As a player I can appreciate efforts to prevent cheating in the game. But I have to say that gliders don't bother me much. The fact is that Bliizard has designed WoW to require huge amounts of farming...experience, materials, and gold. Things that should be fairly basic and not too expensive, such as a flying mount that doesn't go slower than your land-based mount, cost a ridiculous amount of money. Since there are so many other things in the endgame that can take up time, their dedication to these hamster wheels is frustrating. The game is so very good that it overcomes these things. It's just that most players struggle with the economic aspects of the game because they are based around how much time you can dedicate to miindlessly killing/mining/pulling weeds.
In essence, a glider program takes the games only limitless resource...respawning mobs...and allows players to bypass the artificial barrier of time needed to acquire basic resources. Then they can actually spend their game time PLAYING the game. For people like me that work for a living, this would be invaluable.
I do not use these programs, but I can sympathize with their use. The people that hate them the most are the hardcore 14-hour-a-day players who currently dominate the game economies. They rightfully see these applications as allowing more casual players to compete with them for materials and money. So long as the bots are used for those pruposes, I think they would be fine...but even better would be if Blizzard would allow for professions to be profitable, or maybe add interest to the bank...something that would give players another way to earn money besides going out and digging ditches.
And as a final note, I do not particularly like the use of the bots to level characters. Far too many players lack even basic playskill if they do gain every level the hard way. I won't begrudge them doing so, but it's sad for them and everyone else in a group with them. And the worst of all: doing your grind where the mobs you are killing are quest targets for other players. That's the most egregious thing of all.
My confession: I have played a lot, but not quite "hardcore" the way a lot of people are. Real life makes it that way...I prefer to spend time with my wife when I can. But after she goes to bed, I play.
I play 2-3 hours a night on weekdays, 3-5 on weekends, staying up late. I have 6 level 60 characters...virtually every major class is represented. Of those 2 have end-game gear from the 20-man instances (Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj). And no character has ever taken more than 12 days to get to 60.
So yeah, I have about 2,500 hours on the game in 2 years. I cannot for the life of me see how it takes 480 played hours to hit 60. I never avoid content, I go everywhere, and I don't grind. My fastest character to 60 was my mage in just under 9 days...teleport FTW! My warlock did it in just over 9. Warrior even did it at 10 flat, and he was protection specced a lot of the time.
Actually, you get:
7 new outland zones and 4 new Azerothian zones.
Something like 15-20 new dungeons for everything from 5-man parties to 25-man raids
2 new races, complete with the final merger of the class differences between the factions
Team arena PvP combat
An entire new profession(Jewelcrafting) is not something to scoff at...it's a fairly major addition
Now, 500 hours is not an insignificant amount of time, but consider that it takes 250 hours to get the average character to 60. Since you say you raided MC, I assume that was your only character since the other 250 hours were spent there, no doubt. The game's flavor changes significantly even when you do simple things like play a new class. This expansion is quite large...but I sympathize with your viewpoint. Given that we've paid $15 a month for 2 years, I'd think the disc should cost $20, or if it's $40 it should include a free month of playtime.
If they're good, productive employees: let them have their fun. If they're borderline: write them up. It's obvious why they stayed out, you're no idiot. The next thing to watch for is Monday...if they don't make it in Monday, you have problems.
Does anyone know what evidentiary demands have been made of the RIAA in the past? I know that they attempt to prove that the defendant allowed people to download songs from their machine, and therfore sue them essentially for distribution. But it seems to me that an effective defense would be to insist that each download be tracked to the downloader, that for every instance the inifringement should be proven. No doubt there are cases where the downloader owns the CD but is too lazy to rip it himself...I know I have done this for at least half of my MP3s. Could this strategy have any merit by raising the bar of proof, since fair use no doubt would cover a copy of somethign you already paid for?
And yes, I know that they want us to pay each time we download it, until we die, over and over again. I know they're evil, but is there an option here for an effective defense?
