I agree with the dissent that anything not mentioned as a Federal rule belongs to the States to decide. We are, after all, the United States of America, not just America.
Guess we need a full Constitutional amendment like the 22nd if we want to get things under control.
The problem as I see it is the fact that they even can be owned, and that is because they are professional politicians instead of the original citizen-statesmen that was envisioned by the founding fathers.
They act more like an aristocracy than a representative body, but because they are constantly on the re-election tread mill, money has great influence over them, and these types of organizations (i.e. RIAA/MPAA) have lots of money.
It would seem, then, that a simple solution would be for the individual States to enact term limits. And this doesn't need to be a US Constitutional Amendment to limit Congress Critters as the 22nd Amendment limits the Presidency, because Congress are not Federal employees (which means they actually shouldn't get Federal pensions either). They are elected solely by their State, so a given State should be able to enact term limits that affect their own representation. Only the President and VP are nationally elected, thus the need for the 22nd Amendment.
If you eliminate the permanent politician in Washington, then there wouldn't be as much need for the money chase and we might actually get better laws.
Of course all the Congress Critters would scream bloody murder and pass all types of legislation to prevent term limits that would need to be challenged to the Supreme Court, but based on how they responded to Gore vs Bush, indicating all voting rules are the province of the State to decide, it would be an interesting fight.
All this discussion about crime statistics doesn't matter. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms was to ensure the American citizens would always have, as a last resort, a means of stopping an out of control government. This was to prevent the types of abuses the colonists had faced under the British government and what they saw happening in other European kingdoms and countries of the time.
A good source of the history of the purpose behind the 2nd amendment can be found at this site which is actually a Congressional Subcommittee report on the Constitution from 1982.
Some interesting quotes provided include:
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. Noah Webster
that a well regulated militia, composed of gentlemen and freemen, is the natural strength and only security of a free government.... Patrick Henry
In Federalist Paper 46, Madison, later author of the Second Amendment, mentioned
The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of all other countries
and that
notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
The report lists many others.
The point is, the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was not just for an individual to be able to defend themselves from criminals, but as a means of defending themselves from an overly oppressive government. An example of the type of abusive government envisioned is available today in Zimbabwe.
It is worth pointing out that those groups that radically oppose personal gun ownership also seem to be the same groups that believe the federal government should be able to control more aspects of an individual's life. And how interesting is it that the very vocally opposed politicians such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley don't mind having armed body guards for themselves while denouncing the Supreme Court upholding the rights of the citizenry to have similar protection.
It may be just the opposite. I have two boys, one late teens, the other early 20's who make a bit above minimum wage while in school. They and their friends spend most weekends at one house or another playing D&D or video games instead of going out to movies or the malls, partially because they don't want to burn the gas.
By buying more games or pay-per-view, they burn less gas. Considering that filling up the gas tank on most of their older cars is now nearly as costly as a single one-time purchase for a game, then just buying chips, sodas and a multiplayer game for a few weekends of entertainment is not a bad idea.
The original poster is asking for a solution without providing all of the requirements. The original request is for a database program to replace a Notepad based text file, and yet most of the responses on the 6+ pages of comments have been around which programming language has bindings to which database, or discussions on SQL syntax. It would be helpful if the OP could elaborate a little on whether (s)he even has programming skills.
I read the request as looking for an application to replace the Notepad system. If the OP was just using a text editor, then it doesn't really sound as though (s)he needs SQL. A flat file of records with the ability to do straight text search sounds like an option. The question then is what type of tool can be used to manipulate that system?
Following the text editor/file model, one option, though larger than the 800kb discussion around SQLite could be Emacs with Forms Mode. This is also a (very big) text editor, but allows you to view a file of records in a nice editable form, but you can still open the record file directly and use all the searching capability of an editor. Of course this is probably very much overkill for someone used to using Notepad, but I suggest it merely to point out a type of option.
Another potential option might be to use one of the wiki-on-a-stick systems. Tiddlywiki and Stickwiki would allow the OP to use a browser with a wiki interface to record the data into a single transportable file. (S)He could organize how ever desired, though if the OP wants to be able to extract the data for loading elsewhere, that could be a little problematic as these tools tend to store the text in the generated HTML page in little division blocks. Some may offer export capability though.
