"I point the finger first and foremost at the home owners who bought homes they couldn't afford."
Bullshit.
So when those tycoons are able to squeeze a business opportunity they are worthy their millionaire bonuses but when they don't do their due dilligence and lend money to somebody who obviously won't pay it back is the buyer's fault? Do you remember which part is the one with access to credit records, MBAs, staticians and all that stuff?
This a shared responsability scenario but the one with the biggest responsability is the one that controls the situation, and that one is the one with the money, not the one asking for it.
"I guess in the open source world they just assume your app and database will always be located on the same server."
I guess that in the open source world they just assume the system administrator knows better than themselves about the running environment and, in the meantime, safe by default is the proper way to go.
Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft, etc, on the other hand, I guess they just assume that the user paying the little fortunes their licenses require is a clear indication they must be absolutly stupid so better helping them even if that means -by their own stupidity, big problems later. Hey! that's a great opportunity to sell them "security" services and products on top of that!
"Doesn't support" and "it doesn't configure itself by default to be cracked ala red worm" are quite different things. By the way, all sane installers of MySQL do exactly the same thing.
"If life plateaued as a particularly tenacious single celled slime - would that be a bad thing?"
The point is that evolution is not finalist, it doesn't pursue any goal. If life plataeued at a single celled slime, that's neither bad nor good; it'd be just the way it'd be.
"As a beggar it is quite obvious that he is cleaning windows in hope of recompense and in that case it is rude to let someone do work to your benefit when you have no intention of rewarding said behavior."
You said it: even in your opinion it's not immoral; in this situation it might be unpolite, but not immoral, quite a different thing.
And once we get into politeness, not ethics, we are talking a very different issue here. I'd state that the really unpolite behaviour, and the one that starts the thread, is from his side to go fiddling with my car without my consent but, well, I own a car and he's begging in the street, so I'll give him a pass.
Now, your record industry du-jour is not a begger by any extent so the politeness issue is out of the equation. All that rests is that they think they deserve a reward when nobody promised it. It's not immoral not to pay for something public I didn't commit myself to pay for at any point, what it is immoral is for a private party to not only expect but lobby to change the law so they are payed for something nobody committed to pay for.
"this is simple apply the Golden Rule morality"
Reciprocity, you mean? Well, I don't expect others to pay me for things they didn't promise me to pay for, so go figure.
Given that there're more than 3000 individuals in the death row in USA, that you aren't executing thousands of people a year it's more a sign of your inability than anything else.
But, hey, don't be so disappointed, USA is 5th in executions/year... You don't get a medal, but you still get an olympic diplomma.
"Yes might be quicker to send the data from point A to point B by just shipping disks... but only for archiving purposes."
I can tell you I recently have had to resort to move hard drives by courier to move virtual machine images between two datacenters... for a telco, no less!
So you can bet is an option, not only for archiving.
"Without catastrophic or otherwise challenging events, life seems to become complacent - evolution often plateaus."
And this is a bad thing... exactly how?
Evolution happens by random mutation and selection of the better fitted.
On a stable environment, reaching a local optimum is expected to eventually happen and then, further mutations have a very hard time to produce better fitted individuals/populations than those currently in place. But then again, that's a bad thing... exactly why?
"I understand the desire to plant a human being on Mars but at the same time the pragmatic part of me interested in the actual science would rather see a dozen automated missions sent first."
But then, the really pragmatic part of me knows that there will be no way for those dozen automated probes to gather the willness of citizenship and so, be financed, unless there's the expectation of sending a man to plant his feet over there.
"Every major government right now is doing some serious inspections of where is their data flowing through"
No. They are doing it since the first time a customs agent halted a Mr Tcpip Package in the border, some twenty five years ago.
You don't think intelligence agencies were invented yesternight, do you?
"where is it stored and how trusty are the interests of those who control them"
When Lord Palmerston said that funny thing about not being allies, only interests, I think it came implied that there's not just one interest but that each one has his own and that the only trusty interest for a party is its own one. Given that the saying is about 200 years old, I think the news already reached the aforementioned intelligence agencies.
"And you can bet they are not liking the answers they are getting."
What you can bet is that the surprise gesture in their faces only shows their actoral worthness.
Slashdot Mirror
"I point the finger first and foremost at the home owners who bought homes they couldn't afford."
Bullshit.
So when those tycoons are able to squeeze a business opportunity they are worthy their millionaire bonuses but when they don't do their due dilligence and lend money to somebody who obviously won't pay it back is the buyer's fault? Do you remember which part is the one with access to credit records, MBAs, staticians and all that stuff?
This a shared responsability scenario but the one with the biggest responsability is the one that controls the situation, and that one is the one with the money, not the one asking for it.
"I suspect the answer is: the "Chicago Exchanges" have nodes on the low-latency Wall Street network."
For that to work, they should not only need offices at Chicago and nodes in Wall Street, they would also need Faster Than Light pipes in the middle.
"Once Fed decision was announced, someone had to read or listen to it, digest it, and then make a decision."
Why?
SomeTHING had to process it, but why someONE? It is not such a hard problem to tame (except for the timing).
Air is fluid so, yes, Archimede's law is if application too.
"I guess in the open source world they just assume your app and database will always be located on the same server."
I guess that in the open source world they just assume the system administrator knows better than themselves about the running environment and, in the meantime, safe by default is the proper way to go.
Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft, etc, on the other hand, I guess they just assume that the user paying the little fortunes their licenses require is a clear indication they must be absolutly stupid so better helping them even if that means -by their own stupidity, big problems later. Hey! that's a great opportunity to sell them "security" services and products on top of that!
