I just started using pgadmin3, and I have a feeling I have a way to go before I get really good at it. I could really use a migration tool since, as with the previous poster, we have a lot of SQL Server based applications I'd like to see moved to something like PostgreSQL.
Frankly, I still like the old TCL based "pgaccess". It was buggy as all get out, and really bogged down on larger databases, but it had some really nice tools such as the visual query designer.
The article mentions a couple of other GUI tools for accessing and maintaining PostgreSQL databases. Has anyone else used these, or are there other tools that people like?
Good God - Is NOTHING Sacred? Add the words "Children" and "Pornography" into the name of your bill, and suddenly anyone voting against you is open to the accusation that they are, "Soft on Child Pornography."
I've been pretty sick of "The Senator from Disney" before, but now he makes me freaking barf!
Yea, like people downloading songs on the Internet are not only causing the Downfall of Western Civilization, now they are molesting children too!
> Remember that when you go in for surgery and the surgeon says:
I suppose that, if the surgeon had perfect usage of the King's English (circa, 1900), but didn't know which end of the scalple to hold, you'd be just fine with that, right?
Personally, if my surgeon was talking as you described, I'd take some time to check his qulaifications, but if they were in order, I wouldn't give a sh-- about whether or not he had a funny accent...
> If they paid, then in exchange for the money they got a non-public license to redistribute the content.
But... did they?
My point is, did they get a license to distribute the material, or simply pay a fine for violating the copyright? Sort of like the example of the speeding ticket mentioned previously. Once you pay the fine, that doesn't mean you automatically have a license to speed again along that stretch of road in the future.
Once again, we find a paper from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute which brings up real issues, and then blows them completely out of proportion. They have brought up lame anti-FLOSS articles in the past (funded by MS), and they will no doubt continue to bring them up.
The issue if patents and FLOSS software is real, and the way things are going these days, I think we're headed for some real problems in the not too distant future. However, I strongly suspect the problem is not going to come from IBM or other Open Source "friends". (They have no interest in "crushing" open source as a competitor.) It's going to come from either deep pockets like MS, with an ax to grind, or from more small-operators like SCO or other "Intellectual Property Houses", looking to cash in on the Wave.
Software patents are a real issue, but the problem is not isolated in any way to the FLOSS development model. Nor should it be a reason to shy away from using, or developing FLOSS software.
> Notice SCO now states that UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
They're still talking out of both sides of their mouth though. They still claim in their press release that they are, "the Owner of the UNIX Operating System."
Funny that they are the ones announcing BayStar putting the pinch on them. Guess they want to put the "positive spin" on it, just like everything else...
I agree with your statements about spyware, however the problem is that it is non-trivial to define what exactly "Spyware" is. Some people have already claimed that, under the current definition of the law in question here, browser cookies could be defined as "spyware".
Point is, there are plenty of poorly written laws out there, put in place by good intended people to curb "bad" behavior, which have been turned on their heads, and end up doing just the opposite of what their authors thought they would do. Example is the current set of SPAM laws just passed by the Federal government which will actually server to increase the amount of SPAM on the Internet, mostly by legitimizing opt-out "commercial" emails, and taking away most people's ability to effectively hit back at the perp's.
Just because a law is written to stop people from doing bad things to us doesn't mean that it effectively stops that bad behavior, without having unexpected, and sometimes disastrous side-effects!
For this year, I just paid the flat amount. I keep pretty careful track of what I bought, but my wife didn't, so I didn't really know how much I bought. I was seething the whole way, but I figured that was the easiest pseudo-honest thing to do.
This year, I'm going to track things very carefully, and pay only what I need to.
I assume you are speaking in jest, but just to underline the point, yes even that would be an over-simplification.
To blame the problem on all of America would be assuming that all Americans are to blame for the problem. While it is true that many (or most) people are contributing to the problem without even knowing it, to try to clump all of the people in this country into any one social, political, ethnic, moral, religious or ideological block would be... well... just as stupid.
