Well based on my years of experience and our other SA team members, we couldn't be forced to buy Dell servers again.
As for the IBM stuff, rock solid. IBM xSeries are the bomb on x86 and x86-64. The 335 boxes can be racked up all day long and are so in expensive and the 345 (now 346) models are great dev database servers because of the drive room.
While we aren't running Fedora on any production servers (okay maybe that DHCP server that we had to throw in in an emergency and haven't gotten around to replacing) but all of our retail outlets are running a VERY stripped down and customized version of Fedora Core 1. It does the job VERY well. And any non-Linux familiar helpdesk trainees can pickup ANY linux for dummies book and be able to get some basics.
If you run DB2 or websphere under Whitebox or CentOS, you can't call IBM for support on its products. Same for pretty much every other commerical product.
What you DO get is this. If you want to keep the same profile across all hardware (i.e. use Centos/Whitebox on a simple postfix mail server) you can easily retain all training and experience with your staff. Centos/Whitebox being non-trademarked versions of RHEL allow you to set up servers with the same environment without the cost.
We use it for our development servers in fact. Our QA server infrastructure is a mirror of prod but RHEL and whitebox running websphere behave exactly the same. And our SA staff doesn't have to learn my favorite distribution of the week! They have a hard enough time keeping up as it is. (Maybe it's my lack of documentation skills?)
We're currently upgrading to a p650 (Power series) and IBM was really wanting us to go with Linux. Hell I wanted us to go with Linux but we ended up settling on AIX. They almost seemed disappointed. We were looking hard at Suse though because it's currently the only distribution that supports micropartitioning of LPARs which is what we really were needing.
Just for the curious, we decided on AIX for several reasons:
1) Linux on Power5 isn't 'baked' yet. Sure IBM has been working with the major Linux vendors to get it running but it's still new. Sure IBM lists it as a supported configuration but as I've come to learn that doesn't mean it will work. IBM will just provide "support".
2) This really ties to the above one. We're running a 500-1000 tps DB2 database processing millions of dollars. DB2, AIX and Power are very well baked. We're still considering a SuSe LPAR though for some testing.
Now I just need to brush up on my AIX. My last experience was on RS/6000 boxen and an OLD version of AIX. Any good redbooks out there? heh
And this is why I don't shop at BestBuy anymore. I finally got fed up with being treated like a criminal after I spent my hard earned dollars there. The guy asked to check my bags and I said no. I won't shop there anymore and any store that asks to see my bags and doesn't take no for an answer will see me walking right back up to customer service to get my money back.
At least CompUSA decided to go with clear bags.
And specifically, I know going into any store that I'll be monitored. It says so on the door. I make a decision to go into that store. You could say that adware software does the same thing but if I choose not to go into a store because they monitor me, the security guy doesn't follow me home and cause me to wreck my car or jot down everything I buy at another store and try to get me to come back to his store.
Oddly enough spyware companies would not even be noticed if they didn't write such shitty software. The problem with all spyware is that it works so fucking poorly.
I remember reading an article that the zombie pcs were not only sending out spam but hosting part or all of a spamvertized website and the botnet owners were managing DNS with REALLY short TTLs.
You know, I've wondered why more clients don't support this?!?!
I would love to be able to add my contacts right there. I'm already authenticating for chrissakes! And the schema for both outlook and thunderbird are online for anyone who wants to add those attributes. Then again, maybe they should just stick with the standard schemas.
I've been modifying phpldapadmin to allow our users to create a personal address book under thier entries but it's not the best solution in the end.
I'd much rather have this be a part of thunderbird. FYI, Outlook and Outlook Express don't do this either. I can't understand wh
I have a legitimate question. Are you trying to support voter fraud or what? I'm not sure about Ohio but in Georgia there is a list of about 16 or so credentials you can show to verify you are legally allowed to vote. What's the deal in Ohio? I can't understand why people say you shouldn't be forced to show ID to vote!
