Great comments! I completely agree that, no matter what lame story or acting or stupid accents that GL might have foisted on us in the episodes I - III, the worst was the midichlorians. Take a mythology and turn it in to some accident of nature, something that you can measure under a microscope.
However, to say that they "didn't make sense" isn't completely true. There are several people who have compared GL's work with that of Campbell. It was the creation of a "campbellian" super race that necessitated the little things growing in our cells. That's the whole point -- you CAN'T become a hero, or even a great leader by dedication and hard work. You have to be BORN a super-hero, or be "destined" to save the world. The rest of us are just the drones that follow those born to lead.
Oh and the whole "virgin birth" thing really sucked too. That one about made me puke.
Something that has been somewhat painfully evident with Sun for some time now is that Corporations are NOT the monolithic blocks that we sometimes would like to imagine them to be. For a while there, it seemed like Sun would come out every other day with some statement or policy or license or software release that was alternatively GREAT or SUCKY for Open Source. One minute, they'd release something like OpenOffice.org, and then tell us that they would never release Java under an FOSS license, or make some dumb-a** statement about how proprietary software was safer than open source. What we eventually learned was that Sun, the Corporation, was made up of a lot of individuals, who sometimes had different views of the world.
Point is, Microsoft isn't monolithic either, or at least there are some cracks beginning to show, and individuals are starting to "get it". People at the top may have a unified message that they try to present to the public, but the real people in the trenches are starting to break ranks. I'm not saying that MS is going to turn around and become a Sun or IBM within the next couple of years, but expect to see some mixed messages coming out of there.
I don't do a lot with spreadsheets, but one thing I've found that works a LOT better with OOo 2.3 is generating charts. I could usually get what I needed from charts in v2.2.1, but it was bloody slow. They've made some significant changes in the charts Wizard (not all good...), but what really hits me is the time it takes to actually generate the chart. The new version is several times faster than before.
There was a time when I used to download every new kernel release and build it by hand. I used to know every single option in the config scripts, and what every module was for. I had the process down to a science, and I could usually get a new kernel configured, compiled, and up and running in less than an hour. I felt like it marked me as a Real Geek!
However, I've come to a point where, I have more important things to do with my time. Now, I'm not criticizing anyone who builds their own kernel. If you do, then great! If it makes your system run faster/smoother/more reliably, that's HUGE! However, with modern distributions being so modular, the system pretty much only loads in what it needs. A modern desktop is fast enough and has enough memory that the kernel is usually the least of its problems. Load a big application like Oracle or PostgreSQL or Evolution or Gimp or Tomcat, or even Firefox, and the difference between a stock kernel and a hand built one is going to be in the noise level. I've only got so many hours in a day, and I'd rather spend it building applications than fiddling with my kernel.
That's not to say that there isn't a lot of room for improvement. I'm no kernel hacker, but I know there have been some very significant changes in the kernel in the past several years. I have a feeling that the change from 32bit to 64bit architectures is going to make a lot more significant changes, as are the changes from a default single processor architecture to ubiquitous multi-core, and memory sizes greater than 2Gig. It's been said before that what's sitting on your desktop right now looks an awful lot like the "big iron" of five years ago! I know more and more people using Virtualization to run Windows on their Linux or Mac.
Maybe there are some differences in schedulers, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments that the technical differences are really compelling, and that the real differences between the two camps are more personal and political. My gut tells me that, if there really is a difference, then over time, the better implementation will win. Maybe there will be a short term fork in the kernel, but I hardly think that we need to make a major parting of the ways. It seems to me that there are bigger differences out there that we're already living with than the difference between desktop and "server" architectures, if there even is such a thing.
