I agree with you. 99 times out of 100 when you enter a company's name, you get several hundred hits for web sites selling the company's product, but you won't find the link to the company you are looking for itself. Or if you are interested in trying to do some research on [pick any topic] and do a Google search using that topic as a starting point, you will get thousands of hits trying to sell you anything associated with it. But with the exception of a Wikipedia link usually a few links down, you won't find anything useful helping you to research your topic. And then there is the issue of revenue generating ads. As long as web sites don't throw pulsating, gibbering, and epileptic seizure inducing advertisements in their margins or banners, I don't have an issue with ads. They have to make money and pay for their servers etc. (I do use ad blocker plus, so I guess this makes me somewhat hypocritical about this since I never check to see how many static ads it filters out... my preference would be that it allows 100% of the static ads through... a bit of carrot to counter the whip... but who has time to verify this?). So those static ads with words like 'buy' and 'price' etc. could screw up the search as well (I guess depending on how static the ads get:) )
People wonder why Wikipedia has gotten so popular. It is because it is the only place you can go on the internet, enter a search term, and have a reasonable expectation of getting a hit on the subject you want to learn about; without having to jump through all sorts of filtering hoops to ignore things like 'buy' or 'sale' or 'download'. Sure you can filter like that, but you also may be screwing your search at the same time. What if you are writing a paper on topics from actuators to zebras. You may want to know how much of your search topic items are bought each year, how much of a country's GDP was based on it, etc. while not wanting to buy any. You may end up filtering out sites that are useful to you. I gave a couple of random examples, but this can apply to almost anything.
What I would like to see Google do (and all the other search engines too for that matter), is create an option and associated algorithm to break out web searches into two fundamental/gross search categories:
commercial searches - for businesses from which to buy from or do commercial research on... e.g. where can I buy tennis shoes, or CPUs, or cars (had to get a car analogy into the post somewhere) and for how much, etc., or trying to create a list of potential billing system vendors for your new company.
searches for research or information/informative sites. - e.g. (keeping with the two examples just above) how does the tennis shoe market affect workers in Indonesia?; what are the different kinds of CPUs or researching specific architectures; or why GM is such a good buy now; or what are the different kinds of billing systems, how do billing systems differ from one market segment to another... e.g. billing systems for telcos versus for electric companies
I would like to see any progress on getting more meaningful results back from a search. I don't think we will ever see this since all the search engines generate their revenue through advertising. Ultimately, this means we are stuck knowing how much everything costs, but never able to find out what they are good for.:-)
Using the word 'magic' means you are assuming I know little about computers. I worked on Unix systems as a programmer for around 10 years. Big systems that supported literally hundreds of thousands of accounts. Programming in C using shared objects, IPC, muliple processes, daemons, pro*c, the gammit. Also a lot of Java and PL/SQL (was considered to be one of the most advanced at PL/SQL in our company's offices in Saint Louis where we had at the time a couple of thousand programmers). Was a technical team lead and project lead. Now I am an analyst and architect, and get very good references. Been doing that for several years now, and get well paid for it. I know about software and hardware systems.
Just because you don't like the truth when someone speaks it, doesn't mean the person has no idea what he is talking about. I see I've been modded +4. It's a good indication the silent majority agrees with me. That must stick in your craw too.
I must be imagining Red Hat, and Novell, and IBM, and Apple (KHTML is LGPL), and a few other companies.
How about Cubase? Or any other good DAW. Don't tell me that there is a very good Linux project that does this because there isn't. Nothing in Linux even comes close because the license is too restrictive. They would have to give away their code and end up losing money. They make their money from software sales not support. Only very big systems can get away with the selling support paradigm.
Or how about word processors? The only reason OO.o exists is because McNealy's desire to hurt Microsoft (i.e. give away software free that can compete with one of MS's main revenue earners). It may be economical for them to make their own office software instead of paying licensing fees for MS Office, but if you told me that Sun employees use MS Office I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see them making enough money supporting OO.o to cover the cost of the developers they have working on it (and most of the developers for OO.o are Sun employees). Anything less than an enterprise application is pretty much useless in terms of making a living from it. Others who don't want to pay for the work you put into it, can just compile the code you are forced to provide for free.
There's no RAID on that board. You get no increased performance from it.
Smoke some more. BTW, it is unbelievably hard to find SATA RAID cards that are recognized by Linux (same reason it's hard to find good progams).
Pull the wool over your eyes a little further. It feels better when you can't see the real world.
If people are running an OS for some other reason, then we have problems...
I guess you have problems. I for one have stopped using Linux and switched back to Windows because I am tired of things not working without hours of hacking and configuring. I want to use on board RAID without pulling my hair out. I know it is not as good as hardware RAID but it still provides redundancy. I am sick and fucking tired of the stupidity of calling it fake raid and refusing to support it. It is not fake, it stripes and mirrors the same as all raid. So it doesn't have all the features and uses some of the cpu resource to run, it is still real raid.
That is just one example of my frustration. Constantly having to use second rate programs because the the GPL is so restrictive and viral that no software vendor wants to deal with it. As much as people spout 'open source' it isn't. It places as hard or harder restrictions on its use as any proprietary software, they are just different restrictions. But it definitely is not open. Not to mention that trying to get consistency in standards is like trying to herd cats.
It is almost like the Linux community is full of spoiled kids who only want to play if they get their own way and will pick up their ball and take it home if they don't. But I guess that is the Asperger in them. Hey and I like Unix systems better than Windows and concede it is way more secure. I programmed C on Unix for years. But being more secure is not the be all and end all. I haven't had an infection on a Windows machine (at home) since 1995. I have had one infection at work (it got the whole dev centre) and it was cleaned up in one morning. How about getting a zeroconf type interface that works so I don't want to gouge my eyes out every time I want to set up a wireless card in Ubuntu or Fedora? And don't forget my real on board RAID. Or the fucking atrocious sound system (there only needs to be one).