So, the question is what are the full requirements, what skills does the OP have, how much configuration and/or system administration is (s)he wanting to do to have this simple system, and how do you wish to manipulate the data that is captured?
If you want to hand edit it, then some tool that saves records in a flat structure (one per row or one per file) that can be manipulated by a text editor is needed. If all you want is some way to record information and search it, then there may be other options. Many PIM tools also offer limited record management systems that you might look into.
I would rather get support for my database from an organization dedicated to the database support, rather than an IBM that might provide a DB2 support guy, along with half a dozen sales guys trying to tell you that you need other IBM products to go along with the DB2 database to really have the environment you need.
has also caused much of this. I had this very personal experience myself.
I was the senior architect and manager at a major Fortune 30 company ($50b in size) that hired in a new CEO who had been one of the Jack Welch proteges. As with nearly everyone of his sycophants, this new CEO brought both the Six Sigma and HR ranking methods with him.
During review time our managers had to rank everyone from 1 to 5 and were suggested(not formally written as required, as HR liked to point out) to have 10%-1,5 20%-2,4 40%-3's within your group.
Now my team had been composed of the strongest developers and architects from the various other units, specifically to provide guidance to the entire organization and be available in a matrix model to assist any project team that needed it.
So review time comes around, all my team were high performers, all had through out the year been involved in fixing critical issues, helping projects get back on track, etc and I had given them all 4 & 5 (3 was shows up a does their job satisfactorily).
HR told me I had to change some ratings, though they always insisted there was no required distribution, I was pressured to change them. I refused, pointing out that when compared to the organization as a whole, these were the most senior, most productive people we had.
My VP over ruled me, changed the ratings herself so that I had 1-1 (performance plan required), 1-2, 1-4, 1-5 and 3-3's. They also re-organized and took the team away from me. The excuse was that our bar was higher than everyone else, so we had to be ranked against that.
Within 6 months, all but 2 of us were gone. We all took different jobs elsewhere that didn't have this garbage.
The HR ranking model had been pioneered at GE manufacturing plants which employed union workers. In order to be able to get rid of true dead weight in a way the union leaders would agree with, they came up with this ranking model. Classify a bad seed a 1 and you can get rid of them.
The big problem with this is after the first year or two, the dead weight is gone, and the process is now cutting out good people. The other problem was the good people would stick with a particular team where they knew they would come out on top instead of offering to move around so they came out at the top of the curve.
Reading the threads, many people are discussing the relative merits of the other programming languages/environments - Java/C#/Python/etc - but what do all of those have that C++ does not have?
More complete environments.
When you install a C++ compiler, you get a C++ compiler and the standard library. When you install Java or C# or Python you get libraries to support simplified Networking, IO, Database access, GUIs, Memory Management, Threading and more.
Now it is possible to find all that for C++, but they are all separate components that the developer needs to decide on and download. And the number of choices for each is large. Do you use wxWidgets or FLTK or GTK+ for GUI, for example.
The other environments actually reduce your options, and for projects on a timeline the less time you spend on determining what you need to accomplish the task, the sooner you finish. Yes you can bring in replacement libraries in Java or Python or C#, but few people do. The folks that wrote those libraries did a pretty reasonable job on them, and since they are bundled with the standard installers, unless there are really specific needs, there's rarely a reason to replace them.
Look as an example of this at the Mono project. It is an attempt to provide the C#/.Net environment outside of Windows, but it does not have as much traction as.Net on Windows, why? in part because the.Net frameworks are more complete on Windows than in Mono. I not many.Net developers that use WindowsForms in every project. Without that piece of the eco-system already available, their project would take much longer. Mono basically provides C# for Linux, just another programming language.
I've watched over the years as some folks tried to assemble Java-like libraries for C++, but they didn't really take off.
This appears to me as why C++ has the reputation of being so hard to build applications in. The developer has to do so much extra work just to get to the point of assembling the program that the Java or Ruby or C# or Python crowd gets out of the box. Is this the fault of C++? Not the language, but perhaps it is something the steering committe should address. As someone pointed out in an earlier thread, the C++ standard group likes to make the comment that a particular given feature is not part of the language. Perhaps they should rethink that stand.
