No what I was saying was (which I probably should have made clearer, hindsight is 20/20...) this:
I didnt want this to be "lets submit this to Slashdot and get everyone riled up", so read it knowing what type of article this will be. Intended to mean "you will most likely either get pissed off or disgusted by this type of thinking". I know I did.
Case in point: The comrades comment by the author was a real winner, real non-biased journalistic integrity there dont you think?
No what I was saying was (which I probably should have made clearer, hindsight is 20/20...) this:
I didnt want this to be "lets submit this to Slashdot and get everyone riled up", so read it knowing what type of article this will be. Intended to be "you will most likely either get pissed off or disgusted by this type of thinking". I know I did.
Case in point: The comrades comment by the author was a real winner, real non-biased journalistic integrity there dont you think?
It's a numbers game, really. What is the bigger pain the the public's arse? 60 phonecalls / day that we don't want to get, or some regulation that gives us a central place to say, "don't call me, or I'll SUE YOU."
The fact is, for consumers^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hcitizens , the numbers are against us. There are LOTS of businesses out there competing for our interest, and they will use any outlet they think is valid for their marketing purposes.
The more people they can get their message to, the better. That means that as they all expand their marketing efforts, we all get a lot more calls. The problem is, there's a limit to how many unwanted solicitations we as individuals can tolerate, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I've reached mine.
I think you are automatically assuming money equals power.
The Sultan of Brunei makes much more than the President of the US. But which person has the most power?
Ghandi and his followers had much less money than the British empire and look who won.
IMHO the true measure of power is a persons ability to get X resources (usually people) to perform a certain task or goal. The higher your X value is compared to others, the more power you have.
Maybe I have been doing this to long but this is reminiscent of turning 360k 5 1/4 inch floppies into 1.2 MB by adding a cutting a notch opposite of the write protect side. You can also do the same to 3 1/2 720k by adding a hole to the top making it a 1.44 mb.
How many people in IT have heard BS like this time after time year after year...?
Its bad enough I have to hear this bullshit at work, 'forecasts' made by a buzzspeaking fuckstick that never ring true, but *please* don't let this garbage take over Slashdot...It may not be much, but this place is all I have left...*sniff*
Business 2.0 would just go away. Suits read this garbage and believe every word in this rag. These and the people like them are responsible for the 'New Economy' stock market bubble and all of the BS that went along with it.
No doubt. I think someone should have a cron job that automatically submits stories about dumb patents, Microsoft security vulnerabilities, and case mods every week. You can further enhance this system by automatically having it post *those really redundant and lame* 'In Soviet Russia', 'In other news...', and BSOD jokes. Throw in a few clever ELIZA generated trolls and 'I know I am going to get modded down for this...' posts and you could sell rubber neeeples and rule the world!
Since its access/users/mysql you are talking about I might be able to help.
I am going to assume the clients/users are still using windows. MyODBC can be used to connect to your database. (BTW ODBC = Open DataBase Connectivity.) Then you can use MySQLfront to help create tables, etc in a graphical UI on a MS windows box. This means your office 'power users' wont be too mad they wont have their access wizards.;)
Now that you can connect to a MySQL DB, and users have gui tools to create tables and select statements, then you can use something like occamboy suggested (Crystal rpts) if you are stuck using VB. OR you might try using a browser as a reporting tool. This works good if cash is limited.
Example: Using php/apache to build the report html, make a table or DIV for each page, setting a strict table/div width, then at the end of pages insert style sheet page breaks. The user then can print directly from the browser. Yes it *will work* with IE if you are still stuck with it. BTW I would recommend setting the permissions different on the reporting tables, so users can't cheese 'em.
Another thing IMHO helping MySQL more than PostgreSQL in terms of mindshare, is the fact (at least for PHP 4.0+ I know for a fact 4.2.3) is that the MySQL support is loaded/compiled by default, but if you choose to use Postgres you have to include the --with-pgsql option (assumes location is/usr/local/pgsql) when you./configure.
Personally it doesn't matter to me, I have both on my box (to each their own, etc). But since a good number of MySQL installs are used right along with Apache and PHP, it might actually be more of a convenience factor to explain why people might use MySQL more often than PostgreSQL.
I am frankly surprised that MS SQL Server was ranked along oracle and DB2 as a 'high end' DB. Anyone who has had to work with it usually disagrees!
Personally I have seen SQL server most on small/medium size business environments. Any large 'enterprise' sized business deserves what they get if they are dumb enough to rely MS SQL server. Look what happened to Bank Of Americas ATMS when the last MS virus du jour made its rounds.