It is an unfortunate tendency of human nature to try to lump people into groups, and in particular, groups of people "with us or against us." (You know the old saying: "There are two kinds of people -- those who divide people into two groups and those who don't") It's not unlike the way people look at Microsoft as the "Evil Empire." Sure, it's easy to paste that label on them, but that limits your ability to objectively looking at what they have done (for good and bad), or forces you to assume that all people associated with Microsoft are therefore evil themselves, and they have nothing of value to contribute.
> complaints about America are largely the result of American war in Iraq.
Eh? You really mean to say you think that, before one year ago, everyone in the world LOVED the US?
Look, I'm not happy with the situation in Iraq, but to blame all anti-American sentiment on the War is just plain dumb-ass. To blame all anti-American sentiment on any one thing is just as stupid. There are lots of reasons why people dislike the US. Some of those reasons are good, and some aren't, but most go back to policies that have been in place since at least WWII.
The point is that Open Source will boom because people, and even more so governments don't trust an American Monopoly, especially one which has been repeatedly convicted of abusing its monopoly position to extend its power and control.
Good point, but too specific. I think it would have been better to waste one more word and say, "Linux runs on commodity hardware."
The whole point is that Linux is not limited to one or two platforms! If Linux only ran on *Intel Brand* hardware, then Intel would squeeze the market, and people would go elsewhere. However, you aren't limited to Intel or AMD or Sun or PowerPC. You aren't limited by either 32 or 64bit. Vendors compete on the basis of their features and price. If one vendor tries to put the squeeze on you, migrating to another platform is relatively painless. Makes it harder for the vendors, since they can't lock you in, but it sure frees the end user!
Frankly, I've never had any problem with "employee owned" devices at work, other than digital cameras (for obvious reasons). What I've seen more often is policies pushing (if not outright requiring) that the employee supply their own devices (computers, phones, pagers, software, etc.). Of course, since I work as a consultant, that's less surprising.
Hey -- if they get 100,000 hits to that page from the/. link, are they going to announce tomorrow in their next press release that, "Thousands of customers are inquiring about purchasing licenses!" or are they going to accuse/. of trying to DDoS the site?
> Like the author of the article, however, I do feel it's the most likely explanation,...
How about the most obvious theory that the SCO "attack" was nothing more than a cover-up for the real intent of the worm, which was simply to create a vast grid of zombie computers for some other purpose, such as SPAM-bots, or even to launch a broader attack? By this point, it is a well known tactic of SPAM houses to create distributed SPAM mailing grids, since it makes it possible to flood the Internet with messages, while making it impossible to filter on the source.
The SCO site was an easy target -- low hanging fruit. The second attack - on Microsoft - was against a much more hardened site (Microsoft at least knows something about setting up secure, high bandwidth servers). Someone is out there testing the waters.
I always look at the last line in an article like this to tell me what the author is really thinking. I love the Linus quote he put there:
"The less I have to do with Darl McBride, the better off I am... I don't want for that 'Darlness' to rub off on me."
I have a feeling that, while the author takes the accusations seriously (Copyright infringement, if it really is in there, is a serious thing), he doesn't give much to Darl's credibility in the situation.
> Quite - you can sign a contract which says that such-and-such owns copyright on any original work by you.
Depends on what you sign, but I think in most cases you still own the "copyright", but you assign full rights over to such-and-such a party, such as your employer, or the owner of a message board such as Slashdot.
The really ugly part is when you discover that even works created outside of work hours are owned by your employer! I seem to remember a couple of cases recently where people were working on Open Source projects on their own time, and suddenly discovered that their applications were owned by their company, and they didn't have rights to release those works under the GPL.
> Novell should publicly revoke SCO's licene to Unix.
Don't laugh. If Novell can prove that SCO is in breach of contract (especially with regard to the "amended" agreements with Microsoft and Sun which they are basing all their reported profits on), then they just might do that.
