Free software has been around since the beginning of computing. The GPL is only a recent invention. What makes you think that free software means GPL in any form whatsoever?

The biggest problem with making a mysql compatibility layer on top of postgres is dumbing down the whole interface to be compatible. It would involve removing so many items and breaking many standards. You might as well just keep using mysql in the meantime while you port your app to postgres.

And... the whole point of a compatibility layer is so that you can either 1) run your whole app as-is and keep developing as-is on the layer on top of the system. So now you have zero gain from moving to postgres, you're still using the same old cruft... or 2) you want to run some code in the compat layer and some code in the native layer. Now you open up a whole huge can of worms. Now you need to specify which tables/functions/etc are running in which platform, the screwy mysql one, or the real postgres one. Unforeseen interactions between the two would be full of fun surprises I can assure you.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few horrid problems with mysql that would have to be ported. Silent truncation for instance. Insert 30 characters into a 20 character field and mysql will gladly accept it, and not even throw you an error. Now there is a flag you can turn on that will give you errors on some of these issues, but not all of them.

There's several other silent behavior type problems in mysql that would need to be ported over. See: http://code.openark.org/blog/mysql/but-i-do-want-mysql-to-say-error

There's a bit of a history of silently doing nothing with bad data, or silently doing nothing when there's a problem in general. See: http://use.perl.org/~Smylers/journal/34246

This next writeup is a year old, and obviously some shortcomings of mysql have been fixed up... but many of these issues still remain. The issues listed that have not been fixed.... and then some, would have to be ported.

See:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Why_PostgreSQL_Instead_of_MySQL_2009

In conclusion... why waste time in porting such an array of limitations and buggy behavior to such a great platform.

You might say 'but EnterpriseDB is an oracle layer on top of Postgres'. Yeah... Oracle... a real database, not mysql.

The biggest problem with everyone staying on ipv4 and natting until the cows come home (which will be never... these cows will *not* come home for ipv4) is that all of a sudden you have thousands, millions of end-users on nat going through overloaded 4 to 6 proxies.

And if no one switches to v6, only rich content providers will be able to afford direct ipv4
And then, due to the fact that end users will certainly not have a public ip address:
- streaming media of any kind will eventually be unusable due to overload of aforementioned 4 to 6 gateways
- you can't do end to end links (like with voip and video conferencing)... you would of course be able to pay your isp for the privilege to use *their* voip.
- bittorrent and friends will vanish
- self-hosted online gaming will go the way of the dodo and players will be at the mercy of the corporations for whether they can play their old games online or not.
- the LSNs will probably be blocked by most mail servers to prevent spam. You say that's good? Watch the price of email hosting and hosting in general skyrocket because of the high fees companies will need to pay in order to purchase ipv4 addresses from each other. Prices of ipv4 *will* go up due to supply and demand.
- the lack of cheap addresses will force small services out of business and will force many free services to shut down
- the lack of small providers will leave only the big ones remaining
- with the big players the only ones left on the internet, they would love to turn the internet into a dumbed down content distribution system like cable tv... lovely

Still think sticking with ipv4 is a good thing?

Which rock have you been hiding under?

Thinking about choosing Postgres or Mysql is like pondering about whether to bring a war tank or a volkswagon bug to the battle of the bulge. If you want to write real database applications, with real consistency and functionality at the database level, you will pick Postgres. If you want to do all the work at the application level (bad), put up with blind truncation (bad), and put up with a lack of some basic features... by all means pick mysql.

The only reason I can fathom that companies are using mysql for any large scale database system is that the project probably started out simple. It grew and grew and became "too big to port" to anything else. Now they are stuck with mysql and its limitations when they should have been with something better.

I used mysql for many many years. I stayed away from postgres because for some reason I had the impression that it was really complicated. Once I had started using posgres, it was an amazing feeling of new freedom that I had.

I totally agree that text message prices are quite ridiculous, but ignore that for a moment and think about your usage for a month.

If your plan says 25 cents per text message, and you routinely send 500 texts a day, only a complete dimwit would be surprised by the bill at the end of the month. If that same provider had a plan for unlimited texting for 10 or even 20 dollars extra per month, then it's totally worth it if want to stay with that provider, since you won't pay out the nose for texting.

On the other hand I do agree that you should be able to set a cutoff limit if you are not on an unlimited plan so you don't get insane charges.

And to play devils advocate, the services prices for minute overage, text messages and etc are always spelled out in your service agreement. And all the carriers I've dealt with have some way to check your current minute, text and data usage. So if you keep an eye on it, you won't get surprised.

Or they could get a plan with unlimited texting.

I was in high school 9 years ago. Lunch was LOCKDOWN. You had to present your school id to get in, which was color coded to define your appropriate lunch period. Once in, you needed just about a medical emergency to get out unless the lunch period ended. The "recreation yard" felt more like a prison yard... it was a 50 by 50 paved concrete yard with two potted trees that was part of the interior of the school. The only way out of the yard was back into the cafeteria. Mainly people went out there to smoke.

I never ate in the cafeteria, so the easy thing to do was to just skip going. I got friendly with a teacher who ran peer mediation, which was about training kids how to be moderators when two other kids beat the crap out of each other and had to resolve their conflict afterwards (or face detention). So I would just hang out in his office during lunch... do homework in peace, nap if I needed to, and basically just relax. It was a much better experience than sitting around the goths smoking pot in the 'yard'.

HAHA. I wholeheartedly agree. I started my real learning in college. All through public school I hated it. I hated sitting though classes where 1/2 the class time is sucked up taking attendance, 1/4 the time is spent going over the homework the night before, and the last 1/4 is spend shoveling new stuff out.