I think MySQL is the best bet to reduce Microsofts share of the DB market. Oracle is better, but small business isn't willing to fork out that kind of cash, especially in this economy. MySQL is especially perfect for the small business web site, and with Microsoft irrationally increasing subscribtion fees and forcing upgrades, a good percentage of their customers will be running into the open arms of MySQL/Postgres.
No they look somewhat similiar, but it isn't the same person.
Tsutomu Shimomura is the person you are thinking of, not Morgan Lim.
BTW I although the bio might be accurate, I would actually trust everything I read at takedown.com. It is *definitely* biased towards the Markoff side of the Mitnick saga. Read this for an interesting take on the Mitnick saga. Start at section 2a.
Exactly. Personal experience with my cheesy low end HP Inkjet I do the following:
Use hot water and q-tips to clean the print head, as the gunk seems to disappear easier with hot water, then *lightly press* (but not rub) the print head on a paper napkin repeatedly to dry it off.
When refill time, try to purchase oil based inks instead of water based inks, the gunking up phenomenon seems to occur less frequently with the oil based inks.
If you don't know the difference between precision and accuracy, we can't have a discussion.
Agreed
I know I shouldnt feed the trolls but here are the definitions of precision and accuracy: Precision 1) The state or quality of being precise; exactness. 2a)The ability of a measurement to be consistently reproduced. (Which applies to pc-clocks. - my comments.) 2b)The number of significant digits to which a value has been reliably measured.
Accuracy 1) Conformity to fact. 2) Precision; exactness. 3) The ability of a measurement to match the actual value of the quantity being measured.
Now that that is cleared up, there are a gazillion links for this search query on google...Read them all.
In your analogy, the chip itself would be defining its own frequency, which isn't how PC clocks work.
See this page for more information. However an excerpt from this page verifies my explanation:
Time Losses in System Clock on Windows 95-Based Computers The system clock on a Windows 95-based computer may experience a cumulative loss of time.
When you run the Date/Time tool in Control Panel, the computer's real-time clock (RTC) is updated using the MS-DOS system time. Because the RTC is being updated by a device that is less accurate, a cumulative loss of time can occur over a period of time.
The MS-DOS system time is accurate to 1/18 of a second. Each time you use the Date/Time tool, an incorrect time is written to the computer's RTC. The amount of time lost depends on how often the Date/Time tool is opened and the amount of time since it was last opened.
For standalone computers, this may not be much of a problem. However, with network programs that rely upon time and date stamps to ensure the proper file is accessed, this can cause problems over a period of time.
Synopsis of Microsoft Knowledge Base Article ID: Q157619
Not too much of a stretch. Microsoft has been a major contributor to the BSA since its inception. It harasses companies based on rumors of software non-compliance co-opting US Marshalls to act as a the gestapo. It is also growing power and influence worldwide.
Read this interview with Gates himself for more insight on Microsoft and the BSA.
Most clocks, I don't know about you but I use have two digital plug in clocks, they both use AC power rectified from a step down transformer to DC power using a classic 'bridge' rectifier, then use a voltage regulator chip to smooth out and regulate voltage to a much smaller but consistent DC voltage, typicaly 3-12 volts DC. The older 780x series of voltage regulator chips were good, but the more modern chips are much better. The amount of power on the grid fluctuates every day, however the frequency doesn't. Which, for older mechanical clocks would make a difference because an AC motor rotates in a direct relation to the input voltage frequency. For the type of clocks most people use it would make a difference because the chips inside use a steady DC current, which brings me to my next point.
The problem that is likely causing your clocks to get off sync are cheap and shoddy timing circuits. An example of this would be the shoddy clock chip on the old IBM clones. This chip (Intel 8253) has a very low clock tick-resolution ~18.2 times a second, which was fine for polling a joystick, etc on the older boxes, but is terrible for accurate time-keeping. Most digital watches have millions of 'clock-ticks' per second.
Reminds me of this post Once again Rudy Rucker proves prophetic. The protagonist of the story is a programmer named Jerzy Rugby who uses artifical life (ants!) to build and optimize robot source code.
Just like the ant analogy mentioned in the article, the ants were used for their collective ability to help build the smartest AI source. Again I recommend the read.
If Intel isn't spreading FUD about its 64 bit strategy, then this will be a turning point for AMD we will look back on in the future and say: "Wow Intel really screwed the pooch on that one".
Fairly typical for ZDNet, Linux is either downplayed; or, as is the case in this article, ignored totally: Currently, Itanium chips do not run regular Windows code well. Windows software is designed to run on 32-bit systems. 'There hasn't been much OS support'.
