Yeah, in 7.1 the support for returning result sets just wasn't there. I remember the cursor thing you were talking about, and I never even tried it because it seemed so strange. Hopefully the docs are better now, they've been reworked in 7.4 and I think they've been improved a lot.
By "escaping filter" I meant that you could write the python function in a normal editor and then use another quick function that would automatically escape all the SQL special characters, something like PHP's addslashes() function.
I don't really see a way to get away from the escaping issues with any stored procedure language.
The main thing I was saying was if it's a complex function, I think it's too difficult to write the code in a SQL statement, because you have two levels of escaping. So, if you write it in a normal editor, then you can later escape it before you pass it to postgres via SQL.
Also, if you use pgAdmin III, it should automatically escape it before it passes it to the server.
I just wanted to point out that, as of 7.3, PostgreSQL fully supports result sets returned from functions/stored procedures. I've used it myself and find it very simple to use and allows you to do anything you need to do with them.
I believe you can use them anywhere you can use a subselect: in place of a table, an after an "IN", etc.
Hopefully replication has improved by now. I know there are a lot of people using it, but I don't know enough to comment.
As far as python is concerned, wouldn't you normally write the functions in a seperate editor and then just pass it through an escaping filter? I think that would work a lot more effectively than trying to write it in the query yourself the first time through. I think it's the same with complex regexes, or SQL functions, or anything else that would need escaping.
But yeah, I recognize that some of the bigger DBs have more features, particularly in the area of replication and and partitioning. Also postgresql lacks point-in-time recovery (or incremental backup), and it's tougher to upgrade (requires full dump/reload on every minor version).
What are some things that PostgreSQL could do to make it as "quick and powerful" as MySQL?
Sure, if you have a big database in MySQL, than any good DBA should realize a job needs to be done and get to work.
Anyway, seems like you like the FTS in MySQL, what do you think about the one in Postgres 7.4 (it's called tsearch2)? And are there situations where you've found PostgreSQL's caching to behave inefficiently?
I'm not trying to say that MySQL is worse or anything, but I'd like to know more in-depth what the advantages are. It seems like people say often that MySQL is "good enough" for what they do, but don't say why they chose it over postgres.
At this point I'd be very cautious about either postgesql or mysql in a mission-critical role.
PostgreSQL runs the.org and the.info registries, if I'm not mistaken. I think a lot of people would be unhappy if those became unavailable, including all the readers of this website. Sure, there are more mission critical applications out there, but somebody is pretty confident in its stability.
That being said, I don't think I'd choose an X.Y.0 release for anything mission critical.
I'm a fan of PostgreSQL, and I'd like to know how postgres can be easier to use like MySQL. Do you have some suggestions?
Right now the only win32 version or postgresql is commercial (Mammoth PostgreSQL from Command Prompt, Inc., correct me if I'm wrong). The community project is working on a win32 port, and I think that will help. Aside from that, what makes MySQL easier to use?
I'll ignore the speed issue for now, since that depends so heavily on usage patterns.
I use postgresql everywhere, but I also know more about it than a typical web developer might. What would make pgsql better suited for "small to medium sized datastores"?
Just because the law is broken doesn't mean it is invalid; rather those who break it are out of order.
I think the primary difference is that the laws against rape are actually enforced, most of the time. It's when a law is never enforced that it doesn't really exist.
What could be more democratic than allowing every member to have equal say?
Allowing every person to have equal say. I don't care where some other countries draw lines on a map, I only care how many people are actually supporting an idea that someone is proposing as the interests of the world.
Again, I disagree about the "rule of law". The main point of the rule of law is that it applies to everyone, whether rich, poor, or whatever. It also means that if a law is already passed, that it needs to be enforced. If Iraq scoffs at everything the U.N. says, and nobody enforces it, where's this "rule of law" that the U.N. supposedly has?
I respect those who dissent from the decision to invade Iraq. I respect the efforts made by those who want to protect the environment globally. My main point, and the thing that would be most important if we do want to all work together to solve a solve problem for the world (i.e. some kind of global environmental issue), we need to make the U.N. into something worthwhile.
Right now the U.N. has permanent members of the security council, certain veto votes that leave the other countries out, and wholly misplaced representation. Why does someone in France have a greater say in the U.N. than someone in the U.S.? The U.N. was structured on short-term political grounds from back when the politics were different.
Here are my ideas: (1) population based representation (2) limited scope - don't enforce WIPO, or hand out returement benefits, or check whether buildings are up to code. It needs to only address those concerns of all countries, where it is beneficial to all to set a standard. The minute you decree from the U.N. to "eliminate poverty" or "provide healthcare for all" is when it will get too divisive, and just destroy itself. That may indeed happen in the U.S. int the near future, considering the rate at which the federal government is taking power from the states.
