Your post demonstrates the complacency I take issue with.
I never said driving requires one's full attention,and I agree that under some certain circumstances, distraction while behind the wheel is not a significant risk as it is at other times. But this is not the issue.
Just because you have the basic motor functions down pat doesn't make driving a trivial task. It is a very intsensive activity. Ask any professional driver, an inner city truck driver
People regularly underestimate the complexity of the task. I saw a survey once where respondents where asked to answer if they were above or below average drivers. Over 70% said above average. Given that mathematically only 50% can be above average, it demonstrates that a significant number of people are overconfident and complacent behind the wheel of a car.
With all due respect, your comparision to aircraft pilots is nonsense. Maybe aircraft are sophisticated machines (my understanding is that modern craft pretty much fly themselves), but it is only half the picture
. How would you feel if the air traffic controllers were busy facebooking and texting away and not keeping their eyes on the task at hand?
Unlikely. I rarely commute by private transport, but when I do I am constantly blown away by the complacency that a large number regard the difficult and dangerous act of navigating a tonne and a bit of highly destructive, high kinetic energy, projectile of latent death that is the humble car.
Eating bowls of cereal, doing your makeup, reading the newspaper, SMSing, talking on the phone, watching a DVD, fiddling with a number of gizmos : GPS, MP3 etc. And soon - updating your facebook profile.
Geekpowa: Stuck in traffic again. This sux. [comment] [like]
I've been working on a desktop app system for past 12 months.
I started on SWT. Then switched back to swing.
Contrary to popular wisdom, I found that SWT was actually slower than swing. On instantiation anyway. Once instantiated, SWT may outperform Swing (probably does) - but your typical user will not notice. It is the waiting for the window to open that is the obvious cost.
I also discovered alot of functional limitations with SWT. Key one that affected the switch back was dealing with overlaying/overlapping controls. Swing worked the way you would expect, SWT did not.
The programming model for Swing certainly sucks though.
There is radiation budget data. There are published papers that suggest that co2 is impacting, there are other papers around that say it is not. No one as yet as fully nailed how to interpret the data, but some on both sides of the debate are claiming victory on this source of data.
There is the lensing hypothesis which states there are negative feedback/governing loops in play. Supported by some papers as mentioned above.
There are plenty of paleo data sets which are interesting. There are data sets that show that co2 consistently shadows temperature rises - not the other way round as you would expect if co2 is so dangerous. Also the paleo data shows that on long time scales the climate has been quite stable. Given how much other variables fluctuate - including co2, it calls into question, at the very least, the popular notion of a fragile Earth in peril on the verge of tipping point. Also what is happening now in terms of temperatures and co2 is also mirrored in older data sets. Various warming periods have same shape as what has been observed for a large number of data sets. So what is happening now is nothing the planet has not experienced before, and relatively recently in terms of geological time. At least upto the point where humans branched from primate common ancestors, which geologically ain't that long ago at all.
I've seen statistical treatments of the temperature/CO2 data sets which create a very compelling case that doing a simple correlation between temperature and co2 concentrations is not going to yield a meaningful result - there is not enough temperature data to meaningfully do a correlation according to certain strict statistical techniques. Another red flag for me at least is that climate scientists insist on doing the number crunching themselves without enlisting support of their local mathematics/statistics department. And key, pivotal papers in climate science have been heavily criticized for using non-standard statistical methods, but instead of looking into the issue seriously, I see key personalities running to the defence of their peers. Very tribal.
AGW hypothesis is a plausible hypothesis. Yet empirical evidence underpinning AGW hypothesis is quite thin on the ground, unlike the theory of evolution which is supported with compelling data sets from a variety of sources. So, with respect, it is a little disingenuous to try and compare evolution/ID with climate change.
And yes - the climate changes. It always has and always will. The critical question is - are human beings influencing it? On a local scale - yes - that this well understood science. On a global scale : that is the controversy.
The quality of science supporting the pro AGW hypothesis sufficient to invest in trillion dollar political and economic decisions and re-invent the world economy? That is the controversy. Part of me thinks that some people, in part, wish to do this - just for the sake of it - to be able to claim they influenced the planet in some way and claim that they were instrumental in steering the human race towards a better future. Question is - is it even necessary?
It is interesting to me that inspite of the billions spent on researching this issue - there is no compelling empirical dataset causatively linking human activity observed climate variability. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it is an interesting data point never-the-less.
Finally - your post seems to suggest that burden of proof rests solely on the sceptics. If you care to take a look at the sceptical position, I personally believe at least, that their position create sufficient cause for reasonable doubt - to be sceptical.
I don't quite follow your worked example. If I am getting it right, the CBP switched from doing a HASH join to a index join. To best of my knowledge this would only cause performance problems when dealing with very high data volumes. if you are looking up say 100k records, each join would cost a b-tree scan, but with a hash the cost of that would be reduced significantly.
You have a link on postgres forums where issue was discussed. I am curious now - that you have presumably an OLTP type interaction where the CBP got it so wrong to the tune of 45 seconds.
