I feel for RIM... I really do... this whole iphone thing has f'ed them. And the android isn't helping... and a resurgent interest in smartphones by microsoft is just more bad news.
The competition for the smartphone has increased exponentially and RIM might well not have a place in the future of it.
I don't see how they compete with the cool factor of the iphone or the adaptability of the android.
They still have a pretty solid lock on having the most secure phones but how long is that going to last? And more importantly, will the IT departments that care be able to enforce a RIM only standard over the cries of "But I want an iphone!!!"
The whole situation is pretty desperate and I don't know how RIM gets out of it.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 1
Depends. From what I've seen, the local species out here in california drop tightly bound cones but they do open up eventually without fire.
if they didn't the species would die out. We are generally pretty good about preventing fires.
It's more akin to what you see out of lawyers or law firms. They work similar hours and no one cares if the work day is over.
There are deadlines.
If there is an error in the way programmers are managed it is that they're often payed a wage instead of a salary.
Paying programmers by the hour is a bad idea. It's popular amongst many but it's wrong headed. I know they do that in lawfirms as well but that's also a mistake. Good lawyers know better then to write their "real" hours down. If you do something brilliant then you bill your client for extra hours and go home. Good programmers are entitled to the same thing. That makes the whole payment by the hour thing meaningless.
If I hire a programmer full time and I give him projects that have to be done by time X. I don't really care how many hours he's in the office or not. I care that the project is done on time. However that happens is his business. If he can't hit deadlines then I'll find someone that can.
If you're experienced then you should be able to work faster and smarter. If you're young and know less then you should have to work harder to produce the same quality output. I don't really care how many hours you spent doing it. If you spend 10 minutes and some how finish everything and then slack off for the next month... fine. Have fun.
But meet your deadlines.
The only people that have a hard time arranging these sorts of systems are managers that don't know enough to set deadlines. All they can do is judge how many hours people are putting into something. And if they're working hard they assume things are working as well as they can work. Never mind that everyone might be failing around doing counter productive tasks or writing garbage code.
IT managers had better be able to do everything the people they manage do or they're useless. This goes for all managers. You need to understand what your employees are doing or you can't manage them. Simply tracking their hours is meaningless.
If they can do the same job the old hand can do and no worse then how is management wrong?
If certain skills and competencies don't exist at that level then you can't replace the old hands with the young upstarts.
Don't kid yourself. The younger programmers are frequently very good at their jobs.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 1
nonsense.
Our mental evolution was self inflicted like the Giraff neck or the peacock feather. Chimps are vastly more intelligent then their pray. We in no way needed this intelligence to survive in our environment. We needed it instead to outsmart each other and impress females with our social status.
Our intelligence had nothing to do with other life on earth and everything to do with the other males in the tribe we had to outsmart. I'd include the women but biologically that generally isn't how these sexual characteristics work. This is not to claim women are less intelligent. I just don't think they were driving it. Male giraffe necks are longer... male herd animals have bigger horns... it's just how this works especially in mammals.
Companies that count on people like me as a customer won't bother making a version of their software for linux. Especially since I have no problem paying and most of the linux users seem to turn their noses up at the idea of paying. Amusingly, they'll even open source and walk away from projects that could potentially be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Hardware makers that count on customers like me won't bother making a driver for linux.
I want a GUI or I'm not considering your platform. And with me goes the whole corporate industrial complex that serves me. I like the CLI. Really. I am a fan of it. I think there should be a CLI for everything. Have it be there. But if you force me to use it for anything beyond scripting it's an automatic fail.
Have a GUI for all core linux programs and we're good. Mint and Ubuntu have gotten closer to where it needs to be. But it's not there yet. And there remains a serious attitude problem in the community.
All of that said, we need linux. MS has shown itself to be an irrational custodian of their brand. We're looking for a way out. But linux isn't making that easy for us and that's a shame.
As to one over the other. You've entirely missed the point.
I'm not saying there should be no CLI. I'm saying there should be both.
So instead you need to make the argument for why there should be no GUI and you're giving the finger to all the people that want a GUI.
None of these people care if there is a CLI. Why do you care if there is a GUI? Say yes to a gui. Everyone gets what they want.
As to it being shortsighted to say all tasks should have a GUI. With the singular exception of scripting all tasks should have a GUI. It's not even remotely shortsighted. It's best practice. And it will be industry standard one way or the other.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 1
Change anything and something dies.
And guess what? Thinks always change.
