I had a similar problem where at first I thought the file was being corrupted during an FTP transfer but it ended up being that Calc would once in a while save it corrupted so it wouldn't open again. I forget the exact error it gave. That was like the m109 beta, I haven't had the problem since the newest betas (m125+).
Sorry for the double response but you also forgot that the OS will only take a small portion of the memory on a server, so again with the number of accounts we're talking about here the filesystem cache you speak of will become insufficient very quickly. The userspace memory is the proper place for that amount of data. You might not notice the difference in performance on a small implementation but when you get a capable server with this kind of load on it you will find that databases scale much better - anything that regularly goes to the disk is asking for trouble. From your comments it sounds like your experience is probably on a much smaller scale.
With such a strongly worded title you'd think you'd actually have some experience to back up your claims. Memory access is faster than disk access, period. I don't care what file system you're on or what kind of caches the OS implements, fact is it's going to go to the disk almost immediately to store the change. And we're not talking about one user checking every minute. We're talking about tens of thousands of users checking every minute or few minutes. That's a continuous load on the disk - not a desirable situation for a server. Also remember that access logs are also written to disk as well.
I'm not arguing that relational db's are the way to store everything; I'm totally about the right tool for the job. But file systems are good for storing files, they're not intended for the level of data updates (new files / deleted files) that a high use email server generates. Databases are. Also disk writes from databases are also optimized if your database is well designed and resistant to paging. If you don't want a RELATIONAL database, fine. There are other types of databases you know. Mail servers don't have anything in common with file servers in terms of resource usage.
It went "public" in that you no longer need to be invited, but that doesn't mean it's out of beta. In fact I have GMail open in another browser tab right now and it still says beta.
Also, read their terms of use: Personal Use. The Service is made available to you for your personal use only.
So it would be illegal to use it for your company's email anyway. Illegal I don't know but they could at least sue you / stop you. IANAL.
I don't know if you actually have experience running a mail server or not or if you just wanted to go off on your relational db rant, but mail data tends to be created and deleted A LOT with varying size files, and file-based structures on a mail server create serious fragmentation problems. If you do decide to go this way, allow plenty of free drive space - well above normal recommendations - like 80% free or more.
Also many people have their mail clients set with ridiculousy frequent mail check times (like every minute), and on a file based system each check requires a trip to the drive and back. Even with the data on a RAID array with a decent read/write cache, you're still going through the disk subsystem, whereas with a database it would all be in memory.
What's wrong with SELECT * FROM messages WHERE userid=xyz and read=0? That is a cakewalk for a properly indexed dbms. On a medium sized server (say, quad processor w/ 8-16GB RAM) there is more userspace memory than os memory space.
The reason Richard Pearse's "flights" weren't considered the first powered flight is because he basically "powered" his contraptions off the edge of a cliff and glided to a land. The Wright brothers actually lifted off the ground under their own power, as opposed to having the ground drop away (not to mention there was never any proof of his flights actually taking place). Nice conspiracy theory though, keep it up.
Check out this page: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/planetruth.html to see even more information on powered flight and others' accomplishments before and after the Wrights. First powered flight was a dirigible 50 years before Pearse and the Wrights, the first "heavier than air" powered flight took place in 1890, over a decade before Pearse and the Wrights... etc. etc. etc.
So yes, all links in comments are already set with the "nofollow" attribute, but Word Verification is in addition to that to prevent the comments from being autonomously posted in the first place. Word Verification can be enabled or disabled by the blog author.
Yeah but that's what technology is supposed to do - make doing the same things cheaper or easier. Remember 10 years ago when every cell phone provider had a plan for $15 / month? Now you can't touch most any cell phone plan for less than $30 or $40 / month. That's ridiculous.
2 years ago before I switched to Vonage I was paying Verizon over $45 / month for a basic phone line with some features (caller id, call waiting, etc.). My wife and I use almost zero long distance and don't even talk on the phone locally that much. Now I pay $16.94 / month to Vonage all said and done after taxes and with more features than Verizon offered. That's how it should work - advancing technology lets me do the same for cheaper. Before Vonage it seemed my Verizon bill just kept getting bigger with no additional benefit to me.