You apparently didn't know this, but people can reactivate their accounts, and do.
I did know that. I also know that Blizzard's terms of service provide no guarantee of character retention...in fact they explicitly state that your character is their property, and they are under no obligation to retain it even with payment. Given some of their more asinine policies, such as one item restoration per account, ever, no addict worthy of the name would trust his hard-won characters to be retained without payment. Blizzard plays too much with their servers, and it's not far-fetched to imagine that they would purge characters to free up storage.
There's also the battlegrounds route for getting some epics (it takes a lot of time, but that time doesn't have to be consecutive).
This comment is well-meaning but incorrect. There is no casual route to epics via PvP. There are 14 ranks, and around 10 is considered "high" and starts to yield decent items of "superior" quality. On a server of medium-high population, to reach rank 10-11 means you are one of the top 100 players on the server. You will accomplish this with a semi-casual approach of 2-4 hours of PvP daily...but you will progress no further.
In order to break rank 12, and get your first epic, be prepared to PvP for many hours a day, and earn a minimum of 200,000 honor a week in order to jump 3-5 spots a week on that ladder. Break the top 25-30 and you're there! But once you hit rank 12, the pain starts. You will PvP constantly, and only in pre-formed groups, such as with a PvP guild. You can't afford to have losses....the queue times make each loss a staggering blow to your rank. Once you hit rank 13, you will say goodbye to all friends and family. You don't need them any more. 2 months later, if you keep winning, and you have 8-12 hours a day to invest, you will have the privilege of earning rank 14.
What happens then, you ask? You get to spend a LOT of money. Borrow from friends, because you WILL lose that rank before next week, and if you are not currently rank 14, you cannot access the rewards. At this point you will quit PvP, and possibly the entire game, being a burned out shell of the person you used to be only 9 months before.
How do I know all this? Because I know the guys who have done it. I feel sorry for them, because the items they won so painstakingly are inferior to the ones I won on PvE runs that took 1/10 of the time. It's very sad, horribly broken, and Blizzard should be ashamed.
I have been a player of WoW since it came out, and I have to disagree with the parent poster. Particularly, this statement:
With addicts, they're going to be playing all the time. ALL the time. They'll get through the content very quickly, and complain loudly about not having more of it pumped out in each new patch. They'll also use a lot of bandwidth and server time, which Blizzard has to pay for. Chances are these addictive personalities will eventually cause them to jump ship to another MMO to get addicted to, which means less monthly fees.
There are two flaws with this argument. First, the game has built-in timesinks, grinds, and other time traps. These tasks are specifically tailored to increase the time in-game artifically. Despite all this, the addicts grind away...and when they hit the wall, they just start a new character. From scratch they do it all over again. I should know...I have 5 level 60 characters. I consider myself an enthusiast with a cyncial mindset, and I can tell you from playing the game that Blizzard is not angling towards casual gamers at ALL. Quite the opposite...their development philosophy seems to be "be hardcore, or be gone".
The second objection I have regards those level 60 characters. It takes around 240 hours to level a character to 60. Multiply that times 5 (such as in my case) and you have a HUGE investment of time. To leave the game is to lose those characters, forever. All those hours, all that time...and it's gone. I ask you, how does an addict handle this? Quite simply, they don't. They'll be signing over their Social Security to Blizzard in 40 years to keep those characters "alive". The single greatest hook that Blizzard has developed is that attachment. Every person I have spoken to that has thought of quitting has used a variant of this argument to justify continuing. Some even go so far as to continue paying the fees even though they stop playing, just in case they want to come back...and they always do. Netflix can't touch that.
And that is the perspective of a genuine WoW enthusiast. Don't get me started on their development focus...
I wrote a professional "store my dvds and tv shows" app. SQL Server 2K and IIS, only because I have it on my dev box for work. Database, subdomain, separation of business and display logic, hardened against SQL injection and other common hacks, yadda yadda yadda. It took me 10 minutes. I could do it as easily in, say, my PHP/Postgres box, or whatever else you happened to have running on the corporate intranet server. It's rather trivial.