And guess what? Something always dies.
All things being equal you're threatening something that is generally going to happen regardless. All I'm suggesting is that we direct the change to favor us rather then allowing it to happen entirely randomly... and as often as not favoring the parasites.
You think the artic ecosystem loves the mosquito? Not if you're one of the many animals they feed upon. The herds actually migrate towards the ocean simply to get a little ocean breeze. It blows the insects off them a little.
Again, I'm sure if you change anything something is going to suffer. But elements of the ecosystem drop out naturally all the time. And that causes pain for different species.
that is the trade off between being a generalist and being a specialist. Generalists frequently don't do very well. They rarely thrive the way specialists thrive. But specialists are entirely dependent on one specific food source and they can't survive without it.
So the specialists thrive and out populate the generalists until their food source has a problem... and then they can possibly die off entirely. While the generalists are almost impossible to kill.
Most of the really old species on earth are generalists. Any ecosystem that depends upon a specialist is in trouble. It's going to be disrupted sooner or later. But an ecosystem based upon generalists? Bullet proof.
IT tends to throw out the old and import the young because the old hands don't keep up with the new technology. But if you have special skills that are vital to your industry they'll keep you around until you choose to retire or die of old age.
You will have to keep up on technologies as they come. Your company will tell you what skills they're looking for... Definitely keep training.
The suggestion to move to management also isn't bad.
Work on increasing your value and look at job openings that are close to your skill set. Ideally you don't want to care if you're fired because you're so valuable that you'll just get another job.
Imagine if EMTs could get a decent body scan before you've even arrived at the hospital. Doctors could receive a patient having already spent a few minutes going over the scans prior to their arrival.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Nonsense.
There are plenty of other insects for them to feed upon. I'm sure somewhere there is a frog that depends upon mosquitoes but that's such a tiny portion of our ecosystem you can't even pretend it matters. Not even to that habitat.
This whole notion that if any species dies the whole system collapses is idiotic. Species die all the time... NATURALLY. And the ecosystem thrives.
Wipe out all the parasites and doubtless there will be some unintended consequences. But the price will be vastly cheaper then what we're paying with the status quo.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
go back to africa and tell me that.
or stay where ever your are which is probably not africa and stop bothering me about irrelevancies.
I'm completely with you in so far as bad species. But they're not bad because they're invasive or not local. Mosquitoes aren't good in their natural habitat. They're f'ing annoying blood sucking insects that spread diseases... everywhere.
Would I genocide mosquitoes? Absolutely. Ticks, leeches, basically any parasite, lamprays, and all sorts of other things that I'm very happy to exterminate. By all means, keep some DNA on file and possibly an isolated population in a lab... under lock and guard... the guards instructed to shoot anyone in the head that tries to release them. Not wound. Right between the eyes. Some of these species have caused MILLIONS of human deaths. Attempts to release some of them should be seen as attempted mega mass murder. You don't screw around with that. Right between the eyes.
Sound extreme? It's really not. Some of these species have killed millions of people and even amongst the ones that haven't you're dealing with a whole branch of life that isn't our friend. Doubtless I'm going to get some 'circle of life' argument about how I should respect other living things or that everything has it's place. That's a load of crap. We need certain types of life to sustain the biosphere but parasites aren't amongst them.
But what about species that are non-local that aren't bothering anyone? Leave them alone. Exactly how could a eucalyptus tree bother someone? Pollen allergies? I fail to see the problem with them.
Long story short, I don't care if a species is local or not. I care if it's a threat to my community or is irritating while serving no actual purpose. If I don't need it and it's messing with me... well, that's a problem... for it.
Amongst the many amusing failures to grasp reality are the people releasing wolves back into the American wild. This has happened a few times with the same result. The wolves are released. The wolves attack farmer's live stock. The farmers complain to the local government about the wolves. The local government tells them to suck it because the wolves are a protected species. The wolves suddenly disappear and no one can find them. Rinse and repeat.
My view on the matter is not uncommon. It's not the PC view but then the PC view is merely what people say when they're being recorded. Amongst friends and family this is the conclusion.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Fairly common for many species actually. Pine trees and oak trees have a similar effect. And pine trees actually want to burn. Fire is part of a pine tree's life cycle.
One thing you can say about eucalyptus is that they smell nice.
And does anyone really care what is and isn't an invasive species?
