"Microsoft, being at the top of the OS market, will simply add the costs of the fines to the price they charge for their OS."
That's not how monopoly pricing works; that's how a perfectly competitive market works. In a perfectly competitive market, adding to the costs increases the price because the price is driven down to the cost (the supply curve). In a monopoly, adding to the costs has zero effect, because price is determined by *demand*. I.e. they sell the OS for the most that they can get already. If they could sell it for more, they already would.
With monopolies, prices are chosen because an increase in price reduces the quantity of sales such that total revenue drops. Similarly, a decrease in price reduces revenue by more than the increased quantity of sales, so that total revenue drops. This fine does not affect that calculation in any way. Therefore, for them to increase prices, they would either have to accept lower revenue or they would have had to have been underpricing their product. I.e. charging less than the market would bear.
Is it simply because he was not FULLY DEAD that they did not pull the plug?
Well, that COULD be a reason,
I'm fairly certain that a Princess Bride reference (however funny) was not the reason why they didn't remove life support. At least I would hope that they had some better, more scientific reason. For example, that he was in a minimally concious state (brain still working at some level) rather than a persistent vegetative state (no higher brain activity).
"imagine if we could make a "style sheet" of some sort and apply to the code and sudenly all the code you load into your editor is styled as you liked?"
Yeah, but people would still screw it up. For example:
// K&R style -- comments on the if/else go before if () { // comments on the if clause go after the first { } else { // comments on the else go after the else { }
// BSD style if () { } else { }
# Conway style if () { } # This also is a problem with BSD, but I thought I'd put it here. # Comments on the else clause go between the closing } of the if # and the else {. Net result? Hanging elses. I.e. someone removes # the if () {} but does not realize that there is an else. Further, # since an if can only be closed by lookahead, this results in real # oddities, like the else clause attaching to the previous if. else { }
I find the last to be the single ugliest syntax. The theory behind it is that it is best to put keywords in the left most column. However, the problem here (IMO) is that an else is irrelevant without the surrounding block structure and the if. Thus, IMO, it makes sense to write it } else {, as that indicates that the } does not close the if; instead it closes the if true clause before opening the else not true clause. I actually prefer BSD as being more consistent.
Anyway, the problem that your stylesheet would have is that the syntaxes are fundamentally incompatible. In BSD and Conway, you can put line comments (//) after the } and before the else. In K&R, you can't. Now, you might argue that the stylesheet could move the comment. However, if you do that, then you lose information. Why? Because any other location for the comment in K&R already has an equivalent in BSD/Conway.
What's really needed is a single, canonical way of formatting saved code. Then developers can apply the stylesheet to the canonical form when viewing. This canonical way would have to prohibit those practices that only work in some of the representations but not others, e.g. comments in between } and else.
"why the shit shouldn't you follow through on the agreement you made?"
For the same reason that you can't sell yourself into slavery, you changed your mind afterward. Also note that it is quite possible for someone to leave because the company changed around them.
There are any number of agreements that you simply can't legally make:
1. Sell permission for someone to kill you.
2. Sign away your right to compensation for lost luggage on a steam boat.
3. Agree to work for no pay for a year at the end of your employment.
Requiring companies to pay ex-employees whose non-compete agreements they choose to enforce is reasonable. Especially contrast with the last option. If it's so reasonable to prevent you from working for someone else, why isn't it also reasonable to require a year's unpaid notice?
Most European countries work like this already. In the U.S., Washington is relatively unique in that it allows the intial contract offer to count as compensation. Most places require non-competes to also include some kind of severance (consideration in contract law -- the assumption is that your salary is to pay for your work; the non-compete period requires additional compensation).
Incidentally, if this had been the other way around, i.e. if Microsoft had hired a Google employee, then things would have been different. California law is very strict on what it recognizes as a valid non-compete. Note that a9.com CEO Udi Manber moved from A9 to Google without any delay.
"I'm skeptical, because for the same reason 30 days of development estimted, might really be 60, 2 days of development might really be 4."