Or maybe YOU want to commit voter fraud and say "Oh yeah. That's me. Bob Smith!" and then come back later and vote again?
Must be a Republican! Or maybe a Democrat because honestly this bullshit goes both ways.
As far as KVM over IP goes for Windows, you're really stuck with commerical products.
However in our scenario, we have all linux servers running on IBM xSeries boxen. Most newer motherboards also support the same feature set -> POST over serial. I can't tell you how many times being able to watch the box from POST to login over the console port has saved my ass. I rarely have to go to the datacenter except to make hardware changes/installs. Combine that with our Cyclades ACS and remote administration is a breeze.
IBM does also have something VERY cool for their xSeries boxes a called an RSA adapter. This thing actually runs when the machine is powered off and runs an embedded version of VNC. You can load virtual floppy images and boot the machine off of them for complete remote installs of your distro (if it supports net installs). We currently only have them in our x445 boxes but I really want to add them to the 335/345s we have.
Re:Why can't you write a decent sex scene?
on
Ask Neal Stephenson
·
· Score: 1
At least as it relates to The Baroque Cycle, I found the less descriptive scenes more appropriate. It sort of fit with the time period. Sure I would not have minded to know EXACTLY what Newton's niece did to Daniel Waterhouse (sort of) but it was a bit more in the line of a racy novel from the time period.
I'm still waiting for the first time a Republican crys foul for loosing a race and blames the voting machine. Just as a Republican hactivist might do something, I've seen some democrats who would spit rather than see a republican win an election somewhere.
This has to be the first election in my memory where the bile from both sides has been so high. I fear this being the future of american politics. We've got Right-wing religious nutbags who would enforce thier idea of morality on everyone and bring about a theocracy and left-wing nut jobs wanting who would do anything legal or illegal to make sure that Bush doesn't win this year.
I'm literally frigthened for the future of our country. Not because of who might win or lose but because of the polarization that this has brought upon our society. Am I the only one seeing this? I'm firmly convinced that there are people on BOTH sides who want to see thier candidate win so bad that they would strip faith in our system of elections and start an all out civil war over it!
It's funny. I think that person shouldn't even be allowed to vote. For Christ's sake, they aren't allowed behind the wheel of a car, they've probably been removed of all legal decisions to a relative, why should voting be any different? I consider it a much greater issue than driving and giving your money to some gypsy conartist.
The real problem here is that we're trying to measure the intent of a ballot when we should just throw a fucked up ballot out the window. I'm firmly convinced that people who can't read simple fucking directions are even allowed to vote. This is such an important process!
I'd also like to warn people that this can effect BOTH sides of the aisle. A poster above mocked the argument that a government lawyer made to the Supreme Court that "*THIS* president wouldn't do that". I can't wait for the first time the republicans trot out the voting fraud issue to democrats when they lose an election. You have to apply the same standard to BOTH sides, folks.
We're in a similar situation but the key here is support. IBM will NOT help you if you aren't running a supported distro. Try running an X445 with ql2300 cards in HA mode talking to a FastT SAN running DB2 with LifeKeeper for failover support.
Now contact all parties involved and tell them you need support. Oh yeah, my distro is Debian. Everyone from IBM hardware to IBM Software to SteelEye will tell you to go suck rocks and come back with a supported distro.
When we did our TSM install, we had an issue with RedHat 2.1 and the 3582 Tape Library Driver. We called IBM and they provided a driver but it only worked on RedHat 3.
What did we do? We upgraded the box. What good is our nice shiny infrastructure if there's no backup?
Now everyone will bitch and moan that you shouldn't lock yourself in like this or that you should just run whatever distro you want. We designed everything about our enterprise app to be portable. If we get tired of Websphere, we move to Tomcat which is our development platform anyway. If we get tired of DB2, we move to Oracle or Postgres or some other database. We aren't using any DB2 SQL.
But until that time, I like the fact that I can make one call and get the support I need. It's IBM hardware running IBM software. The only non-IBM stuff is the OS and SteelEye LifeKeeper. IBM actually worked with SteelEye for us on a DB2 issue with our SAN.