My experiencne with CBP is that they are great for reporting, but 99.999% of the time for OLTP you want simple b-tree walks to resolve primary key and foreign key lookups. Even in situations where a hash join would consistently yield better results - in a non SQL type programming environment (like berkley DB) - you'd go for a temporary client side cache to effect your hash join.
For OLTP in my experience, cardinality of data doesn't change significantly to justify employing
CBP to pick best strategy at the time. Normally decision made a program time will service all needs to sufficient performance with the added benefit that result will be deterministic and consistent. Extending this to prepared statements - if you are doing primary key lookups in a prepared statement you will always want it to use b-tree index. Even if there are only 10 records in it and a seqscan is thoeretically faster - we are talking about microseconds.
One of the many issues I have with indexes not being exposed via SQL is that it requires feeding and caring of the underlying cost based planner.
Now in an enterprise environment, when you have DBAs available to care and feed the CBP (It amazes me the number of people who call themselves 'DBAs' but have no idea on how to look after the Cost Based Planner). I am not a DBA, I am a programmer, yet whenever I encountered a DBA - odds are high I know more about critical concerns like CBP tuning then they do.
But if you want to put a database into a low end environment, you are in trouble. All works well for a few months then the CBP goes haywire.
Access to indexes provides predictability and a level of determinism that a reasonably competent programmer can understand. Which in low technology environments, and high volume OLTP situations this is desirable. In order to regain determinism for a SQL type database you need to understand statistics, histograms, sample sizes and how the CBP implementation uses that data and in my experience this is outside the domain skill of a typical programmer (and most DBAs).
I am part purist - and part of me believes in hiding implementation details - but there are situations, common situations where it is completely inappropriate. Again - low tech environments and OLTP.
This issue highlights a key problem with SQL. SQL as a language is confused about who its intended audience is.
Is it intended for programmers : programmers who know alot about DBs, programmers who know little, low-tech end users, DBAs?
SQL does things like hide indexing details from programmers - so one on hand it is trying to protect programmers from the DB internals and all this results in is a constant fight between programmers and DBAs as they blame one another for rotten DB performance because of confusion of responsibility. So even though details of the implementation are 'hidden' - how a programmer structures a query substantially impacts performance anyway - so responsibility for performance is diluted inspite of best intentions of hiding indexing details.
Yet - SQL has massive gaps in it. #1 for me is that treats entity relationships as second class citizens. There is no consistent meta data for extracting these details let alone strong enforcement on a language level ( unlike JPQL java persistance query language which solves the problem reasonably well.). So the programmers are required to understand the relational internals in terms of how they are expected to link entities together.
Why hide indexes, but make programmers labour on relationships and think carefully about performance of SQL they write anyway? Again - SQL is confused about its target audiences and it doesn't serve any of the audiences well.
Writing efficient software requires highly skilled programmers that are both expensive to hire and hard to find (and hard to replace). But hardware is cheap. Two approaches to solving a given business problem.
Hire skilled programmers - and make them deliver a well designed solution on limited equipment
Spend more money on equipment and hire less skilled programmers and tolerate the fact that the code they write will not be particularly efficient
In my experience - in general business computing - is that the top of the curve is usually skewed more towards the 2nd approach. Of course every business problem is unique and your mileage may vary.
For example, where I work right now I was heavily involved in the design and implementation of a lightweight inhouse application stack. All of the company competitors use some sort of off the shelf stack such as J2EE. The company consistently out-competes their competitors on price on turnkey sales: because competitor hardware/licence BOM is typically 2 to 3 times higher because of the substantial performance overheads their architectural decisions incur.
Other considerations beyond performance exist too. I used to argue quite colourfully with some of my colleagues on the java vs c/c++ debate. That c/c++ yields faster code. My argument was that even if that were substantially true, the business outcome of using Java is better for other reasons (speed of development and reliability), now go back to your desk and try and fix all those memory leaks and seg faults:-). In the end I won the argument since the company no longer writes c/c++ code yet when they started they were a c/c++ shop. Everything is now in java : because it was evident that all things considered java yields better outcomes for the business.
This is not what I am trying to say. Maybe the word quality is not the most appropriate adjective.
You do not necessarily need to be an expert in a particular field in order to make a reasonable judgement whether the veracity of the claims are proportional to the availability of supporting evidence. I am not an expert evolutionary biologist but I have read my fair share of popular books by the likes of Richard Dawkins and same such to get a feel for how the multiple and disparate threads of inquiry all draw towards a single compelling hypothesis
When I said little that may of been bordering on false modesty. I am actually quite skilled at sophisticated signals processing and diagnostics and within my professional circle right now I come into contact with hundreds of other similar professionals and I am peerless in this activity. So yes, I do consider myself reasonably equipped to look at some of the materials at hand and what I see quite frequently myself are examples of diagnostic bias. I then read works of people more practised in the precise methods that apply, such as Steve McIntyre and the Wegman report for example and the presented logic and reasoning of their cases is quite sound and systematic in my own estimation.
