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Reminds me of a story - (Not so OT.)
When Ghandi was alive, a mother came to see him, child in tow.
"Please tell my child not to eat sugar" the woman said.
Ghandi told the woman to come back in two weeks. Two weeks later, the woman brought her child again. Ghandi looks at the kid and says: "Don't eat sugar."
The woman is stunned. "That's it? I had to go for two weeks just for that?"
"You see," says Ghandi, "Two weeks ago, *I* ate sugar."
Sure, it's just a story and the attribution is probably wrong, but I think it says something worth considering.
I think that kids in general would be more effective at monitoring their parents' surfing habits than the opposite. Are you prepared to have your kids see everything that *you* look at on the web?
And all this talk about having your kids talk openly about what they look at on the web; Are you prepared to talk openly with them about every site or newsgroup you browse? If not, the kid will know that you are being one-sided and insincere. (Kids can *smell* insincerity, just as well as you can...)
IANAP -

Cheers,
Jim



MMDC.NET

Well, if that's really your picture, I'll switch to Postgres.
;-)

Jim

MMDC.NET

• Closed Source is like the law - Both necessitate the existence of lawyers
• Open Source is just Common Courtesy - Like your mother taught you. Share your toys.

Sure, it *is* supported, but when it was 2:30 in the morning the night before I was supposed to deliver the program and it Just Wouldn't Work, though all the code was right, I got pretty frustrated.
I'd gotten really good at DAO. I'd memorized its functions enough to be able to dictate it to someone over the phone. I didn't appreciate having someone else tell me that it wasn't recommended anymore. I didn't want to feel like I was being shepherded along an upgrade path. If I was going to write code, shouldn't I want to write programs that weren't going to be thrown away?
Access was great. I learned to program using it. I made a lot of money being good at it, but yet, there is something flawed in it. It limits you unnecessarily. The database/app bundle concept is just wrong.
Let me explain:
I have a student that I am teaching beginning programming to - We started writing PERL on NT, using ODBC to talk to an Access database that he'd created. Between lessons, he started having trouble with the database, so I told him to mail it to me. Problem was, he was using Japanese Access 2000, I was on English 97. S.O.L... The next lesson, I installed MySQL and MyODBC and we haven't looked back. He's now comfortable writing SQL on a command line, be it Linux or Windows. I can log in remotely and check his tables. Sure, it was a little more difficult for him to grasp at first, but that went away after about a week. (We found a great front end for MySQL - http://dbtools.vila.bol.com.br/ )
Now, he can dump all of the create and insert statements into a plain text file and mail that to me. With very little editing, we could 'upsize' to Oracle or Sybase.
Plus, it's FAST.
But the biggest thing is the feeling that we don't have some marketing department somewhere deciding how we should be writing our code.

Imagine that you wrote a great application in Access 2.0 - that was what, 6 years ago? Try to sell it to a client. Try to make it run. It's not something you would really think of doing, because you've upgraded so far beyond 2.0 - Now imagine that you wrote a great program in perl, 6 years ago. (Or 16 years ago - When did Larry write it?) Chances are, it would still run now, if it ran then.

I don't want what I write now to be obsolete in 5 years.

I want to be able to run it on the platform of my choosing. Linux, Windows, whatever.

Plus, It's free. All of it.
I sometimes kid about MS requiring all of its developers to upgrade to 'ActiveIF' technology - No more writing complicated 'If..Then..Else' statements - Just drop in a few ActiveIF controls. Just be sure you have licenses for each occurrence...
How far off the mark is that, really?

