I'm thinking they're going to customize the license agreement. With a couple of hundred copies of XP2003, they will need to streamline the "Yes, I agree" screens so one click will accept all of the agreements at once. Otherwise the poor admin will wear out his mouse and KVM switch just hopping from one screen to the next. Maybe they can also just connect to a corporation's bank and download the money in one transaction. OMG, and how about if 256 clippys pop up at the same time, asking if he wants help typing a letter? Definite customization required there! Oh, the humanity...!
What is it about that site...
on
Amazon Sales Record
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What is it about the iWon.com site that makes me feel all slimy and dirty? Is it the fact that they're major purveyors of spam? Or could it be all the "popup blocker" ads they run to fund their site, duping the rubes into thinking there's a downloadable software solution to the problem that they and their ilk are doing everything to promote--the indiscriminate installation of spyware, malware, and popups.
It's mildly interesting that Amazon is breaking sales records, but I don't believe a word from that awful site... and as another poster already mentioned-- there's damn little content in the article.
Thank you for that comment. It is hilarious and true. Hat's off to you, AC! It perfectly illustrates the power and the danger of Excel. It also made me laugh enough to alarm the neighbors.
You're absolutely correct. My problem is when that query you specified takes 15-60 minutes to complete (~300,000 records returned from a 5+ table join, then summarized in VB/FoxPro). The great thing about pivot tables is you can start with fairly raw data and you don't have to use more SQL to collapse it, you just drag fields around. I've been using them a lot in the last couple of days, to check the output of queries against the database to make sure they have the correct joins. Write the data to a CSV file, pick it up in Excel, apply a pivot table (it takes about 3 mouse clicks and a few mouse drags) and you've got totals. And you can slice and dice those totals however you need, dynamically.
Call me cynical, but anyone who's saavy enough to get SQL data into an Excel file can learn the pivot table features just by picking it off the (data) menu (YOU DON'T NEED A BOOK!!). But try it, it's amazing.
I have been working on creating 10 year history reports of insurance coverage, aka "exposure reports", gathered from three different databases, and running the output through pivot tables to identify problems, trends, changed product line definitions, and SQL mistakes.
The new history reports are supposed to match previous reports, but little of the infrastructure (product line definitions) for the previous reports (aside from the raw data) still exists. The SQL will output 40,000 to 60,000 records, which, with a minute or two of clicking and formatting in a pivot table can be summarized in a page or two. This feature allows looking at 60,000+ records, 10 years of history (one year each in 10 columns), and anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of product lines. It's easy (almost trivial) to define categories and subcategories, and even sub-sub-categories, and look at just a few or all of them, with automatic counts, sums, and totals. No group-by's or order-by's required in the SQL.
Consider this (auto parts store): Spreadsheet shows 10 years of individual sales transactions. Useful, but not informative. Pivot table shows Car Parts Sales, Years in 10 columns. Leftmost column shows make of car (Chevy, Ford, Dodge, etc.). Main part of pivot table shows summarized sales. Sales by Make of Car over last 10 years, great. Total time to define and format, 45 seconds or less.
If the underlying data contains it, add a second category column, with car's subsystem (fuel, exhaust, engine, electrical, body, interior, tires...). Drag that column over to the pivot table and you can see that (for example) people bought lots of engine parts for Chevys, and lots of tires for Fords. Drag off the make of car column, and see which car subsystem you sold the most parts for, irrespective of make of car. Or maybe drag the column for "salesperson" over and find out Jill sells more Chrysler parts than Fred.Three amazingly informative reports in seconds.
The great thing about Excel pivot tables is every category you drag onto the spreadsheet is "dynamic" meaning there will be a drop down list where you can click on or off any item on the list for instant checking. Just want to compare Fords and Chryslers? Less than a dozen clicks (depends on how many makes you have in your data). Just want to look at the last three years? Click, click, click. Done. File/Print/OK. Tires? Drag, click, you're done. Engine part sales by day of week? Drag, click, file, print, OK. Done.
The downsides? Everything is dynamic, and every change you make will require some reformatting (and new print settings) if you're sending this to management. If you need to reproduce the same report next year, save carefully. I don't use charts, but that's probably also a bit of a pain, because it's easier to change the pivot table definitions than the chart formatting. And of course, you're not going to be able to process more than 64,000 records in Excel, unless I've missed something.
