I comprehended what you wrote just fine, I simply didn't agree with it. There is the bundle itself, and then the bonuses--you want the bonuses, you pay over $x.xx. Simple. You don't have to like it, but you went so far as to claim the HIB folks are violating their own principles (as if you are the arbiter of what those principles may be.)
As a parent, I've never seen this articulated so well, but I wholeheartedly agree. I am sick to death of parents who make a point of martyring themselves publicly so everyone knows what good parents they are, and by extension what good people they are. These are often the same parents who like to show off their kids to other people, as well, as if the kids are status symbols or trophies.
What your kids should see is not that you will do absolutely anything for them, but that you will always try do the right thing regardless of whether it benefits you. That's the kind of example they need, not an example that teaches them that they're the center of the universe and only their needs and wants matter.
There is, after all, a big difference between taking responsibility for your children (which is essential) and attempting to shape the whole world to cater to their whims (or at least give them the impression that this is a desirable state of affairs, or even possible.)
Yeah, I was surprised to hear that. I thought the Linux/Mac versions in the HIBs were almost always native ports. If they can't manage a native port, they shouldn't advertise that game as being "compatible" with Linux/Mac. (Getting it to run under WINE is your own business, then.)
You always get the whole bundle. What you get for paying above the average are bonuses, not part of the original bundle. It's a "thank you" for going the extra mile.
Sure, it probably boosts the contributions, but for crying out loud--you're talking about getting a handful of decent games for under ten bucks. How much of a cheapskate does one have to be to whine about that, when retail games for major platforms average $50 to $60?
CityTime is a totally separate initiative, and in fact it was found that the contractor involved with it bilked the city out of tons of money. It cost about $700M, and in the end the city got a settlement for $466M. The original estimate for the project was about $68M, so the city will still have wound up paying about 3.5x that for it.
That's not a problem with capitalism, just a regulatory issue. If you want to discourage short-term investing, you tax the crap out of it. Place very high taxes on short-term capital gains, and gradually lower them the longer the stock is held. Then it encourages people to invest for the long term rather than the quick pump-and-dump.
Per-transaction taxes can supplement this, to discourage rapid trading meant for quick price manipulation.
Grow a sense of humor, herp derp. What's wrong with using a bit of current slang? Do you take no joy in life? Shall we all speak as though we live in Shakespeare's time? Yea, verily.
Slashdot has a lot of humorless wankers these days.
The law recognizes that people discriminate on the basis of "race." The law wouldn't have to recognize anything about race if society, as a whole, would make it a non-issue. But we don't. There is still ample racism in the US. There are places where non-whites are treated as second-class citizens, where they are abused and intimidated, and sometimes murdered. More subtly, they are denied jobs and housing.
In this case, the law has stepped in to correct an injustice, not enforce a concept of race on society at large. Society is already hung up on race. The law just has to reflect the reality and try to address it.
Just look at some of the comments around here. It's pretty clear American society still devalues and dehumanizes gay people, even if they don't come right out and admit it.
He didn't simply record it, he broadcasted it to all of his friends so they could watch. The obvious goal here was intimidation and humiliation. Classic bullying.
Facebook has 800 million users, and doesn't seem poised to grow much beyond that. Their potential user base is saturated. Going forward, they'll be lucky to keep a steady user base, balanced out by people leaving and new folks joining. But there will likely be a tipping point where the influx of new users won't be enough to keep up with people leaving, and they'll become Myspace.
What keeps people on the site, apparently, are all those games. I don't play any of them, but they seem to be insanely popular. I believe they even offer their own currency, which you purchase with real money, to use in Facebook games. They obviously have ideas about how to monetize their platform, but they aren't profiting much from it. Google seems to have a lot more employees (~22,000 vs. Facebook's ~3500) yet is much more profitable. Google also, as far as I know, has a ton more infrastructure to maintain. So, I don't think it's overhead that's hurting Facebook's bottom line, they just have a poor revenue strategy. Given the wealth of information their users freely provide, there is really no excuse for this.
All I know is, Google gives me much more relevant ads than Facebook ever has. The Facebook ads I get tend to be generic and shady-sounding: dating sites, diet pills, and political propaganda that is the exact opposite of what I'd be interested in. Awesome!
I don't think Facebook has yet become adept at serving relevant, context-sensitive ads. If they can manage that, they might do a lot better. Right now, their ads just seem to be 90% garbage.