Yes, but it's better to know in two days that your estimate is wrong than wait thirty days. Also, a lot of SCRUM is breaking things down to an understandable level. I.e. down to problems like, "Design the initial schema for the main database table" rather than problems like "Define the database schema for the project." It's much easier to determine how long it will take you to write up a practical first draft for a single table than it is to do all of
1. Determine all the data your project will need. 2. Break the data into normalized chunks. 3. Select indexes to optimize query performance. 4. Denormalize to optimize query performance.
Note that the first step is completely open ended. Does your project need one table? Ten? A hundred? Waterfall development processes try to guess this ahead of time. E.g. if most projects average about thirty tables, then that's what this will need. If you only need ten, then you have too much time allocated and over examine the database schema. If you need a hundred, you allocated too little time and miss your date.
The third and fourth steps should actually be done *after* you've started working with sample data. SCRUM allows you to push out problems like this. Waterfall forces you to guess. This leads to duplicate work. Further, every step after the first is dependent on the first. Thus, if you misquote the first, you misquote every step after it. With SCRUM, you openly admit that the first step is not all you need to do and then stop worrying about the rest.
Another advantage of SCRUM is that if you put too much into the current iteration, you can drop stuff. Then, when you do the next iteration, you can pick some or all of that back up with revised estimation. In Waterfall development, you're forced to rewrite the whole estimate every time you do that. With SCRUM, it's just part of the work you would do anyway (you already knew that you were going to plan out the next iteration).
Bezos doesn't have $90 billion. Amazon's total market cap is $15.24 billion ( http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AMZN ). Bezos is not the sole owner of Amazon. I could believe $9 billion, but he would be completely broke afterward.
Of course, Paul Allen is one of Bezos' partners in Blue Origin, and Allen's a bit richer. Still, I think that Blue Origin's business model only works if they can get the initial launch off for quite a bit less than the $30 billion that other initial launches cost (subsequent launches would be cheaper for a reusable vehicle and "spaceport").
Can I just point out that the primary point of the Ford Foundation is to preserve the Ford family's ability to control the Ford Motor Corporation?
I find Buffet's gift to be most interesting in that it clearly does not work as a preservation of his power. Something that was not necessarily true of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Also, unless Buffet is being really stupid here, then it kind of precludes the Gates from using their foundation to keep power in the family. Presumably Buffet will insist on a less Gates focused governance.
"The idea was picked up again by the Uplift trilogies by David Brin"
Actually, Brin had a different idea. He acknowledged that dolphins (and chimpanzees) were less intelligent than humans. However, he suggested that if we (humans) wanted, we could deliberately push the dolphins and chimpanzees to evolve. The net result, tool wielding dolphins, was the same, but the path was different.
I could live with registrars in the content policing business, but has anyone else noticed that this is actually the content *TAXING* business? It's all right to be a spammer...if you pay an extra $199?!?
"I am sure Microsoft said the same thing about Red Hat. Pride goes before a fall Red Hat."
I would take this more seriously if Red Hat were beating Microsoft on any significant measure. At best they might be winning the server OS market, which Microsoft never had. Microsoft has considerably more revenue and profit (something like a hundred times more).
Anyway, there's no evidence that Microsoft and Red Hat compete. Red Hat mostly competes with unix providers (Sun, HP, etc.). Xandros and Mandrake are the ones targeting Microsoft's markets.
"How would Microsoft releasing a proprietary application with a secret document format on Linux show any commitment to open source or open standards?"
It wouldn't. It would show a commitment to not leveraging their monopoly on office suites to preserve their monopoly on operating systems. It would also allow me to run a Linux laptop at work. I currently use MS Windows because it makes it easier to interact with MS Exchange (i.e. with MS Outlook).
"So for 9 months someone that shouldn't has had access?"
Not as I read it. They cut off the access nine months ago. They're only now telling their bosses that they did it. This snippet from the article explains this, "According to Barton, the NNSA chief knew about the incident soon after it happened in September but did not inform Energy Department officials, including Bodman, until Wednesday."
Personally, I don't care if he notified the Secretary of Energy. He should have notified someone like the FBI and the 1500 employees/contractors. The article implies that he did not notify the workers.
"Shouldn't be 1310MJ for gas, and 1048MJ for electric?"
