Biodiesel does produce CO2, but significantly less than traditional diesel, more on the magnitude of gasoline. The benefits to biodiesel are great... sure the infrastructure is already in place and its easy to use (runs in all diesel engines).. but the most important attributes are this...
1. It is renewable 2. Producing it produces oxygen and consumes CO2 3. It has the best energy balance of other fuels (it takes less energy to produce than others) 4. Using just a little bit like a 20% blend decreases pollution and dependance on foreign fuels.
Now everyone say hydrogen is the future... but ask yourself, how do you make hydrogen? The most common method is hydrolysis of water (spliting water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity) but there are chemical processes, etc. So to create hydrogen you need to produce electricity to convert the water to hydrogen. This means that hydrogen is not an energy source, by a medium in which energy travels... just like a battery. We are simply moving the energy production from the car to the power plant. So I don't see any advantage here EXCEPT you reduce the amount of pollution in cities.
I think the future is "diversity". We need to except all forms of energy sources and allow the market to handle it. We should have hybrids, biodiesel, electic, natural gas, high efficiency gasoline, fuel cell and hydrogen vehicles on the road and continue to allow these technologies to develop to increase efficiency while maintaining drivability. I think the government should realize the petroleum has hidden costs and tax that while providing benefits to develop new technologies for efficiency.
Here's the deal... I'm a Windows developer because I basically have to be. What I mean is, I would like to use open source because a lot of times it is superior, etc. However, I can't make the transition because doing so is way too expensive.
For instance, let's say I have software that I wrote using ASP/SQL/HTML right? And the client is saying that SQL Server is too expensive to license. I would love to port everything to PostgreSQL. The problem is I need PostgreSQL to be supported in Windows, otherwise its really not a good option for the client to get new hardware, different network configuration, hoping that the ODBC driver is fast, etc.
If open source want's more momentum, I think it needs to begin invading the land of Windows... look at Firefox... its an awesome browser that runs great and looks great on Windows. And guess what... its gaining market share. OpenOffice is already worrying Microsoft because it is bringing open source competition right on their door step.
So, I encourage developers to port their stuff to Windows. I think it would be great if KDE would work in on most of the machines I work with day to day. Why? Because it lessens the fear (often irrational) of change. If I can use KDE apps today... and I use them exclusively... then when I need a new system, why do I need Windows? And that's the point where the momentum begins to happen.
First let me say this is a very powerful and convenient tool that works as advertised right out of the box. However, I am also upset by how easily this group defends Google and attacks Microsoft. I'm sorry, but if you are creating software you need to keep the users in mind and work with the environment you are given.
I have done a lot of research into how the Google Desktop system works. Here are some things I found...
1. The indexing "agent" (not a windows service) runs as the current user. So, Windows security should block Google from viewing those files.
2. Google installs its own web server on the machine and maps to port 4664. They also do a lot of validation to make sure you can only see this information from the local machine. This appears to be pretty strong.
3. Google stores its cache in the following windows directory: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search -- Leading me to believe that this is user specific. I checked permissions on this other users do not have access to the cache, leading me to believe they would have their own version of the cache.
4. Google seems to abide by the rules of the operating system. Unless they are somehow bypassing Windows security (being google they could reverse engineer anything I guess), this is pretty sound. So it really comes down to the user for setting permissions on their files. Otherwise any old search program could also find those files.
5. Google Desktop search is not spyware. I think the fear is how it integrates your desktop with the Google home page but the truth is no information is sent. At least that's what Google says. However, I looked at the source of what is returned and this is not done using client-side script or an ActiveX object, so I'm not sure how they pull this off. This sort of scares me. For instance, the path to one of my files is seen coming from the their server.
Now, the bad side...
While I was impressed by the lockdown of interface to the local machine, this is easily compromised. In an hour or two I created a VBScript class that could host on the user's machine and use local HTTP to access this data. This means that spyware could be created that allow remote access to the otherwise ironclad cache. This is obviously bad since you could just start searching for passwords and possibly get them.
My suggestion to Google? Add additional settings. For instance, right now the default setting is EVERYWHERE, with some control over WHAT gets indexed. I suggest being able to point the index at specific folders, or be able to not index other folders. This is sort of like shipping a firewall with all ports open. Sure its up to the user to lock it down, but if you don't... bad things happen.
Also, more filetypes would be really good. Especially more code files, etc.
I also think the ability to share your cache could be an option. This would be handy to install on a corporate file server to provide access to files (this is the reason I created the remote access hack)
Of course this may be Google's strategy all along... make the free version do everything and be for personal systems, and then sell a version with more file types, more granular control, sharing etc. Sounds like good bait and switch to me.
So that is all. Very good software, very easy to use. Ships wide open and could breach privacy on beginner level users. Can be used for attack and Google needs to consider this. Overall.. thank you Google!