Even though the tool is great, I still have to go back to work tomorrow and finish the reports. Even so, using pivot tables has considerably reduced
I'm kind of a "veteran" newbie (have had Linux servers in the house for four or five years, since RH 5.x) who has never mastered it. I've fscked up my machines often (part of learning, I guess), and even gotten rooted in the past. So maybe I'm just naive, but when I tried to get FC2 to create a boot floppy for me, it said it was unable to do so because of the size of the kernel or something. I tried a couple of times, but no go for me. I didn't bother to pursue it. Since then the floppy drive on that server has been reycled.
The way I look at it, with the number of machines out there without floppy drives, and the problem of non-bootable CD drives (remember that?) gone away, the idea of having a complete linux distro on a CD to use just for this purpose seems like an advance of sorts. The blank CD costs about the same as a blank floppy, and we get all those extra megabytes of goodness.
Thank you for a thoughtful post. I could not agree more. In a very active thread which has apparently pushed the hot-buttons of a lot of trolls and AC's from all over the political spectrum, but provided vanishingly little actual information, this post seems to come the closest to a balanced view. I wish I had mod points to give you.
It isn't up to the public to decide what they need to know
This is patently wrong, and a paranoid knee-jerk reaction to anti-terrorist FUD spread by well-meaning but clueless (and now campaigning) government functionaries. Public information is just that--public. And unless it is demonstrated before a judge that the information should be kept out of the hands of the public, then it belongs to the people. Hence the phrase, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
An uninformed electorate is a misled electorate. Government rules by the consent of the governed. And a gated-community, private club, members-only government is a government that has removed itself from the very public who has consented to place them in power.
One other point, which I think is relevant here, is that Greenwich, CT is one of the richest communities in the country. I think the reason they don't want aerial maps of the town made public is then we'd all know where and how they live. The anti-terrorist security angle is all just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that America's richest elite class doesn't want to be noticed. Hiding behind the "national security" curtain is just plain cynical.
And what's worse is the poor computer consultant who wants the maps (and has got all the liberal lawyers up in arms and fighting for him) probably just wants them so he can sell good information to companies that do lawn care, swimming pools, and aluminum siding for castle estates.
OK, I'll assume you're from Australia (where the article was posted from), where your statement might be true, or very young. In the good old USA, however, the military is always touting (and throwing dollars after) some new fangled technology that just plain doesn't work. Remember Star Wars? That brought about some fine basic research, but none of the technology ever matured into something that would actually work. Remember that darn tilt-rotor helicopter (I think it was called the Osprey?) that kept crashing with Marines in it? That product made it all the way through development, testing, and limited deployment before Congress finally pulled the plug. The reason was because it didn't work! That was a 40 billion dollar program. Star Wars was likely 100 billion. Sorry, but in the USA, the military does waste money on "unworking devices."
Thank you AC! There are at least a dozen big graphics on that site. That should heat up their processors, and likely swallow some bandwidth as well. I adapted this a bit to D/L the exe as well, and it's running in text mode on a Linux box. This is the most fun I've had with my computer in a long time!
I have no way to tell if this assertion is true (I'm responding to an AC, who could easily be a Gator employee for all I know), but I can say it does not conform to my own (admittedly limited) anecdotal evidence. I have not seen any degradation of system stability as a result of installing SP2 on two of my own machines, nor on two others that I "take care of" for friends.
I recommend that no one should avoid Windows Update unless one or another update demonstrably causes the computer to stop working in some way, and in that case (I haven't seen that happen since NT Service Pack 4(?) or 5, I don't remember exactly), just uninstall the update and track down the source of the problem. It's probably a broken or out-of-date driver anyway.
Don't buy into the argument that updating software is risky and inconvenient and invites instability. It's nothing compared to having your computer OWNED by some kind of virus, worm, or malware. It takes a small amount of knowledge, and a slightly larger amount of common sense to keep a Windows computer stable and malware-free. This requirement is no reason to give up on running a safe machine.
I just tried that, and my version of Thunderbird opens the link from an email in another window. Not as nice as having the option to open another tab, but at least you don't lose your place in the/. thread. I have to admit, I have started right-clicking every link, no matter what program it's displaying in, in order to open it in a new tab. Of course, this doesn't work in IE at work. It's such a good feature, it's become a habit.
No sweat, and I should apologize too. It was me that said "let me get this straight," which is not a normally recognized introduction to a useful exchange of ideas. Sorry. And so far (in case you're not checking) you've got better mods than I do in this exchange anyway. Nice talking with you!