I think that you're reading it wrong. It's 1310MJ for moving (the mechanical energy). You need 2620MJ of gasoline (20 gallons * 131 MJ/gallon) or 1637.5MJ for electric. I.e. the electric takes almost a thousand MJ less to produce the same 1310MJ of work with the vehicle.
Another way of saying this is that a 100% efficient engine would only need 1310MJ. An 80% efficient engine would need 1637.5MJ (20% = 327.5MJ waste). A 50% efficient engine would need 2620 MJ (50% = 1310MJ waste).
However, when I go to the google calc link, I see $2.274, not $2.74. I.e. if this isn't taxed, this is *already* cheaper than gas. It's almost competitive even with the tax (about $.70 a gallon or $2.97 total).
Gigabit ethernet cards are relatively standard these days. Sure, you won't be able to pipe out to the internet at gigabit, but that's also true of 100 mbps. This is the first that I've heard of something that actually uses more than the old 10 mbps.
I predict cheap consumer devices (e.g. TiVo) with gigabit local area networks in the next five years.
In the real world, there are about six acres of land per person. I.e. three people take up about eighteen acres of land (on average). This actually seems pretty accurate.
By contrast, New York City has about forty people per acre.
Of course, that's just land area. If you include water area, both those numbers would be lower.
If you click the google link, it gives examples. E.g. Norton Internet Security's ad blocking software blocks google. Cookie blocking software blocks the google cookie that it uses for persistence. I didn't read through the rest, but it's at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic= 1523 if you want to know.
In terms of AJAX reducing DB queries, it works as follows. In traditional web apps, you often have data that gets reloaded repeatedly. For example, a list of products. The user clicks on a product, looks at it, clicks back to the list (causing a db query on the page refresh). Now, in AJAX, the user clicks on a product, which hides the list. In place of the list the product details are shown. Clicking the link to the list hides the product details and shows the list (no page refresh so no db query). If your main use case is people clicking back and forth between pages (e.g. to compare products), then using AJAX significantly reduces the page hits.
Others have pointed out that server side caching does the same thing (relative to the database). The problem comes when you have a lot of clients relative to the size of your server cache. Server caches work best when multiple clients can share a cache. In this situation, each client might be looking at different products, which causes thrash (there is more info than fits in the cache).
Sure, you can write AJAX apps in such a way that they increase the DB load. AJAX is not magic; it won't auto-solve issues. However, AJAX can be used to rewrite an existing app to reduce page queries. The reduction in page queries will reduce DB load in many situations.
register_globals is only a security flaw if you write bad code. Yes, it allows variable poisoning. However, it *only* does so if you use undefined variables.
1. If we were going to do/. moderation in AJAX, we might change how it worked. Instead of modding an existing score up or down, you'd vote for what you think the true score is. Since this wouldn't be dependent on the existing score, you wouldn't need to refresh anything.
2. The time when you want to reload the page isn't *after* you've moderated, it's before. I.e. refreshing the page after you moderate only helps you for the next moderation, not the current moderation. AJAX could offer you a button that refreshed the moderation for just that post (actually, come to think of it, clicking on the post would be enough; generally you should be looking to moderate posts that show only the headline). A really small request/response. AJAX would also allow a popup that says "Hey, moderation changed here; did you really want this to be a +4? Or are you happy at +3?" A strictly better solution than reloading the entire page, as it takes away the race condition.
3. Even with the existing system, you don't necessarily need to refresh the page. What you want to do is refresh the changes. I.e. get all the moderations and new posts; leave all the existing posts.
It's certainly possible to implement AJAX in ways that are less efficient than the non-AJAX solution. However, properly implemented, AJAX will reduce database load because it does two things: remember previous state and allow one to load changes (to the previous state).
Uhm...you do realize that the J in AJAX stands for *Javascript* right? And that Javascript has *nothing* to do with Java (other than the name and a few similarities of syntax), right?
I agreed with the rest of your post, but calling AJAX Java is clearly wrong.
Btw, I suspect that the main reason why Microsoft was going to support PDF was to ease the transition from XPS. Microsoft would be able to talk to printers that understood *either* XPS or PDF. That would allow people to do their work in XPS, show it to others in small quantities in XPS, and then mass produce in PDF. If the mass produced PDF was inferior to the XPS samples, then that gives Microsoft leverage with the printers to switch to something XPS compatible.