If Microsoft hadn't been there to kill them off, then either OS/2 or Apple/Mac would have filled the gap. No, Linux (which barely existed at that point) and Unix probably would have never reached out to the average Joe crowd, but OS/2 and Apple would have. I would contend that the average user would be a LOT BETTER OFF now if one or the other of those platforms had taken over. Now, you can argue endlessly about IBM's incompetence in marketing, or Apple's snotty attitude now, but take a look how the iPod has taken over the market, in spite of its outrageous price. Microsoft has barely entered that market, but that has not slowed down the market segment as a whole.
No, Microsoft may have hit the "sweet spot" in being dirt cheap, and just barely good enough to get the job done (not to mention its relentless marketing machine), but there's nothing in what they have done which couldn't have been done just as well by someone else had they not been there.
Well, it is true that without the desktop monopoly Google might have had a harder time coming up with software that runs on more than 90% of boxen...
Uh... isn't that the whole point, that Google doesn't need Windows to run? It's mostly running in the browser (with a few interesting tools that run on either Java or Flash, which are also platform independent), so it doesn't freaking matter which OS you're running on. So, if 30% of people had been running Windows, 30% on Mac, 30% on Linux/Unix and 10% on something else, then Google would STILL have been successful!
Actually, I don't see any problem with Dell "charging" for Ubuntu, or at least not giving back the full $50 (or whatever they paid for their OEM Vista license) when you install Ubuntu. If they are actually supporting their Linux laptops, then they are presumably going to need to add people to their support staff who know Linux. Long term it should be cheaper, but that might take a while.
Cheaping out on an otherwise free memory upgrade doesn't make any sense though, unless they're just trying to hide the fact that they are charging you more for the system.
> What is this "cheap broadband" of which you speak?
Everything is relative. I remember when it cost you $100/month for a UUCP dialup connection, and that wasn't even an "always on" connection.
There are plenty of people paying $40/month for "basic" cable TV. I'll wager many (most?) of the people without Internet still pay for at least SOME level of Cable TV. There are usually several options for cable/DSL Internet, some of which are only barely faster than dial-up, but they are always on, more reliable and don't hog your phone line. Some of these are around the same price as a cheap dialup. And then, there is still dial-up. You can still get some connections for free, or very close to it. If you really want to get on the Internet, there's usually some way to do it cheap.
In either case though, the point is that the price is not the primary factor for many of these people. They are either afraid or or intimidated by the technology, or they just simply don't see what all the hoopla is about. Some think they are too old to learn, or they are focused on other things in their lives and don't want to be bothered. You really don't have to have Internet to lead a full and meaningful life.
I don't know about the numbers, but I do know that I'm acquainted with plenty of people who still don't have Internet access. Some of them live outside of the range of cheap broadband. Mostly, it's older people who figure that they've lived all their lives without the Internet, so why go through the hassle of learning how to use it now? They have no problem with staying connected to their friends through the phone, or (*gasp*) through the US Mail. They can order things from catalogs using the phone, or just drive to the store if they need anything. There are plenty of very real dangers out there for someone who doesn't know what he or she is doing (phishing, rootkits, botnets, spam, internet scams, etc.) and they just don't see the benefits to outweigh the risks.
Personally, I'd have a hard time adjusting to not having broadband, but I could probably survive. Slashdot withdrawal is not generally considered to be fatal.
I'm not sure, but it seems like they simply added up the number of total number of reported vulnerabilities, regardless of severity, and said the Windows won. However, that doesn't make any sense. They even said in the article that Windows had 12 "High Priority" bugs, RH Linux only had 2 and OS X had 1, but somehow that makes Windows more secure than Linux.
I'm certain that Microsoft is doing a much better job now with security than they have in the past, but this "study" sure doesn't support the headline.
Or, my favorite variable is, how big is the meeting? Put two or three people in a room, and you will create significantly more "creative" work than those two or three on their own. Put ten or twenty people in a room, and at any particular point in time, over 75% of them will be half asleep, or thinking about other things.
The other thing I always say is, "There should be a law against meetings longer than an hour."
> I don't remember CATB sounding anything like the stuff he writes now.
