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Why don't they just use Word if they need a database??

http://www.neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2003/09/29/5458.aspx

"MIGHT I INSTRUCT YOU TO INTEREST ME IN YOUR WARES? SOMETHING INNOVATIVE, PERHAPS? HOW ABOUT A FUDGEPOP UP THE NOSE? HOW INNOVATIVE!!"

"Actually, I serve traditional ice cream here. You know - in a dish or on a cone or whatever..."

"NOW JUST HOW IS THAT INNOVATIVE? Hmmm?"

Not just Excel. The spreadsheet has to have no functions in it, and be used purely as a database.

Flash forward to 2006. I believe the tables have largely turned. OSX is a great environment to be productive, Apple includes their fantastic XCode development environment and developer documentation with every new Mac, etc.

Meanwhile, Microsoft now charges a LOT of $$ for Visual Studio Enterprise Extreme Radical 2008 .Net (and yes, I am aware it is technically possible to develop .net apps from the command line just as it's technically possible to build your own house using nothing more than an axe and a drill)

and unless you wanna get screwed and pay full price next year when there's an update you'll pay to join their developer club.

Very topical: I saw this excellent cartoon (scroll down) on a blog; sums up the decision to use Excel as a "database".

If I had a pound for every time I've seen Excel stuffed with information and being used as a hacky database just waiting to fall over...

Microsoft has apparently figured out how to keep them safely within the rules, blogging about the wonders of product renaming and coming features instead of anything that might challenge the party line.

I especially like this article about the above blogger hitting an attendee at an MSDN event:
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/18833.aspx

Microsoft has apparently figured out how to keep them safely within the rules, blogging about the wonders of product renaming and coming features instead of anything that might challenge the party line.

I especially like this article about the above blogger hitting an attendee at an MSDN event:
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/18833.aspx

Microsoft has apparently figured out how to keep them safely within the rules, blogging about the wonders of product renaming and coming features instead of anything that might challenge the party line.

I especially like this article about the above blogger hitting an attendee at an MSDN event:
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/18833.aspx

Well said, Rory.

Hey, keep those blog posts & comics coming. Your explanation of 720p vs 1080i was the best tech manual I've ever read. :-)

Does anyone have a Mac?

Read some other Microsoft blogs sometime. Either this "guy" is a real Microsoft insider, or he's spent far too much time studying the company. He's not writing about anything that isn't present on other websites, but he writes about them in more detail. Of course, there's also the fact that none of his fellow Microsoft bloggers (outside of Ballmer) seem to be saying that what he's saying isn't true. There's always a chance that this is an elaborate hoax, but I don't think the chances of that are very high. Some of these Microsoft folks would've stepped up to deny this, and wouldn't be saying nice things about mini-microsoft.

Personally, I suspect the business/marketing/PR/HR side of MS is to blame.

The problem can be summarized by a quote from a Microsoft employee's blog. "... in my experience working with various corporations, what the people in the trenches think is disregarded. If you're below a certain level, you're treated as someone from whom output is expected, but not opinions." This is a problem in any organization, but is only worsened when the managers and executives choose to surround themselves with yes-men. The result is a powerful reality distortion field, and usually poor decisions that leave those who work in the trenches disenfranchised. It's not just large corporations that are susceptable to this, either. I work for a medium sized business and regularily experience this.

You dont have to be for this book. I dont think he has a single article in it.

Btw: there is an essay in there by Rory Blyth, if you dont think it is funny you have never worked in the real world. But the great thing is, the essay is a blog post. you can read it here.
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/434.aspx

You just reminded me of an old comic from Rory Blyth.

Thanks Rory.

Hey, just wanted to say I love those comic videos you and Scott did recently. Also, the pure programming inspiration that is NeoFox, heh, that was a gem.

I work for Microsoft, but I'm a tech-enthusiast, and I love to install bits of everything (Windows CE/XP/etc., I own a Mac, have some Linux boxes, blah blah blah).

I used to be heavily into Linux/OSS, even going so far as to write a textbook on Linux for a local vocational school, but eventually lost interest when I realized that some very vocal members of the "community" were more interested in bashing Microsoft than in furthering Linux. I just didn't get it.

Most recently, I was reading Linux Magazine when I read an inflammatory letter from the editor in which he did *nothing* to promote linux, but spent his entire monthly column talking smack about Microsoft.

Where's the value in that? As an MS stockholder, it doesn't help me out any to say this, but there's enough interesting stuff going on in OSS land that people shouldn't have to resort to MS bashing to get people excited.

Not only that, but if one of the points of something like Linux Magazine is to drive adoption of Linux/OSS, it seems like a stupid move to do anything that will alienate *any* potential customers/users, keeping in mind that softies can play with Linux when they get home, too.

For anybody who's interested, I provided my response to the editor here: "Dear Linux Magazine"

It's such a messy world.

That said, Longhorn does have the new command line shell, Monad - the MSDN Longhorn site indicates it has some new security layer which sounds a good deal like jails but can't possibly be as thorough. Not to mention, a completely new build of Notepad!!!

Excel is a great tool for certain tasks. Since it is the only data manipulation tool many people know, it gets used for things it really shouldn't.

I saw this linked to from joelonsoftware.com about a year ago.

Made me laugh, because I was suffering from having to convert 20,000 row .xls pseudo-databases at the time.

That's not a loser. This is a loser: http://neopoleon.com/blog/.

Bottom line: I'm not convinced Microsoft's philosophical approach to rights-protected content is one consumers will embrace.

Excel as a database.

You can make you own your own function loader very easily like this: http://dom.neopoleon.com/PermaLink.aspx/e36262bd-a 5a8-43ee-936e-0e68cc905740

Compiling each function into its own .o file to build a normal library is also a way to reduce clumpy library loading.