Where do you find people who will wait 2-4 weeks and pony up money for a server rack for such things? I want to steal your job.
No offense, but that mindset is precisely the kind of thing I am warning our user against. There you sit, hacking this thing together on your "dev box", with access to a SQL server box(the server rack previously mentioned for a dedicated solution), assuming access to the corporate intranet server and quite happy to design the "solution" using tools that are hopelessly opaque to the end-user.
In addition, I find it not just unlikely but downright criminal that you suggest all of that takes 10 minutes. You have either stolen someone else's work or you are not being honest. 10 minutes to code two seperate logic structures and implement the entire web-based solution? I call BS, and can't see how you would want my job. You apparently are paid to produce hyperbole.
In any case, Microsoft Access is certainly the absolute WORST choice for a database application--especially for a backend, and MySQL is orders of magnitude better in stability and performance (it is apallingly easy to corrupt an.mdb file full of tables). I think that even Microsoft themselves (at least a lot of them), given the choice, would kill the scourge that is MS Access. Given the backlash they took over their treatment of VB6 however, I think that MS fears they'd be the victim of a severe lynching by "professional MS Office developers".
I do a lot of development in Office, and yeah, losing Access would be a blow in our organization. The quotes you place around your phrase are just flamebait. I also do work that doesn't involve Office, I know the other side of coding, and I can tell you this: oftentimes Office is a great platform for a solution. Because like it or not, no matter what your favorite flavor of code may be, your VP's computer runs Word, Excel, and Powerpoint...and maybe Access. Telling him that it will take 2-4 weeks and a server rack to get some kind of basic "store my recipes" database up and running is unacceptable. I envy people with jobs where they can lollygag around with "professional coding" solutions for all problems. While they are writing their perfectly documented and scalable code in the uber leet language-of-the-week, the business world moves on. There are times when it makes sense to go to the trouble, but more often than not, I find that Access does the job better and faster.
There are people in the world who need to be able to model data quickly, and on their terms. They are called business analysts. With a tool like Access, they can do their jobs. How do you propose they do their jobs when you design a black-box PHP/MySQL application? Are you going to provide them with the tools they need to create their own views and extract data for analysis? Are you going to provide them with a dtaa warehousing/reporting solution that gives them the flexibility they need?
Programmers very seldom consider the needs of analysts, and honestly they tend to slow them down. If all companies were to "BAN Access", many businesses would grind to a halt. But hey, if it gets another PHP script jockey a job, it's all worthwhile I guess.
I have pointed out in a reply to another poster the various strengths of Access. For an organization of your size, it is far and away the best solution. Anyone who insists that you need a fully-fledged solution complete with dedicated servers and development is selling you a bill of goods above and beyond what you need, and in an organization of your size the cost of servers, etc. can add up quickly.
There is a strong bias here on Slashdot against anything Microsoft-centric. I am telling you that in the case of Access it is an unfounded bias. The system works, and it works well. It does scale, but it does not scale to thousands upon thousands of users. If you need to scale to that level later, there is SQL Server...and virtually all of the systems you build in Access will scale up to that level. The upgrade process is easy. But you have 200 users...and from what you describe the databases they use are probably only being used by small percentages of that. Access will work, and it will work well.
Don't let the disdain of suspender-wearing command-line users wear you down. These guys just want to keep anyone from using a Microsoft product, even if it is a good one. It's okay to use a GUI environment such as Access for the needs you describe. You just need someone with a knack for Visual Basic, and that can be just about anyone with a good knowledge of how to write clean code.
I have designed databases in Access that support over 250 users concurrently, and there are no issues of latency or corruption. These databases are not simple "advance to the next record" databases either: they are comprehensive, feature rich applications that tie in seamlessly with the Office applications my users expect to be able to use. I even coded my own security system that is "good enough" in our intranet environment to keep any nosy users out.
