Re:Don't get in over your head...
on
Head First SQL
·
· Score: 1
Did it ever occur to you that the 'paying customer' could just as easily be the tiny local coffeeshop around the corner which just needs a small database
Yes, it did, and that was my first suspicion. And the correct answer is: small shop needs an off the shelf package and not something custom made. The vendor of such can support them via call center when the occassional problem with their product comes up as well as send out regular patches. 'Anita' is going to spend ever increasing amounts of her time fixing and refixing this beast that she's making and end up frustrating the heck out of the owners of the small operation that's hired her - as if a small operation has plenty of extra time and money to wait and/or be the guinea pig while she learns? And nevermind just designing that database, how are reports to be generated and data entered? Even for a small business this is a big project to create all that from scratch (and then to maintain it) even if you were to use Access with its forms and reports wizards, nevermind MySQL.
The professional approach to "could you please set up a database for my very small business" is "Let's look over packages x,y, and z and see which of them best fits your needs." One can legitimately milk that for a week or even two of consulting fees if you include requirements gathering, investigating the features of several packages (and the vendors' support track records), setup, installation, and maybe even some staff instruction on computer use. The professional answer is NOT "Ah, what an amazing coincidence - I just got a beginner's database HOWTO book in the mail yesterday!"
That amount of money is probably the hourly rate for someone with your skills
I'll pass on your kind recommendation but unfortunately you've overshot a fair amount.;)
Re:Don't get in over your head...
on
Head First SQL
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Re:Don't get in over your head... (Score:3, Funny)
It's not 'funny' dammit! It's 'customer getting taken for a ride'. The question is generated because she's using a joining table to solve a many to many between her customer and address tables and has named the constraints herself the same on each table instead of letting the system generate them. But WTF?? Address record goes to ONE customer record! If some other customer registers the same address just duplicate the %$#@ing 200 bytes of text but don't m-m it with the customer table!
Frack! Now I'm going to have to follow adventures of Anita The HOWTO Book Data Architect on that forum in the way one can't help but watch a train wreck in progress.
Re:Don't get in over your head...
on
Head First SQL
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Database design and creation isn't something you pick up over 3 days
Dude, it's FAR more terrifying than that. From the forums on that site:
anita Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 23 Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 1:30 am Post subject: CREATE a TABLE with a FOREIGN KEY I never noticed until this evening while building a database for a customer to use with her business, but I can't seem to find the place in the book where the code for creating multiple tables from two foreign keys exists
WTF: from 'I don't know anything about databases' to 'building a database for a customer' what amount of time? We don't know when "sunday" was, but even so it seems rather abrupt given that 'anita' has only joined the forum in October and is now designing databases for (presumably) paying customers. This HOWTO book must kick serious ass.
overnight experts, sigh
on
Head First SQL
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Prior to opening the couriered package, I had no knowledge of SQL... Now, I can design and create databases
As a database designer/developer who occasionally does DBA duties as well I initially found this quote terrifying in the extreme. But as long as this experimenting about is done on your own PC for at least the next few months, it's great that you're getting a start on a new (to you) class of software tools. Way too many people plough on using spreadsheets where they should be using at least Access. I encourage anyone with accountant or small business owning friends to pass on this review.
I just know how to spend wisely; $150 - $200 on a proper raid card, $40 ea for 3 or 4 80GB drives (more than enough to back up the 120GB in question) leaves $200 for a PC from a second hand shop with a 90 day or so warranty. Plenty. Unless he needs a new dual core system that's going to sit idle practically all the time except for backups? The project is for online backup storage which puts the emphasis on the disk subsystem. Good raid card in second hand system fits that bill better than a new mb/cpu just to run software raid. It's also more power efficient.
I'd tell her to get a Civic instead of a Yugo. RAID cards can cost thousands if you want to go nuts; the GP only recommending starting at $200 which is hardly unreasonable. Chill out.
Who says the age of giants was only during the dinosaur era?
Speaking of giants, they only found 1 of these things, not a whole race of them. How do they know it wasn't the "Andre the Giant" of the sea scorpions?
Give another 50 years, and what we call basic math will be indistinguishable from magic for large parts of the population
One time in the flooring shop I asked the saleswoman the length of the diagonal of some tiles. She was standing there holding a calculator and said 'I don't know, I'll have to get my chart' and ran to get a preprinted chart. I tried to show her how to do length * length * 2 and then the square root button but she just said that it was a lot easier to just read the chart than remember all that.
