Scottish newspaper, The Shetland Times, went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. If hypertext links made without permission were made illegal, this would undermine the World Wide Web
I remember this example from when it was going around when it happened. The crucial point IIRC(which was ommitted from the chapter) is that it was not the fact that it had been linked that was the problem, it was the fact that it had been linked such that it appeared within the frames of another site and was made to appear as if it was their content. In essense the other site was claiming ownership of work which had been produced by the Shetland Times.
This comes to the crux of my feelings on copyright. As well as my computer work I am also a short story writer. I have no objections to people having copies of my work and distributing them, I distribute most of my stuff for free as it's just an interest for me and not a source of income. What I do object to and would invoke the law to prevent is someone else claiming ownership of something I have written or charging for it's distribution.
I suppose you could describe it as 'Freework', you can copy and distribute it so long as you don't charge for it or claim that it's anything but my work.
As I see it there are 3 main issues with migrating from one RDBMS to another:
Migrating data.
Migrating packages (ie processes such as triggers that run within the database).
Skills Transfer
On the first one you really have two choices. If you can extract the data as Comma-Separated-Variable or fixed field width files then you can use SQL*Loader to perform the upload. Alternatively Oracle do supply a Migration Workbech product that can help semiautomate the process, more details can be found here.
Packages running within the database (I must admit I don't know if Sybase has these) will probably need to be rewritten for the new RDBMS. In favour of Oracle it is now possible to write these in Java as a JVM is now included as part of the basic install of the server, I believe that it is Java 2 as of Oracle 8.1.6 but you would have to confirm this with Oracle themselves. Release 3 of Oracle 8i definately supports Java 2 API and includes XML support and Apache bundled within the database according to this page. Try searching the Oracle Corporate Website for further details.
Oracle uses the SQL-92 (ie ANSI) SQL for those areas that it covers, as has been quite rightly pointed out the extensions will differ from RDBMS to RDBMS. There are a lot of very good books available for Oracle which cover everything from introducing a total newbie upto assisting someone skilled in another RDBMS to transfer to Oracle. Try O'Reilly or Amazon for some good examples.
If you want to know more about Oracle on Linux then check out Oracle Technet. You will need to set upo a login but then can view documentation and download development versions to try out.
It does have a fairly hefty disk foot print (about 600Mb IIRC).
Oracle should be able to handle, in terms of size, whatever the hardware can handle. It also supports raw volumes.
The tradition of journalists protecting their source has, in the past, protected people who have done far worse than a minor act of vadalism. On occasion those in power have attempted to brand journalistic sources as treasonous, but they have been protected. Often people go to the press at personal or professional risk to themselves or their families, fear of being revealed could stop them and so mean that crimes perpetrated by those who happen to be in power go unreported. That is not the way for a free state to exist.
Part of the job of the press (unfortunately one on which if often falls down) is to keep the government honest.
I have had a deep distrust of the online activities of bodies like the FBI since reading "Crime and Puzzlement" by John Perry Barlow in 1990. I guess their tech has improved but I doubt their motives will have. The right to protection from crime does have some costs but I think Carnivore and Omnivore have swung a bit too far.
I found it very interesting, and useful, that the author specified that the sploit used was fixed in open source versions of statd before the attack but Digital UNIX took another 6 months.
I am currently involved in major battles with my line manager who seems to have this idea that Open Source = Unsupported. He doesn't realise that a product that is supported by thousands of developers who have a vested interest in solving problems is going to be better supported than one whose only backup is a handful of developers whose managers not only have a vested interest in hiding any flaws found but also want them involved in adding the newest whizz-bang features.
Based on articles I've read it looks like the equation is really Open Source = Secure and Supported.
Also, you may feel very lax about choosing who provides services to you and what companies you trade with, but you apathy certainly should not be enough to justify taking away another's freedom of association and trade.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, it is not apathy I am simply admiting that I cannot know everything. There are services I use on a day to day basis which I do not have the requisite knowledge to to fully asess their ability to provide other than very blunt indicators (eg choosing a doctor who has killed below the average number of his patients this year). My, and others, lack of this knowledge and the time to make this asessment is offset by the regulations set by people who do have that knowledge and the time to act on it.
Also (as I indicated with the scafhold pole example) I am affected by other decisions. For example a companys choice to hire a particular contractor who are cheaper because they adhere to a lower safety standard may result in my being hit by falling debris resulting in my being injured or killed. The same could happen to you or to the author of Fling.