What can Access do easily and well? How about slapping together a presentation in Powerpoint and e-mailing it directly to users? Dumping database content directly into PivotTables for executive analysis...and providing a form to allow them to build their own custom data views. Using Excel objects to chart directly in the database...and provide the ability to get that data out for more detailed analysis. All with no servers, no full-time team of empire-builders who insist everything has to be done in an overly complex way to justify their own jobs.
The snobby dismissal of Access is generally the result of seeing bad implementations of it. There are places where Access is a horrible choice, and there are "developers" who will mangle anything they touch, including Access. But I will tell you this: nothing can touch Access for speed of deployment for its scope. Paying through the nose for a PHP/Java/MySQL/whatever solution that the users have NO chance of being able to tweak by themselves is only a good deal for the developers, who can hold the users hostage when they need changes. I would say that for most small-to-mid-sized organizations(up to around 250 users per database), Access databases can fulfill many of their::internal:: needs. The Internet? That's a different question entirely...run away screaming from Access for that.
It's just that 6+ month turnaround on upgrades or new solutions is what drives people to route around that crap and starting using things like that NAS, or worse, Microsoft Access
Singling out Microsoft Access here makes very little sense. I realize that everyone here on Slashdot is nuts about designing multi-tiered applications with multiple layers, but not all business needs fit that bill. I develop extensively in Microsoft Access, and the tools I can build in literally hours are far more robust for the time spent in development than the web-enabled, dedicated-box-in-the-closet, months-to-update beasts that are put together by our IT department. Plus, the applications I put together actually serve the purpose for which they were intended.
In a nutshell: deriding Microsoft Access is just elitist bull. For the right types of applications(more than you might imagine), Access provides just the right amount of power, desktop usability, and scalability (yes, scalable!). When getting the job done is more important than guaranteeing your own job security with a spaghetti project in the server closet, it does a fine job. It is not important to the business that the IT projects pad the ego and biases of the IT department, it is important to get the job done.
This is a tremendous decision. In order for it to have taken place at all, there must already be an element friendly to open-source concepts in the higher circles...and the expansion of staff necessary to implement these changes will alter the culture of the Office at large. Water cooler conversations will change, and the current bias toward approving patenting anythign that moves might finally begin to erode somewhat.
The Google cache is no different from the Google index...the onyl distinction is the volume of information retained. In order to index the entire page is read, and it is then analyzed for key words. With caching, the entire page is always available, so the user has the option of searching the entire page at will.
Once the publisher of the website has made it available publicly on the open web they are inviting people to refer to that page indefinitely...in much the same way that you can refer to older editions of a printed work. The cache is a very valuable tool for this purpose, and this justifies its existence. It isn't morally dubious at all...it does no harm to the publisher unless they made a mistake they'd rather cover up.
Bear in mind that most broadband is DSL or cable, and yes, a physical tap is possible there as well. My objection to the parent post was the obvious gall he felt at the prospect of having VoIP providers go to the expense of providing access points...the sarcasm was dripping from the post. You make very good points.
Your verbage was the only indication I had regarding your thoughts on wiretaps. If you don't want people to draw conclusions (as opposed to assumptions) based on your writing, then I might suggest a less public forum for presenting your opinions.
That being said, you are correct that there is no payback for installing the equipment. However, the offset to this is the necessity of wiretaps that cannot be circumvented by just switching to Vonage. If this means that the government should assist these upgrades (by tax breaks or direct subsidies), then that is a debate we should have.
The tone of the post is sarcastic, and refers to the upgrade to VoIP technology that supports wiretapping as an "upgrade". The bias is palpable.
Wiretaps are necessary for lots of reasons...and with a properly balanced judiciary we can avoid abuses. The idea that noone should be able to monitor anything, you do, ever, is just so much fantasy. There are bad people in the world, and there are legitimate reasons for law enforcement to monitor such things. In the end text messaging and other such things are just as important...and even though I am not a supporter of law enforcement at all costs, I realize, as should the poster, that it's only evil if it is abused.
