slashdot. All the B.S. that flies around could be hashed out in a slashdot-style discussion, and that's WAY better than banging your head against the wall as the argument turns toward irrelevencies and you can't do anything but email him and hope.
Hey, speaking of which, are there any good liberal websites? Conservatives seem to love to hash out their ideas in a central place and they have a pretty uniform internet presence. Liberal stuff is only an article here or there with no real chance to get any information. There's liberal news, there's liberal people's websites, but what about a central place where they take on the conservatives? Dean's website makes no real arguments, they're just a bunch of visions. If lean conservative on an issue, there's no way I can seek out an opposing view. I've tried. I want real arguments, in plain english, like a bunch of columnists or something.
If you think I'm making this up, try googling for: (1) "conservative columnists" - first link is townhall.com, a good place for all the conservative platforms, and all the arguments in step with modern events. You don't have to agree that the ideas are good, but at least there are ideas, and valid arguments there (among bad, but that's to be expected). (2) "liberal columnists" - I find no useful links. Is liberal a bad word now? What's the deal?
Or, more generally, all the people who had a working box before, and don't want to touch it. It may be running an old OS and a bunch of old apps, and everything might work fine.
Some people, who don't live in the real world, like to think of this type of thing as something that can just be phased out in a few years. Everyone will patch their systems slowly, and vendors will recompile the code with new libraries, and old routers will be replaced with hardware IPv6 routers, and then, magically, everyone is using IPv6.
The reality is that people won't patch their systems, routers will work for eons and nobody wants to replace them, and app vendors are long gone because they don't make money on your legacy app anymore.
This reminds me of arguments about switching to linux. I love GNU and linux of course, but we have a tendency to think of some typical case of an office or home user. But so many people, especially those most likely to care about switching, are atypical. To assume that eveyone needs the same things out of a computer is to turn it into an appliance, which has been shown to completely fail. It ends up that someone has an intricate, delicate system, and nobody in their right mind wants to touch it.
Well, the criteria is that you have to reasonably feel like your life is being threatened, or someone else's life. And it has to be reasonable to other people afterward, you can't do LSD and then claim that it "made sense at the time".
The problem, of course, is that it's hard to tell what really happened. Our legal system here requires "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," so in order to convict someone of murder who's using the self-defense excuse, you have to show that there was no way he could have reasonably been in fear of his life. So, murderers can go free, yes, but that is considered better by our citizens than locking up some of those who really had no other choice but to kill.
One time a stranger snuck up behind my car in the dark (it was winter so it was only like 7-8 pm) while I was in my car just about to pull out of my garage. He was wearing all black, including a motorcycle jacket, and he was bigger than I was. I couldn't close my garage door because of the laser beam thing. I don't currently own a gun, and if I did, it would be illegal for me to carry it in my car anyway (assuming I didn't have a ccw) even though that's one of the most important places to keep a gun.
I didn't really know what to do. My car has 270 ft.-lbs. of torque at about 5500 rpm, so my first inclination was to rev my car to said rpm and get ready to launch in reverse, figuring that was better than risking it. Fortunately, he was on official business and new my name, and when I revved my car he said it in a hurry. Had he not, I would have rammed him up against a car behind me and I wouldn't have even felt bad about it.
Moral of the story: DON'T SCARE PEOPLE. Choose the wrong person (i.e. someone who values their own life over the squemishness about killing someone) and you'll end up dead. The problem is, if you force someone into a situation where they don't know whether they will get another opportunity to survive, bad things will happen to you.
Perhaps I'm misinformed, but I wasn't aware that any non-police agency could confiscate anything, legal or illegal, unless it was handed over. It doesn't matter whether it's a kg of coke, it's their property until law enforcement is involved.
First of all, you can't give someone the right to "wave the gun around" without giving them the right to shoot it. This is a practical matter: as soon as a gun is drawn, all bets are off because life is at risk unless the person without the gun is totally submissive, and far away to begin with. Police don't kill people very often because we hold them to a higher standard than a normal citizen. We expect them to be able to fend someone off until it's necessary to kill.
So, if a bunch of people who aren't police officers "raid" you, it wouldn't be out of the question to consider that you were being attacked. And it wouldn't be out of the question to consider that they could kill you, and that this may be your last opportunity to save your life.
If you know you're not in danger, however, it is murder. But if it's a bunch of scary looking people against one guy that has a bunch of cash on him (because he's been selling illegal stuff all day), I don't think the police would ask too many more questions.