Frankly, I'd still call CATB one of the defining moments in the Open Source movement. It was one of the first real philosophical treatments of what made Open Source software work, which could be understood by normal mortal human beings. RMS had certainly been around for a while, and many would still say he was the one who started the *current* free software movement, but even then, he was largely dismissed as a crank by most of the mainstream.
(In reality, true Free Software has been around for as long as software has been, but RMS breathed new life into it, and really gave it legs.)
Wish I had some moderator points to push parent up.
I don't think I'd be quite as hard on ESR as you are -- I still like some of his classics -- but you're right about his tirades, and more recently about his self-serving editorials. He's likely to latch on to any little thing he doesn't like in a system and go on and on about it like it's the end of the world. There's not a package management tool in the universe that will completely get you around all the complexities of maintaining a system, especially if all the package creators aren't really careful. Do you remember him going on and on about CUPS? Now, I hate CUPS too, but he went absolutely ballistic, about calling it one of the worst software packages in the history of the industry.
I think he's more interested in headlines than he is about shedding light on the subject. He's long been at odds with the more purist philosophies of people like Cox and RMS, and has made no attempt to hide his beliefs that Free and Proprietary should "learn to get along with each other."
I think he's just looking for a reason to bash Red Hat's "Pure Free Software" stance.
> If you read the whole quote, you will see he is saynig that you can go to any PC and have it automatically have it behave and look just like your computer at home.
That's not really my point. I'm sure there are things in Vista which are more "user-centric" in the sense that they allow you bring your "personality" with you (think: Roaming Profiles in W2K/XP). It'd be nice if they actually got that right this time.
The point, however, is that as BG is waving his arms around a feature that they might or might not have finally gotten working, and proclaiming how the USER is king, when actually the user is now at the absolute bottom of the priority list. It is becoming more and more clear that the underlying tone of the OS, and most of the seriously "innovative" new technologies baked into Vista, is that it is much more focused at being "corporate-centric", in the sense of the RIAA and other "content owners" (that is, the people who own the CDs and DVDs, not the people who actually created the content in the first place), to cripple and limit our lawful rights as consumers of that technology/media. The whole "DRM capable peripherals" is absolutely mind-blowing to me. It could spell the end of Open Source software, if the hardware manufacturers actually give in to Microsoft, though in the long run, I have my doubts that it will actually fly.
So can you give us an indication of what the next Windows will be like? Well, it will be more user-centric.
Hahahahahaha.....
Mr. Gates, do you actually mean you are planning on stripping OUT all that shiny new DRM technology you are so carefully putting IN now, presumably because, by the time your next OS comes out (in five to ten years), all your fat corporate sponsors will have finally figured out that treating customers like common thieves and criminals is, well, sort of bad for business?
I'll bet you aren't competing with them though. Do you sell groceries or any other products that Wal-Mart is also selling? I know the area where I live has a couple of long standing grocery stores, ones that are no two-potato stores, and they are feeling a serious pinch from the Wal-Mart stores popping up all over the place. They have SERIOUSLY better food quality, as well as better service, and a well established commitment to the community, but they are having to cut prices and drop services to not go out of business.
OK, so we can argue all day long about the relative points of how Wal-Mart affects the overall economy when they move in to an area. The point I was trying to make is not so much about Wal-Mart specifically, but about corporations in general, and how we can't think of them as a monolithic "moral" entity.
As much as I dislike Wal-Mart, I think we need to get over the idea that corporations themselves are inherently "evil" or "good". Corporations do good or evil things, sometimes right next to each other. Wal-Mart sucks the life out of local businesses and drive down wages in the local job market, but then they turn around and sell pre-installed Linux boxes to home users, and use their market power to push environmentally friendly lightbulbs. Novell is another classic example, reducing the SCO Fudsters to a bloody pulp, and then turning around and making a clearly anti-GPL pact with Microsoft. Sun spends so much time contradicting itself it makes me dizzy just thinking about them. Some corporations consistently do more "evil" things than they do "good", and there is almost always a selfish motive even behind the best of their actions, but remember that there are many different people inside each of these organizations, and some lights shine more brightly at different times.