To think that the line item veto would address this ignores political reality. The President would not consider using such a power to hinder the agenda of any industry group, let alone the content industry lobby. The political fallout of alienating such a group far exceeds the grassroots gain of quashing their desires with a veto. After all, who pays for the ads during the next cycle?
The author is obviously more interested in maintaining his belief that democracy and Islam have had a happy co-existence than acknowledging historical fact.
The article on Wikipedia was very informative. The previous poster stated:
Thanks for the link. It didn't undermine anything I claimed, and the point remains that Mohammad taught and practiced democracy. Deal with it. Linking to wikopedia may be the current fad, but it doesn't automatically prove you're right, unless it actually supports your argument.
Mohammed spent the last ten years of his life at war consolidating Arabia, and it was not as a Prime Minister or President. The article directly destroys your misconception, but you obviously did not read it or lack the comprehension to necessary to realize your error. The link to "Wikopedia" definitely supported his argument, and it effectively demolished your own. Your refusal to realize that just makes you a perfect example of the sad state of argument in today's world.
As opposed as I am to current interference in the Middle East's affairs, I could not disagree with the author of the previous post more. History also does not agree.
The history of the Muslim world is not one of enlightened democracy; however, it has had flashes of enlightened despotism in the form of various sultans and caliphs. The Muslim world was far ahead of the European world in science and culture around the time of the Crusades, and maintained that lead until the advances of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment allowed the European world to finally outstrip them. The advent of constitutional democracy in the form of an American-style republic was the culmination of centuries of progression.
In contradiction to the previous post's claims, there was an anti-democratic movement in the Muslim world the form of Wahhabist/fundamentalist interpretation starting in the late 18th century. The words of Mohammed aside (with which I am not intimately familar), there is no evidence to support that democratic principles were or ever would have been applied in the Islamic world...either historically or in a fictional present time free of Western intervention. Not only has there not been democracy recently in the Muslim world, history does not agree that democracy has ever played a role: in fact, it contradicts that claim.
Slashdot Mirror
In essence, a glider program takes the games only limitless resource...respawning mobs...and allows players to bypass the artificial barrier of time needed to acquire basic resources. Then they can actually spend their game time PLAYING the game. For people like me that work for a living, this would be invaluable.
I do not use these programs, but I can sympathize with their use. The people that hate them the most are the hardcore 14-hour-a-day players who currently dominate the game economies. They rightfully see these applications as allowing more casual players to compete with them for materials and money. So long as the bots are used for those pruposes, I think they would be fine...but even better would be if Blizzard would allow for professions to be profitable, or maybe add interest to the bank...something that would give players another way to earn money besides going out and digging ditches.
And as a final note, I do not particularly like the use of the bots to level characters. Far too many players lack even basic playskill if they do gain every level the hard way. I won't begrudge them doing so, but it's sad for them and everyone else in a group with them. And the worst of all: doing your grind where the mobs you are killing are quest targets for other players. That's the most egregious thing of all.
My confession: I have played a lot, but not quite "hardcore" the way a lot of people are. Real life makes it that way...I prefer to spend time with my wife when I can. But after she goes to bed, I play.
I play 2-3 hours a night on weekdays, 3-5 on weekends, staying up late. I have 6 level 60 characters...virtually every major class is represented. Of those 2 have end-game gear from the 20-man instances (Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj). And no character has ever taken more than 12 days to get to 60.
So yeah, I have about 2,500 hours on the game in 2 years. I cannot for the life of me see how it takes 480 played hours to hit 60. I never avoid content, I go everywhere, and I don't grind. My fastest character to 60 was my mage in just under 9 days...teleport FTW! My warlock did it in just over 9. Warrior even did it at 10 flat, and he was protection specced a lot of the time.