Maybe they are! Remember, not everyone conducts their business through Press Releases on the Internet.
(I've been wondering for some time why IBM and Novell have been so quiet. Turns out, they've been very busy, doing things the smart way, and not running off at the mouth for the benefit of the Press.)
> It could just be that Novell is diversifying its position...
I think Novell is trying to ride the "Linux Wave", just like IBM is, and frankly, I think they have a good chance at being successful at it. Honestly, if you look at Red Hat, they have finally started to turn a real profit selling services on top of Linux, but it's not easy, and it is going to be touch-n-go for a long time for them. SuSE is the same way. Great product, but a hard time making money off it.
Novell used to excel at their NOS, and built a successful tool chain on top of it. Unfortunately, they fell behind the times on the NOS itself, and have been definitely out-classed by the Linux kernel. OK, so they recognize their winners and losers, and decide to drop the NOS, and substitute Linux. It takes a little work to port their tool-chain to Linux, and to convince people once again that they are able to sell an integrated solution, but that's still cheaper than trying to completely overhaul the NOS, and then compete against a "free" alternative.
Novell has made enough mis-steps in the past that this is not a guaranteed win, but I think there are a lot of people who had formerly written off Novell as a lost cause, who are now looking at them as real players in the market!
(IBM is playing the flip side of the same game. They want to sell hardware. They really don't care what you run on it. However, they can tweak Linux in ways not possible with Windows, so they can offer a really slick combination. It doesn't matter if they don't make any money off the kernel, as long as they can sell you Iron.)
> I really should have proofread... There are also some really awful spelling mistakes in there.
Hey - if you'd proofread, they you might not have been quick enough to get all the ++ mods! Besides, this is Slashdot. You have to include at least a couple of spelling mistakes.
> Guess we'll have the IBM law team beat up SCO throughtoutly, then RedHat will scrape up the pieces. Finally the IBM countersuit will bury the scraps beyond human hope.
Actually, looking at the letters published on the Novell site (and kindly transcribed for us by Groklaw), I think it is going to be Novell doing the scrap-picking-up, and maybe even a fair amount of the initial beating up. Obviously, lawyers can claim anything they like in cases like this, but from what I've read so far in the friendly little notes being passed back and forth between SCO and Novell, it seems that Novell is the one holding a Really Big Club over SCO's head.
> Now the one thing that stands in the way here is Outlook, love it or hate it it does do calendaring and email, with task lists and that Exchange server is the thing that really stops people moving over.
(*SIGH*) I use Evolution, and while I love it for email, and for personal calendaring, there still isn't a good *group* calendering server that I know of. Yes, I know there is the "Ximian Connector", but that still depends on Exchange, and is supposedly pretty crippled. (I don't have any personal experience on this, so feel free to correct me if you've used the Connector with great success!) I've seen a couple of commercial applications out there, but when you do more than simply scratch the surface, they are still pretty skimpy on features, and often beastly expensive when you start adding up expenses for a large operation.
I keep looking, hoping that the situation will change, but I haven't found anything to plug this hole yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I still like the old TCL based "pgaccess". It was buggy as all get out, and really bogged down on larger databases, but it had some really nice tools such as the visual query designer.
The article mentions a couple of other GUI tools for accessing and maintaining PostgreSQL databases. Has anyone else used these, or are there other tools that people like?
So, what did you EXPECT?
I've been pretty sick of "The Senator from Disney" before, but now he makes me freaking barf!
Yea, like people downloading songs on the Internet are not only causing the Downfall of Western Civilization, now they are molesting children too!
I suppose that, if the surgeon had perfect usage of the King's English (circa, 1900), but didn't know which end of the scalple to hold, you'd be just fine with that, right?
Personally, if my surgeon was talking as you described, I'd take some time to check his qulaifications, but if they were in order, I wouldn't give a sh-- about whether or not he had a funny accent...
But... did they?
My point is, did they get a license to distribute the material, or simply pay a fine for violating the copyright? Sort of like the example of the speeding ticket mentioned previously. Once you pay the fine, that doesn't mean you automatically have a license to speed again along that stretch of road in the future.
The issue if patents and FLOSS software is real, and the way things are going these days, I think we're headed for some real problems in the not too distant future. However, I strongly suspect the problem is not going to come from IBM or other Open Source "friends". (They have no interest in "crushing" open source as a competitor.) It's going to come from either deep pockets like MS, with an ax to grind, or from more small-operators like SCO or other "Intellectual Property Houses", looking to cash in on the Wave.
Software patents are a real issue, but the problem is not isolated in any way to the FLOSS development model. Nor should it be a reason to shy away from using, or developing FLOSS software.
Sure, you can overclock the suckers, but only if you run in the rain to keep them water-cooled...
They're still talking out of both sides of their mouth though. They still claim in their press release that they are, "the Owner of the UNIX Operating System."
Funny that they are the ones announcing BayStar putting the pinch on them. Guess they want to put the "positive spin" on it, just like everything else...
Point is, there are plenty of poorly written laws out there, put in place by good intended people to curb "bad" behavior, which have been turned on their heads, and end up doing just the opposite of what their authors thought they would do. Example is the current set of SPAM laws just passed by the Federal government which will actually server to increase the amount of SPAM on the Internet, mostly by legitimizing opt-out "commercial" emails, and taking away most people's ability to effectively hit back at the perp's.
Just because a law is written to stop people from doing bad things to us doesn't mean that it effectively stops that bad behavior, without having unexpected, and sometimes disastrous side-effects!
This year, I'm going to track things very carefully, and pay only what I need to.
I assume you are speaking in jest, but just to underline the point, yes even that would be an over-simplification.
To blame the problem on all of America would be assuming that all Americans are to blame for the problem. While it is true that many (or most) people are contributing to the problem without even knowing it, to try to clump all of the people in this country into any one social, political, ethnic, moral, religious or ideological block would be... well... just as stupid.
It is an unfortunate tendency of human nature to try to lump people into groups, and in particular, groups of people "with us or against us." (You know the old saying: "There are two kinds of people -- those who divide people into two groups and those who don't") It's not unlike the way people look at Microsoft as the "Evil Empire." Sure, it's easy to paste that label on them, but that limits your ability to objectively looking at what they have done (for good and bad), or forces you to assume that all people associated with Microsoft are therefore evil themselves, and they have nothing of value to contribute.
Eh? You really mean to say you think that, before one year ago, everyone in the world LOVED the US?
Look, I'm not happy with the situation in Iraq, but to blame all anti-American sentiment on the War is just plain dumb-ass. To blame all anti-American sentiment on any one thing is just as stupid. There are lots of reasons why people dislike the US. Some of those reasons are good, and some aren't, but most go back to policies that have been in place since at least WWII.
The point is that Open Source will boom because people, and even more so governments don't trust an American Monopoly, especially one which has been repeatedly convicted of abusing its monopoly position to extend its power and control.
The whole point is that Linux is not limited to one or two platforms! If Linux only ran on *Intel Brand* hardware, then Intel would squeeze the market, and people would go elsewhere. However, you aren't limited to Intel or AMD or Sun or PowerPC. You aren't limited by either 32 or 64bit. Vendors compete on the basis of their features and price. If one vendor tries to put the squeeze on you, migrating to another platform is relatively painless. Makes it harder for the vendors, since they can't lock you in, but it sure frees the end user!
Frankly, I've never had any problem with "employee owned" devices at work, other than digital cameras (for obvious reasons). What I've seen more often is policies pushing (if not outright requiring) that the employee supply their own devices (computers, phones, pagers, software, etc.). Of course, since I work as a consultant, that's less surprising.
Hey -- if they get 100,000 hits to that page from the /. link, are they going to announce tomorrow in their next press release that, "Thousands of customers are inquiring about purchasing licenses!" or are they going to accuse /. of trying to DDoS the site?
