Use a web-based interface. The mac guy should be fine with that, right?
Using mod_perl, DBI, and HTML::Embperl, you can put together a really nice database interface much more quickly and easily than with access. It will be much easier to maintain as well.
Access is ok to learn how a database works, and to do some small databases used by one or two people..but anything beyond that will be a PITA to administer. A web frontend that you can fully control while giving as many people who need it access is a much better way to do it. That way you are guaranteed that anybody with a web browser is already capable of using the database. No client side installation/maintenance headaches and mac/linux/os_2/whatever can all use the database without needing a crappy M$ app on the client side.
Wht I don't understand is why IBM's attempted use of Linux in the market is receiving so much
flak. They may not have a great track record with OS's but they are a huge corporation with
money to back it up. More than Corel.
Now everyone freaks. Oh no, not IBM again. Granted they are better at hardware. It still doesn't
change this kinda exposure all of you Linux fans have been hoping for.
Your comments above, 'better at hardware', and 'great track record with OS's', are a bit uninformed.
IBM has some incredibly talented programmers, and has a history of releasing software that is way ahead of its time. OS/2 as a desktop OS is one example. There *STILL* isn't an OO solution that comes close in windoze, mac, or linux, and probably won't be for quite some time, if ever. Other examples are the tons of stuff they write for their own research that the public will possibly never see.
And there are others...the database that does image recognition comes to mind. Imagine being able to browse your pr0n collection by simply sending the image database a query like "show me all pictures of blondes with long legs"
IBM has some of the most amazing software you've probably never seen. They simply don't realize that the home market / small business market is worth marketing to.
They seem to be trying to change that, but they mess it up in some form every time *sigh*
If we could have the *choice* of the big company or the local provider.
Right now, my local cable company has the monopoly (for this area) on both cable tv and my cablemodem access. I'm required to have cable tv service (even though I don't watch much tv!) just to have my cablemodem...but that is beside the point.
Lately my service has been pretty bad. My cablemodem lost block sync for 6 hours last night, and did the same thing last week. This has been happening more and more frequently lately. This is a very bad thing as I host the mail lists for my local endurance racing club.
Of course, my choices are deal with it, or go back to a 56K modem. Neither are good. It would be nice if I could tell the incompetent broadband provider and my cable company to fsck themselves and go with a different provider.
Perhaps having the choice of the big guy will force the local cable operators to get their shit together.
I was always uneasy about Jackson's ruling and
posture. To me, Microsoft's crimes were
arrogance, mediocrity and greed, the hallmarks of
our corporatized culture -- none of them, alas,
illegal in our business world
They are not being punished for 'arrogance, mediocrity, and greed' specifically. Perhaps those are the things that prompted them to commit their crimes, but those are not what Microsoft is on trial for.
Did you read the findings of fact, Jon? Microsoft abused it's monopoly power in the software market to stifle innovation and competition. How on earth could a technically superior product (OS/2) made by an even BIGGER company not have succeeded otherwise (yes, IBM marketing did suck, but Microsoft's OEM deals and strong-arm tactics had a LOT to do with OS/2's downfall as a consumer OS).
While teaching myself java, my original web page had a 3d vector-ball animator for a pretty nice scroller implemented in java on it.
This app had explosion effects, vector trails, morphing, and of course all the 3d linear algebra crap for moving and rotating the objects on each axis.
Oh yeah, it used double-buffering for smooth animation too, so I was pushing 320x300 pixels in each and every frame. This was on a Tseng ET6000 video card. Nothing radical there.
On my Pentium 133, in a browser window, this used maybe 25% of my CPU tops.
Of course, this was under OS/2, which had a very good java integration with the OS and netscape (netscape for OS/2 used OS/2's system JRE by default, not its own).
Bottom line is a poorly written app, whether it be in java or any other language will be a CPU pig. Just because it's java doesn't make it so, however.
Business Method patents are only the newest complaint. Before that it was
Software Patents. Before that, it was Genetics patents. Before that, it was
patents on anything that involved any math. The fact is, separating these
things out is almost impossible. How do you draw the line between a software
patent and a hardware patent? How about a software patent and a business
method patent?
