Zbadaj zmiany w Windows XP

Have you ever been in the process of troubleshooting and needed to know what configuration changes the system has recently experienced? Knowing this kind of information can go a long way in helping track down the cause of the problem you're investigating.

Windows XP's System Information tool takes a daily snapshot of your system's configuration, and it records all changes to key elements. In fact, System Information compiles and stores a month's worth of data in its history file. As such, System Information provides a beneficial troubleshooting database.

You can easily investigate System Information's configuration change history. Follow these steps:

1. Open the System Information tool by typing Msinfo32.exe at the command prompt. (You can also access it by going to Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Information.)
2. From the View menu, select System History.
3. Select a category from the System Summary tree on the left.
4. Select a date from the View Changes Since drop-down list.

When you do so, you'll see a listing that displays the date and time of the change along with detailed information on the exact nature of the change.

If you know what you're looking for, you can use the System Information tool's Find feature to quickly scan through the listing.

Wykorzystanie ID w HTML-u

Linking to IDs

You probably know that you can link to a specific place in an HTML document by marking that place with a named anchor (e.g. ) and then referring to the name in the link URL (e.g. ). What you may not know is that you can also link to any element that has an ID assigned to it.

The id attribute is supported by every single HTML tag, so you can assign an ID to any part of the page. IDs are most commonly used to single out HTML elements to control the way they look and behave using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript, respectively.

But assigning an ID to an element also lets you link directly to it. For example, this paragraph has an ID of "intro":

id="intro">This is an

introductory paragraph.

To link to this paragraph from within the same document, simply point to the ID:

#intro">Go to the

introduction

To link to it from another document, also include the document's file name, or full URL as you normally would:

href="example.html#intro">Introduction

Internet Explorer for Windows actually takes this convenience one step further. If you use this method to link to a form field, the browser will give that field focus when the user clicks on the link!

 id="email" />

 



Don't forget to fill in your

 email address!

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer for Windows is the only browser to do this, but other browsers will still scroll to the field as with other HTML elements.

MS SQL server - indeksy

Artykuł na temat indeksów grupowych (cluster) : www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.php/3429281

Stare dane z Access'a w Linux

Dzięki tej bibliotece jest możliwe aby dane z baz .mdb były dostępne z poziomu środowiska Linux, przykład artykuł na otn:

Projekt Unii wspomagający tworzenie oprogramowania typu open-source

Konsortium firm europejskich stworzyło program dotowany przez EU pod nazwą EDOS (Environment for Development and Distribiution of Open Source). Projekt ma na celu zapanowanie nad zarządzaniem projektami Open Source z uwagi na specyfikę tworzenia aplikacji w środowisku Linux. Chodzi głównie od wielorakie zależności między pakietami wchodzącymi w skład dystrybucji Linux.

SQL Server Alter Evey Table

Alter every table in a database

Notice to subscribers: Due to the holiday, the SQL Server newsletter will not be delivered on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004. Look for your next edition of SQL Server on Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2005.

All developers make mistakes from time to time; sometimes this happens because we fail to build in obvious but unstated requirements.

Here's an example: Your database is up and running successfully but various errors in data entry and updating mandate a new requirement: add two columns (LastUpdated and UpdatedBy) to every table. There are hundreds of tables, so it's impractical to perform this task by hand.

This is clearly a chunk of reusable code, so you want to write it once and ensure that it can work on every database. (You might have to refine it slightly for each new database by, for example, changing the column names. But the idea is, you want a procedure to walk all the tables in a database and add one or more columns.)