Having said all that, we do use a few unsupported configurations. Our app uses CUPS for server-side printing. Those boxes are Gentoo. Our datawarehouse is mysql running on Gentoo. The interesting part is that I've actually gone unsupported in one area and that's the warehouse. I had to do a bit of engineering to get Gentoo and my two Fiber Cards to recognize the SAN properly. That and I did a custom ebuild of TSM for backup purposes.
All of this leads me to say one thing, if you value your job, stay supported and keep distro zealotry out of the way. If the company is willing to spend on IBM hardware and software then the cost of a SELS or RHAS license is nothing. It will pay off the first time you call DB2 or WAS support about an issue that, while not having ANYTHING to do with the underlying OS (other than it's Linux), they won't help you because you decided to go unsupported. Explain that to your boss as you're being escorted out the door.
The real problem is that people think giving cash is tacky.
Thereis nothing tackier than giving someone something they didn't want in my mind.
I just got married and we got SEVERAL hundreds of dollars in Target gift cards. We had the wedding out of state so we really wanted to get cash or gift cards since they both travel so well.
In our case, we actually registered for VERY little because we already HAD most of the things a new couple needs. We're both 30. We already have a house and everything that a new home needs. We really didn't need much of anything else. Cash would have been nice because we could put it into savings or maybe pay a house payment with it.
As people wait later in life to get married, many of them already have the typical things that people used to get as wedding gifts (crock pot, pyrex, dishes) and cash is really the best option. With the cash that we got, we were able to pay for everything on our honeymoon that wasn't already paid for in advance. We don't carry a balance on our credit cards so that was nice.
Of course they have alternate ways of fucking you. After a year, the card could loose 10% of its value each month or some craziness. States are moving to outlaw that as well.
It's really the stores own fault. They want people to think of gift cards as safe cash for gifts so now they're being forced to treat it like cash.
Most of these specialized gift cards are handled by seperate companies. They print and brand the cards for the retailers. They're reusable so Aunt Suzie could give Timmy a gift card and load money on to it each year without having to buy a new one. They work great for parents too. The gift card and private label card market are pretty much merged now.
They're also much more durable.
I just got married (yeah me!). Since the wedding was out of state, we got what we wanted (i.e. cash, checks and gift cards for the stores we registered at..Target, JC Penny, Home Depot). I think we literally saw every permutation of gift card that target had. If we didn't use up all of a card, the store left the remaining funds on it and didn't give us cash back. It kind of makes you beholden to the store.
Used to be you could go in with a $100 gift check to a store, buy a pack of gum or some underwear and get the remainder in cash. Then you could go spend the rest elsewhere.
Gift checks were valid as soon as they were printed. Fake a cashiers signature and off you go.
They're also cheaper because one gift card can hold any monetary amount that you can imagine. I think we got one card that was for $35. Used to be you could only get $10,$25,$50 and $100 denominations.
In many ways, the gift cards actually make more sense for the retailer and more money. Gift checks would just expire after a certain time period. With gift cards, the card may never expire but they can do neat things like charge interest on the card after a year. Walmart cards do this I think. After a year, you loose so much of the value of the card each month until it's all gone.
The only reason we weren't bummed about getting gift cards is that we knew we would spend them right away and they wouldn't sit in a drawer for a year.
Well if you're looking for good management tools, I can recommend two EXCELLENT ones that have all the support I need depending on budget:
Lower end budget - SQLYog I heard about this bad boy from a review in phpArch and after spending a few days with the demo, shelled out the less than $100 dollars for the product. It's been a life saver.
Higher end budget - Navicat They bill themselves as the most popular. While I'm not so sure about that, they do have the best cross platform management tool out there. My company is using this one.
Then again his original post has nothing to do with management and everything to do with client side - think LAMP but in an OS/X gui.
I've been struggling with this same question myself for the past few days. I've finally migrated all the disparate spreadsheets in our company into various mysql databases. Excel is pulling the data from mysql over odbc.
