Actually, we use our database for handling anything transaction-oriented.
Why do you think that Perl is less of a language because it's a scripting language (by the way, VB is a scripting language, and it's OO capabilities pale in comparison to Perl)? Most of Java's advanced features like reflection are already built-in to the language. Perl is a full object-oriented language. Also, why do you assume that we're working with flat files? I'm sure that's an Oracle database I'm always talking to.
I like how you think that other people are the only ones whose arguments have holes.
A few questions:
Why have no fossils been found which show evolution between families?
Aren't most changes within a family better explained by shifts in a gene pool and nutritional differences than mutation? (Note for others - creationists have no problem with microevolution - shift of a gene pool within a population - they only have a problem with the addition of new genes to a gene pool)
How do you explain evolution of complex parts of the body for which intermediate forms would have been a hindrance rather than a help?
How do dormant genes fit within the theory of evolution?
Hmmm..., it's nice how you mix all of the people you don't like, and give them a label.
Creationism has little to do with whether or not the Bible is true - it has to do with when the earth came about, and how it happened, and how life came about. There are also many groups within creationism which you seem to have glossed over. Yes, most creationists are trying to defend the Bible's accuracy, however, most creationists do not use the Bible as their proof, they use evidence. The fact that some don't doesn't mean that everyone doesn't. Creationists, though, as a rule, operate using the same scientific principles as everyone else.
But I'm doing exactly what you say using Perl/CGI. I've got a nice object-oriented framework for handling interaction with the various parts of the business, and it works great. So, what am I missing out on? I'm handling a reseller network, our own ERP functionality, workflow, online store including our own and our reseller's pricing, multiple views of our assemble-to-order items (resellers are too dumb to price assemble-to-order, so we have to make it look different), etc. What am I missing, or what would "web services" simplify compared to what I'm doing now?
Hmmm... I use CGI+Perl to integrate our international reseller network, our inventory management, our billing system, and other parts of the business. What other components are necessary for being "enterprise-class"?
I have yet to really figure out what all the hoopla is about. I run vanilla Apache, which then runs a persistent Perl process. We do e-commerce through an international reseller market, have web sites for our resellers to enter prices and shipping charges, and maintain our own through our main database. I have yet to see what _any_ of these technologies offers. What does Java offer that I'm not already doing easily and well? What does.NET offer? How does a "web service" differ from a well-documented CGI interface, perhaps using XML as the transfer language?
As a web developer, this really baffles me. If anyone can shed any light on the actual advantages of this, please comment or email me at johnnyb@wolfram.com.
Actually, the thing you have to remember is that the most often toasted parts of a computer are the power supply and hard drives. If they didn't hardware-raid their hard drives, well, they were dumb. However, they did mention that the computer had a dual-hotswap power supply, so that's not an issue (those things ROCK). As for motherboard and memory, It would be best to have backups, but those only go out every few years, so having active redundant pieces would be wasteful.
I've looked into clustering for several applications, and found that it is usually better just to have a big, redundant server, with some spare hardware sitting on the side than to try the failover stuff.
Bottom line (and it always comes back to the bottom line) is that it would cost too much to make the transition.
You are leaving out ongoing costs. It might be a large investment up front, but it is one that I would guess pay for itself easily in 5 years, and then again every few years after that.
My position, which may well differ from others here is this:
It is in a for-profit organization's interest to use free software
It is in the public interest for a for-profit organization to create free software. In addition, it can also benefit them if done well. Just as freedom always both creates headaches and opportunities.
In the future, when free software is the rule rather than the exception, it will be in a companies interest to create free software, because otherwise they will be unable to compete with those that do.
It has not almost universally failed. I don't see where you're getting this. That's like saying the internet has almost universally failed because of the number of bad businesses that used it. There are many people making money off of the internet today, just as there are many people making money developing Linux stuff today. What is gone is the idea that simply slapping a Linux logo to your product would make it successful.
The idea of charging for services has worked well for many companies. Cygnus, for example, was greatly profitable developing free software long before the movement ever became popular. RedHat seems to be doing well, having beat analyst expectations every quarter. Mandrake has done well. IBM has done well. CollabNet has done well. Many consultancy companies have done well. In fact, the consultancy companies do what can't be done in the Microsoft world - they can be profitable, equal players.
However, this brings up an interesting point that Robert Cringely wrote - if we all standardize to any given system, a single exploit could wipe everything out.
Many people really want all computers to be the same. However, it appears that variety may save us from the "one true exploit". If we didn't all run the same freaking programs, problems like this would have a much milder effect.