Obviously Vonage doesn't have to maintian a physical infrastructure like Verizon does; their technology is built on an existing one. Hopefully that allows them to still be profitable at the much lower cost.
For both my parents' and my uncle's computers, I just installed Firefox and Thunderbird and even left the desktop icons named "Mozilla Firefox" and "Mozilla Thunderbirg", and I just told them that these are the new icons for Internet and Email. None of them were even familiar with the names of the programs they used previously and apparently don't even bother to read what the icon says. Worked out pretty well.
Agreed, but you can still do server-side processing via javascript (I think it's called AJAX) instead of forcing reloads on the page. For simple things like adding a total you'd probably just keep it javascript, but for more complicated things you can use basic javascript to go to the server for more complicated processing instead of worrying about browser compatabilities. Google does a lot of it, like with Google Suggest. Try it out, just start typing something in the search box, and the page will send what you're typing back to google's server via javascript and the server processes that information and returns suggestions which are then displayed on the page in real time again with javascript. This wouldn't be possible without the server doing the work, but the page never needs to reload.
This is different than current market-share, which you seem to be confusing with the rate-of-growth.
What you don't seem to understand is that they absolutely are related. A company who has 95% of market share only has 5% of the people to market to. In any industry, it's easy for a company who has little to no market share to gain market share. But the more market share you have, the harder it is to gain (fewer people to market to).
Let's say a company with 95% of the market and a company with 5% of the market both start a new marketing campaign to try to get new customers. The company with 95% market share can only market to 5% of the people who aren't already their customers. The inverse is true of the company with 5% of the market. Let's say both campaigns are successful and 10% of the people who were marketed to became new customers. Now the 95% market share customer gained 1/2 of a percent market share, but the 5% market share company gained 9.5% market share. Their marketing campaigns were equally successful, but the impact was different. The more market share you have, the harder it is to get more. This is why it's easy for Apple to show a growth rate right now. Let's see if they can sustain it.
What about the virus which would infect 2000/XP if you connected to a network?
That's only if you connect it to an unprotected / unfirewalled / unNAT'd network. What knowledgeable user really does that?
Did you scan your PC recently? Or, let me guess, you spend a lot of time trying to protect yourself from malware?
Yes, all my Windows PC's (about 4 of them in my house) scan themselves daily. Just like my Linux boxes. And they never find anything because I have my router and firewall locked down pretty well. And me and my wife don't download stupid malware programs and we use Firefox instead of IE. It's not any trouble, and I'm not going out of my way at all, I just know how to protect a network (it's not hard).
No Macs work out of the box? They all need repair?
Now you're putting words in my mouth, but that has been my experience lately. I only know a few Mac users right now but I can detail 4 different Macs that those people bought in the past two years that all needed work within a couple weeks out of the box. One iMac was DOA. Replacement came and worked fine. One brand new dual processor G5's CDROM didn't line up with the case and wouldn't open (jammed) because the spacers were set wrong under the drive. Another G5 started crashing within a few weeks and the local Apple store started throwing parts at it (CPU, motherboard, finally figured out it was the hard drive). Most recently a new powerbook lost it's display, about two weeks old. As a non-Mac user, this isn't convincing me to switch.
In fact, the Mac has continued to dramatically outpace PC market gain.
<sarcasm>
Yeah, too bad the PC market couldn't quite get past 95%, that's pretty disappointing. What an accomplishment for Macs to outpace PC market gain.
</sarcasm>
They are one of the world's top brands
What are you basing this on? On my quick google search, they appear at #43 behind many other major software and hardware manufacturers (Microsoft, IBM, Intel, HP, Cisco, Dell, Oracle, SAP). Apple is considered a cult brand, not a top brand.
http://www.finfacts.ie/brands2004.htm
Ive never met a single Windows user whos computer wasn't plagued with tons of spy/malware.
Nice to meet you. I'm a Windows user who doesn't have any trouble with spyware / malware at all and never has. It's not really that hard for a competent computer user.
I've also never known anybody who ever bought a new Mac that worked out of the box and didn't need to be immediately returned as DOA or returned for repair. I guess everybody has different experiences.