I know I'll be modded down for this, but I had to say it. There will never be a year of the Linux desktop. The community can't get it's shit together enough to do it. Servers are easier to build since there are so many less things to build and integrate. And that is probably the only reason Linux as a server is decent... that and big corps like IBM contribute so much they force a consistency on Linux server software. Good night and last one out shut the lights out.
Is sounds like you are saying that because it gets a lot of press causing a lot of people to know the name, then it must be the best database server out there. And it is more compatible and works better because of that? WTF? What the hell do you mean by compatible by the way?
More people know or knew how to program in Visual Basic than in Java or C or C++. Does that mean it is a better programming language and more compatible? You are going to tell me that what I just wrote doesn't make sense. And you would be correct. But neither did your statement. I also used Visual Basic as an example on purpose. Being popular doesn't make it the best, and using the most popular tool doesn't make the best programmer and subsequently the best code.
Both databases have JDBC and ODBC drivers, meaning both can be accessed by business systems requiring an RDBMS. They both use SQL, granted both have variations in the SQL statements as do all RDMBSs (but this should be a non-issue for new development as the differences are not great).
There is one area I think will differ greatly, and that is in database/schema design. Most/many MySQL-Java shops I have seen have poor database designs, especially when the Java programmers rely too heavily on Hibernate to create the design, which is almost always. I think Hibernate is a good tool if used appropriately, but there are too many cases of people using ORM ONLY to create their database, and don't think about the database design any other way. This leads to very poor and inefficient database design. Even at my present company, a high tech start up where much of the server side code and databases where built this way. The databases are now dragging their MySQL asses now that the volume of data is increasing. Not necessarily because of it being MySQL, but because the use of ORM ONLY to create the database design. I'm not saying that this can't happen in a Postgres shop, but I normally see more deliberate database designing where Postgres is used. Perhaps because it isn't quite as light weight it may require better designers to use it, which leads to better database designs. Similar to how C and C++ require more highly trained and deliberate programmers than Java in order to produce good code.
Thanks for the control-scroll tip. I will use that a lot I think.
In Word you can either select the degree of zoom from a drop down combo box directly accessible on the tool bar or type in a custom zoom directly into the text box on the tool bar. In OO.o you always need to open up the zoom dialogue to change the zoom using either radio buttons or typing in the custom zoom into the field. It sounds like a small thing but it is a significant and frustrating piece of poor usability design for those who like to enter values (some people like concrete actions like). Eliminating the need to open up a dialogue box selecting the zoom size and clicking OK removes several clicks. Doesn't sound like much but when you have your stream of conscious focused on your document, it is enough of a distraction to be annoying. It also seems 'clunky' compared to how Word, and most of the MS Office products provide zoom functionality.
I don't think I am being very picky. You know if coding (which I don't do enough any more) or anything you do when you get into a groove, the annoyance of a bump or interruption in your thinking process is more than a little annoying as it can take a bit to get you back in the groove again. This is why I would like to see a more 'Word-like' approach to zoom. Given the price of MS Office I still don't install it on my own PCs or laptops, as OO.o works good enough. If I make a complaint about some feature of OO.o it is not to trash it, it is to try to make it better. If people don't say anything, no one will know that anything is wrong, or that improvement isn't necessary. The king won't put some damn clothes on.:-)
I think OO.o has come a long way, and is continually improving. I have used it before it was OO.o. I still use it. But it still needs improvement. But then again, very few apps are perfect including MS Office (I also don't have bias against MS Office or most MS products either... but please also realize I definitely don't like the abuseful purposes to which Microsoft uses its monopoly... and also that I did a lot of C unix programming professionally, and like working with Unix systems, so I am no Microsoft weenie.:) ). This is one area I would like to see improved. The least user action possible to invoke an action (like changing the degree of zoom) while still being intuitive, the better the user experience. But please don't be defensive (I can't tell if you are by your post, so if you aren't being defensive, my apologies), I am not one of the OO.o detractors. On the contrary, I advise people to use it if they don't feel they need MS Office or if their pocket book is not very deep.
I never understood things like the zoom feature being the way they are. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they are trying to avoid a patent war with respect to the GUI controls. With these stupid business process type patents, Microsoft might have patented a "method to change font sizes using a spinner or drop down box". Or they may have patented a method of zooming in a word processor by clicking on the screen after clicking on plus or minus tool bar buttons. If it is isn't for this reason, then I agree, these would seem to be low hanging fruit in terms of usability that should have been picked years ago.
So far Obama has appointed some people to a number of positions that seem to show pretty concretely that he is following the same policies laid out by George W Bush regarding laws and policies around the DMCA, Business Process Patents, and support for the legal terrorism conducted by the RIAA. And now, here he is joining in on a number of technologies somewhat favored and very familiar to those people who generally detest these anachronistic abominations: Slashdotters.
So why not take advantage of this newly discovered direct access to the white house? Here we are, a very large group of people who have very strong opinions on all these cankerous laws, policies, and organizations, and now the "leader of the free world" has seemingly opened up communications channels directly to the White House that are second nature to most of us. Slashdotters all over America should use this opportunity to clue Obama in on how and why the DMCA tramples peoples rights, the RIAA is at best the last flailing of an outdated business paradigm, and at worst (which is usually), is the worst machination possible of bullying, akin to legal terrorism, and most important of all in my opinion, why Business Process Patents are harmful to competition and disastrous to innovation and progress. We can even give him a car analogy: like if there were business process patents around 1900, Ford would have patented a vague "process of transporting people and goods in horseless carriages," and there would have been a car monopoly back then, the price of cars would be artificially high, and we might still be riding horses now because of it (mind you, there might not be as much talk about global warming now, but that is another story).