Now comes the point where I need to provide tools for various end-users of various end-user skill levels to modify the data. Short of writing my own application, there really isn't anything like FileMaker or Access in the opensource world. Everyone says to write a webapp but I simply don't have the time. I've got too many systems and a linux migration to deal with right now. Couple that with 1 hour internal help desk hold times and we stay busy.
The sad thing about it all is that I'm currently working on the previously disavowed LAMP application. The only thing saving me from pulling my hair out is that I've got an application framework that I always start with built around smarty and adodb. I just hate designing the frickin interface;)
Well I had a chance to look at the Indy Media page on the posting:
Our objectives are to: - Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit. - Supply a body of information that can be easily added to. - Encourage the republishing and redistribution of this data. - Facilitate making local connections. Many of these delegates are involved in politics and business on a town or county level.
I don't know that hotel reservations and such information was published on the convention website. I also am very wary of the phrase "to use in whatever way they see fit."
indymedia is not responsible for how the information is used but based on the paragraph and tone leading up to it, i.e.:
"the self-appointed managers of the world will be discussing their party platform of racism, imperialism and the violent suppression of human liberty."
They go on to say the same thing about the Democrats but I couldn't find similar language or information about delegates to that convention which leads me to believe that this is a cop-out statement to CYA.
The whole posting comes very close to "yelling fire" and seems very negligent.
to get through ALL the linked documents, in the most semantic sense of the phrase, posting this info about delegates can be considered intimidation. I'm not voting for Bush myself but in this has to swing both ways.
If a rule applies to Republicans, it has to apply to Democrats.
Slashdot Mirror
Well based on my years of experience and our other SA team members, we couldn't be forced to buy Dell servers again.
As for the IBM stuff, rock solid. IBM xSeries are the bomb on x86 and x86-64. The 335 boxes can be racked up all day long and are so in expensive and the 345 (now 346) models are great dev database servers because of the drive room.
While we aren't running Fedora on any production servers (okay maybe that DHCP server that we had to throw in in an emergency and haven't gotten around to replacing) but all of our retail outlets are running a VERY stripped down and customized version of Fedora Core 1. It does the job VERY well. And any non-Linux familiar helpdesk trainees can pickup ANY linux for dummies book and be able to get some basics.
Enterprise support.
If you run DB2 or websphere under Whitebox or CentOS, you can't call IBM for support on its products. Same for pretty much every other commerical product.
What you DO get is this. If you want to keep the same profile across all hardware (i.e. use Centos/Whitebox on a simple postfix mail server) you can easily retain all training and experience with your staff. Centos/Whitebox being non-trademarked versions of RHEL allow you to set up servers with the same environment without the cost.
We use it for our development servers in fact. Our QA server infrastructure is a mirror of prod but RHEL and whitebox running websphere behave exactly the same. And our SA staff doesn't have to learn my favorite distribution of the week! They have a hard enough time keeping up as it is. (Maybe it's my lack of documentation skills?)
Yeah I wonder where he got that from?
We're currently upgrading to a p650 (Power series) and IBM was really wanting us to go with Linux. Hell I wanted us to go with Linux but we ended up settling on AIX. They almost seemed disappointed. We were looking hard at Suse though because it's currently the only distribution that supports micropartitioning of LPARs which is what we really were needing.
Just for the curious, we decided on AIX for several reasons:
1) Linux on Power5 isn't 'baked' yet. Sure IBM has been working with the major Linux vendors to get it running but it's still new. Sure IBM lists it as a supported configuration but as I've come to learn that doesn't mean it will work. IBM will just provide "support".
2) This really ties to the above one. We're running a 500-1000 tps DB2 database processing millions of dollars. DB2, AIX and Power are very well baked. We're still considering a SuSe LPAR though for some testing.