As far as public vs. private property, I don't really see how that matters. If you're being mugged on public property, you can still shoot the guy if you think it may save your life. The only indicator is that it is more likely that someone is coming to kill you if they actually trespass, and so deadly force is more easily justified. It's certainly not required, however.
Again, back to the original poster's comment. He predicted that people would buy IBM, and his reasoning went something like this:
(1) people say they want secure products (2) IBM is more capable of supplying secure products. (3) people will buy IBM
Well, that may be true if (1) was the same as "people want secure products", but it's not. They say they want secure products.
Nobody wanted a pink Model T because all the people combined who might choose a pink color did not amount to enough extra revenue to justify new painting equipment.
The whole "I want" attitude is getting tired. Some aspects of life have already caught on: in most social situations it's improper to say something like "I want a yacht and a helicopter with a mini-bar on it". It's much more proper to say "I love boating, and I'm saving up for a sailboat that I want." The difference between those two statements is the latter actually wants to pay the cost, and the former doesn't.
If it's so rediculous to say those things in a social context, why is it OK when talking business? My guess is that it's good PR for a CTO to get up and say he's doing a security this-or-that and that he wants to make things secure. After he's spent an hour talking about it at the last meeting, he gets back to doing the work that's really important.
It kind of reminds me of people who wistfully say "I want to get into shape." Maybe they'd prefer to be in shape over the alternative, but the reality is that it's so low on their priority list that it will never happen. After they spend New Year's day thinking about it, the rest of the year is spent reading slashdot and eating pizza. Those people clearly don't want to get into shape.
It's all opportunity cost, people. In America, we have so many great opportunities that things that may sound good to ourselves ("I'm going to read that book.") fall below the event horizon on our priority list due to other things, like going to the beach or earning your child's college tuition. If it is high enough that you're actually willing to forgo something else, sure, say you want it. If you "really want to do it, but I've got to organize my socks by color alphabetically first", the just shut up about it.
They "want" security in the OS after their applications work, and after the legacy apps work, and after microsoft gets their latest feature requests in for Clippy version 2.0, and...
I think most of them did that because of compatibility requirement and lack of alternatives.
So, in other words, they want it.
Just because a consumer isn't thrilled with every aspect of a product doesn't mean it's not the best product available for their needs. If someone wants compatibility with large proprietary vendors, then they want microsoft.
By the way, I think the real distinction between a "want" and a "need", economically speaking, is that you need something general, and you want something specific. For example: you need food; you want steak. You need an OS; you want Microsoft Windows 2000.
Back to my original point, things people say and things people do are different. Somebody might feel like they want security, but when it comes down to it nobody will pay for it. Do you think people would pay an extra $150 for the OS, and an extra $100 for the email client, for the sake of security? How much would you pay? How much would the average network admin pay? How much would the average home user pay?
My estimation is that people would pay far less than it would cost Microsoft to actually design a secure platform.
By your definition, everyone wants everything. Heck, I "want" a mansion on the beach and a new 'vette. But I'm smart enough to not go around saying it until I have the money.
The original poster was talking about IBM and how people wanted security. He said that IBM could sell "worm resistant" linux. But I'm saying all the talk about security is just talk. The people who care about security now are the same people that cared about it before, and the worms changed nothing. The people who really care: banks, CIA, etc., never had their networks open to worms in the first place. Name me one CTO who announced that he would buy IBM and replace windows because of worm attacks. Nope, they complain and that's it. Whatever miniscule amount of money that people who care about security were willing to spend because of a few worms was spent on Microsofts month-o-security (or whatever they called it), which was also mostly talk.
The more people start using Linux, the more chance that that's what I'm going to WORK with and on in the future. More fun work.
A good point. It kind of got me thinking on this tangent: I wonder if Microsoft intentionally builds a high maintenence cost into their product to gain the loyalty of sysadmins? Sysadmins have powerful purchasing capabilities, and also want job security and promotions. If they buy into linux, than everything might work perfectly and then they get demoted to tech support. At minimum they have no chance to show how they handle a crisis if there is no crisis with linux.
Wow, what a strange web of incentives this complicated world creates.
IBM stands for reliability and predictability, which is exactly what the industry wants today
No, that's what they say they want. Well, people say they want a lot of things, that doesn't mean that they're willing to pay any additional costs at all. Those costs could be in terms of software license fees, worker productivity, interoperability, legacy software capabilities, performance, etc.