We're an invasive species. Does this look like Africa to you? What is really relevant is if you want that species there in the first place. Trees are very hard to complain about as an invasive species. They don't grow very quickly. If you see one growing in your back yard and would rather it not... cut it down with a 10 dollar saw. If you have one already in your backyard.... cutting it down might be pricy. But that's true of any tree care.
For example, lets say the caffeine drinkers are more likely to be basement mushrooms that don't go outside.
Then caffeine would correlate with lower skin cancer risks.
I hate statistical studies. They're only done correctly about 23.8 percent of the time. And only 12.4 percent of the time provide proper methodology. And then about 18.83 percent of them are completely fabricated.
Nope. you don't know what contextual menus are... Excel for example has thousands of options. You don't see them all at once. You see them in nested options. you click on one thing and you get sub menus. Each of those sub menus have more contexual sub menus. It's intuitive and you can find everything.
I'm not going to argue the point with you. You can either provide a viable GUI alternative or suck wind.
It's an international transaction. In what way does it have anything do with their country? If I go to a foreign country and buy a sandwich do I owe taxes in that country or my country of origin? You would say in that country because I'm there. But on line I'm not in my country either am I? No. I'm in their country. So if you should be paying sales taxes to any country it should be to the country that hosts that servers. That is after all where it is being bought.
And guess where all the servers will move then? To a country or place with zero sales tax.
yes, against large companies that centralize their payment system... you are right. But against any entity that isn't of their profile it isn't. And by punishing people for using centralized systems you create a powerful incentive for people to do things in other ways.
Increase the tax and see what happens. You'll just be increasing the incentive to do things in other ways.
If you make it clear that you'll punish people for doing things in a traceable and comprehensible manner then people will just do things in a way that can't be traced or managed by your enforcement wing.
It's not like it's hard. It's dead simple. And it's not illegal to do it this way either. This is a big problem governments have in general. They tend to punish people that help them. Those that avoid government attention generally speaking are left alone even though they're doing the exact same thing and aren't breaking the law.
Punish people for helping you and they'll stop helping you.
I'm not talking about joe blow. That's your elitism again. You think the only people that need a GUI are idiots. Wrong.
You need to provide a GUI for ALL functions and all system settings indifferent to how strange or off the wall it is... The instant you tell me that the only way to do a given thing is to bring up the terminal and type a command in that's a fail. You've taken your driving test and run over six people with the car. You're not getting a license.
Anyone that asks for an example is being obtuse. There are thousands of examples. Someone just asked me to explain how I would translate Grep into a GUI for example. I did that. Anyone that knows anything about linux knows that most of the really juicy features require a CLI at this point. They shouldn't but they do. I'm tired of linux users saying literally "Joe blow doesn't need those functions so why convert them to GUI?"... That's the problem. More then joe blow wants a GUI. And until the linux community understands that they're going to have problems.
Stop assuming that only stupid people want a GUI. It's ignorant and offensive.
there are specialized GUI databases that can handle such tasks.
You're acting like a 5 million entry database MUST use a CLI for some reason. It merely does now because the tools often aren't written to deal with it. But there's no reason it must be CLI.
Worst case you can use faux GUI interfaces that basically enter CLI commands into a different window. I've seen many GUI interfaces that work that way. It's more common on linux then in Windows. Its functional.
I'm not really interested in debating this issue with people that have no imagination or flexibility. If you want to get adoption to increase you're going to have to offer a comprehensive GUI interface. Currently linux only offers GUI on basic functions. That's not good enough.
I'm not a sniveling cringing peasant. If you want to kowtow before any fool in a big hat that's your own business.
I'll just remember that when you're getting oppressed it isn't my business to help you. After all, you apparently like getting mud kicked in your face. I'm not a peasant. I'm a coequal member of my society. Anyone that wants to treat me otherwise will find the result. I'm clever enough that I can walk through most rules without breaking a single law. There are loopholes bored through these systems that are obvious if you know where to look. Major corporations always use them. I see no reason why I can't. If you want to wear paper chains and grub around in the mud like a pig... that's your own business.
I do not kneel. Try force me down and you'll grab nothing but smoke. I'll be gone doing as I please five inches to the left. Grab again... and you'll just get more smoke.
Slashdot Mirror
The seti project was always a bit silly.
I feel for RIM... I really do... this whole iphone thing has f'ed them. And the android isn't helping... and a resurgent interest in smartphones by microsoft is just more bad news.
The competition for the smartphone has increased exponentially and RIM might well not have a place in the future of it.
