.. I have the chance to complain against american typists.
I'm sick tired of people saying "I read you're email yesterday, i'm sorry I should of been more carefull".
First, in "you're", the ' is used for contract sentences, like "YOU ARE". The posessive is "your".
Second: "of" sounds the same that "have", but is NOT the same. "of" denotes posession... "have" is an auxiliary verb.
Third, the commas "," and periods "." are for something, to separate sentences and phrases. They're _NOT_ decorative images, so why do you treat them as if they were?
The problem with America, is that kids (and later adults) type as they talk, and they cannot understand that written and spoken sentences are (or should be) COMPLETELY different. They do NOT study grammar. They consider it USELESS. I try to correct them, but all I get is flames.
And until somebody corrects them, they won't learn. But who will correct them? Someone their age? Come on. Someone older? No way! "Your not my teacher, so shut up", they say.
This is what I get by studying english by the book, and memorizing grammar rules.:-/
Perhaps Richard P. Feynman can explain to us what the heck is happening with the current educational paradygm. ( http://www.drjez.com/uco/Feynman.pdf )
In regard to education in Brazil, I had a very interesting experience. I was teaching a group of students who would ultimately become teachers, since at that time there were not many opportunities in Brazil for a highly trained person in science. These students had already had many courses, and this was to be their most advanced course in electricity and magnetism-Maxwell's equations, and so on. The university was located in various office buildings throughout the city, and the course I taught met in a building which overlooked the bay. I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question-the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell-they couldn't answer it at all!
For instance, one time I was talking about polarized light, and I gave them all some strips of polaroid. Polaroid passes only light whose electric vector is in a certain direction, so I explained how you could tell which way the light is polarized from whether the polaroid is dark or light. We first took two strips of polaroid and rotated them until they let the most light through. From doing that we could tell that the two strips were now admitting light polarized in the same direction-what passed through one piece of polaroid could also pass through the other. But then I asked them how one could tell the absolute direction of polarization, for a single piece of polaroid. They hadn't any idea. I knew this took a certain amount of ingenuity, so I gave them a hint: "Look at the light reflected from the bay outside." Nobody said anything. Then I said, "Have you ever heard of Brewster's Angle?" "Yes, sir! Brewster's Angle is the angle at which light reflected from a medium with an index of refraction is completely polarized." "And which way is the light polarized when it's reflected?" "The light is polarized perpendicular to the plane of reflection, sir." Even now, I have to think about it; they knew it cold! They even knew the tangent of the angle equals the index! I said, "Well?" Still nothing. They had just told me that light reflected from a medium with an index, such as the bay outside, was polarized; they had even told me which way it was polarized. I said, "Look at the bay outside, through the polaroid. Now turn the polaroid." "Ooh, it's polarized!" they said. After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't know what anything meant. When they heard "light that is reflected from a medium with an index," they didn't know that it meant a material such as water. They didn't know that the "direction of the light" is the direction in which you see something when you're looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. So if I asked, "What is Brewster's Angle?" I'm going into the computer with the right keywords. But if I say, "Look at the water," nothing happens-they don't have anything under "Look at the water"!
Finally [in my speech to the teachers], I said that I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. "However," I said, "I must be wrong. There were two students in my class who did very well, and one of the physicists I know was educated entirely in Brazil. Thus, it must be possible for some people to work their way through the system, bad as it is." Well, after I gave the talk, the head of the science education department got up and said, "Mr. Feynman has told us some things that
This tricky DOS virus that appeared in the early 90', appended certain number of 0's to the executable, so it would have exactly the same CRC.
Expect a couple (+ ???) of years of cryptanalysis on MD5, and you'll just get that.
Still, what _I_ want to see is an ANTI-MD5 algorithm. Given an MD5 Hash, obtain a certain string that will generate it. Now _THAT_ would be something neat:)
Everyone says "Well they'll just have to find a new business model," but no one has any suggestions.
OK, here are some.
a) Localized ads. The user will see banner ads (maybe non-clickable) promotioning local products. i.e. newspapers, or sodas, or everyday-use products... that the user is *LIKELY* to buy. In this case, the advertiser won't pay PER CLICK, but PER PAGE VIEW.