People are constantly saying they want security, but the market reality is that nobody actually puts a high number value on it. They want a quick fix solution, like a firewall or something.
It's sort of like a shareware author thinking to himself "Wow, 10000 people want my software, that's great!". We all know that approximately 0 out of the 10000 will actually part with $1 for the shareware software.
Now, there are a few exceptions I'm sure. But the vast majority of people don't care. Money proves what people really want, because people vote with their dollars, and what people really want is Microsoft Software.
Now, if someone can please explain to me why people want Microsoft Software, I'd be interested to know:)
Careful, "equal ground" and "level playing field" are loaded phrases.
All kinds of questions arise, and all are answered differently depending on the person. Is "equal protection under the laws," as in the 14th Amendment, a level playing field?
The real problem with those phrases is that it depends on when you do your leveling. When you play a chess match, each game resets, and it's pretty clear that it's a level playing field (assuming players switch off each game making the first move).
So, let's say you wanted to get involved, and to actively level the playing field. Would you level it at birth (he has a genetic problem, so we should pay for his healthcare regarding that problem)? At age 18 (his parents didn't raise him very well, we should get him through college)?
Or, should we level it any time anyone feels that someone else currently holds the advantage? This seems to be what people really mean when they're in the business of politics. If someone behaves unhealthily their entire life, they may no longer have the advantages of good health. Should we try to level that inequity? Somebody partied through college, and now they don't have the advantage in a job interview, should we give him a handout?
I am of the opinion that "equal protection under the laws" is the most desirable. That means that we don't tax one person to give another a handout; that would be like removing pawns from the board in a chess game as far as equality goes. And it's on shaky moral ground as well: "I'm so compassionate that I'm going to force someone *else* to give this poor person a handout." Compassion is great, but the government cannot posess any at all.
You can't level the playing field after the game has started.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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By definition, both are involved.
Well, obviously one has to have power over another to commit rape, and sex must be involved, so I suppose technically you're correct. Most people refer to the motivation. Are rapists motivated by a need to express their power, or a desire for sex?
Equally self-evident is that peoples' motives differ. Rape for sex is just another violent crime, but rape to express power may be some sort of sexist crime of the highest degree.
There isn't much interest to be generated from "just another violent crime, throw 'em in jail and forget it". However, a lot of interest (and therefore research grants, paid speeches, donated funds, votes, government money, etc.) is generated by a sexist crime that may be part of some deep-rooted societal problem that needs to be eliminated.
So, they hire psycologists (who are motivated always to come up with the most complicated reasons) to decree that all rape is an expression of power over another, as if psycologists had some magical way of knowing that as a fact, that no normal person can understand. Are they suggesting that at no time in history has a man ever commited rape for the mere purpose of sex? That's rediculous. However wrong it is, some men lie for sex, cheat for sex, pay money for sex, and probably a lot of other things. It would seem totally out of the pattern if men never used force for sex.
Of course it's wrong to commit rape, along with any other violent crime. But whenever psycologists start talking, I'm skeptical. They have a theory and no hard evidence. Actually, I'm skeptical anytime anyone starts talking about "root causes", not that I think it's inherently a bad way to think, but usually that ends up as some kind of "blame the parents of the parents of the parents of the parents of the murderer" argument.
Interesting, are you sure? Don't the standards at least have to be different? I usually think of porn as obscene, but obviously that is allowed as long as it's exchanged between consenting adults.
I suppose if it's declared in the same category, you'd need to start carding people to buy the game. That's a lot better, IMO, than restricting speech to adults.
As far as what Ashcroft is doing, it doesn't exactly surprise me. The war on the Constitution has been going on for a long time, and the Constitution has been slowly losing since about 1930. I don't think people will be eternally vigilant until life starts taking a turn for the worse.
GTA is not in violation of any obscenity laws since it's not a public display. Nobody is forcing anyone to look at it. The only violation that even makes sense is that it incites violence.
However, inciting violence requires a lot more specificity than what is shown in GTA. They don't say "kill the hatians that live at 123 Maple Ave".
I think the best one around is PgAdmin III at http://www.pgadmin.org
I don't use it much, but it looks very nice and is easy to work with for the little stuff that I have done. It's also cross platform, and I've used it on windows and linux.
MySQL is a lot easier to deal with in some other important regards
What other regards? This is a serious question, because I don't think the developers always know. They know everyone wants easier-to-use replication (there are some good solutions out there, but nothing is really "out of the box"). I suppose that changing the owner of a database counts, but I don't think I've ever had to do that. I'll try it out and maybe try to get that fixed.