Forget the number of years Linux has been running on a variety of 64 bit chips for years.
Articles like these are way too biased towards the Intel/Microsoft duopoly. I say go for it Intel, AMD can produce stable quality CPUs and you and Microsoft can say to each other: "No one will ever need more than 4GB of memory.";)
For all of Gates 'visionary' success, he is best at dealing with OEMs, and using Windows to leverage other Microsoft products and is almost never the first to enter a new ground-breaking product. Most of Microsofts visionary work is heavily borrowed from other companies to release a product first.
Some examples:
Late entry into networking. Let Novell capture small business networking for many years.
Late entry into GUI interfaces. Let apple (and others) have a modern GUI interface years before a successfull MS version.
Late entry into IDEs (Integrated development environments). Borland was the first commercial success with Turbo Pascal (and incidentally the first successful TSR app called Sidekick).
Late entry into browsers. I can clearly remember using Mosaic and Netscape two years before I saw a decent MS browser.
Late entry into office suites. Can anyone say 1,2,3 or Wordstar?
Late entry into OSes. Gary Kildall had CPM long before Microsoft bought DOS from Tim Patterson.
Late entry into the ISP business. MSN is still behind.
IMHO, the only thing Gates, Ballmer etc are really good at is leveraging its monopoly position on Windows, and forcing OEMS to use its version of office suite, networking, browser, ISP etc. The rest of its technology is for the most part purchased, or stolen.
FTP is a crumbling legacy protocol and will make you look a dinosaur.
These two factors should not even enter the equation. Whatever you decide to use, you should decide based on which one accomplish your goals for a given situation.
Or you can look at it this way: You will look dumb, if you decide on an inferior technical solution only to appease peoples opinions on what they might think of you, or how 'in' you are. Those people really dont matter anyway, they read Business 2.0 and Information Week and believe it is gospel. These same people believed in the 'new economy', and XML this and that, blah blah.
Slashdot Mirror
No what I was saying was (which I probably should have made clearer, hindsight is 20/20...) this:
I didnt want this to be "lets submit this to Slashdot and get everyone riled up", so read it knowing what type of article this will be.
Intended to mean "you will most likely either get pissed off or disgusted by this type of thinking". I know I did.
Case in point: The comrades comment by the author was a real winner, real non-biased journalistic integrity there dont you think?
No what I was saying was (which I probably should have made clearer, hindsight is 20/20...) this:
I didnt want this to be "lets submit this to Slashdot and get everyone riled up", so read it knowing what type of article this will be.
Intended to be "you will most likely either get pissed off or disgusted by this type of thinking". I know I did.
Case in point: The comrades comment by the author was a real winner, real non-biased journalistic integrity there dont you think?
...IT staff treats them with such contempt?
They started it.
It's a numbers game, really. What is the bigger pain the the public's arse? 60 phonecalls / day that we don't want to get, or some regulation that gives us a central place to say, "don't call me, or I'll SUE YOU."
The fact is, for consumers^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h citizens , the numbers are against us. There are LOTS of businesses out there competing for our interest, and they will use any outlet they think is valid for their marketing purposes.
The more people they can get their message to, the better. That means that as they all expand their marketing efforts, we all get a lot more calls. The problem is, there's a limit to how many unwanted solicitations we as individuals can tolerate, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I've reached mine.
I think you are automatically assuming money equals power.
The Sultan of Brunei makes much more than the President of the US. But which person has the most power?
Ghandi and his followers had much less money than the British empire and look who won.
IMHO the true measure of power is a persons ability to get X resources (usually people) to perform a certain task or goal.
The higher your X value is compared to others, the more power you have.
Maybe I have been doing this to long but this is reminiscent of turning 360k 5 1/4 inch floppies into 1.2 MB by adding a cutting a notch opposite of the write protect side. You can also do the same to 3 1/2 720k by adding a hole to the top making it a 1.44 mb.
How many people in IT have heard BS like this time after time year after year...?
Its bad enough I have to hear this bullshit at work, 'forecasts' made by a buzzspeaking fuckstick that never ring true, but *please* don't let this garbage take over Slashdot...It may not be much, but this place is all I have left...*sniff*
Seriously, if you want to read garbage like this pick up a Information Week Red Herring or Business 2.0 then look at the people that are reading them.
Dont want to read it anymore do you?
Business 2.0 would just go away. Suits read this garbage and believe every word in this rag. These and the people like them are responsible for the 'New Economy' stock market bubble and all of the BS that went along with it.