Actually, you get: 7 new outland zones and 4 new Azerothian zones. Something like 15-20 new dungeons for everything from 5-man parties to 25-man raids 2 new races, complete with the final merger of the class differences between the factions Team arena PvP combat An entire new profession(Jewelcrafting) is not something to scoff at...it's a fairly major addition Now, 500 hours is not an insignificant amount of time, but consider that it takes 250 hours to get the average character to 60. Since you say you raided MC, I assume that was your only character since the other 250 hours were spent there, no doubt. The game's flavor changes significantly even when you do simple things like play a new class. This expansion is quite large...but I sympathize with your viewpoint. Given that we've paid $15 a month for 2 years, I'd think the disc should cost $20, or if it's $40 it should include a free month of playtime.
If they're good, productive employees: let them have their fun. If they're borderline: write them up. It's obvious why they stayed out, you're no idiot. The next thing to watch for is Monday...if they don't make it in Monday, you have problems.
And yes, I know that they want us to pay each time we download it, until we die, over and over again. I know they're evil, but is there an option here for an effective defense?
I did know that. I also know that Blizzard's terms of service provide no guarantee of character retention...in fact they explicitly state that your character is their property, and they are under no obligation to retain it even with payment. Given some of their more asinine policies, such as one item restoration per account, ever, no addict worthy of the name would trust his hard-won characters to be retained without payment. Blizzard plays too much with their servers, and it's not far-fetched to imagine that they would purge characters to free up storage.
There's also the battlegrounds route for getting some epics (it takes a lot of time, but that time doesn't have to be consecutive).
This comment is well-meaning but incorrect. There is no casual route to epics via PvP. There are 14 ranks, and around 10 is considered "high" and starts to yield decent items of "superior" quality. On a server of medium-high population, to reach rank 10-11 means you are one of the top 100 players on the server. You will accomplish this with a semi-casual approach of 2-4 hours of PvP daily...but you will progress no further.
In order to break rank 12, and get your first epic, be prepared to PvP for many hours a day, and earn a minimum of 200,000 honor a week in order to jump 3-5 spots a week on that ladder. Break the top 25-30 and you're there! But once you hit rank 12, the pain starts. You will PvP constantly, and only in pre-formed groups, such as with a PvP guild. You can't afford to have losses....the queue times make each loss a staggering blow to your rank. Once you hit rank 13, you will say goodbye to all friends and family. You don't need them any more. 2 months later, if you keep winning, and you have 8-12 hours a day to invest, you will have the privilege of earning rank 14.
What happens then, you ask? You get to spend a LOT of money. Borrow from friends, because you WILL lose that rank before next week, and if you are not currently rank 14, you cannot access the rewards. At this point you will quit PvP, and possibly the entire game, being a burned out shell of the person you used to be only 9 months before.
How do I know all this? Because I know the guys who have done it. I feel sorry for them, because the items they won so painstakingly are inferior to the ones I won on PvE runs that took 1/10 of the time. It's very sad, horribly broken, and Blizzard should be ashamed.
With addicts, they're going to be playing all the time. ALL the time. They'll get through the content very quickly, and complain loudly about not having more of it pumped out in each new patch. They'll also use a lot of bandwidth and server time, which Blizzard has to pay for. Chances are these addictive personalities will eventually cause them to jump ship to another MMO to get addicted to, which means less monthly fees.
There are two flaws with this argument. First, the game has built-in timesinks, grinds, and other time traps. These tasks are specifically tailored to increase the time in-game artifically. Despite all this, the addicts grind away...and when they hit the wall, they just start a new character. From scratch they do it all over again. I should know...I have 5 level 60 characters. I consider myself an enthusiast with a cyncial mindset, and I can tell you from playing the game that Blizzard is not angling towards casual gamers at ALL. Quite the opposite...their development philosophy seems to be "be hardcore, or be gone".
