Well, that's where I respectfully disagree! PCs might be cheaper but I have yet to find a PC that is "just as good" as a Mac, hardware-wise. For instance, I find the trackpads on Macs highly superior than those on PCs. Also, display quality is unparalleled, IMHO
No one is saying that device drives will magically start working flawlessly because their source code is open, although it will make it easier to track down bugs (see Linus Torvalds' quote about the number of eyeballs).
The main point, however, is that now Linux distributions can ship these drives out of the box, so wireless devices will work straight away. Until now the biggest (and dare I say only?) problem I've had with installing Linux on a laptop is finding and installing the right drivers for wireless network cards.
I didn't (want to) say that all RDBMS won't cut it. The only point I wanted to make was that while I can see the point of the author that solutions like Cassandra are a bit overrated for most business applications, for other applications domains they are becoming a viable solution.
I think the author of TFA is missing something: not all databases / datastores are developed for businesses to keep track of their inventories. These days, many scientific disciplines, such as bioinformatics, rely heavily on databases as well.
The latest experimental techniques produce so much data such that "old-fashioned" RDBMSs just don't cut it anymore. So, for certain application domains, NoSQL seems to be at the moment the way forward. I'm afraid the author can wish all the he wants but NoSQL is gonna be around for a while. Until something better comes up, that is.
I don't think the parent's point about handling 10k lines of code has to do with with ability to load these files into memory but rather about managing the complexity of such projects. When a program becomes this big, it becomes harder to keep track of all the names of variables, the argument types of subroutines etc. IDEs like Netbeans or Eclipse have autocompletion functionality that make your life as a developer at lot easier.
It's possible of course that Emacs or vi provide similar functionality but the main point is that you need some type of IDE when managing a large, complex development project.
I have to disagree. A year or so ago my uncle asked me to transfer some files from/to his old 386. After typing 'win' as the DOS prompt, Windows was up and running in literally one second!
All the apps that I opened were very responsive.
I'm sorry but if you can't modify the code and redistribute it yourself, then I don't consider the source to be open. Still, I agree, it could be useful as an educational tool.
Can you do that in a spreadsheet? Sorry if I'm ignorant, but I don't think you can put functions in cells and use these to manipulate data in other cells. To me, this idea sounds rather cool. A pity it isn't Open Source, but hey, maybe innovation still exists in the closed source world!:-)
Errr... Am I missing something in your post? I think you'll find that 3 channels of 256 levels each allows you to create 256^3 (to the 3rd power) = 16777216 different colors!
Genetic engineering by itself is not to blame for this toxicity. It's equally possible to make a toxic variant of corn through classical breeding techniques, like people have been using for hundreds of years. The point I want to make, is that you shouldn't discard genetically modified organisms altogether. There still are plenty of examples where GMOs serve very usefull purposes. IMHO, The problem with GMOs is the same as with any other technology: When used in good hands, it could prove to be a benefit to society. When in bad hands (i.e. evil multinational companies), if will only benefit certain people's bank accounts.
As an analogy of my point: nobody on slashdot would be opposed to software simply because of Microsoft's (or SCO or any other evil software company) business practices? Right?
Disclaimer: I have a background in genetics, so I'm supposed to know what I'm talking about. And, as someone who has always been very interested in biology and life sciences, I hugely care about the environment.
Well, they could get rid of the camera. And the webbrowsing. And the iPod functionality. I for one, would be perfectly happy with a really well designed phone, that has all of the phone capabilities of the iPhone (browsing through voicemails, merging calls into a conference call) but that has no functionality that is not related to making phone calls.
Well, O.K., this year's Keynote was not as spectacular as it used to be, but then again, it's just a business presentation!
The Wired article reads like it's a review for a theatre play or a movie screening. In my opinion, if you're the CEO of an multinational computer company and people are talking about your latest presentation this way, you definitely haven't lost your magic.
Yes, webservices like these are (unfortunately) blocked by the Chinese government. My brother lived in China for more then one year, so he experienced this first hand.
I completely agree with this. I have even heard people from Microsoft admitting (off the record, of course) that they'd rather have everybody running pirated copies of Windows XP instead of people turning to Linux.
There is a whole world of difference between introducing an organism that is genetically modified (=same species + new feature) and a completely new species into an environment.
Of course, it all depends on what this new feature is, but in my opinion, 99% of the modifications we wish to make to a specific crop are beneficial only to us and not to the crop itself (read: its survival in the wild).
For instance, consider a tomato plant that has been modified to grow tomatoes that are twice as big and that can be preserved twice as long as regular tomatoes. While this is obviously beneficial to the farmer and the consumer, it will seriously hinder the survival of this tomato variety in the willd: regular tomato plants will spend less energy on producing fruit and will be able to release their seeds much sooner (because the fruit spoils faster) than the fancy GM variety.
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and in most cases just as good.
Well, that's where I respectfully disagree! PCs might be cheaper but I have yet to find a PC that is "just as good" as a Mac, hardware-wise. For instance, I find the trackpads on Macs highly superior than those on PCs. Also, display quality is unparalleled, IMHO
I couldn't agree more. In my previous job, I had a colleague who wanted to convert me from SVN to Bazaar (http://bazaar-vcs.org/).