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo


MMDC.NET

I've been in a similar situation - I've done years of programming in VB and Access.
With the last 'upgrade' of Access, I found some of the methods that I'd come to rely on disabled by default. Not a huge deal, but a client's last minute change caused me to miss a deadline. ("Oh, we need it in Access 2K - not 97. " Should have been simple, but all of the DAO stuff I had written failed. The reason is still beyond me. )
I felt betrayed by MS - I'd gone and learned what they said to learn and then they changed the rules, so that they could push their latest and greatest version.
So I switched to Perl.
Not a big learning curve, if you knew what you were doing in VB. Interesting enough to get me excited about writing code again. (Yes, VB can be a lot like writing code...)
It took me a while to figure it out.
I took some working scripts and made them better.
But I missed clicking a button to see if it would 'compile'.
I missed the IDE I had in VB. typing 'object' + '.' brought up a list of the properties and methods for the object.
Yet still, I was productive; It was fun again.
Now I'm taking it as a challenge to write my perl using vi. Some of the fun comes from *not* using and IDE.
Instead of a help file, I have the O'Reilly CD bookshelf bookmarked on my HD. Instead of a 'run' button, I have 'perl -w'.
I started writing CGI scripts that used ODBC to talk to SQL Server. (ActiveState Perl on NT.)
At my company, I pushed the idea of intranetting what apps we could - It cut down on all of the support that we had to do installing VB apps on every desktop. (A surprising amount of work.)
I began to really see the the beauty of using open source tools.
I was able to keep my reference books more than a year or two. (My current favorite read is "Unix Power Tools" - my copy is from 1993 - Still lots of useful stuff in there.)
I saw the beauty of writing programs that didn't need users clicking buttons to run. (Try making your typical VB app run without a user sitting there poking the screen.)
My advice? Pick a language and get good at it. Pick something marketable, yet pick something open. Pick something you feel you can learn. Then toss yourself into it.
Get excited again.
Do really cool stuff.
Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC.NET

Interestingly enough, in the Disney movie 'Mulan', some of the scenes included the names of the animators, rendered into archaic forms of the chinese pictographs.
(I read this somewhere on the web - one of those sites that have Disney 'Easter Eggs' - I've never personally seen Mulan...)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo


MMDC.NET

I'm amazed more people aren't more familiar with SAMBA - If you're not:
Take an old box at home and set it up as a SAMBA server. Get to know it well.
Figure out how to make it the PDC for your home network and do logins and share printers.
(You'll probably need to download the latest version if you want to authentication on Win2K clients, since it's a fairly recent capability.)
Webmin makes it easy to administer, too.
Then do a gap analysis to see what features W2K server has that you need. You'll be surprised at how robust and transparent it can be to the users.
Plus, if you have Linux developers in your shop, they'll appreciate being able to map to their ~/ directory, or to be able to ssh in from the road to acess their files securely. (I can even do this from my handspring visor.)
If you don't skimp on hardware and you don't load up the box with every known program and service, you should have a nice stable setup to present to management.
Then, document the hell out of everything, especially how to add/delete users and reset passwords, in a way that any MCSE in training could understand.
Maybe do this on a secondary network, until you are comfortable with your skill/ the hardware/ the software. Tell management that you need SMB on Linux for some of the network tools such as SSH.
Perhaps your intranet is the place - Apache on Linux is a lot easier to use if the content producers can map /home/httpd/htdocs/ as their I:\ drive in windows and/or update the MySQL database via ODBC.
I've done a few pages on my experience setting this up on my website: Wirefarm take a look at "Section 2" halfway down.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET

I was just speaking to some people from Hitatchi Japan about this yesterday at Linux World Tokyo.
(Specifically, I was looking at some of their Middleware offerings.)
It was closed-source development using Linux as the platform, though everything was named "Open - ".
It's interesting because this is an area that is lacking in the Linux server area. When a company is spec-ing out a system, such as a trade processing system with an application server, web server and database, if some of the better alternatives are Linux-based, it opens the door to a lot of new Linux development and a lot of new jobs for Linux developers.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

PS - Had a quick lunch with Hemos and Taco at the conference - great guys.
MMDC.NET

Yup - That about sums it up -
My phone (Toshiba 'Mega Carrots', for some reason,) has a color screen, 16 track FM MIDI synthesizer, digital sound, memo recorder, Web Browser, 4 types of messaging/email, 64Kbps Data connection as a modem and a plug-in digital camera.
It lasts 2 weeks on a charge and weighs about as much as a Snickers Bar. (Half the weight and thickness of a Nokia 6160)Plus it doesn't cost me anything when people call *me*.

My Nokia 6160 back in the US *did* come with 'snake', which was a pretty cool game, though...

