OK, this is a very controversial topic in history and I do not want to come down on one side or another but I do feel that the alternative view needs to be presented:
Are you suggesting that the Americas would not have been discovered without Columbus? Are you saying that if the Portuguese would have discovered it first (like Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500) that Portugal would have had the resources to control and exploit the entire land mass of South America, Central America and the Caribbean? Are you saying that the forces in Spanish society that allowed them to exploit the Americas (conquistadores with nothing to do after the Moors were conquered in Grenada, etc.) would have magically transferred to Portugal or England or France?
Are you suggesting that the steam engine never would have been improved without Watt? Would it have been improved somewhere else? Were the economic and social factors in Great Britain going to be transferred to France or Germany if Watt had died early?
This is a very controversial subject and I do not want to dismiss either side too out of hand. But it is very hard to come up with an example of one individual changing history. An individual might change his own personal history or family history and the history of individuals and families close to that individual but ultimately there was an underlying social, economic, political or artistic environment that had as great or even more influence on the events driving a society to change.
I have been working off and on again on a project (for my own amusement) that brings together two of my favorite hobbies, computers and herpetology: making a taxonomic (is there such a word)database. I have started and stopped it several times being very disatisfied with standard RDMS for this type of data. The problem I have is the structure tends to be an irregular tree, some orders, families, etc. have suborders, subfamilies, etc. and others don't. I recently have been reading up on Object-Oriented Databases and I think this looks much more promising. Anybody else have experience with similar projects? Any resources somebody could point me towards?
I started out as a bookkeeper who showed some proficiencies with computers. The Acctg dept got a new Unix system and I was asked to administer it (and become the DBA/Analyst for the new database software). After struggling mightily in the beginning and bugging consultants and anybody else who would help me, I discovered Linux and found I could learn everything I needed by playing around with Linux on an old 486. Since then I have never looked back. My education background is History/German. How I got into accounting is a different story......
Right now I have a "cuddly" Geeko on my desk. I added it to my shopping basket last time I got the latest release from them. That and a bright, watch with the SuSE logo and a bright, green, fluorescent watchband. Both are great openers for spreading the Linux message!
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OK, this is a very controversial topic in history and I do not want to come down on one side or another but I do feel that the alternative view needs to be presented:
Are you suggesting that the Americas would not have been discovered without Columbus? Are you saying that if the Portuguese would have discovered it first (like Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500) that Portugal would have had the resources to control and exploit the entire land mass of South America, Central America and the Caribbean? Are you saying that the forces in Spanish society that allowed them to exploit the Americas (conquistadores with nothing to do after the Moors were conquered in Grenada, etc.) would have magically transferred to Portugal or England or France?
Are you suggesting that the steam engine never would have been improved without Watt? Would it have been improved somewhere else? Were the economic and social factors in Great Britain going to be transferred to France or Germany if Watt had died early?
This is a very controversial subject and I do not want to dismiss either side too out of hand. But it is very hard to come up with an example of one individual changing history. An individual might change his own personal history or family history and the history of individuals and families close to that individual but ultimately there was an underlying social, economic, political or artistic environment that had as great or even more influence on the events driving a society to change.
I have been working off and on again on a project (for my own amusement) that brings together two of my favorite hobbies, computers and herpetology: making a taxonomic (is there such a word)database. I have started and stopped it several times being very disatisfied with standard RDMS for this type of data. The problem I have is the structure tends to be an irregular tree, some orders, families, etc. have suborders, subfamilies, etc. and others don't. I recently have been reading up on Object-Oriented Databases and I think this looks much more promising. Anybody else have experience with similar projects? Any resources somebody could point me towards?
I started out as a bookkeeper who showed some proficiencies with computers. The Acctg dept got a new Unix system and I was asked to administer it (and become the DBA/Analyst for the new database software). After struggling mightily in the beginning and bugging consultants and anybody else who would help me, I discovered Linux and found I could learn everything I needed by playing around with Linux on an old 486. Since then I have never looked back. My education background is History/German. How I got into accounting is a different story......
Right now I have a "cuddly" Geeko on my desk. I added it to my shopping basket last time I got the latest release from them. That and a bright, watch with the SuSE logo and a bright, green, fluorescent watchband. Both are great openers for spreading the Linux message!