"I'm not sure that "know any better" is all that relevant"
It is. Without unknowledgeable developers, neither PHP nor MySQL would have had the slightest chance.
"The network connections one has some merit."
"Doesn't support" and "it doesn't configure itself by default to be cracked ala red worm" are quite different things. By the way, all sane installers of MySQL do exactly the same thing.
"How do you propose doing so for something like Facebook or Twitter that have thousands of nodes and servers?"
Well, it's not a matter of proposal. Facebook have done it at least twice and it was done the way the grandparent sketched.
"The primary arguments against it traditionally [...] for business customers have been that it doesn't do users/permissions or network connections."
W-H-A-T!!!???
Where do you have heard something so out of reality, boy?
"So, really its more like a stand-alone flat-file database handler like Berekly DB or SQLite that just happens to have some high-end query syntax."
Ok, ok, I see, you are just trolling by turning old MySQL-related arguments to PostgreSQL.
Have a nice day.
"How did MySQL get such critical mass?"
Because it had a very good entry curve for developers that didn't know any better.
More or less like PHP (it's no chance that they got popular together).
"If life plateaued as a particularly tenacious single celled slime - would that be a bad thing?"
The point is that evolution is not finalist, it doesn't pursue any goal. If life plataeued at a single celled slime, that's neither bad nor good; it'd be just the way it'd be.
"You can hook an *eternal* storage..."
WHOOOSHHH!!!
"As a beggar it is quite obvious that he is cleaning windows in hope of recompense and in that case it is rude to let someone do work to your benefit when you have no intention of rewarding said behavior."
You said it: even in your opinion it's not immoral; in this situation it might be unpolite, but not immoral, quite a different thing.
And once we get into politeness, not ethics, we are talking a very different issue here. I'd state that the really unpolite behaviour, and the one that starts the thread, is from his side to go fiddling with my car without my consent but, well, I own a car and he's begging in the street, so I'll give him a pass.
Now, your record industry du-jour is not a begger by any extent so the politeness issue is out of the equation. All that rests is that they think they deserve a reward when nobody promised it. It's not immoral not to pay for something public I didn't commit myself to pay for at any point, what it is immoral is for a private party to not only expect but lobby to change the law so they are payed for something nobody committed to pay for.
"this is simple apply the Golden Rule morality"
Reciprocity, you mean? Well, I don't expect others to pay me for things they didn't promise me to pay for, so go figure.
Nothing to be proud about.
Given that there're more than 3000 individuals in the death row in USA, that you aren't executing thousands of people a year it's more a sign of your inability than anything else.
But, hey, don't be so disappointed, USA is 5th in executions/year... You don't get a medal, but you still get an olympic diplomma.
"Yes might be quicker to send the data from point A to point B by just shipping disks... but only for archiving purposes."
I can tell you I recently have had to resort to move hard drives by courier to move virtual machine images between two datacenters... for a telco, no less!
So you can bet is an option, not only for archiving.
"You can hook an eternal storage medium up to USB 3 or SATA"
Buh! don't drink the cool-aid from storage vendors... their MTBF are not *that* high.
"Without catastrophic or otherwise challenging events, life seems to become complacent - evolution often plateaus."
And this is a bad thing... exactly how?
Evolution happens by random mutation and selection of the better fitted.
On a stable environment, reaching a local optimum is expected to eventually happen and then, further mutations have a very hard time to produce better fitted individuals/populations than those currently in place. But then again, that's a bad thing... exactly why?
"I understand the desire to plant a human being on Mars but at the same time the pragmatic part of me interested in the actual science would rather see a dozen automated missions sent first."
But then, the really pragmatic part of me knows that there will be no way for those dozen automated probes to gather the willness of citizenship and so, be financed, unless there's the expectation of sending a man to plant his feet over there.
"why not send a nuclear submarine that could use its reactor to melt through all the ice and then navigate the sea beneath?"
Because submarines' flying abilities, even when nuclear, compete in the same league as pigs.
"They want to be the Neil Armstrong of Europa--the _dead_ Neil Armstrong of Europa."
Only they won't. Part of being Neil Armstrong was from the very beginning that he came back.
I don't think JFK's words "...and returning him safely to the earth" were a mere poetic license but an essential part of the plot.
"You can die in pain in dirty diapers in a nursing home, or you can die of radiation-induced cancer "
So you also will die in pain in dirty diapers, only without lightly dressed nurses around.
Let me think...
"Every major government right now is doing some serious inspections of where is their data flowing through"
No. They are doing it since the first time a customs agent halted a Mr Tcpip Package in the border, some twenty five years ago.
You don't think intelligence agencies were invented yesternight, do you?
"where is it stored and how trusty are the interests of those who control them"
When Lord Palmerston said that funny thing about not being allies, only interests, I think it came implied that there's not just one interest but that each one has his own and that the only trusty interest for a party is its own one. Given that the saying is about 200 years old, I think the news already reached the aforementioned intelligence agencies.
"And you can bet they are not liking the answers they are getting."
What you can bet is that the surprise gesture in their faces only shows their actoral worthness.
"Today the internet is bigger than any one country - even the NSA can't tap all of it"
You can blame the NSA as a big factor if that changes, then.
"Since money ceased to be backed by gold in any meaningful way, the sum total of "all money" is only limited by what a fool thinks it might be."
Yes, but that doesn't go without effects. Once you measure the effects, you can know what the money amount is.
"... crazy people and criminals who have enough money can buy guns in every country in the world."
And the definition of "enough" varies wildly from country to country as it does their murder statistics.