Just the other day I was wondering if FireFox, or another Mozilla system would support this file format. The basic premise is it take an entire web page (including exteral resources such as images, CSS, javascript, etc) and puts it in one file. You can open these files in a text editor and see they represent a multipart, plain text document. So MS's reasoning for doing this is to make them a little friendlier to download, although only viewable on IE. No encryption or compression that I saw.
That said, I'm glad to see Mozilla is looking to support this. Again, its a fairly open and simple format and I don't know why they are having a hard time converting their docs to this. They probably did it in Word and are trying to export as HTML. This will kill almost any webmaster...
Don't know how it happened but I ended up posting as Anonymous Coward. Anyway, make sure you get the laptop version... MUCH SMALLER!!! They also have a FireFly version which uses even small hard drives.
I agree. While Microsoft has a good research branch, the innovation levels tend to be in the hardware sector right now (with the integrated software of course). If you remove hardware, how many more bells and whistles can they cram into their software? Also, the luggage they are carrying around prevents them from reinnovating without serious rework and customer frustration. For instance, exchange has a lot of great feature but is a hog... what if there is a better way to handle this? They can't just change it without leaving customers in the dark.
Open Source has a much better innovation cycle and fosters good code. Instead of market share being judged by dollars, it is judged by ability and talent; there is a wide gap between the two.
Also, product-based software lends itself to do everything and please everyone. This makes software bloated and more difficult to use. Open source can be "customized" to be efficient and more user friendly. I'm not a Linux "expert" but I know you can recompile Apache or Postgres to include support or not... and that makes things more secure and more efficient.
Now we need to find a way to make hardware open source.
There are many things you can do with the infrastructure you but forward. I have found that sometimes the way to do it in found in the ASP.NET or ASP book, is not the fastest method, but the most flexible. Have you considered a mechanism for caching in memory as to reduce the amount of processing on the database? DB calls require processing and disk access. In-memory cache could be faster, and memory is cheap. $200 / 1Gb???
I don't know what kind of system you are building, but consider something like this...
1. Request information from your code... (compiled code would be faster of course) 2. Code knows what you are looking for (compare parameters) and sees if it was processed recently. 3. If it was processed, point the code to the cached version in RAM. 4. If cached version is not in RAM, look on disk in a managed way (it knows where its at and doesn't have to look around) 5. If not there, go to the database and regenerate the cache for that item.
Now obviously this wouldn't be truly realtime. But I would say that most information doesn't flow in realtime. If it did, a single client-server config isn't suitable.
Also, think about updating the cache when any changes are made. Keep it in the DB so you can "clear" the cache if something gets messed up. You could even use SQL Server and place a trigger on table that when changed calls a DLL for more advanced processing. You have a lot of options, but they are not in the "book".
This is not just an MS workaround either, all developers could evaluate their code requirements. It may be a pain to program in this way, but the gains could be significant.
Keep in mind that ASP.NET offers this level of caching without custom coding, but custom built stuff would allow more flexibility...
I have to agree with many of the comments. The parser you choose is the most important decision. DOM is typically a memory hog and takes time. In my experience the MSXML 4.0 parser is very fast, written in C, etc. DOM is easier to user, but obviously can have some downsides. XML is great for portability and faster development, but performance concerns can arise.
Find out where the bottleneck lies. If you are running an XSLT processor on the server, that will limit your request/sec. I've found that stream XML from the server to a client (such as IE6, gasp) and having the client render to HTML is wicked fast. The XSLT parser in IE renders asynchronously allowing the results to be displayed before the entire doc is loaded. Of course this is MS specific stuff I've experienced, etc.
SAX is faster for grabbing XML events. While writing a web spider, I was parsing HTML using an HTML parser. I switched from that to regex and saw crawl speed increase significantly. It depends if you need to whole XML doc or not.
You may want to try loading the XML DOM once and serialize the binary. You could then ship the binary around town. Macromedia has some tools like this that can send binary objects to a flash client, etc. Limit the parsing.
Another tip... if you have control over the XML schema, you may want to research how to structure XML for performance. I've heard that attribute heavy XML docs are more efficient than docs with embedded data, etc. Also look into some XML tricks like IDs, etc.
Good luck in your pursuit. Choose your parser carefully. If testing turns out negative, you may just want to use some binary data. XML is a wonderful technology designed to aid in system integration, and ease of use... but it comes at a price.
I think the issue with crashing software is a combination of problems. Obviously cost is the biggest issue. Economics is another. And time is never on the developers side. Fact is, it is not economically advantageous to write rock solid code. Why?