So, for the benefit of the success of PostgreSQL, what is your wishlist for its improvements?
I have been looking for a long time for a MySQL person to actually say something that bugged them about PostgreSQL, and why they couldn't use it.
When I started using postgresql, at 6.5.3, it was deficient in many ways. Advocates may have tried to hide these deficiencies at the expense of whoever they were advising. But, I never got any sense that the developers did.
I remember a post by someone on the mailing list that asked (and I'm paraphrasing here from memory, so I could be off): "Would you run your payroll system on PostgreSQL?" (implying that he bet his paycheck on postgresql) and a primary developer responded "not on 7.0, but on 7.1 [just released at the time], yes."
I really think that postgresql has moved a long way since that time. It's at 7.4.1 right now, and I I simply haven't heard reports for a long time about any sort of "weirdness". It's a 24/7 system now. Heck, I was running a 7.1.x system for a long time with no problems.
Now, I get the same feeling about hidden issues with MySQL from the advocates of that system. But I actually check up on my facts, and I've decided that I would prefer not to use a database that thinks Feb 31st is a date.
Granted, I understand that the features of PostgreSQL have to develop a track record of actually working. Well, all the things you mention were fixed at least a year ago, and yes, they do work.
I also understand that MySQL works for you. But what I don't understand is why PostgreSQL doesn't work for you. I'm not saying you should switch to postgresql, but I would like to hear of an actual problem someone had using it in the last 12 months (or heck, 24 months) that MySQL solved. What can PostgreSQL possibly do that would attract your attention again?
From my perspective, MySQL has nothing to attract me away from PostgreSQL. MySQL improvements have been suggested many times, and they're working on them. What improvements do you suggest for PostgreSQL?
To anyone who complains about speed: (1) Does RDBMS performance actually affect your application, or does the bottleneck lie elsewhere? (2) Do you really have the numbers for your application behavior, or are you just guessing? (3) Did you put some minimal informed effort into making the RDBMS perform well, or at least as much effort as you put into the alternative? A good place to start for a postgresql performance problem (hint, hint) would be a detailed description of the problem on pgsql-general.
True. If you don't need multi-statement transactions or whatever don't use 'em.
But why are differing table types an advantage? PostgreSQL only has one table type, and I don't notice anything missing from it. I am still waiting for a MySQL advocate to come up with some feature that makes it somehow more useful than PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL guarantees the enforcement of all of your rules (i.e. foreign key, all types of constraints, etc), database wide, no matter what. MySQL people argue all day about why they don't need the enforced consistancy in postgresql, but I haven't heard anyone say that postgresql doesn't suit their needs for reasons X, Y, and Z.
I really would like to know of some features, I'm not just being argumentative.
MySQL may be fast under some circumstances, but come on... "many times faster than other SQL servers" is an exaggeration. Do you have any actual numbers to back that up? Or are you just assuming that it's fast because of its lack of features?
I think postgresql may have a larger footprint, and a larger executable, but I don't know how much lower than 32 bytes of overhead you can go. I haven't heard before that it eats up disk space quickly. And I've certainly never heard postgresql described as "Friggin' huge" when compared to mysql or firebird.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the latter is a nicer form of the former.
A lot of people get in their heads the idea that they are right, and they know they're right, and the only reason everyone on the planet doesn't agree with them is because everyone else is ignorant.
However, the author of the article did simply present the facts, so I can't complain much. I certainly detected a bias toward the idea of central planning though.
In general, I distrust central planning. One person thinking isn't as useful as many, no matter how wise the one person is. In my opinion, that's the primary failing of socialism: the government simply can't allocate resources as effectively as individuals making their own decisions. I don't care how great of a centralized plan you have, it just won't work.
There's no reason why 99% of the daemons out there couldn't be written in Python or Java (with Kaffe even).
.NET.
UNIX people "hug" C, but not because of performance. It's portability. Python and Java are more of a moving target. They do a good job of maintaining compatibility for the most part, but it's nothing like C.
I don't think we're going to see a serious move in that direction for a while. One thing we need first is a standard VM that's completely free and changes very slowly, and is compatible to many platforms. Basically, I'm talking about a free, cross-platform
4. Use the firewall built into XP, or install one of the many free (for personal use) 3rd party firewalls, or even better look for an ISP that firewalls sensitive ports for you.
Or, MicroSoft could just turn off the services by default.
