What happens when multiple end users want to access 1 spreadsheet at a time. For small teams this can work fine (We're always talking over the partition getting others to 'release' the spreadsheet). But when this team grows to around 30 people even trivial amounts of data should be in a database. If the boss wants his pretty excel file he can use ODBC to access it over the network, and its fairly simplistic to create (or buy/acquire) a frontend for a database.
err, right. And then who'd create the frontends? In a typical marketing/sales firm, where all IT support it outsourced (no, not to India, just some local IT company - they dont have a IT department of their own) where there aren't any "geeky" or lets just say, well informed users, how do they "create" a front-end?
As for buy/acquire, how do they need to buy/acquire for every new spreadsheet that has to be shared?
And if there is some such magical solution, then with such "front-ends" there is always a growing list of features the users will want (specific to each spreadsheet, I must add). What happens then?
Part of the problem of using excel AS a database is that it combines both the database AND the frontend - which means everyone has to "meddle with software adminstration".
Oh do they? The maximum "administration" that I've had to do with such shared spreadsheets (alright, alright, Excel spreadsheets), is to save them at a shared location, and save them after each modification. Is this harder than the copious administration processes for databases?
And while I am here, let me add that I am not dismissing anyone's use of Excel. In fact, I didnt even mention Excel. The fact of the matter is, most users find uses of the software (or the ways of using software) in ways the authors never thought of. Which is exactly what leads to this "gap" in features and desires. Over time, these gaps are filled and a fairly acceptable and close-to-needs solutions evolved (in some cases, they might not need to even release a software - a large number of shortcomings are identified in prototypes themselves). If a large number of users believe sharing, the problems resulting from sharing, lack of statistical capabilities, etc are missing features, then I believe in today's competitive market, any company will add them at the earliest.
I think you need to examine the concept of a "database program" and a database frontend.
Most databases that I have worked with, did not seem to have a mechanism of building a feature rich, easy to use, front-end. They didn't have easy administration capabilities either. Most workable front-ends were made available only by developing them. Oh, I've seen only Oracle, SQL Server (!) and mySQL
Oh I couldn't agree more about the presence of a product niche that has a spreadsheet-esque interface, but not only enforces relationships, but also provides all the snazzy features (statistical operations, et al).
The big questions here are then how many users actually need this, and how many naive users correctly understand the concept of "relationships" between data and the enforcing rules?
I have a sneaky feeling these features are missed mostly by developers tyring to squeeze that extra bit of functionality from a spreadsheet (be it to impress, or out of sheer laziness):-p
So if I have an N-gage, I can SSH to with Putty? What will be the hardware interface? Or is there a mechanism to hook my N-gage to my computer and then SSH to it? - wouldn't that be kinda pointless then?
I really fail to see the point in these posts about a spreadsheet program (be it Excel), not being a database.
Maybe there is a genuine need for a database program (and I use this term here loosely) that provides an interace as easy to use as spreadsheet? Not every user is a programmer, and the vagaries of the any DBMS are well known. Besides, no end-user wants to meddle with software administration.
Maybe the users use it as a database, simply because it provides an easy means of storage and manipulation of trivial data? Not ever user (not in every case, at least) has a million records to work on.
Yes, spreadsheet tools may not have capabilities such as porbability distributions or statistical measures. How many naive users need them? Oh, the average executive might need them to project forecasts, but then, is there a tool that allows this? Conversely, if this limitation has been identified (and I'm sure this must have been identified in the past and by others, as well), why do we not see this being incorporated in any mainstream spreadsheet? (hint: there probably is not enough critical mass of users demanding such a feature).
The other point listed in the article - "the worst nightmare of those who justify IT's return on investment - spending extra money on a more time-consuming product that yields absolutely no measurable improvement?". Well then, perhaps in that given scenario, the need wasn't evaluated correctly? Or maybe such a complexity wasn't required after all?
It's easy to point out the missing features/capabilities from any software, but if it's not asked for by average/most users, it will take a long while to be incorporated (if at all).
Yes, this however leaves the issue of errors introduced by the use of such spreadsheets, whether tacit or implicit. In either cases, it would be due to the user being unable to find the right tool to model the problem, or not being able to understand the problem correctly and hence not taking into account as many (if not all) parameters involved.
Good news is Motorola's Linux-based smartphones were 1% of the cellphone market in 2002 [3.5 million units], while the bad news is Motorola has decided to ahead with not only Linux, but also MS Mobile, for obvious reasons (they wouldn't want to keep all their eggs in one basket, would they?).
However, this provides MS another piece of the pie in yet another industry segment...
