"Don't blame the OS for your screwed up installation. Do you REALLY think that linux doesn't have this kind of crap."
Yes. It's never happened to me on a mac or linux. I also didn't install windows on this machine, it came with windows installed.
"but I've seen people screw up linux royally because they didn't know what they were doing or they were trying to do something that linux is just flaky with."
I didn't know coming out of a screen saver or deleting shortcuts was "trying to do something flaky" with windows.
"My point is that with an OS you shouldn't NEED to know anything about it. The best OS should be COMPLETELY transparent to the user."
Oh go fuck yourself with your bullshit. As my grandpa used to say "wish on one hand and shit on the other and see which one fills faster". Fuck you and your idealialized unrealistic ideas of how the world should work. An eft-pos machine does jack shit and my computer lets me write programs that let's people communicate all over the world and make money. Sorry life is complex, sorry machines that do complex things are complex.
"If your PC is acting like that then fix it. Even if it takes a reinstall. "
Yes it's getting to be about time to re-install windows. It's a ritual I go though every six months or so. Windows just doesn't stay stable long enough.
"Either some software is screwed (done a spy/virus/rootkit scan lately???) or you have dodgey hardware (try a RAM test). But don't confuse your situation with normal behavior of windows."
Hey asshole. I have been working with computers for the last fifteen years, I hang out at slashdot, I have six computers running mac, linux and windows. Don't fucking talk to me like I was your granda OK.
"Implimenting collations correctly is more involved than you are pretending."
Apparently it is very difficult for the postgres developers. No problem for oracle, firebird, mssql, db/2, mysql programmers though. Collations are so fucked up in postgres most languages don't sort properly. Go and search the postgres mailing list for all the complaints.
""those people"? You mean "those people" who use the right tools and techniques for the task? "
I mean those people who rant against OO programing and ORMs.
"If you wanted to use postgresql for real, this would not be an issue."
I will use postgres if and when it has the features it I need and want. So far whenever I have started a project postgres has not been good enough. It's still not good enough. So I use databases that have the features I want.
"You just want to whine about postgresql."
No I am trying to explain to the dickwad fanbois why people don't use postgres and choose mysql instead. Mysql has more features then postgres, features people want. Postgres has lots of features nobody really cares about like *~
I am running windows XP on an dell inspiron laptop with dual cores and 2 gigs of ram. I have a LCD monitor attached to the laptop and I use both screens.
I am talking to my boss and my screen saver kicks in. He asks me for something so I flick the mouse and enter my password to get out of the screen saver. At this point the machine goes into a complete apoplexy. It literally hangs there for like two minutes while the screen is trying to paint itself. After two minutes of this the machine finally becomes responsive and I can finally answer my bosses question. He leaves. At this point I notice that the last program I installed has put like five icons on the desktop so I right click on each one and hit delete. I get five flying windows animation which hang on the screen for almost five minutes. Five fucking minutes to delete shortcuts!
You know what that kind of shit never happens to me using a mac or linux. What's even more amazing is the neither linux nor mac every re-arrange my desktop icons unless I tell them to. Windows seems to take that option as less of a command and more of a suggestion.
"Vendor A impliments "feature" designed to lock in customers. Vendor B is forced to impliment it too. Postgresql isn't a company, there is no vendor, so they aren't under the presure to screw up their software."
Explain why all the open source databases support this feature too then?
"There is no other option. "
Yes there is. It's called collations. It's a standard. Look into it sometime. In fact the SQL standard says you should be able to set collations on a per column basis which MSSQL and firebird support but postgres does not.
"Any ORM will let you put upper() in there, or any other SQL. "
Really? So when I am using activerecord and I call Person.find_by_last_name('mcnab') it puts UPPER in there for me?
"OO programming is very old, as is the bizzare fetish of trying to mash anything and everything into an OO layer for no reason."
Aaaah you are one of those people are you.
"Setting the database to return the wrong information to a standard query means its no longer standard. This should be pretty easy to understand."
You know this conversation reminds of so many I had with postgres users. I remember when postgres didn't support alter table and dickwads like you were saying "there is no need for alter table just use this workaround". I remember when posgtres didn't support outer joins (I do believe it was the last database in the world to support outer joins) and dickwads like you were saying "there is no need for outer joins just your this query instead".
No difference now "there is no need for case insensitive collations just use ilike, *~ or upper() instead". You are wrong. Eventually postgres will implement case insensitive collations or datatypes thereby upholding their long held tradition of being the last database in the world to implement a feature.