First, it costs a lot of money to test and it is very difficult to keep your new code under wraps (from competition) and still offer a truly well tested system. Open source solves this problem by somewhat reducing competition since the code is free and can be tested by many people in various stages of testing. (Probably why Open Source is more stable)
Don't forget boredom. Once a developer gets something "working" he or she doesn't want to continue to stare at the code for hours contemplating its every possible flaw. We'd rather be reading slashdot.
Second, if your software was 100% bug free, people would never have a reason to upgrade. Guaranteed, if Windows 98 didn't crash so dang much I would never have installed Win2k. My dad had an old Compaq Presario with Windows 3.1 on it and it never crashed. He reluctantly had to upgrade to experience things like MP3's and AOL. (and crashes) I did downgrade from WinXP (Piece of doggie doo) back to Win2k.
Third, time is of the essence. Many times I am pressured to get the code done. It is better to have a software application that works pretty good and start using it than to have it absolutely perfect and never use it. This is an expontential scale. It takes more and more time to make the software a fractionally more stable. And sometimes you find a rewrite is in order. There is a balance to be obtained.
Some other things to consider: Scope and Methodology. The comparison was made between cars and code. I think this is an unfair evaluation because the scope of a car is well defined. You know certain parameters such as the size of the road, the speed it can travel. You have certain benchmarks it must meet, safety regulations. Software on the other hand has few of these. Operating Systems run on an incredible number of hardware and can be configured in infinite number of ways. I've found that PCAnywhere when installed with some other, unrelated software can just blow up an machine. The problem is that scope is not, and most noteable cannot be contained WITHOUT limitations. This is the reason why a Linux server running in Terminal mode with two daemons on it can run FOREVER. The scope is well defined, crap is not compiled into the kernel.
Lastly, methodology is the best answer. The comparison of computer code to legal code is a very good one. The reason why good lawyers write good legal docs is because they have a good methodology. They know how to cover their bases. Programming language developers should consider a development methodology and set up limitations. Java and other type-safe language set up these limitations and the result is safer code. Consider narrowing this even more. But realize that limiting what the developer can do has economic effects. What good is the worlds tightest coding methodology if VBScript still exists and can do the same thing? (and break)
In all, we are held in the balance. Yin and Yang. We cannot have one without the other. You add features, you add bugs. You create limitations, your code doesn't get used. You increase your time to market, you watch your competition buy you out. This is the way of things. A chasing after the wind.
In response to this post and the feedback I received:
I apologize for the use of the word "gay" to denote the Viewsonic panel. I do not mean to offend through the use of a word. I consider myself to be fairly open to ideas and lifestyles and do not want to come across as a close-minded, self-rightous know-it-all as that does not describe my general personality. The post was meant to foster action in the community and not to tear down those relationships.
I guess its probably the stupid South Park culture that influences these choice of words. Perhaps its the sometimes childish comments I see on Slashdot and I am trying to appeal those people, or just try to fit in.
I can now see that my post has enlived some discussion. I hope most of it has a positive effect as the ends are more important than the means. In all I think the open source community is quick to term anything that Microsoft does as a bad idea. I'm not sure if this is self-protection or what. In most cases I think its because we have so much to do as developers that there is little time to handle these other interfaces. Also, it begs to question if all that effort is worth it.
So lastly, please accept a sincere apology and take heart that I will never run for public office. I would probably say the stupidest stuff on earth and end up holding public offense.:)
I think this review is VERY biased. For one, its not even a Tablet PC as defined by Microsoft. A tablet PC is a fully functional computer, period. In fact, I just got a Toshiba Portege Tablet PC and use it frequently in tablet mode (it converts to laptop mode for all the wienies that cry about using a pen). Its handwriting recognition is second to none, able to read cursive and messy hand writing. Voice recognition is really good as well, though I am sure there are better products available.
It has builtin WiFi and Bluetooth, 1.4 Gb P3, %12 Mb RAM, and a 40 Gb hard drive. Its a computer and very well adapted to the medical and sales professions.
In all, my experience has been very good with tablet pcs and I wonder when the open source community is going to think about developing such a product. If the open source community does not begin innovating instead of playing catchup to microsoft, it will never succeed. Here is something (the tablet pc) completely new that everyone I show asks "where do I sign to get one"? All of the features are there but the price is still a bit steep. But you have to recoop R+D.
In my opinion these panel things are gay. Tablet PCs rock. Where are the voice recognition and handwriting recognition in the open source community? Are there any efforts? Are we going to let microsoft reinvent the pc while we sit back and simply say... ah... they'll pull it in a year. BTW, they spent millions in R+D and they are not going to simply kill it. They may thorw millions into marketing though which they haven't yet.
Do your homework before advocating decisions for the open source community.
