Same here. We're a distributed/virtual firm with 150+ employees in over a dozen countries. IRC is essential to our operations. We use it for all of our weekly team meetings, among other things.
XML was never built to be written by hand, or to be read with the human eye.
Um, no. That's EXACTLY why it was created -- to offer a basis for data interchange that's read easily by both machines and humans, and whose structure can be inferred by either if need be.
What we do need is a good (ideally open source) XML editor that's as natural and intuitive to use as Notepad (or more ideally Textpad) is to edit text files.
Well, seeing "Notepad" and "natural and intuitive" together in the same sentence is somewhat amusing, I agree with this point. XMLCookTop (site's unavailable at the moment but hopefully it'll be back soon) and XXE are steps in the right direction. We need something like HomeSite or Bluefish for XML. Something that reads a DTD or schema and then provides the appropriate dropdowns, buttons, and other clicky-widgets to author a doc that conforms to it.
Then again I'm an old bastard (30) who wants to edit everything by hand no matter what.
No, you're a young bastard (only 30) who wants to edit everything by hand. Come back in 15 years or so and then you can say that.;)
Just look at DOM Level 2 Style which shows you how to manipulate style rules and stylesheets programmatically. Mozilla supports this API per the spec (at least *I* didn't find any deviations from it in Moz); MSIE supports most of it with a few MS-specific wrinkles.
For that matter, you can use DOM to change the src attribute of a LINK element, which is how a lot of style switchers work.
True enough, although that doesn't make what I said wrong. It just means there's a lot of so-called "web developers" out there producing bad code. But we all knew that already.
BTW, commercial/closed products like FP and CF aren't alone in busted-markup department -- just look at Doxygen and Slashcode.
3) Access to print layout features like in IE
-- In IE, with the right evil Active-x control, a page designer can change the formatting of the printing via JavaScript. This is an awesome feature that we depend on for outputing professional documents from the web browser. However, Moz is not capable of this one. Maybe this could be done with an extention?
No need for ActiveX, this is already possible using standards-compliant CSS/DOM+JS.
4) Better memory management in framework
-- In general, I find that Mozilla does not do a very good job of freeing up memory. Over time, when doing lots of refreshes, eventually Mozilla will take over 100mb even if only one window is left open. Better garbage collection is probably in order.
-- Right now, I have to shut down all Mozilla windows and re-open them from scratch to bounce the memory footprint.
FreeRAM XP Pro takes care of this handily for me on Windows. http://yourwaresolutions.com/ Free as in beer.
> Only complete and utter congential cretins like > the US telcos would think of giving monthly > billable credit to kids.
This phenomenon is neither new nor limited to the USA. Not long after my arrival here in Oz in mid-2002, I got the privilege of loaning my new teenage stepson some money to pay his mobile bill, most of which consisted of charges for text messages.
You are glad USSR fell. Most leftists are. The question is: didn't they support USSR? Yes, they did. They knew what was going on, but they supported USSR back then. Why? Because it was against USA. Quite simple.
I'm a US citizen (born there) and still carry a US passport even though I live overseas now. I consider myself a socialist (even belonged to the DSA at one point), always have, and back in the day, I was most definitely not pro-Soviet, and I am not sorry the Soviet empire dissolved. Nor am I anti-American now (even though I oppose a lot of the policies and actions of the current American régime). Nor am I especially anti-capitalist. But I am anti-authoritarian, anti-corporatist, and anti-imperialist (which is why I oppose the current the current US Administration).
Yes, the Soviet Empire fell, and that's a good thing. Now it's time for the American Empire to do likewise; this would also be a good thing.
Opposition to the US government != anti-American.
A true patriot respects all nations and the rights of their citizens just as much as he does his own.
So kindly speak for yourself, as you definitely don't speak for me.
