One of the great myths of ecology is that everything in Nature is in a gentle and harmonious balance. Its nothing but a huge battle for survival out there. Things may look stable to us, but we are short lived. Nature is pretty nasty, with creatures eating each other alive, dying of hunger and parasitising each other. Other forces of nature such as volcanoes and asteroids threaten the whole planet.
Give me artificial techniques, genetic engineering and chemicals every time.
I agree that using MySQL in this situation is not a great idea, but I think that keeping to the Microsoft line and using MS SQL is pretty dumb. The point should be to encourage flexibility, and avoid getting trapped into either the 'I'll only use open source' mindset or the Stick-with-Microsoft principle. Those forms and reports you design in Access 2000 are likely to become unsupported in Access.Net 2 (or whatever) in a few years time. The MS SQL Server stored procedures you implement tomorrow could be rejected by whatever system MS come up with two versions later. Microsoft have a reputation for sudden changes in direction and dumping old software: look at they way they are now treating Win95, and look at how the next version of Visual Basic requires major rewriting.
Choose solutions that are portable, standard, and will last.
XML is a pure text system. Binary data has to be
converted into a text form (such as Base64).
A description of this is at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 254/3/88.asp
Also, XML is pretty verbose, so I would suggest that if speed is critical, you avoid it.
What about WML, the growth of XML (the basis of SOAP) as a non-proprietary standard, and the appearance and huge success of web scripting languages (such as PHP and JSP).
As for browsers, I use IE, but I also use Netscape, Opera, and Konqueror (the KDE
browser). I use Lynx a surprising amount.
The non-IE browsers are developing and changing
at a fast pace.
And who says WORA (write once, run anywhere) is dead? I develop and deploy cross-platform Java applications. I ship the same binaries for Windows, Linux and Solaris. Anyone else with a Java 1.2 VM can run my stuff - even the graphics.
But Java WORA is trivial compared with Smalltalk:
if you want to see WORA work everywhere (even on
DOS machines) try Squeak Smalltalk.
SOAP is further evidence
of the way that the web languages (in this case XML) are experiencing innovation. Unlike COM/DCOM, SOAP allows an escape route from Microsoft-only systems, as its a public and easily implemented protocol.
There is no reason to think that mankind will die out any time soon on the cosmic scale. Once we are space-bound we are safe from planetary disasters and even the death of our Sun. Even if we were short-lived, its unlikely that all other civilizations over perhaps billions of years were also short lived. Also, over a timescale of millions of years, our galaxy is pretty small. There have been many calculations about how long it would take for total colonization of all stellar systems within our galaxy. I saw one estimate of about 10 million years for a highly cautious civilisation that spend a lot of time building up new colonies before progressing. Think about that: it means that since the death of the dinosaurs the galaxy could have been colonized 6 times over even with travel way below lightspeed.
Even if most civilizations were content to stay at home, it would only take one that was expansionist, and the galaxy would have been filled with intelligent life (and signs of that life).
I see three possible explanations for the lack of evidence: (1) An elderly civilization is acting as a conservationist and telling all new arrivals to keep quiet and stop expanding. (2) Civilizations have only just started to arise within the past few million years. (3) we are alone.
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Give me artificial techniques, genetic engineering and chemicals every time.
Choose solutions that are portable, standard, and will last.
XML is a pure text system. Binary data has to be converted into a text form (such as Base64). A description of this is at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 254/3/88.asp
Also, XML is pretty verbose, so I would suggest that if speed is critical, you avoid it.
What about WML, the growth of XML (the basis of SOAP) as a non-proprietary standard, and the appearance and huge success of web scripting languages (such as PHP and JSP).
As for browsers, I use IE, but I also use Netscape, Opera, and Konqueror (the KDE browser). I use Lynx a surprising amount. The non-IE browsers are developing and changing at a fast pace.
And who says WORA (write once, run anywhere) is dead? I develop and deploy cross-platform Java applications. I ship the same binaries for Windows, Linux and Solaris. Anyone else with a Java 1.2 VM can run my stuff - even the graphics. But Java WORA is trivial compared with Smalltalk: if you want to see WORA work everywhere (even on DOS machines) try Squeak Smalltalk.
SOAP is further evidence of the way that the web languages (in this case XML) are experiencing innovation. Unlike COM/DCOM, SOAP allows an escape route from Microsoft-only systems, as its a public and easily implemented protocol.
There is no reason to think that mankind will die out any time soon on the cosmic scale. Once we are space-bound we are safe from planetary disasters and even the death of our Sun. Even if we were short-lived, its unlikely that all other civilizations over perhaps billions of years were also short lived. Also, over a timescale of millions of years, our galaxy is pretty small. There have been many calculations about how long it would take for total colonization of all stellar systems within our galaxy. I saw one estimate of about 10 million years for a highly cautious civilisation that spend a lot of time building up new colonies before progressing. Think about that: it means that since the death of the dinosaurs the galaxy could have been colonized 6 times over even with travel way below lightspeed.
Even if most civilizations were content to stay at home, it would only take one that was expansionist, and the galaxy would have been filled with intelligent life (and signs of that life).
I see three possible explanations for the lack of evidence: (1) An elderly civilization is acting as a conservationist and telling all new arrivals to keep quiet and stop expanding. (2) Civilizations have only just started to arise within the past few million years. (3) we are alone.
I'm sorry to say, I think (3) is the most likely.