HE is right. It takes ENERGY to make Hydrogen. This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best. The easiest way to make hydrogen is to use electricity to break down water. Hello? Wow are you going to make electricity? That's right, nuclear and fossil fuels, namely oil and coal. That plus the whole take fuel, making electricity, taking electricity, making hydrogen, pumping that into fuel cells to make electricity to power you car... Does anyone sense a loss of energy efficiency in all of this? Yep. In the end it would be more efficient to continue to drive around in your 4-banger car.
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Why do you think all the oil companies don't mind investing into hydrogen? Because they know they will be powering that economy too. Why not go with an energy source that is already available and just as clean. A truly independent energy source that's already available??? Wake up Wired.
Re:Today's diesel engines are WAY better
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239 MPG Car
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I agree. I have a 1999 Jetta TDI and love it. I don't think I'll ever go back to gas. First, Diesel isn't hard to find. Heck, by the time my empty light comes on I can drive 100 miles. 750 miles per tank. Second, it handles great. I won't say its a sports car, but VW has a 6-cylinder racing diesel. You'll find it hard to spin the tires. The power is in the low RPMs (1800 - 2500). The speedometer goes to 140 MPH and I have no doubt it can do that.
Cold weather, no problem. The fuel line stays nice and toasty and the car will start in no more than 30 seconds on the coldest day. Handles great in the snow with all that added diesel torque.
Its not noisy. If you list to the engine, you can tell its not gasoline, but its not loud. Plus, the thing is supposed to last past 300,000 miles now. I'm at 137,000 and its till running like new. Plus, the turbo sounds great when it kicks in.
No fumes, no smoke... except on cold mornings. Then it puffs a little but that's it.
I'd like to get some biodiesel in it. Petro (diesel and gas) sucks for the environment.
Lastly, for you overclockers out there... for $500 you can get a chip upgrade that ups the horsepower to 125-130. This doesn't sound like much but it gives you the same torque as a V6 VW. Sweet!
So, overall... the TDI is a sweet engine. I wish they'd kick some more powerful ones over here to power those SUVs. Also, I want to get biodiesel in my area (Central PA). Now I have to drive to Maryland. (which ain't far for diesel)
Biodiesel may be less clean burning then hydrogen, but there are two important points to this that involve the entire energy lifecycle, not just when its in your car...
1. You need to make pure hydrogen. This process often involves making electricity which involves fossil fuel or nuclear. This makes hydrogen not clean burning.
2. Biodiesel comes from plants which have a wonderful way of producing oxygen and removing CO2 from the air. This reduces that 'dirtiness' of the biodiesel cycle.
One thing to keep in mind is that petro diesel has a lot of particulate matter after being burned. Biodiesel IS NOT DIESEL as we commonly know of and is a completely different fuel. BUT it runs on diesel engine technology. It reduces up to 90% particulate matter and odor commonly associated with petro-diesel powered vehicles. Its also naturally oxygenated meaning it burns more completely. www.biodiesel.org has specs and test results about all of this. Twice the MPG, half the bad stuff and near elimination of particulate exhaust. And that's on current diesel technology. If engine manufacturers begin working on that, that can even be reduced...
I've been evaluating both fuel cell and another technology that is well on its way to mainstream use... biodiesel. http://www.biodiesel.org. This diesel fuel is made from vegetable oil and methonol. It runs on all existing diesel trucks and cars, has a 100% clean production cycle (no fossil fuels required to make it), heck, it can be made with recycled cooking oil! It mixes with petro diesel allowing a easy integration plan (use a little at a time...). Also, its production requires agriculture which equals oxygen... creating a method to take whatever CO2 is produced and convert it.
Now, this isn't as clean as burning pure hydrogen... but is MUCH better than burning gasoline or diesel. It reduces emmissions by more than 50% and eliminates sulfur, odor and reduces the stuff that make smog by a good bit (all this is commonly associated with petro) And when you take a look at what you need to do to produce hydrogen you're looking at producing electricity (fossil fuels/nuclear) or some other chemical process that is harmful. You still end up putting pollution into the air. It seems to me that fuel cells are a way around battery technology, but I feel it is a very inefficient way to do it.
Also, the fuel cell car cost 1 million to build and broke down once? The National Biodiesel Board drove to the nearest Ford dealership, picked up a diesel pickup, filled it with 100% biodiesel and have been driving it around with no problems for 500,000 miles. They just completed there 10th trip across the country! The fuel cell car got up to about 90 MPH... My Jetta TDI (VW) gets up to 90 everyday! The speedometer goes up to 140 and I have no doubts that it can do that. 750 miles per tank, 55 MPG, road rage baby!
So think about it. A fuel source that is renewable, is produced with no waste or by-product, and its growth produces oxygen and cleans the air. Its also a domestic product and is already in use in Europe and the States. It can also be used on all existing diesel vehicles. I say we take all that money we're burning in research and start to build some pumps, fund agriculture and kick start the future!