As point of background, I started working with C++ when it first appeared as a pre-processor that created C code that was compiled by a C compiler (when you had to use the keyword Overload). I later moved into Java and have made a good living doing Java development. Recently though I have gotten deep into programming in 3D graphics with OpenGL. I'm doing it both in Java (using jogl) and C++ (direct gl calls as well as engines). This is one area where there is not a clear choice for any platform, but because in the Java world I have the Networking and Threading, I was able to put a system together much quicker than I could in C++. Of course the Java approach has it's own problems because of the sheer volume of objects created/destroyed (imagine a 3D model made of Vector3D objects), so I end up using C++ approaches using float[] arrays (also an object, but only one).
Sorry for the ramble. Anyway, the point is, I personally think C++ would be more acceptable if it really was an eco-system and not just a programming language.
Exactly why would network card vendors have to release their source code? I don't recall any of them using the wrapper in their product, they deliver Windows drivers that Linux users use via ndiswrapper. The vendors aren't required to do anything.
As I heard the story (n-hand so take with a grain of salt), Sun hired Ousterhout because they wanted a language platform they could control and use against Microsoft. However, Ousterhout insisted that TCL remain with its open license.
When Gosling and crew showed off Oak (later Java), Sun realized they had what they needed, a completely home grown system they could own and control.
Java became the favorite child, TCL was ignored (so was SELF, another language Sun was interested in). So Ousterhout left Sun and formed Scriptics.
So basically it was because Sun wasn't allowed dominating control over TCL that they didn't keep backing it.
Disclaimer: I'm a fan of both Java and TCL. I particularly like TCL's Starkit system of a self contained executable that is drag-and-drop deployable without requiring a runtime install.
Back some time ago, one method that was used was to lurk on Usenet news groups and see who was actively trying to help people solve problems. I was actually offered a really good job in the mid-90s for that very reason.
You get to see if the person really knows their stuff, how enthusiastic they are and how they relate to others.
With the Usenet not as popular any more, you might try and find chat channels associated with areas of interest you need folks and monitor those.
The only problem I see with this, is the definition of average appears to be getting weaker and weaker due to the dumbing down of society. Eventually we would would end up with laws written like:
See Jim. See Jim take bread. See Jim not pay for bread. See police arrest Jim. Bad Jim, bad.
And don't forget about Netbeans as a competitor to Visual Studio.
One place Microsoft has typically kept a lead is in providing simple, easy to use tools to allow quick development activities.
Though many on/. will argue that applications built from these tools are usually inferior, because they allow fairly non-experienced people to quickly build apps, there is one point worth mentioning. Many companies grow via acquisition, and many of the businesses they acquire are really small 2-3 person shops. I know in our organization that has been the norm.
Those small shops have tended to use the Microsoft suite because they are easier to use/setup/administer and provide a complete stack - IIS,.NET, SqlServer, Windows and Visual Studio. And Miccrosoft has a program to assist small idea shops by making these tools readily available as partners or via MSDN subscriptions. The people involved didn't have to worry about being system admins to get a working concept going.
Sun, with a complete stack, and a decent tool in the form of Netbeans, has the potential to really rock the boat for Microsoft. And, since Netbeans has built in support for Glassfish (JBoss and others are available as well), a small 2-3 person shop can setup an environment to allow them to quickly develop applications.
Add together Solaris x86, Java, Glassfish, MySQL, SunOne (LDAP), and Netbeans and you have a complete environment from one organization. Add a management console (such as Webmin) that sits atop them all and Apache, and you have what a small team needs.
All Sun needs to do is come out with a live CD or simple stack image (remember Colbalt Cube, a small office server system that Sun bought?) that allows for quick setup and they can make a strong play for that small end market.
Ironically in the United States there is disagreement on this fact. The story goes that the Smithsonian believed the first powered flight honors should be awarded to Samuel Langley for testing of his Aerodrome before the Wright brothers test.