Last to implement alter table, last to implement outer joins, last to implement replication, last to implement clustering, last to implement failover, last to implement case insensitive collations. Due in large part to dickwads like you.
I remeber one time when my company migrated from windows domains to active directory. They decided (on the advice of MS) to start fresh with AD and "do it right" but the profile migration tool did such a crappy job that it took weeks to get everybody back to where they were. It's amazing how much shit is in your home directory and how much of it you just can't copy from one place to another.
Ah good times. Running from desktop to desktop re-installing software, re-setting up the shares, getting the icons on the desktops etc.... I remember thinking to myself "wasn't/home invented like fifty years ago? how come MS doesn't have it?"
"No need to be sorry, lots of people don't care about that, at all, no really involved."
Then why does every other database support it?
"Postgres does impliment it, just not the way you want it to."
No postgres implements a workaround which is not an SQL standard and is not supported by any ORM.
"Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you. If not then use the portable upper() or lower() like you should have been doing all along."
Because littering your code with SQL is a bad programming practice. Modern programming methods use an object relational layer. You may want to read about them sometime. Oh I will answer the question for you, ilike does not use indexes.
""I can't switch to postgres easily because I relied on non-standard vendor specific features" isn't very compelling. "
Except that I did no such thing, "where lastname = 'McNab'" is standard. "Where lastname *~ 'McNab'" is not. See the difference?
"There are many more bacteria, they can potentially kill many of us, and they'd be more likely to survive if a massive meteor shower came today."
They have also been around longer then us and have more biomass then us.
"But we have intelligence, creativity, and self awareness. We have a greater ability to shape the world around us, a will of our own,"
Those are all means to an end. The end being survival of course. Personally I think those traits will hinder our survival and not help it.
"100,000 years from now, we can imagine exactly what bacteria will be like and what they'll be doing, but we can only make wild guesses about humanity."
"Oh of course, you are doing multi master clustering over a WAN using mysql."
I have done that for years. It's called ring replication look it up sometime. Now mysql also offers Mysql cluster which also works over a wan.
"Yeah, having to change your queries never happens with migrating between other DBs. Come on, at least try to make sense. "
If you are using an ORM then it should be a trivial exercize. Ooops no ORM uses ILIKE or *~ or UPPER() to do where clauses so if you are trying to migrate from mysql to postgres you better forget it. You have to get rid of your ORM and write all your queries by hand. So sorry, the developers of postgres don't really care about that.
"Expecting postgresql to support the vendor specific hack you like instead of the vendor specific hack they already have is just dumb."
But every vendor of databases supports case insensitive queries. Except postgres of course.
"And why do you think ilike is slower than x='y' in a case insensitive DB? "
Does ilike use indexes?
"It doesn't seem that many other DB users think you are right."
Then why do all of them give you the option of case insensitive collations?
" In fact, google seems to support the idea that its mostly just you posting this same shit all over the web because you like to whine about not getting your way."
Really. Over the last five years I am the only one asking for this feature? Google says that? Really?
"Popular != good."
Yes but unpopular != good either.
Here is a hint for you. I need feature X. Every database in the world has feature X except postgres. I guess I won't use postgres.
This topic was about why people use mysql when postgres is so much better. There is a reason for you. Postgres does not support feature X.
"But for us to continue to expand our species, something else is going to have to get out of the way."
The fallacy is in thinking that the destruction of other species does not harm us. The ecosystem of the planet is in a pretty delicate balance. It could very collapse thereby causing massive human death and suffering. It may be that the best way to continue our survival is to make sure the balance is kept stable.
"but allowing ourselves (as the strongest species) to be dominant is a good thing too"
You are not the stronges or the most dominant species on the planet. Bacteria are the most dominant and the strongest species on the planet. They will be around long after you are gone.
"There are a few replication options, that's trivial."
Really. First of all I would hardly call slony trivial. It's a bitch to set up. Secondly it does not support multi master replication. Finally it's not asyncronous and should not be used WANs.
"Clustering and failover are provided by pgcluster."
Pgcluster does not work over a WAN. Pgcluster is not a part of postgres it's a separate product.
"Case insensitive where clauses are provided by ilike, as you already know."
Ilike is not an SQL standard. If you have hundreds of queries already written then you have to rewrite every single one of them to use ilike. Ilike is slower then where x='y'. I don't know of any ORM on the market that uses ilike this means you can not use hibernate, activerecord, etc.