:)
Besides, Business 2.0 is so '1999'
Correction, first Intel processor to use the protected mode interface that worked. They tried with the 286 and it didn't work that well.
No doubt.
I think someone should have a cron job that automatically submits stories about dumb patents, Microsoft security vulnerabilities, and case mods every week. You can further enhance this system by automatically having it post *those really redundant and lame* 'In Soviet Russia', 'In other news...', and BSOD jokes. Throw in a few clever ELIZA generated trolls and 'I know I am going to get modded down for this...' posts and you could sell rubber neeeples and rule the world!
Since its access/users/mysql you are talking about I might be able to help.
;)
I am going to assume the clients/users are still using windows. MyODBC can be used to connect to your database. (BTW ODBC = Open DataBase Connectivity.) Then you can use MySQLfront to help create tables, etc in a graphical UI on a MS windows box. This means your office 'power users' wont be too mad they wont have their access wizards.
Now that you can connect to a MySQL DB, and users have gui tools to create tables and select statements, then you can use something like occamboy suggested (Crystal rpts) if you are stuck using VB. OR you might try using a browser as a reporting tool. This works good if cash is limited.
Example: Using php/apache to build the report html, make a table or DIV for each page, setting a strict table/div width, then at the end of pages insert style sheet page breaks. The user then can print directly from the browser. Yes it *will work* with IE if you are still stuck with it. BTW I would recommend setting the permissions different on the reporting tables, so users can't cheese 'em.
Hope this helps.
Another thing IMHO helping MySQL more than PostgreSQL in terms of mindshare, is the fact (at least for PHP 4.0+ I know for a fact 4.2.3) is that the MySQL support is loaded/compiled by default, but if you choose to use Postgres you have to include the --with-pgsql option (assumes location is /usr/local/pgsql) when you ./configure.
Personally it doesn't matter to me, I have both on my box (to each their own, etc). But since a good number of MySQL installs are used right along with Apache and PHP, it might actually be more of a convenience factor to explain why people might use MySQL more often than PostgreSQL.
I am frankly surprised that MS SQL Server was ranked along oracle and DB2 as a 'high end' DB. Anyone who has had to work with it usually disagrees!
Personally I have seen SQL server most on small/medium size business environments. Any large 'enterprise' sized business deserves what they get if they are dumb enough to rely MS SQL server. Look what happened to Bank Of Americas ATMS when the last MS virus du jour made its rounds.
I think MySQL is the best bet to reduce Microsofts share of the DB market. Oracle is better, but small business isn't willing to fork out that kind of cash, especially in this economy. MySQL is especially perfect for the small business web site, and with Microsoft irrationally increasing subscribtion fees and forcing upgrades, a good percentage of their customers will be running into the open arms of MySQL/Postgres.
Hey this is Slashdot...Its cool and hip to rag on *anything*.
Chill out, its a joke people.
No they look somewhat similiar, but it isn't the same person.
Tsutomu Shimomura is the person you are thinking of, not Morgan Lim.
BTW I although the bio might be accurate, I would actually trust everything I read at takedown.com. It is *definitely* biased towards the Markoff side of the Mitnick saga. Read this for an interesting take on the Mitnick saga. Start at section 2a.
Is that you get to read a duplicate article before everyone else!
On a serious note, Slashdot needs to do something, so this isn't a bad thing IMHO.
Exactly. Personal experience with my cheesy low end HP Inkjet I do the following:
Use hot water and q-tips to clean the print head, as the gunk seems to disappear easier with hot water, then *lightly press* (but not rub) the print head on a paper napkin repeatedly to dry it off.
When refill time, try to purchase oil based inks instead of water based inks, the gunking up phenomenon seems to occur less frequently with the oil based inks.
If you don't know the difference between precision and accuracy, we can't have a discussion.
Agreed
I know I shouldnt feed the trolls but here are the definitions of precision and accuracy:
Precision
1) The state or quality of being precise; exactness.
2a)The ability of a measurement to be consistently reproduced. (Which applies to pc-clocks. - my comments.)
2b)The number of significant digits to which a value has been reliably measured.
Accuracy
1) Conformity to fact.
2) Precision; exactness.
3) The ability of a measurement to match the actual value of the quantity being measured.
Now that that is cleared up, there are a gazillion links for this search query on google...Read them all.
No.
In your analogy, the chip itself would be defining its own frequency, which isn't how PC clocks work.
See this page for more information. However an excerpt from this page verifies my explanation:
Time Losses in System Clock on Windows 95-Based Computers
The system clock on a Windows 95-based computer may experience a cumulative loss of time.
