OK, so I'm a sucker for an AC Troll, but I have to reply:
I live near these shootings. As I type, I hear a police helicopter overhead. My kids complain about not having outdoor recess at school. When I run an errand, I scan the perimeter of the parking lot before getting out of the car, and then jog to the door. But at least I'm not paranoid!
It's not a government plot to stir up anti-Iraq rage because (1) these daylight suburban shootings are too risky for a plot that would need to avoid detection at all costs; (2) the public has had no reason to think that the sniper attacks are related to terrorism, let alone to Iraq (unlike the anthrax attacks of last winter, which apparently were the work of a right-wing kook who wanted to look like an axis-of-evil terrorist); (3) the government has evil elements, but not THAT evil - not hunting rifles against children.
Until less than 24 hours ago, I thought the sniper was probably an Al Qaeda terrorist. No, he hadn't made political demands, but neither did the September 11 hijackers. Far from causing me to favor war against Iraq, though, the prospect of terrorism reminded me that we'll face much more of it if we continue to make war in the Middle East (for no very good reason).
Anyway, the tarot card seems to dispose of my terrorism theory, as well as your government-plot-posing-as-terrorism theory.
I have been told that Tylenol also contains caffiene, apart from the main active ingredient mentioned in the article, which combats the symptoms of caffiene withdrawal (usually in the form of a headache).
Tylenol is straight acetaminophen. Anacin is aspirin and caffeine. Some people say caffeine enhances the analgesic effect of aspirin, and aspirin and cola have long been a popular combination.
If you are at all price sensitive, it makes much more sense to spend $X for clearance-aisle technology instead of $3X for brand-new technology that will be on the clearance aisle in 3-6 months.
My brother used his annual bonus to buy his family's first computer, and spent over $3000 for Gateway's top of the line (which was something like 800 MHz at the time). He'd have been better off buying two or three 400 MHz machines so he wouldn't have to wait in line behind his wife and kids for machine time, spent mostly browsing the web over a dial-up connection.
I worked in a Congressional office back in the day, and your opinion doesn't count if you're not (a) a constituent in the congressional district, (b) a leader who can affect opinion in the district (e.g. Billy Graham), or (c) a personally respected acquaintance of the Member (which could include a donor). Don't get cynical or indignant about being ignored if you're not in the district; respect the congressman for focusing on the folks back home.
As has been said already, your opinion carries more weight if you go to more trouble to express it. Arrange an appointment with the congressman and he'll listen to you. Meet an aide and the congressman will get a memo on what you had to say. Send a letter from his district and your opinion will at least get tallied. If it's not a form letter, there's a good chance your congressman will read it, otherwise an aide will see it. Send an e-mail and you might get a response if you're from the district. If you don't show you're from the district, you probably won't be counted.
If you really care about an issue, don't think you've done your part by clicking a button on a website. Bundle your opinion with others THAT COUNT. Circulate a local petition, or get your civic association or student assembly or local professional organization chapter to pass a resolution, or write an op-ed for your local paper. "Think globally, act locally," is advice learned from experience.
An open source replacement for Exchange's calendar store could eliminate a lot of Windows Server installations. Thousands of businesses are tied to Windows Server because Exchange works exclusively with Windows Server and Outlook works (almost) exclusively with Exchange.
Exchange calendaring replacements have been developed by HP and Steltor, and acquired by Samsung and Oracle, respectively. Those products generally don't integrate with Outlook's calendar as well as Exchange does, but they prove the viability of the Exchange-replacement market, and an open source product would have a big pricing advantage over those commercial alternatives.
The tough part is persuading the end-users to switch from Outlook to a new calendar client. If IT can do this, the odds are good that IT could convince the users to switch from Microsoft Office to Star Office.
Maybe it's premature to short-sell MSFT, but this initiative could be a crack in the wall.
Get them hooked on freebies, then start charging. Microsoft lured the web to its fonts, and now you can only get them with a Microsoft browser. Doh! But we won't get fooled again.
Look how much money is wasted on the traditions of marriage. I dropped a wad on my wife's engagement ring, but then her mother dropped a wad and a half on the wedding, and my wife dropped half a wad on her gown. A couple years later, we wished we had saved one of those wads for furniture, but we couldn't specify what we would have wanted to give up.
Wasting money on a useless but ever-conspicuous bauble is not always a waste. Some women, such as my wife, want to feel, and want their friends to feel, that they were bought for a high price. And truth be told, I don't mind people knowing that I paid a high price for her.
And she was a good investment. She's even taught herself to reupholster furniture!
The web-based administration tools didn't install as documented. And the documentation wasn't easy; it required editing the Windows registry! The traditional GUI tools worked okay.