The best/worst was experiencing a first year teacher for the first time. Not that all first-year teachers are bad, which is hardly the case. She taught science and math in Junior High. Mostly the class time was wasted by her feeble attempts at gaining some semblance of control by assigning "copy pages 200-220 from the text into your notebooks".

Is it just me... or does the picture at:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1xQeOPE9ePU/TEXJFhjMElI/AAAAAAAAFDk/Susb7Y6PP9I/s1600/fake_GOM_simops_operations_top_kill_houston.jpg

have a laptop on the bottom left that's left running the sims... or sim city... or something like that?

Nothing else crashes... just firefox

You missed: ::grumble grumble:: Crashy

Beta 4 crashes any time I right click on a link
It crashes any time I load a new plugin
It crashes any time I open a new tab

I'm totally in agreement with your justifications. I have some similar ones. I get blockbuster and netflix since I don't have a tv either. One out of every 10 dvds or so just refuses to play in a pc dvd drive... so I download the same title. I already paid my movie fee, but got a bunk title due to some drm.

My point here, is that you have your reasons, I have mine, other people have theirs... and it's contributing to the global "moral justifications" of why copying is okay.

But that's exactly my point!

According to the survey, the Some circumstances argument is what makes it morally justifiable to that segment of the population.

As far as the law goes... it's a ban on all circumstances other than what's defined in fair use. But in your case (and in others), in "some circumstances" it's okay to just download it because of [insert reason here].

What makes it acceptable? It's certainly against the law, so it's not the law that makes it acceptable. What else is it then? It's acceptable because it's morally acceptable.

I'm just stating the trends and observations that I've noticed over the past 20 years of computing. There's always been the crew that's cracked, copied, and distributed stuff (I remember playing pirated Apple2 games). Nowadays it's moving from the hidden away portion of society to mainstream where "everyone" is doing it. And since "everyone" is doing it, there seems to be a growing list of "some circumstances" in which make copying morally justifiable.

I honestly don't think this is the case here. It's a case or morality and ease of action. The younger generations (myself included, I'm 27), are being taught by their peers, and sometimes their parents that copying music is okay. It's against the law.. but so is speeding (but that's another debate). With both speeding and music/movie/etc copying, it's a case of "The populous has spoken". Upon looking for some stats on the Wikipedia:

In 2004, an estimated 70 million people participated in online file sharing. According to a CBS News poll, nearly 70 percent of 18 to 29 year olds thought file sharing was acceptable in some circumstances and 58 percent of all Americans who followed the file sharing issue considered it acceptable in at least some circumstances. In July 2008, 20 percent of Europeans used file sharing networks to obtain music.

These are clearly not insignificant numbers, especially the current young adult generation. Seventy percent! That's the MAJORITY. We're clearly dealing with a global, quickly spreading phenomenon. Back when I was in high school (99-03), during my freshman year you needed to be in the "leet" crowd to know about file sharing, kids charged 5 bucks a cd to make you any album you wanted. By the time I was a senior no one was charging because everyone was just downloading. It was the dawn of the napster era.

Our culture is changing, and it's changing worldwide whether you like it or not. Computers are getting faster, bandwidth is getting more plentiful, and people are becoming more 'educated' on how to get things they want for free. They are also being taught that these ways of getting things for free are culturally and morally acceptable.

The majority of this culture (as you can see from Jason Brown's escapade) clearly isn't the "I don't owe you a dime for your work" crowd. Most of the traders that were contacted actually stopped the trading. Which seems to me that it's more of an "oh whoops, I didn't know you weren't cool with that" type of crowd.

For the most part, none of these items fit into the mindset of the culture involved in the sharing. How do I know? If these costs were considered, people would pony up for them. Our society as a whole is a compensation based society. People go to the supermarket for food. They pick out the food they want, then go to the register and pay. My inkling is that they pay because it costs money, time, and labor to produce these food items. But it's illegal to take the food without paying, so of course they pay right? Well it's also illegal to distribute copies of music. But, the thing is you don't see 70% of young adults shoplifting, because shoplifting is also morally and culturally wrong. What about the people who grow food at home for 'free'. They still have to buy or barter for seeds, which take time to collect and package. This holds true for other physical product sales like tools, furniture, music (when it was just a physical product), and etc.

And now you're thinking... how does buying food relate to sharing music in any way? This has been covered a bazillion times by other posters. Say someone invented a food cloning device, and once this device was initially purchased, it could make at no cost, an exact duplicate of any food you put in it. All the perceived associated costs of growing and producing food and seeds for food go out the window. Sure... it took 6 months for that corn to grow to maturity... but wait. I can get a copy for free. And all the outsiders start screaming about the food industry going out of business. They also complain that people are paying for tools, they should be paying for food too! But now food has an infinite supply with zero reproduction cost... people are now confused as to why they should pay for food when they can now get it for free.

History repeats itself time and time again. The horse and buggy industry fought tooth and nail to stay in the game, but failed because automobiles were just bigger/better/faster. Now the music industry is fighting the same fight against bigger/better/faster. Why pony up $20 for a new release cd when you can head to a huge repository of new releases, download what you want, in any quality you want, and have it within a few minutes without having to leave your house. AND! It's morally acceptable to do so because 70% of your peers are also doing it. Therein lies the problem that the music industry faces.

Of course you'll say: "but there are paid services, that will give you those same options (bigger/better/faster)". And as you can see, many people are willing to pay for such services, and some people just aren't, due to the aforementioned reasons".

This is hardly the case.

Is there going to be a huge market for antivirus software for cell phones within the next few years?