So yeah: I am quite confident that my scepticism is well founded: but I am prepared to challenge my preconceptions and fish around for a variety of data. When every second person on the street assumes you are some sort of idiot by virtue of being a climate sceptic - yes there is alot of social pressure to reconsider and take a reasonably close look at the data
When policy reform is being discussed by your politicians such as taxing/capping carbon you become a stakeholder. You can either just spectate and hope your best interests are fairly represented or take an active interest in the issue.
I agree with all of your points about the need to solve real and demonstratable environmental concerns. And yes if those solutions come with benefit of reducing AGW, or forestalling the zombie apocalypse or avert some other unspecified calamity then I can live with that.
Now its false equivalence with a side order of false dichotomy?
Back to AGW - there are more stakeholders in the issue than just 'peer reviewed scientists' and 'the petro-industrial complex'. Lots of money to be made in throttling and rationing legal right to emit atmospheric CO2. Plenty of other stakeholders too - like the general public.
With all due respect - your post is a textbook demonstration of the strawman falacy. I was a little surprised that you didn't use evolution or flat-earth as your keyword substitutions in your attempt to invalidate what I said.
AGW differs from "smoking causes cancer" because of AGW's far reaching political and economic implications. In summary - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As a side line : "smoking causes cancer" is in itself an interesting question when juxtaposed against "cell phone use causes cancer". Presumably the evidence (for phones) is weak - but shouldn't we all just stop using cellphones right now - on basis of precautionary principal? Or is it the telecommunications industry up to dirty tricks to maintain the status quo?
Net-neutrality is not even a evidence based issue. It is strictly a political issue.
Thankyou for your homely words - I do enjoy a rational discussion with someone who although may strongly disagree with my point we still manage to be civil and treat each other with respect.
I made nothing up. I am merely reiterating points of view I picked up elsewhere from well known sceptics such as Anthony Watt's, Monckton etc etc. Of course I am cognisant of the fact that their contribution to this issue may be shoddy and to this effect I made reasonable effects at due diligence to ensure that I was not merely parroting the views of mere crackpots and liars. But if I am indeed operating of incorrect data - by all means feel free to correct me
A small tip - calling someone an idiot from the comfort and security of your keyboard does little to advance your argument. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and wait for your reply that demonstrates what I posted above is in some way incorrect.
And to save you some trouble - please don't bother me with all that peer review literature vs grey literature stuff. I am of the view now it is to some extent just self validation from the climate science tribe where its practitioners have figured out there is no better way to keep the grant money flowing than to keep peddling the AGW. That the checks and balances within the climate community to keep them honest and on target are insufficient to the task : no human institution of endeavour is above scrutiny or groupthink or the risk of politicisation or outright corruption or any number of issues that can result in sub-optimal output - not even the scientific community. An issue as far reaching as AGW requires broader audience treatment. If you are of a different view and you think that I am a complete idiot then you and I cannot possibly share any reality on this issue so there is no point discussing further so don't bother wasting your time engaging me further.
IPCC's prediction of global temperature increase in past 10 years. (Actual numbers fell substantially below even their lower bound prediction)
IPCC's recent claim that it is 'worse than we thought' and that climate change is accelerating which was based on change of trend from least squares line fitting using carefully selected moving end points. Intellectually dishonest behaviour in the most extreme.
Yet - so many predictions made by AGW that did not come to be - but are just silently discarded and substituted with even more fearful headlines of events soon to come. Because it's always worse than we thought.
It seems to me that the only thing that will conclusively falsify AGW at this stage is if the climate were to do absolutely nothing and act in a completely boring fashion for a clear run of several decades. Which paleoclimate records show the climate is anything but this. So as long as there is variability - as there always has been variability - the AGW bogey man will be invoked to explain it.
What to believe anymore? As a layperson - I've personally reached the point where I simply cannot trust what anyone says. I've tried to make sense of the issue myself with what little scientific and statistical background I have and what little I can understand from the literature I am not particularly impressed with the quality of evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis.
Show me a skilled Indian engineer and probability is quite high that they are presently living in a developed nation.
Nations like India suffer from significant brain drain. Majority of people skilled and motivated enough are either preoccupied with immigrating to greener pastures if they haven't done so already.
What is left behind is a a workforce skewed towards young, inexperienced people, largely emitted from the burgeoning 6 month short courser industry.
There is definitely a substantial difference in software quality that correlates based on the nation where the software house is based (but doesn't correlate to the nationalities of the staff in that house).
Cultural considerations also weigh in. Indian professional culture takes politics and hierarchies to a whole new level. As a straight talking engineer, trying to fit into the professional culture in India is exceedingly frustrating to say the least. Most business operations do not plan ahead at all - and are only interested in taking the next immediate step and doing it at absolute minimum cost (time and money). And when it all falls in a heap - they all just pick up the phone and yell at one another until the poor blokes at the bottom of the pile end up working for about 3 days straight without sleep a duct tape an interim solution that always becomes the semi permanent solution. Few weeks later - rinse and repeat. Hardly a professional environment that is conductive for quality engineering.
