For (1) and (2), I've never seen it. I worked w/ Travelocity and Cheaptickets.com and numerous other websites at EDS, and none of them used those features. Most of them were simply multiprocessor CPU boxes with lots of memory. I'm sure there are several cases where it's needed, but I don't think it's as ubiquitous as you indicate.
Actually, it is pretty mass because it indicates millions of users. It's not a mass migration in terms of percentage points, but if I convinced a million users to switch to my new product I'd be pretty happy.
"The convention's location is well chosen -- DjurslandS.net (in Danish) itself is probably the most ambitious wireless community network of the world. About 200 volunteers installed more than 100 masts on the remote area's 32 000 sq mi. Using the wireless standards 802.11a/b/g about 1'500 households enjoy a symmetric 1-2 MBit internet connection via WI-FI (the WI-FI network has 8 direct uplinks to the danish backbone and several DSL fallbacks)."
Sounds like you could microwave a hot dog just by holding it up in the air. This conference was probably envisioned by a seminar given the previous year on "new and effective revenue generation techniques for oncologists".
I like the fact that you can just point your web browser to
http://www.php.net/FUNCTIONNAME
and get the documentation for that function.
Perl has a lot more contextual tricks to help the programmer, but PHP is a lot nicer to beginners who don't want to worry about whether they are in scalar or list context, and what the present value of $_ might happen to be.
The problem _is_ software patents, because there is no way to make something innovative enough for patents on such a discrete machine as a computer.
Patents are usually bad ideas, simply because if multiple people are working on the same idea at the same time, one of them will be COMPLETELY SCREWED. Who decides? Oh yeah, the courts. That means that small developers (you know, the ones that are supposed to be helped by the patent laws) have less of a reason to innovate, because the big companies have more lawyers and are able to spend R&D money much more liberally.
"Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas, then you don't want software patents."
Or, if you just want to innovate without having to spend every waking hour of every day searching the patent database to see if your implementation technique has been patented by someone and therefore unavailable for you to use (even though you came up with it yourself), you might also not want software patents.
Dr. Dobb's Journal had a great article on this several years ago. I'll try to find it.
"You would be correct in saying this project is closed-binary. The difference is huge."
Open-source typically means the ability to redistribute modified binaries. Even if it doesn't (which, if you read the open-source definition, it does), the usefulness which most people attribute to open-source is lost. If you can't recombine modified binaries into a distribution of software, how "open" is it?
The open-source definition says that the software must be (a) redistributable in both source and binary forms, and that (b) the same terms have to apply to derivatives that apply to the original.
What games are good these days? I haven't gamed since the days of Quake I. I liked the old Mechwarrior games, too. What's out now? I'm a fan of realism, first-person, and strategy/tactical combination games.
Their reservation system is on Vax/VMS, if I remember correctly. I used to work in their midrange department, but I knew some of the VMS coverage guys. They have quite a diverse setup. The only operating system I _didn't_ see there was HPUX.
They actually have a data center that is underground, and has a retinal scanner to get in (for some reason, our group got in with keycards - I'm not really sure why). Their tape library is about three times the size of my house. It's a pretty massive operation. Travelocity, hosted in the same location (but on the ground floor, not downstairs), is a bunch of huge SGI machines (8 processors and more each - probably about 30 of them).
They run pretty much everything under the sun. I enjoyed being around the cool equipment while I was there, but absolutely hated the "big company" mentality, so I left after a year.
Re:90% of the internet is valnerable ...
on
Network Attacks Via DNS
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Now, if he doesn't like your patch, you can post the patch on the internet. You can even put it alongside the source. You can even make an autopatch program that will patch djbdns during make so that dumb users can handle the process"
Can you make binaries of your new program and distribute them? If not, I can't see how you call this open-source. It cuts off all of the distributors from carrying patched versions that work with their own distribution, instead of whatever way that djb wants.
And I have one that I had before I knew about the pill's bad effects. But it is still the case. Without the abortive agents, the success rate of "the pill" is 95%. With the abortive agents, they were able to bump it up to 99%.
"but it's now considered medically safe for women to take continuous contraceptives and go without menstrual cycles for all or most of the year."
Interestingly, I've heard it's actually considered more healthful, since the female body was actually made to be pregnant/giving birth/breastfeeding, which leaves long periods without a menstrual cycle.
If you're not going to have kids, it may actually be damaging to have a menstrual cycle.
That said, I'm against the use of most of today's contraceptives because, although the medical establishment doesn't want people to know it, most contraceptives today include abortive properties (they don't just keep the egg from coming out, if one does come out and gets fertilized, they prevent implantation as well). Since I believe life begins at conception, using such things is against my beliefs.
