The current intellectual elite are not software developers (although that's somewhat unfortunate). That's certainly not to say that developers cannot affect change in similar ways that intellectual elites might. Richard Stallman (ok, part of my ideological bias recommends him:) ) and Donald Knuth could perhaps qualify because they affect change not just within technology, but without as well.
That statement ("we have no new intelligentsia") is, of course, wrong. Philosophy and the pragmatic disciplines have been forced to recede to a strongl and pervasive switch to literary theory and humanities in general. Observe the switches in temperament in great thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Thomas Kuhn, the sometimes-antiscience of Paul Feyerabend. There are large-scale social migrations in these areas, and they are not performed sloppily or illegitmately. Unfortunately (I use that word too much), literary theorists are amazingly elitist and consequently you'll see broad trends and individual statements that wish to ignore the new intelligentsia (almost out of spite or something).
I don't have that all figured out yet (duh), but I'm a technologist (software developer and IT manager) with education in philosophy and theology, while my wife is just now finishing the first of her graduate degrees in education and literary theory, so she gives me some insight from an insider's perspective....the cool part is that much of this is readily available and accessible to us geeks (that's why earlier, I thought that it was unfortunate that not more technologists participate as members of the intelligentsia).
Remember The Matrix? Neo kept some disks inside a hollowed-out book "Simulacra and Simulation"...Jean Baudrillard's eerily-convincing book about fabricated reality which foreshadowed one of the plot structures for the movie... a technological one. What you have here is one of the great minds of post-modernist movements and a geek (well, I guess he was a "cracker", eh?) posited as together and somehow sharing a context, making statements about reality.
That said, this article unwittingly (it seems) places a gulf between technologists and the current reigning intelligentsia by at once misunderstanding technologists' sphere of involvement and social participation, and by ignoring powerful and complex intellectual movements which circulate around clear individuals.
Oh, you must be thinking of the other Jesse. The one that said Star Office was a wasted effort, because no one has ever beaten Microsoft in that market. The man mentioned here is a master of deduction. Then again, there's a Jesse Berst who seems to bow to those in power and loves to say stuff like this simply so the coporate Microsoft stooges out there can feel like their getting balanced and cutting editorials.
Jess has also said that StarOffice wouldn't succeed simply because no one has successfully beaten Microsoft at Bill's own game. Now, that's insight into how industries ought to conduct themselves!... "No one's done this before, so as an ambitious entrepeneur, I realize I should do something else instead." Right, Jesse!
Unfortunately, Jesse Berst is hardly insightful even for the pundits, and has never impressed any honestly tech-savvy individual.
Remember, you can't spell "progress" without "twit"!
The other half really needs to be business savvy and sensitivity. Very few companies want tech-only people, and those that do generally hand your work down to you (putting your future parallel to their plans for it). What you really need is to be in a position of an "internal consultant" or "project manager". That's where the real technology money is at.
I started at my present company making just under a moderate amount (but attractive to be sure), and ended up at the end of my first 15 months breaking the 50k barrier. Reason being: (a phrase that people here throw around) "business sensitivity". And what any company (in corporate America) wants is someone solving business problems....technology is a key component, but there's a lot more involved than that. I work with HR on some projects, and I can tell you that there's a sense of reservation for hiring people who can only put technology on a resume.. they want to see people who have solved problems, and who are also competent at the specific tools that entails. Those tools exist to solve those business issues.
Almost no one pays people to sit around and hack. If you do, you will most likely not be making much $$. For the money, you'll be competing with all the MBA people. They will likely make more money out of the gate, but I can tell you for a fact that by-and-large, they are a dime a dozen. Your average geek is much brighter than your average MBA student, so use that to your advantage and help them make sense of their world.
...then your pay check will mostly reflect that, not just the efficiency of your code.
I would suggest looking to use MySQL, and as you receive updates in your MDBs, use the ExportSQL script by Cynergi. If you're comfortable in VBA, you'll want to tweak it a little if you are to use it a lot. I've used it at work, so I know that it works fairly well.
Access allows you to get away with somewhat sloppy data modeling, so you'll need to revisit the generated SQL and make sure you have all the "NOT NULL" and different data types in place as you need them (this can all be tweaked in the VBA without too much effort, but you should be knowledgable in VBA and SQL). You no doubt know that the MySQL data types are more specific than the data types used by Jet (the actual db engine Access uses). This means that you'll want to make sure that the column that was exported as "REAL" shouldn't really be "MEDIUMINT" instead.
The script generates SQL files which can then be used against MySQL in batch mode. So with it, you can set up the VBA function to create the appropriate SQL for refreshing your tables whenever you receive a new MDB.