And don't miss the link further down in this thread to the Creating Applications With Mozilla book. All the examples seem to work fine in Firefox, and I'm learning a lot more about rendering!
Thank you for the clarification. I didn't get it from your original post, but now I do. And I agree, that would be a great idea. I will confess again to nearly complete ignorance of the internals of a rendering engine.
modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs
Now wait, let me get this straight: You want someone to port the "non-standards-compliant" part of IE into a standards-compliant browser so it will render non-standards-compliant web pages the same way the much maligned non-standards-compliant browser does? Doesn't this turn the new browser into a non-standards-compliant browser? Or does that only happen if the rendering engine is written that way from scratch?
I understand the motivation to have an "IE Preview" option-- and have cursed the problem of not having that myself at times-- but if that functionality is built into my browser, I don't think I'd be able to call my browser "standards compliant" anymore. I frankly don't have a better solution, but please don't suggest ruining Gecko by making it an IE clone. (And yes, I'm nearly ignorant on the subject of rendering engine internals.)
People who talk like this are scared, insecure, and wrong. Stay in your parents' basement, AC, because you're wrong and you know it so well you don't even show yourself.
But don't you see? It doesn't require a "security expert" to keep a Windows machine clean and virus-free. All it requires is a little software and a clue. People don't purposely install software that will turn their computers into zombies. They do it because they don't understand that opening an email with that "free screensaver" or "hot picture" will infect their machine (and they're right, it shouldn't be that way!). They don't realize that random popups offering Viagra aren't built into the OS and normal, and that they're different from the random popups that Microsoft Update sends. I know and have observed several people (not stupid!) who just routinely close any popup window, don't read any of them, and assume everything is normal.
If grandma figures that all out, and especially if she tells all her friends, then I have no problem with her calling herself an expert. Don't worry, no prospective employer is going to hire her over someone who knows something, unless maybe she's hired to train end-users in the humdrum tasks of everyday workstation security. Imagine, if you will, a Beowulf Cluster of "grannies-who-get-it" showing everyone they know the nuts and bolts of how not to infect their computers! How to manage Microsoft update, how to d/l, install and run SpyBot S&D, a virus scanner, a spam filter program like POPFile, and maybe even a more secure browser (read, one that doesn't automatically install and run whatever random piece of code it finds on the net). They would do more for overall Internet security than a batallion of security experts preaching arcane router strategies to tired and jaded Network Admins. There would still be occasional viruses, worms, and exploits, but those could be left to the experts. I see no reason to be cynical about this.
Short answer, no. Like Oracle, MSSQL, Postgres, and MySql, none of the "big-iron" databases have integrated programmable front-ends. That functionality is supplied by whatever programming language you use: Perl, Python, VB,.NET, PHP, ASP, whatever, as well as some built-in functionality (like stored procedures, functions, and views) in the database itself. With any of these you have amazing flexibility as to platform, presentation, and access possibilities, as well as grown up features like hot backups, rock-solid backend enforced data integrity, replication to multiple servers, etc. If you want an integrated front-end, use Foxpro, Filemaker, or Access (and put up with their limitations). If you're uncomfortable with a database that lacks that kind of front end, consider learning one of the excellent programming languages used to access the data on a "real" database, and leave the DB nuts and bolts to the DBA's. I did, and haven't looked back.
now that Ingres is shareware GPL any apps you wrote querying the database would have to be GPL also, and our proprietary content-management and human resources systems are just too valuable for that!
This is an anti-OSS troll, and crap. The GPL will not retroactively convert your in-house code to OSS, period! This is patently FUD and a lie. If this is really a consultant for the fortune-500, the client deserves what they get.
As a previous poster pointed out, Postgresql does not require running as root, and doing that goes against ALL the docs.
And who the heck is running a "Linux mainframe"? That's consultant-speak for "the most expensive computer the client bought while I was working for them." My experience with big-ticket consultants is they identify the most dim-witted sycophant on the staff as their guru, and then, when anything goes wrong, they ask the dimwit, "what gives?" As for rebooting after altering a table, well I think the dimwit got it wrong.
In this case (if, on the remote chance this isn't a complete troll), the $100K consultant advised the company to spend another $100K on SQL Server licenses, the dimwit gets a promotion, the consultant rides out on his donkey, and everyone lives happily ever after. And they all deserve each other.
