Actually, the newer stuff isn't anywhere near as bad as the stuff they were testing even a couple of years ago. Motorola and Current Technologies both have systems that avoid putting any HF on the MV lines (those long, unshielded ones that run along the highway and through neighborhoods). Motorola uses its Canopy wireless system, and Current uses low-band VHF (30-50MHz) coupled with HomePlug modems.
That said, many of the BPL field tests are still being conducted with previous-generation equipment.
It's interesting to note that many BPL field trials are cut short, with no deployment planned by the testing company. I'm curious to see if any of the newer-technology trials generate any better results.
I wonder what would have happened if Borland had made a TurboAda.
I think they would have, if the DOD hadn't mandated that there be NO subsets of Ada. That meant that every implementation had to support multithreading (among other things), which would have been difficult on DOS since it didn't even have a scheduler, let alone threads.
While Java does include some built-in support for multithreading primitives, its underlying model (using locks on data to prevent simultaneous access) is the same as many other mainstream languages today.
In other words, Java provides built-in support for traditional concurrency methods, rather than making you reinvent that particular wheel. Which means that if you've done multi-threaded programming before, Java probably supports whatever techniques you've (presumably successfully) used. I fail to see how this is the bad thing that previous posters seem to make it out to be. I don't think anyone is saying that Java has some wonderful new mutithreading paradigm, it just provides support directly within the language for threads and basic concurrency control. Yes, I'm sure there are better things out there, but the point is that Java is a mainstream general-purpose language with threading support. How many of those are there?
Shure in general -- nothing at all. The Shure I got from Sam Ash -- well, I got what I paid for. That was kind of my point: you can cheap out and record your band live in somebody's basement with a little four-track, but it'll sound like that's exactly what you did. If that's the sound you want, they you're good to go, but if you want something a little more polished, you'll have to pony up more time, effort and bucks. None of the three are optional.
You ever priced a Mackie? Studio time? A decent microphone? There are a large number of non-trivial costs to producing an album. No, GarageBand and a Shure mic from Sam Ash isn't going to cut it. If you want professional sound (i.e., something that will sell), then you've got to get some professional gear. And that takes professional amounts of cash. Sure, you can cut your distribution costs with on-line sales, and yes, distributino costs are significant. But to hand-wave the rest of the costs of production as "almost nonexistent" shows a shocking lack of common sense.
Actually, SGI's problems stem mainly from their decision to drop MIPS and pin their future to the Itanium. Which didn't ship, and didn't ship, and didn't ship, until they were forced to play catch-up late in the game with a new revision of the MIPS core. And still Itanium didn't ship, so they had to do another round of development. None of this was in the budget, and most of their best CPU people had left when it was decided that MIPS had no future. So now they're desperately trying to eke out enough revenue to show a profit (aided by drastic layoffs), in the hopes that someone will buy them. Just goes to show that sometimes, even having real-world moves won't save you if your partners drop the ball.
Solaris, which nobody wants to use so much as within 50 feet of a desktop machine.
Actually, it's no different from any other Unix, for the most part. You can run Gnome or KDE for your desktop (or AfterStep or fvwm or any other X window manager), it supports OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle and other commonly-requested programs[1]. Plus, it's got the oft-cited ZFS and DTrace, which are pretty nice (if you need that sort of thing). And, it's free-as-in-beer, so you're not paying a "Sun tax". And it's an industrial-quality OS with lots of development time and R&D dollars spent on it.
Now if we could just get Apple to drop Darwin and their fifty-interrupts-to-do-a-context-switch microkernel and adopt Solaris, we'd really have something...
[1] Actually, the reason I stopped using Linux was the plethora of "w1z4rd c0d3zzz" that passed for applications. If I wanted an app server that just ate CPU for ten minutes and then puked all over its shoes, I could write it myself...