Actually, Q3A is much older than that. You could say that it is more like Wolfenstein 5.0, in which case the software is about 10 years old. The fact that they changed the name and some graphics doesn't hide the fact that they've been working on this for many, many years.
The point is not how long it takes to get something useful - that can be done rather quickly - but instead something that is mature. A mature piece of software interacts with people and other software in the best ways possible. Figuring out how the best way for software to interact with other software and people takes a long time. Compare Notepad and BBEdit. Notepad is what you get when you throw something together in a month or two. BBEdit is what you get when you take an editor and run with it. Notepad is useful, but BBEdit is useful and mature.
I think this is also one of the things that us free software people (myself included) miss when trying to convince others to use free software. Most free software has not had the time to mature. For example, let's take PostgreSQL (which I love) and Oracle (which I can't stand). I have to hand it to the Oracle people - they have added bits and pieces to their platform that make it great for enterprise use. Things like _extremely_ verbose logging, session tracing, the ability to move tables all over the disk and all through files, and all sorts of little administrative things that help the administrator keep things going. All-in-all, PostgreSQL has a much better design, but it will take many years of production use to get all of the little features that Oracle has.
Also, if you look at the --help option of most of the UNIX commands, you see a plethora of options. Most likely, the original author had a really, really limited use for the command. However, users said "wouldn't it be cool if it did X", and so that was implemented. Two things are adding to this time frame - the feedback cycle (it takes a long time for users to learn something, and then figure out how they _wish_ it would run) and the development cycle (each feature takes a lot of time). These cycle times are slow. That's why software takes a long time. More programmers won't make the feedback cycle go any faster. Neither will better programmers. Good software takes time.
1) Windows is _not_ easy enough for any given Grandma to use. Maybe yours, but definitely not mine. My Dad (who has been using computers for a long time, and has a masters in engineering) has trouble figuring out how Windows works all the time. The only thing that makes it "easy" is that its used everywhere.
2) Macintoshes have always been easier to use. Macintoshes have brought more to the usability of computing than _anything_ else. Personally, I don't like the company Apple either. However, they have at least brought something to computing.
I always tell people - if you want something that's easy to use, run Mac OS. If you want something that's technically excellent, run UNIX. If you don't want either of those, stick with Windows.
You have to keep in mind what RMS said. He said that you shouldn't have an opinion on "Intellectual Property", because the issues that occur on patents, copyrights, and trademarks are so varied. Instead you should discuss the merits/weaknesses of each individually. Trying to batch them together confuses the issue.
The reason for free software is freedom for the user. Trademarks do not really restrict user freedom. The idea of trademarks actually benefit the consumer in a meaningful way - they get to know who is giving them a product. Let's say a user is happy with the service RedHat does. Let's say another company calls itself RedHat, and starts marketing to you. How are you, the customer, supposed to know that its a different company? Let's say you are used to RedHat's quality of service, and then buy an enterprise product from the "fake" RedHat for a mission-critical piece of software. Something goes wrong, you call the number. This time, instead of getting the service you're used to, you get crap, because you went with a crap company masquerading as the real deal.
Trademarks are important. There are some abuses of trademark law, but all-in-all its a good thing (tm).
1) Schools are not a business, they are a public service
2) We are not saying that we are going to be giving things to schools, we are saying that with free software, we can charge full price for hardware and support, and still come out _way_ ahead of everyone else. Especially when you use thin terminals.
Actually, it's perfectly legal for students to photocopy large sections of books and entire articles for use at home. In this way, multiple copies _are_ being used at once.
Not really. It runs some things well, but not a generic out-of-the-box program. It runs best if (a) you installed the program under Windows, and (b) you have the Windows DLLs installed somewhere. It's getting better, but still not there.
It does, technically. The problem is, you either let BSA come in and do an audit, or you let them come back with a warrant and the police, and instead of just doing an audit, they will take _all_ your computers and do it for you. The only difference is that the search warrant requires a witnesses to sign sworn statements about illicit behavior.
I think the problem is that teachers, by nature, want to share. They understand that information is freely sharable. Therefore, things like "licenses" to use instructions (which is what a program is) is absurd. I don't think they give it a second thought, because giving and sharing is part of who they are.
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Actually, we use our database for handling anything transaction-oriented.
Why do you think that Perl is less of a language because it's a scripting language (by the way, VB is a scripting language, and it's OO capabilities pale in comparison to Perl)? Most of Java's advanced features like reflection are already built-in to the language. Perl is a full object-oriented language. Also, why do you assume that we're working with flat files? I'm sure that's an Oracle database I'm always talking to.