"But normally to become a top-notch technical worker/scientist/engineer you don't have time to acquire those business skills."
Actually, I've found that all knowledge makes other knowledge easy to learn. Buy a few business books, and a book on accounting, and start your business next week.
"But the government must be involved, or the corporations will run riot over us."
Well, you are partially right here. True, the government must be involved to some degree in business. But for outsourcing? No way. Second, personally I don't think we should have corporations, period. If we went back to only having sole proprietorships and partnerships it would alleviate a lot of the ills that go on, because corporations create an unnatural balance in the economy. But that has nothing to do with laissez-faire capitalism - in fact many of the things that liberals do to "get" big corporations actually end up helping them by screwing over their small-business competition.
With large amounts of regulation, only the biggest companies will have enough manpower and capital to weather through it, leaving small businesses without the ability to compete. This is why there is such high prices in the medical products community. The FDA makes the barrier to entry for medical products so high that noone can get in EXCEPT for overly huge companies and people who are willing to live without compensation for a long time because of the HUGE payoff at the end. With lower regulation, the small companies would have a chance, and would be able to lower the prices for everything.
But the idea of a "social contract" between an employee and the worker isn't really a part of the deal, and I don't see where that idea comes from. Certainly, companies who treat their workers with love and respect will receive more from their employees in return. However, I'm curious, did you believe the "social contract" worked in the other direction? Were you committed to your company even if there were better job offers from other companies with better benefits, better pay, and more interesting work? If you weren't committed to your company, why should they be committed to you?
Personally, I believe in the idea of co-commitment, but am not under the delusion that it's part of some social contract. Instead, I work for people I know and trust, so that I know that I'm getting a fair shake and don't have to worry about getting the shaft. I get less pay, but better people. My hunch is that you chose better pay instead of better people, right? I left a good-paying, easy job at EDS for a job that paid 25% less and was much more difficult because I knew that EDS didn't care jack squat about its employees. I was in a good position at the time (they even offered more money for me to stay), but I knew that if I sell myself to a company that doesn't care, then, *gasp*, they won't care later, either.
Honestly, though, if you are truly good at what you do, it shouldn't be too hard to start your own business without any capital. I started a publishing business without any capital (okay, I admit it, it cost me $100 to get started), and I can only work on it at night and on the weekends. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it, you too could turn your mind into a successful business.
At the risk of droning on, I want to mention what one of my favorite ministries here in Tulsa is - Stand in the Gap. This ministry takes people on the bad side of town who have absolutely nothing and are living on welfare, and teaches them how to start and run their own business. It's not glamorous, but really in America we've kind of gotten a little snooty about doing real work, but these people have taken what little they know how to do and turned it into a business. If they can do it, I'm sure you can, too. If you need help, contact SCORE.
I don't disagree with _all_ taxes. Specifically I don't disagree with taxes that support common institutions. I do disagree with taxes that are there simply to transfer money from one party to another, just because someone in office thinks that they know of a better way to spend my money than I do.
"ome of the neocons are quite honest: They're out to "starve the beast": to kill off public goods they disagree with, by cutting taxes, running huge deficits, and squeezing the budget."
I am one of those people out to "starve the beast", although I think you misrepresent the purpose of starving the beast. The "beast" is government in general, not specific projects. The idea is that if we take money away from politicians, they'll be forced to only spend the money on tasks that are truly necessary for government, and not on idiotic wealth transfers that are better left in either local or individual hands.
"That's not based on the economic impact of the taxes; it's based purely on ideology."
Yes, the ideology that big government == less freedom. I subscribe to that ideology.
I don't mind giving up my money. I give about 15-20% of my income to either my Church (which gives at least half of its money to other beneficial organizations) or to help others. The more money I have, the more I give away. The difference is that I give my money to well-run organizations that actually take care of people who are truly in need, while the government will confiscate my money to expand its beaurocracy and giving it to people who are choosing not to work, not people who are truly in need (I'm sure there are some people helped, but not in comparison to the money actually spent).
If you look at the areas that give the most money to charity, you'll find that it's almost all republican states. If you look at areas that give the least to charity, you'll find that it's mostly democratic states, because democrats don't want to spend _their_ money, they want to spend someone else's money to solve the world's problems.