I comes down to a balancing of one persons right to and another right from. To continue the example, a constrution company has their right to hire whoever is cheapest moderated to hiring contractors who adhere to a basic level of safety to protect other peoples right from being hit by falling debris.
To take your example of nurses, history (and simply looking around) shows that people are willing to be nurses and if the number of those who want to be nurses falls below those needed then offering financial inducements will soon raise the numbers. This could be extended to other job areas as well.
I firmly believe in from each according to their means, to each according to their needs. It is apparent that we will never agree on this point.
From the authors pages it looks like he is not just anti-tax but also opposed to anything which might be considered 'Social Justice'. I notice that he explicitly excluded Education and Healthcare from those things which governments should provide.
The author indicates that he believes that without regulation people would investigate companies and decide who to trust based on that. Unfortunately I have neither the time nor knowledge to investigate all of the companies with whom I have to deal on a daily basis, I'm finding it difficult enough to try to find out who my cheapest telco supplier would be. Also a lot of the things that are covered by regulation are things which if performed substandardly can be lethal, I do not wish to get killed or made seriously ill because I happened to visit the wrong bar for lunch or be impaled by a scafholding pole because someone else hired a company who turned out not to be as trustworthy as they should have been!
Whilst the fling protocol may be of use in the short term for protecting the identity of people in oppressive states who need to communicate information that might get them the attention of serious men in big boots carrying large caliber firearms I suspect that it will quickly be broken and in any case would find it's main use in the activities of those people generally considered to be criminals. I suspect that this sort of protection would be far better served by offshore anonymous remailers.
Also I notice that the author gives a virgin.net address as a mail contact. IIRC this is a UK ISP so presumably the author lives in the UK and benefits from free healthcare, state supported education (even the so called private schools recieve funding from the state albeit via different routes) and has his wages (if he is indeed working) inflated by the lower limit instilled by the social benefits system.
Freedom is all very well until human greed enters the equation.
The point of XML (as I understand it) is not to replace HTML as a method of presenting content in web browsers. It is a structured way of storing and transfering content in a standardised way which can then have styles applied to it so that it can be presented in the best possible format for the end users agent.
An HTML page which looks good in a browser running on a PC won't necessarily look good on a WAP phone screen, printed page or a WebTV, it may not be suitable for an audio browser. If the content is stored in XML you can create different style sheets (XSL) to handle each user agents quirks and foibles (or possibly use presupplied stylesheets if your XML complies with the DTDs the stylesheets were written in reference to) and present your content in a manner that the end user can see it in the best possible format.
Another usage is the transfer of data between companies. For example a product catalogue could be sent out in XML which the customer views (via an XSL style sheet) in their browser and selects the products they desire. The ordering system uses the same XML catalogue to process the order and create a stock pick order to the warehouse which in turn triggers the generation of an invoice and request for payment (probably also in XML) which can then be processed by the finance and credit control systems of the supplier and maybe even the customer.
As far as the average Buffy fan in the street is concerned in producing their home page all they are probably going to need to know is the changes from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0 like having to close tags and be a bit more disiplined in making their code properly formed.
I just want to add before everyone blasts MS for half-assing XML....XML wasn't even finalized when Office2K was in development. Not much you can do about that...
/. is irrelevant.
Microsoft are part of the group of companies who are building the XML standard, they should know what the standard is. If they can't/won't wait for the final standard, or at least comply to the transitional one then they should be critisises for it.
My feeling is that for a UI to be good the 'default' appearence should be easily understandable by a novice, ideally be familiar to users of similar products, but also allow more experienced users to customise the appearance and access more powerful faccilities that the novice is unlikely to need.
Therefore all basic tasks should be possible through drag-and-drop or menu/button clicks for the novice, through key presses for the slightly more experienced user (with more complex tasks also available) and through scripting for the power user who has both the need and ability to use more advanced faccilities.
When I read the original question my first thought was XML.
For info on XML check out http://www.xml.com http://www.xml.org and/or http://www.apache.org
I'm just starting in XML myself, mainly as a way of transfering data from Oracle8i databases to a presentation layer (Browser, WAP, WebTV &) and updates back.