I like how you think that other people are the only ones whose arguments have holes.
A few questions:
Why have no fossils been found which show evolution between families?
Aren't most changes within a family better explained by shifts in a gene pool and nutritional differences than mutation? (Note for others - creationists have no problem with microevolution - shift of a gene pool within a population - they only have a problem with the addition of new genes to a gene pool)
How do you explain evolution of complex parts of the body for which intermediate forms would have been a hindrance rather than a help?
How do dormant genes fit within the theory of evolution?
Hmmm..., it's nice how you mix all of the people you don't like, and give them a label. Creationism has little to do with whether or not the Bible is true - it has to do with when the earth came about, and how it happened, and how life came about. There are also many groups within creationism which you seem to have glossed over. Yes, most creationists are trying to defend the Bible's accuracy, however, most creationists do not use the Bible as their proof, they use evidence. The fact that some don't doesn't mean that everyone doesn't. Creationists, though, as a rule, operate using the same scientific principles as everyone else.
But I'm doing exactly what you say using Perl/CGI. I've got a nice object-oriented framework for handling interaction with the various parts of the business, and it works great. So, what am I missing out on? I'm handling a reseller network, our own ERP functionality, workflow, online store including our own and our reseller's pricing, multiple views of our assemble-to-order items (resellers are too dumb to price assemble-to-order, so we have to make it look different), etc. What am I missing, or what would "web services" simplify compared to what I'm doing now?
Hmmm... I use CGI+Perl to integrate our international reseller network, our inventory management, our billing system, and other parts of the business. What other components are necessary for being "enterprise-class"?
I have yet to really figure out what all the hoopla is about. I run vanilla Apache, which then runs a persistent Perl process. We do e-commerce through an international reseller market, have web sites for our resellers to enter prices and shipping charges, and maintain our own through our main database. I have yet to see what _any_ of these technologies offers. What does Java offer that I'm not already doing easily and well? What does .NET offer? How does a "web service" differ from a well-documented CGI interface, perhaps using XML as the transfer language?
As a web developer, this really baffles me. If anyone can shed any light on the actual advantages of this, please comment or email me at johnnyb@wolfram.com.
Actually, the thing you have to remember is that the most often toasted parts of a computer are the power supply and hard drives. If they didn't hardware-raid their hard drives, well, they were dumb. However, they did mention that the computer had a dual-hotswap power supply, so that's not an issue (those things ROCK). As for motherboard and memory, It would be best to have backups, but those only go out every few years, so having active redundant pieces would be wasteful. I've looked into clustering for several applications, and found that it is usually better just to have a big, redundant server, with some spare hardware sitting on the side than to try the failover stuff.
You are leaving out ongoing costs. It might be a large investment up front, but it is one that I would guess pay for itself easily in 5 years, and then again every few years after that.
My position, which may well differ from others here is this:
It is in a for-profit organization's interest to use free software
It is in the public interest for a for-profit organization to create free software. In addition, it can also benefit them if done well. Just as freedom always both creates headaches and opportunities.
In the future, when free software is the rule rather than the exception, it will be in a companies interest to create free software, because otherwise they will be unable to compete with those that do.
It has not almost universally failed. I don't see where you're getting this. That's like saying the internet has almost universally failed because of the number of bad businesses that used it. There are many people making money off of the internet today, just as there are many people making money developing Linux stuff today. What is gone is the idea that simply slapping a Linux logo to your product would make it successful.
The idea of charging for services has worked well for many companies. Cygnus, for example, was greatly profitable developing free software long before the movement ever became popular. RedHat seems to be doing well, having beat analyst expectations every quarter. Mandrake has done well. IBM has done well. CollabNet has done well. Many consultancy companies have done well. In fact, the consultancy companies do what can't be done in the Microsoft world - they can be profitable, equal players.
#1 is WRONG. The bug they found was in SQL Server. The software they wrote just happened to trigger it.
From the article, it doesn't say exactly what the security problem was, you can't tell for sure that it was #2.
However, this brings up an interesting point that Robert Cringely wrote - if we all standardize to any given system, a single exploit could wipe everything out.
Many people really want all computers to be the same. However, it appears that variety may save us from the "one true exploit". If we didn't all run the same freaking programs, problems like this would have a much milder effect.
Even if its completely from scratch, they are still building on what they did earlier.
I think you are mistaken. If you already know how to program games, then a book on games on Linux is quite good.