I don't see how they compete with the cool factor of the iphone or the adaptability of the android.
They still have a pretty solid lock on having the most secure phones but how long is that going to last? And more importantly, will the IT departments that care be able to enforce a RIM only standard over the cries of "But I want an iphone!!!"
The whole situation is pretty desperate and I don't know how RIM gets out of it.
Depends. From what I've seen, the local species out here in california drop tightly bound cones but they do open up eventually without fire.
if they didn't the species would die out. We are generally pretty good about preventing fires.
Programming is not a 9/5 job.
It's more akin to what you see out of lawyers or law firms. They work similar hours and no one cares if the work day is over.
There are deadlines.
If there is an error in the way programmers are managed it is that they're often payed a wage instead of a salary.
Paying programmers by the hour is a bad idea. It's popular amongst many but it's wrong headed. I know they do that in lawfirms as well but that's also a mistake. Good lawyers know better then to write their "real" hours down. If you do something brilliant then you bill your client for extra hours and go home. Good programmers are entitled to the same thing. That makes the whole payment by the hour thing meaningless.
If I hire a programmer full time and I give him projects that have to be done by time X. I don't really care how many hours he's in the office or not. I care that the project is done on time. However that happens is his business. If he can't hit deadlines then I'll find someone that can.
If you're experienced then you should be able to work faster and smarter. If you're young and know less then you should have to work harder to produce the same quality output. I don't really care how many hours you spent doing it. If you spend 10 minutes and some how finish everything and then slack off for the next month... fine. Have fun.
But meet your deadlines.
The only people that have a hard time arranging these sorts of systems are managers that don't know enough to set deadlines. All they can do is judge how many hours people are putting into something. And if they're working hard they assume things are working as well as they can work. Never mind that everyone might be failing around doing counter productive tasks or writing garbage code.
IT managers had better be able to do everything the people they manage do or they're useless. This goes for all managers. You need to understand what your employees are doing or you can't manage them. Simply tracking their hours is meaningless.
If they can do the same job the old hand can do and no worse then how is management wrong?
If certain skills and competencies don't exist at that level then you can't replace the old hands with the young upstarts.
Don't kid yourself. The younger programmers are frequently very good at their jobs.
nonsense.
Our mental evolution was self inflicted like the Giraff neck or the peacock feather. Chimps are vastly more intelligent then their pray. We in no way needed this intelligence to survive in our environment. We needed it instead to outsmart each other and impress females with our social status.
Our intelligence had nothing to do with other life on earth and everything to do with the other males in the tribe we had to outsmart. I'd include the women but biologically that generally isn't how these sexual characteristics work. This is not to claim women are less intelligent. I just don't think they were driving it. Male giraffe necks are longer... male herd animals have bigger horns... it's just how this works especially in mammals.
That's fine. Be obtuse and insult me. My request is reasonable.
When you suffer with the consequences of poor adoption you know why.
End of line.
Oh you want a reason... okay.
I won't use it.
Companies that count on people like me as a customer won't bother making a version of their software for linux. Especially since I have no problem paying and most of the linux users seem to turn their noses up at the idea of paying. Amusingly, they'll even open source and walk away from projects that could potentially be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Hardware makers that count on customers like me won't bother making a driver for linux.
I want a GUI or I'm not considering your platform. And with me goes the whole corporate industrial complex that serves me. I like the CLI. Really. I am a fan of it. I think there should be a CLI for everything. Have it be there. But if you force me to use it for anything beyond scripting it's an automatic fail.
Have a GUI for all core linux programs and we're good. Mint and Ubuntu have gotten closer to where it needs to be. But it's not there yet. And there remains a serious attitude problem in the community.
All of that said, we need linux. MS has shown itself to be an irrational custodian of their brand. We're looking for a way out. But linux isn't making that easy for us and that's a shame.
As to one over the other. You've entirely missed the point.
I'm not saying there should be no CLI. I'm saying there should be both.
So instead you need to make the argument for why there should be no GUI and you're giving the finger to all the people that want a GUI.
None of these people care if there is a CLI. Why do you care if there is a GUI? Say yes to a gui. Everyone gets what they want.
As to it being shortsighted to say all tasks should have a GUI. With the singular exception of scripting all tasks should have a GUI. It's not even remotely shortsighted. It's best practice. And it will be industry standard one way or the other.
Change anything and something dies.
And guess what? Thinks always change.
And guess what? Something always dies.
All things being equal you're threatening something that is generally going to happen regardless. All I'm suggesting is that we direct the change to favor us rather then allowing it to happen entirely randomly... and as often as not favoring the parasites.
You think the artic ecosystem loves the mosquito? Not if you're one of the many animals they feed upon. The herds actually migrate towards the ocean simply to get a little ocean breeze. It blows the insects off them a little.
Again, I'm sure if you change anything something is going to suffer. But elements of the ecosystem drop out naturally all the time. And that causes pain for different species.
that is the trade off between being a generalist and being a specialist. Generalists frequently don't do very well. They rarely thrive the way specialists thrive. But specialists are entirely dependent on one specific food source and they can't survive without it.
So the specialists thrive and out populate the generalists until their food source has a problem... and then they can possibly die off entirely. While the generalists are almost impossible to kill.
Most of the really old species on earth are generalists. Any ecosystem that depends upon a specialist is in trouble. It's going to be disrupted sooner or later. But an ecosystem based upon generalists? Bullet proof.
IT tends to throw out the old and import the young because the old hands don't keep up with the new technology. But if you have special skills that are vital to your industry they'll keep you around until you choose to retire or die of old age.
You will have to keep up on technologies as they come. Your company will tell you what skills they're looking for... Definitely keep training.
The suggestion to move to management also isn't bad.
Work on increasing your value and look at job openings that are close to your skill set. Ideally you don't want to care if you're fired because you're so valuable that you'll just get another job.
Imagine if EMTs could get a decent body scan before you've even arrived at the hospital. Doctors could receive a patient having already spent a few minutes going over the scans prior to their arrival.
Nonsense.
There are plenty of other insects for them to feed upon. I'm sure somewhere there is a frog that depends upon mosquitoes but that's such a tiny portion of our ecosystem you can't even pretend it matters. Not even to that habitat.
This whole notion that if any species dies the whole system collapses is idiotic. Species die all the time... NATURALLY. And the ecosystem thrives.
Wipe out all the parasites and doubtless there will be some unintended consequences. But the price will be vastly cheaper then what we're paying with the status quo.
go back to africa and tell me that.
or stay where ever your are which is probably not africa and stop bothering me about irrelevancies.
I'm completely with you in so far as bad species. But they're not bad because they're invasive or not local. Mosquitoes aren't good in their natural habitat. They're f'ing annoying blood sucking insects that spread diseases... everywhere.
Would I genocide mosquitoes? Absolutely. Ticks, leeches, basically any parasite, lamprays, and all sorts of other things that I'm very happy to exterminate. By all means, keep some DNA on file and possibly an isolated population in a lab... under lock and guard... the guards instructed to shoot anyone in the head that tries to release them. Not wound. Right between the eyes. Some of these species have caused MILLIONS of human deaths. Attempts to release some of them should be seen as attempted mega mass murder. You don't screw around with that. Right between the eyes.
Sound extreme? It's really not. Some of these species have killed millions of people and even amongst the ones that haven't you're dealing with a whole branch of life that isn't our friend. Doubtless I'm going to get some 'circle of life' argument about how I should respect other living things or that everything has it's place. That's a load of crap. We need certain types of life to sustain the biosphere but parasites aren't amongst them.
But what about species that are non-local that aren't bothering anyone? Leave them alone. Exactly how could a eucalyptus tree bother someone? Pollen allergies? I fail to see the problem with them.
Long story short, I don't care if a species is local or not. I care if it's a threat to my community or is irritating while serving no actual purpose. If I don't need it and it's messing with me... well, that's a problem... for it.
Amongst the many amusing failures to grasp reality are the people releasing wolves back into the American wild. This has happened a few times with the same result. The wolves are released. The wolves attack farmer's live stock. The farmers complain to the local government about the wolves. The local government tells them to suck it because the wolves are a protected species. The wolves suddenly disappear and no one can find them. Rinse and repeat.
My view on the matter is not uncommon. It's not the PC view but then the PC view is merely what people say when they're being recorded. Amongst friends and family this is the conclusion.
Fairly common for many species actually. Pine trees and oak trees have a similar effect. And pine trees actually want to burn. Fire is part of a pine tree's life cycle.
One thing you can say about eucalyptus is that they smell nice.
And does anyone really care what is and isn't an invasive species?
We're an invasive species. Does this look like Africa to you? What is really relevant is if you want that species there in the first place. Trees are very hard to complain about as an invasive species. They don't grow very quickly. If you see one growing in your back yard and would rather it not... cut it down with a 10 dollar saw. If you have one already in your backyard.... cutting it down might be pricy. But that's true of any tree care.