IIRC, Microsoft started TerraServer basically as a showcase for SQL Server 2000. It's a double entendre for "terra" meaning earth and "tera" as in tera-byte, showing how much data SQL Server can handle. As far as I can tell, they're not selling anything.
TerraServer is operated by the Microsoft Corporation as a research project for developing advanced database technology, and was born at the Microsoft Bay Area Research Center. TerraServer's foundation is Microsoft SQL Server 2000, the complete relational database management and analysis system for building scalable e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.
The author of TFA (and many others like it) still miss the point of Linux. If there is a need for somebody to make their own distro, then fine. Linux doesn't need to topple Windows. I'm not in any way saying Linux couldn't use some usability improvements, but if Linux grows and more and more "mom and dad" Windows users switch to Linux, it's not like they're going to contribute back to the community other than maybe buying commercial distros.
They're fine, sounds like you had a defective one. I have a 128MB and a 1 gig one now, and I don't use the end cap on either of them can carry them around on my keychain and they're fine. The 128MB one even went through the wash and still works (didn't lose any data).
For databases, it would make more sense to have a license for X thousand transactions, or Y amount of data.
That'd be like making your car payment based on how many miles you drive it each month. What difference does that make to the manufacturer (of the car or of the software). Not to mention the pain in the ass of tracking it. Per CPU does make some sense for server applications, but it could probably be even more simple.
I want to know where this backend bandwidth is coming from and who's paying for it?
Keep in mind that bandwidth isn't a finite resource. Need more bandwidth? Install a new line. Upstream providers continue to invest the money that we consumers pay them for service to upgrade their own service and infrastructure to accommodate more and more bandwidth over time. That lowers the cost of bandwidth so consumers buy more of it. Rinse and repeat. It's not unreasonable to have these numbers in a few years.
I'm not sure if Red Hat came up with RPM or not. RPM.org isn't immediately clear on that point.
I always thought RPM stood for Red Hat Package Manager, but you're right RPM.org doesn't mention that. Wikipedia states 'RPM Package Manager (or RPM, originally called "Red Hat Package Manager")' implying that "Red Hat" was dropped and now I guess it's just a recursive acronym.
Agreed, in that instance the top gear rule I mentioned would take precedence. This is more general theory, as mentioned in an earlier post the specifics of these numbers will vary greatly between vehicles. But generally there is a public misconception that slower = better fuel economy; I'm just pointing out that it's not that simple and there are actual variables that can be measured to determine the most efficient speed and it's not as slow as most people think (top gear rule again). But that point where aerodynamic drag catches up with rolling friction absolutely plays a part in the most efficient speed. If you google around a bit you can find more information about the subject. Here's a site that explains it similar to the way I did: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question477.htm
"people aren't aerodynamic" - depends on the bike I guess. On my YZF, when I'm in full tuck it's pretty aerodynamic. Also drag coefficients can be misleading, keep in mind it has to be multiplied by frontal surface area to get the actual drag - so while people might not be aerodynamic, they don't have a lot of surface area either compared to a car.
Your last paragraph makes absosutley no sense to me. Manufacturers put just as much work into reducing the aerodynamic drag coefficient as they do rolling resistance which brings both numbers down so the crossover point is still higher than you imply. Particularly on the many "high mileage" vehicles where there is a big jump between city and highway mpg. And that would be a Toyota Prius, not a Honda. Honda has the Insight; maybe that's what you were thinking.
Your last sentence about motorcycles makes even less sense. At what point in the discussion are we talking about top speed? And how does the information I've provided in any way indicate that motorcycles would be slow?
I'd draw you a graph if I could, but hopefully this explanation will clarify:
Rolling friction is a constant value with regard to speed, where air resistance is relative to the square of the speed, so at low speeds the total drag of air resistance is less than rolling friction, and as speed increases the two lines will cross. It's at that point where I'm saying is the most efficient speed, assuming top gear and within an appropriate RPM for the engine. I didn't say they "balance out", I said where the values are equal - one is linear and one is exponential. Hope that helps.