IMO it's simple.
"Stuff" should be patentable. Things that get done by said 'stuff' should not.
This would eliminate math patents, software patents, and business model patents. Patenting a process is a pretty silly thing, if you ask me. But what do I know?
Here's an example...I just merged Aspell onto the backend of the database I wrote at work to return a form in the browser with each misspelled word and it's suggestions appearing in a drop-down list. You can then pick the 'proper' spelling for each of these words, submit, and be presented with your original text-entry area with all changes made for you.
Patentable? Yes...on several levels...I could patent the software that does it, or the process itself. It is unique as far as I can see.
Will I seek a patent? No. It's a stupid thing to patent and is obvious to anybody who would stop to think about the problem for more than a minute.
Now the thing I *should* have patented while I had the chance was my idea for a hockey puck that floated on air (think like a hovercraft here) to be used on, say, basketball courts. Real-life airhockey! Oh well...somebody else patented the idea a couple of years after I thought of it. Go figure.
Sadly, the purchase of 3dfx by nvidia has consumed the entire linux support pages (drivers) from what I can tell. That was part of my decision to buy an Nvidia GeForce 2 for my new computer. The old card is for sale on Ebay if anybody wants to bid on it:)
I'm SChecklerX there too.
BTW, the GeForce 2MX only cost me around $100, so it's not so bad. The Voodoo3 3000 was $150 when I got it new.
Just write a script that takes the mp3's and converts them back into.wav.au, whatever (one at a time, obviously, unless you have huge amounts of storage space not available to the common man!), and then re-encode in Ogg-Vorbis.
Your theory, of course, breaks down totally when it comes to beautiful women who can appreciate artistic code. Of course, these are usually intelligent women. I guess you just don't know any? That is a shame.
Yes, I have shown some girls what I have done, and even though they may not understand it at the lower level, they are impressed, and I dare say aroused!
Btw, most of these ladies are also athletes. I don't think I've ever met a fat slob that I could honestly say I found above average intelligence.
Finally, a box that will run the NT Kernal for more than 24 hours. Give them
time, and Microsoft will be able to bring that machine to it's knees.
And if the NT kernel fails, I'm sure gnome and KDE are up to the task.
While Half-Life was probably the best fully immersive game I've played, I also fondly remember scanning the comp.sys.pc.games (remember that group before it split into everything under the sun hierarchies?) and working with other people to figure the game out (we were all playing it at the same time, and it was neat seeing where everyone was and what they had figured out). Remember the dotted-I's and Crossed-t's on the tombstone? Puzzle after puzzle. Tons of fun for a couple of months!
And all of this on a lowly 486/33, before wolfenstein hit the market.
What is its purpose, other than to complicate an otherwise simple process??
What is wrong with using smaller apps that are suited to a specific task? For example, if I need a scheduling system, I would probably write a web-based one, or use an existing one if I liked it, and run it on the company intranet. This also ensures that EVERYONE can use it, no matter the OS or location. Hell, they could use Links on a Vt100 for all I care!
Any company that is large enough to 'need groupware' is also large enough to write a better solution better tailored to their own workflow model IMNSHO. Any company that isn't that big should be able to communicate and cooperate effectively via standard ways (shared area on a network, phone communication, etc) quite efficiently.
'Groupware' is just another one of those application suites that caters to the "let's do it on the computer, just because we can!" mentality. Stupid.
What does groupware offer that a mailserver, shared file area, and a webserver with a SQL backend don't? Nothing.
At least fans are something that make sense
on
Suing Over... Fans?
·
· Score: 1
At least a patent for a fan/turbine blad/propeller, whatever makes sense.
I don't see what you people are complaining about. Are any of you engineers? Aerospace engineers? Do you know what it takes to figure out optimal blade shape to produce a specific airflow? No? Then I dare say you are clueless on this issue.
Nothing wrong with fan blade patents, or even bearings and EMF gadgetry. With that said, it would be stupid to patent the RPM calculator.
But when I did, most problems anybody had with their machine was the damned virus scanner being cranked up and sucking the life out of the machine every time it opened any type of file.
Why companies spend so much money on something that common sense can fix is beyond me.