The current structure of the U.N. will never achieve much power. It's not just the U.S. standing in the way of that, it's just that the structure is unstable. When the U.S. falls from power (be it tomorrow or when the sun explodes), the next big country will be wondering why country XYZ has so much power in the U.N., and won't buy it.
Whether France used their veto power or not, they certainly didn't prevent us from going into Iraq. So, obviously they didn't have veto power, because we went anyway. Just because it's written down, doesn't mean it's representative of reality.
And I have no idea what the original poster was referring to about "the rule of law". I didn't find the logic in his post, and I was trying to sort it out. If you know, let me know. I also don't know where you got the definition for "rule of law", but I don't think it has anything to do with just cause or strong and weak people.
Oh, like the power you mentioned one sentence earlier? The one I quoted 2 lines up?
Which is exactly why the U.N. has no power, and why France has little power. Their veto power only means anything if the U.S. cares what the U.N. says. The U.S. might be more willing to pay attention if it was based more on some democratic principle, like population (of course, then we might question whether the population of a country really has control over the government). France wants the current U.N. to have more power, because they are overrepresented in the U.N.
I think a lot of people believe that a lot of people believe what you're saying. However, I think opinions are more mixed than you'd have me believe.
How do you explain the number of countries that consider themselves to support us in the war in Iraq? The war in Afganistan?
There are always detractors, vying for their own niche of power. Sometimes they're loud. However, it takes a more convincing argument than they've made. If most of the world was really against the U.S., we'd be facing a lot more resistance. However, I think your resistance is a few people short of a party. When some noticeable portion of the population is seriously willing to stand up and say that we're doing something wrong, I'm all ears. Until that time, I just figure there are always two sides to an issue, and so people will complain no matter what we do.
I understand that France censored yahoo.com for listing Nazi websites or something similar. The government also uses confiscatory taxes on it's citizens, depriving them of property rights. You may think that's a preferable balance of rights.
I would personally choose living in the U.S., and personally consider myself more free here. I don't agree with everything our government does, or all the restrictions it places on rights. We could go on forever listing all the rights deprived of citizens of each country. I'll just say that neither country is the model for a free state, and I'm unconvinced when the French government acts as though it is the ideal.
Arguing is a lot easier when you argue against something that I didn't say. I think the model is some ideal that doesn't exist. I happen to think that the U.S. is a lot closer than France; you probably disagree. But I certainly don't look up to them for guidance.
I didn't say that land mass should have anything to do with it. I was merely showing that there is absolutely NO CRITERIA by which you can justify France having the same vote as the U.S.
Democracy is about the people. I don't know why you think we should give more voting power to someone in France than someone in the U.S. Just because Europe is divided into many small contries, and N. America consists of 3 large countries, why should Europeans get more votes?
Sure, it would make a lot more sense to me if China had 5 times the votes. At least that makes some kind of sense. The reason that's not the case is because the U.S. would claim that the actions of the Chinese government are less representative of the people than the actions of the U.S. government. If that claim is wrong, than China should have 5 times the vote that we do, in whatever international government that exists between us.
I didn't say that the U.S. enforces all the U.N. resolutions. But facts aren't what matter to you when you can call me a dumb American.
I was simply showing the fallacy of his argument regarding the rule of law. The U.S. blindly surrendering its power to the whims of U.N. officials has absolutely nothing to do with the rule of law.
I don't want the U.S. to surrender its power to the U.N. any time soon, and I don't think it's going to happen. Why does a nation like France get the same vote on the security council that we do? They have lower population, lower GDP, less land, and less military power. Not only that, but France isn't exactly the model for a free state.
When the political structure of the U.N. makes a little more sense, it is more likely that the U.S. will join more completely.
I bet France would just love to have all kinds of power over the U.S. because they have been marginalized in the last century. Maybe there are some ulterior motives in accusing the U.S. of not playing well with others. A lot of people want to see the U.S. out of power.
You have no right to begin assault wars without legitimation of the UN security counsal - there will be no world order without the rule of law.
Sure we do... it's called "National Sovereignty". That means that our country can do what's in our best interests, and we don't have to answer to a self-appointed world government (U.N.) unless we choose to.
By the way, I understand that you have difficulty with English, but "Rule of Law" means that people obey what's written in law universally, not what's decided by a political powermonger. If France obeyed the rule of law, they would have enforced U.N. Res. 1441, like the U.S. did.
Now, bad things happen in any country. I would say the U.S. has a pretty good record overall. I bet it's better than whatever country you come from.
Maybe if the countries in the U.N. rose to our standards of a free society ruled by its people, then maybe we'd be more inclined to give the U.N. some of our power in the name of global interests. The list of the countries that are part of the U.N. presently scares me away, however.
PostgreSQL has more enterprise features, but it's not used as much as MySQL. It seems pretty solid, though. We toyed with a bit, but my boss decided to go with MySQL mainly because he had heard of it before.
Yeah, postgres has always had a recognition problem. I like it because of the data integrity features, and the only feature I would really like is point-in-time-recovery (incremental backup, whatever you want to call it).