The Wright brothers tried to force the Smithsonian into acknowledging them by sending the Wright Flyer to the London Museum instead of the Smithsonian. In 1942, the Smithsonian published a retraction of previous claims and recognized the Wright brother's flight as the first powered, so they could get the plane back to the US museum.
So, both the Wrights and Langley were American, but politics was involved here anyway.
This is a true statement, and one of the issues I see with unions, particularly ones like the writers guild. In these cases, the unions end up forcing higher pay even for no-talents just because they are in the union. The talented people don't need the unions as they could get work because of their talent. Unions in this case are there for the benefit of the below-line talents.
So what ends up happening is all costs go up because the union places a strangle hold on an industry.
Today's market does not need unions. There is sufficient competition across the board that there is no real need for union protection of employees. If the shop you work in is a sweat shop with bad management, leave and work at a competitor that isn't a sweat shop. Eventually the company goes out of business or changes its business practices. In the early part of the 1900's that wasn't possible as there were less options, but today things are different.
So now, unions exist to prop up the mediocre, raising costs and causing problems for everyone else.
Straw poll: how many/.'ers are members of a programmer's union?
True about the size issue, probably wouldn't have Self Serve which is the norm today at filling stations, though it would be cool to have a robotic change center. You know, like the drive through car washes, but instead drive through battery replacement. Or, maybe even get back to the concept of a service station instead of a gas station.
But since today (at least in my state) all gas pumps are regulated by the State and inspected yearly, and the gas octane level is tested, there is no reason why there wouldn't also be battery regulators to check the stock periodically.
Uh, that was my point. The question was related to the single use philosophy of UNIX utilities. I pointed out emacs is a single use utility: it interprets LISP scripts. Just because there are hundreds of LISP scripts provided doesn't negate the contention that emacs is still just a LISP interpreter. So yeah it was a nice try, and specifically to the point of the original comment.
Maybe it is the philosophy that emacs is just a LISP interpreter with buffer-targeted key input capability? Like a shell or PERL or other interpreters, you feed it new scripts to interpret. So it does one thing, interpret LISP. Just because what you can do with the LISP scripts is nearly infinite, doesn't mean emacs doesn't fall into the do one thing UNIX utility camp.
I know you don't feed the AC trolls, but I love comments like this. Let me guess, you've never worked in a big iron shop before have you?
COBOL is still around for a very simple reason: it does the job it was designed to do.
Which of your hip, cool languages would you propose to run on the big iron? You know, environments intended to process billions of transactions over petabytes of data in reasonable time windows? Some dynamic scripting language and a web server database?
The fact is nothing has come around that replaces the capabilities of COBOL for the job it is intended to do, which is business applications.
Just because you don't recognize its value, doesn't make it a joke. You may be inexperienced in using these languages, but plenty of others are building enterprise applications in many major large scale institutions.
I read an interesting article called
Reading the Sun Spots that discusses sun spots and climate change.
The article makes the point that:
In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
So what is the missing piece? Either it is human activity or something these researchers found (or both):
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
So they say based on mud core samples and other research that the increase in the solar activity isn't sufficient to cause the temperature increases we are experiencing, but if you add in the blocking effect of the cloud-forming radiation, then that does provide sufficient increase. An interesting note though is if this is correct about cloud formations not occurring as regularly during high sunspot activity, that could explain some of the drought conditions plaguing the world.
The really interesting point of the article is that if this proves out then by 2020 we are looking at a cooling period because with the decrease in sun spot activity not only will the Sun's heat drop, but the shielding effect of the solar winds will diminish, allowing increased cloud cover which will increase cooling.
This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age.
So now the question is, will human activity make up for the variation and continue the warming trend, staving off another Little Ice Age or will the world cool?
For those of you old enough to remember, the 1970's environmental concern was the coming ice age, so here we are again.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for that, I was not aware of it.
I agree with the dissent that anything not mentioned as a Federal rule belongs to the States to decide. We are, after all, the United States of America, not just America.
Guess we need a full Constitutional amendment like the 22nd if we want to get things under control.
Yeah, that'll happen.
The problem as I see it is the fact that they even can be owned, and that is because they are professional politicians instead of the original citizen-statesmen that was envisioned by the founding fathers.