My suggestion is to dump Access. It's nice for rapid devolopment, but if you're running an e-commerce thing with it, then I pity you. Not only would NT be your problem, but you'll have Access' sloppy page-level record locking and it's tendency to not release connections and record locks with the consistency e-commerce apps should have the right to expect.
I agree to a great extent. It's my opinion that many people have the wrong idea about freedom and tend to not improve on the concept of freedom as much as they improve on how freedom is to be orchestrated to suit their own ends. Much of this is a direct result of a kind of ignorance closely related to the word "ignorance" which is often packaged with the idea of "bigotry". And this particular problem seems to be our curse: I can never know as much as I probably could know for any particular decision and/or reaction to a situation. There's another type of freedom involved here that rarely gets named as a freedom, and that's the right of a group of people to speak up and say "we don't agree" or "we don't like that" or even "we think that should be suppressed because of these reasons".
I'd like to suggest that our society learn to deal with a new type of dissident: the person who doesn't like/approve of what I am doing or what I have to say. We are quick to celebrate people who break away from the norm and do or think of something new and outrageous. Perhaps there should be room in our complex social engine that is inhabited by people who want to condemn.
Could we at least be big enough to not spend so much energy being pissed off at those people? Not that it's something to dwell on, but perhaps would could also have a mindset that indeed there *might be* something that can be learned from such people; that maybe those people own angles on the world which are not available to myself.
John Katz' articles are usually pretty good, and I particularly enjoyed this one, but I certainly left with the feeling that somehow the kinds of people we disagree with (like people who object to state-funding art displays which ridicule an important icon close to the identity of purity and self-sacrifice for a great number of citizens of that same state), that these people should be done away with, that we should exercise power against them because we feel that they are exercising power against others.
We are not nearly as advanced as we believe ourselves to be. And maybe I should be reserved in my basic reaction to Jesse Ventura: maybe he's not the dolt he seems to be. His comment about religion seems about par for a dolt, but maybe he's more complex than that, and maybe I benefit more from thinking through why he (or people like him) make a comment like that than I would be assuming that he's just trying to feel better about himself and ending my engagement there.
Let's please think in both directions on these issues.
I see that they're renting it on video and selling it on DVD here in the States. I haven't seen anyone sell it on video. DVD stands to gain from such cool, sensory-intense movies as the Matrix, so I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted movies like the Matrix to only sell on DVD, and it would make sense that they can't not milk the revenues in video rental.
...but then again, many things make sense to me and still are simply not true:)
I see that they're renting it on video and selling it on DVD here in the States. I haven't seen anyone sell it on video. DVD stands to gain from such cool, sensory-intense movies as the Matrix, so I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted movies like the Matrix to only sell on DVD, and it would make sense that they can't not milk the revenues in video rental.
...but then again, many things make sense to me and still simply aren't true:)
I haven't tried the Matrix on my PC, but I also bought a Pioneer DV-414 player to hook into my very generous entertainment center and there noticed it to fuzz-out several times toward the beginning of the movie. Funny, though-- if I skipped back a little bit and played through that part again, it worked fine.
I'm not Catholic either, but I have a degree in theology, so take my opinion with a grain of salt and forgive the slight tangent.
It's not surprising from my end that people can at some point create stable, real life. At some level, it is just a task in biological mechanics. Most traditional theologians believe issues such as sin, etc. are related to a being's moral responsibility as reflected by how that being bears God's image (and therefore a responsibility to be good in a maximal sense, just as God must be maximally good to truly be God).
I don't think anyone has ever said that doing the nasty is a prerequisite to having a soul (maybe a lopsided reading of Augustine would leave you with this idea), or to really being "alive" in the same sense as the rest of natural creation....we're a part of nature too, so our work in it is itself a natural thing, so I agree that we can fiddle around with them, but I also understand that we need to consider moral responsibility with them as well (I don't see a whole lot of debate on that, but maybe how "moral" is defined).
People create stuff all the time. We've just managed to form a hysteria around creating certain types of things....keep in mind that there was a time that making fire labeled someone as having the power of the gods (or something similar), but today I can hardly impress anyone with that ability. Much of what we are working with is simply convention.
Anyway.. so what do I do with my theology degree?? Why, I write software of course!:-)
Perhaps one of the most lamentable aspects of being a Linux user and fan is the constant felt need to defend what should inarguably be a great idea (it is simply tiring). Standing in front of simplistic accusations and such apocalyptic claims is a frustrating experience, particularly when people are being simplistic on purpose: because it's easier and satisfies their own interests.
I've run into the parallel between communism and Linux, and techno-hippyism and Linux, before. It's never been a very informed perspective, and one that has lazily been unapplied to other areas of life. For instance, does academia survive by the closedness or openness of information? does democracy thrive through power-oriented structures or through public-oriented structures? People who praise the M$ model would be continuing the same design in promoting the idea of a "benevolent dictator": but who wants a dictator even if they were benevolent?