But let's get realistic, Microsoft doesn't really have an interest in security, in fact I'd argue they prefer to keep their OS from being "too secure" on purpose.
what is wrong with rewriting the code from the ground-up?
Nothing is wrong with that, as long as your time is worth nothing.
The obvious answer is that if you get some enjoyment out of a rewrite, and you actually do it, then sure, its great. But if you have to trade something more important, than it's bad. What else could you do with your time, and how much enjoyment or productivity would you get out of the alternatives?
When I first started programming, I would always get a vision about how a piece of software should work, and think about rewriting it. But usually the current software is, to an extent, cluttered for a reason. I think it's only worthwhile if you can actually work out the details, and you're still confident. The details are what always cause the problems.
Slashdot itself stimulates the brain a lot more than any TV program. I've noticed that dispite the countless hours I've spent watching the History channel, I somehow end up totally ignorant of the subject (even the stuff that's on all the time, like WW2 stuff).
The internet, being a full-duplex network, is infinately more social and stimulating than T.V., a half-duplex network.
Imagine if a show like "The O'Reilly Factor" was a bunch of stories on slashdot. All the B.S. that flies around could be hashed out in a slashdot-style discussion, and that's WAY better than banging your head against the wall as the argument turns toward irrelevencies and you can't do anything but email him and hope.
Hey, speaking of which, are there any good liberal websites? Conservatives seem to love to hash out their ideas in a central place and they have a pretty uniform internet presence. Liberal stuff is only an article here or there with no real chance to get any information. There's liberal news, there's liberal people's websites, but what about a central place where they take on the conservatives? Dean's website makes no real arguments, they're just a bunch of visions. If lean conservative on an issue, there's no way I can seek out an opposing view. I've tried. I want real arguments, in plain english, like a bunch of columnists or something.
If you think I'm making this up, try googling for:
(1) "conservative columnists" - first link is townhall.com, a good place for all the conservative platforms, and all the arguments in step with modern events. You don't have to agree that the ideas are good, but at least there are ideas, and valid arguments there (among bad, but that's to be expected).
(2) "liberal columnists" - I find no useful links. Is liberal a bad word now? What's the deal?
Or, more generally, all the people who had a working box before, and don't want to touch it. It may be running an old OS and a bunch of old apps, and everything might work fine.
Some people, who don't live in the real world, like to think of this type of thing as something that can just be phased out in a few years. Everyone will patch their systems slowly, and vendors will recompile the code with new libraries, and old routers will be replaced with hardware IPv6 routers, and then, magically, everyone is using IPv6.
The reality is that people won't patch their systems, routers will work for eons and nobody wants to replace them, and app vendors are long gone because they don't make money on your legacy app anymore.
This reminds me of arguments about switching to linux. I love GNU and linux of course, but we have a tendency to think of some typical case of an office or home user. But so many people, especially those most likely to care about switching, are atypical. To assume that eveyone needs the same things out of a computer is to turn it into an appliance, which has been shown to completely fail. It ends up that someone has an intricate, delicate system, and nobody in their right mind wants to touch it.
Well, the criteria is that you have to reasonably feel like your life is being threatened, or someone else's life. And it has to be reasonable to other people afterward, you can't do LSD and then claim that it "made sense at the time".
The problem, of course, is that it's hard to tell what really happened. Our legal system here requires "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," so in order to convict someone of murder who's using the self-defense excuse, you have to show that there was no way he could have reasonably been in fear of his life. So, murderers can go free, yes, but that is considered better by our citizens than locking up some of those who really had no other choice but to kill.
One time a stranger snuck up behind my car in the dark (it was winter so it was only like 7-8 pm) while I was in my car just about to pull out of my garage. He was wearing all black, including a motorcycle jacket, and he was bigger than I was. I couldn't close my garage door because of the laser beam thing. I don't currently own a gun, and if I did, it would be illegal for me to carry it in my car anyway (assuming I didn't have a ccw) even though that's one of the most important places to keep a gun.
I didn't really know what to do. My car has 270 ft.-lbs. of torque at about 5500 rpm, so my first inclination was to rev my car to said rpm and get ready to launch in reverse, figuring that was better than risking it. Fortunately, he was on official business and new my name, and when I revved my car he said it in a hurry. Had he not, I would have rammed him up against a car behind me and I wouldn't have even felt bad about it.
Moral of the story: DON'T SCARE PEOPLE. Choose the wrong person (i.e. someone who values their own life over the squemishness about killing someone) and you'll end up dead. The problem is, if you force someone into a situation where they don't know whether they will get another opportunity to survive, bad things will happen to you.