"No, only from idiots who think "a" and "A" are the same thing."
Unfortunately for postgres that's most human beings on the planet. That's why virtually every single database on the planet gives you the option of a case insensitive collation except postgres. Oracle, DB/2, MSSQL, Mysql, firebird, informix, all have that option. Postgres does not.
"If you want to do a case insensitive comparison, use ilike or use upper() or lower() (depending on the circumstance"
In other words stop using an ORM and write all all your queries by hand. If you are not using an ORM and are porting an app from mysql then rewrite every single query that has a where clause to use upper and lower.
"Really? That's why thousands of people use it and have no problem at all with case insensitivity right? "
Yes thousands use it. Alas millions use oracle, mysql, mssql, and db/2. As you may have noticed postgres is not the most popular database. There is a reason for that.
"If you want to check an email then do lower(email)"
Hey I have another idea. I could just use mysql, firebird, oracle, mssql, informix, db/2 instead then I would not have to rewrite all my queries.
I do have a question for you though...
How come the postgres developers feel fine about completely ignoring the hundreds of requests they have had for this feature? Every other database has it so why not just write a new collation? Is it really that hard?
I'll answer the question for you. No it's not that hard. The developers are arrogant pricks who feel fine about non standard SQL like ILIKE and *~ when it suits them but throw a knipshin about standards when somebody asks for a case insensitive collation.
People have been asking for this for years now, just google their mailing list. They just don't give a shit. If you want to know why people are choosing mysql instead of postgres there is the answer. Mysql is more responsive to their users, postgres developers don't give a shit. They do what they want not what their users want.
"We kill because we are doing what we're wired up to do. We are satisfying our needs and inherent desires as a species. Just like lions have probably wiped out several species due to their desire to eat and to be dominant. It's all part of a natural process, and it's not necessarily evil."
Only if you belive that there is no difference between you and a spider. Many people believe that there is a differnce between a human and a spider and that since we have intelligence, language, and a moral sense we should not be continually acting according to our basest instincts.
Oddly enough we as humans have chosen to make many acts of "animal behavior" illegal such as murder, rape, burglary, etc. I suppose you are against those things. I am sure you would like to have all the rape laws revoked because it's just satisfying our needs and inherent desires as a species to rape any woman or girl we see.
"We should save every species we can, but to have only lost one with all that's changed in the past 50 years is actually a credit to us."
Not really. Fifty years is not a long time. Oh and although many species are not extinct thousands have been reduced to having populations that less then a thousand or are confined to just a few square miles.
But hey don't let any actual facts stop feeling good about yourself. Take credit that you were able to stop the complete decimation of a species and be happy that the remaining 50 live someplace in a controlled enviroment.
"At least in the First World and particularly in corporate environments,"
What the hell are you talking about. Price and vendor lock are extremely important to corporations. Oh and some bit of news for you. Corporations don't buy OEM versions of office, that's for the snotty nosed kid who gets it from the internet. Corporations get visits from the MS reps who make a deal for all the MS software they use. Then the corporation keeps an account of what they use and then pay MS. Which leads me to the best reason for using open office of all..
NO NEED TO KEEP TRACK OF HOW MANY COPIES YOU HAVE INSTALLED!!!.. Most large companies have at least one full time staff (more likely a whole team) to keep track of their software licenses so they don't go out of compliance. With OO you will never have to keep track of them.
"I work in a corporate environment and I know a bunch of people who have OO installed on their machines, but it's not there because it's free, it's there because they're using it as a PDF exporter."
Ah you reminded me another reasons to use OO instead of office.
You do not need to get budget approval. This is huge! In a corporation if you want anything at all you have to subject yourself to the bureaucracy of getting budget approvals and will most likely be denied anyway. With OO you just download it and go. This empowers the staff to solve their own problems, frees up accounting, frees up budgeting, frees up the mid level managers from having to deal with yet another request to spend 500 bucks.
Yes but it doesn't have what people REALLY want. Replication, clustering, failover, case insensitive where clauses.
If you want high availibility you have to cobble together slony and pgpool (which does not support multi master replication) neither of which is suitable for working over a WAN.
There is a reason why people choose MySql and that's because it delivers the features people really want first. Even the features are not 100% "correct" they are delivered "good enough" to get "real work" done.
Take case insesntive where clauses for example. For the last five years or so that I have been following the pg mailing lists there must have been hundreds of requests from people who want to switch over from mysql, ms-sql, oracle, informix, firebird etc for a case insensitive collation option. They just get ignored and told to change all their queries to use ILIKE or *~ or some other stupid non standard postgres only SQL. Oddly enough their primary excuse for not providing it is that it's not a SQL standard.