It's strange how much recognition matters, even when postgres runs the.info registry, the.org registry, and I think the american chemical society has a database >1TB. I'm a postgres fan, so it's a little disappointing to see it rejected like that. I think it will help a lot when they get the windows port out.
This seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The interesting thing about that expression is that double standards work both ways. You're absolutely right that some people hold a double standard regarding the rights of a free software copyright holder vs the rights of a proprietary software copyright holder.
However, it's so easy to turn that around: proprietary developers don't want to respect the rights of free software copyright holders, but they want us to respect their copyrights.
Depending on the argument, inverting perspectives like this can help one side, or they can cancel out. Ultimately, the free software guys win because it would be fine by them to cancel out all sides, because the free software copyright holders can sooner abandon their copyrights than the proprietary software copyright holders.
I think there exists some analogy here to the placement of the tax burden and the elasticity of supply (of course that's referring to economics).
So, I would tend to say that the proprietary software developers are the ones that better respect the rights of free software copyright holders first, and until that time will hold a weaker claim to their own copyrights.
Yeah... 'cept the whole point was that slashdot readers are inconsistant! Of course a group is inconsistant if you pick and choose all the varying opinions. If he said that slashdot readers' perspectives about computer security are flawed for reasons x,y, and z that would be fine with me. Sure, it's a generalization, and that's a good thing. But he said that slashdot readers were contradicting themselves. It's a feeble attempt at an argument if you do both the grouping and then find the inconsistancies, and then imply that the people are individually inconsistant.
Slashdotters are hypocrites and hold double-standards.
You're saying slashdot posters are inconsistant, but they're just different people who all happen to read slashdot. If you want to make a real argument, pick one person and attack their inconsistancies.
Another example is the political parties. You can't say that Democrats are inconsistant because of this, that, and the other. Democrats are a varied group, and they have many different perspectives and form their arguments in different, often contradictary ways. They just see a common means to their end, and each individual may be 100% consistant. (note: I'm not a democrat, I just used them as an example. This works with any political party that I can think of.)
Ultimately what you're doing is grouping variety of people together (slashdot readers) and then attacking the group as a whole for being inconsistant with respect to a separate issue (their perspectives about computer security).
You can do that to anyone. For example: "Blondes are so inconsistant. First they complain that the environment is being damaged, then the next week they're complaining about too much government regulation." Well, being blonde obviously has nothing to do with the topic, so of course you find inconsistancies in their viewpoint.
That type of reasoning is very simple-minded. The world is a complicated place with myriad possible groupings of people. Analogies that relate nations, corporations, SIGs, etc. to people often confuse the issue beyond repair. Microsoft isn't a "bully," it's just that the shareholders elect people that are likely to use aggressive business tactics and leverage the monopoly that they have to gain shareholder value. You can't punish MS in any way analogous to punishing a bully, because the shareholders could be long gone by now (however many years it takes to settle an antitrust lawsuit), because it's simply not a person, it's a group. Same with nations, it's a group and should not be personified. Think how much time the media has wasted talking about Bush as though he "doesn't play well with others." Nations are groups, not people.
Uh-huh... sure... The way I heard the story he was being pretty violent himself, but that part of the tape was not admitted as evidence. I'm not saying that police should beat him up when they're not in danger, but "victim" is I think too strong a word.
Oh, come on. When people start talking about huge social programs, it's pretty easy to associate them with the communist party. Exaggeration? Yes. But it seems a lot like the McCarthyism label has been used for all the same purposes as the communism label, in a strange sort of irony. Rather than attack any policy specifically, you call him a McCarthyist and that's it. It's just as bad.
Well, for the most part, powerful in the U.S. means powerful anywhere. I think people all across the political spectrum agree that the U.S.'s power eclipses that of any nation in Africa to such an extent that Clarence Thomas could reasonably be percieved more powerful than the leaders of any African nation.
If you have some evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested to hear it. However, it's fairly subjective, so maybe you consider the leaders over there more powerful.
There aren't too many nations out there with influence even in the same legue as the U.S., economically or militarily, and none in Africa come to mind.
I think that there are a couple things you missed though:
(1) Some people like hot coffee. You said yourself that the heat lasts longer for takeout orders. Perhaps customers were demanding hot coffee, and McDonalds was the only one satisfying that demand.
(2) "A burn center" might be useful as an expert witness, but proof of danger it is not. The FDA warns against too much fat consumption, and I think most people will agree that McDonalds shouldn't be held accountable for the fat content that consumers are demanding
(3) 700 sounds like a pretty small number to me. Last I heard, McDonalds is a huge multinational company, and that amounts to A LOT of happy coffee consumers.
(4) The only ulterior motive point that you made -- the one about pleasing health inspectors -- didn't seem particularly strong. It seems to me that McDonalds made coffee hot just to satisfy consumers. Perhaps you have more evidence otherwise.