Perhaps I'm misinformed, but I wasn't aware that any non-police agency could confiscate anything, legal or illegal, unless it was handed over. It doesn't matter whether it's a kg of coke, it's their property until law enforcement is involved.
First of all, you can't give someone the right to "wave the gun around" without giving them the right to shoot it. This is a practical matter: as soon as a gun is drawn, all bets are off because life is at risk unless the person without the gun is totally submissive, and far away to begin with. Police don't kill people very often because we hold them to a higher standard than a normal citizen. We expect them to be able to fend someone off until it's necessary to kill.
So, if a bunch of people who aren't police officers "raid" you, it wouldn't be out of the question to consider that you were being attacked. And it wouldn't be out of the question to consider that they could kill you, and that this may be your last opportunity to save your life.
If you know you're not in danger, however, it is murder. But if it's a bunch of scary looking people against one guy that has a bunch of cash on him (because he's been selling illegal stuff all day), I don't think the police would ask too many more questions.
As far as public vs. private property, I don't really see how that matters. If you're being mugged on public property, you can still shoot the guy if you think it may save your life. The only indicator is that it is more likely that someone is coming to kill you if they actually trespass, and so deadly force is more easily justified. It's certainly not required, however.
Again, back to the original poster's comment. He predicted that people would buy IBM, and his reasoning went something like this:
(1) people say they want secure products
(2) IBM is more capable of supplying secure products.
(3) people will buy IBM
Well, that may be true if (1) was the same as "people want secure products", but it's not. They say they want secure products.
Nobody wanted a pink Model T because all the people combined who might choose a pink color did not amount to enough extra revenue to justify new painting equipment.
The whole "I want" attitude is getting tired. Some aspects of life have already caught on: in most social situations it's improper to say something like "I want a yacht and a helicopter with a mini-bar on it". It's much more proper to say "I love boating, and I'm saving up for a sailboat that I want." The difference between those two statements is the latter actually wants to pay the cost, and the former doesn't.
If it's so rediculous to say those things in a social context, why is it OK when talking business? My guess is that it's good PR for a CTO to get up and say he's doing a security this-or-that and that he wants to make things secure. After he's spent an hour talking about it at the last meeting, he gets back to doing the work that's really important.
It kind of reminds me of people who wistfully say "I want to get into shape." Maybe they'd prefer to be in shape over the alternative, but the reality is that it's so low on their priority list that it will never happen. After they spend New Year's day thinking about it, the rest of the year is spent reading slashdot and eating pizza. Those people clearly don't want to get into shape.
It's all opportunity cost, people. In America, we have so many great opportunities that things that may sound good to ourselves ("I'm going to read that book.") fall below the event horizon on our priority list due to other things, like going to the beach or earning your child's college tuition. If it is high enough that you're actually willing to forgo something else, sure, say you want it. If you "really want to do it, but I've got to organize my socks by color alphabetically first", the just shut up about it.
They "want" security in the OS after their applications work, and after the legacy apps work, and after microsoft gets their latest feature requests in for Clippy version 2.0, and...
I think most of them did that because of compatibility requirement and lack of alternatives.
So, in other words, they want it.
Just because a consumer isn't thrilled with every aspect of a product doesn't mean it's not the best product available for their needs. If someone wants compatibility with large proprietary vendors, then they want microsoft.
By the way, I think the real distinction between a "want" and a "need", economically speaking, is that you need something general, and you want something specific. For example: you need food; you want steak. You need an OS; you want Microsoft Windows 2000.
Back to my original point, things people say and things people do are different. Somebody might feel like they want security, but when it comes down to it nobody will pay for it. Do you think people would pay an extra $150 for the OS, and an extra $100 for the email client, for the sake of security? How much would you pay? How much would the average network admin pay? How much would the average home user pay?
My estimation is that people would pay far less than it would cost Microsoft to actually design a secure platform.
By your definition, everyone wants everything. Heck, I "want" a mansion on the beach and a new 'vette. But I'm smart enough to not go around saying it until I have the money.
The original poster was talking about IBM and how people wanted security. He said that IBM could sell "worm resistant" linux. But I'm saying all the talk about security is just talk. The people who care about security now are the same people that cared about it before, and the worms changed nothing. The people who really care: banks, CIA, etc., never had their networks open to worms in the first place. Name me one CTO who announced that he would buy IBM and replace windows because of worm attacks. Nope, they complain and that's it. Whatever miniscule amount of money that people who care about security were willing to spend because of a few worms was spent on Microsofts month-o-security (or whatever they called it), which was also mostly talk.