2. Thanks to Mike Hillyer for his invaluable help with the book. Say what you like about Visual Basic (I happen to loathe it, myself), Mike's an excellent programmer, and his knowledge of MySQL is superb. In fact, part of the way through the process of writing this book, he was hired by MySQL AB to work with the teams developing the Connectors and the new GUI tools. His site VBMySQL.com provides a valuable and unique resource for VB and other Windows developers wanting to build DB applications who'd like to use an actual database instead of Access and don't feel like condemning themselves or their users to paying for SQL Server. Rather than flame him for his language and platform choices, you should commend him for introducing many Windows programmers to an Open Source technology. (BTW, you might be interested in knowing that he also uses Linux and programs in C++ as well.) It was a privilege to have him work on the book with us, and it's a privilege to work with him now at MySQL AB. And he's a damn good writer.
3. We wrote the book because there's a lot of MySQL installations out there, and a lot of very badly done MySQL databases. Granted, there are some things that MySQl isn't (yet). But it is fast and stable -- or can be. And it's certainly possible to throw those advantages away through poor DB and application design by people who don't know the difference between a database and a spreadsheet or who don't know how to leverage SQL to do their heavy lifting for them. We chose not to spend a great deal of time with enforcing foreign keys because a great many administrators are still running MySQL 3.23 and don't bother to make InnoDB available. Besides, if you expect people to understand key constraints, you have to get them to normalise first, and many devs don't even do that.
4. We wanted to encourage PHP developers to make the transition to ext/mysqli as soon as possible.
5. I don't know what other people may have experienced with Apress, but they've been damned nice to me, and I can tell you that Gary Cornell does answer his email, even when it comes from a lowly writer who's not yet even signed a contract. Speaking of which -- their contracts are much better than Wrox' or Wiley's. And since I've been associated with them, they've dumped at least one bad editor and another one that I'd heard some not-so-favourable things about.
6. While we didn't cover this in the book, fans of Postgres might wish to take note: We already have a working Cluster implementation, and we're anxious to see what yours will look like.:)
> Lastly, being African American, I'm interested in what you were implying by your last comment.
The NYT story isn't really news; it's simply reporting an effect which has been observed time and time again over the last 50-60 years.
Ethnic minorities in the USA (especially Blacks and Hispanics) tend to be economically disadvantaged to start with. Hence, the boost they receive to their post-military careers tends to be greater in relation to what they would have received had they not served, as compared to whites.
In other words: If you're Black or Hispanic in the USA, you're a lot more likely to start out poor and a lot less likely to be offered opportunities for advancement than if you're white. In this regard, the military (which was desegregated a couple of decades before civilian society) tends to be an equaliser. So the relative advantage to your career derived from military service is likely to be greater if you're Black or Hispanic than if you're white.
Does this reflect racism in American society? Yes.
Does this reflect racism on the part of the poster? No.
(BTW, addressing the main topic: I have no degree, taught myself Web programming and databases, co-authored 8 books about them, and now work in a technical capacity for a well-known Open Source company. Getting the degree is seldom ever a bad idea -- I wish I'd finished mine, it would have made some things easier -- but there are other ways to advance yourself, if you're willing to learn and to do the work.)
given that firefox is based upon mozilla, which is based upon netscape, its hardly surprising that it's a p.o.s.
Netscape lost the 'browser wars' to IE for one reason, that that reason was merit.
Two very old, very tired arguments.
Statement #1 is untrue. The old Netscape codebase was scrapped. (Which is why there was neither a commercial nor Open Source release of Netscape 5.) Mozilla was a from-the-ground-up rewrite.
Statement #2 is at best debatable. Since Microsoft undercut Netscape through giving away its product, "bundling" it with the OS, and making deals to ensure that its product would be highly visible and accessible to Windows users while Netscape's wouldn't be, we'll never really know, will we?
My late dev server was a 1997-vintage Pentium 200 with 160 MB RAM. Paid $50 for it. Ran Win2K Server, Apache or IIS (depending upon the needs of the moment), MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python, ColdFusion, and a few other goodies. It made a pretty fair mail and file server and gateway as well. Chugged along very happily like that for years until the mobo finally gave out about a month ago.
Yes, I said "Windows 2000 Server".
