Postgres is the predecessor of PostgreSQL. Postgres used a different query language when it was still a university project led by Stonebraker. Postgres was the next project after Ingres as the name suggests, and its query language was originally similar...called QUEL instead os SQL or something like that.

Postgres forked into two code bases after the university project ended. Stonebraker started a company called Illustra to sell a commercial version of Postgres. Informix eventually bought Illustra and called it Online Dynamic Server if i recall, and by the time IBM bought informix this sibling of Postgres was the flagship product.

The second fork of postgres was picked up by former students of Stonebraker (initially Joly Chen if i recall and one or two others..too lazy to google for the details). They introduced a SQL parser front end of their own and called the initial release Postgres95 v1.x since it was the fad MSFT started to use years in product names, and also resetting the version number given the changes in features and management (postgres was at version 4.x).

When it came time to release the next major version the name was looking dated and redundant since there was still a release number. So the name became PostgreSQL as it was more meaningful (the primary feature difference being the query language). The version number was then "un-reset" too...postgres95 1.x being considered as 5.x and the first PostgreSQL named release being 6.0.

So yes, postgres isn't the same as postgresql. It is mist accurately described as the father of PostgreSQL and Informix. Architecturally the latter two are essentially the same, but their SQL parsers are unrelated as they were each developed post fork, plus the codebases diverged quite significantly over the past 20 years.

They are both fantastic databases by the way...they wipe the floor with mysql. To say postgreSQL is not web scale are ignorant and probably last used it in the 1990s if at all. It truly kicks butt for full text search, geospatial data for mapping or survey data, astronomy and so on. It is 10+ years ahead of Microsoft SQL server or mysql at that stuff as well as things like multi version concurrency...i was spoiled by PostgreSQL MVCC when i had to contend with rows and tables being locked until transactions wete committed in other RDBMSes.

MySQL has no extensibility, nowhere near the rich set of data types or extensibility, and is not optimised for write heavy ACID transaction stuff. MySQL is great for your CD collection or your blog or whatever, but PostgreSQL is still far superior for accounting/erp/mapping/etc, though i do acknowledge MySQL/MariaDB has gotten "good enough" it is far frpm the best.

And dont start with me on noSQL. Its a great hammer but only some applications are nails, even at "web scale".

Congratulations to Dr Stonebraker. His legacy in the industry is impressive and his work has led to a Free database project that can truly take on the big O on many serious fronts.

Why explain anything? Anyone worth my time has my phone number and/or email. The only response required to queries about me and facebook can be "phone me" or "email me" or "text me".

If anything, using facebook is more trouble than picking up a phone or tapping out an email or sms, and NSA dragnets notwithstanding less intrusive as well. So after signing up years ago and getting poked and having sheep thrown at me for a couple months my account has been virtually dormant since.

Actually, on 2015-03-16 he said he's been using a web browser and Tor. I don't know if the two are related and I don't know when he started using a common browser in a typical fashion.

Looking at the kerfuffle around LLVM/Clang you can find more of the same attitude from RMS—he doesn't have the ego invested in the work as his detractors claim he does (often without examples cited at all, sometimes as with the grandparent poster with wrong examples cited):

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance. The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers -- so that all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us.

Those aren't the words of someone who places ego above the good of the project or the public. For software freedom seekers, software freedom and defense of software freedom is the goal and good for the public.

I can't tell you. But the history is the history. The product is infamous for it's crippling security bugs over many many years. PHP was shit a decade ago, and it hasn't gotten any better. Featurits? That's part of it.

PHP is inherently insecure. You can't have a web platform language with constant patches. One day your fine, the next, rooted. Stay away.

Firmware is software and computer users still need software freedom for all published software. This hasn't changed since Richard Stallman reached conclusions about the ethics of software over 30 years ago. Changing what device the software is loaded into or the form it takes when loaded doesn't change any of the underlying issues that all have to do with how people treat each other. This is also not an issue to be properly understood by "open source" focus on convenience, caving into business desires, or developmental methodology.

If you want to say that RMS's position is pedantic, that's fine. Just understand that RMS has slightly different values than open source advocates and he works to keep those values. RMS views open source as dangerous to the freedom to have all changes made available because open source does not make any guarantee about it. Others, like ESR, aren't quite as concerned about that as long as some version of the source is available. Thus, you get open source. Free and open source software are not exactly the same thing though.

Open source advocates think that proprietary software is acceptable and free software advocates don't think proprietary software is ever acceptable, as RMS points out in his essays and talks dating back many years (1, 2). I'd hardly call that difference pedantic—being overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning like a pedant. And the preservation of software freedom copyleft makes real can sometimes be okay to forgo but only after careful consideration. But the open source movement doesn't distinguish among licenses based on copyleft because that would draw attention to the very thing that movement was designed to silence and distract discussion away from talk of—software freedom.

Glenn Greenwald asks a more interesting and important question than /. encourages its readers to consider when Greenwald asks "What's Scarier: Terrorism, or Governments Blocking Websites in its Name?" and then he answers it, "More damage has been inflicted historically by censorship than by the "terrorism" used to justify it.". Considering how little of a threat terrorism is in the US relative to other known dangers ('Terrorism Still Less Deadly in US Than Lack of Health Insurance, Salmonella', 'Gun Murders vs. Terrorism by the Numbers') one has to wonder about other western countries such as France.