Now, Microsoft will have to spend a lot more money up front to get XPS support into hardware. In the beginning, Microsoft will offer brilliant tools and technical assistance to printer manufacturers who wanted to offer XPS support. In five to ten years, they will charge money to not display warnings that the device is not XPS certified.
The real question is what's stopping them from doing that? It's only money. They have plenty. This is probably the correct decision for Adobe. However, Microsoft is still fully capable of moving into the market. It's just going to be a bit harder now.
"Why in the hell would someone who just wants to send email or browse the web, or play GTA have to write the code or be present when it's written?"
That's backwards of what the GP said. Quote: "Software should either be written with a client present or by people who intend on using the product themselves."
In your examples, the people *writing* the code would also be clients (because pretty much everyone sends email and browses the web; games should mostly be written by gamers). Further, you don't need *every* client to be present, just a representative sample (preferably one that includes at least some non-developers -- unless you're writing a compiler or other developer tool). I.e. it's not incumbent on the client(s) to be present during the writing of the code; it's incumbent on the code writers to make sure that they have (some) clients available while writing the code.
The fact that you're misunderstanding such a basic issue of software design is emblematic of one of the main reasons why so much software is crap. People just don't get the basics. Gather requirements from actual users; plan your architecture before committing to code (prototyping before architecture is fine, so long as you realize that you can't use that code); write tests before you code and verify that your code meets your tests.
"No, it's not, because it is yet another way our society is being fractured into the haves vs. the have-nots."
Yes, because prior to this, it's not like scalpers just got in line and obtained all the good seats, which they then sold to the "haves." Something that happens so ridiculously much that Celine Dion concerts require ID to verify that you haven't been to one previously that year. This auction does two things:
1. It makes explicit something that has been implicitly true. The rich have always had the ability to pay more to scalpers and get the best tickets.
2. It will allow artists to get paid more for their work. Sure, Ticketmaster might get the entire sum now (didn't RTFA, so I don't know how this works), but how long will that last? Soon, artists will demand a share of the higher revenues too.
"The masses used to be able to go to concerts and sporting events, but when tickets reach $1500 they simply cannot do so anymore."
Yes, because that's every ticket. It's not like only the best tickets go for that much.
"high ticket prices... are a primary reason folks are watching their TV's"
Actually, the main reason that I watch TV instead of going to events is that I prefer the comfort of my own home, with my own remote, to the crowds of live performances.
Last year, I went to a Queensryche/Judas Priest concert. It was ok. Priest sounded good, very similar to albums that I have. By contrast, Queensryche sounded nothing like their albums. I'm not sure if it was just that they have a studio friendly sound or that Tate's older and may not be able to deliver the same vocal quality, but I was really disappointed. I won't be looking to see another Queensryche concert anytime soon, even if they leave out the new stuff. I'd rather listen at home, where I can play at a reasonable volume, pause whenever I want, replay, etc.
Also, as others have noted, live performances are a limited resource. There are only so many quality seats. It doesn't scale. By contrast, an unlimited number of people can enjoy TV, CDs, and DVDs.
If you really care about the have nots, stop going to concerts that sell out immediately (performed by the haves) and start attending concerts at smaller, local venues. The sound quality will actually be better if you go to a cozy venue rather than a giant stadium. Go to high school sports events rather than professional events.
You implicitly did by replying to a comment about pluralization. As with Ruby, discussion has implicit defaults. You needed to explicitly say, "This has nothing to do with pluralization, but..." if you didn't want people to respond as if you were talking about pluralization. Or simply picked a different post to which to respond. Preferably one with more appropriate context.
"Show up with an offer to let them shave your head or pluck a fingernail from your hand"
As others have pointed out, there's no DNA in hair or fingernails. The DNA would be in the hair follicle or the skin stuck to the fingernail. Shaving won't get it. You need to pluck the hair.
A blood sample is optimal, as it provides plenty of DNA with little possibility for confusion. Oral or anal (at least that's what the guy on CSI suggests) swabs are sufficient for most purposes.
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft, being at the top of the OS market, will simply add the costs of the fines to the price they charge for their OS."