They already do this on TV. The model works, what else do you want? i.e. If i'm reading a webpage and in the middle I saw this upcoming movie ad, It'll draw my interest. NOT RIGHT NOW, but later. That's what advertising is for, after all. Frankly, if advertisers deceive the users with "warning! Your computer is in danger!", why the heck are they complaining about click-fraud? DOH!
b) Pay-per-mail ads. Figure out some way to find out if a user mails the website owner to get more info of a product. I've seen this model suggested elsewhere.
c) Targetted ads - already this is working fine:)
d) Poll-modifiable targetted ads. i.e. "[ ] No, i'm not interested in this kind of offers". Tell the advertiser what you DON'T want to buy, and let their stats do the rest.
e) Free webpage ads *WHERE THE PUBLISHER WANTS THEM*. But no, they prefer to be in ALL WEBPAGES, AT THE TOP where nobody reads them. Take fortunecity, netfirms and *ack!* geocities... they enforce their non-working business model upon their users... do they really work? DO THEY? This is why i'm looking for banner-ad hacks where i can swallow the topmost banner and turn it into a tower banner in my webpages, so I can place it WHERE I WANT so my website will look much more professional, and the user will be *MORE LIKELY* to click on the google ads.
The title doesn't say: "Firefox bad for advertisers", but rather: "Firefox USERS bad for advertisers".
The grand majority of Firefox users are one or more of the following:
* HaxX0rz who like to deface SPAM-advertised websites
* programmers who don't give a **** about a Microsoft Certification course or "microsoft products CHEAPER!!! than everywhere" because they use G++, not VC++.
* Loners who watch pr0n and don't give a **** about viagra because they don't need it right now. Heck if they needed it, they'd rather be with their g/fs and not reading their mail, either;)
(Oh but if they saw SPAM promoting "nerd personals in your own city! Find a geek date just like you!!", I bet, they'd _SURELY_ click!)
* people who already used Proxomitron to block pop-up ads and find firefox to be just the next step.
* webmasters who got used to receiving SPAM years before the average joe user did, and already implemented filters in their websites/mail clients/etc.
* Poor guys who use YAHOO! Mail with integrated SPAM blocking
* Intelligent consumers who prefer to click on targetted google ads on the websites they visit, than your average "kick the monkey!"
* Or the newbie who just found out he CAN block ads, and asked his firefox tech-savvy friend to install him all the blockers he can.
* And last, but not least: The WINDOWS-based open source users who have always liked alternative non-microsoft stuff (Irfanview, Pixia, PHP, etc), but still find Linux too complicated... they used IE6 (with all the patches, of course) but were expecting anxiously the day Firefox 1 arrived.
So, what's the big deal? Spammers are *JUST* noticing that there's a percentage of population that doesn't click. They just had no chance to find out they existed earlier.
It's very interesting how pressure groups can control so many things in the US (heck, EVERYWHERE!)
Because americans are, or at least tend to be, a "the heck, who cares" or "the heck, i care, but I can't change it so who cares" kind of people. Like it's becoming this giant amorphous mass of goo that gets shaped by... guess what? THE MEDIA!!!
Put millions of people in front of a TV showing stupid soap operas and they end up purchasing their favorite actors' clothes, or following their examples. Put them in front of a TV showing all kind of violent crimes, and you end up with lots of people purchasing guns for "self-defense". Put them in front of a TV showing "The terrorists! The terrorists! Run away!" and they end up voting for Bush.
IMHO this parental group at least should be praised for trying to do something - heck, they're doing it! Which is much more than the average american does.
Now there's a little "problem" with America... it's COMPLETELY HETEROGENEOUS. 50 years ago, there was a christian majority, so people could manage to get organized and decide by themselves what's good and what's not. But now, people can't protest against something they consider bad, because others consider it good, or "normal".
In other words, it's the jungle law. This parent group will have control of your TV unless _YOU_ do something about it.
Ah, the joys of being in a completely chaotic democracy, ruled by pressure groups and a bipartisan system... Don't you LOVE America?:)
"Monday, October 6, 2014. Today a terrorist attack left a hundred schools without internet access. Four suicides have been reported. The police is assisting those who had a nervous crisis. So far the situation is stable, since the students were told they would get back their internet access for tomorrow."