Need mobos which can hold 16 GB of memory, not faster CPUs
Then go buy one. NewEgg's motherboard search has 'max supported memory' as an option where there are 2 that support 16GB and 3 that support 32GB. And that's in the consumer grade motherboards. You've been able to get that kind of memory support in a server class motherboard, that really doesn't cost much more than a consumer one, for years and years now.
If you can't trust 12 people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty to evaluate that evidence
Such a finely developed sense of civic duty you have there. Jury duty may well be a pain in the arse but it's a hard won right for accused that people in trouble with the law in most other parts of the world would find an amazing gift.
International law and terrorists, making smaller countries comply
Like making an international law in the first place? There are no international laws; only international treaties. (Outside of the EU) there is no international legislature with the ability to pass binding laws.
but you may remember this poll from last year where majorities in several countries traditionally allied with the US rated the country as a serious threat to world peace
The Guardian (UK: just above US on internet censorship list (ICL hereafter)), Haaretz (Israel: 13th on ICL) , Toronto Star (Canada: 5th on ICL) should apparently be more concerned about their own countries' internet censoring than the US's. This is a typical tactic to crack down on something and point the blame or direct attention at an external cause. Reforma from Mexico, the only country not on the ICL, is frequently just complaining about the US in general.
I believe that a big reason a lot of people don't want the US in control
It's not "people" who don't like US control, it's "people who run oppressive governments". Look at the summary: a Russian is complaining about US control at the same time his government is busy trying to copy the Chinese filtering techniques.
Let's look at the Internet Usage By Region graph linked above that innocently labels by continental land masses as if all populations of the world yearn to be free from the USA's oppressive Internet policies. Compare it to the Internet Censorship worst offenders list on Wikipedia. Oh, look, apparently as a suprise to many/. readers, the USA is at the bottom of the list, mainly for laws aimed at restricting offensive materials from children that are under constant attack in the courts. No one is in Chinese or Russian courts fighting to remove censorship there because it would just get the plaintiff disappeared. And don't be fooled by the Europeans. France and Germany are #8 and #9 of the top 10 list of Internet censors.
Of all the major players in the world, the US has the by far best track record (not perfect, just best) of keeping the internet open.
Where were you to back me up when the geology teacher in grade 11 asked on a quiz 'what is the name of the star this planet orbits?' He marked me wrong for putting 'Sol' instead of 'the Sun' (same for Luna and Terra on the same quiz). I pointed out the name of the thing was indeed 'Sol' and that putting 'the' in front of it meant the word sun wasn't a proper name. He admitted that even though I was technically correct it wasn't the answer he was looking for so 10% off for each of the 3 anyway. Now THAT shit was pompous.
Counterfeiting is illegal. The US Mints only make coins; any bills they printed would have to be with their color laser printer. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints the bills.
On a D630 we are seeing four and a half hour battery life with standard stock batteries
I also have a D630 with the stock battery and I get just over 4 hours with a normal hard drive thanks to using RightMark's CPU utility to lower the voltage by 30% from the factory setting. You should try it in combination with the SSD and the thing will run for days on an extended battery. (your CPU might not be stable at 30% lower like mine but you'll be able to lower it some)
It seems crazy that the data centres seem to run in hot states
Several people have asked this and you're all thinking inside the box; a better idea is why not locate data centers near large cavern complexes or abandoned mines where the air temp inside is in the 60's no matter what the temp outside. Run a duct into the cave and you have natural AC. Just need a fan and if the power to that goes out, have one of those exercise bikes with the big fan as a wheel for the backup.
I have to disagree; the Borg are a pretty good relentless antagonist and not a cheap plot device in themselves... although unfortunately cheap plot devices are too often used to get the Federation Friends out of their clutches.
I was thinking the same thing and figure the final word in tired, cheap ST plot devices would be a prequel about travelling back in time to meet Q in a runaway holodeck program.