The point is, we need to be ready to flame corporations when they do evil/stupid things, but then not be afraid to encourage them when they do the right thing.
I think you're missing the point. Sure, the statement isn't literally true, but in reality, good hackers rarely start out with a completely "clean slate". You borrow ideas, code snippets, examples, familiar routines, convenient hacks, libraries and a host of other pieces from other, previously written code. Starting from scratch is an interesting intellectual exercise, but in practice, if you're trying to actually write something useful, only fools think they can write everything better than it's ever been done before.
Re: the "dead tuples" and the need to vacuum, this is exactly what I'm seeing in my application performance tests! The database gets slower and slower, until I run a vacuum, at which point it suddenly speeds up again (sometimes by a factor of 10 or more). Granted, I'm pounding the database just as hard as I can, so the loads are unrealistic, but it still points to a (in my case) significant bottleneck.
> TFA also fails to mention that mysql cannot be used in commercial development without paying $200 per client - which makes it more expensive than most other solutions (except maybe oracle, and even they have cheap licenses for some uses).
Oracle has an "eXpress Edition", which they say is free to use, even in commercial deployments. (Make sure you read the license yourself, as I'm not even close to being a lawyer!) I've used it for some development work, and it seems to work nicely. It's a bit crippled when it comes to the usual fine-tuning options, but most normal Oracle tools will talk to it. The one gotcha that I overlooked at first is that it has a cap on overall user data size of something like 4 or 5Gig, so you have to think about how much data you're going to be handling. (In other words, it's not something to replace a full-blown enterprise Oracle installation, but it's great for smaller applications.)
So, in this case, it is possible that MySQL would end up being more expensive than Oracle!
Oh, and of course, it's all proprietary software, so if you want a full FOSS stack, you're not going to find it there.
OK, I don't think there is much debate that Oracle is a "better" database than PostgreSQL when it comes to really BIG databases, where you have to regularly deal with multi-million line tables, or huge numbers of transactions. I'm no database guru, but I've used PostgreSQL a lot, and my experience is that it really starts to bog down on large datasets, where Oracle just sneezes at them.
However, for many (most?) cases, Oracle is also HUGE OVERKILL!
Does anyone know of a reasonably un-emotional, but still somewhat accurate comparison between PostgreSQL and Oracle? When is it appropriate to use one vs. the other?
Slashdot Mirror
Great comments! I completely agree that, no matter what lame story or acting or stupid accents that GL might have foisted on us in the episodes I - III, the worst was the midichlorians. Take a mythology and turn it in to some accident of nature, something that you can measure under a microscope.
However, to say that they "didn't make sense" isn't completely true. There are several people who have compared GL's work with that of Campbell. It was the creation of a "campbellian" super race that necessitated the little things growing in our cells. That's the whole point -- you CAN'T become a hero, or even a great leader by dedication and hard work. You have to be BORN a super-hero, or be "destined" to save the world. The rest of us are just the drones that follow those born to lead.
Oh and the whole "virgin birth" thing really sucked too. That one about made me puke.
I think my favorite article is an old one by David Brin at: "Star Wars" despots vs."Star Trek" populists and his follow up article
(Sorry, couldn't pass that one up.)
Point is, Microsoft isn't monolithic either, or at least there are some cracks beginning to show, and individuals are starting to "get it". People at the top may have a unified message that they try to present to the public, but the real people in the trenches are starting to break ranks. I'm not saying that MS is going to turn around and become a Sun or IBM within the next couple of years, but expect to see some mixed messages coming out of there.