The main idea is whether the consumer assumed the risk of taking the coffee. I say that she's at least 50% at fault, simply because spilling the coffee was a mistake on her part, and I expect that she understood that it would hurt her to some extent if she did.
I think a better solution to this type of problem is for consumers demand cooler coffee. I think the type of judgement you're talking about should be reserved for hidden things that can hurt consumers, like infected food or something. Usually I would expect this type of judgement when the big company is trying to "cheap out" by hiding a danger rather than fixing it. The hot in the coffee isn't very well hidden.
The quality of software is completely orthogonal to the freedoms granted to the user.
I suppose the implication is that some models create stronger incentives in some ways, but the way to tell that is to judge the results as objectively as possible.
Evidence gets thrown around by either side and nobody can eliminate all the uncontrolled variables. So, nothing is conclusive except the number of people convinced on either side.
It's not much different from a socialism/capitalism debate. Some people claim that socialism was disproven with the fall of the USSR and the Nazis and Mussolini (who all used socialistic economic policy); some people claim that socialism hasn't really been done the right way, and point to failures of capitalism.
I think the ultimate solution for both the economic model of a country and software involves using several models at different levels. In software, maybe we should have dreamweaver and photoshop as proprietary, and the OS free. In a country, maybe the federal level should be capitalistic and minimal, and the municipal government more socialist.
You don't understand economics. Demand is a line. The "worth" of a product is based upon the value consumers are willing to spend on it. The supply end, then, is a line for the cost needed to produce the product. The actual price tends to hange around where these two lines converge, in a competitive market. Now, the issue of course is that creative works are covered under monopolistic conditions (copyright). However, various monopolies can compete against each other for similar creative works (staroffice vs ms office, for instance).
[let Qs = quantity supplied; Qd = quantity demanded] If you're at the equilibrium price, where Qd = Qs, then P * Qd = revenue
For a firm to invest in developing a creative work, revenue must be greater than the R&D costs. However, if anyone can copy their R&D work, the copycat firm is able to meet any supply at any price and still profit, thereby driving the supply curve far right and the price at equilibrium down to virtually nothing. So, the firm will simply not invest in R&D if the investment is not protected from copycat firms.
The only time they will invest in R&D is when the consumer surplus (in this case the consumer of the research is the researching firm itself) from using their own research throughout the firm is greater than the R&D costs. Free software is SO EFFICIENT that this is often the case. It's cheaper for a company of 1000 people to research and fix the cause of a bug in a piece of software and apply it to all the employees' computers than to pay another firm to license their patch 1000 times.
This is basically a more verbose version of what I was trying to say in my post above. $1M would be the R&D cost in my example, and also in my example, I implied that the consumer surplus for me using my own research (which cost me $1M) would be less than $1M. So, in my example, the firm would simply not produce, even though greater the Qd at $1 is greater than 1M.
My statement was vague and thanks for pointing out its imprecision.
For all those who claim that capitalism inately produces the "best solution" through the "invisible hand", why is it that they push copyright so hard to fix a problem which has been proven to not exist.
First, I never said that. Second, where has it been proven that a world with no copyrights produces more creative works of every variety? Maybe software would benefit, and painting, but maybe movies suffer without copyrights? Maybe novels suffer? It's all left to personal opinion, because you provide no proof for any of that, and no proof even that software would benefit without copyrights, which is the only evidence you provided (an that's anecdotal, at best).
We do need more scientific analysis in this area to determine what really produces the most creativity, but that's inherently a nebulous goal (creative is in the eye of the beholder), and also requires a lot of experimenting on a live system (which we might hesitate to do, for the same reason we don't replace the VM with the latest and greatest on mission critical live systems).
Don't you think a few companies might form a joint venture to sponser its development?
Yeah, that's what I was suggesting when I said that I thought people should organize into similar groups to develop in their common interest. If enough firms get together, their combined consumer surplus (again from using their own research) would be greater than the R&D costs.
I don't think that with copyright there's any kind of absolute solution. Some people like to think of things as black & white (like abortion), but I think many issues (including abortion) are more complicated, and can't be addressed in binary like that. If everything was like free software, there are certain types of creations that would be impaired due to a lack of incentive.
I prefer a little bit more chaos that you seem to prefer. I'd rather have a little less unity in our laws between states, but that's a separate issue. Copyright really needs to be handled effectively on a national level, and I'll agree with you there, it's just a question of how much hand they have in deciding what's best. I haven't yet been convinced that any system is better than copyright, but copyright should be reformed.
Regarding the corporations as governments, I agree, except that there's a huge difference: the government can imprison you, and no corporation can (refrain from obvious comments about Dimitri).
I think it would go a long way if the timeframe for copyright was much shorter.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, in 7.1 the support for returning result sets just wasn't there. I remember the cursor thing you were talking about, and I never even tried it because it seemed so strange. Hopefully the docs are better now, they've been reworked in 7.4 and I think they've been improved a lot.