Slashdot Mirror
Did it ever occur to you that the 'paying customer' could just as easily be the tiny local coffeeshop around the corner which just needs a small database
;)
Yes, it did, and that was my first suspicion. And the correct answer is: small shop needs an off the shelf package and not something custom made. The vendor of such can support them via call center when the occassional problem with their product comes up as well as send out regular patches. 'Anita' is going to spend ever increasing amounts of her time fixing and refixing this beast that she's making and end up frustrating the heck out of the owners of the small operation that's hired her - as if a small operation has plenty of extra time and money to wait and/or be the guinea pig while she learns? And nevermind just designing that database, how are reports to be generated and data entered? Even for a small business this is a big project to create all that from scratch (and then to maintain it) even if you were to use Access with its forms and reports wizards, nevermind MySQL.
The professional approach to "could you please set up a database for my very small business" is "Let's look over packages x,y, and z and see which of them best fits your needs." One can legitimately milk that for a week or even two of consulting fees if you include requirements gathering, investigating the features of several packages (and the vendors' support track records), setup, installation, and maybe even some staff instruction on computer use. The professional answer is NOT "Ah, what an amazing coincidence - I just got a beginner's database HOWTO book in the mail yesterday!"
That amount of money is probably the hourly rate for someone with your skills
I'll pass on your kind recommendation but unfortunately you've overshot a fair amount.
Re:Don't get in over your head... (Score:3, Funny)
It's not 'funny' dammit! It's 'customer getting taken for a ride'. The question is generated because she's using a joining table to solve a many to many between her customer and address tables and has named the constraints herself the same on each table instead of letting the system generate them. But WTF?? Address record goes to ONE customer record! If some other customer registers the same address just duplicate the %$#@ing 200 bytes of text but don't m-m it with the customer table!
Frack! Now I'm going to have to follow adventures of Anita The HOWTO Book Data Architect on that forum in the way one can't help but watch a train wreck in progress.
Database design and creation isn't something you pick up over 3 days
Dude, it's FAR more terrifying than that. From the forums on that site:
anita Joined: 07 Oct 2007
Posts: 23
Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 1:30 am
Post subject: CREATE a TABLE with a FOREIGN KEY
I never noticed until this evening while building a database for a customer to use with her business, but I can't seem to find the place in the book where the code for creating multiple tables from two foreign keys exists
WTF: from 'I don't know anything about databases' to 'building a database for a customer' what amount of time? We don't know when "sunday" was, but even so it seems rather abrupt given that 'anita' has only joined the forum in October and is now designing databases for (presumably) paying customers. This HOWTO book must kick serious ass.
Prior to opening the couriered package, I had no knowledge of SQL ... Now, I can design and create databases
As a database designer/developer who occasionally does DBA duties as well I initially found this quote terrifying in the extreme. But as long as this experimenting about is done on your own PC for at least the next few months, it's great that you're getting a start on a new (to you) class of software tools. Way too many people plough on using spreadsheets where they should be using at least Access. I encourage anyone with accountant or small business owning friends to pass on this review.
does nothing but foment hatred against the US?
So join the other half of the population that isn't hating.
I just know how to spend wisely; $150 - $200 on a proper raid card, $40 ea for 3 or 4 80GB drives (more than enough to back up the 120GB in question) leaves $200 for a PC from a second hand shop with a 90 day or so warranty. Plenty. Unless he needs a new dual core system that's going to sit idle practically all the time except for backups? The project is for online backup storage which puts the emphasis on the disk subsystem. Good raid card in second hand system fits that bill better than a new mb/cpu just to run software raid. It's also more power efficient.
I'd tell her to get a Civic instead of a Yugo. RAID cards can cost thousands if you want to go nuts; the GP only recommending starting at $200 which is hardly unreasonable. Chill out.
Who says the age of giants was only during the dinosaur era?
Speaking of giants, they only found 1 of these things, not a whole race of them. How do they know it wasn't the "Andre the Giant" of the sea scorpions?
Ah, but with a national database of everything, the missing disks could be located with a simple search query!
Give another 50 years, and what we call basic math will be indistinguishable from magic for large parts of the population
One time in the flooring shop I asked the saleswoman the length of the diagonal of some tiles. She was standing there holding a calculator and said 'I don't know, I'll have to get my chart' and ran to get a preprinted chart. I tried to show her how to do length * length * 2 and then the square root button but she just said that it was a lot easier to just read the chart than remember all that.