I don't do a lot with spreadsheets, but one thing I've found that works a LOT better with OOo 2.3 is generating charts. I could usually get what I needed from charts in v2.2.1, but it was bloody slow. They've made some significant changes in the charts Wizard (not all good...), but what really hits me is the time it takes to actually generate the chart. The new version is several times faster than before.
However, I've come to a point where, I have more important things to do with my time. Now, I'm not criticizing anyone who builds their own kernel. If you do, then great! If it makes your system run faster/smoother/more reliably, that's HUGE! However, with modern distributions being so modular, the system pretty much only loads in what it needs. A modern desktop is fast enough and has enough memory that the kernel is usually the least of its problems. Load a big application like Oracle or PostgreSQL or Evolution or Gimp or Tomcat, or even Firefox, and the difference between a stock kernel and a hand built one is going to be in the noise level. I've only got so many hours in a day, and I'd rather spend it building applications than fiddling with my kernel.
That's not to say that there isn't a lot of room for improvement. I'm no kernel hacker, but I know there have been some very significant changes in the kernel in the past several years. I have a feeling that the change from 32bit to 64bit architectures is going to make a lot more significant changes, as are the changes from a default single processor architecture to ubiquitous multi-core, and memory sizes greater than 2Gig. It's been said before that what's sitting on your desktop right now looks an awful lot like the "big iron" of five years ago! I know more and more people using Virtualization to run Windows on their Linux or Mac.
Maybe there are some differences in schedulers, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments that the technical differences are really compelling, and that the real differences between the two camps are more personal and political. My gut tells me that, if there really is a difference, then over time, the better implementation will win. Maybe there will be a short term fork in the kernel, but I hardly think that we need to make a major parting of the ways. It seems to me that there are bigger differences out there that we're already living with than the difference between desktop and "server" architectures, if there even is such a thing.
No, Microsoft may have hit the "sweet spot" in being dirt cheap, and just barely good enough to get the job done (not to mention its relentless marketing machine), but there's nothing in what they have done which couldn't have been done just as well by someone else had they not been there.
Yea, you're right. I didn't know if I should be barfing or rolling on the floor laughing. I think I did a little of both.
Cheaping out on an otherwise free memory upgrade doesn't make any sense though, unless they're just trying to hide the fact that they are charging you more for the system.
Everything is relative. I remember when it cost you $100/month for a UUCP dialup connection, and that wasn't even an "always on" connection.
There are plenty of people paying $40/month for "basic" cable TV. I'll wager many (most?) of the people without Internet still pay for at least SOME level of Cable TV. There are usually several options for cable/DSL Internet, some of which are only barely faster than dial-up, but they are always on, more reliable and don't hog your phone line. Some of these are around the same price as a cheap dialup. And then, there is still dial-up. You can still get some connections for free, or very close to it. If you really want to get on the Internet, there's usually some way to do it cheap.
In either case though, the point is that the price is not the primary factor for many of these people. They are either afraid or or intimidated by the technology, or they just simply don't see what all the hoopla is about. Some think they are too old to learn, or they are focused on other things in their lives and don't want to be bothered. You really don't have to have Internet to lead a full and meaningful life.
Personally, I'd have a hard time adjusting to not having broadband, but I could probably survive. Slashdot withdrawal is not generally considered to be fatal.
I'm certain that Microsoft is doing a much better job now with security than they have in the past, but this "study" sure doesn't support the headline.
The other thing I always say is, "There should be a law against meetings longer than an hour."
Frankly, I'd still call CATB one of the defining moments in the Open Source movement. It was one of the first real philosophical treatments of what made Open Source software work, which could be understood by normal mortal human beings. RMS had certainly been around for a while, and many would still say he was the one who started the *current* free software movement, but even then, he was largely dismissed as a crank by most of the mainstream.
(In reality, true Free Software has been around for as long as software has been, but RMS breathed new life into it, and really gave it legs.)