I've done alot of work for state run telecommunications company over there. That the state run space agency is having so much success completely baffles me. Maybe there are actually good state institutions in India after all.
You assert alot of things about the state of climate science here - yet previously you said that you are not a climatologist and all non-climatologists (including presumably yourself) should butt out.
I never broadcasted my opinion on this issue only to request more transparency and to assert that climate science fundamentals are reasonably approachable without requiring too much onerous background knowledge.
With all due respect to you, your assertion that science, as it is practiced today is already fully transparent and by inference is free from politics, self interest and corrupting influences is a little naive - especially coming from a practising scientist.
Finally - if you insist on only getting data from credible/qualified sources - then good for you. If you insist on personalities over empirical evidence, that can be easily accommodated. For a skeptical "qualified" viewpoint - hears some personalities: Lindzon, Haynie, McKintyre, Spencer, McKitrick, Lomberg. Quite a diversity of research and conclusions should you care to take a look.
The parent was not criticising anything. They are merely echoing RSM's suggested solution that transparency of data and methods would completely diffuse all the heat that is building up around this very important policy issue. It is a good solution.
Climategate would be a non issue if there was complete transparency of data and methods - instead we have an audit trail in the public domain demonstrating scientists acting in a way that quite unprofessional and unbecoming to the 'fearless pursuit of knowledge'.
When people hide data and methods, then hide behind authority figures - just like you consistently do in all of your, slightly elitist, posts on this issue - then talk of consensus - as though the scientific method is some sort of popularity context - my balony detection kit starts ringing.
The bulk of climate science isn't hard. It is largely statistical analysis. Of the few papers I've read - I've had no trouble following them.
Seems to me that you morally object to tribalism and fundamentalism - not religion per se. I too object to tribalism. Religion can be a carrier for tribalism, but it is not the only carrier. Your own post above obviously carries highly antagonistic us vs them theme which in itself is tribalistic.
No shortage of atheists who go through great contortions to try and rationalise atrocities of the 20th century against religion in order to remain true to their beliefs that religion at heart is fundamentally evil - the crusades into the holy land and all of that. I must admit I used to think this way once too. But deeper forces are at work if you are seeking a theory that consolidates horrific events from the crusades, to the rise of Fascism and National Socialism to the Cambodian killing fields
As an atheist I consider religious doctrine silly. I'd sooner read Thomas Paine than read what some silly goat herder felt was important 2000 years ago and I don't try to hide my feelings about issues like this from the theists around me. But I try to remain respectful. Its a balancing act. I may of acted like a fundy atheist in the past from time to time, but fundamentalism/tribalism are ugly human traits no matter what the underlying cause - and I have little time for fundamentalists of any persuasion, hence there are no Scientologists in my life.
I am an atheist. I have many friends and family (including my wife) who subscribe to one of the many Christian variants. Also friends and colleagues who are Hindu, Sikh, Islam etc etc.
Once upon a time I had lots of close friends who are now Scientologists. They actively, passionately, and publicly hate me and consider me to be a deeply immoral person. A SP in their own language.
The gulf between your 'typical' Scientologist and how they view the world and other mainstream faiths is in my own very direct experience, is an extra-ordinary gulf.
You can trot out the religious atrocities of the past, but your typical theist today is as likely as a non theist to be a decent, social, community minded person. Scientology followers, by virtue of their extremist and uncompromising doctrine, are very much an anti social vector, and the only community they respect is their own Scientology community. As for your uninformed comments about only 'retards' being attracted to Scientology - cults like Scientology are actually quite nuanced and sophisticated in their recruitment - and attracting educated white collar folk is their bread and butter. Read this book if you have the inclination. A piece of blue sky
HTML was not born out of formal standards. Multiple parties have been independently evolving browser technology for better or worse without a central body (i.e. from ActiveX to JavaScript to AJAX and Flash). W3C represents an attempt to define standards well after the implementation.
It is not yet widely deployed technology for computer/human interface (native rich clients and dumb terminals still dominate) and I personally hope it never will be. It is a terrible interface, both for engineers to develop and people to use and these observations have nothing to do with the implementation, but with the actual underlying architecture powering HTML/HTTP. Web solves the original problem it targeted quite well, but its a square peg in a round hole when it comes to trying to build a rich application.
I have to agree with the GP - the whole issue around bundling is silly. Where do you draw the line at what should and should not be bundled? Is the TCP/IP stack an antitrust concern for example? R.I.P. trumpet software.
Should I also be upset that there is so much bundling in a popular Linux distro. Fedora favour's Gnome - should I get angry about that?
The only possible issue I could see is if MS made it difficult/impossible to install Firefox and not use IE. I rarely use windows these days, but when I do, installing Firefox is usually the first task and the only thing I use IE for.
I once used to think that making concessions to people who oppose this branch of science because of their religious sensitivities was a decent and reasonable thing to do.
Public figures like Sam Harris help me realise that they simply don't deserve it. Their position and the means they used to arrive at that position have no merit what-so-ever.