I won't ask you to cite accident data that directly relates speed of a vehicle to the cause of the accident (if there is any), but I personally know far more people who have been in accidents and even killed by drunk drivers, distracted drivers (cell phones, newspapers, eating, makeup, etc.) and many other factors other than simply losing control of a vehicle because it was moving too fast. Maybe it's just my personal experience. But there are many studies that show how changing the speed limit on a particular road by as much as 20 mph has little to no affect on the speed that drivers actually travel on the given road. This is because as I stated, people drive at a speed they are comfortable at in general. I guess you could argue that the speed at which they're comfortable isn't a safe one, but I would disagree with that.
I totally agree with you that people in general aren't good drivers. The driver training and testing requirements should be far more intensive (at least in the US). But that doesn't mean that all accidents are caused by outright speed.
Exactly my thoughts. As a driving instructor for the Porsche Club of America, the maximum safe speed for me, as a good driver in my track prepared Porsche, is way higher than any speed limit. I only obey the speed limit in residential areas where safety is an issue (and by obey, I mean within 5-10 mph). The rest of the time I'm not even close. I also pay the $155.50 "drive at a reasonable speed" tax about once every year and a half to two years to my local township.
Last winter, I found myself safely driving the 55 mph speed limit on a highway in my Land Rover at night with three inches of snow on the ground and more coming down. Something is definitely wrong with speed limits.
Speed limits are based on 30-50 year old equations and don't take into account better vehicles with more safety and control devices, better tire technology, better traffic control devices, etc.
Also somebody mentioned gas mileage; it seems most people are of the misconception that driving slower increases fuel mileage. That is not true. Generally speaking, the most efficient speed for a vehicle is in top gear (the most efficient distance / engine revolution), at a speed where air resistance and rolling friction are approximately equal assuming that speed is at an efficient engine speed. This speed can vary widely from vehicle to vehicle.
Sorry for the rant. There are just so many reasons why speed limits are set improperly (many of them political as well). People will inherently drive at a speed which is safe for them, and if we're all courteous to one another on the road there would be no problem at any speed.
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I had a similar problem where at first I thought the file was being corrupted during an FTP transfer but it ended up being that Calc would once in a while save it corrupted so it wouldn't open again. I forget the exact error it gave. That was like the m109 beta, I haven't had the problem since the newest betas (m125+).
Sorry for the double response but you also forgot that the OS will only take a small portion of the memory on a server, so again with the number of accounts we're talking about here the filesystem cache you speak of will become insufficient very quickly. The userspace memory is the proper place for that amount of data. You might not notice the difference in performance on a small implementation but when you get a capable server with this kind of load on it you will find that databases scale much better - anything that regularly goes to the disk is asking for trouble. From your comments it sounds like your experience is probably on a much smaller scale.
With such a strongly worded title you'd think you'd actually have some experience to back up your claims. Memory access is faster than disk access, period. I don't care what file system you're on or what kind of caches the OS implements, fact is it's going to go to the disk almost immediately to store the change. And we're not talking about one user checking every minute. We're talking about tens of thousands of users checking every minute or few minutes. That's a continuous load on the disk - not a desirable situation for a server. Also remember that access logs are also written to disk as well.
I'm not arguing that relational db's are the way to store everything; I'm totally about the right tool for the job. But file systems are good for storing files, they're not intended for the level of data updates (new files / deleted files) that a high use email server generates. Databases are. Also disk writes from databases are also optimized if your database is well designed and resistant to paging. If you don't want a RELATIONAL database, fine. There are other types of databases you know. Mail servers don't have anything in common with file servers in terms of resource usage.
It went "public" in that you no longer need to be invited, but that doesn't mean it's out of beta. In fact I have GMail open in another browser tab right now and it still says beta.
Also, read their terms of use:
Personal Use. The Service is made available to you for your personal use only.
So it would be illegal to use it for your company's email anyway. Illegal I don't know but they could at least sue you / stop you. IANAL.
I don't know if you actually have experience running a mail server or not or if you just wanted to go off on your relational db rant, but mail data tends to be created and deleted A LOT with varying size files, and file-based structures on a mail server create serious fragmentation problems. If you do decide to go this way, allow plenty of free drive space - well above normal recommendations - like 80% free or more.