Slashdot Mirror
Scottish newspaper, The Shetland Times, went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. If hypertext links made without permission were made illegal, this would undermine the World Wide Web
I remember this example from when it was going around when it happened. The crucial point IIRC(which was ommitted from the chapter) is that it was not the fact that it had been linked that was the problem, it was the fact that it had been linked such that it appeared within the frames of another site and was made to appear as if it was their content. In essense the other site was claiming ownership of work which had been produced by the Shetland Times.
This comes to the crux of my feelings on copyright. As well as my computer work I am also a short story writer. I have no objections to people having copies of my work and distributing them, I distribute most of my stuff for free as it's just an interest for me and not a source of income. What I do object to and would invoke the law to prevent is someone else claiming ownership of something I have written or charging for it's distribution.
I suppose you could describe it as 'Freework', you can copy and distribute it so long as you don't charge for it or claim that it's anything but my work.
As I see it there are 3 main issues with migrating from one RDBMS to another:
On the first one you really have two choices. If you can extract the data as Comma-Separated-Variable or fixed field width files then you can use SQL*Loader to perform the upload. Alternatively Oracle do supply a Migration Workbech product that can help semiautomate the process, more details can be found here.
Packages running within the database (I must admit I don't know if Sybase has these) will probably need to be rewritten for the new RDBMS. In favour of Oracle it is now possible to write these in Java as a JVM is now included as part of the basic install of the server, I believe that it is Java 2 as of Oracle 8.1.6 but you would have to confirm this with Oracle themselves. Release 3 of Oracle 8i definately supports Java 2 API and includes XML support and Apache bundled within the database according to this page. Try searching the Oracle Corporate Website for further details.
Oracle uses the SQL-92 (ie ANSI) SQL for those areas that it covers, as has been quite rightly pointed out the extensions will differ from RDBMS to RDBMS. There are a lot of very good books available for Oracle which cover everything from introducing a total newbie upto assisting someone skilled in another RDBMS to transfer to Oracle. Try O'Reilly or Amazon for some good examples.
I hope that this is helpful
Stephen
If you want to know more about Oracle on Linux then check out Oracle Technet. You will need to set upo a login but then can view documentation and download development versions to try out.
It does have a fairly hefty disk foot print (about 600Mb IIRC).
Oracle should be able to handle, in terms of size, whatever the hardware can handle. It also supports raw volumes.
Stephen
The tradition of journalists protecting their source has, in the past, protected people who have done far worse than a minor act of vadalism. On occasion those in power have attempted to brand journalistic sources as treasonous, but they have been protected. Often people go to the press at personal or professional risk to themselves or their families, fear of being revealed could stop them and so mean that crimes perpetrated by those who happen to be in power go unreported. That is not the way for a free state to exist.
Part of the job of the press (unfortunately one on which if often falls down) is to keep the government honest.
Why am I reminded of all those games of paranoia I played as a student?
Trust the computer. The computer is your friend.
Hey I read that mail! Report to your nearest termination centre NOW mal!
While you're at it why not drop into the Electronic Frontier Foundation and pick up a blue ribbon?
I have had a deep distrust of the online activities of bodies like the FBI since reading "Crime and Puzzlement" by John Perry Barlow in 1990. I guess their tech has improved but I doubt their motives will have. The right to protection from crime does have some costs but I think Carnivore and Omnivore have swung a bit too far.
I found it very interesting, and useful, that the author specified that the sploit used was fixed in open source versions of statd before the attack but Digital UNIX took another 6 months.
I am currently involved in major battles with my line manager who seems to have this idea that Open Source = Unsupported. He doesn't realise that a product that is supported by thousands of developers who have a vested interest in solving problems is going to be better supported than one whose only backup is a handful of developers whose managers not only have a vested interest in hiding any flaws found but also want them involved in adding the newest whizz-bang features.
Based on articles I've read it looks like the equation is really Open Source = Secure and Supported.
Also, you may feel very lax about choosing who provides services to you and what companies you trade with, but you apathy certainly should not be enough to justify taking away another's freedom of association and trade.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, it is not apathy I am simply admiting that I cannot know everything. There are services I use on a day to day basis which I do not have the requisite knowledge to to fully asess their ability to provide other than very blunt indicators (eg choosing a doctor who has killed below the average number of his patients this year). My, and others, lack of this knowledge and the time to make this asessment is offset by the regulations set by people who do have that knowledge and the time to act on it.
Also (as I indicated with the scafhold pole example) I am affected by other decisions. For example a companys choice to hire a particular contractor who are cheaper because they adhere to a lower safety standard may result in my being hit by falling debris resulting in my being injured or killed. The same could happen to you or to the author of Fling.