I agree with you, though I have to point out:
There's really no way to determine whether
article=news
will return TRUE or FALSE without knowing the context, hence, in scalar context,
$article = news
will return TRUE in the "is not false" meaning of the word. However, I think it's also somewhat clear that:
%article = news
in that
the feature set of Perl 6 is now stable, and yes,
there has been a delay, and yes,
Larry seems to have great confidence in the Perl development team, and yes,
his wife Gloria has veto power over the progress of the team toward the new Perl version.
Granted parsing the whole 4-page expression to evaluate such a simple expression is probably not that efficient. Maybe it's time to search CPAN for the Onion::WhatsItMean module.
OK, what makes a database product attractive to a corporation? There's the usual feature list, but most all of them will store data, process queries, and safely protect data. What corporations are looking for today is ease of integration with their other systems. Can I grab the data into Apache and serve it up hot and fresh on the net? Can I grab it into a VB dataset and squirt it into my admin's form letters? Is there a web management front-end, a la PHPMyAdmin or PHPPgAdmin? How about JDBC? How about ODBC? Dot NET? How about third party transaction management (MTS)? What about a Win32 (or KDE!) native GUI front-end for adding users, managing backups, etc.? How about a Perl DBI module? Or a PHP/Pear module? A way to efficiently migrate data from another product? Or seamless synchronization to and from my salespeople's laptops or palm pilots?
All of these things cost a lot of money to develop and maintain (programmer time), and without them any database, no matter how sophisticated, will just not be competitive with MSSQL, Oracle, MySql, Postgres, Sybase, or Firebird.
I think CA has finally figured out that Ingres won't fly without a lot of software to support it, and they can't afford to do it alone. I've heard (back in the day, mind you) that Ingres is a great, fast and capable database. I sense their intent now is not so much to imporove the core product, but to gather as many free add-on's as they can. Are you really going to slog through a zillion lines of legacy code to change a query optimizer or caching algorithm to improve the core product? More likely are you going to look at it to figure out the interfaces so you can integrate it into a new Pear DB module or web frontend?
Incidentally, I don't expect that large corporations are going to acquire the "Open Source" version of the product anyway (and CA knows this). They'll buy the version with support and a "trusted" vendor standing behind it. But the bonus will be that CA's sales force will be able to point out dozens of new, free interfaces and utilities that support it and make it useful. And heck, the Linux nerds at the corporation can support it as well.
And, as for the million bucks, well, that could buy them about 10 programmers for a year if they just hired them, or, in the form of a contest, could buy them a whole bunch of code from Open Source programmers who are willing to contribute something, on the off chance they might just get paid for it--or even just be recognized. It's sort of lottery economics.
I don't know the product, so I don't know if it's worth it, but I do know that CA is a corporation whose sole purpose is to maximize the value of its stockholders investments. A great new Open Source database product would be a fine thing. A big thirsty corporate sponge sopping up all the output of a couple hundred Open Source programmers in the service of wringing a few more years of viability for a competitor of MySQL and PostgreSQL might not be such a blessing.
My take on this is to be wary, very wary. And of course, to download and install it to see what it can do! If it's a great database, then why not?
I agree completely, except that the people this product is being marketed to have got to buy the computer and AOL access before they can get onto eBay! Sad, but true.
And after a year online, I'm pretty sure they'll think the $20/month they're paying AOL is too high too. But that's how some people learn.
I agree. However it should be noted that just changing the prodcedure language doesn't avoid proprietary lock-in. Writing a stored procedure in any language requires writing to a specific API with specific structures in a specific context for accessing, manipulating, and returning data. The fact it's written in C or Python or PHP or PL/SQL may make the stored procedure easier for someone to understand (if they're more familiar with those languages-- and I agree with a previous poster that PL/SQL beyond the most basic is difficult to understand, and don't get me started on T-SQL in MSSQL!), but most definitely doesn't make it portable. You can't really pull the procedures out and use them elsewhere--another DB or in some middle layer of software. Creating any significant DB functionality with stored procedures will result in a reduction in the portability of the application. You're locked in, even if it's a lock in to PostgreSQL.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad thing, and I'm in favor of using stored procedures, and have written quite a few of them, for Oracle and for PostgreSQL and MSSQL. They keep key functionality centralized, and allow less experienced coders to do useful work without having to understand all the complex data relationships, integrity rules, security policy, and such that are a part of any non-trivial DB application. I've also noticed that PostgreSQL's "native" procedure language is getting more and more compatible with Oracle's PL/SQL, making Oracle ironically perhaps the least subject to proprietary lock-in.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking they're going to customize the license agreement. With a couple of hundred copies of XP2003, they will need to streamline the "Yes, I agree" screens so one click will accept all of the agreements at once. Otherwise the poor admin will wear out his mouse and KVM switch just hopping from one screen to the next. Maybe they can also just connect to a corporation's bank and download the money in one transaction. OMG, and how about if 256 clippys pop up at the same time, asking if he wants help typing a letter? Definite customization required there! Oh, the humanity...!
