MS Access is 'only' a frontend to JET (aka MDB)...
Please correct my logic here, but wasn't Access originally a rewrite of dBase IV? The same one developed by Tom Rettig, of "Lassie" fame? Is that why any Access database I've ever had to depend on barks at passing cars when it reaches 25MB?
Not entirely fair, of course -- only refers to pre-W2K MDE's. It's still only a short step from there to a decent database though, and many folks start with Access as an easy kick-start. More than that though, and the path is fraught with pain...
The software is valueable (sic), so the people who work with it are valueable
I've got mod points, but I'm not going to use them here because there is no category for "Cynical" which this post would most assuredly be modded up for.
However, he's mostly right. My father used to say when trying to sell an ugly piece of jewelry "If a piece doesn't sell, keep raising the price until it does". Worked for him.
Product placement -- one photo, just one photo could change the stock price of the winning company. "Bill Gates uses Zippy Quick whiteboards (Yow! Are we presenting yet?)". I'd pay $10M of someone else's money for that, any day.
I think when you have enough money for basics you shift to a different economy, where you keep accounts using a different type of coin. For LARP's such as the SCA the coin is respect & renown, for exec types it's how much time is this going to cost. I suspect for the upper end of the spectrum it might be "how much is this going to bother me?"
If you believe that evolution is happening and is continually differentiating species, then where does Homosapien stand in that evolutionary timeline?
If, as I'm hoping, it's infinite, I'd say we're mathematically smack in the middle.
The only truly contentious issue between "creationism" and "evolution" is whether the Irish Anglican archbishop James Ussher was a good or a bad mathematician in 1580. All else is nothing but choice of granularity.
Parallel parking in the city is easy with practice and a cool eye, a fine sense of perspective, good eye-hand coordination, and a Robot Parker from Toyota.
Sheesh-- where's the geek in that? Turns you into a User.
A real geek would have a replica Dymaxion Car, dive in at right angles and swing the pointy end around.
Perhaps. EMC has some low-cost high density stuff used by the finance industry a lot, but I'd still look into MAID disk arrays (massive arrays of inactive disks). They have better response than tapes and don't chew anywhere near the power of a large RAID array; disks with info not being used don't spin except for an algorithm-based spin-up exerciser. Iirc they also use acoustic sensors and other interesting bits to pro-actively determine a failing disk, which they then route around as if it were a bad sector. Copan makes them I think.
Only problem is that the stereotypical middle dwellers are breeding like rabbits, while the science-sypathisers tend to pop them out at a much lower rate.
Anyone care to speculate where this will leave us in 50 years, let alone 250,000?
It's been done -- look up the old SF short story "The Marching Morons". Brilliant story, Swiftian humour. 1930's I think. Read it.
I think it all started with the first Vax 780, or possibly the first IBM 370 channel controller. Those old machines booted with a 7" floppy that had a capacity of 0.5k. Yep, 512 bytes. Early bootstraps could store the entire contents on to a hard disk with very few instructions if the sector size matched.
Depends on the size of your device and system cache, really. There's a functional difference between the size of a sector and the size of the space allocated for new files or file extensions. My advice? Let the hardware vendors decide what they want for the sector size, doesn't matter all that much. Then make sure any file extension or file initial size allocation is a healthy multiple of that. If you don't use it all, truncate on close. It's small allocations, not small sector sizes, that determine the rate of file fragmentation.
Unfortunately, ultimately, most business users will be forced to upgrade to new systems simply because there will no longer be replacement parts for the old systems.
Yep. In the shop I'm in now we support about 17,000 retail lanes with POS gear and servers. A very big ish is when a donk is at (a) end of life (vendors don't make 'em), (b) end of availability (nothing on the second hand market either) and (c) end of support (can't even beg used replacments to fix).
Stuff stays on roughly in sync with Moore's Law, 18 months. We have to upgrade at that point, and we spend more on cables for new peripherals than we do on software upgrades. All this in a business environment that really, really wishes there was no such thing as progress.
Yes -- if a committee of apes were to decide on the next generation of ape, would they think -- better fur, longer arms, bigger teeth, or would they come up with the idea of a human? (I paraphrase and grossly misquote something somewhere in Heinlein)
Personally, I see us switching to dummy terminals to interface with computers, but home computers will still exist. The idea would be that the "Desktop Computer" as we know it today would disappear and be replaced by a device...
This is often called "convergence", but I think "divergence" would be more appropos. It makes sense to create specialist devices from general-purpose stored program computers. An MP3 player is a computer. A GameBoy is a computer. A Non-contact Digital Thermometer with Laser Sighting (e.g. Soanar QM-7222, what a cool toy, don't take it in a carry-on bag) is a computer. But none of them require you to carry AVG support or RAID arrays around with you. Yet. Unless you want to.
Re:How long do plastic bags and bottles last anywa
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Bacteria Eat Styrofoam
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The most difficult part of working for an ecological recycling firm is fighting the seagulls for your turf.
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Provided the plywood side doesn't fall off the Radar Men's Moon Tank, and the lava flow doesn't melt the film entirely!!