So if you using any kind of an ORM and you can not stomach asking your employees or web users to remember the exact capitalization of everything they have ever typed into your database then postgres is not an option.
"Last I heard, it was a two-man operation. Still, it would be nice if the OOo people would either support the NeoOffice guys, help out, or make some effort toward bringing their own port to OSX."
Why doesn't apple do that? It's not like anybody else is going to benefit from neooffice. If not apple how about the mac users themselves.
"Maybe open-source is doomed to try to emulate Excel?"
A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. Excel was trying to emulate quattro pro and lotus 123, lotus 123 was trying to emulate visicalc.
What else do you want from a spreadsheet?
Personally I think spreadsheets are the most dangerous software on the market. At my last company we routinely lost millions of dollars because know nothing sales people used spreadsheets without understanding the math or the relationships between the data and gave wrong prices to customers. Eventually (I am not kidding) the CIO forbade the use of spreadsheets by the sales people and made them go through accounting instead. Eventually he had the IT staff write a custom app to do the pricing so that business rules could be enforced properly.
Actually with zune dollars MS has found a great way to make money off their music store. Because you are not allowed to spend just a buck and buy a song you have to fork over five bucks to get the song you want. While they are waiting for you to buy the other four songs they are earning interest on your money. MS by forcing you to purchase in lots of five is going to make millions on interest.
It's clever and a great way to make money while ripping off your clients.
"The Apple crowd is not being one iota more selfish than the Microsoft crowd--neither one shares its APIs with the other. So I guess the Apple crowd isn't as selfish as you are convinced they are, eh?"
It's hardly flattering to say that you are as selfish as the windows crowd.
"So we are all expected to sink to the lowest common denominator?"
Straw man.
"If so, I assume your web browser of choice is lynx? "
No it's firefox. It works on all platform I use. It's not safari because that only works on the mac. It's not IE because that only works on the windows.
"Right...to hell with anyone trying to improve things & do them better."
Who is trying to improve what exactly? Ate the Mac whiners trying to improve anything?
"Apparently you're not able to remember statements from paragraph to paragraph. He specifically advocated developing a common back end to all apps and only customizing the GUI"
Again, why? What's in it for the developers? At best all they get in return is being shit on by mac assholes like you and your buddy.
Besides it's open source. If you really want a pretty cocoa gui you take the code, you make it into a library, you write the mac only cocoa gui for it. Nobody is stopping you. If you assholes spent half the time coding that you spent bitching, moaning and insulting developers maybe it would happen.
"Again with the short memory. Remember how he said that Adium, just like all other ports, tracks and reports bugs back to libgaim?"
First of all he claimed that without offering any evidence. Secondly I bet the contributions to libgaim from adium (if there are any) are tiny compared to contribution from linux users. Especially when you consider how much shit they probably get from mac users.
"I'll take his "we can do better" attitude any day over your "I've learned to eat dung and like it, so everyone else should too" one."
But that's not your attitude. Your attitude is not "we can do better" it's "whaaaaaah why don't you make life better for meeeeee!!!". I don't see the mac community doing anything except bitching and moaning.
"Because maybe he's only hostile towards people with closed minds."
OJ got off because the police planted evidence. I am almost certain he committed the crimes but because the police planted evidence he did and should have gotten off.
"You don't even have to do that. Just provide a framework that others can link against to get the necessary back-end features and the necessary documentation. Instead of having to write a Mac app, GUI and all, you just have to factor out your back-end code and provide a library."
Why? Give me one good reason anybody should do that.
"And if you can't do it right, enable someone else to."
It's open source, why don't you do it?
"No, I will be satisfied when people who make Mac applications actually bother to do it correctly. If that's too much to ask, then don't complain when you get complaints."
Again. Why bother. It's not like we are getting paid for this. Why bother trying to make ungrateful spoiled brats happy? What's in it for me except being pissed on by the likes of you?
"Microsoft learned this lesson. The geniuses over in the Windows Media team had a shockingly, almost criminally bad Windows Media Player for OS X."
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't blame the OS for your screwed up installation. Do you REALLY think that linux doesn't have this kind of crap."
Yes. It's never happened to me on a mac or linux. I also didn't install windows on this machine, it came with windows installed.
"but I've seen people screw up linux royally because they didn't know what they were doing or they were trying to do something that linux is just flaky with."