Need mobos which can hold 16 GB of memory, not faster CPUs
Then go buy one. NewEgg's motherboard search has 'max supported memory' as an option where there are 2 that support 16GB and 3 that support 32GB. And that's in the consumer grade motherboards. You've been able to get that kind of memory support in a server class motherboard, that really doesn't cost much more than a consumer one, for years and years now.
If you can't trust 12 people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty to evaluate that evidence
Such a finely developed sense of civic duty you have there. Jury duty may well be a pain in the arse but it's a hard won right for accused that people in trouble with the law in most other parts of the world would find an amazing gift.
we may use your signal to target a space war laser that will disintegrate you
It's OK; I've remodulated my shields to match the frequency of their laser.
Yes, the subsections are alphabetized internally. The US is in the least worrisome category at the bottom.
Now I just need a copy of the software on my laptop and a time warping wormhole to 1942.
Just have to remember not to ask for "pepsi, free"...
International law and terrorists, making smaller countries comply
Like making an international law in the first place? There are no international laws; only international treaties. (Outside of the EU) there is no international legislature with the ability to pass binding laws.
but you may remember this poll from last year where majorities in several countries traditionally allied with the US rated the country as a serious threat to world peace
The Guardian (UK: just above US on internet censorship list (ICL hereafter)), Haaretz (Israel: 13th on ICL) , Toronto Star (Canada: 5th on ICL) should apparently be more concerned about their own countries' internet censoring than the US's. This is a typical tactic to crack down on something and point the blame or direct attention at an external cause. Reforma from Mexico, the only country not on the ICL, is frequently just complaining about the US in general.
I believe that a big reason a lot of people don't want the US in control
/. readers, the USA is at the bottom of the list, mainly for laws aimed at restricting offensive materials from children that are under constant attack in the courts. No one is in Chinese or Russian courts fighting to remove censorship there because it would just get the plaintiff disappeared. And don't be fooled by the Europeans. France and Germany are #8 and #9 of the top 10 list of Internet censors.
It's not "people" who don't like US control, it's "people who run oppressive governments". Look at the summary: a Russian is complaining about US control at the same time his government is busy trying to copy the Chinese filtering techniques.
Let's look at the Internet Usage By Region graph linked above that innocently labels by continental land masses as if all populations of the world yearn to be free from the USA's oppressive Internet policies. Compare it to the Internet Censorship worst offenders list on Wikipedia. Oh, look, apparently as a suprise to many
Of all the major players in the world, the US has the by far best track record (not perfect, just best) of keeping the internet open.
Where were you to back me up when the geology teacher in grade 11 asked on a quiz 'what is the name of the star this planet orbits?' He marked me wrong for putting 'Sol' instead of 'the Sun' (same for Luna and Terra on the same quiz). I pointed out the name of the thing was indeed 'Sol' and that putting 'the' in front of it meant the word sun wasn't a proper name. He admitted that even though I was technically correct it wasn't the answer he was looking for so 10% off for each of the 3 anyway. Now THAT shit was pompous.
Damn, I hated high school.
The US Mint can print as many bills as they like
Counterfeiting is illegal. The US Mints only make coins; any bills they printed would have to be with their color laser printer. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints the bills.
On a D630 we are seeing four and a half hour battery life with standard stock batteries
I also have a D630 with the stock battery and I get just over 4 hours with a normal hard drive thanks to using RightMark's CPU utility to lower the voltage by 30% from the factory setting. You should try it in combination with the SSD and the thing will run for days on an extended battery. (your CPU might not be stable at 30% lower like mine but you'll be able to lower it some)
I just went on the Walk Against Warming march in Sydney
Hmm, sounds like a hot and sweaty activity. Maybe next time it should be a "Sit Quetly Against Warming"
It seems crazy that the data centres seem to run in hot states
Several people have asked this and you're all thinking inside the box; a better idea is why not locate data centers near large cavern complexes or abandoned mines where the air temp inside is in the 60's no matter what the temp outside. Run a duct into the cave and you have natural AC. Just need a fan and if the power to that goes out, have one of those exercise bikes with the big fan as a wheel for the backup.
I have to disagree; the Borg are a pretty good relentless antagonist and not a cheap plot device in themselves... although unfortunately cheap plot devices are too often used to get the Federation Friends out of their clutches.
getting pretty tired of prequels and time travel
I was thinking the same thing and figure the final word in tired, cheap ST plot devices would be a prequel about travelling back in time to meet Q in a runaway holodeck program.