It's easy to obtain the list of user tables:

SELECT Name FROM sysobjects WHERE Type = 'U' ORDER BY Name

The result set is more conveniently handled as a user-defined function that returns a table:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.UserTables_fnt
()
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
(SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT name
FROM dbo.sysobjects
WHERE type = 'U')
ORDER BY name
)

Suppose that you want to add a column called LastUpdated (of type TimeStamp) to every table in the database. To add such a column to any given table, e.g., Customers, your command would look like this:

ALTER TABLE MyDB.dbo.Customers ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL

Now you create a query (view, stored procedure, UDF) that manufactures the statements you need to accomplish your task:

SELECT
'ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[' + name + '] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL'
AS CommandText
FROM dbo.UserTables_fnt()

Assuming that you make a copy of the Northwind sample database called NorthwindTest and run this code against it, the results look like this:

ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Categories] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[CustomerCustomerDemo] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp
NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[CustomerDemographics] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp
NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Customers] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[dtproperties] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Employees] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[EmployeeTerritories] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp
NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Order Details] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Orders] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Products] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Region] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Shippers] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Suppliers] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL
ALTER TABLE NorthwindTest.dbo.[Territories] ADD LastUpdated TimeStamp NULL

I used brackets around the table names because they guard against a problematic table name: Order Details. In the absence of spaces, the parser doesn't care about the brackets; but in the presence of spaces, the generated SQL will cause an error.

You can deal with this result set in a variety of ways, including paste it into Query Analyzer and execute it, turn it into a stored procedure, or turn it into an updateable view. Given its one-off nature, I prefer the first choice.

I love writing code that writes code because then I don't have to do it--and it never misspells anything. You can extend this concept to perform just about any DML action that you could perform by hand.

If you're going to try this technique, I strongly encourage you to create a SELECT query first, which manufactures the desired DML, so you can inspect it and check its syntax before running it.

Arthur Fuller has been developing database applications for more than 20 years. He frequently works with Access ADPs, Microsoft SQL 2000, MySQL, and .NET.

Pseudo grafika z css

Styling text with pseudo-elements

Notice to subscribers: Due to the holiday, the Design and Usability Tactics newsletter will not be delivered on Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004. Look for your next edition of Design and Usability Tactics on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005.

Most Web builders are familiar with using CSS pseudo-class selectors to style the different states of hyperlinks in order to achieve rollover effects. However, you may not be aware of another "pseudo" selector that you can use to create text effects, such as initial caps.

The selector constructs I'm referring to are the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements, and they enable you to create styles that apply to the first letter or first line of a text element such as a paragraph. They're called pseudo-elements because they work as if there was an extra markup tag (such as a tag) defining the first letter or first line as a separate element that can then receive its own styling.

Creating an initial letter effect

A classic typographic effect that is often used to add emphasis to the beginning of a text passage is to accentuate the first letter of the first word with some distinctive formatting. Ancient manuscripts were famous for their elaborate initial letters at the beginning of each chapter or verse, but we don't see that treatment much anymore. The modern initial letter effect is usually more sedate, with an initial letter that is just a little bigger and bolder than the normal text that follows. We can create this effect easily with the :first-letter pseudo-element.

Suppose you want to accentuate the beginning of each paragraph of text as shown in Figure A. You could start with the following XHTML markup. (The text within the

tags has been abbreviated to make the example code easier to read.)

<..body>

Or bends with the remover ... nor no man ever loved.

Which alters ... no man ever loved.

Love's not time's fool, ... it is an ever fixed mark.

And then you could apply the following CSS styles to achieve the effect:

p {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 16px;
color: #000000;
}
p:first-letter {
font-size: 30px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FF0000;
}

There's nothing in the markup that separates the first letter from the rest of the text, but you can still apply distinctive styling to the first letter of each paragraph by defining that formatting in the p:first-letter style. The rules in the p:first-letter style override the corresponding rules in the p style, but only for the first letter in each paragraph.

Combining and controlling the effects

Now, suppose you want to combine the initial letter effect with one that accents the first line of text as well--but you only want the effect to appear on the first paragraph, not on the paragraphs that follow.

The combined effect shown in Figure B may look tricky, but it's fairly easy to accomplish. The :first-line pseudo-element enables you to format the first line of a paragraph just as the :first-letter pseudo-element does for the initial letter. The :first-line pseudo-element works better than tags for selecting the first line of text because the selection adapts automatically to changes in line lengths as the browser window is resized. Combining the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements with a class (or ID) applied to a specific paragraph tag in the markup enables you to restrict the effect to that paragraph.