What is it about the iWon.com site that makes me feel all slimy and dirty? Is it the fact that they're major purveyors of spam? Or could it be all the "popup blocker" ads they run to fund their site, duping the rubes into thinking there's a downloadable software solution to the problem that they and their ilk are doing everything to promote--the indiscriminate installation of spyware, malware, and popups.
It's mildly interesting that Amazon is breaking sales records, but I don't believe a word from that awful site... and as another poster already mentioned-- there's damn little content in the article.
Thank you for that comment. It is hilarious and true. Hat's off to you, AC! It perfectly illustrates the power and the danger of Excel. It also made me laugh enough to alarm the neighbors.
You're absolutely correct. My problem is when that query you specified takes 15-60 minutes to complete (~300,000 records returned from a 5+ table join, then summarized in VB/FoxPro). The great thing about pivot tables is you can start with fairly raw data and you don't have to use more SQL to collapse it, you just drag fields around. I've been using them a lot in the last couple of days, to check the output of queries against the database to make sure they have the correct joins. Write the data to a CSV file, pick it up in Excel, apply a pivot table (it takes about 3 mouse clicks and a few mouse drags) and you've got totals. And you can slice and dice those totals however you need, dynamically.
Call me cynical, but anyone who's saavy enough to get SQL data into an Excel file can learn the pivot table features just by picking it off the (data) menu (YOU DON'T NEED A BOOK!!). But try it, it's amazing.
I have been working on creating 10 year history reports of insurance coverage, aka "exposure reports", gathered from three different databases, and running the output through pivot tables to identify problems, trends, changed product line definitions, and SQL mistakes.
The new history reports are supposed to match previous reports, but little of the infrastructure (product line definitions) for the previous reports (aside from the raw data) still exists. The SQL will output 40,000 to 60,000 records, which, with a minute or two of clicking and formatting in a pivot table can be summarized in a page or two. This feature allows looking at 60,000+ records, 10 years of history (one year each in 10 columns), and anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of product lines. It's easy (almost trivial) to define categories and subcategories, and even sub-sub-categories, and look at just a few or all of them, with automatic counts, sums, and totals. No group-by's or order-by's required in the SQL.
Consider this (auto parts store): Spreadsheet shows 10 years of individual sales transactions. Useful, but not informative. Pivot table shows Car Parts Sales, Years in 10 columns. Leftmost column shows make of car (Chevy, Ford, Dodge, etc.). Main part of pivot table shows summarized sales. Sales by Make of Car over last 10 years, great. Total time to define and format, 45 seconds or less.
If the underlying data contains it, add a second category column, with car's subsystem (fuel, exhaust, engine, electrical, body, interior, tires...). Drag that column over to the pivot table and you can see that (for example) people bought lots of engine parts for Chevys, and lots of tires for Fords. Drag off the make of car column, and see which car subsystem you sold the most parts for, irrespective of make of car. Or maybe drag the column for "salesperson" over and find out Jill sells more Chrysler parts than Fred.Three amazingly informative reports in seconds.
The great thing about Excel pivot tables is every category you drag onto the spreadsheet is "dynamic" meaning there will be a drop down list where you can click on or off any item on the list for instant checking. Just want to compare Fords and Chryslers? Less than a dozen clicks (depends on how many makes you have in your data). Just want to look at the last three years? Click, click, click. Done. File/Print/OK. Tires? Drag, click, you're done. Engine part sales by day of week? Drag, click, file, print, OK. Done.
The downsides? Everything is dynamic, and every change you make will require some reformatting (and new print settings) if you're sending this to management. If you need to reproduce the same report next year, save carefully. I don't use charts, but that's probably also a bit of a pain, because it's easier to change the pivot table definitions than the chart formatting. And of course, you're not going to be able to process more than 64,000 records in Excel, unless I've missed something.