I comes down to a balancing of one persons right to and another right from. To continue the example, a constrution company has their right to hire whoever is cheapest moderated to hiring contractors who adhere to a basic level of safety to protect other peoples right from being hit by falling debris.
To take your example of nurses, history (and simply looking around) shows that people are willing to be nurses and if the number of those who want to be nurses falls below those needed then offering financial inducements will soon raise the numbers. This could be extended to other job areas as well.
I firmly believe in from each according to their means, to each according to their needs. It is apparent that we will never agree on this point.
From the authors pages it looks like he is not just anti-tax but also opposed to anything which might be considered 'Social Justice'. I notice that he explicitly excluded Education and Healthcare from those things which governments should provide.
The author indicates that he believes that without regulation people would investigate companies and decide who to trust based on that. Unfortunately I have neither the time nor knowledge to investigate all of the companies with whom I have to deal on a daily basis, I'm finding it difficult enough to try to find out who my cheapest telco supplier would be. Also a lot of the things that are covered by regulation are things which if performed substandardly can be lethal, I do not wish to get killed or made seriously ill because I happened to visit the wrong bar for lunch or be impaled by a scafholding pole because someone else hired a company who turned out not to be as trustworthy as they should have been!
Whilst the fling protocol may be of use in the short term for protecting the identity of people in oppressive states who need to communicate information that might get them the attention of serious men in big boots carrying large caliber firearms I suspect that it will quickly be broken and in any case would find it's main use in the activities of those people generally considered to be criminals. I suspect that this sort of protection would be far better served by offshore anonymous remailers.
Also I notice that the author gives a virgin.net address as a mail contact. IIRC this is a UK ISP so presumably the author lives in the UK and benefits from free healthcare, state supported education (even the so called private schools recieve funding from the state albeit via different routes) and has his wages (if he is indeed working) inflated by the lower limit instilled by the social benefits system.
Freedom is all very well until human greed enters the equation.
The point of XML (as I understand it) is not to replace HTML as a method of presenting content in web browsers. It is a structured way of storing and transfering content in a standardised way which can then have styles applied to it so that it can be presented in the best possible format for the end users agent.
An HTML page which looks good in a browser running on a PC won't necessarily look good on a WAP phone screen, printed page or a WebTV, it may not be suitable for an audio browser. If the content is stored in XML you can create different style sheets (XSL) to handle each user agents quirks and foibles (or possibly use presupplied stylesheets if your XML complies with the DTDs the stylesheets were written in reference to) and present your content in a manner that the end user can see it in the best possible format.
Another usage is the transfer of data between companies. For example a product catalogue could be sent out in XML which the customer views (via an XSL style sheet) in their browser and selects the products they desire. The ordering system uses the same XML catalogue to process the order and create a stock pick order to the warehouse which in turn triggers the generation of an invoice and request for payment (probably also in XML) which can then be processed by the finance and credit control systems of the supplier and maybe even the customer.
As far as the average Buffy fan in the street is concerned in producing their home page all they are probably going to need to know is the changes from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0 like having to close tags and be a bit more disiplined in making their code properly formed.
/. is great.
Alyson Hannigan is a wonderful, talented actress.
I just want to add before everyone blasts MS for half-assing XML....XML wasn't even finalized when Office2K was in development. Not much you can do about that...
Microsoft are part of the group of companies who are building the XML standard, they should know what the standard is. If they can't/won't wait for the final standard, or at least comply to the transitional one then they should be critisises for it.
/. is cool.
Alyson Hannigan is beautiful.
My feeling is that for a UI to be good the 'default' appearence should be easily understandable by a novice, ideally be familiar to users of similar products, but also allow more experienced users to customise the appearance and access more powerful faccilities that the novice is unlikely to need.
Therefore all basic tasks should be possible through drag-and-drop or menu/button clicks for the novice, through key presses for the slightly more experienced user (with more complex tasks also available) and through scripting for the power user who has both the need and ability to use more advanced faccilities.
Stephen
When I read the original question my first thought was XML.
For info on XML check out http://www.xml.com http://www.xml.org and/or http://www.apache.org
I'm just starting in XML myself, mainly as a way of transfering data from Oracle8i databases to a presentation layer (Browser, WAP, WebTV &) and updates back.
Stephen