I just hope situations like this don't become real. Sheesh...
I'd really like an adaptation of "Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis" for the widescreen.
That game ROCKED. And don't worry about previous videogame adaptations. Those were usually action games adapted with a sucky story. Here we're talking about a game which is ACTUALLY a story.
When software companies sell their software, it's priority that they keep the source hidden (why sell something that you can get for free?)
In contrast, open source software is meant to be given away.
Therefore, Open vs. Closed source is just a readaptation of the products vs. services issue. Allow me to explain why:
Open source software tends to be more generic (i.e. a software for scripting websites), while closed source tends to be more specific (i.e. software for scripting company's website).
Therefore Open Source users tend to focus more on SERVICES (i.e. adapting open source software "X" for company "Y"). That's what we all web programmers do, right? Eventually we end up making products, therefore the source code is closed (i.e. the PHP files for our client companies). We can choose to sell it as a product (i.e. giving an exclusive, non-transferrable license to the client), or keep working on it as a service.
The problem is when a company wants to make a product and wants to have EVERYONE using it. It's destroying the economy in favor of a few (i.e. Microsoft). Kills the competition, etc etc.
Open vs. closed software is like the Yang/Yin duality: One cannot exist without the other. Closed software needs Open software to avoid reinventing the wheel. Open software needs closed software to have an active market using it.
The lifecycle of Software goes like this: Someone writes a software good enough for a specific task. He can choose either to sell it, or to give it away. If he sells it, (closed source) there will come competitors as a natural consequence. If he gives it away, people will adapt it to their specific things, charging for the service. This will eventually become a software in itself, repeating the cycle.
It's not that one is better than the other. Both are the opposite sides of the coin. It's when someone tries to force one over the other (GPL infection and patented software monopolies are examples of such extremes) is when things get messy.
So, open vs. closed source, in the end, is just a matter of economy.
Yes, subqueries make the programmer's life a LOT easier. But IMHO using joins works in most cases. There's a little problem, it requires a perfect understanding of how they work, or you'd get in trouble. Also, I've read that joins is generally more efficient than doing subqueries.
Oh yes, I'm using MySQL 4.0x and it has unions, too.
Face it, if you want to write commercial apps you have to CHOOSE.
I worked in a _HUGE_ database project and it was slow as hell because we couldn't use native solutions for optimization, because we were required to maintain code compatibility. They had licensed Informix, and we got to maintain it compatible (to justify a gazillion dollars investment in an already obsolete DB).
So, want to use Limit? No thanks. Want to find out the thread ID's? No thanks. Want to improve performance by using native mySQL functions? No thanks. Named locks? logic functions inside queries? etc etc...
I use phplib DB_SQL to keep layers separation. Frankly, if you want to be 100% "neutral" you would end up using only the most basic features of SQL (select... from... where. ta-da!), and that's useless.
Let the other guys handle SQL adaptation when the business decides to adopt another implementation. Still, if you code multi-tier you won't have much problem there. I see multi-tier programming having many more advantages than simply maintaining SQL neutrality.
Slashdot Mirror
Almost nothing I come across bugs me more than the pseudo word 'ur.' (Yes, Ur is a place. 'ur' is not a proper contraction for 'your' or 'you're.')
:)
You're right. Ur is an ancient mesopotamian city.
Insightful.
He is COMPLETELY right in stating: "People write as they speak". I've seen it a million times.
.. I have the chance to complain against american typists.
:-/
I'm sick tired of people saying "I read you're email yesterday, i'm sorry I should of been more carefull".
First, in "you're", the ' is used for contract sentences, like "YOU ARE". The posessive is "your".
Second: "of" sounds the same that "have", but is NOT the same. "of" denotes posession... "have" is an auxiliary verb.
Third, the commas "," and periods "." are for something, to separate sentences and phrases. They're _NOT_ decorative images, so why do you treat them as if they were?
The problem with America, is that kids (and later adults) type as they talk, and they cannot understand that written and spoken sentences are (or should be) COMPLETELY different. They do NOT study grammar. They consider it USELESS. I try to correct them, but all I get is flames.
