Especially if you are running a database under Linux, for whatever reason. Say because your budget for a project is a couple hundred bucks (including hardware) and requires the system to generate a lot of paperwork.
Actually, I've been playing with an embedded database called SQLite[sqlite.org]. It wraps the DB engine in your application, and you get info back and forth through a linked C library.
The author(s) wrote a set of Tcl bindings which make it easy for my lame ass to write noddy little applications in short order. (One line of code to load the module, one line of code to open the database file, and everything after that is retrieving data through SQL.)
Of course your worm would have to either know ahead of time the proper ODBC source, or seek it out, and hope the user associated with the database has been granted any rights to actually modify the data.
Much simpler to stick to MS office. More bang for your buck. Why settled for a DB user when you can OWN! the box.
I've been packaging MySQL and a copy of the TclHttpd to create a local web server that can be run under Linux and Windows. The user just opens a web browser to "localhost" and does what he/she/it needs to.
To tie several apps together, set one up as a master. For applications that will really only be talking to themselves I will sometimes use an embedded DB engine called Sqlite. It runs directly in your application making it too damn fast to be funny.
Well actually this is the last tool I needed to completely cut loose from MS office. I run a database of Volunteers for a large folk festival. Every year I have to send out several mailings to about 1000 people at a time. To automate the process, I shoot out mailing labels in Access. I tried writing my own mailing list program, but frankly I have a database to run. I've written my share of drivers to know that if a canned product will do it for you USE IT.
Now I use OpenOffice religiously, and MySQL (what the present database is written in.) The only reason my Viao still has a Windows partion is for printing the labels. Okay, that and Civ. This is gravy. This is soooo cooool. My head is stuffed with applications for this integration. Must stop posting and start coding...
Now according to the theory of marketing, an ideal product fulfills an existing demand. The marketer simply acts as way of communicating between buyers and sellers.
Given how much in the way of resources Microsoft devotes to marketing, does anyone have illusions of it being an ideal product?
Already, programming jobs are being exported to places where they can be done almost for free. I'm starting to wonder if Linux and other open source projects are choking off what remains of our software economy. Is it too farfetched to think that some restrictions need to be put into place to protect workers?
This is a non-sequitor. Jobs HAVE moved overseas, and it doesn't matter whether the software is Open Source or not.
Frankly software should be free. We don't charge for understanding algebra, chemical processes have been known for years, and I don't recall paying royalties for understanding the history of WWII.
It is only in the 20th century that we have regarded ideas as any kind of property. If you don't believe me that the open exchange of ideas speeds progress, look at how in a little under 200 years Chemistry CAN now turn lead into gold. (Granted, if you simply shoot protons into lead atoms you will end up with a radioactive isotope of gold, but I digress.)
Alchemists tried for thousands of years, each toiling in secret. They coveted their formulas, and each took them to the grave. I don't recall any one of them being particularly rich at the end either.
Hardly any need, it was transmitting all of its data to the ground in real time.
Re:New? but I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey ...
on
Blacker Than Black
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· Score: 1, Funny
That comment made me want to hit you over the head with a bone. Or maybe it's that annoying screeching sound. I think it's coming from my mother board. Damn capacitors.
We can finally get the Heart of Gold affect
on
Blacker Than Black
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· Score: 2, Funny
Think of it Linux geeks. A car that's so black, you can't tell how close you are standing to it. Inside all of the controls will be black on a darker shade of black.
I think the decline of American civilization began with the invention of Lotus 123. Before that, real estate transactions had to make sense on the back of an envelope. CEO's couldn't just burn everything down to a number and frob them in real time to make them look good.
Think of how many decisions in business don't even look good on paper anymore. Companies shedding devisions that, while making money, aren't making BOOKOO money. All the games like 37.5 hour work weeks on your pay stub. And all of those assine hoops they jump through for tax reasons.
Now if I go to company A and say, hey, for yor next data center upgrade I can save you 80% of the cost by going with Linux I would be laughed out of the meeting. If I turn around and say I can save 10% of your next round of computer upgrades by skipping the floppy, they might buy it. If I say that I will save them a fraction of a penny on a penny component by going with a noname manufacturer, I'd get promoted.
I like the suggestion to just produce the stuff on site. You can make peroxide easily enough. The danger is storing it, and transporting it. Want a billion dollar industry, make a Peroxide factory that transports on a truck bed for on-site fuel manufacture.
Unfortunately, the Space shuttle is such a camel of a spacecraft that I doubt it will ever fly again. In 2 accidents we have already passed the russians in fatalilites in space.
20 launches of the shuttle at $250 a pop would pay all of the R&D for retrofitting an existing rocket design to fly manned missions. (The Gemini spacecraft was launched on a modified ICBM btw.)
In the meantime, all efforts should be made to find some other way of getting crap into space. The shuttle is, and has been for it's entire existance, a sucking sound for American taxpayer money.
You must be doing a better job than I am at suppressing the memories of Season 7 aren't you. If there was one more Dream Sequence I was going to hurl the @#$! tv out the windows.
And lets all recall the wonderful TNG movies. You know classics like the wrath of^H^H^H^H^, er Generations.
And never credit market timing where damn crappy commercials explain it better. The Ad's where Vapid action sequences tied together with hackneyed lines. I had to call in favors to drag my wife out to it, she thought from the ads that it was going to suck.
And don't forget, it was Roddenberry who was working against the tide to bring a cancelled series first back from the dead, then into the movies, and finally back on the air. That takes a hell of a lot more Chutzpa than takine am established franchise and running it on autopilot until it is utterly forgettable.