I like the Wasabi dispenser idea -

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

PS - I just started an iMode site - Check it out:
MMDC.NET

Several people have pointed out that a knowing participant cannot give unbiased, impartial data.
Since all of us casual observers know this, It must have occurred to the demographics companies ages ago -
I wonder how many of them have tried intrusive, illegal surveillance of unsuspecting consumers to gather their data.

First, they'd have to identify their target as being 'average' from all outward appearances. Then they hire an undercover team to monitor every move, every purchase, every magazine ad glanced at for more than a second.

The more I think about it, the more likely it seems - here you were, worrying about browser cookies, when some guy who looks like Jean Reno (not Janet Reno, but the guy from that Nat Portman flick, "The Professional",) is lurking in your bushes and going through your trash, seeing if you clip coupons for nasal spray, or buy suspicious amounts of hand lotion...

I suppose there is only one defense - Obfuscate the data! If you think you may be observed, start radically changing your behaviour. If you see an ad for soup on TV, snap into a rain-man-zombie-like state and go directly to the store and buy up 12 cans, all the while chanting "Soup is good food, Soup is good food..." (Better if it's like two in the morning...)
The next day, react violently to the print version of the same ad - scratch out the eyes of all the people in the ad...

That should get them to stop following you.

I'd better go look at ZDNet for a while, to through them off track...

Cheers,
Jim, paranoid in Tokyo


MMDC.NET

Well, that's what changed, IIRC - Now, programs that use CDDB have to use CDDB exclusively.
My understanding is that GRIP gets blocked anymore.
Is this the case?

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET

To use the CDDB database, you have to agree to ONLY use the CDDB database. No replication to FreeCDDB allowed.

But then again, how about a program that will read the *file system* of your computer and re-construct the CDDB entry for submission to FreeCDDB?
Let me explain:
You use a CDDB-approved CD ripper to generate a dir full of MP3s. You close that program.

You run a script to compare the files in YOUR filesystem to the CD still in the tray. You generate a FreeCDDB submission. You hit SEND and the FreeCDDB gets updated...

You haven't used the CDDB database in an un-authorized way, you've read the attributes of YOUR files that YOU created, that reside on YOUR harddrive.

The pity is that all of this trouble is to make up for the unfortunate fact that Gracenote abused our trust. Maybe they have the right to do it, but nobody who sat dutifully typing in their CD titles knew that it would be one day restrictively controlled like this.

Maybe Gracenote will realize that they could do better by just opening things up again, not challenging the community to make them redundant.

Anyone else notice that the open letter never said exactly WHY they were suing?

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET

A wise friend once told me: "Paris was always better 20 years before. No matter what period of time it is that you're talking about..."

When I started with computers, it was on a printer terminal. No fancy CRT, just reams of greenbar. Though technically a CLI, it made editing long text files *interesting*... Since every mistake probably meant printing out a few pages of relatively scarce paper, (at my school, anyway...) we were more careful about what we typed. No luxury of on-screen editing for us!

My older sister wrote her programs in college on a deck of 80 char cards - Her husband could manually enter the boot sequence of his PDP-something-or-other using the switches on the front of the box.

(I remember a friend of mine who ridiculed me for using PINE as a mail reader - way too graphical! What a waste of resources!)

It's all relative. Each advance represents certain losses and gains and shifts in perceptions; It is exactly because Windows is such a big, gassy, bloated mess that I can afford a 1.2 GHz processor and so much RAM. They've driven down hardware prices for the masses. If I want to use this hardware to run VI and mpg123 while serving pages with APACHE in the background, I won't need KDE *or* GNOME and the performance will certainly kick ass. For this, I have MS and Intel to thank. (Even though mine is Caldera on AMD!)

Don't worry about the next generation - They will soon enough make us all obsolete with their wizardry, no matter which interface they choose...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET

I was at the Chiyoda ward office not long ago and they were telling me that with a spouse visa, you still have to get it renewed every three years and prove that you're still married.
In my infinite wisdom, I jokingly asked if you had to be married to the same woman...
Trust me, never try homour at the ward office...

MMDC.NET