For example, lets say the caffeine drinkers are more likely to be basement mushrooms that don't go outside.
Then caffeine would correlate with lower skin cancer risks.
I hate statistical studies. They're only done correctly about 23.8 percent of the time. And only 12.4 percent of the time provide proper methodology. And then about 18.83 percent of them are completely fabricated.
Nothing as far as it goes. it's one way of dealing with a problem based on a taxation and legal frame work that is extremely antiquated at this point.
I frankly find the whole thing to be due a savage update.
I also question whether MS or the buyer should be liable for the taxes at all. The whole code needs a reboot.
Nope. you don't know what contextual menus are... Excel for example has thousands of options. You don't see them all at once. You see them in nested options. you click on one thing and you get sub menus. Each of those sub menus have more contexual sub menus. It's intuitive and you can find everything.
I'm not going to argue the point with you. You can either provide a viable GUI alternative or suck wind.
It's an international transaction. In what way does it have anything do with their country? If I go to a foreign country and buy a sandwich do I owe taxes in that country or my country of origin? You would say in that country because I'm there. But on line I'm not in my country either am I? No. I'm in their country. So if you should be paying sales taxes to any country it should be to the country that hosts that servers. That is after all where it is being bought.
And guess where all the servers will move then? To a country or place with zero sales tax.
Game over.
yes, against large companies that centralize their payment system... you are right. But against any entity that isn't of their profile it isn't. And by punishing people for using centralized systems you create a powerful incentive for people to do things in other ways.
Increase the tax and see what happens. You'll just be increasing the incentive to do things in other ways.
If you make it clear that you'll punish people for doing things in a traceable and comprehensible manner then people will just do things in a way that can't be traced or managed by your enforcement wing.
It's not like it's hard. It's dead simple. And it's not illegal to do it this way either. This is a big problem governments have in general. They tend to punish people that help them. Those that avoid government attention generally speaking are left alone even though they're doing the exact same thing and aren't breaking the law.
Punish people for helping you and they'll stop helping you.
I'm not talking about joe blow. That's your elitism again. You think the only people that need a GUI are idiots. Wrong.
You need to provide a GUI for ALL functions and all system settings indifferent to how strange or off the wall it is... The instant you tell me that the only way to do a given thing is to bring up the terminal and type a command in that's a fail. You've taken your driving test and run over six people with the car. You're not getting a license.
Yep, GUI is expensive and CLI is easy. We know.
It's called creating a polished experience. Stop being lazy.
Anyone that asks for an example is being obtuse. There are thousands of examples. Someone just asked me to explain how I would translate Grep into a GUI for example. I did that. Anyone that knows anything about linux knows that most of the really juicy features require a CLI at this point. They shouldn't but they do. I'm tired of linux users saying literally "Joe blow doesn't need those functions so why convert them to GUI?"... That's the problem. More then joe blow wants a GUI. And until the linux community understands that they're going to have problems.
Stop assuming that only stupid people want a GUI. It's ignorant and offensive.
there are specialized GUI databases that can handle such tasks.
You're acting like a 5 million entry database MUST use a CLI for some reason. It merely does now because the tools often aren't written to deal with it. But there's no reason it must be CLI.
Worst case you can use faux GUI interfaces that basically enter CLI commands into a different window. I've seen many GUI interfaces that work that way. It's more common on linux then in Windows. Its functional.
I'm not really interested in debating this issue with people that have no imagination or flexibility. If you want to get adoption to increase you're going to have to offer a comprehensive GUI interface. Currently linux only offers GUI on basic functions. That's not good enough.
I'm not a sniveling cringing peasant. If you want to kowtow before any fool in a big hat that's your own business.
I'll just remember that when you're getting oppressed it isn't my business to help you. After all, you apparently like getting mud kicked in your face. I'm not a peasant. I'm a coequal member of my society. Anyone that wants to treat me otherwise will find the result. I'm clever enough that I can walk through most rules without breaking a single law. There are loopholes bored through these systems that are obvious if you know where to look. Major corporations always use them. I see no reason why I can't. If you want to wear paper chains and grub around in the mud like a pig... that's your own business.
I do not kneel. Try force me down and you'll grab nothing but smoke. I'll be gone doing as I please five inches to the left. Grab again... and you'll just get more smoke.