Even though the tool is great, I still have to go back to work tomorrow and finish the reports. Even so, using pivot tables has considerably reduced
I'm kind of a "veteran" newbie (have had Linux servers in the house for four or five years, since RH 5.x) who has never mastered it. I've fscked up my machines often (part of learning, I guess), and even gotten rooted in the past. So maybe I'm just naive, but when I tried to get FC2 to create a boot floppy for me, it said it was unable to do so because of the size of the kernel or something. I tried a couple of times, but no go for me. I didn't bother to pursue it. Since then the floppy drive on that server has been reycled.
The way I look at it, with the number of machines out there without floppy drives, and the problem of non-bootable CD drives (remember that?) gone away, the idea of having a complete linux distro on a CD to use just for this purpose seems like an advance of sorts. The blank CD costs about the same as a blank floppy, and we get all those extra megabytes of goodness.
Thank you for a thoughtful post. I could not agree more. In a very active thread which has apparently pushed the hot-buttons of a lot of trolls and AC's from all over the political spectrum, but provided vanishingly little actual information, this post seems to come the closest to a balanced view. I wish I had mod points to give you.
I re-read the GP post, and I didn't see where the poster said USA sucks. I think that was an inference you made on your own.
It's spelled "polls" not "poles". Otherwise a nice piece of fiction.
This is patently wrong, and a paranoid knee-jerk reaction to anti-terrorist FUD spread by well-meaning but clueless (and now campaigning) government functionaries. Public information is just that--public. And unless it is demonstrated before a judge that the information should be kept out of the hands of the public, then it belongs to the people. Hence the phrase, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
An uninformed electorate is a misled electorate. Government rules by the consent of the governed. And a gated-community, private club, members-only government is a government that has removed itself from the very public who has consented to place them in power.
One other point, which I think is relevant here, is that Greenwich, CT is one of the richest communities in the country. I think the reason they don't want aerial maps of the town made public is then we'd all know where and how they live. The anti-terrorist security angle is all just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that America's richest elite class doesn't want to be noticed. Hiding behind the "national security" curtain is just plain cynical.
And what's worse is the poor computer consultant who wants the maps (and has got all the liberal lawyers up in arms and fighting for him) probably just wants them so he can sell good information to companies that do lawn care, swimming pools, and aluminum siding for castle estates.
OK, I'll assume you're from Australia (where the article was posted from), where your statement might be true, or very young. In the good old USA, however, the military is always touting (and throwing dollars after) some new fangled technology that just plain doesn't work. Remember Star Wars? That brought about some fine basic research, but none of the technology ever matured into something that would actually work. Remember that darn tilt-rotor helicopter (I think it was called the Osprey?) that kept crashing with Marines in it? That product made it all the way through development, testing, and limited deployment before Congress finally pulled the plug. The reason was because it didn't work! That was a 40 billion dollar program. Star Wars was likely 100 billion. Sorry, but in the USA, the military does waste money on "unworking devices."
Thank you AC! There are at least a dozen big graphics on that site. That should heat up their processors, and likely swallow some bandwidth as well. I adapted this a bit to D/L the exe as well, and it's running in text mode on a Linux box. This is the most fun I've had with my computer in a long time!
I have no way to tell if this assertion is true (I'm responding to an AC, who could easily be a Gator employee for all I know), but I can say it does not conform to my own (admittedly limited) anecdotal evidence. I have not seen any degradation of system stability as a result of installing SP2 on two of my own machines, nor on two others that I "take care of" for friends.
I recommend that no one should avoid Windows Update unless one or another update demonstrably causes the computer to stop working in some way, and in that case (I haven't seen that happen since NT Service Pack 4(?) or 5, I don't remember exactly), just uninstall the update and track down the source of the problem. It's probably a broken or out-of-date driver anyway.
Don't buy into the argument that updating software is risky and inconvenient and invites instability. It's nothing compared to having your computer OWNED by some kind of virus, worm, or malware. It takes a small amount of knowledge, and a slightly larger amount of common sense to keep a Windows computer stable and malware-free. This requirement is no reason to give up on running a safe machine.