This was way better than Plan 9.
Please correct my logic here, but wasn't Access originally a rewrite of dBase IV? The same one developed by Tom Rettig, of "Lassie" fame? Is that why any Access database I've ever had to depend on barks at passing cars when it reaches 25MB?
Not entirely fair, of course -- only refers to pre-W2K MDE's. It's still only a short step from there to a decent database though, and many folks start with Access as an easy kick-start. More than that though, and the path is fraught with pain...
I've got mod points, but I'm not going to use them here because there is no category for "Cynical" which this post would most assuredly be modded up for.
However, he's mostly right. My father used to say when trying to sell an ugly piece of jewelry "If a piece doesn't sell, keep raising the price until it does". Worked for him.
Product placement -- one photo, just one photo could change the stock price of the winning company. "Bill Gates uses Zippy Quick whiteboards (Yow! Are we presenting yet?)". I'd pay $10M of someone else's money for that, any day.
I think when you have enough money for basics you shift to a different economy, where you keep accounts using a different type of coin. For LARP's such as the SCA the coin is respect & renown, for exec types it's how much time is this going to cost. I suspect for the upper end of the spectrum it might be "how much is this going to bother me?"
Can I get a beta copy of Nifty Doorways?
If, as I'm hoping, it's infinite, I'd say we're mathematically smack in the middle.
The only truly contentious issue between "creationism" and "evolution" is whether the Irish Anglican archbishop James Ussher was a good or a bad mathematician in 1580. All else is nothing but choice of granularity.
Could I have a third eye? Budget time is coming up and I could use the additional insight.
Sheesh-- where's the geek in that? Turns you into a User.
A real geek would have a replica Dymaxion Car, dive in at right angles and swing the pointy end around.
(We miss you, R. Buckminster Fuller!)
Yeep! Have I shrouded to that nature spirit again? I wanted the six-legged gecko berserker. Darn.
Perhaps. EMC has some low-cost high density stuff used by the finance industry a lot, but I'd still look into MAID disk arrays (massive arrays of inactive disks). They have better response than tapes and don't chew anywhere near the power of a large RAID array; disks with info not being used don't spin except for an algorithm-based spin-up exerciser. Iirc they also use acoustic sensors and other interesting bits to pro-actively determine a failing disk, which they then route around as if it were a bad sector. Copan makes them I think.
Doh! I will shut up and go back to my RFP's now.
Anyone care to speculate where this will leave us in 50 years, let alone 250,000?
It's been done -- look up the old SF short story "The Marching Morons". Brilliant story, Swiftian humour. 1930's I think. Read it.
And yes, I remember booting 750's, 780's, 785's, 8550's, 6550's ... all manner of Vaxen, repeatedly, about 10 years of it.
Mind you, at least 7 years of that was waiting for the 750 microcode to load...
Hardware was all very compatible, worked very well when it was working at all -- sort of like a Citroen.
But I still miss DCL, and logical names. They waz cool.
I'm standing here, watching a tape drive, spinning around, and talking...
Hey, I think I need that and a Ball of Everlasting Golem for war epic 1.0. Oh, wait...
Man that takes me back. Where's my toupee....
Depends on the size of your device and system cache, really. There's a functional difference between the size of a sector and the size of the space allocated for new files or file extensions. My advice? Let the hardware vendors decide what they want for the sector size, doesn't matter all that much. Then make sure any file extension or file initial size allocation is a healthy multiple of that. If you don't use it all, truncate on close. It's small allocations, not small sector sizes, that determine the rate of file fragmentation.
Yep. In the shop I'm in now we support about 17,000 retail lanes with POS gear and servers. A very big ish is when a donk is at (a) end of life (vendors don't make 'em), (b) end of availability (nothing on the second hand market either) and (c) end of support (can't even beg used replacments to fix).
Stuff stays on roughly in sync with Moore's Law, 18 months. We have to upgrade at that point, and we spend more on cables for new peripherals than we do on software upgrades. All this in a business environment that really, really wishes there was no such thing as progress.
I thought ProDOS was for the Apple /// though?
Yes -- if a committee of apes were to decide on the next generation of ape, would they think -- better fur, longer arms, bigger teeth, or would they come up with the idea of a human? (I paraphrase and grossly misquote something somewhere in Heinlein)
BTW I think it's better rendered as Pars cantati, pars saltati, et in brechis pars bullorum ;)
j/k, honest...
This is often called "convergence", but I think "divergence" would be more appropos. It makes sense to create specialist devices from general-purpose stored program computers. An MP3 player is a computer. A GameBoy is a computer. A Non-contact Digital Thermometer with Laser Sighting (e.g. Soanar QM-7222, what a cool toy, don't take it in a carry-on bag) is a computer. But none of them require you to carry AVG support or RAID arrays around with you. Yet. Unless you want to.
The most difficult part of working for an ecological recycling firm is fighting the seagulls for your turf.
It was a Big-3 Australian bank, assets in the billions, managed funds group. Excel was everywhere. Workflow problems would make you cry.