radiant.matrix

correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. — Mr. Fred, from Our Corner, by Annie Besant; as quoted in DENIED ASPIRATES.

Mr. Fred is pointing out that all use of language is, in a way, slang — a choice of words that marks one’s class. Interesting point.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,” — Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find / They’re blind to own failings, others’ skills

So from 18 to 66 percent in two years — in what had seemed until very recently a relatively old and stable market. In short: people who care about computers, at least insofar as “caring” means “spending over $1000”, are switching to Macs. Interesting. — John Gruber, Daring Fireball: Sixty-Six

Yes, that is interesting. However, there’s a lot of buried complexity that just doesn’t come out in the statement above, or the article from which it comes.

First, the “PC market” in general is very hard to define, especially for people who really care about their machines. Purely anecdotal, of course, but most people I know who care deeply about computing build their own machine from parts¹ — those numbers are not counted in the PC market-share analysis.

Second, while Apple’s growth in a market segment ($1000+ PCs) is impressive, it’s not very useful information when it comes to observing trends in the overall market. In that regard, I think Mr. Gruber is on the nose when he says:

a simplistic “overall PC market share” number has never been a good metric for gauging the Mac’s success because the “overall PC market” includes millions of commodity-level low-end machines that Apple neither tries nor wants to sell. — John Gruber, Daring Fireball: Sixty-Six

I’d take it a step further, though — I think that the metric is poor because Apple isn’t really a PC company. Apple’s computer products, from design to the way they’re marketed, is so wildly different than the rest of the industry that I’m not sure Apple really even belongs in the set. What you buy from Apple is less computer and more experience.

1. Those that don’t, though, do seem to buy Macs.

Based on the official instructions from the DBD::mysql maintainer, here’s a fast summary for people who know their way around compiling and installing software on Unix-like systems:

1. Download the MySQL Linux sources

2. Unpack them to your cygwin home directory:

   $ cd ~ ; tar xzf mysql-5.0.51b.tar.gz

3. Configure and install:

   $ cd mysql-5.0.51b
   $ ./configure && make && make install

4. Check the above for errors. If there are none, continue.

5. Download the DBD::mysql distribution from CPAN

6. Unpack this into your cygwin home directory:

   $ cd ~ ; tar xzf DBD-mysql-4.007.tar.gz

7. Build the makefile

   $ cd DBD-mysql-4.007
   $ perl Makefile.PL --mysqlconfig=/usr/local/bin/mysqlconfig –testhost=127.0.0.1

8. Make, and optionally make test — note that ‘make test’ may produce some failures, but DBD::mysql may still work

   $ make
   optional: $ make test
   $ make install

9. You’re done!

Enjoy!

Dow’s Law: In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion