Since most posters seem to be trying to force MySQL or PostgreSQL to somehow fit the original poster's needs, I figured I'd reply with my own interpretation of what he wants.
I really don't remember much about programs like dBase, other than editing and viewing.DBF files with utilities such as PC Tools, so I could be wrong on this. My vague recollection is that dBase provides a "serverless" database -- a DBF file that can be easily moved from one machine to another without exporting (a la mysqldump), and without the requirement of a heavyweight server continuously loaded into memory. These DBF files could be easily manipulated with simple software programs, or manipulated programmatically with libraries.
It sounds like what the poster wants is a piece of software that would conceptually lie between the lightweight UNIX db/dbm/ndbm/gdbm databases and the heavyweight server-based databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL.
As a programmer, I've often wished that I've had some simple way of storing complex data without having to roll my own solution, or rely on PostgreSQL/MySQL. Also, I have a web designer friend who would love to be able to use database-aware Perl CGI scripts without having to use his web host's SQL servers. (For small applications that REALLY don't need the full power of MySQL -- like banner rotator scripts.) I figure if this hypothetical serverless mini-database could support an SQL parser and have a DBI-compliant DBD driver... presto!
I'd volunteer to whip up an implementation of this idea, but my software to-do list is already enormous.:)
It's hard to believe that companies are dumb enough to blatantly violate the intellectual property rights of open-source software. There's a possibility that KISS is just ignorant and thinks mplayer is some sort of public domain freeware or something. However, I've heard of companies stealing GPL code before. Perhaps their ignorance lies in thinking that noone will notice and they can get away with it.
I've worked in the consumer electronics industry, and I can attest to the fact that mplayer is a sweet, sweet, sweet piece of code to these companies, and is great to use in products. One particular large corporation I've done consumer electronics work for leverages GPL code extensively, but goes to extreme painstaking measures to comply 100% with the GPL.
I expect KISS to quickly do whatever it takes to comply with the GPL. No company pragmatic enough to have a released product should be willing to put their necks on the line in a GPL validation trial.
(Argh, this "posting right after waking up" business has already led me to posting a blank message on this thread.)
Can't... resist... urge... to... nitpick... (as a total Commodore 64 geek...)
You could either write your own software in the BASIC programming language, which was the C-64's operating system, or select from titles ranging from surprisingly powerful business software to games.
The Commodore 64's operating system was not BASIC. The OS was a piece of code referred to simply as the Kernel. It was on ROM in the memory areas from $E000 to $FFFF. The BASIC interpreter (which was located in ROM at $A000 - $BFFF) used the Kernel for I/O and other operating system type stuff. In the later years, GEOS became popular, which was its own operating system and superceded the built-in ROM kernel.
BASIC was essentially the UI you got when you powered on the machine, though, and that's probably what the article author was talking about.
OK, history lesson, anybody remember "ed"? Am I remembering correctly?? After so many years, us old guys get forgetful... Bill's Vi was a bolt on for Ed so we could see a full screen of text, instead of just a few lines at a time, right?
192.168.0.0/16 certainly does exist. The first three bits has not dictated the netmask for years. See RFC1817 for more information on this. Here's a relevant excerpt (emphasis added):
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) ([RFC1518], [RFC1519]) is
deployed in the Internet as the primary mechanism to improve scaling
property of the Internet routing system. Essential to CIDR is the
generalization of the concept of variable length subnet masks (VLSM)
and the elimination of classes of network numbers (A, B, and C). The
interior (intra-domain) routing protocols that support CIDR are OSPF,
RIP II, Integrated IS-IS, and E-IGRP. The exterior (inter-domain)
routing protocol that supports CIDR is BGP-4. Protocols like RIP,
BGP-3, EGP, and IGRP do not support CIDR.
Of course, if you were going to go through that kind of trouble, you might as well just setup a whole jabber server so you could run your own transports. I wonder if you could tie the unix-based and jabber server user authentication together so you don't have to keep up with two user bases? Well, if not, there's always $preferredscriptinglanguage.
Just for the record, I've been able to pull this off by downloading the xdb_auth_cpile perl code, then modifying the sample "test".pm file, adding a 17-line UNIX authenticator. It works great.
Don!
What are you doing still in Starkville, man? You don't know how good you have it... Why, back in my day, we didn't even have a waffle house and had to drive 25 miles for coffee and live music!
Actually, Ricochet is back from the dead, and providing service in Denver and San Diego. They are taking a much more conservative (post-dot-com) business approach this time.
I had the service when I was in Denver, and it worked out pretty well. It's ~$30/month ($45/month if you want a mailbox, ha ha.)
I wholeheartedly agree... I've been working only as a contractor for the past three years, for five different companies. I've never been treated badly because I was a contractor. On the contrary, my co-workers and I have always shared a great deal of respect.
If anything, I feel bad for the permanent employees who have to slave away their lives with only 2-3 weeks of vacation a year.
Perhaps a less ambitious and more realistic starting point would be to produce "books on tape" of some of the Project Gutenberg works. One person could produce a work with minimal effort and no sound effects.
Okay, this is really freaking me out...
on
Another .NET Language
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· Score: 2, Funny
...to see my name on Slashdot for the second time in a week.
David Simmons (the one not associated with SmallScript Corp.)
It would appear that IE6.0 (at least) supports this resume feature of HTTP, when conditions permit. I just tested it by interrupting a large download from my web site.
I burned an ISO to a CD-RW by dragging and dropping an ISO image into the "list of files to burn". A dialog box asked me if I would like to burn the ISO as an image, instead of as a file in the filesystem.
Even if Congress does pass laws restricting how citizens can use crypto, I don't think terrorists will be motivated to use the restricted versions of the software.
When crypto is outlawed, only outlaws will have crypto.
It seems I'm always rubbing against the 2^32 barrier these days. 32-bit processors impose a limit of 4GB of addressable linear memory address space, without resorting to hacks like segmentation. (I'm not sure about what's been done lately in OS's to move that barrier from machine-wide to per-process, but we'll hit that one too, in the near future.) My home machines each have a half-gigabyte of memory... It's not unlikely that I will have a need for 64-bit memory addressing in the near future.
Filesystems and a lot of other software have been hacked up in recent years to circumvent the 2^32 barrier with 64-bit fields that have to be processed one 32-bit integer at a time. Nasty!
The Commodore 64 programmer inside of me cringes at the thought of having to use an 8-byte address as the target of a long jump, but I think this has to happen. Unfortunately, I suspect the industry is going to let segmentation and other hacks come back into style rather than fixing the real problem. Sigh.
Some are still around, like Idealab
on
Web Hospices?
·
· Score: 1
I'll assume that the "bankruptcy filing, creditor evasion, even hiring contractors for fictitious compensation" bit is sarcasm.
I think you'll still find "umbrella companies" here and there, where multiple startups share resources such as office space, internet connectivity, server rooms, lawyers, secretaries, and system administrators. I've worked for a startup that was part of the Idealab incubator company, which has facilities in Pasadena and Boston.
Obviously, if a startup does not have a viable business plan, such economies will only slow their burn rate. For smart startups, however, I imagine it continues to be a good deal.
Usual disclaimer: IANAL, and you really should consult a lawyer if you want to be sure about this sort of thing.
However, just to educate yourself, I would recommend sitting down and spending a day combing through the actual laws to get a feel for how they may apply to your situation. Start with the Export Administration Regulations, Part 740:
Basically, the BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security, formerly the Bureau of Export Administration) divides the world into several categories:
USA and Canada(?)
The "EU+8" "friendly" countries
Other countries that don't fall into the above two categories, but are not considered terrorist countries
The "T-7" list of terrorist countries
You'll probably be treating each category of country in a different way. Furthermore, restrictions may be slightly different depending on if you are exporting to foreign government users or foreign non-government users. Also, in some circumstances, you may be required to file reports indicating how various customers are using your crypto.
You'll also want to peruse all the relevent web pages at the BIS:
(Hmm, looks like they've recently changed their name to "Bureau of Industry and Security". They were "Bureau of Export Administration" when I looked earlier this year.)
For practically any kind of commercial crypto you are planning to export, you'll need to file some paperwork with the BIS. Fill out a request form on their web site, and they'll send you the paperwork.
One last recommendation I could make would be to occasionally read the talk.politics.crypto newsgroup.
Whenever I talk to people about crypto export regulations, I usually hear "Oh, you must not have heard, crypto regulations are relaxed, now!" I have to explain that dealing with crypto exports still requires, at least, dealing with a ton of bureaucracy and is still a royal pain in the ass.
I've found the FM broadcast solutions for getting sound into your car stereo are very bad. I've tried a couple of low-end (~$20) solutions, such as the "SoundFeeder" or whatever, and have always ended up throwing them away. These devices transmit with a *very* small amount of power, and the audio always ends up being staticy. Hopefully the higher-end FM modulator solutions work better, such as the ones bundled with fancy store-installed audio equipment.
The "cassette" feeders are quite a bit better than the FM feeders, although the quality is still low.
My solution was to get an Aiwa car stereo, which has a 1/8" (3.5mm) audio input connector on the front. I wish more manufacturers would produce car stereos with these most useful ports. Of course, if you're going to upgrade your car stereo, you might as well get one that plays mp3's to begin with.
Most of this doesn't meet your requirement for science programming, but I've spent hours in the car being entertained by radio dramas from the Old Time Radio Vault. (free downloads from a slow, user-limited ftp server, and a small charge for better access to the vault.) There's *tons* of good stuff there. Who knows, maybe even some old science shows.:)
Also, if you're willing fork over the cash, XM Radio can be entertaining. There's a Discovery channel with sciency-type stuff.
Unfortunately, SprintPCS's web site is down a *lot*. I get ASP errors all the time when I try to use their web site to check my account. Other SprintPCS customers I know complain about this, too. I've recently switched from SprintPCS to Verizon. Verizon's coverage is *much* better, at least here in the Portland, OR area.
I find the 'bc' program to be pretty handy. It will do arithmetic, binary/hex/decimal base calculations, etc. (For those who like reverse polish notation, maybe 'dc' would work better.)
example doing a base conversion:
$ bc bc 1.05 Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details type `warranty'. obase=16 ibase=2 10101010 AA
There are patent issues and it doesn't get the best compression, but MPEG-2 is likely to be around for quite some time, given that it is the codec used by DVD players and HDTV broadcasts.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't remember much about programs like dBase, other than editing and viewing .DBF files with utilities such as PC Tools, so I could be wrong on this. My vague recollection is that dBase provides a "serverless" database -- a DBF file that can be easily moved from one machine to another without exporting (a la mysqldump), and without the requirement of a heavyweight server continuously loaded into memory. These DBF files could be easily manipulated with simple software programs, or manipulated programmatically with libraries.
It sounds like what the poster wants is a piece of software that would conceptually lie between the lightweight UNIX db/dbm/ndbm/gdbm databases and the heavyweight server-based databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL.
As a programmer, I've often wished that I've had some simple way of storing complex data without having to roll my own solution, or rely on PostgreSQL/MySQL. Also, I have a web designer friend who would love to be able to use database-aware Perl CGI scripts without having to use his web host's SQL servers. (For small applications that REALLY don't need the full power of MySQL -- like banner rotator scripts.) I figure if this hypothetical serverless mini-database could support an SQL parser and have a DBI-compliant DBD driver... presto!
I'd volunteer to whip up an implementation of this idea, but my software to-do list is already enormous. :)
I've worked in the consumer electronics industry, and I can attest to the fact that mplayer is a sweet, sweet, sweet piece of code to these companies, and is great to use in products. One particular large corporation I've done consumer electronics work for leverages GPL code extensively, but goes to extreme painstaking measures to comply 100% with the GPL.
I expect KISS to quickly do whatever it takes to comply with the GPL. No company pragmatic enough to have a released product should be willing to put their necks on the line in a GPL validation trial.
(Argh, this "posting right after waking up" business has already led me to posting a blank message on this thread.)
BASIC was essentially the UI you got when you powered on the machine, though, and that's probably what the article author was talking about.
Heh, speak for yourself... I'm from MS, and if there's one thing I can't stand, it's people from anywhere talking too slow! :)
192.168.0.0/16 certainly does exist. The first three bits has not dictated the netmask for years. See RFC1817 for more information on this. Here's a relevant excerpt (emphasis added):
Just for the record, I've been able to pull this off by downloading the xdb_auth_cpile perl code, then modifying the sample "test" .pm file, adding a 17-line UNIX authenticator. It works great.
Don! What are you doing still in Starkville, man? You don't know how good you have it... Why, back in my day, we didn't even have a waffle house and had to drive 25 miles for coffee and live music!
Actually, Ricochet is back from the dead, and providing service in Denver and San Diego. They are taking a much more conservative (post-dot-com) business approach this time. I had the service when I was in Denver, and it worked out pretty well. It's ~$30/month ($45/month if you want a mailbox, ha ha.)
If anything, I feel bad for the permanent employees who have to slave away their lives with only 2-3 weeks of vacation a year.
Perhaps a less ambitious and more realistic starting point would be to produce "books on tape" of some of the Project Gutenberg works. One person could produce a work with minimal effort and no sound effects.
...to see my name on Slashdot for the second time in a week.
David Simmons
(the one not associated with SmallScript Corp.)
It would appear that IE6.0 (at least) supports this resume feature of HTTP, when conditions permit. I just tested it by interrupting a large download from my web site.
I burned an ISO to a CD-RW by dragging and dropping an ISO image into the "list of files to burn". A dialog box asked me if I would like to burn the ISO as an image, instead of as a file in the filesystem.
When crypto is outlawed, only outlaws will have crypto.
Filesystems and a lot of other software have been hacked up in recent years to circumvent the 2^32 barrier with 64-bit fields that have to be processed one 32-bit integer at a time. Nasty!
The Commodore 64 programmer inside of me cringes at the thought of having to use an 8-byte address as the target of a long jump, but I think this has to happen. Unfortunately, I suspect the industry is going to let segmentation and other hacks come back into style rather than fixing the real problem. Sigh.
I think you'll still find "umbrella companies" here and there, where multiple startups share resources such as office space, internet connectivity, server rooms, lawyers, secretaries, and system administrators. I've worked for a startup that was part of the Idealab incubator company, which has facilities in Pasadena and Boston.
Obviously, if a startup does not have a viable business plan, such economies will only slow their burn rate. For smart startups, however, I imagine it continues to be a good deal.
However, just to educate yourself, I would recommend sitting down and spending a day combing through the actual laws to get a feel for how they may apply to your situation. Start with the Export Administration Regulations, Part 740:
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/txt/740.txt
Basically, the BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security, formerly the Bureau of Export Administration) divides the world into several categories:
You'll probably be treating each category of country in a different way. Furthermore, restrictions may be slightly different depending on if you are exporting to foreign government users or foreign non-government users. Also, in some circumstances, you may be required to file reports indicating how various customers are using your crypto.
You'll also want to peruse all the relevent web pages at the BIS:
http://www.bxa.doc.gov/
(Hmm, looks like they've recently changed their name to "Bureau of Industry and Security". They were "Bureau of Export Administration" when I looked earlier this year.)
For practically any kind of commercial crypto you are planning to export, you'll need to file some paperwork with the BIS. Fill out a request form on their web site, and they'll send you the paperwork.
One last recommendation I could make would be to occasionally read the talk.politics.crypto newsgroup.
Whenever I talk to people about crypto export regulations, I usually hear "Oh, you must not have heard, crypto regulations are relaxed, now!" I have to explain that dealing with crypto exports still requires, at least, dealing with a ton of bureaucracy and is still a royal pain in the ass.
The "cassette" feeders are quite a bit better than the FM feeders, although the quality is still low.
My solution was to get an Aiwa car stereo, which has a 1/8" (3.5mm) audio input connector on the front. I wish more manufacturers would produce car stereos with these most useful ports. Of course, if you're going to upgrade your car stereo, you might as well get one that plays mp3's to begin with.
Also, if you're willing fork over the cash, XM Radio can be entertaining. There's a Discovery channel with sciency-type stuff.
Unfortunately, SprintPCS's web site is down a *lot*. I get ASP errors all the time when I try to use their web site to check my account. Other SprintPCS customers I know complain about this, too. I've recently switched from SprintPCS to Verizon. Verizon's coverage is *much* better, at least here in the Portland, OR area.
example doing a base conversion:
Does anyone know what the law says about this in Oregon?
There are patent issues and it doesn't get the best compression, but MPEG-2 is likely to be around for quite some time, given that it is the codec used by DVD players and HDTV broadcasts.