I say Slashdotters across America because, after all, Obama is the American president (and not, like a lot of left wing Canadians seem to think, the Prime Minister of Canada... they don't seem to understand that American Democrat == (at best) small C Conservative... besides, the election was in AMERICA, NOT IN CANADA YOU BOZOS). But it is true that while America is rapidly losing ground as the world's economic powerhouse, many of these policies are felt around the globe. (I wonder if when China finally reigns supreme as the world's economic powerhouse, if the DMCA will be replaced by laws mandating software piracy?... just kidding... but....) So in that respect, Slashdotters from elsewhere should have a say in these matters too.
We should try to be polite at first, and use well reasoned arguments on why Obama should change the direction he seems to have started out on with respect to these various laws and policies. But at the same time, take advantage of the Slashdot Effect (while being polite and well reasoned) to show just how many people are opposed to the direction he has taken, and want the RIAA cut down at the roots, the DMCA updated to truly protect the copyright holder without trampling the rights of the purchaser, and to show some common sense and throw ALL business process patents in the garbage and instruct the patent office not to accept any more (and for good measure, line up every single stinking bottom feeding scum sucking, mother fucking patent lawyer against the law and kick every one of those god damned sores on the 'taint' of the universe squarely in the balls, or the cunt, while understanding that while some may have balls, they are all cunts.... OK maybe not, cunts are useful... Sorry... I'm better now... ummmm, this last bit might be considered a little, just a little too impolite a message to send to the white house, but all the rest still applies).
Sure they can adapt. But what is to stop them from following the same path that they have a proven track record of following, and keep themselves perpetually behind the eight ball? Just like the tech weenies who just have to buy the latest gadget. So far they seem to be good at overextending themselves. Not all companies have leaders who can reign themselves in. I seem to recall some server company being bought by Oracle recently.
Funny... I lived there, in Missouri, for close to seven years. Just moved back to Canada last year. Delivery times were pretty darned good in my experience. But I didn't know about the boxes there... mind you I lived in older neighbourhoods... like over a hundred years old.:) But then again, there are more neighbourhoods like that in the U.S. than in Canada. We have a few older ones in cities and towns in Ontario, Quebec, and some of the Maritime provinces but that is it. But not so many in other places.
I have lived in the United States and of course in Canada. I can tell you from a completely unbiased view point that compared to Canada, the USPS is phenomenal, kicks ass, the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cat's ass, wunderbar, etc. etc. etc.
In Canada, if you live in a subdivision newer than something like 1978 (already getting pretty old), you will never get a letter delivered to your door. Instead they have a ridiculous setup called 'super mailboxes': think of an apartment mailbox but set up on select subdivision street corners. House owners have to go to their 'super mailbox' to pick up their letters; you don't get mail delivered to your door any more. The corollary of this is that you can't mail a letter from your home mailbox either (no home mailboxes any more).
In Canada, mail is only delivered five days a week, and only once per day. As opposed to six days a week in the U.S. We also don't have very many 'real' post offices. They contract the local post office duties to Shoppers Drugmart (Canada's equivalent to Walgreens or CVS). They have a little counter in the back of the stores. I suppose it works OK, but you aren't guaranteed that if you drop off a parcel or letter before the postal counter closes that it will be picked up by the post office for processing that night.
Postal employees are rabid union members. They make British coal miners of the 1970s look like pussies. They will go on strike at the drop of a hat. And they do as often as they can get away with, and they get away with a lot up here. Blocking mail from getting into facilities during a strike is routine, and the police sit back and watch it happen. They need a special court order to protect the ability to deliver the mail, so the first few days of a strike you aren't guaranteed that mail will move easily. Not that it does when there isn't a strike. And I don't know what these morons have to strike about. All postal office employees get paid a ridiculous wage ($40,000.00 to $60,000.00+) for a job that most high school drop out can do. Carriers get to go home early if they finish their routes before 8 hours are up. Most only have to work half days for full pay.
And as for delivery times, compare 3 days for a first class letter anywhere in the U.S.A. to 5 days in Canada... and in some places, 5 days 'if you're lucky'. And from my experience, 3 days in the U.S. is pretty much guaranteed... yes sometimes it is longer but not often. All in all, don't complain about the poor old USPS. Given what they have to do, they do it pretty well.
Here is a tip for USPS customers who don't like junk mail. It usually works. It worked for me when I was living in Saint Louis County in the great state of MO. (as opposed to the great states of Curly and Larry). There is a regulation that says that they have to not deliver items to you if you consider them offensive or obscene. The great part is that you get to say what is offensive or obscene. I forget the form number (it might be 2150), but you go to your local post office they should be able to tell you... you might have to ask the manager. Anyway, you can tell them to block certain senders from sending you obscene materials. So you can tell them to block mail from any of the major daily papers in your area (and sometimes the smaller ones) from sending you anything. In the U.S. almost all the big junk mail flyers come from the newspapers. It is called 'total market coverage'.... the papers have big databases on all the households in their area... usually more complete than the USPS... they know who the deliver the Sunday paper to (with all those dead trees worth of advertising) and more important to this conversation, all those who don't get the Sunday paper. Then they mail the flyers to all of those households who don't get the paper that day. And anyone else you can think of
Having Java fragment as much as Linux distributions could be disastrous to the business world. The nice thing about Sun keeping a tight reign on the Java specification is that it created a standard that is/was well, standard. Thinking about a fragmented Java non-standard makes me feel uneasy for some reason.
If you have the money. For anything you would want to run in production it costs tens of thousands of dollars per server (assuming a quad core or dual quad core intel server). High tech start ups like where I am working now can't afford that kind of money, even with deep pockets backing it up. The other alternative is JBoss, which not everyone agrees is all that good, even if it does provide a good number of features. Also, since it is being developed by Sun, it can or will serve as a good reference implementation of the J2EE specification. I can't see a commercial app server filling this niche as they always stuff it full of proprietary features to try to lock you in to their product.