That's not how monopoly pricing works; that's how a perfectly competitive market works. In a perfectly competitive market, adding to the costs increases the price because the price is driven down to the cost (the supply curve). In a monopoly, adding to the costs has zero effect, because price is determined by *demand*. I.e. they sell the OS for the most that they can get already. If they could sell it for more, they already would.
With monopolies, prices are chosen because an increase in price reduces the quantity of sales such that total revenue drops. Similarly, a decrease in price reduces revenue by more than the increased quantity of sales, so that total revenue drops. This fine does not affect that calculation in any way. Therefore, for them to increase prices, they would either have to accept lower revenue or they would have had to have been underpricing their product. I.e. charging less than the market would bear.
There are other alternatives to Virgin Galactic, e.g. http://www.blueorigin.com/index.html
"imagine if we could make a "style sheet" of some sort and apply to the code and sudenly all the code you load into your editor is styled as you liked?"
// K&R style -- comments on the if/else go before
// comments on the if clause go after the first {
// comments on the else go after the else {
// BSD style
Yeah, but people would still screw it up. For example:
if () {
} else {
}
if ()
{
}
else
{
}
# Conway style
if () {
}
# This also is a problem with BSD, but I thought I'd put it here.
# Comments on the else clause go between the closing } of the if
# and the else {. Net result? Hanging elses. I.e. someone removes
# the if () {} but does not realize that there is an else. Further,
# since an if can only be closed by lookahead, this results in real
# oddities, like the else clause attaching to the previous if.
else {
}
I find the last to be the single ugliest syntax. The theory behind it is that it is best to put keywords in the left most column. However, the problem here (IMO) is that an else is irrelevant without the surrounding block structure and the if. Thus, IMO, it makes sense to write it } else {, as that indicates that the } does not close the if; instead it closes the if true clause before opening the else not true clause. I actually prefer BSD as being more consistent.
Anyway, the problem that your stylesheet would have is that the syntaxes are fundamentally incompatible. In BSD and Conway, you can put line comments (//) after the } and before the else. In K&R, you can't. Now, you might argue that the stylesheet could move the comment. However, if you do that, then you lose information. Why? Because any other location for the comment in K&R already has an equivalent in BSD/Conway.
What's really needed is a single, canonical way of formatting saved code. Then developers can apply the stylesheet to the canonical form when viewing. This canonical way would have to prohibit those practices that only work in some of the representations but not others, e.g. comments in between } and else.
"why the shit shouldn't you follow through on the agreement you made?"
For the same reason that you can't sell yourself into slavery, you changed your mind afterward. Also note that it is quite possible for someone to leave because the company changed around them.
There are any number of agreements that you simply can't legally make:
1. Sell permission for someone to kill you.
2. Sign away your right to compensation for lost luggage on a steam boat.
3. Agree to work for no pay for a year at the end of your employment.
Requiring companies to pay ex-employees whose non-compete agreements they choose to enforce is reasonable. Especially contrast with the last option. If it's so reasonable to prevent you from working for someone else, why isn't it also reasonable to require a year's unpaid notice?
Most European countries work like this already. In the U.S., Washington is relatively unique in that it allows the intial contract offer to count as compensation. Most places require non-competes to also include some kind of severance (consideration in contract law -- the assumption is that your salary is to pay for your work; the non-compete period requires additional compensation).
Incidentally, if this had been the other way around, i.e. if Microsoft had hired a Google employee, then things would have been different. California law is very strict on what it recognizes as a valid non-compete. Note that a9.com CEO Udi Manber moved from A9 to Google without any delay.
"I'm skeptical, because for the same reason 30 days of development estimted, might really be 60, 2 days of development might really be 4."
Yes, but it's better to know in two days that your estimate is wrong than wait thirty days. Also, a lot of SCRUM is breaking things down to an understandable level. I.e. down to problems like, "Design the initial schema for the main database table" rather than problems like "Define the database schema for the project." It's much easier to determine how long it will take you to write up a practical first draft for a single table than it is to do all of
1. Determine all the data your project will need.
2. Break the data into normalized chunks.
3. Select indexes to optimize query performance.
4. Denormalize to optimize query performance.
Note that the first step is completely open ended. Does your project need one table? Ten? A hundred? Waterfall development processes try to guess this ahead of time. E.g. if most projects average about thirty tables, then that's what this will need. If you only need ten, then you have too much time allocated and over examine the database schema. If you need a hundred, you allocated too little time and miss your date.