The second objection I have regards those level 60 characters. It takes around 240 hours to level a character to 60. Multiply that times 5 (such as in my case) and you have a HUGE investment of time. To leave the game is to lose those characters, forever. All those hours, all that time...and it's gone. I ask you, how does an addict handle this? Quite simply, they don't. They'll be signing over their Social Security to Blizzard in 40 years to keep those characters "alive". The single greatest hook that Blizzard has developed is that attachment. Every person I have spoken to that has thought of quitting has used a variant of this argument to justify continuing. Some even go so far as to continue paying the fees even though they stop playing, just in case they want to come back...and they always do. Netflix can't touch that.
And that is the perspective of a genuine WoW enthusiast. Don't get me started on their development focus...
This is why you are not in such a position. And yes, I would like fries with that.
Where do you find people who will wait 2-4 weeks and pony up money for a server rack for such things? I want to steal your job.
No offense, but that mindset is precisely the kind of thing I am warning our user against. There you sit, hacking this thing together on your "dev box", with access to a SQL server box(the server rack previously mentioned for a dedicated solution), assuming access to the corporate intranet server and quite happy to design the "solution" using tools that are hopelessly opaque to the end-user.
In addition, I find it not just unlikely but downright criminal that you suggest all of that takes 10 minutes. You have either stolen someone else's work or you are not being honest. 10 minutes to code two seperate logic structures and implement the entire web-based solution? I call BS, and can't see how you would want my job. You apparently are paid to produce hyperbole.
I do a lot of development in Office, and yeah, losing Access would be a blow in our organization. The quotes you place around your phrase are just flamebait. I also do work that doesn't involve Office, I know the other side of coding, and I can tell you this: oftentimes Office is a great platform for a solution. Because like it or not, no matter what your favorite flavor of code may be, your VP's computer runs Word, Excel, and Powerpoint...and maybe Access. Telling him that it will take 2-4 weeks and a server rack to get some kind of basic "store my recipes" database up and running is unacceptable. I envy people with jobs where they can lollygag around with "professional coding" solutions for all problems. While they are writing their perfectly documented and scalable code in the uber leet language-of-the-week, the business world moves on. There are times when it makes sense to go to the trouble, but more often than not, I find that Access does the job better and faster.
Programmers very seldom consider the needs of analysts, and honestly they tend to slow them down. If all companies were to "BAN Access", many businesses would grind to a halt. But hey, if it gets another PHP script jockey a job, it's all worthwhile I guess.
There is a strong bias here on Slashdot against anything Microsoft-centric. I am telling you that in the case of Access it is an unfounded bias. The system works, and it works well. It does scale, but it does not scale to thousands upon thousands of users. If you need to scale to that level later, there is SQL Server...and virtually all of the systems you build in Access will scale up to that level. The upgrade process is easy. But you have 200 users...and from what you describe the databases they use are probably only being used by small percentages of that. Access will work, and it will work well.
Don't let the disdain of suspender-wearing command-line users wear you down. These guys just want to keep anyone from using a Microsoft product, even if it is a good one. It's okay to use a GUI environment such as Access for the needs you describe. You just need someone with a knack for Visual Basic, and that can be just about anyone with a good knowledge of how to write clean code.
What can Access do easily and well? How about slapping together a presentation in Powerpoint and e-mailing it directly to users? Dumping database content directly into PivotTables for executive analysis...and providing a form to allow them to build their own custom data views. Using Excel objects to chart directly in the database...and provide the ability to get that data out for more detailed analysis. All with no servers, no full-time team of empire-builders who insist everything has to be done in an overly complex way to justify their own jobs.
The snobby dismissal of Access is generally the result of seeing bad implementations of it. There are places where Access is a horrible choice, and there are "developers" who will mangle anything they touch, including Access. But I will tell you this: nothing can touch Access for speed of deployment for its scope. Paying through the nose for a PHP/Java/MySQL/whatever solution that the users have NO chance of being able to tweak by themselves is only a good deal for the developers, who can hold the users hostage when they need changes. I would say that for most small-to-mid-sized organizations(up to around 250 users per database), Access databases can fulfill many of their ::internal:: needs. The Internet? That's a different question entirely...run away screaming from Access for that.