As for XP, I wouldn't know. Any machine with a Windows XP install coming into my possession doesn't keep it for longer than about ten minutes.;-)
I've been running 5.0.0 nonstop (with a few reboots not related to MySQL) for the last 3.5 months and I've found it quite stable. It handles the crash-me's pretty well, too.
Postgres is a general pain to install and configure, and requires the Big "V" as well.
MySQL is also faster and has less resource requirements.
And, as I mentioned previously, the usefulness of triggers is debatable in any case.
> Not only that, because MySQL lacks essential > features like triggers and stored procedures
False. I am running MySQL 5.0 and using stored procedures and user functions right now, and have been since the first of the year.
It can be argued that triggers are not necessary, but whether you agree that they are or not, they're coming in 5.1.
> As relational databases go, MySQL is utter crap.
Also false. MySQL is in many cases faster than any other RDBMS in common use, including Postgreas and Oracle. And it complies with SQL-99 better than either Oracle or SQL Server.
> Even in the realm of open-source databases, > there are better choices.
That's entirely subjective (at best, since you're offered no evidence to back up this claim).
And comparing MySQL with Access is like comparing a jet fighter with a kids' model of one.
Redundant as Hell, I'm Sure, but ...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I can't be the first to make this observation, but here goes anyway...
Has anyone ever noticed that THEIR SOFTWARE SUCKS A BIG HAIRY NUT ? ! ?
Haven't allowed it on any machine of mine in about 3-4 years -- haven't missed it, either.
In case you missed that part of my post, let me reiterate that *even MSDN* tell devs not to use global references or document.all, that these are (a) deprecated (and not likely to be supported forever) and (b) a huge hit on performance.
Most sane developers have been coding to W3C DOM for yonks anyways, and even Microsoft use it in their tutorials/examples/documentation. People who are deliberately coding to MSIE are very much in the minority. The proof? I can surf the Web (including pages that use heavy amounts of JS/DOM) quite easily using Mozilla, Opera, or Konqueror.
I suppose next you're going to claim that Mozilla et al. are doomed because they don't support clientside VBScript like MSIE does... which almost nobody uses, either.
> Start with matching the functionality (IE the > ability to reference objects without needing to > go through getelementByID the way you can in the > MS browser, this will eliminate 90% of the > javascript incompatibilities between the two > browsers).
NonoNONOnonoNONONO. And again NO. This is just so seriously wrong I don't even know where to begin.
1. You seriously want the global namespace polluted to that extent? I sure as hell don't!
2. Even MSDN tells you NOT to use direct access. As they themselves will tell you, it's bad programming practice and a tremendous performance hit as well.
(Remind me never to use any API you've had a hand in developing, ok? Thanks!)
Besides, MSIE supports a good chunk of W3C DOM (as do Opera, Konq, Safari, et al.) -- getElementById() and getElementsByTagName() are *already* cross-browser, so there is absolutely no reason not to use them.
There is absolutely zero reason for any other browser to support MSIE's b0rken object model.
There are numerous tools for creating SVG if you're not prepared to roll up your sleeves and bang out the code in a text editor (it's markup, and only slightly more complex than HTML, after all).
Jasc had a pretty good one that I beta-tested a couple of years ago. Used to be called Trajectory, they changed the name to something else, but I don't remember what it is now.
Several mainstream graphics and presentation apps can export to SVG, including OpenOffice.org 1.1 and (believe it or not) MS Visio 2003.
IIRC (not 100% sure, I lost my copy), Adobe Illustrator also has SVG export capability.
If I understand correctly what the parent and grandparent are aiming at, it doesn't matter what compiler SCO uses to produce its binaries.
Even if they use one that is GPL'ed, GPL does not transfer to the binaries compiled with it. Otherwise, EVERY app compiled with gcc would automatically be GPL'ed, which we know is not the case.
If I'm missing the point here, then somebody please correct me.
Slashdot Mirror
Same here. We're a distributed/virtual firm with 150+ employees in over a dozen countries. IRC is essential to our operations. We use it for all of our weekly team meetings, among other things.