On another note, wonder what he meant by being able to launch phones at different times (Christmas in the west, Chinese new year in China) with Linux. Do they plan to just plug-in the latest kernel patch and use it to claim "new, improved Smart-Phone!":-p
Oh, and IMO, tech interviews could be better without questions such as "What are the benefits of using Linux?" and "Why is Linux better for the connected office? ".
OO programming defines and to some extent mandates more concrete and phased flow-control diagrams than a regular flowchart.
In typical structured programming, there is more emphasis on control flow. Furthermore, for any modestly sized software, you will need flowcharts withy varying detail - those depicting the overall flow, flow for a particular user, flow within a particular module, and so on. This essentially leaves the decision of detail to each organization and/or author, and we can thus argue this approach introduces a certain vague-ness.
OOP, on the other hand, provides more detailed and clearer demarcation for each of these entities.
Use Cases - model the functionality of system and the path of interaction of different users with it.
Activity Diagrams - depict the dynamism of the system and model the control flow from activity to activity. You can use these to model workflow and business processes.
Statechart Diagrams - depicts the dynamic response of the system in response to external stimuli.
Sequence Diagram - describes the interactions between different components (classes) in terms of message/data exchange over time.
Class Diagram - some call it the backbone of OOP. These diagram depict the various entities in your system and the relationships/associations among them.
Object Diagram - describe the snapshot of entities in the system at a given time. You can use these to examine the overall system state at any time, and verify your class diagram
Package Diagram - More useful for teams/people responsible for managing deployment and building the system, package diagrams describe the grouping and packaging of your classes.
Deployment Diagram - depicts the physical resources in the system and how they are deployed (locally, remotely, whether as nodes, connections, etc.)
This is even more important from the OSS community perspective.
Being the first to market, as they say in business, is half the battle. I don't know much about the software usage scenario in Africa, but if there is a fledgling open source initiative there, it will provide an early insight about the principles and thought process behind open source, the alternatives available to the mainstream (and sometimes expensive) commerical software and the presence of a worldwide, large, helpful OSS community.
With this early presence and awareness, there will be more and more converts to OSS at an early stage, which will go a long way in contributing to OSS over time.
Is anybody out there using Bayesian filtering for stuff other than to get rid of spam?
Look out for most content management systems - most of them happen to make use of some or other form of Bayesian algorithms to "cleanse" the content and/or extract attributes. After all, your "filter" is nothing but a set of rules built on a test/clean data, with which you compare your actual data.
For example, how useful would Bayesian filtering be to identify news stories/blog entries in the RSS feeds I monitor?
Do you monitor similar/same RSS feeds from different sources? What factors differentiate these two sources? Do you have know the ground rules/criteria to determine sanctity for the same/similar RSS feed from these different sources?
Is there any software out there using Bayesian filtering to do this sort of thing already?
Don't know about that. Though I'm sure you can download some Bayesian implementation from the web and hook it up with your RSS feeds.
What other areas can you think of where Bayesian filtering may prove useful?
There are already content management (catalogs), and attribute extraction (ESS systems for large corporations need to exchange data with several suppliers via supplier catalogs).
Its heartening to hear about pan-African open source initiative. The implications of this are enormous.
This shows there is a fairly large developer community, which is informed and competitive enough to be a part of the open source initiative, as against merely working to earn.
That, the efforts from these developers shall sooner or later bring revenue for the African economy. With the outsourcing initiatives already filling coffers of other econonomies all over the world, I don't see why stable African countries should not be benefited.
All such initiatives provide an example and direction to the youth - not all of them have the guidance and help they need, and such initiatives provide some inkling that perhaps there might be some prosperity in software.
This further chips away at the belief that Africa is about poverty, aids and civil wars only. I agree all these exist, but education can help eradicate these to a large extent.
Finally, such initiatives may prompt the government to provide more funding to the software companies association/education institutions to develop and promote the industry, attracting foreign investment (read outsourcing)
One of the biggest problems I have found while teaching/interacting with older people, especially related to IT, is the lack of visualization.
This is not to say they dont have the cerebral matter, but the simple fact that they have not been as exposed to technology and technology-related products as we have been since childhood. Point in case: How many of mothers (and I mean in their fifties and later) have you seen taking a go at X-box or playstation? Or trying to figure out the controls of the new DVD player/home entertainment system, etc? At least I havent seen too many.
So, the biggest hinderance is the apathy/fear towards all things "geek" or "advanced" (as my mother calls them). Reminds me of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance":-)
Try giving her the CD-ROMs/online material from www.howstuffworks.com [howstuffworks] - which I have found to be great resource for starters.
As if pr0n pop-ups werent enough, we'll now have Dubya and others popping up and asking to vote for them.
Wonder if the internet usage policy will classify Dubya with his silly grin as "distasteful, objectionable content":-)
Oh didnt you know? this version of course does not supply English wrenches! go get that other rpm from (list of locations, of which the first three don't work). If you do manage to locate the wrench, then of course, its incompatible with everything you have...you get the picture!;)
...you'd have to go through 100 different man pages to find the command to get it to start, but of course, it won't start because you lack certain RPM, or you the command to start expects a number of modules to be pre-installed. Oh, and when you try to install those modules you find they are incompatible with your car, in-effect you have to change the whole car.
Buy a new car, and start the whole process all over again...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh! no sorcery or magic tricks then?
just another piece of programming trudgery...*sigh
What happens when multiple end users want to access 1 spreadsheet at a time. For small teams this can work fine (We're always talking over the partition getting others to 'release' the spreadsheet). But when this team grows to around 30 people even trivial amounts of data should be in a database. If the boss wants his pretty excel file he can use ODBC to access it over the network, and its fairly simplistic to create (or buy/acquire) a frontend for a database.
err, right. And then who'd create the frontends? In a typical marketing/sales firm, where all IT support it outsourced (no, not to India, just some local IT company - they dont have a IT department of their own) where there aren't any "geeky" or lets just say, well informed users, how do they "create" a front-end?
As for buy/acquire, how do they need to buy/acquire for every new spreadsheet that has to be shared?
And if there is some such magical solution, then with such "front-ends" there is always a growing list of features the users will want (specific to each spreadsheet, I must add). What happens then?
Part of the problem of using excel AS a database is that it combines both the database AND the frontend - which means everyone has to "meddle with software adminstration". Oh do they? The maximum "administration" that I've had to do with such shared spreadsheets (alright, alright, Excel spreadsheets), is to save them at a shared location, and save them after each modification. Is this harder than the copious administration processes for databases?
And while I am here, let me add that I am not dismissing anyone's use of Excel. In fact, I didnt even mention Excel. The fact of the matter is, most users find uses of the software (or the ways of using software) in ways the authors never thought of. Which is exactly what leads to this "gap" in features and desires. Over time, these gaps are filled and a fairly acceptable and close-to-needs solutions evolved (in some cases, they might not need to even release a software - a large number of shortcomings are identified in prototypes themselves). If a large number of users believe sharing, the problems resulting from sharing, lack of statistical capabilities, etc are missing features, then I believe in today's competitive market, any company will add them at the earliest.
I think you need to examine the concept of a "database program" and a database frontend. Most databases that I have worked with, did not seem to have a mechanism of building a feature rich, easy to use, front-end. They didn't have easy administration capabilities either. Most workable front-ends were made available only by developing them. Oh, I've seen only Oracle, SQL Server (!) and mySQL
Oh I couldn't agree more about the presence of a product niche that has a spreadsheet-esque interface, but not only enforces relationships, but also provides all the snazzy features (statistical operations, et al).
:-p
The big questions here are then how many users actually need this, and how many naive users correctly understand the concept of "relationships" between data and the enforcing rules?
I have a sneaky feeling these features are missed mostly by developers tyring to squeeze that extra bit of functionality from a spreadsheet (be it to impress, or out of sheer laziness)
So if I have an N-gage, I can SSH to with Putty? What will be the hardware interface? Or is there a mechanism to hook my N-gage to my computer and then SSH to it? - wouldn't that be kinda pointless then?
:-s
wonder what I'm missing here...
I really fail to see the point in these posts about a spreadsheet program (be it Excel), not being a database.
Maybe there is a genuine need for a database program (and I use this term here loosely) that provides an interace as easy to use as spreadsheet? Not every user is a programmer, and the vagaries of the any DBMS are well known. Besides, no end-user wants to meddle with software administration.
Maybe the users use it as a database, simply because it provides an easy means of storage and manipulation of trivial data? Not ever user (not in every case, at least) has a million records to work on.
Yes, spreadsheet tools may not have capabilities such as porbability distributions or statistical measures. How many naive users need them? Oh, the average executive might need them to project forecasts, but then, is there a tool that allows this? Conversely, if this limitation has been identified (and I'm sure this must have been identified in the past and by others, as well), why do we not see this being incorporated in any mainstream spreadsheet? (hint: there probably is not enough critical mass of users demanding such a feature).
The other point listed in the article - "the worst nightmare of those who justify IT's return on investment - spending extra money on a more time-consuming product that yields absolutely no measurable improvement?". Well then, perhaps in that given scenario, the need wasn't evaluated correctly? Or maybe such a complexity wasn't required after all?
It's easy to point out the missing features/capabilities from any software, but if it's not asked for by average/most users, it will take a long while to be incorporated (if at all). Yes, this however leaves the issue of errors introduced by the use of such spreadsheets, whether tacit or implicit. In either cases, it would be due to the user being unable to find the right tool to model the problem, or not being able to understand the problem correctly and hence not taking into account as many (if not all) parameters involved.
...he is just awaiting 'scriptization'...
Good news is Motorola's Linux-based smartphones were 1% of the cellphone market in 2002 [3.5 million units], while the bad news is Motorola has decided to ahead with not only Linux, but also MS Mobile, for obvious reasons (they wouldn't want to keep all their eggs in one basket, would they?).
:-p
However, this provides MS another piece of the pie in yet another industry segment...
On another note, wonder what he meant by being able to launch phones at different times (Christmas in the west, Chinese new year in China) with Linux. Do they plan to just plug-in the latest kernel patch and use it to claim "new, improved Smart-Phone!"
Oh, and IMO, tech interviews could be better without questions such as "What are the benefits of using Linux?" and "Why is Linux better for the connected office? ".
In typical structured programming, there is more emphasis on control flow. Furthermore, for any modestly sized software, you will need flowcharts withy varying detail - those depicting the overall flow, flow for a particular user, flow within a particular module, and so on. This essentially leaves the decision of detail to each organization and/or author, and we can thus argue this approach introduces a certain vague-ness.
OOP, on the other hand, provides more detailed and clearer demarcation for each of these entities.
*sigh... life's tough
This is even more important from the OSS community perspective.
Being the first to market, as they say in business, is half the battle. I don't know much about the software usage scenario in Africa, but if there is a fledgling open source initiative there, it will provide an early insight about the principles and thought process behind open source, the alternatives available to the mainstream (and sometimes expensive) commerical software and the presence of a worldwide, large, helpful OSS community.
With this early presence and awareness, there will be more and more converts to OSS at an early stage, which will go a long way in contributing to OSS over time.
Is anybody out there using Bayesian filtering for stuff other than to get rid of spam?
Look out for most content management systems - most of them happen to make use of some or other form of Bayesian algorithms to "cleanse" the content and/or extract attributes. After all, your "filter" is nothing but a set of rules built on a test/clean data, with which you compare your actual data.
For example, how useful would Bayesian filtering be to identify news stories/blog entries in the RSS feeds I monitor?
Do you monitor similar/same RSS feeds from different sources? What factors differentiate these two sources? Do you have know the ground rules/criteria to determine sanctity for the same/similar RSS feed from these different sources?
Is there any software out there using Bayesian filtering to do this sort of thing already?
Don't know about that. Though I'm sure you can download some Bayesian implementation from the web and hook it up with your RSS feeds.
What other areas can you think of where Bayesian filtering may prove useful?
There are already content management (catalogs), and attribute extraction (ESS systems for large corporations need to exchange data with several suppliers via supplier catalogs).
Wrong again. The sarcasm is " our friendly software giant"!!
Expect BillG to share..?
Looks more like a stereo! How is one supposed to carry it again? Stuck against a ear, pretending to listen to music?
err, thats an imcomplete tool. Throw in a sheet of paper, and then you'd have a complete writing tool! works for me all the time :-)
One of the biggest problems I have found while teaching/interacting with older people, especially related to IT, is the lack of visualization. :-)
This is not to say they dont have the cerebral matter, but the simple fact that they have not been as exposed to technology and technology-related products as we have been since childhood. Point in case: How many of mothers (and I mean in their fifties and later) have you seen taking a go at X-box or playstation? Or trying to figure out the controls of the new DVD player/home entertainment system, etc? At least I havent seen too many.
So, the biggest hinderance is the apathy/fear towards all things "geek" or "advanced" (as my mother calls them). Reminds me of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"
Try giving her the CD-ROMs/online material from www.howstuffworks.com [howstuffworks] - which I have found to be great resource for starters.
Oh hell no! that would be laughing matter! :-
As if pr0n pop-ups werent enough, we'll now have Dubya and others popping up and asking to vote for them. :-)
Wonder if the internet usage policy will classify Dubya with his silly grin as "distasteful, objectionable content"
Oh, wait till you hear about the weapons inspectors looking for WMD on mars
wonder where the extra $100 billion came from?
how many of them post their wives pictures, or express their fetishism, or rave about their hidden passions and the 'encounters' ...
Oh didnt you know? this version of course does not supply English wrenches! go get that other rpm from (list of locations, of which the first three don't work). If you do manage to locate the wrench, then of course, its incompatible with everything you have...you get the picture! ;)
...you'd have to go through 100 different man pages to find the command to get it to start, but of course, it won't start because you lack certain RPM, or you the command to start expects a number of modules to be pre-installed. Oh, and when you try to install those modules you find they are incompatible with your car, in-effect you have to change the whole car. Buy a new car, and start the whole process all over again...
I wonder how much this will help all the noobie developers actually create viruses using the holes left by M$ :-)