taligent

I've used SAP HANA and it's a fantastic piece of software arguably the best SQL database on the market today.

It also costs an absolute fortune (only approved hardware allowed) and even the AWS instance which costs $3.50/hour is not certified for production deployments. I don't know many startups who can afford $5000 a month for minimum redundancy.

If that is the case then pretty disappointing. It really needed to be 4x to compete with DigitalOcean and the like.

https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing

The problem is that that right now in the software industry:

TDD, Agile, Scrum, XP etc are a religion.

And a lot of people have managed to make their lives easier by making the teachings of this religion mandatory. So what I've been witnessing the last few years is that saying "no I don't think we need a test for this" is a position that will get you no where. So instead every one just puts up with longer and longer build times and spending more time each day fixing broken tests.

Sure you will still have bugs. The question is whether the reduction in bugs due to TDD outweighs the increased investment in developer and tester time.

Because for those of us who do TDD every day the blowout in time is at minimum 2-3x longer than without it. Not to mention the detrimental impact on build times.

All of that aside. Have you noticed how there are no decent metrics available for TDD's effectiveness ?

No one is disputing that the code is formally correct. The problem is that the code is generally focused on those specific tests and those tests alone. Meaning the code hasn't been designed or architected with a broader context in mind.

Hence over time the codebase becomes this huge tangled mess of "formally correct solutions".

I suspect your comment adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. If you disagree with the premise then how about explaining why you think TDD is the panacea for poor software quality.

TDD in theory is a great idea. In practice it is dreadful.

Because what has happened is that the obsession with code coverage has meant that developers create a whole raft of tests that serve no real purpose. Which due to TDD then gets translated into unworkable, unwieldy spaghetti like mess of code. Throw in IOC and UI testing e.g. Cucumber and very quickly the simplest feature takes 5x as long to develop and is borderline unmaintainable.

It just seems like there needs to be a better way to do this.

> but to most IT is tech support

I don't know where you get this ridiculous idea from. Most IT in Australia is actually in software engineering and testing for banks, media, mining etc. Most of the tech support I am aware of is slowly being outsourced.

I don't say this lightly but you really are an idiot.

The idea that innovation can only come from certain areas is completely baseless. The idea that people in countries towns like Burnie have no use for NBN other than music, warez, porn is offensive. And your concept of wealth "trickling down" has been shown time and time again to never happen.

And the NBN is being rolled out everywhere so not sure where you get this ridiculous vote buying concept from.

> What's the point of replacing copper if the weakest link of the network remains.

Typical selfish attitude.

What clearly you don't understand is that for a large percentage of the population the weakest link IS the copper network. They don't connect at 24Mbps. I personally know people who connect as low as 1Mbps. So what good is a faster international link to them ?

And there are huge benefits internally if everyone has a super fast connection especially for anything that involves face to face communication e.g. those in remote, rural areas.

Sure technical problems happen all the time. But there are tens/hundreds of thousands of engineers/testers across the world who get paid very well to fix them. Bitcoin doesn't have that sort of infrastructure. And if you are responsible about money safety then putting your money into Bitcoin is pretty stupid. Banks around the world insure credit card losses for any fraudulent transactions.

Not find their way around California as well:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416321,00.asp

So by having VP8 I save a few cents off the price of an OS upgrade or new device.

And in exchange I get significantly poorer quality video.

> completely free alternative to h264

As a user H.264 was already free. As a developer H.264 was already free.

The entire plane interior is fire-retardant and there are lots of extinguishers around.

I've flown to over 50 countries and the rules are the same everywhere.

The whole TSA uproar is actually more of a reflection of the anti-government, libertarian, personal rights above community rights attitude that uniquely exists within many Americans.

It is non trivial to smash a liquor bottle to produce a long shard strong enough to cause mass damage. And it has to be smashed without rousing attention amongst passengers. And even if you did cut someone it would take minutes to bleed to death.