The third and fourth steps should actually be done *after* you've started working with sample data. SCRUM allows you to push out problems like this. Waterfall forces you to guess. This leads to duplicate work. Further, every step after the first is dependent on the first. Thus, if you misquote the first, you misquote every step after it. With SCRUM, you openly admit that the first step is not all you need to do and then stop worrying about the rest.
Another advantage of SCRUM is that if you put too much into the current iteration, you can drop stuff. Then, when you do the next iteration, you can pick some or all of that back up with revised estimation. In Waterfall development, you're forced to rewrite the whole estimate every time you do that. With SCRUM, it's just part of the work you would do anyway (you already knew that you were going to plan out the next iteration).
Bezos doesn't have $90 billion. Amazon's total market cap is $15.24 billion ( http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AMZN ). Bezos is not the sole owner of Amazon. I could believe $9 billion, but he would be completely broke afterward.
Of course, Paul Allen is one of Bezos' partners in Blue Origin, and Allen's a bit richer. Still, I think that Blue Origin's business model only works if they can get the initial launch off for quite a bit less than the $30 billion that other initial launches cost (subsequent launches would be cheaper for a reusable vehicle and "spaceport").
Googling found http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-803274.html which indicates that Bezos' net worth is in the low billions.
Can I just point out that the primary point of the Ford Foundation is to preserve the Ford family's ability to control the Ford Motor Corporation?
I find Buffet's gift to be most interesting in that it clearly does not work as a preservation of his power. Something that was not necessarily true of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Also, unless Buffet is being really stupid here, then it kind of precludes the Gates from using their foundation to keep power in the family. Presumably Buffet will insist on a less Gates focused governance.
"The idea was picked up again by the Uplift trilogies by David Brin"
Actually, Brin had a different idea. He acknowledged that dolphins (and chimpanzees) were less intelligent than humans. However, he suggested that if we (humans) wanted, we could deliberately push the dolphins and chimpanzees to evolve. The net result, tool wielding dolphins, was the same, but the path was different.
"the content policing business"
I could live with registrars in the content policing business, but has anyone else noticed that this is actually the content *TAXING* business? It's all right to be a spammer...if you pay an extra $199?!?
"I am sure Microsoft said the same thing about Red Hat. Pride goes before a fall Red Hat."
I would take this more seriously if Red Hat were beating Microsoft on any significant measure. At best they might be winning the server OS market, which Microsoft never had. Microsoft has considerably more revenue and profit (something like a hundred times more).
Anyway, there's no evidence that Microsoft and Red Hat compete. Red Hat mostly competes with unix providers (Sun, HP, etc.). Xandros and Mandrake are the ones targeting Microsoft's markets.
"How would Microsoft releasing a proprietary application with a secret document format on Linux show any commitment to open source or open standards?"
It wouldn't. It would show a commitment to not leveraging their monopoly on office suites to preserve their monopoly on operating systems. It would also allow me to run a Linux laptop at work. I currently use MS Windows because it makes it easier to interact with MS Exchange (i.e. with MS Outlook).
"So for 9 months someone that shouldn't has had access?"
Not as I read it. They cut off the access nine months ago. They're only now telling their bosses that they did it. This snippet from the article explains this, "According to Barton, the NNSA chief knew about the incident soon after it happened in September but did not inform Energy Department officials, including Bodman, until Wednesday."
Personally, I don't care if he notified the Secretary of Energy. He should have notified someone like the FBI and the 1500 employees/contractors. The article implies that he did not notify the workers.
"Shouldn't be 1310MJ for gas, and 1048MJ for electric?"
I think that you're reading it wrong. It's 1310MJ for moving (the mechanical energy). You need 2620MJ of gasoline (20 gallons * 131 MJ/gallon) or 1637.5MJ for electric. I.e. the electric takes almost a thousand MJ less to produce the same 1310MJ of work with the vehicle.