I didn't know coming out of a screen saver or deleting shortcuts was "trying to do something flaky" with windows.
"My point is that with an OS you shouldn't NEED to know anything about it. The best OS should be COMPLETELY transparent to the user."
Oh go fuck yourself with your bullshit. As my grandpa used to say "wish on one hand and shit on the other and see which one fills faster". Fuck you and your idealialized unrealistic ideas of how the world should work. An eft-pos machine does jack shit and my computer lets me write programs that let's people communicate all over the world and make money. Sorry life is complex, sorry machines that do complex things are complex.
"If your PC is acting like that then fix it. Even if it takes a reinstall. "
Yes it's getting to be about time to re-install windows. It's a ritual I go though every six months or so. Windows just doesn't stay stable long enough.
"Either some software is screwed (done a spy/virus/rootkit scan lately???) or you have dodgey hardware (try a RAM test). But don't confuse your situation with normal behavior of windows."
Hey asshole. I have been working with computers for the last fifteen years, I hang out at slashdot, I have six computers running mac, linux and windows. Don't fucking talk to me like I was your granda OK.
"Implimenting collations correctly is more involved than you are pretending."
Apparently it is very difficult for the postgres developers. No problem for oracle, firebird, mssql, db/2, mysql programmers though. Collations are so fucked up in postgres most languages don't sort properly. Go and search the postgres mailing list for all the complaints.
""those people"? You mean "those people" who use the right tools and techniques for the task? "
I mean those people who rant against OO programing and ORMs.
"If you wanted to use postgresql for real, this would not be an issue."
I will use postgres if and when it has the features it I need and want. So far whenever I have started a project postgres has not been good enough. It's still not good enough. So I use databases that have the features I want.
"You just want to whine about postgresql."
No I am trying to explain to the dickwad fanbois why people don't use postgres and choose mysql instead. Mysql has more features then postgres, features people want. Postgres has lots of features nobody really cares about like *~
This happened to me about a half an hour ago.
I am running windows XP on an dell inspiron laptop with dual cores and 2 gigs of ram. I have a LCD monitor attached to the laptop and I use both screens.
I am talking to my boss and my screen saver kicks in. He asks me for something so I flick the mouse and enter my password to get out of the screen saver. At this point the machine goes into a complete apoplexy. It literally hangs there for like two minutes while the screen is trying to paint itself. After two minutes of this the machine finally becomes responsive and I can finally answer my bosses question. He leaves. At this point I notice that the last program I installed has put like five icons on the desktop so I right click on each one and hit delete. I get five flying windows animation which hang on the screen for almost five minutes. Five fucking minutes to delete shortcuts!
You know what that kind of shit never happens to me using a mac or linux. What's even more amazing is the neither linux nor mac every re-arrange my desktop icons unless I tell them to. Windows seems to take that option as less of a command and more of a suggestion.
Windows is not ready for the desktop.
"Vendor A impliments "feature" designed to lock in customers. Vendor B is forced to impliment it too. Postgresql isn't a company, there is no vendor, so they aren't under the presure to screw up their software."
Explain why all the open source databases support this feature too then?
"There is no other option. "
Yes there is. It's called collations. It's a standard. Look into it sometime. In fact the SQL standard says you should be able to set collations on a per column basis which MSSQL and firebird support but postgres does not.
"Any ORM will let you put upper() in there, or any other SQL. "
Really? So when I am using activerecord and I call Person.find_by_last_name('mcnab') it puts UPPER in there for me?
"OO programming is very old, as is the bizzare fetish of trying to mash anything and everything into an OO layer for no reason."
Aaaah you are one of those people are you.
"Setting the database to return the wrong information to a standard query means its no longer standard. This should be pretty easy to understand."
You know this conversation reminds of so many I had with postgres users. I remember when postgres didn't support alter table and dickwads like you were saying "there is no need for alter table just use this workaround". I remember when posgtres didn't support outer joins (I do believe it was the last database in the world to support outer joins) and dickwads like you were saying "there is no need for outer joins just your this query instead".
No difference now "there is no need for case insensitive collations just use ilike, *~ or upper() instead". You are wrong. Eventually postgres will implement case insensitive collations or datatypes thereby upholding their long held tradition of being the last database in the world to implement a feature.
Last to implement alter table, last to implement outer joins, last to implement replication, last to implement clustering, last to implement failover, last to implement case insensitive collations. Due in large part to dickwads like you.