Re:What about MySQL?
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I know I will be ridiculed for this, but the only really bad thing MS SQL Server has going for it is that it only runs on Windows boxes. As an RDBMS, it is pretty decent. It is not the best, it is not the worst. I find it interesting that it was one of the first RDBMSs that had almost full support of SQL-92 as far back as version 6.5 (mid/late 90s). In my work I have used a number database systems, a couple very extensively and the rest in at least non trivial applications (Oracle, MS SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, and to a small degree DB2). From my experience I'd say that for anything up to very large databases (amount of data stored, number of tables, etc.), SQL Server works and performs quite well (v6.5 was only good up to medium large). It supports the SQL standards quite well, is one of the best documented database systems out there, and is quite robust. If they could find a way to run it on anything other than a 'Windows' machine, given its much lower pricing, I think it could probably cut into Oracle's and IBM's market share quite a bit.
The most important thing for passenger rail transportation in the United States (and Canada too for that matter) is to give the passenger trains a higher priority in terms of sharing the rail lines. Right now, freight trains have a higher priority. What this means is that when a passenger train and a freight train need to use the same stretch of track at the same time, the freight train wins, and the passenger train is relegated to parking on a siding until the freight train moves past. Worst of all, it is very commonly freight trainS. In fact the passenger train may sit still for 15 or 20 minutes with no other trains on the track, waiting before the freight train even gets to the contested piece of track. This causes very, very frequent delays for passengers. Enough so that many won't take the train.
Several years ago I was on a business trip to Springfield Illinois for day and a half, and from there needed to go do some work in the Chicago area. For a change of pace I decided to take the train to Chicago. From Springfield to Chicago is maybe a two and a half hour drive; three tops. I left around one in the afternoon. We pulled into sidings so often to let freight trains go by it was unbelievable. We parked on a siding one time for two or three hours waiting for multiple freight trains to pass. A three hour train trip turned into almost ten hours by the time we got to Joliet, which is still 45 minutes out from Chicago. I was actually going to stay in Naperville (just west of Chicago, not quite doubling back on my trip in... it's maybe 10 or 15 miles north of the train route I was on.). The plan was to take the train to Union Station, and grab the commuter train back to Naperville... assuming the train I was on would be on time and arrive around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. We were so late the commuter train had stopped running and like I said, we were only getting into Joliet at 11 at night. Fortunately someone I was talking to was actually getting off at Joliet and driving to Naperville where he lived. Otherwise it would have meant staying in the city overnight (not so onerous but still a change in plans when traveling is a pain in the ass).
Here is the thing: I asked the conductor and he said this was very common. They never ran on time. I have since talked to a few Amtrak employees and they ALL said the same thing. People won't take the train unless the passenger trains have priority and they can count on getting to their destination on schedule. The European rail system seems to be able to do this quite fine. Amtrak and U.S. legislators need to look to the European passenger rail system as an example of how they should do it in the U.S. If people could use this they would. There is a demand that is being left unfulfilled. I have had conversations about taking the train to Chicago from St. Louis for a weekend with people. First there is limited service from STL now, and it is so unreliable they would rather drive. Once there it was usually more convenient to cab to the clubs and theatres etc. than drive your own car (parking can be a pain, and then there is the no drinking and driving thing). Most stayed in the downtown, so a train ride would have been perfect. Never mind the fact you can sleep on the trip back so you aren't dead tired on Monday. Alas... Amtrak can't deliver the goods... at least not on time. If a 5 hour trip from STL to CHI is so messed up, think how late you would be on a 24 to 48 hour trip! Fix the scheduling, and people WILL ride the trains.
My thoughts as well. Give a proper handle, and can lift a 100 pound weight off the ground using one hand. Grab the handle an pull up with the legs. I would guess most males can do this too. Now grab a 1000 pound weight and try to lift it strapped in to this thing. If you were able to hold on to it and not let it slip out of your hand, I would think it likely that you would rip your hand off of your wrist. To be truly useful for lifting things over a long period of time, you would need some sort of mechanical hand as well.
think that they just need to be more clever about the ads
Yes... like stop the jumping jiggling flashing so fucking annoying that I can't actually read the content I went there to read. Personally I have nothing against ads being on the page I'm reading. But when they get annoying because of an extremely high 'look at me I'm annoying as hell' factor, I stop looking at that ad permanently with a filter. It is really a companies own fault if people filter out their advertisements after they hire an ad agency that they seem to think that the only way to sell on the Internet is to create ads that are the equivalent of the late night gizmo pitch men who yell at the top of their lungs with the most annoying voice imaginable. It might be possible that it is the web site owner's fault as well for allowing advertisements that annoy their users too.
If the ad people who seem to think it is important to annoy you in order to make an ad 'work well', would get over that fallacy, people would leave the ads alone. I've seen a lot of very clever ads that have good old fashioned static images. But perhaps now-a-days, clever is being replaced by stupid blunt force trauma on the senses. Too bad, 'cause like grandma used to say, "You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar." I never figured out why she wanted to catch flies anyway.
Please, how can anyone moderate this as interesting?
...we have no proof or anything...
It is a sophomoric response at best. Of course we don't know who is telling the truth, but the purpose of the forum is to discuss the issue. The issue is what can be done when someone steals your work, posts it as their own, and then tries sue the real owner? To discuss it requires that we assume that the guy isn't BS'ing us and really has a problem... which is an interesting one, and probably why it made it to the main page. (You know, suspension of disbelief, the only reason we don't walk out of a Star Wars movie without thinking that Lucas has gone downhill a long way since episode IV... OK so that's not a good example, but you know what I mean.) We all know that he could be lying but who fucking cares? Now if there were a mod for 'who fucking cares' that would apply. And 'interesting' sure as hell doesn't.
