Posts by #define INFINITY -1

Re: Proprietary private newsgroups

El Reg is the new NNTP for me.

Agreed on the server side. Client woes are usually psychological.

Re: Access 97

I've read a lot of hate over ODBC... but is there anything with as general a scope? As you indicate all other db abstractions are language specific.

I know very well it can be finicky.

Re: Father, forgive me ...

Back when MS hadn't jumped onto the class library naming shenanigans and had a simple interface to COM, instead of a roundabout one (aka .NET) and made no apologies for it not being CORBA...well I lost my hate for VB some time after they ditched it.

And boy did they ditch it.

Re: Access 97

Some say

set n = createobject("adodb.connection")

n.open "provider=microsoft.jet.oledb.4.0;data source=filename"

set w = createobject("adodb.recordset")

w.open "select field1,field2 from table1 inner join table2 on table1.pki1=table2.fkitable1", n

But that's hearsay.

Re: MDBs? Really?

It was never acceptable to use Access. Otoh, in its time it provided a relational view of your database which was pretty rare. And the OLE2 format allowing for the bundling of multiple streams--making a copy of your database became CTRL+C & CTRL+V (obviously with NT mandatory locking). If they only had a 'show tables' command I'd probably seldom need anything else (as I mentioned above).

Re: Jet

"And how", as they say in the classics. I seem to remember msdhcp using some kind of jet database.

Back to the point though, quite a few db's are small enough where dbase is sufficient. I hear MS ODBC does a pretty good job with dbase files too. And the advantage over MSAccess (97) databases is that you can actually list your tables!

That's what they tell me anyway.

As long as you go into this with your eyes focused on that clear downside, wherein the recipients of the funding need to steel themselves against the temptation to simply produce the results that will be rewarded by more funding--as I say, if we are agreed that that needs to be in the spotlight, then accelerate them li'l fundamentals to your heart's content (with a reasonable amount of my tax money).

Re: "What benefits do we actually get from projects like CERN?"

To people who are invested heavily in the stock market, that value is precisely quantifiable*. That's why we have government grants. It encourages poor (and ignorant) people with the idea they can get paid to do what their instincts are yelling at them is a Good Thing. They get into debt, and prop up those first mentioned.

Simple enough?

*I have a day job.

My point is being missed. So far in this forum, "fundamental research" equates to research with "no clear payoff". I'm just wondering aloud when and why it was decided that this 'no payoff' thing needed to be redressed.

As I mentioned, don't approach this from a 'today is better' POV. Maybe it is; maybe without the crown supporting the improvement in timepieces and steam engines, we wouldn't be sharing these ideas now, because we'd only be dreaming about the possibility of telegraphs. But if necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps the funding could be dialed way back without humanity suffering a jot.

That assumes Pangloss' theorem that we live in the best of all possible worlds. How can you tell for certain that without government funding of research we would not be better off? In a world where governments stuck to the job of regulation.

Re: Social media "campaign" versus legal challenge

In the interests of not giving a dog a bad name unnecessarily, I note that where the article talks 'sexual harassment' and 'discrimination', you are talking about sex crimes?

Let me rephrase, give a dog a bad name, or call him Satan--are these equivalent?

Re: How many Shuttles could have been kept operative..

Which would've been money well spent had the program continued. As it stands, you've simply confirmed the cost, as the USA government has no space capability whatsoever.

Re: You don't want to close the airport over nothing

That's just it. Selfies are by nature posed for, giving time for the cameraman to get everything in focus. And every dolt begins to think they'd be able to do wildlife photography no probs.

Re: Adding to the paranoia maybe?

I decided to remove my password because there are ways around it.

Came here to say the same thing--I don't see much of evidence of:

'the damage that reports like these do to public trust'

@Glen 1 Re: Fighting the slide towards hagiography.

"According to FREEEDOM ..."

I'd paraphrase as 'according to CAPITTALISSM'. In fact a sliding scale on tax does suggest that too much money is a thing. Only, that sliding scale stops somewhere above two or three orders of magnitude what I earn...

Reasons for this? Lobby capital maybe?

Re: Ah, the Legendary Friday Register Snark...

Well that just took the fun out of the whole thing. Thanks.

I was coming here to express my thanks for the Linux comment, as I have always had the feeling that until I could compile all the binaries I had not completed The Linux Challenge (hats off to the founders of all distributions).

Re: <strike>Acronyms</strike> Initialism

Wow, on a dot-uk site, no-one seems to have a copy of Fowler? This all falls under 'curtailment', and Britons do not need to keep their vocabulary in the Victorian era. Acronymn is a 20th century invention.