I just tried that, and my version of Thunderbird opens the link from an email in another window. Not as nice as having the option to open another tab, but at least you don't lose your place in the /. thread. I have to admit, I have started right-clicking every link, no matter what program it's displaying in, in order to open it in a new tab. Of course, this doesn't work in IE at work. It's such a good feature, it's become a habit.
No sweat, and I should apologize too. It was me that said "let me get this straight," which is not a normally recognized introduction to a useful exchange of ideas. Sorry. And so far (in case you're not checking) you've got better mods than I do in this exchange anyway. Nice talking with you!
And don't miss the link further down in this thread to the Creating Applications With Mozilla book. All the examples seem to work fine in Firefox, and I'm learning a lot more about rendering!
Thank you for the clarification. I didn't get it from your original post, but now I do. And I agree, that would be a great idea. I will confess again to nearly complete ignorance of the internals of a rendering engine.
Thanks again for the clarification.
modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs
Now wait, let me get this straight: You want someone to port the "non-standards-compliant" part of IE into a standards-compliant browser so it will render non-standards-compliant web pages the same way the much maligned non-standards-compliant browser does? Doesn't this turn the new browser into a non-standards-compliant browser? Or does that only happen if the rendering engine is written that way from scratch?
I understand the motivation to have an "IE Preview" option-- and have cursed the problem of not having that myself at times-- but if that functionality is built into my browser, I don't think I'd be able to call my browser "standards compliant" anymore. I frankly don't have a better solution, but please don't suggest ruining Gecko by making it an IE clone. (And yes, I'm nearly ignorant on the subject of rendering engine internals.)
Ewwwk, I responded to an AC. Sorry...
If grandma figures that all out, and especially if she tells all her friends, then I have no problem with her calling herself an expert. Don't worry, no prospective employer is going to hire her over someone who knows something, unless maybe she's hired to train end-users in the humdrum tasks of everyday workstation security. Imagine, if you will, a Beowulf Cluster of "grannies-who-get-it" showing everyone they know the nuts and bolts of how not to infect their computers! How to manage Microsoft update, how to d/l, install and run SpyBot S&D, a virus scanner, a spam filter program like POPFile, and maybe even a more secure browser (read, one that doesn't automatically install and run whatever random piece of code it finds on the net). They would do more for overall Internet security than a batallion of security experts preaching arcane router strategies to tired and jaded Network Admins. There would still be occasional viruses, worms, and exploits, but those could be left to the experts. I see no reason to be cynical about this.
Does it have a programmable front-end
Short answer, no. Like Oracle, MSSQL, Postgres, and MySql, none of the "big-iron" databases have integrated programmable front-ends. That functionality is supplied by whatever programming language you use: Perl, Python, VB, .NET, PHP, ASP, whatever, as well as some built-in functionality (like stored procedures, functions, and views) in the database itself. With any of these you have amazing flexibility as to platform, presentation, and access possibilities, as well as grown up features like hot backups, rock-solid backend enforced data integrity, replication to multiple servers, etc. If you want an integrated front-end, use Foxpro, Filemaker, or Access (and put up with their limitations). If you're uncomfortable with a database that lacks that kind of front end, consider learning one of the excellent programming languages used to access the data on a "real" database, and leave the DB nuts and bolts to the DBA's. I did, and haven't looked back.
This is an anti-OSS troll, and crap. The GPL will not retroactively convert your in-house code to OSS, period! This is patently FUD and a lie. If this is really a consultant for the fortune-500, the client deserves what they get.
As a previous poster pointed out, Postgresql does not require running as root, and doing that goes against ALL the docs.
And who the heck is running a "Linux mainframe"? That's consultant-speak for "the most expensive computer the client bought while I was working for them." My experience with big-ticket consultants is they identify the most dim-witted sycophant on the staff as their guru, and then, when anything goes wrong, they ask the dimwit, "what gives?" As for rebooting after altering a table, well I think the dimwit got it wrong.
In this case (if, on the remote chance this isn't a complete troll), the $100K consultant advised the company to spend another $100K on SQL Server licenses, the dimwit gets a promotion, the consultant rides out on his donkey, and everyone lives happily ever after. And they all deserve each other.
OK, I know... IHBT IHL HAND... Grrrr!
I agree with you, though I have to point out: There's really no way to determine whether
will return TRUE or FALSE without knowing the context, hence, in scalar context, will return TRUE in the "is not false" meaning of the word. However, I think it's also somewhat clear that:in thatthe feature set of Perl 6 is now stable, and yes,
there has been a delay, and yes,
Larry seems to have great confidence in the Perl development team, and yes,
his wife Gloria has veto power over the progress of the team toward the new Perl version.