I remeber one time when my company migrated from windows domains to active directory. They decided (on the advice of MS) to start fresh with AD and "do it right" but the profile migration tool did such a crappy job that it took weeks to get everybody back to where they were. It's amazing how much shit is in your home directory and how much of it you just can't copy from one place to another.
/home invented like fifty years ago? how come MS doesn't have it?"
Ah good times. Running from desktop to desktop re-installing software, re-setting up the shares, getting the icons on the desktops etc.... I remember thinking to myself "wasn't
"No need to be sorry, lots of people don't care about that, at all, no really involved."
Then why does every other database support it?
"Postgres does impliment it, just not the way you want it to."
No postgres implements a workaround which is not an SQL standard and is not supported by any ORM.
"Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you. If not then use the portable upper() or lower() like you should have been doing all along."
Because littering your code with SQL is a bad programming practice. Modern programming methods use an object relational layer. You may want to read about them sometime. Oh I will answer the question for you, ilike does not use indexes.
""I can't switch to postgres easily because I relied on non-standard vendor specific features" isn't very compelling. "
Except that I did no such thing, "where lastname = 'McNab'" is standard. "Where lastname *~ 'McNab'" is not. See the difference?
"There are many more bacteria, they can potentially kill many of us, and they'd be more likely to survive if a massive meteor shower came today."
They have also been around longer then us and have more biomass then us.
"But we have intelligence, creativity, and self awareness. We have a greater ability to shape the world around us, a will of our own,"
Those are all means to an end. The end being survival of course. Personally I think those traits will hinder our survival and not help it.
"100,000 years from now, we can imagine exactly what bacteria will be like and what they'll be doing, but we can only make wild guesses about humanity."
I submit we will be long gone.
"Oh of course, you are doing multi master clustering over a WAN using mysql."
I have done that for years. It's called ring replication look it up sometime. Now mysql also offers Mysql cluster which also works over a wan.
"Yeah, having to change your queries never happens with migrating between other DBs. Come on, at least try to make sense. "
If you are using an ORM then it should be a trivial exercize. Ooops no ORM uses ILIKE or *~ or UPPER() to do where clauses so if you are trying to migrate from mysql to postgres you better forget it. You have to get rid of your ORM and write all your queries by hand. So sorry, the developers of postgres don't really care about that.
"Expecting postgresql to support the vendor specific hack you like instead of the vendor specific hack they already have is just dumb."
But every vendor of databases supports case insensitive queries. Except postgres of course.
"And why do you think ilike is slower than x='y' in a case insensitive DB? "
Does ilike use indexes?
"It doesn't seem that many other DB users think you are right."
Then why do all of them give you the option of case insensitive collations?
" In fact, google seems to support the idea that its mostly just you posting this same shit all over the web because you like to whine about not getting your way."
Really. Over the last five years I am the only one asking for this feature? Google says that? Really?
"Popular != good."
Yes but unpopular != good either.
Here is a hint for you. I need feature X. Every database in the world has feature X except postgres. I guess I won't use postgres.
This topic was about why people use mysql when postgres is so much better. There is a reason for you. Postgres does not support feature X.
"But for us to continue to expand our species, something else is going to have to get out of the way."
The fallacy is in thinking that the destruction of other species does not harm us. The ecosystem of the planet is in a pretty delicate balance. It could very collapse thereby causing massive human death and suffering. It may be that the best way to continue our survival is to make sure the balance is kept stable.
"but allowing ourselves (as the strongest species) to be dominant is a good thing too"
You are not the stronges or the most dominant species on the planet. Bacteria are the most dominant and the strongest species on the planet. They will be around long after you are gone.
"There are a few replication options, that's trivial."
Really. First of all I would hardly call slony trivial. It's a bitch to set up. Secondly it does not support multi master replication. Finally it's not asyncronous and should not be used WANs.
"Clustering and failover are provided by pgcluster."
Pgcluster does not work over a WAN. Pgcluster is not a part of postgres it's a separate product.
"Case insensitive where clauses are provided by ilike, as you already know."
Ilike is not an SQL standard. If you have hundreds of queries already written then you have to rewrite every single one of them to use ilike. Ilike is slower then where x='y'. I don't know of any ORM on the market that uses ilike this means you can not use hibernate, activerecord, etc.
"No, only from idiots who think "a" and "A" are the same thing."
Unfortunately for postgres that's most human beings on the planet. That's why virtually every single database on the planet gives you the option of a case insensitive collation except postgres. Oracle, DB/2, MSSQL, Mysql, firebird, informix, all have that option. Postgres does not.