The more people start using Linux, the more chance that that's what I'm going to WORK with and on in the future. More fun work.
A good point. It kind of got me thinking on this tangent: I wonder if Microsoft intentionally builds a high maintenence cost into their product to gain the loyalty of sysadmins? Sysadmins have powerful purchasing capabilities, and also want job security and promotions. If they buy into linux, than everything might work perfectly and then they get demoted to tech support. At minimum they have no chance to show how they handle a crisis if there is no crisis with linux.
Wow, what a strange web of incentives this complicated world creates.
IBM stands for reliability and predictability, which is exactly what the industry wants today
:)
No, that's what they say they want. Well, people say they want a lot of things, that doesn't mean that they're willing to pay any additional costs at all. Those costs could be in terms of software license fees, worker productivity, interoperability, legacy software capabilities, performance, etc.
People are constantly saying they want security, but the market reality is that nobody actually puts a high number value on it. They want a quick fix solution, like a firewall or something.
It's sort of like a shareware author thinking to himself "Wow, 10000 people want my software, that's great!". We all know that approximately 0 out of the 10000 will actually part with $1 for the shareware software.
Now, there are a few exceptions I'm sure. But the vast majority of people don't care. Money proves what people really want, because people vote with their dollars, and what people really want is Microsoft Software.
Now, if someone can please explain to me why people want Microsoft Software, I'd be interested to know
agreed
Careful, "equal ground" and "level playing field" are loaded phrases.
All kinds of questions arise, and all are answered differently depending on the person. Is "equal protection under the laws," as in the 14th Amendment, a level playing field?
The real problem with those phrases is that it depends on when you do your leveling. When you play a chess match, each game resets, and it's pretty clear that it's a level playing field (assuming players switch off each game making the first move).
So, let's say you wanted to get involved, and to actively level the playing field. Would you level it at birth (he has a genetic problem, so we should pay for his healthcare regarding that problem)? At age 18 (his parents didn't raise him very well, we should get him through college)?
Or, should we level it any time anyone feels that someone else currently holds the advantage? This seems to be what people really mean when they're in the business of politics. If someone behaves unhealthily their entire life, they may no longer have the advantages of good health. Should we try to level that inequity? Somebody partied through college, and now they don't have the advantage in a job interview, should we give him a handout?
I am of the opinion that "equal protection under the laws" is the most desirable. That means that we don't tax one person to give another a handout; that would be like removing pawns from the board in a chess game as far as equality goes. And it's on shaky moral ground as well: "I'm so compassionate that I'm going to force someone *else* to give this poor person a handout." Compassion is great, but the government cannot posess any at all.
You can't level the playing field after the game has started.
By definition, both are involved.
Well, obviously one has to have power over another to commit rape, and sex must be involved, so I suppose technically you're correct. Most people refer to the motivation. Are rapists motivated by a need to express their power, or a desire for sex?
Equally self-evident is that peoples' motives differ. Rape for sex is just another violent crime, but rape to express power may be some sort of sexist crime of the highest degree.
There isn't much interest to be generated from "just another violent crime, throw 'em in jail and forget it". However, a lot of interest (and therefore research grants, paid speeches, donated funds, votes, government money, etc.) is generated by a sexist crime that may be part of some deep-rooted societal problem that needs to be eliminated.
So, they hire psycologists (who are motivated always to come up with the most complicated reasons) to decree that all rape is an expression of power over another, as if psycologists had some magical way of knowing that as a fact, that no normal person can understand. Are they suggesting that at no time in history has a man ever commited rape for the mere purpose of sex? That's rediculous. However wrong it is, some men lie for sex, cheat for sex, pay money for sex, and probably a lot of other things. It would seem totally out of the pattern if men never used force for sex.
Of course it's wrong to commit rape, along with any other violent crime. But whenever psycologists start talking, I'm skeptical. They have a theory and no hard evidence. Actually, I'm skeptical anytime anyone starts talking about "root causes", not that I think it's inherently a bad way to think, but usually that ends up as some kind of "blame the parents of the parents of the parents of the parents of the murderer" argument.
Interesting, are you sure? Don't the standards at least have to be different? I usually think of porn as obscene, but obviously that is allowed as long as it's exchanged between consenting adults.