A cost of 20% to 30% gdp stands in stark contrast to the numbers yielded by the RICE/DICE climate models. Models that take economic factors into account and have been around for some time now. Once again faced with contradictory data on a serious issue that has far too much political baggage.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said driving requires one's full attention,and I agree that under some certain circumstances, distraction while behind the wheel is not a significant risk as it is at other times. But this is not the issue.
Just because you have the basic motor functions down pat doesn't make driving a trivial task. It is a very intsensive activity. Ask any professional driver, an inner city truck driver
People regularly underestimate the complexity of the task. I saw a survey once where respondents where asked to answer if they were above or below average drivers. Over 70% said above average. Given that mathematically only 50% can be above average, it demonstrates that a significant number of people are overconfident and complacent behind the wheel of a car.
With all due respect, your comparision to aircraft pilots is nonsense. Maybe aircraft are sophisticated machines (my understanding is that modern craft pretty much fly themselves), but it is only half the picture
. How would you feel if the air traffic controllers were busy facebooking and texting away and not keeping their eyes on the task at hand?
While drivers will hopefully steer away
Unlikely. I rarely commute by private transport, but when I do I am constantly blown away by the complacency that a large number regard the difficult and dangerous act of navigating a tonne and a bit of highly destructive, high kinetic energy, projectile of latent death that is the humble car.
Eating bowls of cereal, doing your makeup, reading the newspaper, SMSing, talking on the phone, watching a DVD, fiddling with a number of gizmos : GPS, MP3 etc. And soon - updating your facebook profile.
Geekpowa: Stuck in traffic again. This sux. [comment] [like]
I started on SWT. Then switched back to swing.
Contrary to popular wisdom, I found that SWT was actually slower than swing. On instantiation anyway. Once instantiated, SWT may outperform Swing (probably does) - but your typical user will not notice. It is the waiting for the window to open that is the obvious cost.
I also discovered alot of functional limitations with SWT. Key one that affected the switch back was dealing with overlaying/overlapping controls. Swing worked the way you would expect, SWT did not.
The programming model for Swing certainly sucks though.
There is radiation budget data. There are published papers that suggest that co2 is impacting, there are other papers around that say it is not. No one as yet as fully nailed how to interpret the data, but some on both sides of the debate are claiming victory on this source of data.
There is the lensing hypothesis which states there are negative feedback/governing loops in play. Supported by some papers as mentioned above.
There are plenty of paleo data sets which are interesting. There are data sets that show that co2 consistently shadows temperature rises - not the other way round as you would expect if co2 is so dangerous. Also the paleo data shows that on long time scales the climate has been quite stable. Given how much other variables fluctuate - including co2, it calls into question, at the very least, the popular notion of a fragile Earth in peril on the verge of tipping point. Also what is happening now in terms of temperatures and co2 is also mirrored in older data sets. Various warming periods have same shape as what has been observed for a large number of data sets. So what is happening now is nothing the planet has not experienced before, and relatively recently in terms of geological time. At least upto the point where humans branched from primate common ancestors, which geologically ain't that long ago at all.
I've seen statistical treatments of the temperature/CO2 data sets which create a very compelling case that doing a simple correlation between temperature and co2 concentrations is not going to yield a meaningful result - there is not enough temperature data to meaningfully do a correlation according to certain strict statistical techniques. Another red flag for me at least is that climate scientists insist on doing the number crunching themselves without enlisting support of their local mathematics/statistics department. And key, pivotal papers in climate science have been heavily criticized for using non-standard statistical methods, but instead of looking into the issue seriously, I see key personalities running to the defence of their peers. Very tribal.
AGW hypothesis is a plausible hypothesis. Yet empirical evidence underpinning AGW hypothesis is quite thin on the ground, unlike the theory of evolution which is supported with compelling data sets from a variety of sources. So, with respect, it is a little disingenuous to try and compare evolution/ID with climate change.
And yes - the climate changes. It always has and always will. The critical question is - are human beings influencing it? On a local scale - yes - that this well understood science. On a global scale : that is the controversy.
The quality of science supporting the pro AGW hypothesis sufficient to invest in trillion dollar political and economic decisions and re-invent the world economy? That is the controversy. Part of me thinks that some people, in part, wish to do this - just for the sake of it - to be able to claim they influenced the planet in some way and claim that they were instrumental in steering the human race towards a better future. Question is - is it even necessary?
It is interesting to me that inspite of the billions spent on researching this issue - there is no compelling empirical dataset causatively linking human activity observed climate variability. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it is an interesting data point never-the-less.
Finally - your post seems to suggest that burden of proof rests solely on the sceptics. If you care to take a look at the sceptical position, I personally believe at least, that their position create sufficient cause for reasonable doubt - to be sceptical.
I don't quite follow your worked example. If I am getting it right, the CBP switched from doing a HASH join to a index join. To best of my knowledge this would only cause performance problems when dealing with very high data volumes. if you are looking up say 100k records, each join would cost a b-tree scan, but with a hash the cost of that would be reduced significantly.