Also many people have their mail clients set with ridiculousy frequent mail check times (like every minute), and on a file based system each check requires a trip to the drive and back. Even with the data on a RAID array with a decent read/write cache, you're still going through the disk subsystem, whereas with a database it would all be in memory.
What's wrong with SELECT * FROM messages WHERE userid=xyz and read=0? That is a cakewalk for a properly indexed dbms. On a medium sized server (say, quad processor w/ 8-16GB RAM) there is more userspace memory than os memory space.
The reason Richard Pearse's "flights" weren't considered the first powered flight is because he basically "powered" his contraptions off the edge of a cliff and glided to a land. The Wright brothers actually lifted off the ground under their own power, as opposed to having the ground drop away (not to mention there was never any proof of his flights actually taking place). Nice conspiracy theory though, keep it up.
Check out this page: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/planetruth.html to see even more information on powered flight and others' accomplishments before and after the Wrights. First powered flight was a dirigible 50 years before Pearse and the Wrights, the first "heavier than air" powered flight took place in 1890, over a decade before Pearse and the Wrights... etc. etc. etc.
Check it:
Keeping Comments Clean
So yes, all links in comments are already set with the "nofollow" attribute, but Word Verification is in addition to that to prevent the comments from being autonomously posted in the first place. Word Verification can be enabled or disabled by the blog author.
Yeah but that's what technology is supposed to do - make doing the same things cheaper or easier. Remember 10 years ago when every cell phone provider had a plan for $15 / month? Now you can't touch most any cell phone plan for less than $30 or $40 / month. That's ridiculous.
2 years ago before I switched to Vonage I was paying Verizon over $45 / month for a basic phone line with some features (caller id, call waiting, etc.). My wife and I use almost zero long distance and don't even talk on the phone locally that much. Now I pay $16.94 / month to Vonage all said and done after taxes and with more features than Verizon offered. That's how it should work - advancing technology lets me do the same for cheaper. Before Vonage it seemed my Verizon bill just kept getting bigger with no additional benefit to me.
Obviously Vonage doesn't have to maintian a physical infrastructure like Verizon does; their technology is built on an existing one. Hopefully that allows them to still be profitable at the much lower cost.
For both my parents' and my uncle's computers, I just installed Firefox and Thunderbird and even left the desktop icons named "Mozilla Firefox" and "Mozilla Thunderbirg", and I just told them that these are the new icons for Internet and Email. None of them were even familiar with the names of the programs they used previously and apparently don't even bother to read what the icon says. Worked out pretty well.
Agreed, but you can still do server-side processing via javascript (I think it's called AJAX) instead of forcing reloads on the page. For simple things like adding a total you'd probably just keep it javascript, but for more complicated things you can use basic javascript to go to the server for more complicated processing instead of worrying about browser compatabilities. Google does a lot of it, like with Google Suggest. Try it out, just start typing something in the search box, and the page will send what you're typing back to google's server via javascript and the server processes that information and returns suggestions which are then displayed on the page in real time again with javascript. This wouldn't be possible without the server doing the work, but the page never needs to reload.
No, the keywords were "market gain".
This is different than current market-share, which you seem to be confusing with the rate-of-growth.
What you don't seem to understand is that they absolutely are related. A company who has 95% of market share only has 5% of the people to market to. In any industry, it's easy for a company who has little to no market share to gain market share. But the more market share you have, the harder it is to gain (fewer people to market to).
Let's say a company with 95% of the market and a company with 5% of the market both start a new marketing campaign to try to get new customers. The company with 95% market share can only market to 5% of the people who aren't already their customers. The inverse is true of the company with 5% of the market. Let's say both campaigns are successful and 10% of the people who were marketed to became new customers. Now the 95% market share customer gained 1/2 of a percent market share, but the 5% market share company gained 9.5% market share. Their marketing campaigns were equally successful, but the impact was different. The more market share you have, the harder it is to get more. This is why it's easy for Apple to show a growth rate right now. Let's see if they can sustain it.
What about the virus which would infect 2000/XP if you connected to a network?
That's only if you connect it to an unprotected / unfirewalled / unNAT'd network. What knowledgeable user really does that?
Did you scan your PC recently? Or, let me guess, you spend a lot of time trying to protect yourself from malware?