How about the most obvious theory that the SCO "attack" was nothing more than a cover-up for the real intent of the worm, which was simply to create a vast grid of zombie computers for some other purpose, such as SPAM-bots, or even to launch a broader attack? By this point, it is a well known tactic of SPAM houses to create distributed SPAM mailing grids, since it makes it possible to flood the Internet with messages, while making it impossible to filter on the source.
The SCO site was an easy target -- low hanging fruit. The second attack - on Microsoft - was against a much more hardened site (Microsoft at least knows something about setting up secure, high bandwidth servers). Someone is out there testing the waters.
Depends on what you sign, but I think in most cases you still own the "copyright", but you assign full rights over to such-and-such a party, such as your employer, or the owner of a message board such as Slashdot.
The really ugly part is when you discover that even works created outside of work hours are owned by your employer! I seem to remember a couple of cases recently where people were working on Open Source projects on their own time, and suddenly discovered that their applications were owned by their company, and they didn't have rights to release those works under the GPL.
Don't laugh. If Novell can prove that SCO is in breach of contract (especially with regard to the "amended" agreements with Microsoft and Sun which they are basing all their reported profits on), then they just might do that.
(Pictures of the protest at SCO headquarters last June)
Maybe they are! Remember, not everyone conducts their business through Press Releases on the Internet.
(I've been wondering for some time why IBM and Novell have been so quiet. Turns out, they've been very busy, doing things the smart way, and not running off at the mouth for the benefit of the Press.)
I think Novell is trying to ride the "Linux Wave", just like IBM is, and frankly, I think they have a good chance at being successful at it. Honestly, if you look at Red Hat, they have finally started to turn a real profit selling services on top of Linux, but it's not easy, and it is going to be touch-n-go for a long time for them. SuSE is the same way. Great product, but a hard time making money off it.
Novell used to excel at their NOS, and built a successful tool chain on top of it. Unfortunately, they fell behind the times on the NOS itself, and have been definitely out-classed by the Linux kernel. OK, so they recognize their winners and losers, and decide to drop the NOS, and substitute Linux. It takes a little work to port their tool-chain to Linux, and to convince people once again that they are able to sell an integrated solution, but that's still cheaper than trying to completely overhaul the NOS, and then compete against a "free" alternative.
Novell has made enough mis-steps in the past that this is not a guaranteed win, but I think there are a lot of people who had formerly written off Novell as a lost cause, who are now looking at them as real players in the market!
(IBM is playing the flip side of the same game. They want to sell hardware. They really don't care what you run on it. However, they can tweak Linux in ways not possible with Windows, so they can offer a really slick combination. It doesn't matter if they don't make any money off the kernel, as long as they can sell you Iron.)
Hey - if you'd proofread, they you might not have been quick enough to get all the ++ mods! Besides, this is Slashdot. You have to include at least a couple of spelling mistakes.
Actually, looking at the letters published on the Novell site (and kindly transcribed for us by Groklaw), I think it is going to be Novell doing the scrap-picking-up, and maybe even a fair amount of the initial beating up. Obviously, lawyers can claim anything they like in cases like this, but from what I've read so far in the friendly little notes being passed back and forth between SCO and Novell, it seems that Novell is the one holding a Really Big Club over SCO's head.
(*SIGH*) I use Evolution, and while I love it for email, and for personal calendaring, there still isn't a good *group* calendering server that I know of. Yes, I know there is the "Ximian Connector", but that still depends on Exchange, and is supposedly pretty crippled. (I don't have any personal experience on this, so feel free to correct me if you've used the Connector with great success!) I've seen a couple of commercial applications out there, but when you do more than simply scratch the surface, they are still pretty skimpy on features, and often beastly expensive when you start adding up expenses for a large operation.
I keep looking, hoping that the situation will change, but I haven't found anything to plug this hole yet.