You have a link on postgres forums where issue was discussed. I am curious now - that you have presumably an OLTP type interaction where the CBP got it so wrong to the tune of 45 seconds.
My experiencne with CBP is that they are great for reporting, but 99.999% of the time for OLTP you want simple b-tree walks to resolve primary key and foreign key lookups. Even in situations where a hash join would consistently yield better results - in a non SQL type programming environment (like berkley DB) - you'd go for a temporary client side cache to effect your hash join.
For OLTP in my experience, cardinality of data doesn't change significantly to justify employing CBP to pick best strategy at the time. Normally decision made a program time will service all needs to sufficient performance with the added benefit that result will be deterministic and consistent. Extending this to prepared statements - if you are doing primary key lookups in a prepared statement you will always want it to use b-tree index. Even if there are only 10 records in it and a seqscan is thoeretically faster - we are talking about microseconds.
One of the many issues I have with indexes not being exposed via SQL is that it requires feeding and caring of the underlying cost based planner.
Now in an enterprise environment, when you have DBAs available to care and feed the CBP (It amazes me the number of people who call themselves 'DBAs' but have no idea on how to look after the Cost Based Planner). I am not a DBA, I am a programmer, yet whenever I encountered a DBA - odds are high I know more about critical concerns like CBP tuning then they do.
But if you want to put a database into a low end environment, you are in trouble. All works well for a few months then the CBP goes haywire.
Access to indexes provides predictability and a level of determinism that a reasonably competent programmer can understand. Which in low technology environments, and high volume OLTP situations this is desirable. In order to regain determinism for a SQL type database you need to understand statistics, histograms, sample sizes and how the CBP implementation uses that data and in my experience this is outside the domain skill of a typical programmer (and most DBAs).
I am part purist - and part of me believes in hiding implementation details - but there are situations, common situations where it is completely inappropriate. Again - low tech environments and OLTP.
This issue highlights a key problem with SQL. SQL as a language is confused about who its intended audience is.
Is it intended for programmers : programmers who know alot about DBs, programmers who know little, low-tech end users, DBAs?
SQL does things like hide indexing details from programmers - so one on hand it is trying to protect programmers from the DB internals and all this results in is a constant fight between programmers and DBAs as they blame one another for rotten DB performance because of confusion of responsibility. So even though details of the implementation are 'hidden' - how a programmer structures a query substantially impacts performance anyway - so responsibility for performance is diluted inspite of best intentions of hiding indexing details.
Yet - SQL has massive gaps in it. #1 for me is that treats entity relationships as second class citizens. There is no consistent meta data for extracting these details let alone strong enforcement on a language level ( unlike JPQL java persistance query language which solves the problem reasonably well.). So the programmers are required to understand the relational internals in terms of how they are expected to link entities together.
Why hide indexes, but make programmers labour on relationships and think carefully about performance of SQL they write anyway? Again - SQL is confused about its target audiences and it doesn't serve any of the audiences well.
To some extent is a question of economics.
Writing efficient software requires highly skilled programmers that are both expensive to hire and hard to find (and hard to replace). But hardware is cheap. Two approaches to solving a given business problem.
In my experience - in general business computing - is that the top of the curve is usually skewed more towards the 2nd approach. Of course every business problem is unique and your mileage may vary.
For example, where I work right now I was heavily involved in the design and implementation of a lightweight inhouse application stack. All of the company competitors use some sort of off the shelf stack such as J2EE. The company consistently out-competes their competitors on price on turnkey sales: because competitor hardware/licence BOM is typically 2 to 3 times higher because of the substantial performance overheads their architectural decisions incur.
Other considerations beyond performance exist too. I used to argue quite colourfully with some of my colleagues on the java vs c/c++ debate. That c/c++ yields faster code. My argument was that even if that were substantially true, the business outcome of using Java is better for other reasons (speed of development and reliability), now go back to your desk and try and fix all those memory leaks and seg faults :-). In the end I won the argument since the company no longer writes c/c++ code yet when they started they were a c/c++ shop. Everything is now in java : because it was evident that all things considered java yields better outcomes for the business.
This is not what I am trying to say. Maybe the word quality is not the most appropriate adjective.
You do not necessarily need to be an expert in a particular field in order to make a reasonable judgement whether the veracity of the claims are proportional to the availability of supporting evidence. I am not an expert evolutionary biologist but I have read my fair share of popular books by the likes of Richard Dawkins and same such to get a feel for how the multiple and disparate threads of inquiry all draw towards a single compelling hypothesis
When I said little that may of been bordering on false modesty. I am actually quite skilled at sophisticated signals processing and diagnostics and within my professional circle right now I come into contact with hundreds of other similar professionals and I am peerless in this activity. So yes, I do consider myself reasonably equipped to look at some of the materials at hand and what I see quite frequently myself are examples of diagnostic bias. I then read works of people more practised in the precise methods that apply, such as Steve McIntyre and the Wegman report for example and the presented logic and reasoning of their cases is quite sound and systematic in my own estimation.