He told me "it was very simple to use, you only have to..." and then started drawing a very complicated diagram on my whiteboard.
Personally, I thought it was complete overkill for the two-man project we were working on.
No one is saying that device drives will magically start working flawlessly because their source code is open, although it will make it easier to track down bugs (see Linus Torvalds' quote about the number of eyeballs).
The main point, however, is that now Linux distributions can ship these drives out of the box, so wireless devices will work straight away. Until now the biggest (and dare I say only?) problem I've had with installing Linux on a laptop is finding and installing the right drivers for wireless network cards.
I didn't (want to) say that all RDBMS won't cut it. The only point I wanted to make was that while I can see the point of the author that solutions like Cassandra are a bit overrated for most business applications, for other applications domains they are becoming a viable solution.
I think the author of TFA is missing something: not all databases / datastores are developed for businesses to keep track of their inventories. These days, many scientific disciplines, such as bioinformatics, rely heavily on databases as well.
The latest experimental techniques produce so much data such that "old-fashioned" RDBMSs just don't cut it anymore. So, for certain application domains, NoSQL seems to be at the moment the way forward. I'm afraid the author can wish all the he wants but NoSQL is gonna be around for a while. Until something better comes up, that is.
I don't think the parent's point about handling 10k lines of code has to do with with ability to load these files into memory but rather about managing the complexity of such projects. When a program becomes this big, it becomes harder to keep track of all the names of variables, the argument types of subroutines etc. IDEs like Netbeans or Eclipse have autocompletion functionality that make your life as a developer at lot easier.
It's possible of course that Emacs or vi provide similar functionality but the main point is that you need some type of IDE when managing a large, complex development project.
I have to disagree. A year or so ago my uncle asked me to transfer some files from/to his old 386. After typing 'win' as the DOS prompt, Windows was up and running in literally one second! All the apps that I opened were very responsive.
I'm sorry but if you can't modify the code and redistribute it yourself, then I don't consider the source to be open. Still, I agree, it could be useful as an educational tool.
Can you do that in a spreadsheet? Sorry if I'm ignorant, but I don't think you can put functions in cells and use these to manipulate data in other cells. To me, this idea sounds rather cool. A pity it isn't Open Source, but hey, maybe innovation still exists in the closed source world! :-)
Errr... Am I missing something in your post? I think you'll find that 3 channels of 256 levels each allows you to create 256^3 (to the 3rd power) = 16777216 different colors!
Genetic engineering by itself is not to blame for this toxicity. It's equally possible to make a toxic variant of corn through classical breeding techniques, like people have been using for hundreds of years. The point I want to make, is that you shouldn't discard genetically modified organisms altogether. There still are plenty of examples where GMOs serve very usefull purposes. IMHO, The problem with GMOs is the same as with any other technology: When used in good hands, it could prove to be a benefit to society. When in bad hands (i.e. evil multinational companies), if will only benefit certain people's bank accounts .
As an analogy of my point: nobody on slashdot would be opposed to software simply because of Microsoft's (or SCO or any other evil software company) business practices? Right?
Disclaimer: I have a background in genetics, so I'm supposed to know what I'm talking about. And, as someone who has always been very interested in biology and life sciences, I hugely care about the environment.
...to your loved one: I'd prefer you to cheat on me as much as you want rather than being honest and just break up with me when you're fed up with me.
Well, they could get rid of the camera. And the webbrowsing. And the iPod functionality. I for one, would be perfectly happy with a really well designed phone, that has all of the phone capabilities of the iPhone (browsing through voicemails, merging calls into a conference call) but that has no functionality that is not related to making phone calls.
I mean, what *more* do you want of a phone?
Well, O.K., this year's Keynote was not as spectacular as it used to be, but then again, it's just a business presentation!
The Wired article reads like it's a review for a theatre play or a movie screening. In my opinion, if you're the CEO of an multinational computer company and people are talking about your latest presentation this way, you definitely haven't lost your magic.
Yes, webservices like these are (unfortunately) blocked by the Chinese government. My brother lived in China for more then one year, so he experienced this first hand.
This is the first time I see a fashion-related story on slashdot!
I completely agree with this. I have even heard people from Microsoft admitting (off the record, of course) that they'd rather have everybody running pirated copies of Windows XP instead of people turning to Linux.
There is a whole world of difference between introducing an organism that is genetically modified (=same species + new feature) and a completely new species into an environment.
Of course, it all depends on what this new feature is, but in my opinion, 99% of the modifications we wish to make to a specific crop are beneficial only to us and not to the crop itself (read: its survival in the wild).
For instance, consider a tomato plant that has been modified to grow tomatoes that are twice as big and that can be preserved twice as long as regular tomatoes. While this is obviously beneficial to the farmer and the consumer, it will seriously hinder the survival of this tomato variety in the willd: regular tomato plants will spend less energy on producing fruit and will be able to release their seeds much sooner (because the fruit spoils faster) than the fancy GM variety.