While I'm sure that happens, I have yet to encounter it.:-p
I'm also not against having two databases: one that's not normalized but is instead fully tuned for application performance; another that's a fully normalized, deeply relational data warehouse. The former feeds the latter. I've seen applications that do this, so they can code for performance on the frontend, and have reliable data consistency/logic on the backend.
Yeah, it really depends on what you are doing. But any time you break normalization there should be a good reason. Performance is certainly a valid reason. "I'm too lazy to make a well-designed database," however, is not.
If you find yourself breaking normalization all the time, then you've probably found a use case where a relational database isn't the best tool for the job.
While there is a "right" way to use a given tool, there is no one tool that is right for every situation. People who get this backwards are zealots and will often make poor decisions.
I can definitely see the value in making an informed tradeoff, but like you said, a lot of the time it's not an informed decision--they just do it to make it work and don't really have the expertise to know which is the right way to go. I've definitely seen enough bad database designs to know that most developers just have no clue how to design them. The worst I've seen had bad designs and poor performance, and were built in a completely ad hoc manner without any eye toward maintainability, performance, or data integrity/consistency. The philosophy was just "make it work."
I think developers need to realize that databases are a lot like code: first you prototype, then you throw away the prototype and do it right. (Then again, plenty of developers just keep the prototype and use it for production.)
I think the main problem is application developers not understanding anything about database theory. The vast majority of databases I encounter are not normalized at all, and it's almost always because they were designed by a developer with no database background.
Granted, I didn't come into this field with that background, either, but I made a point to learn it, and now I'm very cognizant of implementing sound database designs. This whole idea of throwing random strings of structured text into a database column, and then relying entirely on the program code to parse and use it... well, why the hell even use a relational database, then?
Relational databases aren't suitable for every application, nor are "bigtable" and other NoSQL implementations. The problem is that developers use a particular kind of database without really understanding how to use it properly. If they can get data in, and get data out, that's basically all they care about. Never mind if they make it a maintenance nightmare in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an article about it, in case you're interested:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10212843-93.html
Indeed, some authors actually do their own translations, or have substantial input into them.
I comprehended what you wrote just fine, I simply didn't agree with it. There is the bundle itself, and then the bonuses--you want the bonuses, you pay over $x.xx. Simple. You don't have to like it, but you went so far as to claim the HIB folks are violating their own principles (as if you are the arbiter of what those principles may be.)
As a parent, I've never seen this articulated so well, but I wholeheartedly agree. I am sick to death of parents who make a point of martyring themselves publicly so everyone knows what good parents they are, and by extension what good people they are. These are often the same parents who like to show off their kids to other people, as well, as if the kids are status symbols or trophies.
What your kids should see is not that you will do absolutely anything for them, but that you will always try do the right thing regardless of whether it benefits you. That's the kind of example they need, not an example that teaches them that they're the center of the universe and only their needs and wants matter.
There is, after all, a big difference between taking responsibility for your children (which is essential) and attempting to shape the whole world to cater to their whims (or at least give them the impression that this is a desirable state of affairs, or even possible.)
Yeah, I was surprised to hear that. I thought the Linux/Mac versions in the HIBs were almost always native ports. If they can't manage a native port, they shouldn't advertise that game as being "compatible" with Linux/Mac. (Getting it to run under WINE is your own business, then.)
You always get the whole bundle. What you get for paying above the average are bonuses, not part of the original bundle. It's a "thank you" for going the extra mile.
Sure, it probably boosts the contributions, but for crying out loud--you're talking about getting a handful of decent games for under ten bucks. How much of a cheapskate does one have to be to whine about that, when retail games for major platforms average $50 to $60?
CityTime is a totally separate initiative, and in fact it was found that the contractor involved with it bilked the city out of tons of money. It cost about $700M, and in the end the city got a settlement for $466M. The original estimate for the project was about $68M, so the city will still have wound up paying about 3.5x that for it.
That's not a problem with capitalism, just a regulatory issue. If you want to discourage short-term investing, you tax the crap out of it. Place very high taxes on short-term capital gains, and gradually lower them the longer the stock is held. Then it encourages people to invest for the long term rather than the quick pump-and-dump.
Per-transaction taxes can supplement this, to discourage rapid trading meant for quick price manipulation.
Yeah, I remember when MLB.com was using Silverlight. It was such a disaster they ended up ditching it for Flash, too.
That's what is known as a "platitude" and it doesn't really mean anything.