So yeah: I am quite confident that my scepticism is well founded: but I am prepared to challenge my preconceptions and fish around for a variety of data. When every second person on the street assumes you are some sort of idiot by virtue of being a climate sceptic - yes there is alot of social pressure to reconsider and take a reasonably close look at the data
When policy reform is being discussed by your politicians such as taxing/capping carbon you become a stakeholder. You can either just spectate and hope your best interests are fairly represented or take an active interest in the issue.
I agree with all of your points about the need to solve real and demonstratable environmental concerns. And yes if those solutions come with benefit of reducing AGW, or forestalling the zombie apocalypse or avert some other unspecified calamity then I can live with that.
Now its false equivalence with a side order of false dichotomy?
Back to AGW - there are more stakeholders in the issue than just 'peer reviewed scientists' and 'the petro-industrial complex'. Lots of money to be made in throttling and rationing legal right to emit atmospheric CO2. Plenty of other stakeholders too - like the general public.
Minor correction - I meant the false equivalence fallacy - not the strawman fallacy.
With all due respect - your post is a textbook demonstration of the strawman falacy. I was a little surprised that you didn't use evolution or flat-earth as your keyword substitutions in your attempt to invalidate what I said.
AGW differs from "smoking causes cancer" because of AGW's far reaching political and economic implications. In summary - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As a side line : "smoking causes cancer" is in itself an interesting question when juxtaposed against "cell phone use causes cancer". Presumably the evidence (for phones) is weak - but shouldn't we all just stop using cellphones right now - on basis of precautionary principal? Or is it the telecommunications industry up to dirty tricks to maintain the status quo?
Net-neutrality is not even a evidence based issue. It is strictly a political issue.
Thankyou for your homely words - I do enjoy a rational discussion with someone who although may strongly disagree with my point we still manage to be civil and treat each other with respect.
I made nothing up. I am merely reiterating points of view I picked up elsewhere from well known sceptics such as Anthony Watt's, Monckton etc etc. Of course I am cognisant of the fact that their contribution to this issue may be shoddy and to this effect I made reasonable effects at due diligence to ensure that I was not merely parroting the views of mere crackpots and liars. But if I am indeed operating of incorrect data - by all means feel free to correct me
A small tip - calling someone an idiot from the comfort and security of your keyboard does little to advance your argument. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and wait for your reply that demonstrates what I posted above is in some way incorrect.
And to save you some trouble - please don't bother me with all that peer review literature vs grey literature stuff. I am of the view now it is to some extent just self validation from the climate science tribe where its practitioners have figured out there is no better way to keep the grant money flowing than to keep peddling the AGW. That the checks and balances within the climate community to keep them honest and on target are insufficient to the task : no human institution of endeavour is above scrutiny or groupthink or the risk of politicisation or outright corruption or any number of issues that can result in sub-optimal output - not even the scientific community. An issue as far reaching as AGW requires broader audience treatment. If you are of a different view and you think that I am a complete idiot then you and I cannot possibly share any reality on this issue so there is no point discussing further so don't bother wasting your time engaging me further.
Like I lamented. Who can I trust?
Yet - so many predictions made by AGW that did not come to be - but are just silently discarded and substituted with even more fearful headlines of events soon to come. Because it's always worse than we thought.
It seems to me that the only thing that will conclusively falsify AGW at this stage is if the climate were to do absolutely nothing and act in a completely boring fashion for a clear run of several decades. Which paleoclimate records show the climate is anything but this. So as long as there is variability - as there always has been variability - the AGW bogey man will be invoked to explain it.
What to believe anymore? As a layperson - I've personally reached the point where I simply cannot trust what anyone says. I've tried to make sense of the issue myself with what little scientific and statistical background I have and what little I can understand from the literature I am not particularly impressed with the quality of evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis.
Nations like India suffer from significant brain drain. Majority of people skilled and motivated enough are either preoccupied with immigrating to greener pastures if they haven't done so already.
What is left behind is a a workforce skewed towards young, inexperienced people, largely emitted from the burgeoning 6 month short courser industry.
There is definitely a substantial difference in software quality that correlates based on the nation where the software house is based (but doesn't correlate to the nationalities of the staff in that house).
Cultural considerations also weigh in. Indian professional culture takes politics and hierarchies to a whole new level. As a straight talking engineer, trying to fit into the professional culture in India is exceedingly frustrating to say the least. Most business operations do not plan ahead at all - and are only interested in taking the next immediate step and doing it at absolute minimum cost (time and money). And when it all falls in a heap - they all just pick up the phone and yell at one another until the poor blokes at the bottom of the pile end up working for about 3 days straight without sleep a duct tape an interim solution that always becomes the semi permanent solution. Few weeks later - rinse and repeat. Hardly a professional environment that is conductive for quality engineering.
I've done alot of work for state run telecommunications company over there. That the state run space agency is having so much success completely baffles me. Maybe there are actually good state institutions in India after all.