And until somebody corrects them, they won't learn. But who will correct them? Someone their age? Come on. Someone older? No way! "Your not my teacher, so shut up", they say.
This is what I get by studying english by the book, and memorizing grammar rules.
Perhaps Richard P. Feynman can explain to us what the heck is happening with the current educational paradygm.
( http://www.drjez.com/uco/Feynman.pdf )
----
Excerpt from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" By Richard P. Feynman
In regard to education in Brazil, I had a very interesting experience. I was teaching a group of students who would ultimately become teachers, since at that time there were not many opportunities in Brazil for a highly trained person in science. These students had already had many courses, and this was to be their most advanced course in electricity and magnetism-Maxwell's equations, and so on. The university was located in various office buildings throughout the city, and the course I taught met in a building which overlooked the bay. I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question-the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell-they couldn't answer it at all!
For instance, one time I was talking about polarized light, and I gave them all some strips of polaroid. Polaroid passes only light whose electric vector is in a certain direction, so I explained how you could tell which way the light is polarized from whether the polaroid is dark or light. We first took two strips of polaroid and rotated them until they let the most light through. From doing that we could tell that the two strips were now admitting light polarized in the same direction-what passed through one piece of polaroid could also pass through the other. But then I asked them how one could tell the absolute direction of polarization, for a single piece of polaroid. They hadn't any idea. I knew this took a certain amount of ingenuity, so I gave them a hint: "Look at the light reflected from the bay outside." Nobody said anything. Then I said, "Have you ever heard of Brewster's Angle?" "Yes, sir! Brewster's Angle is the angle at which light reflected from a medium with an index of refraction is completely polarized." "And which way is the light polarized when it's reflected?" "The light is polarized perpendicular to the plane of reflection, sir." Even now, I have to think about it; they knew it cold! They even knew the tangent of the angle equals the index! I said, "Well?" Still nothing. They had just told me that light reflected from a medium with an index, such as the bay outside, was polarized; they had even told me which way it was polarized. I said, "Look at the bay outside, through the polaroid. Now turn the polaroid." "Ooh, it's polarized!" they said. After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't know what anything meant. When they heard "light that is
reflected from a medium with an index," they didn't know that it meant a material such as water. They didn't know that the "direction of the light" is the direction in which you see something when you're looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. So if I asked, "What is Brewster's Angle?" I'm going into the computer with the right keywords. But if I say, "Look at the water," nothing happens-they don't have anything under "Look at the water"!
Finally [in my speech to the teachers], I said that I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. "However," I said, "I must be wrong. There were two students in my class who did very well, and one of the physicists I know was educated entirely in Brazil. Thus, it must be possible for some people to work their way through the system, bad as it is." Well, after I gave the talk, the head of the science education department got up and said, "Mr. Feynman has told us some things that
I live in Mexico! (4th from bottom) :(
This tricky DOS virus that appeared in the early 90', appended certain number of 0's to the executable, so it would have exactly the same CRC.
:)
Expect a couple (+ ???) of years of cryptanalysis on MD5, and you'll just get that.
Still, what _I_ want to see is an ANTI-MD5 algorithm. Given an MD5 Hash, obtain a certain string that will generate it. Now _THAT_ would be something neat
+1, informative
Everyone says "Well they'll just have to find a new business model," but no one has any suggestions.
:)
OK, here are some.
a) Localized ads. The user will see banner ads (maybe non-clickable) promotioning local products. i.e. newspapers, or sodas, or everyday-use products... that the user is *LIKELY* to buy. In this case, the advertiser won't pay PER CLICK, but PER PAGE VIEW.