And the knives rely on serration to cut through steak so are very dull.

And given that every country in the world has a TSA and abides by almost identical rules I would guess that there is a lot of people thinking about ways to make us safer. Why isn't the status quo the safest yet reasonable measures we have ?

Firstly there are sniffer dogs as well as bomb detection equipment around every airport I've been to. They are just deployed randomly which should be fine as a deterrence.

Secondly the reason commercial airlines are different from smaller planes and other bombing targets is because you can use one to kill tens of thousands of people (fly into large skyscrapers). You can't do that with a car bomb or crashing a small plane into a large one.

And the fact you have these incidents at all should tell you that airline security is important.

   So we waste billions of dollars per year to "force terrorists to up their game."

So you would rather make it easier for them ?

  TSA screeners are largely incompetent.

Evidence please.

  they need only set off a bomb in the main terminal entrance

They could set off a bomb anywhere. A plane is unique in that you could fly into a large skyscraper and kill tens of thousands of people.

  groped by imbeciles who think that patting down frightened five year olds

Equating someone doing their job with a paedophile is a much, no ?

    You can buy glass, you can get knives from restaurants.

I can't speak for US terminals but in many international ones. The glass you get isn't large enough to cause serious damage e.g. snowdomes and the knives in restaurants have deliberately dull blades. And cockpit doors whilst locked from the inside are routinely opened in order to provide food/drinks to the captain. So it's hardly a fool proof system.

But hey don't let me stop with your confused anti-TSA crusade.

You actually think it would be better to put it in the hands of private companies ?

Wow.

The problem is that as a consumer device it risks being curtailed/banned in areas that it never would if it was a business/education device.

I know the distinction is subtle but so is the line for what constitutes an invasion of privacy.

One example we all know well. Car mechanic. Parts analysed from the video in real time to provide contextual information e.g. replacement periods. Asking questions about stock information from the suppliers. Looking at VINs to instantly see warranty/recall information from the car company.

Now if I own a car mechanic business I could never build this. But Google has all the technology today that just needs pulling together into cohesive services.

But instead of solving these real world problems they instead prefer to get embroiled in consumer privacy issues.

The technology is everywhere. The act is not.

You don't see people walking around with their phone held high constantly recording everything as they walk around. If you did then most people would be suspicious or concerned about what they were doing. And more than likely at some point they would be asked to stop.

People record video using smartphones of people they know. Not random strangers.

So ?

The intent of the camera system is to have evidence if an incident occurs. I doubt the bar owner is going through it at the end of the night looking for which parts of it are interesting enough to post on Facebook.

> solving a problem people don't have

See this is what I don't get about Google.

There are thousands of problems that Google Glasses could solve. But life recording and answering how long a bridge is are terrible use cases. For me it makes far more sense to position it in firmly in the business and education sectors. And then provide the necessary back end services to support developers.

It ties in so much better with other Google services and works to their strength which is in solving big data problems. Leave the gimmicks to the others.

No. The media is simply not going to bother to review the car.

And Musk can't ask for more than that.

The reporter would have his reputation on the line so it's not he has nothing to lose here. And if a bad review could leave you attacked by Musk and the huge hoardes of influential internet nerds I can't see what gain they would have from a repeat review.

Telsa is starting to get a reputation as being toxic to the media.

For a smart guy Musk is being incredibly stupid.

It's one thing to attack a show like Top Gear. It's a whole other to attack the New York Times. People around the world have a lot of respect for the paper and whilst nobody claims that they are always right there is the assumption that they wouldn't intentionally be dishonest or biased.

So by continually picking a fight with them people will tune out and just take the "truth lies in the middle" position which is not good at all for Tesla.

It is highly dependent on the location. In Tokyo, Google Maps was much better. In Australia, Apple Maps is better in the cities and worse in country areas. And apparently around California, Apple Maps might be better.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416321,00.asp

So long story short it is likely you will have a few map apps on your phone.