Our world is made up a a thousand little rules that a computer will be oblivious to until somebody writes them down. (Or more specifically, writes them in a way that allow the rules the system learns to integrate with other rulesets. Learning is easy. Remebering is the hard part.)
A figment of Douglas Adams imagination. A company so large and makes so many shoddy products that the only division making a profit is the complaint department that now spans 3 planets...
Its a set of glass walls. You can't open them. To move air through the house they have a ventilation system, but it tends to pick up mold and viruses, requiring a take down and reinstall about every year or so.
Since everything is made of glass, kids tend to throw rocks at it. Rather than reinforce the glass, you are periodically sent a set of "patches" to fix the glass yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Crimy, they could at least throw us a bone with some Chance or Community Chest cards.
Especially if you are running a database under Linux, for whatever reason. Say because your budget for a project is a couple hundred bucks (including hardware) and requires the system to generate a lot of paperwork.
The author(s) wrote a set of Tcl bindings which make it easy for my lame ass to write noddy little applications in short order. (One line of code to load the module, one line of code to open the database file, and everything after that is retrieving data through SQL.)
Much simpler to stick to MS office. More bang for your buck. Why settled for a DB user when you can OWN! the box.
To tie several apps together, set one up as a master. For applications that will really only be talking to themselves I will sometimes use an embedded DB engine called Sqlite. It runs directly in your application making it too damn fast to be funny.
So what program is FUD registered to. I know it's somewhere in Windows, I just can't fund it...
Now I use OpenOffice religiously, and MySQL (what the present database is written in.) The only reason my Viao still has a Windows partion is for printing the labels. Okay, that and Civ. This is gravy. This is soooo cooool. My head is stuffed with applications for this integration. Must stop posting and start coding...
Given how much in the way of resources Microsoft devotes to marketing, does anyone have illusions of it being an ideal product?
This is a non-sequitor. Jobs HAVE moved overseas, and it doesn't matter whether the software is Open Source or not.
Frankly software should be free. We don't charge for understanding algebra, chemical processes have been known for years, and I don't recall paying royalties for understanding the history of WWII.
It is only in the 20th century that we have regarded ideas as any kind of property. If you don't believe me that the open exchange of ideas speeds progress, look at how in a little under 200 years Chemistry CAN now turn lead into gold. (Granted, if you simply shoot protons into lead atoms you will end up with a radioactive isotope of gold, but I digress.)
Alchemists tried for thousands of years, each toiling in secret. They coveted their formulas, and each took them to the grave. I don't recall any one of them being particularly rich at the end either.
It's only a fleshwound, er, study.
Hardly any need, it was transmitting all of its data to the ground in real time.
That comment made me want to hit you over the head with a bone. Or maybe it's that annoying screeching sound. I think it's coming from my mother board. Damn capacitors.
Might make a cool screen too.
Maybe we should push CMDR Taco to allow the Karmic Whores like ourselves to moderate the selection of new stories as well as the comments.
(Cue the excessivly nasty moderation of this comment.)
Think of how many decisions in business don't even look good on paper anymore. Companies shedding devisions that, while making money, aren't making BOOKOO money. All the games like 37.5 hour work weeks on your pay stub. And all of those assine hoops they jump through for tax reasons.
Now if I go to company A and say, hey, for yor next data center upgrade I can save you 80% of the cost by going with Linux I would be laughed out of the meeting. If I turn around and say I can save 10% of your next round of computer upgrades by skipping the floppy, they might buy it. If I say that I will save them a fraction of a penny on a penny component by going with a noname manufacturer, I'd get promoted.
Or just good old fashioned kerosene.
I like the suggestion to just produce the stuff on site. You can make peroxide easily enough. The danger is storing it, and transporting it. Want a billion dollar industry, make a Peroxide factory that transports on a truck bed for on-site fuel manufacture.
20 launches of the shuttle at $250 a pop would pay all of the R&D for retrofitting an existing rocket design to fly manned missions. (The Gemini spacecraft was launched on a modified ICBM btw.)
In the meantime, all efforts should be made to find some other way of getting crap into space. The shuttle is, and has been for it's entire existance, a sucking sound for American taxpayer money.
How do they get payloads into orbit: A cheap expendible rocket.
How do they repair satellites in space: They don't. They launch a new on with a cheap expendible rocket.
And lets all recall the wonderful TNG movies. You know classics like the wrath of^H^H^H^H^, er Generations.
And never credit market timing where damn crappy commercials explain it better. The Ad's where Vapid action sequences tied together with hackneyed lines. I had to call in favors to drag my wife out to it, she thought from the ads that it was going to suck.
And don't forget, it was Roddenberry who was working against the tide to bring a cancelled series first back from the dead, then into the movies, and finally back on the air. That takes a hell of a lot more Chutzpa than takine am established franchise and running it on autopilot until it is utterly forgettable.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
Well, they did remove Clippy by default.
I'm not worthy.
You can't push string.
Our world is made up a a thousand little rules that a computer will be oblivious to until somebody writes them down. (Or more specifically, writes them in a way that allow the rules the system learns to integrate with other rulesets. Learning is easy. Remebering is the hard part.)
A figment of Douglas Adams imagination. A company so large and makes so many shoddy products that the only division making a profit is the complaint department that now spans 3 planets...
Its a set of glass walls. You can't open them. To move air through the house they have a ventilation system, but it tends to pick up mold and viruses, requiring a take down and reinstall about every year or so.
Since everything is made of glass, kids tend to throw rocks at it. Rather than reinforce the glass, you are periodically sent a set of "patches" to fix the glass yourself.