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Biodiesel does produce CO2, but significantly less than traditional diesel, more on the magnitude of gasoline. The benefits to biodiesel are great... sure the infrastructure is already in place and its easy to use (runs in all diesel engines).. but the most important attributes are this...
1. It is renewable
2. Producing it produces oxygen and consumes CO2
3. It has the best energy balance of other fuels (it takes less energy to produce than others)
4. Using just a little bit like a 20% blend decreases pollution and dependance on foreign fuels.
Now everyone say hydrogen is the future... but ask yourself, how do you make hydrogen? The most common method is hydrolysis of water (spliting water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity) but there are chemical processes, etc. So to create hydrogen you need to produce electricity to convert the water to hydrogen. This means that hydrogen is not an energy source, by a medium in which energy travels... just like a battery. We are simply moving the energy production from the car to the power plant. So I don't see any advantage here EXCEPT you reduce the amount of pollution in cities.
I think the future is "diversity". We need to except all forms of energy sources and allow the market to handle it. We should have hybrids, biodiesel, electic, natural gas, high efficiency gasoline, fuel cell and hydrogen vehicles on the road and continue to allow these technologies to develop to increase efficiency while maintaining drivability. I think the government should realize the petroleum has hidden costs and tax that while providing benefits to develop new technologies for efficiency.
Here's the deal... I'm a Windows developer because I basically have to be. What I mean is, I would like to use open source because a lot of times it is superior, etc. However, I can't make the transition because doing so is way too expensive.
For instance, let's say I have software that I wrote using ASP/SQL/HTML right? And the client is saying that SQL Server is too expensive to license. I would love to port everything to PostgreSQL. The problem is I need PostgreSQL to be supported in Windows, otherwise its really not a good option for the client to get new hardware, different network configuration, hoping that the ODBC driver is fast, etc.
If open source want's more momentum, I think it needs to begin invading the land of Windows... look at Firefox... its an awesome browser that runs great and looks great on Windows. And guess what... its gaining market share. OpenOffice is already worrying Microsoft because it is bringing open source competition right on their door step.
So, I encourage developers to port their stuff to Windows. I think it would be great if KDE would work in on most of the machines I work with day to day. Why? Because it lessens the fear (often irrational) of change. If I can use KDE apps today... and I use them exclusively... then when I need a new system, why do I need Windows? And that's the point where the momentum begins to happen.
First let me say this is a very powerful and convenient tool that works as advertised right out of the box. However, I am also upset by how easily this group defends Google and attacks Microsoft. I'm sorry, but if you are creating software you need to keep the users in mind and work with the environment you are given.
I have done a lot of research into how the Google Desktop system works. Here are some things I found...
1. The indexing "agent" (not a windows service) runs as the current user. So, Windows security should block Google from viewing those files.
2. Google installs its own web server on the machine and maps to port 4664. They also do a lot of validation to make sure you can only see this information from the local machine. This appears to be pretty strong.
3. Google stores its cache in the following windows directory: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search -- Leading me to believe that this is user specific. I checked permissions on this other users do not have access to the cache, leading me to believe they would have their own version of the cache.
4. Google seems to abide by the rules of the operating system. Unless they are somehow bypassing Windows security (being google they could reverse engineer anything I guess), this is pretty sound. So it really comes down to the user for setting permissions on their files. Otherwise any old search program could also find those files.
5. Google Desktop search is not spyware. I think the fear is how it integrates your desktop with the Google home page but the truth is no information is sent. At least that's what Google says. However, I looked at the source of what is returned and this is not done using client-side script or an ActiveX object, so I'm not sure how they pull this off. This sort of scares me. For instance, the path to one of my files is seen coming from the their server.
Now, the bad side...
While I was impressed by the lockdown of interface to the local machine, this is easily compromised. In an hour or two I created a VBScript class that could host on the user's machine and use local HTTP to access this data. This means that spyware could be created that allow remote access to the otherwise ironclad cache. This is obviously bad since you could just start searching for passwords and possibly get them.
My suggestion to Google? Add additional settings. For instance, right now the default setting is EVERYWHERE, with some control over WHAT gets indexed. I suggest being able to point the index at specific folders, or be able to not index other folders. This is sort of like shipping a firewall with all ports open. Sure its up to the user to lock it down, but if you don't... bad things happen.
Also, more filetypes would be really good. Especially more code files, etc.
I also think the ability to share your cache could be an option. This would be handy to install on a corporate file server to provide access to files (this is the reason I created the remote access hack)
Of course this may be Google's strategy all along... make the free version do everything and be for personal systems, and then sell a version with more file types, more granular control, sharing etc. Sounds like good bait and switch to me.
So that is all. Very good software, very easy to use. Ships wide open and could breach privacy on beginner level users. Can be used for attack and Google needs to consider this. Overall.. thank you Google!