They act more like an aristocracy than a representative body, but because they are constantly on the re-election tread mill, money has great influence over them, and these types of organizations (i.e. RIAA/MPAA) have lots of money.
It would seem, then, that a simple solution would be for the individual States to enact term limits. And this doesn't need to be a US Constitutional Amendment to limit Congress Critters as the 22nd Amendment limits the Presidency, because Congress are not Federal employees (which means they actually shouldn't get Federal pensions either). They are elected solely by their State, so a given State should be able to enact term limits that affect their own representation. Only the President and VP are nationally elected, thus the need for the 22nd Amendment.
If you eliminate the permanent politician in Washington, then there wouldn't be as much need for the money chase and we might actually get better laws.
Of course all the Congress Critters would scream bloody murder and pass all types of legislation to prevent term limits that would need to be challenged to the Supreme Court, but based on how they responded to Gore vs Bush, indicating all voting rules are the province of the State to decide, it would be an interesting fight.
Pipe dreams, I know.
All this discussion about crime statistics doesn't matter. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms was to ensure the American citizens would always have, as a last resort, a means of stopping an out of control government. This was to prevent the types of abuses the colonists had faced under the British government and what they saw happening in other European kingdoms and countries of the time.
A good source of the history of the purpose behind the 2nd amendment can be found at this site which is actually a Congressional Subcommittee report on the Constitution from 1982.
Some interesting quotes provided include:
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. Noah Webster
that a well regulated militia, composed of gentlemen and freemen, is the natural strength and only security of a free government.... Patrick Henry
In Federalist Paper 46, Madison, later author of the Second Amendment, mentioned
The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of all other countries
and that
notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
The report lists many others.
The point is, the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was not just for an individual to be able to defend themselves from criminals, but as a means of defending themselves from an overly oppressive government. An example of the type of abusive government envisioned is available today in Zimbabwe.
It is worth pointing out that those groups that radically oppose personal gun ownership also seem to be the same groups that believe the federal government should be able to control more aspects of an individual's life. And how interesting is it that the very vocally opposed politicians such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley don't mind having armed body guards for themselves while denouncing the Supreme Court upholding the rights of the citizenry to have similar protection.
Which is exactly why they should do it, considering that Sun is a for-profit publicly traded company. Commercial gain is what they are supposed to do.
It will be interesting to see where this all leads.
It may be just the opposite. I have two boys, one late teens, the other early 20's who make a bit above minimum wage while in school. They and their friends spend most weekends at one house or another playing D&D or video games instead of going out to movies or the malls, partially because they don't want to burn the gas.
By buying more games or pay-per-view, they burn less gas. Considering that filling up the gas tank on most of their older cars is now nearly as costly as a single one-time purchase for a game, then just buying chips, sodas and a multiplayer game for a few weekends of entertainment is not a bad idea.
The original poster is asking for a solution without providing all of the requirements. The original request is for a database program to replace a Notepad based text file, and yet most of the responses on the 6+ pages of comments have been around which programming language has bindings to which database, or discussions on SQL syntax. It would be helpful if the OP could elaborate a little on whether (s)he even has programming skills.
I read the request as looking for an application to replace the Notepad system. If the OP was just using a text editor, then it doesn't really sound as though (s)he needs SQL. A flat file of records with the ability to do straight text search sounds like an option. The question then is what type of tool can be used to manipulate that system?
Following the text editor/file model, one option, though larger than the 800kb discussion around SQLite could be Emacs with Forms Mode. This is also a (very big) text editor, but allows you to view a file of records in a nice editable form, but you can still open the record file directly and use all the searching capability of an editor. Of course this is probably very much overkill for someone used to using Notepad, but I suggest it merely to point out a type of option.
Another potential option might be to use one of the wiki-on-a-stick systems. Tiddlywiki and Stickwiki would allow the OP to use a browser with a wiki interface to record the data into a single transportable file. (S)He could organize how ever desired, though if the OP wants to be able to extract the data for loading elsewhere, that could be a little problematic as these tools tend to store the text in the generated HTML page in little division blocks. Some may offer export capability though.