By "escaping filter" I meant that you could write the python function in a normal editor and then use another quick function that would automatically escape all the SQL special characters, something like PHP's addslashes() function.
I don't really see a way to get away from the escaping issues with any stored procedure language.
The main thing I was saying was if it's a complex function, I think it's too difficult to write the code in a SQL statement, because you have two levels of escaping. So, if you write it in a normal editor, then you can later escape it before you pass it to postgres via SQL.
Also, if you use pgAdmin III, it should automatically escape it before it passes it to the server.
I just wanted to point out that, as of 7.3, PostgreSQL fully supports result sets returned from functions/stored procedures. I've used it myself and find it very simple to use and allows you to do anything you need to do with them.
I believe you can use them anywhere you can use a subselect: in place of a table, an after an "IN", etc.
Hopefully replication has improved by now. I know there are a lot of people using it, but I don't know enough to comment.
As far as python is concerned, wouldn't you normally write the functions in a seperate editor and then just pass it through an escaping filter? I think that would work a lot more effectively than trying to write it in the query yourself the first time through. I think it's the same with complex regexes, or SQL functions, or anything else that would need escaping.
But yeah, I recognize that some of the bigger DBs have more features, particularly in the area of replication and and partitioning. Also postgresql lacks point-in-time recovery (or incremental backup), and it's tougher to upgrade (requires full dump/reload on every minor version).
What are some things that PostgreSQL could do to make it as "quick and powerful" as MySQL?
Sure, if you have a big database in MySQL, than any good DBA should realize a job needs to be done and get to work.
Anyway, seems like you like the FTS in MySQL, what do you think about the one in Postgres 7.4 (it's called tsearch2)? And are there situations where you've found PostgreSQL's caching to behave inefficiently?
I'm not trying to say that MySQL is worse or anything, but I'd like to know more in-depth what the advantages are. It seems like people say often that MySQL is "good enough" for what they do, but don't say why they chose it over postgres.
At this point I'd be very cautious about either postgesql or mysql in a mission-critical role.
.org and the .info registries, if I'm not mistaken. I think a lot of people would be unhappy if those became unavailable, including all the readers of this website. Sure, there are more mission critical applications out there, but somebody is pretty confident in its stability.
PostgreSQL runs the
That being said, I don't think I'd choose an X.Y.0 release for anything mission critical.
Postgresql is less functional than SQL Server - though it's a fine product anyway.
What functionality left out of postgresql do you find most important?
I'm a fan of PostgreSQL, and I'd like to know how postgres can be easier to use like MySQL. Do you have some suggestions?
Right now the only win32 version or postgresql is commercial (Mammoth PostgreSQL from Command Prompt, Inc., correct me if I'm wrong). The community project is working on a win32 port, and I think that will help. Aside from that, what makes MySQL easier to use?
I'll ignore the speed issue for now, since that depends so heavily on usage patterns.
I use postgresql everywhere, but I also know more about it than a typical web developer might. What would make pgsql better suited for "small to medium sized datastores"?
Just because the law is broken doesn't mean it is invalid; rather those who break it are out of order.
I think the primary difference is that the laws against rape are actually enforced, most of the time. It's when a law is never enforced that it doesn't really exist.
What could be more democratic than allowing every member to have equal say?
Allowing every person to have equal say. I don't care where some other countries draw lines on a map, I only care how many people are actually supporting an idea that someone is proposing as the interests of the world.
Again, I disagree about the "rule of law". The main point of the rule of law is that it applies to everyone, whether rich, poor, or whatever. It also means that if a law is already passed, that it needs to be enforced. If Iraq scoffs at everything the U.N. says, and nobody enforces it, where's this "rule of law" that the U.N. supposedly has?
I respect those who dissent from the decision to invade Iraq. I respect the efforts made by those who want to protect the environment globally. My main point, and the thing that would be most important if we do want to all work together to solve a solve problem for the world (i.e. some kind of global environmental issue), we need to make the U.N. into something worthwhile.
Right now the U.N. has permanent members of the security council, certain veto votes that leave the other countries out, and wholly misplaced representation. Why does someone in France have a greater say in the U.N. than someone in the U.S.? The U.N. was structured on short-term political grounds from back when the politics were different.
Here are my ideas:
(1) population based representation
(2) limited scope - don't enforce WIPO, or hand out returement benefits, or check whether buildings are up to code. It needs to only address those concerns of all countries, where it is beneficial to all to set a standard. The minute you decree from the U.N. to "eliminate poverty" or "provide healthcare for all" is when it will get too divisive, and just destroy itself. That may indeed happen in the U.S. int the near future, considering the rate at which the federal government is taking power from the states.