Another way of saying this is that a 100% efficient engine would only need 1310MJ. An 80% efficient engine would need 1637.5MJ (20% = 327.5MJ waste). A 50% efficient engine would need 2620 MJ (50% = 1310MJ waste).
However, when I go to the google calc link, I see $2.274, not $2.74. I.e. if this isn't taxed, this is *already* cheaper than gas. It's almost competitive even with the tax (about $.70 a gallon or $2.97 total).
Gigabit ethernet cards are relatively standard these days. Sure, you won't be able to pipe out to the internet at gigabit, but that's also true of 100 mbps. This is the first that I've heard of something that actually uses more than the old 10 mbps.
I predict cheap consumer devices (e.g. TiVo) with gigabit local area networks in the next five years.
In the real world, there are about six acres of land per person. I.e. three people take up about eighteen acres of land (on average). This actually seems pretty accurate.
By contrast, New York City has about forty people per acre.
Of course, that's just land area. If you include water area, both those numbers would be lower.
Land area:
World: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001763.html
NYC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City
If you click the google link, it gives examples. E.g. Norton Internet Security's ad blocking software blocks google. Cookie blocking software blocks the google cookie that it uses for persistence. I didn't read through the rest, but it's at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic= 1523 if you want to know.
In terms of AJAX reducing DB queries, it works as follows. In traditional web apps, you often have data that gets reloaded repeatedly. For example, a list of products. The user clicks on a product, looks at it, clicks back to the list (causing a db query on the page refresh). Now, in AJAX, the user clicks on a product, which hides the list. In place of the list the product details are shown. Clicking the link to the list hides the product details and shows the list (no page refresh so no db query). If your main use case is people clicking back and forth between pages (e.g. to compare products), then using AJAX significantly reduces the page hits.
Others have pointed out that server side caching does the same thing (relative to the database). The problem comes when you have a lot of clients relative to the size of your server cache. Server caches work best when multiple clients can share a cache. In this situation, each client might be looking at different products, which causes thrash (there is more info than fits in the cache).
Sure, you can write AJAX apps in such a way that they increase the DB load. AJAX is not magic; it won't auto-solve issues. However, AJAX can be used to rewrite an existing app to reduce page queries. The reduction in page queries will reduce DB load in many situations.
"So what was the third item he was going to criticise, Apache or Linux"
He says that he doesn't like Apache either. Just not as much as he dislikes PHP/MySQL.
register_globals is only a security flaw if you write bad code. Yes, it allows variable poisoning. However, it *only* does so if you use undefined variables.
1. If we were going to do /. moderation in AJAX, we might change how it worked. Instead of modding an existing score up or down, you'd vote for what you think the true score is. Since this wouldn't be dependent on the existing score, you wouldn't need to refresh anything.
2. The time when you want to reload the page isn't *after* you've moderated, it's before. I.e. refreshing the page after you moderate only helps you for the next moderation, not the current moderation. AJAX could offer you a button that refreshed the moderation for just that post (actually, come to think of it, clicking on the post would be enough; generally you should be looking to moderate posts that show only the headline). A really small request/response. AJAX would also allow a popup that says "Hey, moderation changed here; did you really want this to be a +4? Or are you happy at +3?" A strictly better solution than reloading the entire page, as it takes away the race condition.
3. Even with the existing system, you don't necessarily need to refresh the page. What you want to do is refresh the changes. I.e. get all the moderations and new posts; leave all the existing posts.
It's certainly possible to implement AJAX in ways that are less efficient than the non-AJAX solution. However, properly implemented, AJAX will reduce database load because it does two things: remember previous state and allow one to load changes (to the previous state).
"Yeah, everywhere. It's called AJAX."
Uhm...you do realize that the J in AJAX stands for *Javascript* right? And that Javascript has *nothing* to do with Java (other than the name and a few similarities of syntax), right?
I agreed with the rest of your post, but calling AJAX Java is clearly wrong.
Btw, I suspect that the main reason why Microsoft was going to support PDF was to ease the transition from XPS. Microsoft would be able to talk to printers that understood *either* XPS or PDF. That would allow people to do their work in XPS, show it to others in small quantities in XPS, and then mass produce in PDF. If the mass produced PDF was inferior to the XPS samples, then that gives Microsoft leverage with the printers to switch to something XPS compatible.