They already do this on TV. The model works, what else do you want? i.e. If i'm reading a webpage and in the middle I saw this upcoming movie ad, It'll draw my interest. NOT RIGHT NOW, but later. That's what advertising is for, after all. Frankly, if advertisers deceive the users with "warning! Your computer is in danger!", why the heck are they complaining about click-fraud? DOH!
b) Pay-per-mail ads. Figure out some way to find out if a user mails the website owner to get more info of a product. I've seen this model suggested elsewhere.
c) Targetted ads - already this is working fine
d) Poll-modifiable targetted ads. i.e. "[ ] No, i'm not interested in this kind of offers". Tell the advertiser what you DON'T want to buy, and let their stats do the rest.
e) Free webpage ads *WHERE THE PUBLISHER WANTS THEM*. But no, they prefer to be in ALL WEBPAGES, AT THE TOP where nobody reads them. Take fortunecity, netfirms and *ack!* geocities... they enforce their non-working business model upon their users... do they really work? DO THEY? This is why i'm looking for banner-ad hacks where i can swallow the topmost banner and turn it into a tower banner in my webpages, so I can place it WHERE I WANT so my website will look much more professional, and the user will be *MORE LIKELY* to click on the google ads.
My 2 cents.
The title doesn't say: "Firefox bad for advertisers", but rather: "Firefox USERS bad for advertisers".
;)
The grand majority of Firefox users are one or more of the following:
* HaxX0rz who like to deface SPAM-advertised websites
* programmers who don't give a **** about a Microsoft Certification course or "microsoft products CHEAPER!!! than everywhere" because they use G++, not VC++.
* Loners who watch pr0n and don't give a **** about viagra because they don't need it right now. Heck if they needed it, they'd rather be with their g/fs and not reading their mail, either
(Oh but if they saw SPAM promoting "nerd personals in your own city! Find a geek date just like you!!", I bet, they'd _SURELY_ click!)
* people who already used Proxomitron to block pop-up ads and find firefox to be just the next step.
* webmasters who got used to receiving SPAM years before the average joe user did, and already implemented filters in their websites/mail clients/etc.
* Poor guys who use YAHOO! Mail with integrated SPAM blocking
* Intelligent consumers who prefer to click on targetted google ads on the websites they visit, than your average "kick the monkey!"
* Or the newbie who just found out he CAN block ads, and asked his firefox tech-savvy friend to install him all the blockers he can.
* And last, but not least: The WINDOWS-based open source users who have always liked alternative non-microsoft stuff (Irfanview, Pixia, PHP, etc), but still find Linux too complicated... they used IE6 (with all the patches, of course) but were expecting anxiously the day Firefox 1 arrived.
So, what's the big deal? Spammers are *JUST* noticing that there's a percentage of population that doesn't click. They just had no chance to find out they existed earlier.
*blink blink*
(turns around)
"I thought I saw a spam"
It's very interesting how pressure groups can control so many things in the US (heck, EVERYWHERE!)
:)
Because americans are, or at least tend to be, a "the heck, who cares" or "the heck, i care, but I can't change it so who cares" kind of people. Like it's becoming this giant amorphous mass of goo that gets shaped by... guess what? THE MEDIA!!!
Put millions of people in front of a TV showing
stupid soap operas and they end up purchasing their favorite actors' clothes, or following their examples. Put them in front of a TV showing
all kind of violent crimes, and you end up with lots of people purchasing guns for "self-defense". Put them in front of a TV showing "The terrorists! The terrorists! Run away!" and they end up voting for Bush.
IMHO this parental group at least should be praised for trying to do something - heck, they're doing it! Which is much more than the average american does.
Now there's a little "problem" with America... it's COMPLETELY HETEROGENEOUS. 50 years ago, there was a christian majority, so people could manage to get organized and decide by themselves what's good and what's not. But now, people can't protest against something they consider bad, because others consider it good, or "normal".
In other words, it's the jungle law. This parent group will have control of your TV unless _YOU_ do something about it.
Ah, the joys of being in a completely chaotic democracy, ruled by pressure groups and a bipartisan system... Don't you LOVE America?
Hmmm this has possibilities...
Yes boss, I'm checking the numbers... Stupid boss.
WHAT?
Oh, did I think that loud? Hey look at that babe...
WHAT?
ARGH! Somebody shut this off!!!!
"Monday, October 6, 2014. Today a terrorist attack left a hundred schools without internet access. Four suicides have been reported. The police is assisting those who had a nervous crisis. So far the situation is stable, since the students were told they would get back their internet access for tomorrow."
I just hope situations like this don't become real. Sheesh...
-1, Redundant
I'd like to see him again saying "Junior?"
I'd really like an adaptation of "Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis" for the widescreen.