Just the other day I was wondering if FireFox, or another Mozilla system would support this file format. The basic premise is it take an entire web page (including exteral resources such as images, CSS, javascript, etc) and puts it in one file. You can open these files in a text editor and see they represent a multipart, plain text document. So MS's reasoning for doing this is to make them a little friendlier to download, although only viewable on IE. No encryption or compression that I saw.
That said, I'm glad to see Mozilla is looking to support this. Again, its a fairly open and simple format and I don't know why they are having a hard time converting their docs to this. They probably did it in Word and are trying to export as HTML. This will kill almost any webmaster...
Don't know how it happened but I ended up posting as Anonymous Coward. Anyway, make sure you get the laptop version... MUCH SMALLER!!! They also have a FireFly version which uses even small hard drives.
http://www.smartdisk.com/products_HD.asp
I agree. While Microsoft has a good research branch, the innovation levels tend to be in the hardware sector right now (with the integrated software of course). If you remove hardware, how many more bells and whistles can they cram into their software? Also, the luggage they are carrying around prevents them from reinnovating without serious rework and customer frustration. For instance, exchange has a lot of great feature but is a hog... what if there is a better way to handle this? They can't just change it without leaving customers in the dark. Open Source has a much better innovation cycle and fosters good code. Instead of market share being judged by dollars, it is judged by ability and talent; there is a wide gap between the two. Also, product-based software lends itself to do everything and please everyone. This makes software bloated and more difficult to use. Open source can be "customized" to be efficient and more user friendly. I'm not a Linux "expert" but I know you can recompile Apache or Postgres to include support or not... and that makes things more secure and more efficient. Now we need to find a way to make hardware open source.
There are many things you can do with the infrastructure you but forward. I have found that sometimes the way to do it in found in the ASP.NET or ASP book, is not the fastest method, but the most flexible. Have you considered a mechanism for caching in memory as to reduce the amount of processing on the database? DB calls require processing and disk access. In-memory cache could be faster, and memory is cheap. $200 / 1Gb???
I don't know what kind of system you are building, but consider something like this...
1. Request information from your code... (compiled code would be faster of course)
2. Code knows what you are looking for (compare parameters) and sees if it was processed recently.
3. If it was processed, point the code to the cached version in RAM.
4. If cached version is not in RAM, look on disk in a managed way (it knows where its at and doesn't have to look around)
5. If not there, go to the database and regenerate the cache for that item.
Now obviously this wouldn't be truly realtime. But I would say that most information doesn't flow in realtime. If it did, a single client-server config isn't suitable.
Also, think about updating the cache when any changes are made. Keep it in the DB so you can "clear" the cache if something gets messed up. You could even use SQL Server and place a trigger on table that when changed calls a DLL for more advanced processing. You have a lot of options, but they are not in the "book".
This is not just an MS workaround either, all developers could evaluate their code requirements. It may be a pain to program in this way, but the gains could be significant.
Keep in mind that ASP.NET offers this level of caching without custom coding, but custom built stuff would allow more flexibility...
I have to agree with many of the comments. The parser you choose is the most important decision. DOM is typically a memory hog and takes time. In my experience the MSXML 4.0 parser is very fast, written in C, etc. DOM is easier to user, but obviously can have some downsides. XML is great for portability and faster development, but performance concerns can arise.
Find out where the bottleneck lies. If you are running an XSLT processor on the server, that will limit your request/sec. I've found that stream XML from the server to a client (such as IE6, gasp) and having the client render to HTML is wicked fast. The XSLT parser in IE renders asynchronously allowing the results to be displayed before the entire doc is loaded. Of course this is MS specific stuff I've experienced, etc.
SAX is faster for grabbing XML events. While writing a web spider, I was parsing HTML using an HTML parser. I switched from that to regex and saw crawl speed increase significantly. It depends if you need to whole XML doc or not.
You may want to try loading the XML DOM once and serialize the binary. You could then ship the binary around town. Macromedia has some tools like this that can send binary objects to a flash client, etc. Limit the parsing.
Another tip... if you have control over the XML schema, you may want to research how to structure XML for performance. I've heard that attribute heavy XML docs are more efficient than docs with embedded data, etc. Also look into some XML tricks like IDs, etc.
Good luck in your pursuit. Choose your parser carefully. If testing turns out negative, you may just want to use some binary data. XML is a wonderful technology designed to aid in system integration, and ease of use... but it comes at a price.
I think the issue with crashing software is a combination of problems. Obviously cost is the biggest issue. Economics is another. And time is never on the developers side. Fact is, it is not economically advantageous to write rock solid code. Why?