They are going to send them to Canada and force them to pay for the cell phone / data plans we have here. Most plans here charge us long distance charges for long distance calls... that we RECEIVE!. Try that one on.
Slashdot Mirror
Lame as well as lazy response. While you try to come off sounding smart you sound more like a smart ass. Sophomoric at best.
I agree with you. 99 times out of 100 when you enter a company's name, you get several hundred hits for web sites selling the company's product, but you won't find the link to the company you are looking for itself. Or if you are interested in trying to do some research on [pick any topic] and do a Google search using that topic as a starting point, you will get thousands of hits trying to sell you anything associated with it. But with the exception of a Wikipedia link usually a few links down, you won't find anything useful helping you to research your topic. And then there is the issue of revenue generating ads. As long as web sites don't throw pulsating, gibbering, and epileptic seizure inducing advertisements in their margins or banners, I don't have an issue with ads. They have to make money and pay for their servers etc. (I do use ad blocker plus, so I guess this makes me somewhat hypocritical about this since I never check to see how many static ads it filters out... my preference would be that it allows 100% of the static ads through... a bit of carrot to counter the whip... but who has time to verify this?). So those static ads with words like 'buy' and 'price' etc. could screw up the search as well (I guess depending on how static the ads get :) )
People wonder why Wikipedia has gotten so popular. It is because it is the only place you can go on the internet, enter a search term, and have a reasonable expectation of getting a hit on the subject you want to learn about; without having to jump through all sorts of filtering hoops to ignore things like 'buy' or 'sale' or 'download'. Sure you can filter like that, but you also may be screwing your search at the same time. What if you are writing a paper on topics from actuators to zebras. You may want to know how much of your search topic items are bought each year, how much of a country's GDP was based on it, etc. while not wanting to buy any. You may end up filtering out sites that are useful to you. I gave a couple of random examples, but this can apply to almost anything.
What I would like to see Google do (and all the other search engines too for that matter), is create an option and associated algorithm to break out web searches into two fundamental/gross search categories:
I would like to see any progress on getting more meaningful results back from a search. I don't think we will ever see this since all the search engines generate their revenue through advertising. Ultimately, this means we are stuck knowing how much everything costs, but never able to find out what they are good for. :-)
Using the word 'magic' means you are assuming I know little about computers. I worked on Unix systems as a programmer for around 10 years. Big systems that supported literally hundreds of thousands of accounts. Programming in C using shared objects, IPC, muliple processes, daemons, pro*c, the gammit. Also a lot of Java and PL/SQL (was considered to be one of the most advanced at PL/SQL in our company's offices in Saint Louis where we had at the time a couple of thousand programmers). Was a technical team lead and project lead. Now I am an analyst and architect, and get very good references. Been doing that for several years now, and get well paid for it. I know about software and hardware systems.
Just because you don't like the truth when someone speaks it, doesn't mean the person has no idea what he is talking about. I see I've been modded +4. It's a good indication the silent majority agrees with me. That must stick in your craw too.
How about Cubase? Or any other good DAW. Don't tell me that there is a very good Linux project that does this because there isn't. Nothing in Linux even comes close because the license is too restrictive. They would have to give away their code and end up losing money. They make their money from software sales not support. Only very big systems can get away with the selling support paradigm.
Or how about word processors? The only reason OO.o exists is because McNealy's desire to hurt Microsoft (i.e. give away software free that can compete with one of MS's main revenue earners). It may be economical for them to make their own office software instead of paying licensing fees for MS Office, but if you told me that Sun employees use MS Office I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see them making enough money supporting OO.o to cover the cost of the developers they have working on it (and most of the developers for OO.o are Sun employees). Anything less than an enterprise application is pretty much useless in terms of making a living from it. Others who don't want to pay for the work you put into it, can just compile the code you are forced to provide for free.
Smoke some more. BTW, it is unbelievably hard to find SATA RAID cards that are recognized by Linux (same reason it's hard to find good progams).
Pull the wool over your eyes a little further. It feels better when you can't see the real world.
I guess you have problems. I for one have stopped using Linux and switched back to Windows because I am tired of things not working without hours of hacking and configuring. I want to use on board RAID without pulling my hair out. I know it is not as good as hardware RAID but it still provides redundancy. I am sick and fucking tired of the stupidity of calling it fake raid and refusing to support it. It is not fake, it stripes and mirrors the same as all raid. So it doesn't have all the features and uses some of the cpu resource to run, it is still real raid.
That is just one example of my frustration. Constantly having to use second rate programs because the the GPL is so restrictive and viral that no software vendor wants to deal with it. As much as people spout 'open source' it isn't. It places as hard or harder restrictions on its use as any proprietary software, they are just different restrictions. But it definitely is not open. Not to mention that trying to get consistency in standards is like trying to herd cats.
It is almost like the Linux community is full of spoiled kids who only want to play if they get their own way and will pick up their ball and take it home if they don't. But I guess that is the Asperger in them. Hey and I like Unix systems better than Windows and concede it is way more secure. I programmed C on Unix for years. But being more secure is not the be all and end all. I haven't had an infection on a Windows machine (at home) since 1995. I have had one infection at work (it got the whole dev centre) and it was cleaned up in one morning. How about getting a zeroconf type interface that works so I don't want to gouge my eyes out every time I want to set up a wireless card in Ubuntu or Fedora? And don't forget my real on board RAID. Or the fucking atrocious sound system (there only needs to be one).
I know I'll be modded down for this, but I had to say it. There will never be a year of the Linux desktop. The community can't get it's shit together enough to do it. Servers are easier to build since there are so many less things to build and integrate. And that is probably the only reason Linux as a server is decent... that and big corps like IBM contribute so much they force a consistency on Linux server software. Good night and last one out shut the lights out.