Singling out Microsoft Access here makes very little sense. I realize that everyone here on Slashdot is nuts about designing multi-tiered applications with multiple layers, but not all business needs fit that bill. I develop extensively in Microsoft Access, and the tools I can build in literally hours are far more robust for the time spent in development than the web-enabled, dedicated-box-in-the-closet, months-to-update beasts that are put together by our IT department. Plus, the applications I put together actually serve the purpose for which they were intended.
In a nutshell: deriding Microsoft Access is just elitist bull. For the right types of applications(more than you might imagine), Access provides just the right amount of power, desktop usability, and scalability (yes, scalable!). When getting the job done is more important than guaranteeing your own job security with a spaghetti project in the server closet, it does a fine job. It is not important to the business that the IT projects pad the ego and biases of the IT department, it is important to get the job done.
It's an excellent beginning.
Hey man, your hard drive spins too. Just thought you'd like to know.
The Google cache is no different from the Google index...the onyl distinction is the volume of information retained. In order to index the entire page is read, and it is then analyzed for key words. With caching, the entire page is always available, so the user has the option of searching the entire page at will.
Once the publisher of the website has made it available publicly on the open web they are inviting people to refer to that page indefinitely...in much the same way that you can refer to older editions of a printed work. The cache is a very valuable tool for this purpose, and this justifies its existence. It isn't morally dubious at all...it does no harm to the publisher unless they made a mistake they'd rather cover up.
Bear in mind that most broadband is DSL or cable, and yes, a physical tap is possible there as well. My objection to the parent post was the obvious gall he felt at the prospect of having VoIP providers go to the expense of providing access points...the sarcasm was dripping from the post. You make very good points.
That being said, you are correct that there is no payback for installing the equipment. However, the offset to this is the necessity of wiretaps that cannot be circumvented by just switching to Vonage. If this means that the government should assist these upgrades (by tax breaks or direct subsidies), then that is a debate we should have.
Wiretaps are necessary for lots of reasons...and with a properly balanced judiciary we can avoid abuses. The idea that noone should be able to monitor anything, you do, ever, is just so much fantasy. There are bad people in the world, and there are legitimate reasons for law enforcement to monitor such things. In the end text messaging and other such things are just as important...and even though I am not a supporter of law enforcement at all costs, I realize, as should the poster, that it's only evil if it is abused.
He could only fly with light from a yellow sun, so it did kinda evolve here.
A hint: not the general populace.
The article on Wikipedia was very informative. The previous poster stated:
Mohammed spent the last ten years of his life at war consolidating Arabia, and it was not as a Prime Minister or President. The article directly destroys your misconception, but you obviously did not read it or lack the comprehension to necessary to realize your error. The link to "Wikopedia" definitely supported his argument, and it effectively demolished your own. Your refusal to realize that just makes you a perfect example of the sad state of argument in today's world.The history of the Muslim world is not one of enlightened democracy; however, it has had flashes of enlightened despotism in the form of various sultans and caliphs. The Muslim world was far ahead of the European world in science and culture around the time of the Crusades, and maintained that lead until the advances of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment allowed the European world to finally outstrip them. The advent of constitutional democracy in the form of an American-style republic was the culmination of centuries of progression.
In contradiction to the previous post's claims, there was an anti-democratic movement in the Muslim world the form of Wahhabist/fundamentalist interpretation starting in the late 18th century. The words of Mohammed aside (with which I am not intimately familar), there is no evidence to support that democratic principles were or ever would have been applied in the Islamic world...either historically or in a fictional present time free of Western intervention. Not only has there not been democracy recently in the Muslim world, history does not agree that democracy has ever played a role: in fact, it contradicts that claim.