Now, Microsoft will have to spend a lot more money up front to get XPS support into hardware. In the beginning, Microsoft will offer brilliant tools and technical assistance to printer manufacturers who wanted to offer XPS support. In five to ten years, they will charge money to not display warnings that the device is not XPS certified.
The real question is what's stopping them from doing that? It's only money. They have plenty. This is probably the correct decision for Adobe. However, Microsoft is still fully capable of moving into the market. It's just going to be a bit harder now.
"Why in the hell would someone who just wants to send email or browse the web, or play GTA have to write the code or be present when it's written?"
That's backwards of what the GP said. Quote: "Software should either be written with a client present or by people who intend on using the product themselves."
In your examples, the people *writing* the code would also be clients (because pretty much everyone sends email and browses the web; games should mostly be written by gamers). Further, you don't need *every* client to be present, just a representative sample (preferably one that includes at least some non-developers -- unless you're writing a compiler or other developer tool). I.e. it's not incumbent on the client(s) to be present during the writing of the code; it's incumbent on the code writers to make sure that they have (some) clients available while writing the code.
The fact that you're misunderstanding such a basic issue of software design is emblematic of one of the main reasons why so much software is crap. People just don't get the basics. Gather requirements from actual users; plan your architecture before committing to code (prototyping before architecture is fine, so long as you realize that you can't use that code); write tests before you code and verify that your code meets your tests.
"No, it's not, because it is yet another way our society is being fractured into the haves vs. the have-nots."
... are a primary reason folks are watching their TV's"
Yes, because prior to this, it's not like scalpers just got in line and obtained all the good seats, which they then sold to the "haves." Something that happens so ridiculously much that Celine Dion concerts require ID to verify that you haven't been to one previously that year. This auction does two things:
1. It makes explicit something that has been implicitly true. The rich have always had the ability to pay more to scalpers and get the best tickets.
2. It will allow artists to get paid more for their work. Sure, Ticketmaster might get the entire sum now (didn't RTFA, so I don't know how this works), but how long will that last? Soon, artists will demand a share of the higher revenues too.
"The masses used to be able to go to concerts and sporting events, but when tickets reach $1500 they simply cannot do so anymore."
Yes, because that's every ticket. It's not like only the best tickets go for that much.
"high ticket prices
Actually, the main reason that I watch TV instead of going to events is that I prefer the comfort of my own home, with my own remote, to the crowds of live performances.
Last year, I went to a Queensryche/Judas Priest concert. It was ok. Priest sounded good, very similar to albums that I have. By contrast, Queensryche sounded nothing like their albums. I'm not sure if it was just that they have a studio friendly sound or that Tate's older and may not be able to deliver the same vocal quality, but I was really disappointed. I won't be looking to see another Queensryche concert anytime soon, even if they leave out the new stuff. I'd rather listen at home, where I can play at a reasonable volume, pause whenever I want, replay, etc.
Also, as others have noted, live performances are a limited resource. There are only so many quality seats. It doesn't scale. By contrast, an unlimited number of people can enjoy TV, CDs, and DVDs.
If you really care about the have nots, stop going to concerts that sell out immediately (performed by the haves) and start attending concerts at smaller, local venues. The sound quality will actually be better if you go to a cozy venue rather than a giant stadium. Go to high school sports events rather than professional events.
You implicitly did by replying to a comment about pluralization. As with Ruby, discussion has implicit defaults. You needed to explicitly say, "This has nothing to do with pluralization, but ..." if you didn't want people to respond as if you were talking about pluralization. Or simply picked a different post to which to respond. Preferably one with more appropriate context.
"Show up with an offer to let them shave your head or pluck a fingernail from your hand"
As others have pointed out, there's no DNA in hair or fingernails. The DNA would be in the hair follicle or the skin stuck to the fingernail. Shaving won't get it. You need to pluck the hair.
A blood sample is optimal, as it provides plenty of DNA with little possibility for confusion. Oral or anal (at least that's what the guy on CSI suggests) swabs are sufficient for most purposes.