It's funny, I looked at it (they gave me the test before my "live" interview, and handed me the results when I left) and it said some fairly negative things about me (loner, needs his hand held when given new tasks, tendency to run with scissors;-). I still got the job though. I've only been here a couple of days, but things are going pretty well and my boss seems quite happy with my work (more like my comprehension of what my work will involve when we finally get something I was hired to do).
My advice? Go ahead and take the test. Techies aren't hired for their personality, so if you've got a proven track record a test shouldn't affect your chances one way or the other. OTOH, if this is your first or second job, then a test might carry more weight (since they've got little else to go on).
QUAL was a pre-SQL relational language, which had much better conformance with relational algebra. In order to use it to its limits, though, you had to really know relational theory. I vaguely remember something about being able to specify an ordering within a subselect that was different than the ordering in the outer query, but I don't really remember. I do remember that QUEL "made sense", more so than SQL did when I learned it. Then again, my first RDBMS was University INGRES, so I learned QUEL first, so maybe it's no surprise that I prefer it. Used to, anyway -- I haven't used QUEL since....hmmm, over a decade, anyway.
Oracle ships with an Java GUI that makes the database creation process alot less painful
I have never seen an Oracle DBA (and I've been one) use the Java GUI for anything even remotely complex. It's too slow for most of the complicated tasks, and for simple tasks (say creating a new user/role), it's even faster to use the command line.
You are comparing a Sabertooth tiger with a common house cat which is pretty redundant.
Maybe you could give a shout upstairs and ask your mom what "redundant" means?
OracleDB is a much more complex product than Postgres is
Gee, ya'think? Gosh, maybe that's why a good Oracle DBA can pull six figures, and even a haphazard part-timer like me can make enough to pay the mortgage. The question is, is all that complexity necessary? All the DBAs at major shops that I've worked at (Union Pacific, Freightliner, Nike, to name a few) have their own script generator that permits them to tweak a handful of parameters (base directory, number of redo files, etc.) then spits out the createdb script and executes it. Even that's more work than it takes to create a new database on PostgreSQL. Sure, Oracle's more configurable and more tunable, but it's high-maintenance kit. Some people install expensive engine management systems to get the last usable bit of power out of thier engines. If you need it, then you probably really need it, but if you don't, then it's not just a waste of money, it's a waste of time as well. Same with Oracle.
While working for a former employer I...blah, blah, blah
Sooooo..... Your point is that Oracle scales better and handles better at the limit than PostgreSQL? And that relates to relative ease of configuration....how? Nobody's arguing that PosgreSQL is better for large installations than Oracle (except you and your little strawman). The point is, Oracle's a lot more complex than a lot of shops (maybe even a lot of Oracle shops) really need.
Oh, and was your previous employer really billing millions of dollars a day through MySQL? I doubt it, unless they showed other suicidal tendencies...
Oracle: - Create new directories for bdump, cdump, udump and archivelog. - Add new files for the new tablespace(s), control and redo logs. - Add the new SID to TNSNAMES.DAT and listener.ora - Create the new tablespace(s)
PostgreSQL: - "createdb "
Oracle's got PosgreSQL beat in terms of features (which, as someone else already noted, many Oracle users don't need), but I wouldn't try whining that PostgreSQL is "hard to configure" Not compared to Oracle it isn't!
I first learned Unix on 4.2BSD, so the BSD conventions were more "natural" to me. I also used Linux back in the day of the 2.0 kernel (I think the first one I compiled was 2.0.36), and I just found the quality of much of the software appalling. Not Linux per se, but a lot of the stuff on Freshmeat was "of variable quality", to be charitable. It was sooo disappointing to find exactly what you needed, then discover that it was written by a HS sophomore and had hard-wired directory paths, required a genuine SoundBlaster card to play the "connection successful" sound and would only compile on a version of gcc that was a major revision behind.
I'm sure things are much better now (I haven't run into too many issues with stuff I've gotton from SourceForge or Tigris), but it was just enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. That said, I wouldn't hesitate to give Linux another shot if there was a compelling reason to do so, but with the FOSS community doing such a good job of making things cross-platform, I can't see that happening any time soon.
