Huh? Who's talking about safety here?

Why do the hydrogen canard then? Why not burn Compressed Natural Gas? Nearly all the benifits and CHEAP fuel too...

Oh, and before you start into the "Using free solar electricity to disassociate hydrogen from water at home" exercise, let me remind you that even solar power costs (both in money and environmental damage), the process is wildly inefficient and currently the industrial source of hydrogen today is reforming natural gas.

Oh stop with all the facts... You are confusing people with the truth.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway... Oh, and gas stations that sell CNG already exist.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway...

Hydrogen is a stupid idea.

Use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Getting Hydrogen from water and electricity is wildly inefficient and thus extremely expensive. It's also not a very good motor fuel because it takes some pretty major modifications to existing motors.

Do you know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..

Hydrogen is still a stupid idea.

Look, either go full 100% electric and just put in chargers everywhere, or use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Hydrogen is hard to obtain and store and there is no existing distribution infrastructure to speak of.

Does anybody here know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..

Hey, I use Open Office all the time on my Windows laptop... But I'm a confirmed penny pincher who has some IT experience.

But I think you miss the point that we are discussing infrastructure level stuff that the end user NEVER sees. So your example doesn't really wash. MS Office is entrenched because it's what people know and use at work, it's what they are used to. Who knows what relational database the application uses? Not the end user.

What's actually happening is Oracle is falling out of favor in new development. There are cheaper options that do the job just as well. So Oracle is facing a declining user base as they loose market share. It may take decades to die, but Oracle is done unless they can start to capture more of the new development market share. The end user doesn't care what database is the application uses, as long as it works.

What's the difference?

Mainly, for most customers, PRICE is the only real difference.

It's not support, it's not functionality, it's not even performance (usually), it's about what you pay.

For some customers, there are some unique features that Oracle brings or performance increases they have, but you pay though the nose for it. Usually the people that need these features can afford to buy from Oracle so that's what they do. There is some name recognition that gets your product into some place it wouldn't go otherwise, but that doesn't happen all that much.

Apart from that, it's about money and Oracle fleecing people who could get a database and support cheaper from other vendors using other products..

So... What are you going to do in the YEARS of time this will take and how are you going to come up with the THOUSANDS of dollars this will cost to "protect your good name?"

If you really go to Duke.... I suggest that if you cheated in CS 102 you turn yourself in...

Aside from that, I think you picked the wrong NC school. Stay away from anything blue in that state and pick the red school. (Howl)

It was actually written (some of it) in the late 60's and YES it is still valid and IMHO should be read by anybody involved in doing or managing any kind of engineering effort. My favorite chapter is the one the book's title comes from "The Mythical Man Month" where Brooks explains why it is that adding people to a project makes it take longer and cost more. It's a Classic.

LOL... Well, I DID do the toggle switch thing a few times, but I didn't build the system myself, nor was it vacuum tube based... It had a heck of a lot of 7400 series chips and a huge 5V supply that all came packaged in a box about the size of your fridge....

Shouldn't you be retired by now?

Compilers are just programs.... Bugs happen.

In my nearly 30 years at this, I've only ever had to crack open the compiler/assembler once to track down a bug. Usually these "bugs" are avoided by turning off (or controlling) the automatic optimizations. I would suggest you leave the compiler debugging to the compiler experts because what *you* describe as stupid may actually have a larger purpose behind it. (Full disclosure, yes, I've written assembly code and even had to drop into assembly in the middle of a C Function from time to time.)

I've known programmers who have NEVER seen assembly and wouldn't know a "Jump To Subroutine" instruction from a "Load Program Counter" who I greatly respect. They may not be thinking bits, bytes and how there data is arranged in memory, but they can produce some pretty amazing things anyway. Don't sell somebody short, just because they don't understand something you cut your teeth on. Everybody has their own strengths.