Now I just need to brush up on my AIX. My last experience was on RS/6000 boxen and an OLD version of AIX. Any good redbooks out there? heh
And this is why I don't shop at BestBuy anymore. I finally got fed up with being treated like a criminal after I spent my hard earned dollars there. The guy asked to check my bags and I said no. I won't shop there anymore and any store that asks to see my bags and doesn't take no for an answer will see me walking right back up to customer service to get my money back.
At least CompUSA decided to go with clear bags.
And specifically, I know going into any store that I'll be monitored. It says so on the door. I make a decision to go into that store. You could say that adware software does the same thing but if I choose not to go into a store because they monitor me, the security guy doesn't follow me home and cause me to wreck my car or jot down everything I buy at another store and try to get me to come back to his store.
Oddly enough spyware companies would not even be noticed if they didn't write such shitty software. The problem with all spyware is that it works so fucking poorly.
VRRP?
*shudder*
I have nightmares about the Nokia/Checkpoint VRRP implementation. To this day.
Actually it's not.
I remember reading an article that the zombie pcs were not only sending out spam but hosting part or all of a spamvertized website and the botnet owners were managing DNS with REALLY short TTLs.
You know, I've wondered why more clients don't support this?!?!
I would love to be able to add my contacts right there. I'm already authenticating for chrissakes! And the schema for both outlook and thunderbird are online for anyone who wants to add those attributes. Then again, maybe they should just stick with the standard schemas.
I've been modifying phpldapadmin to allow our users to create a personal address book under thier entries but it's not the best solution in the end.
I'd much rather have this be a part of thunderbird. FYI, Outlook and Outlook Express don't do this either. I can't understand wh
Best IMAP and LDAP support out right now. LDAP support ESPECIALLY.
I have a legitimate question. Are you trying to support voter fraud or what? I'm not sure about Ohio but in Georgia there is a list of about 16 or so credentials you can show to verify you are legally allowed to vote. What's the deal in Ohio? I can't understand why people say you shouldn't be forced to show ID to vote!
Or maybe YOU want to commit voter fraud and say "Oh yeah. That's me. Bob Smith!" and then come back later and vote again?
Must be a Republican! Or maybe a Democrat because honestly this bullshit goes both ways.
As far as KVM over IP goes for Windows, you're really stuck with commerical products.
However in our scenario, we have all linux servers running on IBM xSeries boxen. Most newer motherboards also support the same feature set -> POST over serial. I can't tell you how many times being able to watch the box from POST to login over the console port has saved my ass. I rarely have to go to the datacenter except to make hardware changes/installs. Combine that with our Cyclades ACS and remote administration is a breeze.
IBM does also have something VERY cool for their xSeries boxes a called an RSA adapter. This thing actually runs when the machine is powered off and runs an embedded version of VNC. You can load virtual floppy images and boot the machine off of them for complete remote installs of your distro (if it supports net installs). We currently only have them in our x445 boxes but I really want to add them to the 335/345s we have.
At least as it relates to The Baroque Cycle, I found the less descriptive scenes more appropriate. It sort of fit with the time period. Sure I would not have minded to know EXACTLY what Newton's niece did to Daniel Waterhouse (sort of) but it was a bit more in the line of a racy novel from the time period.
CAll me crazy but if you wanted to listen to a radio broadcast in realtime on your stereo, why wouldn't you just tune in the station?
I'm still waiting for the first time a Republican crys foul for loosing a race and blames the voting machine. Just as a Republican hactivist might do something, I've seen some democrats who would spit rather than see a republican win an election somewhere.
This has to be the first election in my memory where the bile from both sides has been so high. I fear this being the future of american politics. We've got Right-wing religious nutbags who would enforce thier idea of morality on everyone and bring about a theocracy and left-wing nut jobs wanting who would do anything legal or illegal to make sure that Bush doesn't win this year.
I'm literally frigthened for the future of our country. Not because of who might win or lose but because of the polarization that this has brought upon our society. Am I the only one seeing this? I'm firmly convinced that there are people on BOTH sides who want to see thier candidate win so bad that they would strip faith in our system of elections and start an all out civil war over it!