The current structure of the U.N. will never achieve much power. It's not just the U.S. standing in the way of that, it's just that the structure is unstable. When the U.S. falls from power (be it tomorrow or when the sun explodes), the next big country will be wondering why country XYZ has so much power in the U.N., and won't buy it.
Whether France used their veto power or not, they certainly didn't prevent us from going into Iraq. So, obviously they didn't have veto power, because we went anyway. Just because it's written down, doesn't mean it's representative of reality.
And I have no idea what the original poster was referring to about "the rule of law". I didn't find the logic in his post, and I was trying to sort it out. If you know, let me know. I also don't know where you got the definition for "rule of law", but I don't think it has anything to do with just cause or strong and weak people.
Oh, like the power you mentioned one sentence earlier? The one I quoted 2 lines up?
Which is exactly why the U.N. has no power, and why France has little power. Their veto power only means anything if the U.S. cares what the U.N. says. The U.S. might be more willing to pay attention if it was based more on some democratic principle, like population (of course, then we might question whether the population of a country really has control over the government). France wants the current U.N. to have more power, because they are overrepresented in the U.N.
I think a lot of people believe that a lot of people believe what you're saying. However, I think opinions are more mixed than you'd have me believe.
How do you explain the number of countries that consider themselves to support us in the war in Iraq? The war in Afganistan?
There are always detractors, vying for their own niche of power. Sometimes they're loud. However, it takes a more convincing argument than they've made. If most of the world was really against the U.S., we'd be facing a lot more resistance. However, I think your resistance is a few people short of a party. When some noticeable portion of the population is seriously willing to stand up and say that we're doing something wrong, I'm all ears. Until that time, I just figure there are always two sides to an issue, and so people will complain no matter what we do.
I understand that France censored yahoo.com for listing Nazi websites or something similar. The government also uses confiscatory taxes on it's citizens, depriving them of property rights. You may think that's a preferable balance of rights.
I would personally choose living in the U.S., and personally consider myself more free here. I don't agree with everything our government does, or all the restrictions it places on rights. We could go on forever listing all the rights deprived of citizens of each country. I'll just say that neither country is the model for a free state, and I'm unconvinced when the French government acts as though it is the ideal.
And the US is a model for a free state?
Arguing is a lot easier when you argue against something that I didn't say. I think the model is some ideal that doesn't exist. I happen to think that the U.S. is a lot closer than France; you probably disagree. But I certainly don't look up to them for guidance.
I didn't say that land mass should have anything to do with it. I was merely showing that there is absolutely NO CRITERIA by which you can justify France having the same vote as the U.S.
Democracy is about the people. I don't know why you think we should give more voting power to someone in France than someone in the U.S. Just because Europe is divided into many small contries, and N. America consists of 3 large countries, why should Europeans get more votes?
Sure, it would make a lot more sense to me if China had 5 times the votes. At least that makes some kind of sense. The reason that's not the case is because the U.S. would claim that the actions of the Chinese government are less representative of the people than the actions of the U.S. government. If that claim is wrong, than China should have 5 times the vote that we do, in whatever international government that exists between us.
I didn't say that the U.S. enforces all the U.N. resolutions. But facts aren't what matter to you when you can call me a dumb American.
I was simply showing the fallacy of his argument regarding the rule of law. The U.S. blindly surrendering its power to the whims of U.N. officials has absolutely nothing to do with the rule of law.
I don't want the U.S. to surrender its power to the U.N. any time soon, and I don't think it's going to happen. Why does a nation like France get the same vote on the security council that we do? They have lower population, lower GDP, less land, and less military power. Not only that, but France isn't exactly the model for a free state.
When the political structure of the U.N. makes a little more sense, it is more likely that the U.S. will join more completely.
I bet France would just love to have all kinds of power over the U.S. because they have been marginalized in the last century. Maybe there are some ulterior motives in accusing the U.S. of not playing well with others. A lot of people want to see the U.S. out of power.
You have no right to begin assault wars without legitimation of the UN security counsal - there will be no world order without the rule of law.
Sure we do... it's called "National Sovereignty". That means that our country can do what's in our best interests, and we don't have to answer to a self-appointed world government (U.N.) unless we choose to.
By the way, I understand that you have difficulty with English, but "Rule of Law" means that people obey what's written in law universally, not what's decided by a political powermonger. If France obeyed the rule of law, they would have enforced U.N. Res. 1441, like the U.S. did.
Now, bad things happen in any country. I would say the U.S. has a pretty good record overall. I bet it's better than whatever country you come from.
Maybe if the countries in the U.N. rose to our standards of a free society ruled by its people, then maybe we'd be more inclined to give the U.N. some of our power in the name of global interests. The list of the countries that are part of the U.N. presently scares me away, however.
PostgreSQL has more enterprise features, but it's not used as much as MySQL. It seems pretty solid, though. We toyed with a bit, but my boss decided to go with MySQL mainly because he had heard of it before.