"If you want to do a case insensitive comparison, use ilike or use upper() or lower() (depending on the circumstance"
In other words stop using an ORM and write all all your queries by hand. If you are not using an ORM and are porting an app from mysql then rewrite every single query that has a where clause to use upper and lower.
"Really? That's why thousands of people use it and have no problem at all with case insensitivity right? "
Yes thousands use it. Alas millions use oracle, mysql, mssql, and db/2. As you may have noticed postgres is not the most popular database. There is a reason for that.
"If you want to check an email then do lower(email)"
Hey I have another idea. I could just use mysql, firebird, oracle, mssql, informix, db/2 instead then I would not have to rewrite all my queries.
I do have a question for you though...
How come the postgres developers feel fine about completely ignoring the hundreds of requests they have had for this feature? Every other database has it so why not just write a new collation? Is it really that hard?
I'll answer the question for you. No it's not that hard. The developers are arrogant pricks who feel fine about non standard SQL like ILIKE and *~ when it suits them but throw a knipshin about standards when somebody asks for a case insensitive collation.
People have been asking for this for years now, just google their mailing list. They just don't give a shit. If you want to know why people are choosing mysql instead of postgres there is the answer. Mysql is more responsive to their users, postgres developers don't give a shit. They do what they want not what their users want.
"We kill because we are doing what we're wired up to do. We are satisfying our needs and inherent desires as a species. Just like lions have probably wiped out several species due to their desire to eat and to be dominant. It's all part of a natural process, and it's not necessarily evil."
Only if you belive that there is no difference between you and a spider. Many people believe that there is a differnce between a human and a spider and that since we have intelligence, language, and a moral sense we should not be continually acting according to our basest instincts.
Oddly enough we as humans have chosen to make many acts of "animal behavior" illegal such as murder, rape, burglary, etc. I suppose you are against those things. I am sure you would like to have all the rape laws revoked because it's just satisfying our needs and inherent desires as a species to rape any woman or girl we see.
"We should save every species we can, but to have only lost one with all that's changed in the past 50 years is actually a credit to us."
Not really. Fifty years is not a long time. Oh and although many species are not extinct thousands have been reduced to having populations that less then a thousand or are confined to just a few square miles.
But hey don't let any actual facts stop feeling good about yourself. Take credit that you were able to stop the complete decimation of a species and be happy that the remaining 50 live someplace in a controlled enviroment.
"At least in the First World and particularly in corporate environments,"
What the hell are you talking about. Price and vendor lock are extremely important to corporations. Oh and some bit of news for you. Corporations don't buy OEM versions of office, that's for the snotty nosed kid who gets it from the internet. Corporations get visits from the MS reps who make a deal for all the MS software they use. Then the corporation keeps an account of what they use and then pay MS. Which leads me to the best reason for using open office of all..
NO NEED TO KEEP TRACK OF HOW MANY COPIES YOU HAVE INSTALLED!!!.. Most large companies have at least one full time staff (more likely a whole team) to keep track of their software licenses so they don't go out of compliance. With OO you will never have to keep track of them.
"I work in a corporate environment and I know a bunch of people who have OO installed on their machines, but it's not there because it's free, it's there because they're using it as a PDF exporter."
Ah you reminded me another reasons to use OO instead of office.
You do not need to get budget approval. This is huge! In a corporation if you want anything at all you have to subject yourself to the bureaucracy of getting budget approvals and will most likely be denied anyway. With OO you just download it and go. This empowers the staff to solve their own problems, frees up accounting, frees up budgeting, frees up the mid level managers from having to deal with yet another request to spend 500 bucks.
Yes but it doesn't have what people REALLY want. Replication, clustering, failover, case insensitive where clauses.
If you want high availibility you have to cobble together slony and pgpool (which does not support multi master replication) neither of which is suitable for working over a WAN.
There is a reason why people choose MySql and that's because it delivers the features people really want first. Even the features are not 100% "correct" they are delivered "good enough" to get "real work" done.
Take case insesntive where clauses for example. For the last five years or so that I have been following the pg mailing lists there must have been hundreds of requests from people who want to switch over from mysql, ms-sql, oracle, informix, firebird etc for a case insensitive collation option. They just get ignored and told to change all their queries to use ILIKE or *~ or some other stupid non standard postgres only SQL. Oddly enough their primary excuse for not providing it is that it's not a SQL standard.