I love how price grabber is offering me the best deals on Republicans AND Democrats. I knew they were all for sale but now I know how much!
Well the parent poster said the voter had dementia and checked all the boxes and circled two names. I would call that incompentent.
It's funny. I think that person shouldn't even be allowed to vote. For Christ's sake, they aren't allowed behind the wheel of a car, they've probably been removed of all legal decisions to a relative, why should voting be any different? I consider it a much greater issue than driving and giving your money to some gypsy conartist.
The real problem here is that we're trying to measure the intent of a ballot when we should just throw a fucked up ballot out the window. I'm firmly convinced that people who can't read simple fucking directions are even allowed to vote. This is such an important process!
I'd also like to warn people that this can effect BOTH sides of the aisle. A poster above mocked the argument that a government lawyer made to the Supreme Court that "*THIS* president wouldn't do that". I can't wait for the first time the republicans trot out the voting fraud issue to democrats when they lose an election. You have to apply the same standard to BOTH sides, folks.
We're in a similar situation but the key here is support. IBM will NOT help you if you aren't running a supported distro. Try running an X445 with ql2300 cards in HA mode talking to a FastT SAN running DB2 with LifeKeeper for failover support.
Now contact all parties involved and tell them you need support. Oh yeah, my distro is Debian. Everyone from IBM hardware to IBM Software to SteelEye will tell you to go suck rocks and come back with a supported distro.
When we did our TSM install, we had an issue with RedHat 2.1 and the 3582 Tape Library Driver. We called IBM and they provided a driver but it only worked on RedHat 3.
What did we do? We upgraded the box. What good is our nice shiny infrastructure if there's no backup?
Now everyone will bitch and moan that you shouldn't lock yourself in like this or that you should just run whatever distro you want. We designed everything about our enterprise app to be portable. If we get tired of Websphere, we move to Tomcat which is our development platform anyway. If we get tired of DB2, we move to Oracle or Postgres or some other database. We aren't using any DB2 SQL.
But until that time, I like the fact that I can make one call and get the support I need. It's IBM hardware running IBM software. The only non-IBM stuff is the OS and SteelEye LifeKeeper. IBM actually worked with SteelEye for us on a DB2 issue with our SAN.
Having said all that, we do use a few unsupported configurations. Our app uses CUPS for server-side printing. Those boxes are Gentoo. Our datawarehouse is mysql running on Gentoo. The interesting part is that I've actually gone unsupported in one area and that's the warehouse. I had to do a bit of engineering to get Gentoo and my two Fiber Cards to recognize the SAN properly. That and I did a custom ebuild of TSM for backup purposes.
All of this leads me to say one thing, if you value your job, stay supported and keep distro zealotry out of the way. If the company is willing to spend on IBM hardware and software then the cost of a SELS or RHAS license is nothing. It will pay off the first time you call DB2 or WAS support about an issue that, while not having ANYTHING to do with the underlying OS (other than it's Linux), they won't help you because you decided to go unsupported. Explain that to your boss as you're being escorted out the door.
The real problem is that people think giving cash is tacky.
Thereis nothing tackier than giving someone something they didn't want in my mind.
I just got married and we got SEVERAL hundreds of dollars in Target gift cards. We had the wedding out of state so we really wanted to get cash or gift cards since they both travel so well.
In our case, we actually registered for VERY little because we already HAD most of the things a new couple needs. We're both 30. We already have a house and everything that a new home needs. We really didn't need much of anything else. Cash would have been nice because we could put it into savings or maybe pay a house payment with it.
As people wait later in life to get married, many of them already have the typical things that people used to get as wedding gifts (crock pot, pyrex, dishes) and cash is really the best option. With the cash that we got, we were able to pay for everything on our honeymoon that wasn't already paid for in advance. We don't carry a balance on our credit cards so that was nice.
It is NOW.
Of course they have alternate ways of fucking you. After a year, the card could loose 10% of its value each month or some craziness. States are moving to outlaw that as well.