Um, no. That's EXACTLY why it was created -- to offer a basis for data interchange that's read easily by both machines and humans, and whose structure can be inferred by either if need be.
Well, seeing "Notepad" and "natural and intuitive" together in the same sentence is somewhat amusing, I agree with this point. XMLCookTop (site's unavailable at the moment but hopefully it'll be back soon) and XXE are steps in the right direction. We need something like HomeSite or Bluefish for XML. Something that reads a DTD or schema and then provides the appropriate dropdowns, buttons, and other clicky-widgets to author a doc that conforms to it.
No, you're a young bastard (only 30) who wants to edit everything by hand. Come back in 15 years or so and then you can say that.
> Standards bodies just move too slowly for a company that is trying to keep customers happy with new feature requests.
Hello? We're talking about MS Office here -- 90% of whose features don't even get used by the overwhelming majority of users.
> By bypassing the whole standards thing, the company is free to do what it wants.
Evidently you've never heard of vendor lock-in and data loss due to unmaintained/lost formats.
Please amass some data from sources other than MS Marketing, then try again. Thanks for playing.
Hi, Steve!
So the NYT finally ran you off, eh?
Just look at DOM Level 2 Style which shows you how to manipulate style rules and stylesheets programmatically. Mozilla supports this API per the spec (at least *I* didn't find any deviations from it in Moz); MSIE supports most of it with a few MS-specific wrinkles.
For that matter, you can use DOM to change the src attribute of a LINK element, which is how a lot of style switchers work.
True enough, although that doesn't make what I said wrong. It just means there's a lot of so-called "web developers" out there producing bad code. But we all knew that already.
BTW, commercial/closed products like FP and CF aren't alone in busted-markup department -- just look at Doxygen and Slashcode.
Bah. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
Hitler sent all the real Marxists (Socialists/Communists) to concentration camps or had them shot.
No need for ActiveX, this is already possible using standards-compliant CSS/DOM+JS.
FreeRAM XP Pro takes care of this handily for me on Windows. http://yourwaresolutions.com/ Free as in beer.
> Only complete and utter congential cretins like
> the US telcos would think of giving monthly
> billable credit to kids.
This phenomenon is neither new nor limited to the USA. Not long after my arrival here in Oz in mid-2002, I got the privilege of loaning my new teenage stepson some money to pay his mobile bill, most of which consisted of charges for text messages.
(He did pay me back a month or two later, BTW.)
> I haven't met anyone who wrote OSS for a living
Stop by where I work sometime and I'll introduce you to about 100 people who do.
Hmmm, looks like a freely available spec to me... The book is also available as an OO.org file. You'd prefer if they used
Let's face it, most Windows users don't know about OO.org, much less something like LaTex, and most Linux users don't need to read the book.
Wrong. You're confusing socialism with crony capitalism.
Please don't waste any more of our time talking about socialism until you learn what the term actually means.
I'm a US citizen (born there) and still carry a US passport even though I live overseas now. I consider myself a socialist (even belonged to the DSA at one point), always have, and back in the day, I was most definitely not pro-Soviet, and I am not sorry the Soviet empire dissolved. Nor am I anti-American now (even though I oppose a lot of the policies and actions of the current American régime). Nor am I especially anti-capitalist. But I am anti-authoritarian, anti-corporatist, and anti-imperialist (which is why I oppose the current the current US Administration).
Yes, the Soviet Empire fell, and that's a good thing. Now it's time for the American Empire to do likewise; this would also be a good thing.
Opposition to the US government != anti-American.
A true patriot respects all nations and the rights of their citizens just as much as he does his own.
So kindly speak for yourself, as you definitely don't speak for me.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm one of the authors of the book.