If the users are too stupid to not run things they get in attachments, fire 'em!
Any pornmonger knows you don't use deja for porn. You use altavista's photo and media finder! All thumbnailed nice and neat for ya, so you don't waste time going to a site that doesn't carry your fetish:)
I pay my ISP for my connection. That's where the money to support the internet comes from, dipshit.
If you are selling a product on the internet, you don't need banner ads. You are already selling the product to make money, duh!
Corporate websites make money from their product. There's where the money comes from to establish their informational websites.
Everyone else, like me, create pages with information because they have something to share, and want to do so.
Spam and banner ads are unneeded. Get over it. I seem to recall a very nice internet surviving without all that crap before 1994. And ya know what? It was a better place.
Slashdot Mirror
Using mod_perl, DBI, and HTML::Embperl, you can put together a really nice database interface much more quickly and easily than with access. It will be much easier to maintain as well.
Access is ok to learn how a database works, and to do some small databases used by one or two people..but anything beyond that will be a PITA to administer. A web frontend that you can fully control while giving as many people who need it access is a much better way to do it. That way you are guaranteed that anybody with a web browser is already capable of using the database. No client side installation/maintenance headaches and mac/linux/os_2/whatever can all use the database without needing a crappy M$ app on the client side.
IBM has some incredibly talented programmers, and has a history of releasing software that is way ahead of its time. OS/2 as a desktop OS is one example. There *STILL* isn't an OO solution that comes close in windoze, mac, or linux, and probably won't be for quite some time, if ever. Other examples are the tons of stuff they write for their own research that the public will possibly never see.
And there are others...the database that does image recognition comes to mind. Imagine being able to browse your pr0n collection by simply sending the image database a query like "show me all pictures of blondes with long legs"
IBM has some of the most amazing software you've probably never seen. They simply don't realize that the home market / small business market is worth marketing to.
They seem to be trying to change that, but they mess it up in some form every time *sigh*
Right now, my local cable company has the monopoly (for this area) on both cable tv and my cablemodem access. I'm required to have cable tv service (even though I don't watch much tv!) just to have my cablemodem...but that is beside the point.
Lately my service has been pretty bad. My cablemodem lost block sync for 6 hours last night, and did the same thing last week. This has been happening more and more frequently lately. This is a very bad thing as I host the mail lists for my local endurance racing club.
Of course, my choices are deal with it, or go back to a 56K modem. Neither are good. It would be nice if I could tell the incompetent broadband provider and my cable company to fsck themselves and go with a different provider.
Perhaps having the choice of the big guy will force the local cable operators to get their shit together.
Did you read the findings of fact, Jon? Microsoft abused it's monopoly power in the software market to stifle innovation and competition. How on earth could a technically superior product (OS/2) made by an even BIGGER company not have succeeded otherwise (yes, IBM marketing did suck, but Microsoft's OEM deals and strong-arm tactics had a LOT to do with OS/2's downfall as a consumer OS).
While teaching myself java, my original web page had a 3d vector-ball animator for a pretty nice scroller implemented in java on it.
This app had explosion effects, vector trails, morphing, and of course all the 3d linear algebra crap for moving and rotating the objects on each axis.
Oh yeah, it used double-buffering for smooth animation too, so I was pushing 320x300 pixels in each and every frame. This was on a Tseng ET6000 video card. Nothing radical there.
On my Pentium 133, in a browser window, this used maybe 25% of my CPU tops.
Of course, this was under OS/2, which had a very good java integration with the OS and netscape (netscape for OS/2 used OS/2's system JRE by default, not its own).
Bottom line is a poorly written app, whether it be in java or any other language will be a CPU pig. Just because it's java doesn't make it so, however.
IMO it's simple.
"Stuff" should be patentable. Things that get done by said 'stuff' should not.
This would eliminate math patents, software patents, and business model patents. Patenting a process is a pretty silly thing, if you ask me. But what do I know?
Here's an example...I just merged Aspell onto the backend of the database I wrote at work to return a form in the browser with each misspelled word and it's suggestions appearing in a drop-down list. You can then pick the 'proper' spelling for each of these words, submit, and be presented with your original text-entry area with all changes made for you.