Here's the XHTML markup for Figure B (with the text abbreviated as before):

<..body>

Or bends with the remover to remove .... nor no man ever
loved.

Which alters ... no man ever loved.

Love's not time's fool, ... it is an ever fixed mark.

And here are the CSS styles that create the effect:

p {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 16px;
color: #000000;
}
p.firstgraf:first-letter {
font-size: 30px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FF0000;
}
p.firstgraf:first-line {
font-size:18px;
font-weight:bold;
line-height:18px;
}

Caveats and notes and browser compatibility (oh my)

You need to keep a few things in mind as you work with the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements. First, the pseudo-element must be the last construct in the selector portion of your CSS code. For example, div#main p.firstgraf:first-line is a valid use of the pseudo-element, but p:first-line a:link is not.

Secondly, when you create an initial letter effect with :first-letter, the initial letter is still part of the main text block, so you can't really position it independent of the rest of the text. As a result, this technique isn't a good way to create drop cap effects where a large initial letter should extend below the text baseline and the following text lines should flow around it. Letter spacing is also hard to control with the :first-letter pseudo-element, so it doesn't work well for large, heavily undercut letters (such as T and W) followed by small text.

Finally, you need to consider browser support for the pseudo-elements. Generally, browser support for these selectors is reasonably good among the current versions of the major browsers. However, the same can't be said for older versions of those same browsers.

Fortunately, selectors containing the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements are generally ignored by the older browsers, which means that the text appears normally, without the initial letter (or line) effect. Since these effects are usually optional visual enhancements, you can often accept the loss of the effect in the deficient browsers without resorting to hacks or alternate formatting to compensate for those deficiencies.

Michael Meadhra has been working in the field since the earliest days of the Web. His book credits span some three dozen titles, including How to Do Everything with Dreamweaver MX 2004, published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill.

Pseudo grafika z css

Styling text with pseudo-elements

Notice to subscribers: Due to the holiday, the Design and Usability Tactics newsletter will not be delivered on Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004. Look for your next edition of Design and Usability Tactics on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005.

Most Web builders are familiar with using CSS pseudo-class selectors to style the different states of hyperlinks in order to achieve rollover effects. However, you may not be aware of another "pseudo" selector that you can use to create text effects, such as initial caps.

The selector constructs I'm referring to are the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements, and they enable you to create styles that apply to the first letter or first line of a text element such as a paragraph. They're called pseudo-elements because they work as if there was an extra markup tag (such as a tag) defining the first letter or first line as a separate element that can then receive its own styling.

Creating an initial letter effect

A classic typographic effect that is often used to add emphasis to the beginning of a text passage is to accentuate the first letter of the first word with some distinctive formatting. Ancient manuscripts were famous for their elaborate initial letters at the beginning of each chapter or verse, but we don't see that treatment much anymore. The modern initial letter effect is usually more sedate, with an initial letter that is just a little bigger and bolder than the normal text that follows. We can create this effect easily with the :first-letter pseudo-element.

Suppose you want to accentuate the beginning of each paragraph of text as shown in Figure A. You could start with the following XHTML markup. (The text within the

tags has been abbreviated to make the example code easier to read.)

Or bends with the remover ... nor no man ever loved.

Which alters ... no man ever loved.

Love's not time's fool, ... it is an ever fixed mark.

And then you could apply the following CSS styles to achieve the effect:

p {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 16px;
color: #000000;
}
p:first-letter {
font-size: 30px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FF0000;
}

There's nothing in the markup that separates the first letter from the rest of the text, but you can still apply distinctive styling to the first letter of each paragraph by defining that formatting in the p:first-letter style. The rules in the p:first-letter style override the corresponding rules in the p style, but only for the first letter in each paragraph.

Combining and controlling the effects

Now, suppose you want to combine the initial letter effect with one that accents the first line of text as well--but you only want the effect to appear on the first paragraph, not on the paragraphs that follow.