First, it costs a lot of money to test and it is very difficult to keep your new code under wraps (from competition) and still offer a truly well tested system. Open source solves this problem by somewhat reducing competition since the code is free and can be tested by many people in various stages of testing. (Probably why Open Source is more stable)
Don't forget boredom. Once a developer gets something "working" he or she doesn't want to continue to stare at the code for hours contemplating its every possible flaw. We'd rather be reading slashdot.
Second, if your software was 100% bug free, people would never have a reason to upgrade. Guaranteed, if Windows 98 didn't crash so dang much I would never have installed Win2k. My dad had an old Compaq Presario with Windows 3.1 on it and it never crashed. He reluctantly had to upgrade to experience things like MP3's and AOL. (and crashes) I did downgrade from WinXP (Piece of doggie doo) back to Win2k.
Third, time is of the essence. Many times I am pressured to get the code done. It is better to have a software application that works pretty good and start using it than to have it absolutely perfect and never use it. This is an expontential scale. It takes more and more time to make the software a fractionally more stable. And sometimes you find a rewrite is in order. There is a balance to be obtained.
Some other things to consider: Scope and Methodology. The comparison was made between cars and code. I think this is an unfair evaluation because the scope of a car is well defined. You know certain parameters such as the size of the road, the speed it can travel. You have certain benchmarks it must meet, safety regulations. Software on the other hand has few of these. Operating Systems run on an incredible number of hardware and can be configured in infinite number of ways. I've found that PCAnywhere when installed with some other, unrelated software can just blow up an machine. The problem is that scope is not, and most noteable cannot be contained WITHOUT limitations. This is the reason why a Linux server running in Terminal mode with two daemons on it can run FOREVER. The scope is well defined, crap is not compiled into the kernel.
Lastly, methodology is the best answer. The comparison of computer code to legal code is a very good one. The reason why good lawyers write good legal docs is because they have a good methodology. They know how to cover their bases. Programming language developers should consider a development methodology and set up limitations. Java and other type-safe language set up these limitations and the result is safer code. Consider narrowing this even more. But realize that limiting what the developer can do has economic effects. What good is the worlds tightest coding methodology if VBScript still exists and can do the same thing? (and break)
In all, we are held in the balance. Yin and Yang. We cannot have one without the other. You add features, you add bugs. You create limitations, your code doesn't get used. You increase your time to market, you watch your competition buy you out. This is the way of things. A chasing after the wind.
In response to this post and the feedback I received: I apologize for the use of the word "gay" to denote the Viewsonic panel. I do not mean to offend through the use of a word. I consider myself to be fairly open to ideas and lifestyles and do not want to come across as a close-minded, self-rightous know-it-all as that does not describe my general personality. The post was meant to foster action in the community and not to tear down those relationships. I guess its probably the stupid South Park culture that influences these choice of words. Perhaps its the sometimes childish comments I see on Slashdot and I am trying to appeal those people, or just try to fit in. I can now see that my post has enlived some discussion. I hope most of it has a positive effect as the ends are more important than the means. In all I think the open source community is quick to term anything that Microsoft does as a bad idea. I'm not sure if this is self-protection or what. In most cases I think its because we have so much to do as developers that there is little time to handle these other interfaces. Also, it begs to question if all that effort is worth it. So lastly, please accept a sincere apology and take heart that I will never run for public office. I would probably say the stupidest stuff on earth and end up holding public offense. :)
I think this review is VERY biased. For one, its not even a Tablet PC as defined by Microsoft. A tablet PC is a fully functional computer, period. In fact, I just got a Toshiba Portege Tablet PC and use it frequently in tablet mode (it converts to laptop mode for all the wienies that cry about using a pen). Its handwriting recognition is second to none, able to read cursive and messy hand writing. Voice recognition is really good as well, though I am sure there are better products available.
It has builtin WiFi and Bluetooth, 1.4 Gb P3, %12 Mb RAM, and a 40 Gb hard drive. Its a computer and very well adapted to the medical and sales professions.
In all, my experience has been very good with tablet pcs and I wonder when the open source community is going to think about developing such a product. If the open source community does not begin innovating instead of playing catchup to microsoft, it will never succeed. Here is something (the tablet pc) completely new that everyone I show asks "where do I sign to get one"? All of the features are there but the price is still a bit steep. But you have to recoop R+D.
In my opinion these panel things are gay. Tablet PCs rock. Where are the voice recognition and handwriting recognition in the open source community? Are there any efforts? Are we going to let microsoft reinvent the pc while we sit back and simply say... ah... they'll pull it in a year. BTW, they spent millions in R+D and they are not going to simply kill it. They may thorw millions into marketing though which they haven't yet.
Do your homework before advocating decisions for the open source community.