.info registry, the .org registry, and I think the american chemical society has a database >1TB. I'm a postgres fan, so it's a little disappointing to see it rejected like that. I think it will help a lot when they get the windows port out.
Yeah, postgres has always had a recognition problem. I like it because of the data integrity features, and the only feature I would really like is point-in-time-recovery (incremental backup, whatever you want to call it).
It's strange how much recognition matters, even when postgres runs the
This seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The interesting thing about that expression is that double standards work both ways. You're absolutely right that some people hold a double standard regarding the rights of a free software copyright holder vs the rights of a proprietary software copyright holder.
However, it's so easy to turn that around: proprietary developers don't want to respect the rights of free software copyright holders, but they want us to respect their copyrights.
Depending on the argument, inverting perspectives like this can help one side, or they can cancel out. Ultimately, the free software guys win because it would be fine by them to cancel out all sides, because the free software copyright holders can sooner abandon their copyrights than the proprietary software copyright holders.
I think there exists some analogy here to the placement of the tax burden and the elasticity of supply (of course that's referring to economics).
So, I would tend to say that the proprietary software developers are the ones that better respect the rights of free software copyright holders first, and until that time will hold a weaker claim to their own copyrights.
Yeah... 'cept the whole point was that slashdot readers are inconsistant! Of course a group is inconsistant if you pick and choose all the varying opinions. If he said that slashdot readers' perspectives about computer security are flawed for reasons x,y, and z that would be fine with me. Sure, it's a generalization, and that's a good thing. But he said that slashdot readers were contradicting themselves. It's a feeble attempt at an argument if you do both the grouping and then find the inconsistancies, and then imply that the people are individually inconsistant.
Slashdotters are hypocrites and hold double-standards.
You're saying slashdot posters are inconsistant, but they're just different people who all happen to read slashdot. If you want to make a real argument, pick one person and attack their inconsistancies.
Another example is the political parties. You can't say that Democrats are inconsistant because of this, that, and the other. Democrats are a varied group, and they have many different perspectives and form their arguments in different, often contradictary ways. They just see a common means to their end, and each individual may be 100% consistant. (note: I'm not a democrat, I just used them as an example. This works with any political party that I can think of.)
Ultimately what you're doing is grouping variety of people together (slashdot readers) and then attacking the group as a whole for being inconsistant with respect to a separate issue (their perspectives about computer security).
You can do that to anyone. For example: "Blondes are so inconsistant. First they complain that the environment is being damaged, then the next week they're complaining about too much government regulation." Well, being blonde obviously has nothing to do with the topic, so of course you find inconsistancies in their viewpoint.
That type of reasoning is very simple-minded. The world is a complicated place with myriad possible groupings of people. Analogies that relate nations, corporations, SIGs, etc. to people often confuse the issue beyond repair. Microsoft isn't a "bully," it's just that the shareholders elect people that are likely to use aggressive business tactics and leverage the monopoly that they have to gain shareholder value. You can't punish MS in any way analogous to punishing a bully, because the shareholders could be long gone by now (however many years it takes to settle an antitrust lawsuit), because it's simply not a person, it's a group. Same with nations, it's a group and should not be personified. Think how much time the media has wasted talking about Bush as though he "doesn't play well with others." Nations are groups, not people.
victim
Uh-huh... sure... The way I heard the story he was being pretty violent himself, but that part of the tape was not admitted as evidence. I'm not saying that police should beat him up when they're not in danger, but "victim" is I think too strong a word.
busy calling people communists
Oh, come on. When people start talking about huge social programs, it's pretty easy to associate them with the communist party. Exaggeration? Yes. But it seems a lot like the McCarthyism label has been used for all the same purposes as the communism label, in a strange sort of irony. Rather than attack any policy specifically, you call him a McCarthyist and that's it. It's just as bad.
Well, for the most part, powerful in the U.S. means powerful anywhere. I think people all across the political spectrum agree that the U.S.'s power eclipses that of any nation in Africa to such an extent that Clarence Thomas could reasonably be percieved more powerful than the leaders of any African nation.
If you have some evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested to hear it. However, it's fairly subjective, so maybe you consider the leaders over there more powerful.
There aren't too many nations out there with influence even in the same legue as the U.S., economically or militarily, and none in Africa come to mind.
First, I'll commend you on an informative post.
I think that there are a couple things you missed though:
(1) Some people like hot coffee. You said yourself that the heat lasts longer for takeout orders. Perhaps customers were demanding hot coffee, and McDonalds was the only one satisfying that demand.
(2) "A burn center" might be useful as an expert witness, but proof of danger it is not. The FDA warns against too much fat consumption, and I think most people will agree that McDonalds shouldn't be held accountable for the fat content that consumers are demanding
(3) 700 sounds like a pretty small number to me. Last I heard, McDonalds is a huge multinational company, and that amounts to A LOT of happy coffee consumers.