The Linux community promotes a better idea (one that is neither a naive "left" nor a too-simple "right"): a middle-ground much like the concept of social democracy. A sense of social orientation and duty with a supporting sense of individuality and democratic freedom (the two are co-determinative and almost symbiotic). A concept that leverages the power of technology while making sure it belongs to the people.
I know that's a bit preachy, but it's true. That's something that M$ isn't doing: they aren't empowering people, they empower themselves and spend a lot of money convincing us that its all for the best. And for the most part, they succeed, because they appeal to people just like themselves: corporate, power-oriented individuals who make decisions daily which are better for themselves and the companies they own, and tell everyone else that their increasingly fat wallet ultimately is better for the community than if those resources were put directly into the hands of the populous.
Those kinds of editorials make me sick because they represent several things: 1) people will listen to them and agree with them because they hear key words that they know they must fear --like the word "communism". 2) the world in which we Linux people live is comprised by people like Mr. Metcalfe who are really only good at centering the stage around themselves rather than actually contributing anything useful back to the community. At the same time, we have to take it seriously and keep responding. If we don't, people will not understand. Our open-source ideology should extend to a sense of persistence in defending its value... and hopefully with enough eyes focusing here, the bugs of the dominant closed-source models will become apparent!:)
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That statement ("we have no new intelligentsia") is, of course, wrong. Philosophy and the pragmatic disciplines have been forced to recede to a strongl and pervasive switch to literary theory and humanities in general. Observe the switches in temperament in great thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Thomas Kuhn, the sometimes-antiscience of Paul Feyerabend. There are large-scale social migrations in these areas, and they are not performed sloppily or illegitmately. Unfortunately (I use that word too much), literary theorists are amazingly elitist and consequently you'll see broad trends and individual statements that wish to ignore the new intelligentsia (almost out of spite or something).
I don't have that all figured out yet (duh), but I'm a technologist (software developer and IT manager) with education in philosophy and theology, while my wife is just now finishing the first of her graduate degrees in education and literary theory, so she gives me some insight from an insider's perspective. ...the cool part is that much of this is readily available and accessible to us geeks (that's why earlier, I thought that it was unfortunate that not more technologists participate as members of the intelligentsia).
Remember The Matrix? Neo kept some disks inside a hollowed-out book "Simulacra and Simulation" ...Jean Baudrillard's eerily-convincing book about fabricated reality which foreshadowed one of the plot structures for the movie... a technological one. What you have here is one of the great minds of post-modernist movements and a geek (well, I guess he was a "cracker", eh?) posited as together and somehow sharing a context, making statements about reality.
That said, this article unwittingly (it seems) places a gulf between technologists and the current reigning intelligentsia by at once misunderstanding technologists' sphere of involvement and social participation, and by ignoring powerful and complex intellectual movements which circulate around clear individuals.
Jess has also said that StarOffice wouldn't succeed simply because no one has successfully beaten Microsoft at Bill's own game. Now, that's insight into how industries ought to conduct themselves! ... "No one's done this before, so as an ambitious entrepeneur, I realize I should do something else instead." Right, Jesse!
Unfortunately, Jesse Berst is hardly insightful even for the pundits, and has never impressed any honestly tech-savvy individual.
Remember, you can't spell "progress" without "twit"!
I started at my present company making just under a moderate amount (but attractive to be sure), and ended up at the end of my first 15 months breaking the 50k barrier. Reason being: (a phrase that people here throw around) "business sensitivity". And what any company (in corporate America) wants is someone solving business problems. ...technology is a key component, but there's a lot more involved than that. I work with HR on some projects, and I can tell you that there's a sense of reservation for hiring people who can only put technology on a resume.. they want to see people who have solved problems, and who are also competent at the specific tools that entails. Those tools exist to solve those business issues.
Almost no one pays people to sit around and hack. If you do, you will most likely not be making much $$. For the money, you'll be competing with all the MBA people. They will likely make more money out of the gate, but I can tell you for a fact that by-and-large, they are a dime a dozen. Your average geek is much brighter than your average MBA student, so use that to your advantage and help them make sense of their world.
...then your pay check will mostly reflect that, not just the efficiency of your code.
Access allows you to get away with somewhat sloppy data modeling, so you'll need to revisit the generated SQL and make sure you have all the "NOT NULL" and different data types in place as you need them (this can all be tweaked in the VBA without too much effort, but you should be knowledgable in VBA and SQL). You no doubt know that the MySQL data types are more specific than the data types used by Jet (the actual db engine Access uses). This means that you'll want to make sure that the column that was exported as "REAL" shouldn't really be "MEDIUMINT" instead.
