No, it's not ready to replace SQL, and I don't think it ever will. What are your requirements? If it's horizontal scalability (and you're actually hitting a performance wall) you should begin to think about it. Maybe also if you never do any joins.
Relational database systems (+ normalization) compromise everything to ensure the ACID properties, which for the majority of cases, is the most important part.
I've been looking at buying a folder, and the main draw to the Brompton is the size of the folded bike. The minimum price is about $1000 though, and the cheaper folding bikes, usually American or Taiwanese brands, only fold in the middle so are not nearly as portable. I looked around for a cheaper bike with the same fold as the Brompton, and found one made by a company called Flamingo Bikes, but haven't been able to find a source: http://www.flamingobike.com/products/products_show.php?pid=5... .
If you're going to be carrying your machine onto buses or trains regularly, the Brompton is in a whole other league compared to even the most compact of it's rivals. It's a proper bike with few major compromises (only the poor gear range really) but folds down to a very neat, compact package.
If you just need something that is easy to store, or to take as luggage on an aeroplane, a Dahon would be a better choice - they fold into a much larger and clumsier package than the Brompton, but are cheaper, lighter and faster. The Brompton is perfectly capable of covering long distances but is far from ideal, especially on poor roads or in hilly areas.
$1000 might seem a lot for a bicycle, but as an everyday mode of transport it is extremely good value. A good quality bicycle will last for decades, requiring only modest maintenance. New brake blocks every 1500 miles, new tyres every 3000 and a chain and rear sprocket after 6-8000 miles add up to a mere two cents per mile. Quality machines like the Brompton hold their value extremely well, with used machines barely depreciating at all after the initial drop from new.
The Brompton is absolutely the perfect means of travel in London, not least because even the top-of-the-range model costs less than an Annual Travelcard for public transport.
The unique location is the big plus, especially considering that the absence of geostationary satellites over the poles means this is likely the ONLY developer job on the planet that can't be done offsite, until they run fiber to Antarctica.
Were the Iridium/Globalstar satellites de-orbited? That would be such a shame: to have a true global wireless communications network deployed and to let it decay...
Thanks. That's great news. I heard something along the lines of de-orbiting them, but wasn't sure if that was avoided.
I also couldn't check Wikipedia at that moment ;-) Now I can.
With a 86.4° inclination, Iridium satellites should be above the horizon. Some data communication should then be possible (interestingly, the article says they weren't designed for that). Neither Globalstar nor Orbcomm appear to operate at those latitudes.
Anyway, it seems putting a clever human close to the equipment is a good idea.
It's interesting, all up, the money making idea. Even though /b/ contains the best and worst of the net, the other boards are quite reasonable (as long a /b/ stays up to keep the trolls from wandering). Is the sites image so bad that advertisers can overlook such an opportunity for targeted ads? (ie. its unlikely anyone would be in the anime board if they weren't quite interested in anime)
...and, let's face it, the relative complexity of a skyscraper compared to a computer software program, given equal cost, is very, very low. A skyscraper costs hundreds of millions to construct. An equally costly software project would be something like the entire lifespan of the .NET Framework including the CLR, Standard Library, C#, VB.NET, Silverlight, all of the "Enterprise" features, etc.
Also, software isn't really construction. It's built by the people who design it, for the most part. Imagine a skyscraper (or car, bridge, etc) built entirely by engineers. Yikes.
We can't afford a single skyscraper collapse, but we can usually afford to use bad software.
In fact techniques exist to produce software with near-zero defect rates (primarily relying on extremely thorough code inspection, IIRC), but they're far too expensive for commercial use.
The name of this article is really unfortunate and will probably mislead many readers.