Likewise, look at the presidential contenders. Of all of the candidates who were serious contenders for party nominations, the one with the _lowest_ net worth was George W Bush. The ones with the most extra money are the ones wanting to raise people's taxes because it won't hurt _them_. If you look at how much money John Kerry gives to charity, it's abysmal (to be fair, I haven't checked on GWB in this regard). I almost gave as much money to charity in the last year as John Kerry. Instead of spending other people's money to help the situation, why doesn't he spend his own? I know I'm spending mine. Even worse is Al Gore, who in one year gave only $400 to charity.
Also, when you speak of "a fraction" of my income, I hardly consider 40% "a fraction" (sales tax + state tax + federal tax / SS / employer's tax + individual item taxes). If we didn't waste so much money in government overhead, our economy would be overflowing with abundance (we kind of are, already, as the "poor" in america are doing better than the average european).
The government is one of the most inefficient operations in the world - and it needs to be to avoid corruption. However, the more responsibility you put on the government, the more inefficient the overall process becomes. The more you tax people, the less free they become, and the more dependent on government they become. The steeper the slope of progressive taxes / reduced burdens, the fewer people who will be willing to climb it (I know a secretary who refused every pay raise she was offered because it would reduce her benefits she was getting from others by more than her benefit payouts).
Anyway, I'm tired of the government thinking that it knows better at the federal level how to deal with local social issues than, maybe, those of us who actually live here.
Your other points are good but this one is stupid:
"I thought the whole point of the OS movement was to make the programmer completely irrelevant."
The whole point of the OS movement is to get programmers working together instead of against each other in order to make their jobs of business/personal automation easier.
Slashdot Mirror
Just an FYI, casting can be used in previous versions to prevent this. For example:
'1' = integer_column
can be modified to use an index by doing
'1'::int = integer_column
The real confusing bit was coming where int8's and int4's were not using indexes, so
1 = int8_column
was not using an index, but
1::int8 = int8_column
was using the index. I previous just did copious casting, but now I don't have to. Yeah!
If you're using bytea fields and Perl DBI
$bstring; #binary string
$id; #identifying attribute
$sth = $dbh->prepare("update x set y = ? where z = ?");
$sth->bind_param(1, $bstring);
$sth->bind_param(2, $id);
$sth->execute;
You may have to modify bind_param in the first case to $sth->bind_param(1, $bstring, DBI::SQL_BINARY), but I can't remember exactly how it goes.
In php, you have to be more explicit, with pg_escape_bytea and stripcslashes.
If your main concern is speed you should not be using a relational database. If your main concern is data integrity, you should not be using MySQL.
PostgreSQL supports union-all views.
For (1) and (2), I've never seen it. I worked w/ Travelocity and Cheaptickets.com and numerous other websites at EDS, and none of them used those features. Most of them were simply multiprocessor CPU boxes with lots of memory. I'm sure there are several cases where it's needed, but I don't think it's as ubiquitous as you indicate.
"Didn't the US get a major boost when it was a fledging nation by ignoring patents and copyright from the old world?"
But those patents weren't registered w/ the US PTO.
Actually, it is pretty mass because it indicates millions of users. It's not a mass migration in terms of percentage points, but if I convinced a million users to switch to my new product I'd be pretty happy.
"The convention's location is well chosen -- DjurslandS.net (in Danish) itself is probably the most ambitious wireless community network of the world. About 200 volunteers installed more than 100 masts on the remote area's 32 000 sq mi. Using the wireless standards 802.11a/b/g about 1'500 households enjoy a symmetric 1-2 MBit internet connection via WI-FI (the WI-FI network has 8 direct uplinks to the danish backbone and several DSL fallbacks)."
Sounds like you could microwave a hot dog just by holding it up in the air. This conference was probably envisioned by a seminar given the previous year on "new and effective revenue generation techniques for oncologists".
Viewing perldoc isn't quite the same as viewing a hyperlinked web page.
I like the fact that you can just point your web browser to
http://www.php.net/FUNCTIONNAME
and get the documentation for that function.
Perl has a lot more contextual tricks to help the programmer, but PHP is a lot nicer to beginners who don't want to worry about whether they are in scalar or list context, and what the present value of $_ might happen to be.
"Easy, I come up with some great idea based in software. My patent allows me the opportunity to make money off of that idea."
What about others who came up with that same idea independently?
The problem _is_ software patents, because there is no way to make something innovative enough for patents on such a discrete machine as a computer.
Patents are usually bad ideas, simply because if multiple people are working on the same idea at the same time, one of them will be COMPLETELY SCREWED. Who decides? Oh yeah, the courts. That means that small developers (you know, the ones that are supposed to be helped by the patent laws) have less of a reason to innovate, because the big companies have more lawyers and are able to spend R&D money much more liberally.
"Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas, then you don't want software patents."
Or, if you just want to innovate without having to spend every waking hour of every day searching the patent database to see if your implementation technique has been patented by someone and therefore unavailable for you to use (even though you came up with it yourself), you might also not want software patents.
Dr. Dobb's Journal had a great article on this several years ago. I'll try to find it.
"You would be correct in saying this project is closed-binary. The difference is huge."
Open-source typically means the ability to redistribute modified binaries. Even if it doesn't (which, if you read the open-source definition, it does), the usefulness which most people attribute to open-source is lost. If you can't recombine modified binaries into a distribution of software, how "open" is it?
The open-source definition says that the software must be (a) redistributable in both source and binary forms, and that (b) the same terms have to apply to derivatives that apply to the original.
Yeah, I missed Rainbow Six - is it any good? It looks good from the boxes, but I don't want to waste money on something just because it looks good.
What do you like/not like about Rainbox Six? Which one is the best?
What games are good these days? I haven't gamed since the days of Quake I. I liked the old Mechwarrior games, too. What's out now? I'm a fan of realism, first-person, and strategy/tactical combination games.
Their reservation system is on Vax/VMS, if I remember correctly. I used to work in their midrange department, but I knew some of the VMS coverage guys. They have quite a diverse setup. The only operating system I _didn't_ see there was HPUX.
They actually have a data center that is underground, and has a retinal scanner to get in (for some reason, our group got in with keycards - I'm not really sure why). Their tape library is about three times the size of my house. It's a pretty massive operation. Travelocity, hosted in the same location (but on the ground floor, not downstairs), is a bunch of huge SGI machines (8 processors and more each - probably about 30 of them).
They run pretty much everything under the sun. I enjoyed being around the cool equipment while I was there, but absolutely hated the "big company" mentality, so I left after a year.
"Now, if he doesn't like your patch, you can post the patch on the internet. You can even put it alongside the source. You can even make an autopatch program that will patch djbdns during make so that dumb users can handle the process"
Can you make binaries of your new program and distribute them? If not, I can't see how you call this open-source. It cuts off all of the distributors from carrying patched versions that work with their own distribution, instead of whatever way that djb wants.
And I have one that I had before I knew about the pill's bad effects. But it is still the case. Without the abortive agents, the success rate of "the pill" is 95%. With the abortive agents, they were able to bump it up to 99%.
"but it's now considered medically safe for women to take continuous contraceptives and go without menstrual cycles for all or most of the year."
Interestingly, I've heard it's actually considered more healthful, since the female body was actually made to be pregnant/giving birth/breastfeeding, which leaves long periods without a menstrual cycle.
If you're not going to have kids, it may actually be damaging to have a menstrual cycle.
That said, I'm against the use of most of today's contraceptives because, although the medical establishment doesn't want people to know it, most contraceptives today include abortive properties (they don't just keep the egg from coming out, if one does come out and gets fertilized, they prevent implantation as well). Since I believe life begins at conception, using such things is against my beliefs.
"But normally to become a top-notch technical worker/scientist/engineer you don't have time to acquire those business skills."
Actually, I've found that all knowledge makes other knowledge easy to learn. Buy a few business books, and a book on accounting, and start your business next week.
"But the government must be involved, or the corporations will run riot over us."
Well, you are partially right here. True, the government must be involved to some degree in business. But for outsourcing? No way. Second, personally I don't think we should have corporations, period. If we went back to only having sole proprietorships and partnerships it would alleviate a lot of the ills that go on, because corporations create an unnatural balance in the economy. But that has nothing to do with laissez-faire capitalism - in fact many of the things that liberals do to "get" big corporations actually end up helping them by screwing over their small-business competition.
With large amounts of regulation, only the biggest companies will have enough manpower and capital to weather through it, leaving small businesses without the ability to compete. This is why there is such high prices in the medical products community. The FDA makes the barrier to entry for medical products so high that noone can get in EXCEPT for overly huge companies and people who are willing to live without compensation for a long time because of the HUGE payoff at the end. With lower regulation, the small companies would have a chance, and would be able to lower the prices for everything.
But the idea of a "social contract" between an employee and the worker isn't really a part of the deal, and I don't see where that idea comes from. Certainly, companies who treat their workers with love and respect will receive more from their employees in return. However, I'm curious, did you believe the "social contract" worked in the other direction? Were you committed to your company even if there were better job offers from other companies with better benefits, better pay, and more interesting work? If you weren't committed to your company, why should they be committed to you?
Personally, I believe in the idea of co-commitment, but am not under the delusion that it's part of some social contract. Instead, I work for people I know and trust, so that I know that I'm getting a fair shake and don't have to worry about getting the shaft. I get less pay, but better people. My hunch is that you chose better pay instead of better people, right? I left a good-paying, easy job at EDS for a job that paid 25% less and was much more difficult because I knew that EDS didn't care jack squat about its employees. I was in a good position at the time (they even offered more money for me to stay), but I knew that if I sell myself to a company that doesn't care, then, *gasp*, they won't care later, either.
Honestly, though, if you are truly good at what you do, it shouldn't be too hard to start your own business without any capital. I started a publishing business without any capital (okay, I admit it, it cost me $100 to get started), and I can only work on it at night and on the weekends. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it, you too could turn your mind into a successful business.
At the risk of droning on, I want to mention what one of my favorite ministries here in Tulsa is - Stand in the Gap. This ministry takes people on the bad side of town who have absolutely nothing and are living on welfare, and teaches them how to start and run their own business. It's not glamorous, but really in America we've kind of gotten a little snooty about doing real work, but these people have taken what little they know how to do and turned it into a business. If they can do it, I'm sure you can, too. If you need help, contact SCORE.
I don't disagree with _all_ taxes. Specifically I don't disagree with taxes that support common institutions. I do disagree with taxes that are there simply to transfer money from one party to another, just because someone in office thinks that they know of a better way to spend my money than I do.
"ome of the neocons are quite honest: They're out to "starve the beast": to kill off public goods they disagree with, by cutting taxes, running huge deficits, and squeezing the budget."
I am one of those people out to "starve the beast", although I think you misrepresent the purpose of starving the beast. The "beast" is government in general, not specific projects. The idea is that if we take money away from politicians, they'll be forced to only spend the money on tasks that are truly necessary for government, and not on idiotic wealth transfers that are better left in either local or individual hands.
"That's not based on the economic impact of the taxes; it's based purely on ideology."
Yes, the ideology that big government == less freedom. I subscribe to that ideology.
I don't mind giving up my money. I give about 15-20% of my income to either my Church (which gives at least half of its money to other beneficial organizations) or to help others. The more money I have, the more I give away. The difference is that I give my money to well-run organizations that actually take care of people who are truly in need, while the government will confiscate my money to expand its beaurocracy and giving it to people who are choosing not to work, not people who are truly in need (I'm sure there are some people helped, but not in comparison to the money actually spent).
If you look at the areas that give the most money to charity, you'll find that it's almost all republican states. If you look at areas that give the least to charity, you'll find that it's mostly democratic states, because democrats don't want to spend _their_ money, they want to spend someone else's money to solve the world's problems.
Likewise, look at the presidential contenders. Of all of the candidates who were serious contenders for party nominations, the one with the _lowest_ net worth was George W Bush. The ones with the most extra money are the ones wanting to raise people's taxes because it won't hurt _them_. If you look at how much money John Kerry gives to charity, it's abysmal (to be fair, I haven't checked on GWB in this regard). I almost gave as much money to charity in the last year as John Kerry. Instead of spending other people's money to help the situation, why doesn't he spend his own? I know I'm spending mine. Even worse is Al Gore, who in one year gave only $400 to charity.
Also, when you speak of "a fraction" of my income, I hardly consider 40% "a fraction" (sales tax + state tax + federal tax / SS / employer's tax + individual item taxes). If we didn't waste so much money in government overhead, our economy would be overflowing with abundance (we kind of are, already, as the "poor" in america are doing better than the average european).
The government is one of the most inefficient operations in the world - and it needs to be to avoid corruption. However, the more responsibility you put on the government, the more inefficient the overall process becomes. The more you tax people, the less free they become, and the more dependent on government they become. The steeper the slope of progressive taxes / reduced burdens, the fewer people who will be willing to climb it (I know a secretary who refused every pay raise she was offered because it would reduce her benefits she was getting from others by more than her benefit payouts).
Anyway, I'm tired of the government thinking that it knows better at the federal level how to deal with local social issues than, maybe, those of us who actually live here.
Your other points are good but this one is stupid:
"I thought the whole point of the OS movement was to make the programmer completely irrelevant."
The whole point of the OS movement is to get programmers working together instead of against each other in order to make their jobs of business/personal automation easier.
"I did my duty"
You started your own company and are employing others?
Heaven forbid we get to spend our own money the way we think is best without having to justify it to everyone else in the world..
There is no real separation between economic freedom and individual liberty.