Is sounds like you are saying that because it gets a lot of press causing a lot of people to know the name, then it must be the best database server out there. And it is more compatible and works better because of that? WTF? What the hell do you mean by compatible by the way?
More people know or knew how to program in Visual Basic than in Java or C or C++. Does that mean it is a better programming language and more compatible? You are going to tell me that what I just wrote doesn't make sense. And you would be correct. But neither did your statement. I also used Visual Basic as an example on purpose. Being popular doesn't make it the best, and using the most popular tool doesn't make the best programmer and subsequently the best code.
Both databases have JDBC and ODBC drivers, meaning both can be accessed by business systems requiring an RDBMS. They both use SQL, granted both have variations in the SQL statements as do all RDMBSs (but this should be a non-issue for new development as the differences are not great).
There is one area I think will differ greatly, and that is in database/schema design. Most/many MySQL-Java shops I have seen have poor database designs, especially when the Java programmers rely too heavily on Hibernate to create the design, which is almost always. I think Hibernate is a good tool if used appropriately, but there are too many cases of people using ORM ONLY to create their database, and don't think about the database design any other way. This leads to very poor and inefficient database design. Even at my present company, a high tech start up where much of the server side code and databases where built this way. The databases are now dragging their MySQL asses now that the volume of data is increasing. Not necessarily because of it being MySQL, but because the use of ORM ONLY to create the database design. I'm not saying that this can't happen in a Postgres shop, but I normally see more deliberate database designing where Postgres is used. Perhaps because it isn't quite as light weight it may require better designers to use it, which leads to better database designs. Similar to how C and C++ require more highly trained and deliberate programmers than Java in order to produce good code.
Flame on!
Thanks for the control-scroll tip. I will use that a lot I think.
In Word you can either select the degree of zoom from a drop down combo box directly accessible on the tool bar or type in a custom zoom directly into the text box on the tool bar. In OO.o you always need to open up the zoom dialogue to change the zoom using either radio buttons or typing in the custom zoom into the field. It sounds like a small thing but it is a significant and frustrating piece of poor usability design for those who like to enter values (some people like concrete actions like). Eliminating the need to open up a dialogue box selecting the zoom size and clicking OK removes several clicks. Doesn't sound like much but when you have your stream of conscious focused on your document, it is enough of a distraction to be annoying. It also seems 'clunky' compared to how Word, and most of the MS Office products provide zoom functionality.
I don't think I am being very picky. You know if coding (which I don't do enough any more) or anything you do when you get into a groove, the annoyance of a bump or interruption in your thinking process is more than a little annoying as it can take a bit to get you back in the groove again. This is why I would like to see a more 'Word-like' approach to zoom. Given the price of MS Office I still don't install it on my own PCs or laptops, as OO.o works good enough. If I make a complaint about some feature of OO.o it is not to trash it, it is to try to make it better. If people don't say anything, no one will know that anything is wrong, or that improvement isn't necessary. The king won't put some damn clothes on. :-)
I think OO.o has come a long way, and is continually improving. I have used it before it was OO.o. I still use it. But it still needs improvement. But then again, very few apps are perfect including MS Office (I also don't have bias against MS Office or most MS products either... but please also realize I definitely don't like the abuseful purposes to which Microsoft uses its monopoly... and also that I did a lot of C unix programming professionally, and like working with Unix systems, so I am no Microsoft weenie. :) ). This is one area I would like to see improved. The least user action possible to invoke an action (like changing the degree of zoom) while still being intuitive, the better the user experience. But please don't be defensive (I can't tell if you are by your post, so if you aren't being defensive, my apologies), I am not one of the OO.o detractors. On the contrary, I advise people to use it if they don't feel they need MS Office or if their pocket book is not very deep.
I never understood things like the zoom feature being the way they are. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they are trying to avoid a patent war with respect to the GUI controls. With these stupid business process type patents, Microsoft might have patented a "method to change font sizes using a spinner or drop down box". Or they may have patented a method of zooming in a word processor by clicking on the screen after clicking on plus or minus tool bar buttons. If it is isn't for this reason, then I agree, these would seem to be low hanging fruit in terms of usability that should have been picked years ago.
So far Obama has appointed some people to a number of positions that seem to show pretty concretely that he is following the same policies laid out by George W Bush regarding laws and policies around the DMCA, Business Process Patents, and support for the legal terrorism conducted by the RIAA. And now, here he is joining in on a number of technologies somewhat favored and very familiar to those people who generally detest these anachronistic abominations: Slashdotters.
So why not take advantage of this newly discovered direct access to the white house? Here we are, a very large group of people who have very strong opinions on all these cankerous laws, policies, and organizations, and now the "leader of the free world" has seemingly opened up communications channels directly to the White House that are second nature to most of us. Slashdotters all over America should use this opportunity to clue Obama in on how and why the DMCA tramples peoples rights, the RIAA is at best the last flailing of an outdated business paradigm, and at worst (which is usually), is the worst machination possible of bullying, akin to legal terrorism, and most important of all in my opinion, why Business Process Patents are harmful to competition and disastrous to innovation and progress. We can even give him a car analogy: like if there were business process patents around 1900, Ford would have patented a vague "process of transporting people and goods in horseless carriages," and there would have been a car monopoly back then, the price of cars would be artificially high, and we might still be riding horses now because of it (mind you, there might not be as much talk about global warming now, but that is another story).
I say Slashdotters across America because, after all, Obama is the American president (and not, like a lot of left wing Canadians seem to think, the Prime Minister of Canada... they don't seem to understand that American Democrat == (at best) small C Conservative... besides, the election was in AMERICA, NOT IN CANADA YOU BOZOS). But it is true that while America is rapidly losing ground as the world's economic powerhouse, many of these policies are felt around the globe. (I wonder if when China finally reigns supreme as the world's economic powerhouse, if the DMCA will be replaced by laws mandating software piracy?... just kidding... but....) So in that respect, Slashdotters from elsewhere should have a say in these matters too.