So if you using any kind of an ORM and you can not stomach asking your employees or web users to remember the exact capitalization of everything they have ever typed into your database then postgres is not an option.
Sorry.
postgres recently came out with a new version and I don't think /. even covered it.
What gives?
NO it's more like negligent homocide. We kill due to our neglect and quest for money.
Price, no vendor lock in, open file formats.
Three big pluses.
What's so great about a ribbon? What's wrong with office 97? I use it all the time.
"Last I heard, it was a two-man operation. Still, it would be nice if the OOo people would either support the NeoOffice guys, help out, or make some effort toward bringing their own port to OSX."
Why doesn't apple do that? It's not like anybody else is going to benefit from neooffice. If not apple how about the mac users themselves.
"Maybe open-source is doomed to try to emulate Excel?"
A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. Excel was trying to emulate quattro pro and lotus 123, lotus 123 was trying to emulate visicalc.
What else do you want from a spreadsheet?
Personally I think spreadsheets are the most dangerous software on the market. At my last company we routinely lost millions of dollars because know nothing sales people used spreadsheets without understanding the math or the relationships between the data and gave wrong prices to customers. Eventually (I am not kidding) the CIO forbade the use of spreadsheets by the sales people and made them go through accounting instead. Eventually he had the IT staff write a custom app to do the pricing so that business rules could be enforced properly.
Actually with zune dollars MS has found a great way to make money off their music store. Because you are not allowed to spend just a buck and buy a song you have to fork over five bucks to get the song you want. While they are waiting for you to buy the other four songs they are earning interest on your money. MS by forcing you to purchase in lots of five is going to make millions on interest.
It's clever and a great way to make money while ripping off your clients.
"The Apple crowd is not being one iota more selfish than the Microsoft crowd--neither one shares its APIs with the other. So I guess the Apple crowd isn't as selfish as you are convinced they are, eh?"
It's hardly flattering to say that you are as selfish as the windows crowd.
"So we are all expected to sink to the lowest common denominator?"
Straw man.
"If so, I assume your web browser of choice is lynx? "
No it's firefox. It works on all platform I use. It's not safari because that only works on the mac. It's not IE because that only works on the windows.
"Right...to hell with anyone trying to improve things & do them better."
Who is trying to improve what exactly? Ate the Mac whiners trying to improve anything?
"Apparently you're not able to remember statements from paragraph to paragraph. He specifically advocated developing a common back end to all apps and only customizing the GUI"
Again, why? What's in it for the developers? At best all they get in return is being shit on by mac assholes like you and your buddy.
Besides it's open source. If you really want a pretty cocoa gui you take the code, you make it into a library, you write the mac only cocoa gui for it. Nobody is stopping you. If you assholes spent half the time coding that you spent bitching, moaning and insulting developers maybe it would happen.
"Again with the short memory. Remember how he said that Adium, just like all other ports, tracks and reports bugs back to libgaim?"
First of all he claimed that without offering any evidence. Secondly I bet the contributions to libgaim from adium (if there are any) are tiny compared to contribution from linux users. Especially when you consider how much shit they probably get from mac users.
"I'll take his "we can do better" attitude any day over your "I've learned to eat dung and like it, so everyone else should too" one."
But that's not your attitude. Your attitude is not "we can do better" it's "whaaaaaah why don't you make life better for meeeeee!!!". I don't see the mac community doing anything except bitching and moaning.
"Because maybe he's only hostile towards people with closed minds."
In that case he better not look in a mirror.
OJ got off because the police planted evidence. I am almost certain he committed the crimes but because the police planted evidence he did and should have gotten off.
Earnings is nothing. How is their PE ratio?
"You don't even have to do that. Just provide a framework that others can link against to get the necessary back-end features and the necessary documentation. Instead of having to write a Mac app, GUI and all, you just have to factor out your back-end code and provide a library."
Why? Give me one good reason anybody should do that.
"And if you can't do it right, enable someone else to."
It's open source, why don't you do it?
"No, I will be satisfied when people who make Mac applications actually bother to do it correctly. If that's too much to ask, then don't complain when you get complaints."
Again. Why bother. It's not like we are getting paid for this. Why bother trying to make ungrateful spoiled brats happy? What's in it for me except being pissed on by the likes of you?
"Microsoft learned this lesson. The geniuses over in the Windows Media team had a shockingly, almost criminally bad Windows Media Player for OS X."
Newsflash. MS is a company trying to sell shit.