When I tried to dump a bunch of data into a test database, it didn't all get there. Turns out the database ran out of room in its "data devspace." I never worked with a database before that needed space pre-allocated for the data, and this requirement might be a problem for my clients without on-site DBAs.
The ODBC driver had a quirk that truncated floating-point values to integers when I dumped the values from a legacy database (Paradox) into SAP DB. The dump went fine if I defined the SAP DB table structure in advance, but the automatic ODBC type conversion didn't work.
Support is very responsive and competent, but it's only available through a mailing list, not a newsgroup, so it's harder to follow and participate in threads.
The documentation is thorough, but the online version doesn't have an index. SAP says you can use Google to search it.
It seems like a solid, well-built product, and I think it would work well if i got to know it better, but I'll probably wait until the developers iron out some of the kinks.
SAP licensed Adabas D and evolved it into the current SAP DB. Adabas D has itself evolved and is still sold by SoftwareAG. The situation is like that of SQL Server, which was licensed by Sybase to Microsoft and has evolved under both brands since the fork.
Postgresql is BSD style (do what you will) while SAP was released under the GPL.
The SAP DB license isn't really onerous. The database kernel is under the GPL, so if you distribute the server on a CD-ROM, you need to put the server's source on the CD. If you allow a download of the server, you need a link to the server source. The programming interfaces and client utilities are under the Lesser GPL, and can be distributed as binaries and linked to closed-source software.
This licensing doesn't restrict my rights to my application software at all. As for letting customers know the identity of the server software, that's no problem because SAP DB is easier to sell than PizzaFace DB.
PostgreSQL and SAP DB are both good products. A few differences I've noticed might influence your choice:
Platform independence: SAP DB supports Windows better than PostgreSQL does. They both have good support for unices of various flavors.
Concurrency: Both databases support ACID transactions. PostgreSQL uses multi-version concurrency control so reads and writes won't interfere with each other, while SAP DB uses row-level locking. In this respect, PostgreSQL v. SAP DB is similar to Oracle v. DB2.
Curriculum vitae: PostgreSQL originated at Berkeley, and has very cool features like MVCC and functional indexes. SAP DB descends from Adabas D, which was marketed as the PC-sized little brother of Adabas for mainframes, and SAP's focus is on providing robust support for business applications such as SAP's customer-relations and supply-chain products.
Developers: PostgreSQL is developed by a global community of volunteers. SAP DB is developed by a team of employees (FAQ says 100) in a major software company. Development of both products is active.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so I'm a sucker for an AC Troll, but I have to reply:
I live near these shootings. As I type, I hear a police helicopter overhead. My kids complain about not having outdoor recess at school. When I run an errand, I scan the perimeter of the parking lot before getting out of the car, and then jog to the door. But at least I'm not paranoid!
It's not a government plot to stir up anti-Iraq rage because (1) these daylight suburban shootings are too risky for a plot that would need to avoid detection at all costs; (2) the public has had no reason to think that the sniper attacks are related to terrorism, let alone to Iraq (unlike the anthrax attacks of last winter, which apparently were the work of a right-wing kook who wanted to look like an axis-of-evil terrorist); (3) the government has evil elements, but not THAT evil - not hunting rifles against children.
Until less than 24 hours ago, I thought the sniper was probably an Al Qaeda terrorist. No, he hadn't made political demands, but neither did the September 11 hijackers. Far from causing me to favor war against Iraq, though, the prospect of terrorism reminded me that we'll face much more of it if we continue to make war in the Middle East (for no very good reason).
Anyway, the tarot card seems to dispose of my terrorism theory, as well as your government-plot-posing-as-terrorism theory.
If you are at all price sensitive, it makes much more sense to spend $X for clearance-aisle technology instead of $3X for brand-new technology that will be on the clearance aisle in 3-6 months.
My brother used his annual bonus to buy his family's first computer, and spent over $3000 for Gateway's top of the line (which was something like 800 MHz at the time). He'd have been better off buying two or three 400 MHz machines so he wouldn't have to wait in line behind his wife and kids for machine time, spent mostly browsing the web over a dial-up connection.
I worked in a Congressional office back in the day, and your opinion doesn't count if you're not (a) a constituent in the congressional district, (b) a leader who can affect opinion in the district (e.g. Billy Graham), or (c) a personally respected acquaintance of the Member (which could include a donor). Don't get cynical or indignant about being ignored if you're not in the district; respect the congressman for focusing on the folks back home.
As has been said already, your opinion carries more weight if you go to more trouble to express it. Arrange an appointment with the congressman and he'll listen to you. Meet an aide and the congressman will get a memo on what you had to say. Send a letter from his district and your opinion will at least get tallied. If it's not a form letter, there's a good chance your congressman will read it, otherwise an aide will see it. Send an e-mail and you might get a response if you're from the district. If you don't show you're from the district, you probably won't be counted.