I suppose if it's declared in the same category, you'd need to start carding people to buy the game. That's a lot better, IMO, than restricting speech to adults.
As far as what Ashcroft is doing, it doesn't exactly surprise me. The war on the Constitution has been going on for a long time, and the Constitution has been slowly losing since about 1930. I don't think people will be eternally vigilant until life starts taking a turn for the worse.
GTA is not in violation of any obscenity laws since it's not a public display. Nobody is forcing anyone to look at it. The only violation that even makes sense is that it incites violence.
However, inciting violence requires a lot more specificity than what is shown in GTA. They don't say "kill the hatians that live at 123 Maple Ave".
I think the best one around is PgAdmin III at http://www.pgadmin.org
I don't use it much, but it looks very nice and is easy to work with for the little stuff that I have done. It's also cross platform, and I've used it on windows and linux.
MySQL is a lot easier to deal with in some other important regards
What other regards? This is a serious question, because I don't think the developers always know. They know everyone wants easier-to-use replication (there are some good solutions out there, but nothing is really "out of the box"). I suppose that changing the owner of a database counts, but I don't think I've ever had to do that. I'll try it out and maybe try to get that fixed.
So, for the benefit of the success of PostgreSQL, what is your wishlist for its improvements?
I have been looking for a long time for a MySQL person to actually say something that bugged them about PostgreSQL, and why they couldn't use it.
When I started using postgresql, at 6.5.3, it was deficient in many ways. Advocates may have tried to hide these deficiencies at the expense of whoever they were advising. But, I never got any sense that the developers did.
I remember a post by someone on the mailing list that asked (and I'm paraphrasing here from memory, so I could be off): "Would you run your payroll system on PostgreSQL?" (implying that he bet his paycheck on postgresql) and a primary developer responded "not on 7.0, but on 7.1 [just released at the time], yes."
I really think that postgresql has moved a long way since that time. It's at 7.4.1 right now, and I I simply haven't heard reports for a long time about any sort of "weirdness". It's a 24/7 system now. Heck, I was running a 7.1.x system for a long time with no problems.
Now, I get the same feeling about hidden issues with MySQL from the advocates of that system. But I actually check up on my facts, and I've decided that I would prefer not to use a database that thinks Feb 31st is a date.
Granted, I understand that the features of PostgreSQL have to develop a track record of actually working. Well, all the things you mention were fixed at least a year ago, and yes, they do work.
I also understand that MySQL works for you. But what I don't understand is why PostgreSQL doesn't work for you. I'm not saying you should switch to postgresql, but I would like to hear of an actual problem someone had using it in the last 12 months (or heck, 24 months) that MySQL solved. What can PostgreSQL possibly do that would attract your attention again?
From my perspective, MySQL has nothing to attract me away from PostgreSQL. MySQL improvements have been suggested many times, and they're working on them. What improvements do you suggest for PostgreSQL?
Doubtful when you show us no numbers.
To anyone who complains about speed:
(1) Does RDBMS performance actually affect your application, or does the bottleneck lie elsewhere?
(2) Do you really have the numbers for your application behavior, or are you just guessing?
(3) Did you put some minimal informed effort into making the RDBMS perform well, or at least as much effort as you put into the alternative? A good place to start for a postgresql performance problem (hint, hint) would be a detailed description of the problem on pgsql-general.
True. If you don't need multi-statement transactions or whatever don't use 'em.
But why are differing table types an advantage? PostgreSQL only has one table type, and I don't notice anything missing from it. I am still waiting for a MySQL advocate to come up with some feature that makes it somehow more useful than PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL guarantees the enforcement of all of your rules (i.e. foreign key, all types of constraints, etc), database wide, no matter what. MySQL people argue all day about why they don't need the enforced consistancy in postgresql, but I haven't heard anyone say that postgresql doesn't suit their needs for reasons X, Y, and Z.
I really would like to know of some features, I'm not just being argumentative.
MySQL may be fast under some circumstances, but come on... "many times faster than other SQL servers" is an exaggeration. Do you have any actual numbers to back that up? Or are you just assuming that it's fast because of its lack of features?
What's the per-row overhead of firebird?
For postgres, I think it's 32 bytes.
I think postgresql may have a larger footprint, and a larger executable, but I don't know how much lower than 32 bytes of overhead you can go. I haven't heard before that it eats up disk space quickly. And I've certainly never heard postgresql described as "Friggin' huge" when compared to mysql or firebird.
Can you give some numbers?