You assert alot of things about the state of climate science here - yet previously you said that you are not a climatologist and all non-climatologists (including presumably yourself) should butt out.
I never broadcasted my opinion on this issue only to request more transparency and to assert that climate science fundamentals are reasonably approachable without requiring too much onerous background knowledge.
With all due respect to you, your assertion that science, as it is practiced today is already fully transparent and by inference is free from politics, self interest and corrupting influences is a little naive - especially coming from a practising scientist.
Finally - if you insist on only getting data from credible/qualified sources - then good for you. If you insist on personalities over empirical evidence, that can be easily accommodated. For a skeptical "qualified" viewpoint - hears some personalities: Lindzon, Haynie, McKintyre, Spencer, McKitrick, Lomberg. Quite a diversity of research and conclusions should you care to take a look.
The parent was not criticising anything. They are merely echoing RSM's suggested solution that transparency of data and methods would completely diffuse all the heat that is building up around this very important policy issue. It is a good solution.
Climategate would be a non issue if there was complete transparency of data and methods - instead we have an audit trail in the public domain demonstrating scientists acting in a way that quite unprofessional and unbecoming to the 'fearless pursuit of knowledge'.
When people hide data and methods, then hide behind authority figures - just like you consistently do in all of your, slightly elitist, posts on this issue - then talk of consensus - as though the scientific method is some sort of popularity context - my balony detection kit starts ringing.
The bulk of climate science isn't hard. It is largely statistical analysis. Of the few papers I've read - I've had no trouble following them.
The attack doesn't rely on MD5 itself or MD5 collisions. It would work no matter what hashing algorithm was used.
Seems to me that you morally object to tribalism and fundamentalism - not religion per se. I too object to tribalism. Religion can be a carrier for tribalism, but it is not the only carrier. Your own post above obviously carries highly antagonistic us vs them theme which in itself is tribalistic.
No shortage of atheists who go through great contortions to try and rationalise atrocities of the 20th century against religion in order to remain true to their beliefs that religion at heart is fundamentally evil - the crusades into the holy land and all of that. I must admit I used to think this way once too. But deeper forces are at work if you are seeking a theory that consolidates horrific events from the crusades, to the rise of Fascism and National Socialism to the Cambodian killing fields
As an atheist I consider religious doctrine silly. I'd sooner read Thomas Paine than read what some silly goat herder felt was important 2000 years ago and I don't try to hide my feelings about issues like this from the theists around me. But I try to remain respectful. Its a balancing act. I may of acted like a fundy atheist in the past from time to time, but fundamentalism/tribalism are ugly human traits no matter what the underlying cause - and I have little time for fundamentalists of any persuasion, hence there are no Scientologists in my life.
I am an atheist. I have many friends and family (including my wife) who subscribe to one of the many Christian variants. Also friends and colleagues who are Hindu, Sikh, Islam etc etc.
Once upon a time I had lots of close friends who are now Scientologists. They actively, passionately, and publicly hate me and consider me to be a deeply immoral person. A SP in their own language.
The gulf between your 'typical' Scientologist and how they view the world and other mainstream faiths is in my own very direct experience, is an extra-ordinary gulf.
You can trot out the religious atrocities of the past, but your typical theist today is as likely as a non theist to be a decent, social, community minded person. Scientology followers, by virtue of their extremist and uncompromising doctrine, are very much an anti social vector, and the only community they respect is their own Scientology community. As for your uninformed comments about only 'retards' being attracted to Scientology - cults like Scientology are actually quite nuanced and sophisticated in their recruitment - and attracting educated white collar folk is their bread and butter. Read this book if you have the inclination. A piece of blue sky
Actually I disagree with most of your comments.
HTML was not born out of formal standards. Multiple parties have been independently evolving browser technology for better or worse without a central body (i.e. from ActiveX to JavaScript to AJAX and Flash). W3C represents an attempt to define standards well after the implementation.
It is not yet widely deployed technology for computer/human interface (native rich clients and dumb terminals still dominate) and I personally hope it never will be. It is a terrible interface, both for engineers to develop and people to use and these observations have nothing to do with the implementation, but with the actual underlying architecture powering HTML/HTTP. Web solves the original problem it targeted quite well, but its a square peg in a round hole when it comes to trying to build a rich application.
Should I also be upset that there is so much bundling in a popular Linux distro. Fedora favour's Gnome - should I get angry about that?
The only possible issue I could see is if MS made it difficult/impossible to install Firefox and not use IE. I rarely use windows these days, but when I do, installing Firefox is usually the first task and the only thing I use IE for.
I once used to think that making concessions to people who oppose this branch of science because of their religious sensitivities was a decent and reasonable thing to do.
Public figures like Sam Harris help me realise that they simply don't deserve it. Their position and the means they used to arrive at that position have no merit what-so-ever.
A cost of 20% to 30% gdp stands in stark contrast to the numbers yielded by the RICE/DICE climate models. Models that take economic factors into account and have been around for some time now. Once again faced with contradictory data on a serious issue that has far too much political baggage.