It's really the stores own fault. They want people to think of gift cards as safe cash for gifts so now they're being forced to treat it like cash.
Cost, volume and up until now fraud.
Most of these specialized gift cards are handled by seperate companies. They print and brand the cards for the retailers. They're reusable so Aunt Suzie could give Timmy a gift card and load money on to it each year without having to buy a new one. They work great for parents too. The gift card and private label card market are pretty much merged now.
They're also much more durable.
I just got married (yeah me!). Since the wedding was out of state, we got what we wanted (i.e. cash, checks and gift cards for the stores we registered at..Target, JC Penny, Home Depot). I think we literally saw every permutation of gift card that target had. If we didn't use up all of a card, the store left the remaining funds on it and didn't give us cash back. It kind of makes you beholden to the store.
Used to be you could go in with a $100 gift check to a store, buy a pack of gum or some underwear and get the remainder in cash. Then you could go spend the rest elsewhere.
Gift checks were valid as soon as they were printed. Fake a cashiers signature and off you go.
They're also cheaper because one gift card can hold any monetary amount that you can imagine. I think we got one card that was for $35. Used to be you could only get $10,$25,$50 and $100 denominations.
In many ways, the gift cards actually make more sense for the retailer and more money. Gift checks would just expire after a certain time period. With gift cards, the card may never expire but they can do neat things like charge interest on the card after a year. Walmart cards do this I think. After a year, you loose so much of the value of the card each month until it's all gone.
The only reason we weren't bummed about getting gift cards is that we knew we would spend them right away and they wouldn't sit in a drawer for a year.
Well if you're looking for good management tools, I can recommend two EXCELLENT ones that have all the support I need depending on budget:
;)
Lower end budget - SQLYog
I heard about this bad boy from a review in phpArch and after spending a few days with the demo, shelled out the less than $100 dollars for the product. It's been a life saver.
Higher end budget - Navicat
They bill themselves as the most popular. While I'm not so sure about that, they do have the best cross platform management tool out there. My company is using this one.
Then again his original post has nothing to do with management and everything to do with client side - think LAMP but in an OS/X gui.
I've been struggling with this same question myself for the past few days. I've finally migrated all the disparate spreadsheets in our company into various mysql databases. Excel is pulling the data from mysql over odbc.
Now comes the point where I need to provide tools for various end-users of various end-user skill levels to modify the data. Short of writing my own application, there really isn't anything like FileMaker or Access in the opensource world. Everyone says to write a webapp but I simply don't have the time. I've got too many systems and a linux migration to deal with right now. Couple that with 1 hour internal help desk hold times and we stay busy.
The sad thing about it all is that I'm currently working on the previously disavowed LAMP application. The only thing saving me from pulling my hair out is that I've got an application framework that I always start with built around smarty and adodb. I just hate designing the frickin interface
Well I had a chance to look at the Indy Media page on the posting:
Our objectives are to:
- Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit.
- Supply a body of information that can be easily added to.
- Encourage the republishing and redistribution of this data.
- Facilitate making local connections. Many of these delegates are involved in politics and business on a town or county level.
I don't know that hotel reservations and such information was published on the convention website. I also am very wary of the phrase "to use in whatever way they see fit."
indymedia is not responsible for how the information is used but based on the paragraph and tone leading up to it, i.e.:
"the self-appointed managers of the world will be discussing their party platform of racism, imperialism and the violent suppression of human liberty."
They go on to say the same thing about the Democrats but I couldn't find similar language or information about delegates to that convention which leads me to believe that this is a cop-out statement to CYA.
The whole posting comes very close to "yelling fire" and seems very negligent.
Then it's public information and I recant.
If there was even the slightest hint of encouragement for action AGAINST these individuals, I would go back to my old position.
to get through ALL the linked documents, in the most semantic sense of the phrase, posting this info about delegates can be considered intimidation. I'm not voting for Bush myself but in this has to swing both ways.
If a rule applies to Republicans, it has to apply to Democrats.