So, the question is what are the full requirements, what skills does the OP have, how much configuration and/or system administration is (s)he wanting to do to have this simple system, and how do you wish to manipulate the data that is captured?
If you want to hand edit it, then some tool that saves records in a flat structure (one per row or one per file) that can be manipulated by a text editor is needed. If all you want is some way to record information and search it, then there may be other options. Many PIM tools also offer limited record management systems that you might look into.
How about EnterpriseDB?
I would rather get support for my database from an organization dedicated to the database support, rather than an IBM that might provide a DB2 support guy, along with half a dozen sales guys trying to tell you that you need other IBM products to go along with the DB2 database to really have the environment you need.
I was the senior architect and manager at a major Fortune 30 company ($50b in size) that hired in a new CEO who had been one of the Jack Welch proteges. As with nearly everyone of his sycophants, this new CEO brought both the Six Sigma and HR ranking methods with him.
During review time our managers had to rank everyone from 1 to 5 and were suggested(not formally written as required, as HR liked to point out) to have 10%-1,5 20%-2,4 40%-3's within your group.
Now my team had been composed of the strongest developers and architects from the various other units, specifically to provide guidance to the entire organization and be available in a matrix model to assist any project team that needed it.
So review time comes around, all my team were high performers, all had through out the year been involved in fixing critical issues, helping projects get back on track, etc and I had given them all 4 & 5 (3 was shows up a does their job satisfactorily).
HR told me I had to change some ratings, though they always insisted there was no required distribution, I was pressured to change them. I refused, pointing out that when compared to the organization as a whole, these were the most senior, most productive people we had.
My VP over ruled me, changed the ratings herself so that I had 1-1 (performance plan required), 1-2, 1-4, 1-5 and 3-3's. They also re-organized and took the team away from me. The excuse was that our bar was higher than everyone else, so we had to be ranked against that.
Within 6 months, all but 2 of us were gone. We all took different jobs elsewhere that didn't have this garbage.
The HR ranking model had been pioneered at GE manufacturing plants which employed union workers. In order to be able to get rid of true dead weight in a way the union leaders would agree with, they came up with this ranking model. Classify a bad seed a 1 and you can get rid of them.
The big problem with this is after the first year or two, the dead weight is gone, and the process is now cutting out good people. The other problem was the good people would stick with a particular team where they knew they would come out on top instead of offering to move around so they came out at the top of the curve.
Reading the threads, many people are discussing the relative merits of the other programming languages/environments - Java/C#/Python/etc - but what do all of those have that C++ does not have?
More complete environments.
When you install a C++ compiler, you get a C++ compiler and the standard library. When you install Java or C# or Python you get libraries to support simplified Networking, IO, Database access, GUIs, Memory Management, Threading and more.
Now it is possible to find all that for C++, but they are all separate components that the developer needs to decide on and download. And the number of choices for each is large. Do you use wxWidgets or FLTK or GTK+ for GUI, for example.
The other environments actually reduce your options, and for projects on a timeline the less time you spend on determining what you need to accomplish the task, the sooner you finish. Yes you can bring in replacement libraries in Java or Python or C#, but few people do. The folks that wrote those libraries did a pretty reasonable job on them, and since they are bundled with the standard installers, unless there are really specific needs, there's rarely a reason to replace them.
Look as an example of this at the Mono project. It is an attempt to provide the C#/.Net environment outside of Windows, but it does not have as much traction as .Net on Windows, why? in part because the .Net frameworks are more complete on Windows than in Mono. I not many .Net developers that use WindowsForms in every project. Without that piece of the eco-system already available, their project would take much longer. Mono basically provides C# for Linux, just another programming language.
I've watched over the years as some folks tried to assemble Java-like libraries for C++, but they didn't really take off.
This appears to me as why C++ has the reputation of being so hard to build applications in. The developer has to do so much extra work just to get to the point of assembling the program that the Java or Ruby or C# or Python crowd gets out of the box. Is this the fault of C++? Not the language, but perhaps it is something the steering committe should address. As someone pointed out in an earlier thread, the C++ standard group likes to make the comment that a particular given feature is not part of the language. Perhaps they should rethink that stand.