Yes, all my Windows PC's (about 4 of them in my house) scan themselves daily. Just like my Linux boxes. And they never find anything because I have my router and firewall locked down pretty well. And me and my wife don't download stupid malware programs and we use Firefox instead of IE. It's not any trouble, and I'm not going out of my way at all, I just know how to protect a network (it's not hard).
No Macs work out of the box? They all need repair?
Now you're putting words in my mouth, but that has been my experience lately. I only know a few Mac users right now but I can detail 4 different Macs that those people bought in the past two years that all needed work within a couple weeks out of the box. One iMac was DOA. Replacement came and worked fine. One brand new dual processor G5's CDROM didn't line up with the case and wouldn't open (jammed) because the spacers were set wrong under the drive. Another G5 started crashing within a few weeks and the local Apple store started throwing parts at it (CPU, motherboard, finally figured out it was the hard drive). Most recently a new powerbook lost it's display, about two weeks old. As a non-Mac user, this isn't convincing me to switch.
In fact, the Mac has continued to dramatically outpace PC market gain.
<sarcasm>Yeah, too bad the PC market couldn't quite get past 95%, that's pretty disappointing. What an accomplishment for Macs to outpace PC market gain.
</sarcasm>They are one of the world's top brands
What are you basing this on? On my quick google search, they appear at #43 behind many other major software and hardware manufacturers (Microsoft, IBM, Intel, HP, Cisco, Dell, Oracle, SAP). Apple is considered a cult brand, not a top brand. http://www.finfacts.ie/brands2004.htm
Ive never met a single Windows user whos computer wasn't plagued with tons of spy/malware.
Nice to meet you. I'm a Windows user who doesn't have any trouble with spyware / malware at all and never has. It's not really that hard for a competent computer user.
I've also never known anybody who ever bought a new Mac that worked out of the box and didn't need to be immediately returned as DOA or returned for repair. I guess everybody has different experiences.
IIRC, Microsoft started TerraServer basically as a showcase for SQL Server 2000. It's a double entendre for "terra" meaning earth and "tera" as in tera-byte, showing how much data SQL Server can handle. As far as I can tell, they're not selling anything.
Check it out: terraserver.microsoft.com
TerraServer is operated by the Microsoft Corporation as a research project for developing advanced database technology, and was born at the Microsoft Bay Area Research Center. TerraServer's foundation is Microsoft SQL Server 2000, the complete relational database management and analysis system for building scalable e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.
The author of TFA (and many others like it) still miss the point of Linux. If there is a need for somebody to make their own distro, then fine. Linux doesn't need to topple Windows. I'm not in any way saying Linux couldn't use some usability improvements, but if Linux grows and more and more "mom and dad" Windows users switch to Linux, it's not like they're going to contribute back to the community other than maybe buying commercial distros.
They're fine, sounds like you had a defective one. I have a 128MB and a 1 gig one now, and I don't use the end cap on either of them can carry them around on my keychain and they're fine. The 128MB one even went through the wash and still works (didn't lose any data).
For databases, it would make more sense to have a license for X thousand transactions, or Y amount of data.
That'd be like making your car payment based on how many miles you drive it each month. What difference does that make to the manufacturer (of the car or of the software). Not to mention the pain in the ass of tracking it. Per CPU does make some sense for server applications, but it could probably be even more simple.
64 bit Windows is out...
XP Pro x64
Server 2003 Standard x64 (Enterprise and Datacenter editions also available in 64 bit)
But you are correct that many people run 32 bit XP on Athlon 64's, or even Windows 2000 Server or Server 2003 32 bit versions on Opterons.
I want to know where this backend bandwidth is coming from and who's paying for it?
Keep in mind that bandwidth isn't a finite resource. Need more bandwidth? Install a new line. Upstream providers continue to invest the money that we consumers pay them for service to upgrade their own service and infrastructure to accommodate more and more bandwidth over time. That lowers the cost of bandwidth so consumers buy more of it. Rinse and repeat. It's not unreasonable to have these numbers in a few years.
I'm not sure if Red Hat came up with RPM or not. RPM.org isn't immediately clear on that point.