I got a Booq bag for a trip, and I wound up sending it back. They look great and all, but in the end there just wasn't enough room in it for much more than the laptop and PS brick. (I guess that's why they sell so many accessories that attach to the shoulder strap.) Sure, that should be all you need, but it was a hella big bag for the bit of space it gave you. And the sleeve that came with it wasn't very well padded. So I sent my $100+ bag back and hied myself down to $OFFICESUPPLYSTORE and picked up a thickly-padded laptop sleeve for $30. It's got pockets for cables & whatnot, and fit nicely into the bag I already have (an old-skool Timbuk2 Dee Dawg).
I used NetBSD as my desktop for over two years, and didn't have any usability issues. Thunderbird for e-mail, Firefox for browsing, OpenOffice for the occasional resume tweak. Plus all the "standard" FOSS stuff: Gimp, Apache, Tomcat, Ethereal, gAIM, etc. VLC for the (very) occasional MP3/DVD playback.
Granted, I'm more of a pure software developer (I don't game, and I don't use my machine for "media" too much), but I can't recall a time when I got "stuck" because I didn't have some piece of software available. I believe both KDE and GNOME are available (I used AfterStep), so there shouldn't be too much confusion switching a Windows user over.
IIRC, the thermocouples that produce electricity from the (thorium?) core are the weak link, the actual thermal output from the source could provide sufficient power for close to a century.
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Actually, the newer stuff isn't anywhere near as bad as the stuff they were testing even a couple of years ago. Motorola and Current Technologies both have systems that avoid putting any HF on the MV lines (those long, unshielded ones that run along the highway and through neighborhoods). Motorola uses its Canopy wireless system, and Current uses low-band VHF (30-50MHz) coupled with HomePlug modems.
That said, many of the BPL field tests are still being conducted with previous-generation equipment.
It's interesting to note that many BPL field trials are cut short, with no deployment planned by the testing company. I'm curious to see if any of the newer-technology trials generate any better results.
That's just the additional fonts disk, right?
Nope, printer driver for a daisy-wheel that just happens to work with the Spinwriter...
Where do you think nVidia came from?
it seems to me that Java doesn't give us a whole lot more than Ada had
How about a runtime you can use on a cell phone?
I wonder what would have happened if Borland had made a TurboAda.
I think they would have, if the DOD hadn't mandated that there be NO subsets of Ada. That meant that every implementation had to support multithreading (among other things), which would have been difficult on DOS since it didn't even have a scheduler, let alone threads.
While Java does include some built-in support for multithreading primitives, its underlying model (using locks on data to prevent simultaneous access) is the same as many other mainstream languages today.
In other words, Java provides built-in support for traditional concurrency methods, rather than making you reinvent that particular wheel. Which means that if you've done multi-threaded programming before, Java probably supports whatever techniques you've (presumably successfully) used. I fail to see how this is the bad thing that previous posters seem to make it out to be. I don't think anyone is saying that Java has some wonderful new mutithreading paradigm, it just provides support directly within the language for threads and basic concurrency control. Yes, I'm sure there are better things out there, but the point is that Java is a mainstream general-purpose language with threading support. How many of those are there?
And what's wrong with Shure, btw?
Shure in general -- nothing at all. The Shure I got from Sam Ash -- well, I got what I paid for. That was kind of my point: you can cheap out and record your band live in somebody's basement with a little four-track, but it'll sound like that's exactly what you did. If that's the sound you want, they you're good to go, but if you want something a little more polished, you'll have to pony up more time, effort and bucks. None of the three are optional.
With downloads, costs are almost nonexistant.
Now that's not even close to right.
You ever priced a Mackie? Studio time? A decent microphone? There are a large number of non-trivial costs to producing an album. No, GarageBand and a Shure mic from Sam Ash isn't going to cut it. If you want professional sound (i.e., something that will sell), then you've got to get some professional gear. And that takes professional amounts of cash. Sure, you can cut your distribution costs with on-line sales, and yes, distributino costs are significant. But to hand-wave the rest of the costs of production as "almost nonexistent" shows a shocking lack of common sense.