The script generates SQL files which can then be used against MySQL in batch mode. So with it, you can set up the VBA function to create the appropriate SQL for refreshing your tables whenever you receive a new MDB.
My suggestion is to dump Access. It's nice for rapid devolopment, but if you're running an e-commerce thing with it, then I pity you. Not only would NT be your problem, but you'll have Access' sloppy page-level record locking and it's tendency to not release connections and record locks with the consistency e-commerce apps should have the right to expect.
I'd like to suggest that our society learn to deal with a new type of dissident: the person who doesn't like/approve of what I am doing or what I have to say. We are quick to celebrate people who break away from the norm and do or think of something new and outrageous. Perhaps there should be room in our complex social engine that is inhabited by people who want to condemn.
Could we at least be big enough to not spend so much energy being pissed off at those people? Not that it's something to dwell on, but perhaps would could also have a mindset that indeed there *might be* something that can be learned from such people; that maybe those people own angles on the world which are not available to myself.
John Katz' articles are usually pretty good, and I particularly enjoyed this one, but I certainly left with the feeling that somehow the kinds of people we disagree with (like people who object to state-funding art displays which ridicule an important icon close to the identity of purity and self-sacrifice for a great number of citizens of that same state), that these people should be done away with, that we should exercise power against them because we feel that they are exercising power against others.
We are not nearly as advanced as we believe ourselves to be. And maybe I should be reserved in my basic reaction to Jesse Ventura: maybe he's not the dolt he seems to be. His comment about religion seems about par for a dolt, but maybe he's more complex than that, and maybe I benefit more from thinking through why he (or people like him) make a comment like that than I would be assuming that he's just trying to feel better about himself and ending my engagement there.
Let's please think in both directions on these issues.
It's not surprising from my end that people can at some point create stable, real life. At some level, it is just a task in biological mechanics. Most traditional theologians believe issues such as sin, etc. are related to a being's moral responsibility as reflected by how that being bears God's image (and therefore a responsibility to be good in a maximal sense, just as God must be maximally good to truly be God).
I don't think anyone has ever said that doing the nasty is a prerequisite to having a soul (maybe a lopsided reading of Augustine would leave you with this idea), or to really being "alive" in the same sense as the rest of natural creation. ...we're a part of nature too, so our work in it is itself a natural thing, so I agree that we can fiddle around with them, but I also understand that we need to consider moral responsibility with them as well (I don't see a whole lot of debate on that, but maybe how "moral" is defined).
People create stuff all the time. We've just managed to form a hysteria around creating certain types of things. ...keep in mind that there was a time that making fire labeled someone as having the power of the gods (or something similar), but today I can hardly impress anyone with that ability. Much of what we are working with is simply convention.
Anyway.. so what do I do with my theology degree?? Why, I write software of course! :-)
Perhaps one of the most lamentable aspects of being a Linux user and fan is the constant felt need to defend what should inarguably be a great idea (it is simply tiring). Standing in front of simplistic accusations and such apocalyptic claims is a frustrating experience, particularly when people are being simplistic on purpose: because it's easier and satisfies their own interests.
:)
I've run into the parallel between communism and Linux, and techno-hippyism and Linux, before. It's never been a very informed perspective, and one that has lazily been unapplied to other areas of life. For instance, does academia survive by the closedness or openness of information? does democracy thrive through power-oriented structures or through public-oriented structures? People who praise the M$ model would be continuing the same design in promoting the idea of a "benevolent dictator": but who wants a dictator even if they were benevolent?
The Linux community promotes a better idea (one that is neither a naive "left" nor a too-simple "right"): a middle-ground much like the concept of social democracy. A sense of social orientation and duty with a supporting sense of individuality and democratic freedom (the two are co-determinative and almost symbiotic). A concept that leverages the power of technology while making sure it belongs to the people.
I know that's a bit preachy, but it's true. That's something that M$ isn't doing: they aren't empowering people, they empower themselves and spend a lot of money convincing us that its all for the best. And for the most part, they succeed, because they appeal to people just like themselves: corporate, power-oriented individuals who make decisions daily which are better for themselves and the companies they own, and tell everyone else that their increasingly fat wallet ultimately is better for the community than if those resources were put directly into the hands of the populous.
Those kinds of editorials make me sick because they represent several things: 1) people will listen to them and agree with them because they hear key words that they know they must fear --like the word "communism". 2) the world in which we Linux people live is comprised by people like Mr. Metcalfe who are really only good at centering the stage around themselves rather than actually contributing anything useful back to the community. At the same time, we have to take it seriously and keep responding. If we don't, people will not understand. Our open-source ideology should extend to a sense of persistence in defending its value... and hopefully with enough eyes focusing here, the bugs of the dominant closed-source models will become apparent!