I don't think I'd be quite as hard on ESR as you are -- I still like some of his classics -- but you're right about his tirades, and more recently about his self-serving editorials. He's likely to latch on to any little thing he doesn't like in a system and go on and on about it like it's the end of the world. There's not a package management tool in the universe that will completely get you around all the complexities of maintaining a system, especially if all the package creators aren't really careful. Do you remember him going on and on about CUPS? Now, I hate CUPS too, but he went absolutely ballistic, about calling it one of the worst software packages in the history of the industry.
I think he's more interested in headlines than he is about shedding light on the subject. He's long been at odds with the more purist philosophies of people like Cox and RMS, and has made no attempt to hide his beliefs that Free and Proprietary should "learn to get along with each other."
I think he's just looking for a reason to bash Red Hat's "Pure Free Software" stance.
That's not really my point. I'm sure there are things in Vista which are more "user-centric" in the sense that they allow you bring your "personality" with you (think: Roaming Profiles in W2K/XP). It'd be nice if they actually got that right this time.
The point, however, is that as BG is waving his arms around a feature that they might or might not have finally gotten working, and proclaiming how the USER is king, when actually the user is now at the absolute bottom of the priority list. It is becoming more and more clear that the underlying tone of the OS, and most of the seriously "innovative" new technologies baked into Vista, is that it is much more focused at being "corporate-centric", in the sense of the RIAA and other "content owners" (that is, the people who own the CDs and DVDs, not the people who actually created the content in the first place), to cripple and limit our lawful rights as consumers of that technology/media. The whole "DRM capable peripherals" is absolutely mind-blowing to me. It could spell the end of Open Source software, if the hardware manufacturers actually give in to Microsoft, though in the long run, I have my doubts that it will actually fly.
Mr. Gates, do you actually mean you are planning on stripping OUT all that shiny new DRM technology you are so carefully putting IN now, presumably because, by the time your next OS comes out (in five to ten years), all your fat corporate sponsors will have finally figured out that treating customers like common thieves and criminals is, well, sort of bad for business?
OK, so we can argue all day long about the relative points of how Wal-Mart affects the overall economy when they move in to an area. The point I was trying to make is not so much about Wal-Mart specifically, but about corporations in general, and how we can't think of them as a monolithic "moral" entity.
The point is, we need to be ready to flame corporations when they do evil/stupid things, but then not be afraid to encourage them when they do the right thing.
I think you're missing the point. Sure, the statement isn't literally true, but in reality, good hackers rarely start out with a completely "clean slate". You borrow ideas, code snippets, examples, familiar routines, convenient hacks, libraries and a host of other pieces from other, previously written code. Starting from scratch is an interesting intellectual exercise, but in practice, if you're trying to actually write something useful, only fools think they can write everything better than it's ever been done before.
Thanks!
Mod parent up.
Oracle has an "eXpress Edition", which they say is free to use, even in commercial deployments. (Make sure you read the license yourself, as I'm not even close to being a lawyer!) I've used it for some development work, and it seems to work nicely. It's a bit crippled when it comes to the usual fine-tuning options, but most normal Oracle tools will talk to it. The one gotcha that I overlooked at first is that it has a cap on overall user data size of something like 4 or 5Gig, so you have to think about how much data you're going to be handling. (In other words, it's not something to replace a full-blown enterprise Oracle installation, but it's great for smaller applications.)
So, in this case, it is possible that MySQL would end up being more expensive than Oracle!
Oh, and of course, it's all proprietary software, so if you want a full FOSS stack, you're not going to find it there.
However, for many (most?) cases, Oracle is also HUGE OVERKILL!
Does anyone know of a reasonably un-emotional, but still somewhat accurate comparison between PostgreSQL and Oracle? When is it appropriate to use one vs. the other?
There has only been one program ever written from from scratch, and that was "Hello World." Everything other program has been cut-n-pasted from that.
(Well, that's true at least from the advent of "high level" languages like "C", but it's probably true with respect to most Assembly programs too.)