We should try to be polite at first, and use well reasoned arguments on why Obama should change the direction he seems to have started out on with respect to these various laws and policies. But at the same time, take advantage of the Slashdot Effect (while being polite and well reasoned) to show just how many people are opposed to the direction he has taken, and want the RIAA cut down at the roots, the DMCA updated to truly protect the copyright holder without trampling the rights of the purchaser, and to show some common sense and throw ALL business process patents in the garbage and instruct the patent office not to accept any more (and for good measure, line up every single stinking bottom feeding scum sucking, mother fucking patent lawyer against the law and kick every one of those god damned sores on the 'taint' of the universe squarely in the balls, or the cunt, while understanding that while some may have balls, they are all cunts .... OK maybe not, cunts are useful... Sorry... I'm better now... ummmm, this last bit might be considered a little, just a little too impolite a message to send to the white house, but all the rest still applies).
please mod this guy up
Sure they can adapt. But what is to stop them from following the same path that they have a proven track record of following, and keep themselves perpetually behind the eight ball? Just like the tech weenies who just have to buy the latest gadget. So far they seem to be good at overextending themselves. Not all companies have leaders who can reign themselves in. I seem to recall some server company being bought by Oracle recently.
As long as you don't ask me how I spread their little legs apart.... the moths I mean.
Funny... I lived there, in Missouri, for close to seven years. Just moved back to Canada last year. Delivery times were pretty darned good in my experience. But I didn't know about the boxes there... mind you I lived in older neighbourhoods... like over a hundred years old. :) But then again, there are more neighbourhoods like that in the U.S. than in Canada. We have a few older ones in cities and towns in Ontario, Quebec, and some of the Maritime provinces but that is it. But not so many in other places.
Speaking of which, have you ever smelled moth balls? ......... (ducks)
I have lived in the United States and of course in Canada. I can tell you from a completely unbiased view point that compared to Canada, the USPS is phenomenal, kicks ass, the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cat's ass, wunderbar, etc. etc. etc.
In Canada, if you live in a subdivision newer than something like 1978 (already getting pretty old), you will never get a letter delivered to your door. Instead they have a ridiculous setup called 'super mailboxes': think of an apartment mailbox but set up on select subdivision street corners. House owners have to go to their 'super mailbox' to pick up their letters; you don't get mail delivered to your door any more. The corollary of this is that you can't mail a letter from your home mailbox either (no home mailboxes any more).
In Canada, mail is only delivered five days a week, and only once per day. As opposed to six days a week in the U.S. We also don't have very many 'real' post offices. They contract the local post office duties to Shoppers Drugmart (Canada's equivalent to Walgreens or CVS). They have a little counter in the back of the stores. I suppose it works OK, but you aren't guaranteed that if you drop off a parcel or letter before the postal counter closes that it will be picked up by the post office for processing that night.
Postal employees are rabid union members. They make British coal miners of the 1970s look like pussies. They will go on strike at the drop of a hat. And they do as often as they can get away with, and they get away with a lot up here. Blocking mail from getting into facilities during a strike is routine, and the police sit back and watch it happen. They need a special court order to protect the ability to deliver the mail, so the first few days of a strike you aren't guaranteed that mail will move easily. Not that it does when there isn't a strike. And I don't know what these morons have to strike about. All postal office employees get paid a ridiculous wage ($40,000.00 to $60,000.00+) for a job that most high school drop out can do. Carriers get to go home early if they finish their routes before 8 hours are up. Most only have to work half days for full pay.
And as for delivery times, compare 3 days for a first class letter anywhere in the U.S.A. to 5 days in Canada... and in some places, 5 days 'if you're lucky'. And from my experience, 3 days in the U.S. is pretty much guaranteed... yes sometimes it is longer but not often. All in all, don't complain about the poor old USPS. Given what they have to do, they do it pretty well.
Here is a tip for USPS customers who don't like junk mail. It usually works. It worked for me when I was living in Saint Louis County in the great state of MO. (as opposed to the great states of Curly and Larry). There is a regulation that says that they have to not deliver items to you if you consider them offensive or obscene. The great part is that you get to say what is offensive or obscene. I forget the form number (it might be 2150), but you go to your local post office they should be able to tell you... you might have to ask the manager. Anyway, you can tell them to block certain senders from sending you obscene materials. So you can tell them to block mail from any of the major daily papers in your area (and sometimes the smaller ones) from sending you anything. In the U.S. almost all the big junk mail flyers come from the newspapers. It is called 'total market coverage'.... the papers have big databases on all the households in their area... usually more complete than the USPS ... they know who the deliver the Sunday paper to (with all those dead trees worth of advertising) and more important to this conversation, all those who don't get the Sunday paper. Then they mail the flyers to all of those households who don't get the paper that day. And anyone else you can think of
Having Java fragment as much as Linux distributions could be disastrous to the business world. The nice thing about Sun keeping a tight reign on the Java specification is that it created a standard that is/was well, standard. Thinking about a fragmented Java non-standard makes me feel uneasy for some reason.
If you have the money. For anything you would want to run in production it costs tens of thousands of dollars per server (assuming a quad core or dual quad core intel server). High tech start ups like where I am working now can't afford that kind of money, even with deep pockets backing it up. The other alternative is JBoss, which not everyone agrees is all that good, even if it does provide a good number of features. Also, since it is being developed by Sun, it can or will serve as a good reference implementation of the J2EE specification. I can't see a commercial app server filling this niche as they always stuff it full of proprietary features to try to lock you in to their product.