:)
1. Thanks to Mary for the positive review.
2. Thanks to Mike Hillyer for his invaluable help with the book. Say what you like about Visual Basic (I happen to loathe it, myself), Mike's an excellent programmer, and his knowledge of MySQL is superb. In fact, part of the way through the process of writing this book, he was hired by MySQL AB to work with the teams developing the Connectors and the new GUI tools. His site VBMySQL.com provides a valuable and unique resource for VB and other Windows developers wanting to build DB applications who'd like to use an actual database instead of Access and don't feel like condemning themselves or their users to paying for SQL Server. Rather than flame him for his language and platform choices, you should commend him for introducing many Windows programmers to an Open Source technology. (BTW, you might be interested in knowing that he also uses Linux and programs in C++ as well.) It was a privilege to have him work on the book with us, and it's a privilege to work with him now at MySQL AB. And he's a damn good writer.
3. We wrote the book because there's a lot of MySQL installations out there, and a lot of very badly done MySQL databases. Granted, there are some things that MySQl isn't (yet). But it is fast and stable -- or can be. And it's certainly possible to throw those advantages away through poor DB and application design by people who don't know the difference between a database and a spreadsheet or who don't know how to leverage SQL to do their heavy lifting for them. We chose not to spend a great deal of time with enforcing foreign keys because a great many administrators are still running MySQL 3.23 and don't bother to make InnoDB available. Besides, if you expect people to understand key constraints, you have to get them to normalise first, and many devs don't even do that.
4. We wanted to encourage PHP developers to make the transition to ext/mysqli as soon as possible.
5. I don't know what other people may have experienced with Apress, but they've been damned nice to me, and I can tell you that Gary Cornell does answer his email, even when it comes from a lowly writer who's not yet even signed a contract. Speaking of which -- their contracts are much better than Wrox' or Wiley's. And since I've been associated with them, they've dumped at least one bad editor and another one that I'd heard some not-so-favourable things about.
6. While we didn't cover this in the book, fans of Postgres might wish to take note: We already have a working Cluster implementation, and we're anxious to see what yours will look like.
A government made a sensible, non-kneejerk decision with regard to the Internet?
:)
I want to to move there!
Oh, wait... I already did.
> Lastly, being African American, I'm interested in what you were implying by your last comment.
The NYT story isn't really news; it's simply reporting an effect which has been observed time and time again over the last 50-60 years.
Ethnic minorities in the USA (especially Blacks and Hispanics) tend to be economically disadvantaged to start with. Hence, the boost they receive to their post-military careers tends to be greater in relation to what they would have received had they not served, as compared to whites.
In other words: If you're Black or Hispanic in the USA, you're a lot more likely to start out poor and a lot less likely to be offered opportunities for advancement than if you're white. In this regard, the military (which was desegregated a couple of decades before civilian society) tends to be an equaliser. So the relative advantage to your career derived from military service is likely to be greater if you're Black or Hispanic than if you're white.
Does this reflect racism in American society? Yes.
Does this reflect racism on the part of the poster? No.
(BTW, addressing the main topic: I have no degree, taught myself Web programming and databases, co-authored 8 books about them, and now work in a technical capacity for a well-known Open Source company. Getting the degree is seldom ever a bad idea -- I wish I'd finished mine, it would have made some things easier -- but there are other ways to advance yourself, if you're willing to learn and to do the work.)
Two very old, very tired arguments.
Statement #1 is untrue. The old Netscape codebase was scrapped. (Which is why there was neither a commercial nor Open Source release of Netscape 5.) Mozilla was a from-the-ground-up rewrite.
Statement #2 is at best debatable. Since Microsoft undercut Netscape through giving away its product, "bundling" it with the OS, and making deals to ensure that its product would be highly visible and accessible to Windows users while Netscape's wouldn't be, we'll never really know, will we?
My late dev server was a 1997-vintage Pentium 200 with 160 MB RAM. Paid $50 for it. Ran Win2K Server, Apache or IIS (depending upon the needs of the moment), MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python, ColdFusion, and a few other goodies. It made a pretty fair mail and file server and gateway as well. Chugged along very happily like that for years until the mobo finally gave out about a month ago.
;-)
Yes, I said "Windows 2000 Server".