The law should favor criminals instead, then? :-p
Grow a sense of humor, herp derp. What's wrong with using a bit of current slang? Do you take no joy in life? Shall we all speak as though we live in Shakespeare's time? Yea, verily.
Slashdot has a lot of humorless wankers these days.
The law recognizes that people discriminate on the basis of "race." The law wouldn't have to recognize anything about race if society, as a whole, would make it a non-issue. But we don't. There is still ample racism in the US. There are places where non-whites are treated as second-class citizens, where they are abused and intimidated, and sometimes murdered. More subtly, they are denied jobs and housing.
In this case, the law has stepped in to correct an injustice, not enforce a concept of race on society at large. Society is already hung up on race. The law just has to reflect the reality and try to address it.
Just look at some of the comments around here. It's pretty clear American society still devalues and dehumanizes gay people, even if they don't come right out and admit it.
It's fucking sickening.
He didn't simply record it, he broadcasted it to all of his friends so they could watch. The obvious goal here was intimidation and humiliation. Classic bullying.
Facebook has 800 million users, and doesn't seem poised to grow much beyond that. Their potential user base is saturated. Going forward, they'll be lucky to keep a steady user base, balanced out by people leaving and new folks joining. But there will likely be a tipping point where the influx of new users won't be enough to keep up with people leaving, and they'll become Myspace.
What keeps people on the site, apparently, are all those games. I don't play any of them, but they seem to be insanely popular. I believe they even offer their own currency, which you purchase with real money, to use in Facebook games. They obviously have ideas about how to monetize their platform, but they aren't profiting much from it. Google seems to have a lot more employees (~22,000 vs. Facebook's ~3500) yet is much more profitable. Google also, as far as I know, has a ton more infrastructure to maintain. So, I don't think it's overhead that's hurting Facebook's bottom line, they just have a poor revenue strategy. Given the wealth of information their users freely provide, there is really no excuse for this.
All I know is, Google gives me much more relevant ads than Facebook ever has. The Facebook ads I get tend to be generic and shady-sounding: dating sites, diet pills, and political propaganda that is the exact opposite of what I'd be interested in. Awesome!
I don't think Facebook has yet become adept at serving relevant, context-sensitive ads. If they can manage that, they might do a lot better. Right now, their ads just seem to be 90% garbage.
People get paid to do this, obviously, and Slashdot tolerates it because they know what side their bread is buttered on.
Or have it supply the favorite answer of programmers everywhere: "It depends!"
While I'm sure that happens, I have yet to encounter it. :-p
I'm also not against having two databases: one that's not normalized but is instead fully tuned for application performance; another that's a fully normalized, deeply relational data warehouse. The former feeds the latter. I've seen applications that do this, so they can code for performance on the frontend, and have reliable data consistency/logic on the backend.
I'll give you credit for coming up with one of the more amusing conspiracy theories I've heard recently.
Yeah, it really depends on what you are doing. But any time you break normalization there should be a good reason. Performance is certainly a valid reason. "I'm too lazy to make a well-designed database," however, is not.
If you find yourself breaking normalization all the time, then you've probably found a use case where a relational database isn't the best tool for the job.
While there is a "right" way to use a given tool, there is no one tool that is right for every situation. People who get this backwards are zealots and will often make poor decisions.
I can definitely see the value in making an informed tradeoff, but like you said, a lot of the time it's not an informed decision--they just do it to make it work and don't really have the expertise to know which is the right way to go. I've definitely seen enough bad database designs to know that most developers just have no clue how to design them. The worst I've seen had bad designs and poor performance, and were built in a completely ad hoc manner without any eye toward maintainability, performance, or data integrity/consistency. The philosophy was just "make it work."
I think developers need to realize that databases are a lot like code: first you prototype, then you throw away the prototype and do it right. (Then again, plenty of developers just keep the prototype and use it for production.)
I think the main problem is application developers not understanding anything about database theory. The vast majority of databases I encounter are not normalized at all, and it's almost always because they were designed by a developer with no database background.
Granted, I didn't come into this field with that background, either, but I made a point to learn it, and now I'm very cognizant of implementing sound database designs. This whole idea of throwing random strings of structured text into a database column, and then relying entirely on the program code to parse and use it... well, why the hell even use a relational database, then?
Relational databases aren't suitable for every application, nor are "bigtable" and other NoSQL implementations. The problem is that developers use a particular kind of database without really understanding how to use it properly. If they can get data in, and get data out, that's basically all they care about. Never mind if they make it a maintenance nightmare in the process.
The use of Photoshop does not automatically imply lying.