As point of background, I started working with C++ when it first appeared as a pre-processor that created C code that was compiled by a C compiler (when you had to use the keyword Overload). I later moved into Java and have made a good living doing Java development. Recently though I have gotten deep into programming in 3D graphics with OpenGL. I'm doing it both in Java (using jogl) and C++ (direct gl calls as well as engines). This is one area where there is not a clear choice for any platform, but because in the Java world I have the Networking and Threading, I was able to put a system together much quicker than I could in C++. Of course the Java approach has it's own problems because of the sheer volume of objects created/destroyed (imagine a 3D model made of Vector3D objects), so I end up using C++ approaches using float[] arrays (also an object, but only one).
Sorry for the ramble. Anyway, the point is, I personally think C++ would be more acceptable if it really was an eco-system and not just a programming language.
Unfortunately not true, look at 13 USC 221, which is the current controlling law for the census.
Unfortunately, the way the original Constitutional requirement was written said
"[The Census] shall be made ... in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct."
Which of course the Congress uses to basically do what ever they want, including requiring more information than just a head count.
Just an added thought to you question:
What's the possibility that two different programmers who presumably speak different languages working independently and exclusive of one another,Exactly why would network card vendors have to release their source code? I don't recall any of them using the wrapper in their product, they deliver Windows drivers that Linux users use via ndiswrapper. The vendors aren't required to do anything.
As I heard the story (n-hand so take with a grain of salt), Sun hired Ousterhout because they wanted a language platform they could control and use against Microsoft. However, Ousterhout insisted that TCL remain with its open license.
When Gosling and crew showed off Oak (later Java), Sun realized they had what they needed, a completely home grown system they could own and control.
Java became the favorite child, TCL was ignored (so was SELF, another language Sun was interested in). So Ousterhout left Sun and formed Scriptics.
So basically it was because Sun wasn't allowed dominating control over TCL that they didn't keep backing it.
Disclaimer: I'm a fan of both Java and TCL. I particularly like TCL's Starkit system of a self contained executable that is drag-and-drop deployable without requiring a runtime install.
Back some time ago, one method that was used was to lurk on Usenet news groups and see who was actively trying to help people solve problems. I was actually offered a really good job in the mid-90s for that very reason.
You get to see if the person really knows their stuff, how enthusiastic they are and how they relate to others.
With the Usenet not as popular any more, you might try and find chat channels associated with areas of interest you need folks and monitor those.
The only problem I see with this, is the definition of average appears to be getting weaker and weaker due to the dumbing down of society. Eventually we would would end up with laws written like:
See Jim. See Jim take bread. See Jim not pay for bread. See police arrest Jim. Bad Jim, bad.Ok, maybe not quite that bad, I hope.
And don't forget about Netbeans as a competitor to Visual Studio.
One place Microsoft has typically kept a lead is in providing simple, easy to use tools to allow quick development activities.
Though many on /. will argue that applications built from these tools are usually inferior, because they allow fairly non-experienced people to quickly build apps, there is one point worth mentioning. Many companies grow via acquisition, and many of the businesses they acquire are really small 2-3 person shops. I know in our organization that has been the norm.
Those small shops have tended to use the Microsoft suite because they are easier to use/setup/administer and provide a complete stack - IIS, .NET, SqlServer, Windows and Visual Studio. And Miccrosoft has a program to assist small idea shops by making these tools readily available as partners or via MSDN subscriptions. The people involved didn't have to worry about being system admins to get a working concept going.
Sun, with a complete stack, and a decent tool in the form of Netbeans, has the potential to really rock the boat for Microsoft. And, since Netbeans has built in support for Glassfish (JBoss and others are available as well), a small 2-3 person shop can setup an environment to allow them to quickly develop applications.
Add together Solaris x86, Java, Glassfish, MySQL, SunOne (LDAP), and Netbeans and you have a complete environment from one organization. Add a management console (such as Webmin) that sits atop them all and Apache, and you have what a small team needs.
All Sun needs to do is come out with a live CD or simple stack image (remember Colbalt Cube, a small office server system that Sun bought?) that allows for quick setup and they can make a strong play for that small end market.