I know I will be ridiculed for this, but the only really bad thing MS SQL Server has going for it is that it only runs on Windows boxes. As an RDBMS, it is pretty decent. It is not the best, it is not the worst. I find it interesting that it was one of the first RDBMSs that had almost full support of SQL-92 as far back as version 6.5 (mid/late 90s). In my work I have used a number database systems, a couple very extensively and the rest in at least non trivial applications (Oracle, MS SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, and to a small degree DB2). From my experience I'd say that for anything up to very large databases (amount of data stored, number of tables, etc.), SQL Server works and performs quite well (v6.5 was only good up to medium large). It supports the SQL standards quite well, is one of the best documented database systems out there, and is quite robust. If they could find a way to run it on anything other than a 'Windows' machine, given its much lower pricing, I think it could probably cut into Oracle's and IBM's market share quite a bit.
That alone would ruin me for life.
The most important thing for passenger rail transportation in the United States (and Canada too for that matter) is to give the passenger trains a higher priority in terms of sharing the rail lines. Right now, freight trains have a higher priority. What this means is that when a passenger train and a freight train need to use the same stretch of track at the same time, the freight train wins, and the passenger train is relegated to parking on a siding until the freight train moves past. Worst of all, it is very commonly freight trainS. In fact the passenger train may sit still for 15 or 20 minutes with no other trains on the track, waiting before the freight train even gets to the contested piece of track. This causes very, very frequent delays for passengers. Enough so that many won't take the train.
Several years ago I was on a business trip to Springfield Illinois for day and a half, and from there needed to go do some work in the Chicago area. For a change of pace I decided to take the train to Chicago. From Springfield to Chicago is maybe a two and a half hour drive; three tops. I left around one in the afternoon. We pulled into sidings so often to let freight trains go by it was unbelievable. We parked on a siding one time for two or three hours waiting for multiple freight trains to pass. A three hour train trip turned into almost ten hours by the time we got to Joliet, which is still 45 minutes out from Chicago. I was actually going to stay in Naperville (just west of Chicago, not quite doubling back on my trip in... it's maybe 10 or 15 miles north of the train route I was on.). The plan was to take the train to Union Station, and grab the commuter train back to Naperville... assuming the train I was on would be on time and arrive around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. We were so late the commuter train had stopped running and like I said, we were only getting into Joliet at 11 at night. Fortunately someone I was talking to was actually getting off at Joliet and driving to Naperville where he lived. Otherwise it would have meant staying in the city overnight (not so onerous but still a change in plans when traveling is a pain in the ass).
Here is the thing: I asked the conductor and he said this was very common. They never ran on time. I have since talked to a few Amtrak employees and they ALL said the same thing. People won't take the train unless the passenger trains have priority and they can count on getting to their destination on schedule. The European rail system seems to be able to do this quite fine. Amtrak and U.S. legislators need to look to the European passenger rail system as an example of how they should do it in the U.S. If people could use this they would. There is a demand that is being left unfulfilled. I have had conversations about taking the train to Chicago from St. Louis for a weekend with people. First there is limited service from STL now, and it is so unreliable they would rather drive. Once there it was usually more convenient to cab to the clubs and theatres etc. than drive your own car (parking can be a pain, and then there is the no drinking and driving thing). Most stayed in the downtown, so a train ride would have been perfect. Never mind the fact you can sleep on the trip back so you aren't dead tired on Monday. Alas... Amtrak can't deliver the goods... at least not on time. If a 5 hour trip from STL to CHI is so messed up, think how late you would be on a 24 to 48 hour trip! Fix the scheduling, and people WILL ride the trains.
My thoughts as well. Give a proper handle, and can lift a 100 pound weight off the ground using one hand. Grab the handle an pull up with the legs. I would guess most males can do this too. Now grab a 1000 pound weight and try to lift it strapped in to this thing. If you were able to hold on to it and not let it slip out of your hand, I would think it likely that you would rip your hand off of your wrist. To be truly useful for lifting things over a long period of time, you would need some sort of mechanical hand as well.
Yes... like stop the jumping jiggling flashing so fucking annoying that I can't actually read the content I went there to read. Personally I have nothing against ads being on the page I'm reading. But when they get annoying because of an extremely high 'look at me I'm annoying as hell' factor, I stop looking at that ad permanently with a filter. It is really a companies own fault if people filter out their advertisements after they hire an ad agency that they seem to think that the only way to sell on the Internet is to create ads that are the equivalent of the late night gizmo pitch men who yell at the top of their lungs with the most annoying voice imaginable. It might be possible that it is the web site owner's fault as well for allowing advertisements that annoy their users too.
If the ad people who seem to think it is important to annoy you in order to make an ad 'work well', would get over that fallacy, people would leave the ads alone. I've seen a lot of very clever ads that have good old fashioned static images. But perhaps now-a-days, clever is being replaced by stupid blunt force trauma on the senses. Too bad, 'cause like grandma used to say, "You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar." I never figured out why she wanted to catch flies anyway.
Please, how can anyone moderate this as interesting?
It is a sophomoric response at best. Of course we don't know who is telling the truth, but the purpose of the forum is to discuss the issue. The issue is what can be done when someone steals your work, posts it as their own, and then tries sue the real owner? To discuss it requires that we assume that the guy isn't BS'ing us and really has a problem... which is an interesting one, and probably why it made it to the main page. (You know, suspension of disbelief, the only reason we don't walk out of a Star Wars movie without thinking that Lucas has gone downhill a long way since episode IV... OK so that's not a good example, but you know what I mean.) We all know that he could be lying but who fucking cares? Now if there were a mod for 'who fucking cares' that would apply. And 'interesting' sure as hell doesn't.
I find it amusing that so many of the replies trying to counter your premise actually reinforce it.
They are going to send them to Canada and force them to pay for the cell phone / data plans we have here. Most plans here charge us long distance charges for long distance calls... that we RECEIVE!. Try that one on.