I always thought RPM stood for Red Hat Package Manager, but you're right RPM.org doesn't mention that. Wikipedia states 'RPM Package Manager (or RPM, originally called "Red Hat Package Manager")' implying that "Red Hat" was dropped and now I guess it's just a recursive acronym.
Agreed, in that instance the top gear rule I mentioned would take precedence. This is more general theory, as mentioned in an earlier post the specifics of these numbers will vary greatly between vehicles. But generally there is a public misconception that slower = better fuel economy; I'm just pointing out that it's not that simple and there are actual variables that can be measured to determine the most efficient speed and it's not as slow as most people think (top gear rule again). But that point where aerodynamic drag catches up with rolling friction absolutely plays a part in the most efficient speed. If you google around a bit you can find more information about the subject. Here's a site that explains it similar to the way I did:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question477.htm
"people aren't aerodynamic" - depends on the bike I guess. On my YZF, when I'm in full tuck it's pretty aerodynamic. Also drag coefficients can be misleading, keep in mind it has to be multiplied by frontal surface area to get the actual drag - so while people might not be aerodynamic, they don't have a lot of surface area either compared to a car.
Your last paragraph makes absosutley no sense to me. Manufacturers put just as much work into reducing the aerodynamic drag coefficient as they do rolling resistance which brings both numbers down so the crossover point is still higher than you imply. Particularly on the many "high mileage" vehicles where there is a big jump between city and highway mpg. And that would be a Toyota Prius, not a Honda. Honda has the Insight; maybe that's what you were thinking.
Your last sentence about motorcycles makes even less sense. At what point in the discussion are we talking about top speed? And how does the information I've provided in any way indicate that motorcycles would be slow?
I'd draw you a graph if I could, but hopefully this explanation will clarify:
Rolling friction is a constant value with regard to speed, where air resistance is relative to the square of the speed, so at low speeds the total drag of air resistance is less than rolling friction, and as speed increases the two lines will cross. It's at that point where I'm saying is the most efficient speed, assuming top gear and within an appropriate RPM for the engine. I didn't say they "balance out", I said where the values are equal - one is linear and one is exponential. Hope that helps.
I won't ask you to cite accident data that directly relates speed of a vehicle to the cause of the accident (if there is any), but I personally know far more people who have been in accidents and even killed by drunk drivers, distracted drivers (cell phones, newspapers, eating, makeup, etc.) and many other factors other than simply losing control of a vehicle because it was moving too fast. Maybe it's just my personal experience. But there are many studies that show how changing the speed limit on a particular road by as much as 20 mph has little to no affect on the speed that drivers actually travel on the given road. This is because as I stated, people drive at a speed they are comfortable at in general. I guess you could argue that the speed at which they're comfortable isn't a safe one, but I would disagree with that.
I totally agree with you that people in general aren't good drivers. The driver training and testing requirements should be far more intensive (at least in the US). But that doesn't mean that all accidents are caused by outright speed.
Exactly my thoughts. As a driving instructor for the Porsche Club of America, the maximum safe speed for me, as a good driver in my track prepared Porsche, is way higher than any speed limit. I only obey the speed limit in residential areas where safety is an issue (and by obey, I mean within 5-10 mph). The rest of the time I'm not even close. I also pay the $155.50 "drive at a reasonable speed" tax about once every year and a half to two years to my local township.
Last winter, I found myself safely driving the 55 mph speed limit on a highway in my Land Rover at night with three inches of snow on the ground and more coming down. Something is definitely wrong with speed limits.
Speed limits are based on 30-50 year old equations and don't take into account better vehicles with more safety and control devices, better tire technology, better traffic control devices, etc.
Also somebody mentioned gas mileage; it seems most people are of the misconception that driving slower increases fuel mileage. That is not true. Generally speaking, the most efficient speed for a vehicle is in top gear (the most efficient distance / engine revolution), at a speed where air resistance and rolling friction are approximately equal assuming that speed is at an efficient engine speed. This speed can vary widely from vehicle to vehicle.
Sorry for the rant. There are just so many reasons why speed limits are set improperly (many of them political as well). People will inherently drive at a speed which is safe for them, and if we're all courteous to one another on the road there would be no problem at any speed.