If you really care about an issue, don't think you've done your part by clicking a button on a website. Bundle your opinion with others THAT COUNT. Circulate a local petition, or get your civic association or student assembly or local professional organization chapter to pass a resolution, or write an op-ed for your local paper. "Think globally, act locally," is advice learned from experience.
An open source replacement for Exchange's calendar store could eliminate a lot of Windows Server installations. Thousands of businesses are tied to Windows Server because Exchange works exclusively with Windows Server and Outlook works (almost) exclusively with Exchange.
Exchange calendaring replacements have been developed by HP and Steltor, and acquired by Samsung and Oracle, respectively. Those products generally don't integrate with Outlook's calendar as well as Exchange does, but they prove the viability of the Exchange-replacement market, and an open source product would have a big pricing advantage over those commercial alternatives.
The tough part is persuading the end-users to switch from Outlook to a new calendar client. If IT can do this, the odds are good that IT could convince the users to switch from Microsoft Office to Star Office.
Maybe it's premature to short-sell MSFT, but this initiative could be a crack in the wall.
Darn, I thought this article was about Toronto's gift to journalism, Naked News.
I guess that was a joke, but let's make sure everyone understands that attorney licensure isn't easily transportable across state lines.
Get them hooked on freebies, then start charging. Microsoft lured the web to its fonts, and now you can only get them with a Microsoft browser. Doh! But we won't get fooled again.
.Net for Linux?
BTW, where do I download
Look how much money is wasted on the traditions of marriage. I dropped a wad on my wife's engagement ring, but then her mother dropped a wad and a half on the wedding, and my wife dropped half a wad on her gown. A couple years later, we wished we had saved one of those wads for furniture, but we couldn't specify what we would have wanted to give up.
Wasting money on a useless but ever-conspicuous bauble is not always a waste. Some women, such as my wife, want to feel, and want their friends to feel, that they were bought for a high price. And truth be told, I don't mind people knowing that I paid a high price for her.
And she was a good investment. She's even taught herself to reupholster furniture!
- The web-based administration tools didn't install as documented. And the documentation wasn't easy; it required editing the Windows registry! The traditional GUI tools worked okay.
- When I tried to dump a bunch of data into a test database, it didn't all get there. Turns out the database ran out of room in its "data devspace." I never worked with a database before that needed space pre-allocated for the data, and this requirement might be a problem for my clients without on-site DBAs.
- The ODBC driver had a quirk that truncated floating-point values to integers when I dumped the values from a legacy database (Paradox) into SAP DB. The dump went fine if I defined the SAP DB table structure in advance, but the automatic ODBC type conversion didn't work.
- Support is very responsive and competent, but it's only available through a mailing list, not a newsgroup, so it's harder to follow and participate in threads.
- The documentation is thorough, but the online version doesn't have an index. SAP says you can use Google to search it.
It seems like a solid, well-built product, and I think it would work well if i got to know it better, but I'll probably wait until the developers iron out some of the kinks.SAP licensed Adabas D and evolved it into the current SAP DB. Adabas D has itself evolved and is still sold by SoftwareAG. The situation is like that of SQL Server, which was licensed by Sybase to Microsoft and has evolved under both brands since the fork.
- promoting pornography for minors
- furnishing pornography to minors
- public display of explicit sexual material
The Missouri Attorney General might be able to help.This licensing doesn't restrict my rights to my application software at all. As for letting customers know the identity of the server software, that's no problem because SAP DB is easier to sell than PizzaFace DB.
- Platform independence: SAP DB supports Windows better than PostgreSQL does. They both have good support for unices of various flavors.
- Concurrency: Both databases support ACID transactions. PostgreSQL uses multi-version concurrency control so reads and writes won't interfere with each other, while SAP DB uses row-level locking. In this respect, PostgreSQL v. SAP DB is similar to Oracle v. DB2.
- Curriculum vitae: PostgreSQL originated at Berkeley, and has very cool features like MVCC and functional indexes. SAP DB descends from Adabas D, which was marketed as the PC-sized little brother of Adabas for mainframes, and SAP's focus is on providing robust support for business applications such as SAP's customer-relations and supply-chain products.
- Developers: PostgreSQL is developed by a global community of volunteers. SAP DB is developed by a team of employees (FAQ says 100) in a major software company. Development of both products is active.
You can do good work with either product.D A Pennebaker, who filmed Ziggy Stardust's last performance, also documented the last waltz of the Internet Bubble as producer of Startup.com.