When you run the Date/Time tool in Control Panel, the computer's real-time clock (RTC) is updated using the MS-DOS system time. Because the RTC is being updated by a device that is less accurate, a cumulative loss of time can occur over a period of time.
The MS-DOS system time is accurate to 1/18 of a second. Each time you use the Date/Time tool, an incorrect time is written to the computer's RTC. The amount of time lost depends on how often the Date/Time tool is opened and the amount of time since it was last opened.
For standalone computers, this may not be much of a problem. However, with network programs that rely upon time and date stamps to ensure the proper file is accessed, this can cause problems over a period of time.
Synopsis of Microsoft Knowledge Base Article ID: Q157619
Not too much of a stretch. Microsoft has been a major contributor to the BSA since its inception. It harasses companies based on rumors of software non-compliance co-opting US Marshalls to act as a the gestapo. It is also growing power and influence worldwide.
Read this interview with Gates himself for more insight on Microsoft and the BSA.
To sum it all up, the BSA *is* Microsoft.
Most clocks, I don't know about you but I use have two digital plug in clocks, they both use AC power rectified from a step down transformer to DC power using a classic 'bridge' rectifier, then use a voltage regulator chip to smooth out and regulate voltage to a much smaller but consistent DC voltage, typicaly 3-12 volts DC. The older 780x series of voltage regulator chips were good, but the more modern chips are much better. The amount of power on the grid fluctuates every day, however the frequency doesn't. Which, for older mechanical clocks would make a difference because an AC motor rotates in a direct relation to the input voltage frequency. For the type of clocks most people use it would make a difference because the chips inside use a steady DC current, which brings me to my next point.
The problem that is likely causing your clocks to get off sync are cheap and shoddy timing circuits. An example of this would be the shoddy clock chip on the old IBM clones. This chip (Intel 8253) has a very low clock tick-resolution ~18.2 times a second, which was fine for polling a joystick, etc on the older boxes, but is terrible for accurate time-keeping. Most digital watches have millions of 'clock-ticks' per second.
Reminds me of this post Once again Rudy Rucker proves prophetic. The protagonist of the story is a programmer named Jerzy Rugby who uses artifical life (ants!) to build and optimize robot source code.
Just like the ant analogy mentioned in the article, the ants were used for their collective ability to help build the smartest AI source. Again I recommend the read.
If Intel isn't spreading FUD about its 64 bit strategy, then this will be a turning point for AMD we will look back on in the future and say: "Wow Intel really screwed the pooch on that one".
;)
Fairly typical for ZDNet, Linux is either downplayed; or, as is the case in this article, ignored totally:
Currently, Itanium chips do not run regular Windows code well.
Windows software is designed to run on 32-bit systems.
'There hasn't been much OS support'.
Forget the number of years Linux has been running on a variety of 64 bit chips for years.
Articles like these are way too biased towards the Intel/Microsoft duopoly. I say go for it Intel, AMD can produce stable quality CPUs and you and Microsoft can say to each other: "No one will ever need more than 4GB of memory."
Some examples:
Late entry into networking. Let Novell capture small business networking for many years.
Late entry into GUI interfaces. Let apple (and others) have a modern GUI interface years before a successfull MS version.
Late entry into IDEs (Integrated development environments). Borland was the first commercial success with Turbo Pascal (and incidentally the first successful TSR app called Sidekick).
Late entry into browsers. I can clearly remember using Mosaic and Netscape two years before I saw a decent MS browser.
Late entry into office suites. Can anyone say 1,2,3 or Wordstar?
Late entry into OSes. Gary Kildall had CPM long before Microsoft bought DOS from Tim Patterson.
Late entry into the ISP business. MSN is still behind.
IMHO, the only thing Gates, Ballmer etc are really good at is leveraging its monopoly position on Windows, and forcing OEMS to use its version of office suite, networking, browser, ISP etc. The rest of its technology is for the most part purchased, or stolen.
HTTP is amateur and will make you look a wimp.
FTP is a crumbling legacy protocol and will make you look a dinosaur.
These two factors should not even enter the equation. Whatever you decide to use, you should decide based on which one accomplish your goals for a given situation.
Or you can look at it this way: You will look dumb, if you decide on an inferior technical solution only to appease peoples opinions on what they might think of you, or how 'in' you are. Those people really dont matter anyway, they read Business 2.0 and Information Week and believe it is gospel. These same people believed in the 'new economy', and XML this and that, blah blah.
Do the right thing.