That game ROCKED. And don't worry about previous videogame adaptations. Those were usually action games adapted with a sucky story. Here we're talking about a game which is ACTUALLY a story.
a^=(b^=a);b^=a;
(^ is the XOR operator)
Here's a sample.
g b es.orgs exy-gorgeous-babes.orgs -babes.com
>pretty-damn-sexy-gorgeous-babes-that-will-suck.co mk .or g
Listing registered domain names...
>gorgeous-babes.com
>gorgeous-babes.or
>pretty-gorgeous-babes.com
>pretty-gorgeous-ba
>pretty-sexy-gorgeous-babes.com
>pretty-
>pretty-damn-sexy-gorgeou
>pretty-damn-sexy-gorgeous-babes.org
>pretty-damn-sexy-gorgeous-babes-that-will-suc
Error: Out of Memory.
HAH HAH!
My biggest complaint though, is that her volume control is broken, but that didn't show up until AFTER I married her.
And Wife 1.0 was born.
When software companies sell their software, it's priority that they keep the source hidden (why sell something that you can get for free?)
In contrast, open source software is meant to be given away.
Therefore, Open vs. Closed source is just a readaptation of the products vs. services issue. Allow me to explain why:
Open source software tends to be more generic (i.e. a software for scripting websites), while closed source tends to be more specific (i.e. software for scripting company's website).
Therefore Open Source users tend to focus more on SERVICES (i.e. adapting open source software "X" for company "Y"). That's what we all web programmers do, right? Eventually we end up making products, therefore the source code is closed (i.e. the PHP files for our client companies). We can choose to sell it as a product (i.e. giving an exclusive, non-transferrable license to the client), or keep working on it as a service.
The problem is when a company wants to make a product and wants to have EVERYONE using it. It's destroying the economy in favor of a few (i.e. Microsoft). Kills the competition, etc etc.
Open vs. closed software is like the Yang/Yin duality: One cannot exist without the other. Closed software needs Open software to avoid reinventing the wheel. Open software needs closed software to have an active market using it.
The lifecycle of Software goes like this: Someone writes a software good enough for a specific task. He can choose either to sell it, or to give it away. If he sells it, (closed source) there will come competitors as a natural consequence. If he gives it away, people will adapt it to their specific things, charging for the service. This will eventually become a software in itself, repeating the cycle.
It's not that one is better than the other. Both are the opposite sides of the coin. It's when someone tries to force one over the other (GPL infection and patented software monopolies are examples of such extremes) is when things get messy.
So, open vs. closed source, in the end, is just a matter of economy.
2.1 million users were currently online sharing one billion, 176 million files.
:P
OK remove the fake RIAA and MPAA files, viruses, and trojans. Then relist, please
Seems to me as if people always thought of MySQL 3.23. InnoDB is supplied with MySQL 4, and it's A.C.I.D. compliant.
Problem is, very few people use it because they don't know it (InnoDB is relatively new, 2 years ago we didn't have MySQL 4).
Yes, subqueries make the programmer's life a LOT easier. But IMHO using joins works in most cases. There's a little problem, it requires a perfect understanding of how they work, or you'd get in trouble. Also, I've read that joins is generally more efficient than doing subqueries.
Oh yes, I'm using MySQL 4.0x and it has unions, too.
If everything else fails, use temporary tables.
Face it, if you want to write commercial apps you have to CHOOSE.
I worked in a _HUGE_ database project and it was slow as hell because we couldn't use native solutions for optimization, because we were required to maintain code compatibility. They had licensed Informix, and we got to maintain it compatible (to justify a gazillion dollars investment in an already obsolete DB).
So, want to use Limit? No thanks. Want to find out the thread ID's? No thanks. Want to improve performance by using native mySQL functions? No thanks. Named locks? logic functions inside queries? etc etc...
I use phplib DB_SQL to keep layers separation. Frankly, if you want to be 100% "neutral" you would end up using only the most basic features of SQL (select... from... where. ta-da!), and that's useless.
Let the other guys handle SQL adaptation when the business decides to adopt another implementation. Still, if you code multi-tier you won't have much problem there. I see multi-tier programming having many more advantages than simply maintaining SQL neutrality.