Patentable? Yes...on several levels...I could patent the software that does it, or the process itself. It is unique as far as I can see.
Will I seek a patent? No. It's a stupid thing to patent and is obvious to anybody who would stop to think about the problem for more than a minute.
Now the thing I *should* have patented while I had the chance was my idea for a hockey puck that floated on air (think like a hovercraft here) to be used on, say, basketball courts. Real-life airhockey! Oh well...somebody else patented the idea a couple of years after I thought of it. Go figure.
I'm SChecklerX there too.
BTW, the GeForce 2MX only cost me around $100, so it's not so bad. The Voodoo3 3000 was $150 when I got it new.
A far superior desktop OS (still is), killed by microsloth's unfair abuse of monopoly power tactics.
I know, I was an OS/2 marketing droid for IBM at the time.
Just write a script that takes the mp3's and converts them back into .wav .au, whatever (one at a time, obviously, unless you have huge amounts of storage space not available to the common man!), and then re-encode in Ogg-Vorbis.
I hope so. It's nice not having to boot to windoze just to play a game every now and then.
Instead of flaming away because you *think* you know what the problem is, perhaps you should educate yourself on what you are commenting on first.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/
Yes, I have shown some girls what I have done, and even though they may not understand it at the lower level, they are impressed, and I dare say aroused!
Btw, most of these ladies are also athletes. I don't think I've ever met a fat slob that I could honestly say I found above average intelligence.
Finally, a box that will run the NT Kernal for more than 24 hours. Give them time, and Microsoft will be able to bring that machine to it's knees. And if the NT kernel fails, I'm sure gnome and KDE are up to the task.
My personal favorite at the moment is WindowMaker + ROX-Filer
Good functionality, no extra crap, and very nice looking and intuitive to use.
And all of this on a lowly 486/33, before wolfenstein hit the market.
That would be Calvin & Hobbes
What is wrong with using smaller apps that are suited to a specific task? For example, if I need a scheduling system, I would probably write a web-based one, or use an existing one if I liked it, and run it on the company intranet. This also ensures that EVERYONE can use it, no matter the OS or location. Hell, they could use Links on a Vt100 for all I care!
Any company that is large enough to 'need groupware' is also large enough to write a better solution better tailored to their own workflow model IMNSHO. Any company that isn't that big should be able to communicate and cooperate effectively via standard ways (shared area on a network, phone communication, etc) quite efficiently.
'Groupware' is just another one of those application suites that caters to the "let's do it on the computer, just because we can!" mentality. Stupid.
What does groupware offer that a mailserver, shared file area, and a webserver with a SQL backend don't? Nothing.
I don't see what you people are complaining about. Are any of you engineers? Aerospace engineers? Do you know what it takes to figure out optimal blade shape to produce a specific airflow? No? Then I dare say you are clueless on this issue.
Nothing wrong with fan blade patents, or even bearings and EMF gadgetry. With that said, it would be stupid to patent the RPM calculator.
But when I did, most problems anybody had with their machine was the damned virus scanner being cranked up and sucking the life out of the machine every time it opened any type of file.
Why companies spend so much money on something that common sense can fix is beyond me.
If the users are too stupid to not run things they get in attachments, fire 'em!
Virus scanners are viruses themselves afaic.
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?cn=med
Aren't more powerful designs based on rapidly switching the magnetic field as the projectile moves through the gun (kindof like maglev trains work)
Just curious.
No good engineer is taught how to memorize anything. We are good at what we do because we can *DERIVE* what we need, looking up the details.
And don't put down art. Same goes for athletics. Musicians and Athletes are some of the most intelligent people I know.
-- why yes, sir, as a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist.
Wouldn't you just love to be a whale or a dolphin out playing in the waves when this thing comes by.
If you are selling a product on the internet, you don't need banner ads. You are already selling the product to make money, duh!
Corporate websites make money from their product. There's where the money comes from to establish their informational websites.
Everyone else, like me, create pages with information because they have something to share, and want to do so.
Spam and banner ads are unneeded. Get over it. I seem to recall a very nice internet surviving without all that crap before 1994. And ya know what? It was a better place.