I bought the book precisely because I wanted a quick introduction to the various Linux APIs. It served that purpose quite well.
Actually, Q3A is much older than that. You could say that it is more like Wolfenstein 5.0, in which case the software is about 10 years old. The fact that they changed the name and some graphics doesn't hide the fact that they've been working on this for many, many years.
The point is not how long it takes to get something useful - that can be done rather quickly - but instead something that is mature. A mature piece of software interacts with people and other software in the best ways possible. Figuring out how the best way for software to interact with other software and people takes a long time. Compare Notepad and BBEdit. Notepad is what you get when you throw something together in a month or two. BBEdit is what you get when you take an editor and run with it. Notepad is useful, but BBEdit is useful and mature. I think this is also one of the things that us free software people (myself included) miss when trying to convince others to use free software. Most free software has not had the time to mature. For example, let's take PostgreSQL (which I love) and Oracle (which I can't stand). I have to hand it to the Oracle people - they have added bits and pieces to their platform that make it great for enterprise use. Things like _extremely_ verbose logging, session tracing, the ability to move tables all over the disk and all through files, and all sorts of little administrative things that help the administrator keep things going. All-in-all, PostgreSQL has a much better design, but it will take many years of production use to get all of the little features that Oracle has. Also, if you look at the --help option of most of the UNIX commands, you see a plethora of options. Most likely, the original author had a really, really limited use for the command. However, users said "wouldn't it be cool if it did X", and so that was implemented. Two things are adding to this time frame - the feedback cycle (it takes a long time for users to learn something, and then figure out how they _wish_ it would run) and the development cycle (each feature takes a lot of time). These cycle times are slow. That's why software takes a long time. More programmers won't make the feedback cycle go any faster. Neither will better programmers. Good software takes time.
I think he was specifically refering to the OS X port, not the whole thing.
A few things you have wrong:
1) Windows is _not_ easy enough for any given Grandma to use. Maybe yours, but definitely not mine. My Dad (who has been using computers for a long time, and has a masters in engineering) has trouble figuring out how Windows works all the time. The only thing that makes it "easy" is that its used everywhere.
2) Macintoshes have always been easier to use. Macintoshes have brought more to the usability of computing than _anything_ else. Personally, I don't like the company Apple either. However, they have at least brought something to computing.
I always tell people - if you want something that's easy to use, run Mac OS. If you want something that's technically excellent, run UNIX. If you don't want either of those, stick with Windows.
Actually, with write-ahead logging (found in 7.1) PostgreSQL is very, very fast.
You have to keep in mind what RMS said. He said that you shouldn't have an opinion on "Intellectual Property", because the issues that occur on patents, copyrights, and trademarks are so varied. Instead you should discuss the merits/weaknesses of each individually. Trying to batch them together confuses the issue.
The reason for free software is freedom for the user. Trademarks do not really restrict user freedom. The idea of trademarks actually benefit the consumer in a meaningful way - they get to know who is giving them a product. Let's say a user is happy with the service RedHat does. Let's say another company calls itself RedHat, and starts marketing to you. How are you, the customer, supposed to know that its a different company? Let's say you are used to RedHat's quality of service, and then buy an enterprise product from the "fake" RedHat for a mission-critical piece of software. Something goes wrong, you call the number. This time, instead of getting the service you're used to, you get crap, because you went with a crap company masquerading as the real deal.
Trademarks are important. There are some abuses of trademark law, but all-in-all its a good thing (tm).
1) Schools are not a business, they are a public service
2) We are not saying that we are going to be giving things to schools, we are saying that with free software, we can charge full price for hardware and support, and still come out _way_ ahead of everyone else. Especially when you use thin terminals.
Actually, it's perfectly legal for students to photocopy large sections of books and entire articles for use at home. In this way, multiple copies _are_ being used at once.
Not really. It runs some things well, but not a generic out-of-the-box program. It runs best if (a) you installed the program under Windows, and (b) you have the Windows DLLs installed somewhere. It's getting better, but still not there.
It does, technically. The problem is, you either let BSA come in and do an audit, or you let them come back with a warrant and the police, and instead of just doing an audit, they will take _all_ your computers and do it for you. The only difference is that the search warrant requires a witnesses to sign sworn statements about illicit behavior.
I think the problem is that teachers, by nature, want to share. They understand that information is freely sharable. Therefore, things like "licenses" to use instructions (which is what a program is) is absurd. I don't think they give it a second thought, because giving and sharing is part of who they are.