Granted parsing the whole 4-page expression to evaluate such a simple expression is probably not that efficient. Maybe it's time to search CPAN for the Onion::WhatsItMean module.
Good luck to Larry with Perl 6 and his health.
OK, what makes a database product attractive to a corporation? There's the usual feature list, but most all of them will store data, process queries, and safely protect data. What corporations are looking for today is ease of integration with their other systems. Can I grab the data into Apache and serve it up hot and fresh on the net? Can I grab it into a VB dataset and squirt it into my admin's form letters? Is there a web management front-end, a la PHPMyAdmin or PHPPgAdmin? How about JDBC? How about ODBC? Dot NET? How about third party transaction management (MTS)? What about a Win32 (or KDE!) native GUI front-end for adding users, managing backups, etc.? How about a Perl DBI module? Or a PHP/Pear module? A way to efficiently migrate data from another product? Or seamless synchronization to and from my salespeople's laptops or palm pilots?
All of these things cost a lot of money to develop and maintain (programmer time), and without them any database, no matter how sophisticated, will just not be competitive with MSSQL, Oracle, MySql, Postgres, Sybase, or Firebird.
I think CA has finally figured out that Ingres won't fly without a lot of software to support it, and they can't afford to do it alone. I've heard (back in the day, mind you) that Ingres is a great, fast and capable database. I sense their intent now is not so much to imporove the core product, but to gather as many free add-on's as they can. Are you really going to slog through a zillion lines of legacy code to change a query optimizer or caching algorithm to improve the core product? More likely are you going to look at it to figure out the interfaces so you can integrate it into a new Pear DB module or web frontend?
Incidentally, I don't expect that large corporations are going to acquire the "Open Source" version of the product anyway (and CA knows this). They'll buy the version with support and a "trusted" vendor standing behind it. But the bonus will be that CA's sales force will be able to point out dozens of new, free interfaces and utilities that support it and make it useful. And heck, the Linux nerds at the corporation can support it as well.
And, as for the million bucks, well, that could buy them about 10 programmers for a year if they just hired them, or, in the form of a contest, could buy them a whole bunch of code from Open Source programmers who are willing to contribute something, on the off chance they might just get paid for it--or even just be recognized. It's sort of lottery economics.
I don't know the product, so I don't know if it's worth it, but I do know that CA is a corporation whose sole purpose is to maximize the value of its stockholders investments. A great new Open Source database product would be a fine thing. A big thirsty corporate sponge sopping up all the output of a couple hundred Open Source programmers in the service of wringing a few more years of viability for a competitor of MySQL and PostgreSQL might not be such a blessing.
My take on this is to be wary, very wary. And of course, to download and install it to see what it can do! If it's a great database, then why not?
I agree completely, except that the people this product is being marketed to have got to buy the computer and AOL access before they can get onto eBay! Sad, but true. And after a year online, I'm pretty sure they'll think the $20/month they're paying AOL is too high too. But that's how some people learn.
I agree. However it should be noted that just changing the prodcedure language doesn't avoid proprietary lock-in. Writing a stored procedure in any language requires writing to a specific API with specific structures in a specific context for accessing, manipulating, and returning data. The fact it's written in C or Python or PHP or PL/SQL may make the stored procedure easier for someone to understand (if they're more familiar with those languages-- and I agree with a previous poster that PL/SQL beyond the most basic is difficult to understand, and don't get me started on T-SQL in MSSQL!), but most definitely doesn't make it portable. You can't really pull the procedures out and use them elsewhere--another DB or in some middle layer of software. Creating any significant DB functionality with stored procedures will result in a reduction in the portability of the application. You're locked in, even if it's a lock in to PostgreSQL.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad thing, and I'm in favor of using stored procedures, and have written quite a few of them, for Oracle and for PostgreSQL and MSSQL. They keep key functionality centralized, and allow less experienced coders to do useful work without having to understand all the complex data relationships, integrity rules, security policy, and such that are a part of any non-trivial DB application. I've also noticed that PostgreSQL's "native" procedure language is getting more and more compatible with Oracle's PL/SQL, making Oracle ironically perhaps the least subject to proprietary lock-in.
Oops, I mean $3,600 total... Arrgh, where's the math checker when I need it?