Voting only changes nothing when you vote to change nothing. That is why you have no change. The vast majority of Americans vote for a Democrat or a Republican, and both represent status quo.

If America really wanted change they would yake their votes seriously, study all the options and vote for candidates that represent neither democrats nor republicans because the track record of both is quite clear--no matter what is said by candidates of either of those parties you get the same thing.

It has to be driven by voters too. Independents and third parties wont run for office in great numbers unless voters support then in great numbers and voters must be the ones to break the cycle. Nobody will care to run for office that is truly different until voters care to have a different government. Voters dont care and dont actually vote. The ones that bother to go to the voting station are often not really voting, they are just picking a name because it is the incumbant or because it was the one on the most campaign signs and tv ads.

American government is an example of what happens when people DON'T vote, not that change doesnt happen despite voting.

Well actually yes there are some very offensive hysterical pro choice nut hubs out there. I knew one of those in university.

In Canada where I am there are literally no restrictions at all on abortion. The court struck down laws decades ago and it is such a sensitive topic no restrictions or regulations have ever been put in to replace them. Though in reality medical professionals would never do so, from a strictly legal standpoint a woman could abort a healthy viable fetus at full term for any reason at all, including gender selection or other non medical reasons.

While watching TV a nurse was being interviewed and her opinion that abortion should be regulated...not even restricted much but that guidelines requiring counselling for late term abortions and limiting reasons beyond 30 weeks or so to medical issues like birth defects and threat to mothers health.

This person I knew was watching this and declared she was "such a close minded bitch" and left. It was her opinion that a woman should be able to terminate any pregnancy for any reason whatever at any time, including during labour and right up to the point of delivery. Literally. And if you thought otherwise in any way she had no time for you. She was VERY judgemental on that fact and would say a young woman was foolish for keeping an unplanned pregnancy if they weren't done school and so on.

She called herself pro choice but I called her anti abortion. I never liked to call wing nuts who threaten abortion doctors or picket clinics pro life...I call them anti abortionists. After I met this young woman I stopped using the term pro choice so freely too. They are pro abortionists. The issue is abortion and you are pro or anti.

I was amused at the term inactivity. Clever. But the issue is circumcision and you are pro or anti. And people have their reasons and there has to be some open mindedness to those points of view on both sides.

What attack surface?

Systemd *the project* is a repository of a large number of individual binaries. The init system is separate from the logging is separate from this time sync thinf and so on.

Systemd is NOT one monolithic entity (which linux OS people haven't seemed to mind in other respects--the kernel is monolithic after all). It does not have any one large attack surface either.

The issue that makes it contoversial is that it is not "unix like" enough for old grey neckbeards. It has binary log stores, the various components interact with binary APIs and it is designed to work specifically with Linux rather that being kernel agnostic. It is "different"...the init system appears to be the free software equivalent to Microsoft svchost...or so goes the argument.

The other argument..or conspiracy theory or whatever, is that the *project*, irrespective of how modular or componentised or how much is optional, is that forces from the evil-corporate-redhat camp are somehow coercing distro maintainers to adopt the whole works carte-blanche, perhaps before its time.

None of this really has any bearing on the security of its design or attack footprint however. It has been in use for a few years now and no heartbleed scale issues found yet.

I did find it disorienting at first to work with systemd and i wouldn't have implemented it exactly that way, but on the whole it is far better than the inconsistent, crufty, not broken per se but very brittle sysVinit.

Anyways i see the whole systemd controversy as being indicitave of a 'UNIX old guard' culture. Not universally in open source but a loud segment of it. Sometimes what aint broke is worth fixing, because it is brittle, or it actually has cracks and holes unseen like metal fatigue. And in the case of low level stuff like this it is thankless work. Systemd is in that realm with openssl and ntpd and consolekit. Systemd takes some old poorly supported and outdated stuff and replaces it with something radically different, and for their efforts they are shat upon. Yes they have big egos but so do most free software leaders. If you create and maintain something and are more meek or deferential then this kind of un sexy software ends up in a state like consolekit or ntpd or openssl...no new ideas, no scrutiny, no appreciation... Until the developer just gives up or thete is a big bug missed or whatever.

Attitudes have to change. Stop bitching about the efforts of people like Pottering and Sievers and contribute! Don't agree with the state of things? Spearhead an effort for an alternative. Systemd is not compiled into GNOME and other software though it is packaged with that depenency most often. The APIs and peotocols are open. Alternative implementations can be made.

I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who put in all the effort on systemd...AND uselessd AND systembsd. They want to make software better even if we dont always agree with their approach. And in the interest of avoiding monoculture I really hope the alternative implementations gain traction...and that goes for alternatives to openssl anf ntpd as well.

I think your explanation falls very short when you refer to municipal limitations on the number of competitors as a "natural" monopoly. There's nothing natural about it if it's a situation directly caused by limits imposed by government. Prospective ISPs should have been able to negotiate with property owners at all levels to build lines of any sort wherever it made sense. Capping local markets at one or two providers is where the Internet got off track, not when the beneficiaries of this corporate welfare started doing the only thing that made sense given their unassailable, government-granted position. So now we pile the FCC on top of a problem that never needed to exist. Like Harry Browne used to say: government will break your knees, then hand you a pair of crutches and say "See? Without us you couldn't walk!"

CISSP teaches you NOTHING about pen testing. If you want to really learn, go here: https://www.offensive-security... It's good and cheap.