As for XP, I wouldn't know. Any machine with a Windows XP install coming into my possession doesn't keep it for longer than about ten minutes.
I've been running 5.0.0 nonstop (with a few reboots not related to MySQL) for the last 3.5 months and I've found it quite stable. It handles the crash-me's pretty well, too.
Postgres is a general pain to install and configure, and requires the Big "V" as well.
MySQL is also faster and has less resource requirements.
And, as I mentioned previously, the usefulness of triggers is debatable in any case.
> Not only that, because MySQL lacks essential
> features like triggers and stored procedures
False. I am running MySQL 5.0 and using stored procedures and user functions right now, and have been since the first of the year.
It can be argued that triggers are not necessary, but whether you agree that they are or not, they're coming in 5.1.
> As relational databases go, MySQL is utter crap.
Also false. MySQL is in many cases faster than any other RDBMS in common use, including Postgreas and Oracle. And it complies with SQL-99 better than either Oracle or SQL Server.
> Even in the realm of open-source databases,
> there are better choices.
That's entirely subjective (at best, since you're offered no evidence to back up this claim).
And comparing MySQL with Access is like comparing a jet fighter with a kids' model of one.
I can't be the first to make this observation, but here goes anyway...
?
Has anyone ever noticed that
THEIR
SOFTWARE
SUCKS
A
BIG
HAIRY
NUT
!
?
Haven't allowed it on any machine of mine in about 3-4 years -- haven't missed it, either.
Thank you for this opportunity to share.
In case you missed that part of my post, let me reiterate that *even MSDN* tell devs not to use global references or document.all, that these are (a) deprecated (and not likely to be supported forever) and (b) a huge hit on performance.
Most sane developers have been coding to W3C DOM for yonks anyways, and even Microsoft use it in their tutorials/examples/documentation. People who are deliberately coding to MSIE are very much in the minority. The proof? I can surf the Web (including pages that use heavy amounts of JS/DOM) quite easily using Mozilla, Opera, or Konqueror.
I suppose next you're going to claim that Mozilla et al. are doomed because they don't support clientside VBScript like MSIE does... which almost nobody uses, either.
> Start with matching the functionality (IE the
> ability to reference objects without needing to > go through getelementByID the way you can in the > MS browser, this will eliminate 90% of the
> javascript incompatibilities between the two
> browsers).
NonoNONOnonoNONONO. And again NO. This is just so seriously wrong I don't even know where to begin.
1. You seriously want the global namespace polluted to that extent? I sure as hell don't!
2. Even MSDN tells you NOT to use direct access. As they themselves will tell you, it's bad programming practice and a tremendous performance hit as well.
(Remind me never to use any API you've had a hand in developing, ok? Thanks!)
Besides, MSIE supports a good chunk of W3C DOM (as do Opera, Konq, Safari, et al.) -- getElementById() and getElementsByTagName() are *already* cross-browser, so there is absolutely no reason not to use them.
There is absolutely zero reason for any other browser to support MSIE's b0rken object model.
There are numerous tools for creating SVG if you're not prepared to roll up your sleeves and bang out the code in a text editor (it's markup, and only slightly more complex than HTML, after all).
Jasc had a pretty good one that I beta-tested a couple of years ago. Used to be called Trajectory, they changed the name to something else, but I don't remember what it is now.
Several mainstream graphics and presentation apps can export to SVG, including OpenOffice.org 1.1 and (believe it or not) MS Visio 2003.
IIRC (not 100% sure, I lost my copy), Adobe Illustrator also has SVG export capability.
Check out the SVG Homepage at W3 for more SVG authoring apps.
If I understand correctly what the parent and grandparent are aiming at, it doesn't matter what compiler SCO uses to produce its binaries.
Even if they use one that is GPL'ed, GPL does not transfer to the binaries compiled with it. Otherwise, EVERY app compiled with gcc would automatically be GPL'ed, which we know is not the case.
If I'm missing the point here, then somebody please correct me.
Thanks.