Actually, SGI's problems stem mainly from their decision to drop MIPS and pin their future to the Itanium. Which didn't ship, and didn't ship, and didn't ship, until they were forced to play catch-up late in the game with a new revision of the MIPS core. And still Itanium didn't ship, so they had to do another round of development. None of this was in the budget, and most of their best CPU people had left when it was decided that MIPS had no future. So now they're desperately trying to eke out enough revenue to show a profit (aided by drastic layoffs), in the hopes that someone will buy them. Just goes to show that sometimes, even having real-world moves won't save you if your partners drop the ball.
Solaris, which nobody wants to use so much as within 50 feet of a desktop machine.
Actually, it's no different from any other Unix, for the most part. You can run Gnome or KDE for your desktop (or AfterStep or fvwm or any other X window manager), it supports OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle and other commonly-requested programs[1]. Plus, it's got the oft-cited ZFS and DTrace, which are pretty nice (if you need that sort of thing). And, it's free-as-in-beer, so you're not paying a "Sun tax". And it's an industrial-quality OS with lots of development time and R&D dollars spent on it.
Now if we could just get Apple to drop Darwin and their fifty-interrupts-to-do-a-context-switch microkernel and adopt Solaris, we'd really have something...
[1] Actually, the reason I stopped using Linux was the plethora of "w1z4rd c0d3zzz" that passed for applications. If I wanted an app server that just ate CPU for ten minutes and then puked all over its shoes, I could write it myself...
Answer, hell, it's their echo of Java....
It's funny, I looked at it (they gave me the test before my "live" interview, and handed me the results when I left) and it said some fairly negative things about me (loner, needs his hand held when given new tasks, tendency to run with scissors ;-). I still got the job though. I've only been here a couple of days, but things are going pretty well and my boss seems quite happy with my work (more like my comprehension of what my work will involve when we finally get something I was hired to do).
My advice? Go ahead and take the test. Techies aren't hired for their personality, so if you've got a proven track record a test shouldn't affect your chances one way or the other. OTOH, if this is your first or second job, then a test might carry more weight (since they've got little else to go on).
:q! is clearly documented in the vi manual as well, but I still say it's unintuitive.
Dunno, it's more intuitive than "ZZ" (which is what I tend to use).
QUAL was a pre-SQL relational language, which had much better conformance with relational algebra. In order to use it to its limits, though, you had to really know relational theory. I vaguely remember something about being able to specify an ordering within a subselect that was different than the ordering in the outer query, but I don't really remember. I do remember that QUEL "made sense", more so than SQL did when I learned it. Then again, my first RDBMS was University INGRES, so I learned QUEL first, so maybe it's no surprise that I prefer it. Used to, anyway -- I haven't used QUEL since....hmmm, over a decade, anyway.
Oracle ships with an Java GUI that makes the database creation process alot less painful
I have never seen an Oracle DBA (and I've been one) use the Java GUI for anything even remotely complex. It's too slow for most of the complicated tasks, and for simple tasks (say creating a new user/role), it's even faster to use the command line.
You are comparing a Sabertooth tiger with a common house cat which is pretty redundant.
Maybe you could give a shout upstairs and ask your mom what "redundant" means?
OracleDB is a much more complex product than Postgres is
Gee, ya'think? Gosh, maybe that's why a good Oracle DBA can pull six figures, and even a haphazard part-timer like me can make enough to pay the mortgage. The question is, is all that complexity necessary? All the DBAs at major shops that I've worked at (Union Pacific, Freightliner, Nike, to name a few) have their own script generator that permits them to tweak a handful of parameters (base directory, number of redo files, etc.) then spits out the createdb script and executes it. Even that's more work than it takes to create a new database on PostgreSQL. Sure, Oracle's more configurable and more tunable, but it's high-maintenance kit. Some people install expensive engine management systems to get the last usable bit of power out of thier engines. If you need it, then you probably really need it, but if you don't, then it's not just a waste of money, it's a waste of time as well. Same with Oracle.