(4) The only ulterior motive point that you made -- the one about pleasing health inspectors -- didn't seem particularly strong. It seems to me that McDonalds made coffee hot just to satisfy consumers. Perhaps you have more evidence otherwise.
The main idea is whether the consumer assumed the risk of taking the coffee. I say that she's at least 50% at fault, simply because spilling the coffee was a mistake on her part, and I expect that she understood that it would hurt her to some extent if she did.
I think a better solution to this type of problem is for consumers demand cooler coffee. I think the type of judgement you're talking about should be reserved for hidden things that can hurt consumers, like infected food or something. Usually I would expect this type of judgement when the big company is trying to "cheap out" by hiding a danger rather than fixing it. The hot in the coffee isn't very well hidden.
The quality of software is completely orthogonal to the freedoms granted to the user.
I suppose the implication is that some models create stronger incentives in some ways, but the way to tell that is to judge the results as objectively as possible.
Evidence gets thrown around by either side and nobody can eliminate all the uncontrolled variables. So, nothing is conclusive except the number of people convinced on either side.
It's not much different from a socialism/capitalism debate. Some people claim that socialism was disproven with the fall of the USSR and the Nazis and Mussolini (who all used socialistic economic policy); some people claim that socialism hasn't really been done the right way, and point to failures of capitalism.
I think the ultimate solution for both the economic model of a country and software involves using several models at different levels. In software, maybe we should have dreamweaver and photoshop as proprietary, and the OS free. In a country, maybe the federal level should be capitalistic and minimal, and the municipal government more socialist.
You don't understand economics. Demand is a line. The "worth" of a product is based upon the value consumers are willing to spend on it. The supply end, then, is a line for the cost needed to produce the product. The actual price tends to hange around where these two lines converge, in a competitive market. Now, the issue of course is that creative works are covered under monopolistic conditions (copyright). However, various monopolies can compete against each other for similar creative works (staroffice vs ms office, for instance).
[let Qs = quantity supplied; Qd = quantity demanded]
If you're at the equilibrium price, where Qd = Qs,
then P * Qd = revenue
For a firm to invest in developing a creative work, revenue must be greater than the R&D costs. However, if anyone can copy their R&D work, the copycat firm is able to meet any supply at any price and still profit, thereby driving the supply curve far right and the price at equilibrium down to virtually nothing. So, the firm will simply not invest in R&D if the investment is not protected from copycat firms.
The only time they will invest in R&D is when the consumer surplus (in this case the consumer of the research is the researching firm itself) from using their own research throughout the firm is greater than the R&D costs. Free software is SO EFFICIENT that this is often the case. It's cheaper for a company of 1000 people to research and fix the cause of a bug in a piece of software and apply it to all the employees' computers than to pay another firm to license their patch 1000 times.
This is basically a more verbose version of what I was trying to say in my post above. $1M would be the R&D cost in my example, and also in my example, I implied that the consumer surplus for me using my own research (which cost me $1M) would be less than $1M. So, in my example, the firm would simply not produce, even though greater the Qd at $1 is greater than 1M.
My statement was vague and thanks for pointing out its imprecision.
For all those who claim that capitalism inately produces the "best solution" through the "invisible hand", why is it that they push copyright so hard to fix a problem which has been proven to not exist.
First, I never said that. Second, where has it been proven that a world with no copyrights produces more creative works of every variety? Maybe software would benefit, and painting, but maybe movies suffer without copyrights? Maybe novels suffer? It's all left to personal opinion, because you provide no proof for any of that, and no proof even that software would benefit without copyrights, which is the only evidence you provided (an that's anecdotal, at best).
We do need more scientific analysis in this area to determine what really produces the most creativity, but that's inherently a nebulous goal (creative is in the eye of the beholder), and also requires a lot of experimenting on a live system (which we might hesitate to do, for the same reason we don't replace the VM with the latest and greatest on mission critical live systems).
Don't you think a few companies might form a joint venture to sponser its development?
Yeah, that's what I was suggesting when I said that I thought people should organize into similar groups to develop in their common interest. If enough firms get together, their combined consumer surplus (again from using their own research) would be greater than the R&D costs.
Thoughtful post.
I don't think that with copyright there's any kind of absolute solution. Some people like to think of things as black & white (like abortion), but I think many issues (including abortion) are more complicated, and can't be addressed in binary like that. If everything was like free software, there are certain types of creations that would be impaired due to a lack of incentive.
I prefer a little bit more chaos that you seem to prefer. I'd rather have a little less unity in our laws between states, but that's a separate issue. Copyright really needs to be handled effectively on a national level, and I'll agree with you there, it's just a question of how much hand they have in deciding what's best. I haven't yet been convinced that any system is better than copyright, but copyright should be reformed.
Regarding the corporations as governments, I agree, except that there's a huge difference: the government can imprison you, and no corporation can (refrain from obvious comments about Dimitri).
I think it would go a long way if the timeframe for copyright was much shorter.