HE is right. It takes ENERGY to make Hydrogen. This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best. The easiest way to make hydrogen is to use electricity to break down water. Hello? Wow are you going to make electricity? That's right, nuclear and fossil fuels, namely oil and coal. That plus the whole take fuel, making electricity, taking electricity, making hydrogen, pumping that into fuel cells to make electricity to power you car... Does anyone sense a loss of energy efficiency in all of this? Yep. In the end it would be more efficient to continue to drive around in your 4-banger car.
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Why do you think all the oil companies don't mind investing into hydrogen? Because they know they will be powering that economy too. Why not go with an energy source that is already available and just as clean. A truly independent energy source that's already available??? Wake up Wired.
I agree. I have a 1999 Jetta TDI and love it. I don't think I'll ever go back to gas. First, Diesel isn't hard to find. Heck, by the time my empty light comes on I can drive 100 miles. 750 miles per tank. Second, it handles great. I won't say its a sports car, but VW has a 6-cylinder racing diesel. You'll find it hard to spin the tires. The power is in the low RPMs (1800 - 2500). The speedometer goes to 140 MPH and I have no doubt it can do that.
Cold weather, no problem. The fuel line stays nice and toasty and the car will start in no more than 30 seconds on the coldest day. Handles great in the snow with all that added diesel torque.
Its not noisy. If you list to the engine, you can tell its not gasoline, but its not loud. Plus, the thing is supposed to last past 300,000 miles now. I'm at 137,000 and its till running like new. Plus, the turbo sounds great when it kicks in.
No fumes, no smoke... except on cold mornings. Then it puffs a little but that's it.
I'd like to get some biodiesel in it. Petro (diesel and gas) sucks for the environment.
Lastly, for you overclockers out there... for $500 you can get a chip upgrade that ups the horsepower to 125-130. This doesn't sound like much but it gives you the same torque as a V6 VW. Sweet!
So, overall... the TDI is a sweet engine. I wish they'd kick some more powerful ones over here to power those SUVs. Also, I want to get biodiesel in my area (Central PA). Now I have to drive to Maryland. (which ain't far for diesel)
Canola Oil = 100 gallons per acre per year Soybean Oil = 50 gallons per acre per year
Biodiesel may be less clean burning then hydrogen, but there are two important points to this that involve the entire energy lifecycle, not just when its in your car... 1. You need to make pure hydrogen. This process often involves making electricity which involves fossil fuel or nuclear. This makes hydrogen not clean burning. 2. Biodiesel comes from plants which have a wonderful way of producing oxygen and removing CO2 from the air. This reduces that 'dirtiness' of the biodiesel cycle.
One thing to keep in mind is that petro diesel has a lot of particulate matter after being burned. Biodiesel IS NOT DIESEL as we commonly know of and is a completely different fuel. BUT it runs on diesel engine technology. It reduces up to 90% particulate matter and odor commonly associated with petro-diesel powered vehicles. Its also naturally oxygenated meaning it burns more completely. www.biodiesel.org has specs and test results about all of this. Twice the MPG, half the bad stuff and near elimination of particulate exhaust. And that's on current diesel technology. If engine manufacturers begin working on that, that can even be reduced...
I've been evaluating both fuel cell and another technology that is well on its way to mainstream use... biodiesel. http://www.biodiesel.org. This diesel fuel is made from vegetable oil and methonol. It runs on all existing diesel trucks and cars, has a 100% clean production cycle (no fossil fuels required to make it), heck, it can be made with recycled cooking oil! It mixes with petro diesel allowing a easy integration plan (use a little at a time...). Also, its production requires agriculture which equals oxygen... creating a method to take whatever CO2 is produced and convert it.
Now, this isn't as clean as burning pure hydrogen... but is MUCH better than burning gasoline or diesel. It reduces emmissions by more than 50% and eliminates sulfur, odor and reduces the stuff that make smog by a good bit (all this is commonly associated with petro) And when you take a look at what you need to do to produce hydrogen you're looking at producing electricity (fossil fuels/nuclear) or some other chemical process that is harmful. You still end up putting pollution into the air. It seems to me that fuel cells are a way around battery technology, but I feel it is a very inefficient way to do it.
Also, the fuel cell car cost 1 million to build and broke down once? The National Biodiesel Board drove to the nearest Ford dealership, picked up a diesel pickup, filled it with 100% biodiesel and have been driving it around with no problems for 500,000 miles. They just completed there 10th trip across the country! The fuel cell car got up to about 90 MPH... My Jetta TDI (VW) gets up to 90 everyday! The speedometer goes up to 140 and I have no doubts that it can do that. 750 miles per tank, 55 MPG, road rage baby!
So think about it. A fuel source that is renewable, is produced with no waste or by-product, and its growth produces oxygen and cleans the air. Its also a domestic product and is already in use in Europe and the States. It can also be used on all existing diesel vehicles. I say we take all that money we're burning in research and start to build some pumps, fund agriculture and kick start the future!