While working for a former employer I...blah, blah, blah
Sooooo..... Your point is that Oracle scales better and handles better at the limit than PostgreSQL? And that relates to relative ease of configuration....how? Nobody's arguing that PosgreSQL is better for large installations than Oracle (except you and your little strawman). The point is, Oracle's a lot more complex than a lot of shops (maybe even a lot of Oracle shops) really need.
Oh, and was your previous employer really billing millions of dollars a day through MySQL? I doubt it, unless they showed other suicidal tendencies...
Oracle and DB2. A.k.a., "what the big boys use".
Compare that to trying to create a new database:
Oracle:
- Create new directories for bdump, cdump, udump and archivelog.
- Add new files for the new tablespace(s), control and redo logs.
- Add the new SID to TNSNAMES.DAT and listener.ora
- Create the new tablespace(s)
PostgreSQL:
- "createdb "
Oracle's got PosgreSQL beat in terms of features (which, as someone else already noted, many Oracle users don't need), but I wouldn't try whining that PostgreSQL is "hard to configure" Not compared to Oracle it isn't!
I first learned Unix on 4.2BSD, so the BSD conventions were more "natural" to me. I also used Linux back in the day of the 2.0 kernel (I think the first one I compiled was 2.0.36), and I just found the quality of much of the software appalling. Not Linux per se, but a lot of the stuff on Freshmeat was "of variable quality", to be charitable. It was sooo disappointing to find exactly what you needed, then discover that it was written by a HS sophomore and had hard-wired directory paths, required a genuine SoundBlaster card to play the "connection successful" sound and would only compile on a version of gcc that was a major revision behind.
I'm sure things are much better now (I haven't run into too many issues with stuff I've gotton from SourceForge or Tigris), but it was just enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. That said, I wouldn't hesitate to give Linux another shot if there was a compelling reason to do so, but with the FOSS community doing such a good job of making things cross-platform, I can't see that happening any time soon.
Of the 12,000 pages remaining, 10,000 were marked "This page intentionally left blank".
The real AKAImBatman has been retired five years and living like a king in San Francisco
Are you sure that isn't "living like a queen..."?
I got a Booq bag for a trip, and I wound up sending it back. They look great and all, but in the end there just wasn't enough room in it for much more than the laptop and PS brick. (I guess that's why they sell so many accessories that attach to the shoulder strap.) Sure, that should be all you need, but it was a hella big bag for the bit of space it gave you. And the sleeve that came with it wasn't very well padded. So I sent my $100+ bag back and hied myself down to $OFFICESUPPLYSTORE and picked up a thickly-padded laptop sleeve for $30. It's got pockets for cables & whatnot, and fit nicely into the bag I already have (an old-skool Timbuk2 Dee Dawg).
I used NetBSD as my desktop for over two years, and didn't have any usability issues. Thunderbird for e-mail, Firefox for browsing, OpenOffice for the occasional resume tweak. Plus all the "standard" FOSS stuff: Gimp, Apache, Tomcat, Ethereal, gAIM, etc. VLC for the (very) occasional MP3/DVD playback.
Granted, I'm more of a pure software developer (I don't game, and I don't use my machine for "media" too much), but I can't recall a time when I got "stuck" because I didn't have some piece of software available. I believe both KDE and GNOME are available (I used AfterStep), so there shouldn't be too much confusion switching a Windows user over.
A source so powerful, it can only be used for good or evil!
I'm sure they squander all the money on booze and hookers.
So OpenBSD's doing some marketing now? It's about time!
IIRC, the thermocouples that produce electricity from the (thorium?) core are the weak link, the actual thermal output from the source could provide sufficient power for close to a century.