Ironically in the United States there is disagreement on this fact. The story goes that the Smithsonian believed the first powered flight honors should be awarded to Samuel Langley for testing of his Aerodrome before the Wright brothers test.
The Wright brothers tried to force the Smithsonian into acknowledging them by sending the Wright Flyer to the London Museum instead of the Smithsonian. In 1942, the Smithsonian published a retraction of previous claims and recognized the Wright brother's flight as the first powered, so they could get the plane back to the US museum.
So, both the Wrights and Langley were American, but politics was involved here anyway.
This is a true statement, and one of the issues I see with unions, particularly ones like the writers guild. In these cases, the unions end up forcing higher pay even for no-talents just because they are in the union. The talented people don't need the unions as they could get work because of their talent. Unions in this case are there for the benefit of the below-line talents.
So what ends up happening is all costs go up because the union places a strangle hold on an industry.
Today's market does not need unions. There is sufficient competition across the board that there is no real need for union protection of employees. If the shop you work in is a sweat shop with bad management, leave and work at a competitor that isn't a sweat shop. Eventually the company goes out of business or changes its business practices. In the early part of the 1900's that wasn't possible as there were less options, but today things are different.
So now, unions exist to prop up the mediocre, raising costs and causing problems for everyone else.
Straw poll: how many /.'ers are members of a programmer's union?
Thank you.
I learned something new today, always the best way to start a day.
True about the size issue, probably wouldn't have Self Serve which is the norm today at filling stations, though it would be cool to have a robotic change center. You know, like the drive through car washes, but instead drive through battery replacement. Or, maybe even get back to the concept of a service station instead of a gas station.
But since today (at least in my state) all gas pumps are regulated by the State and inspected yearly, and the gas octane level is tested, there is no reason why there wouldn't also be battery regulators to check the stock periodically.
Uh, that was my point. The question was related to the single use philosophy of UNIX utilities. I pointed out emacs is a single use utility: it interprets LISP scripts. Just because there are hundreds of LISP scripts provided doesn't negate the contention that emacs is still just a LISP interpreter. So yeah it was a nice try, and specifically to the point of the original comment.
Maybe it is the philosophy that emacs is just a LISP interpreter with buffer-targeted key input capability? Like a shell or PERL or other interpreters, you feed it new scripts to interpret. So it does one thing, interpret LISP. Just because what you can do with the LISP scripts is nearly infinite, doesn't mean emacs doesn't fall into the do one thing UNIX utility camp.
I know you don't feed the AC trolls, but I love comments like this. Let me guess, you've never worked in a big iron shop before have you?
COBOL is still around for a very simple reason: it does the job it was designed to do.
Which of your hip, cool languages would you propose to run on the big iron? You know, environments intended to process billions of transactions over petabytes of data in reasonable time windows? Some dynamic scripting language and a web server database?
The fact is nothing has come around that replaces the capabilities of COBOL for the job it is intended to do, which is business applications.
Just because you don't recognize its value, doesn't make it a joke. You may be inexperienced in using these languages, but plenty of others are building enterprise applications in many major large scale institutions.
I read an interesting article called Reading the Sun Spots that discusses sun spots and climate change.
The article makes the point that:
In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.So what is the missing piece? Either it is human activity or something these researchers found (or both):
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.So they say based on mud core samples and other research that the increase in the solar activity isn't sufficient to cause the temperature increases we are experiencing, but if you add in the blocking effect of the cloud-forming radiation, then that does provide sufficient increase. An interesting note though is if this is correct about cloud formations not occurring as regularly during high sunspot activity, that could explain some of the drought conditions plaguing the world.
The really interesting point of the article is that if this proves out then by 2020 we are looking at a cooling period because with the decrease in sun spot activity not only will the Sun's heat drop, but the shielding effect of the solar winds will diminish, allowing increased cloud cover which will increase cooling.
This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age.So now the question is, will human activity make up for the variation and continue the warming trend, staving off another Little Ice Age or will the world cool?
For those of you old enough to remember, the 1970's environmental concern was the coming ice age, so here we are again.
Nicely said.