The combined effect shown in Figure B may look tricky, but it's fairly easy to accomplish. The :first-line pseudo-element enables you to format the first line of a paragraph just as the :first-letter pseudo-element does for the initial letter. The :first-line pseudo-element works better than tags for selecting the first line of text because the selection adapts automatically to changes in line lengths as the browser window is resized. Combining the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements with a class (or ID) applied to a specific paragraph tag in the markup enables you to restrict the effect to that paragraph.

Here's the XHTML markup for Figure B (with the text abbreviated as before):

Or bends with the remover to remove .... nor no man ever
loved.

Which alters ... no man ever loved.

Love's not time's fool, ... it is an ever fixed mark.

And here are the CSS styles that create the effect:

p {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 16px;
color: #000000;
}
p.firstgraf:first-letter {
font-size: 30px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FF0000;
}
p.firstgraf:first-line {
font-size:18px;
font-weight:bold;
line-height:18px;
}

Caveats and notes and browser compatibility (oh my)

You need to keep a few things in mind as you work with the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements. First, the pseudo-element must be the last construct in the selector portion of your CSS code. For example, div#main p.firstgraf:first-line is a valid use of the pseudo-element, but p:first-line a:link is not.

Secondly, when you create an initial letter effect with :first-letter, the initial letter is still part of the main text block, so you can't really position it independent of the rest of the text. As a result, this technique isn't a good way to create drop cap effects where a large initial letter should extend below the text baseline and the following text lines should flow around it. Letter spacing is also hard to control with the :first-letter pseudo-element, so it doesn't work well for large, heavily undercut letters (such as T and W) followed by small text.

Finally, you need to consider browser support for the pseudo-elements. Generally, browser support for these selectors is reasonably good among the current versions of the major browsers. However, the same can't be said for older versions of those same browsers.

Fortunately, selectors containing the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements are generally ignored by the older browsers, which means that the text appears normally, without the initial letter (or line) effect. Since these effects are usually optional visual enhancements, you can often accept the loss of the effect in the deficient browsers without resorting to hacks or alternate formatting to compensate for those deficiencies.

Michael Meadhra has been working in the field since the earliest days of the Web. His book credits span some three dozen titles, including How to Do Everything with Dreamweaver MX 2004, published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill.

Wykorzystanie możliwości Oracle w zakresie zarządzania hasłami

Use profiles to create a password management policy

Notice to subscribers: Due to the holiday, the Oracle newsletter will not be delivered on Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004. Look for your next edition of Oracle on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005.

Most Oracle database users create user accounts with the default profile. Since Oracle 8, it's possible to lock an account by creating a profile and assigning it to a user with either of these two statements:

CREATE USER myuser . . . PROFILE myprofile;
ALTER USER myuser PROFILE myprofile;

A typical attempt to break into a database account is to try several commonly used passwords, such as "welcome" or the username. You can prevent multiple failed attempts at logging in by using the profile tag FAILED_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS:

CREATE PROFILE myprofile LIMIT
FAILED_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS 5
PASSWORD_LOCK_TIME 1;

Users assigned to this profile will be locked out of their accounts after five login attempts with an incorrect password. The account will be inaccessible for one day or until a DBA issues the command ALTER USER ACCOUNT UNLOCK.

Even after several years, I've found that my old password still works on previous projects. This makes a good case for placing a limit on a password's lifetime so it will expire after a certain period (e.g., at the end of a contract). There's also an option to allow a specific grace period, which is useful for projects that aren't used very often. If the user doesn't log in until after the password expires, the user can still connect, but a warning will display until the grace period expires. Use the PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME and PASSWORD_GRACE_TIME tags on a profile to enable these features.

ALTER PROFILE myprofile LIMIT
PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME 30
PASSWORD_GRACE_TIME 3;

Users assigned to that profile will be locked out of their accounts 30 days after the last time the password is changed. After 30 days, attempting to log in will result in warning messages for three more days before the account is locked.

Many users will see these limits and simply try to reset their passwords to what they were previously using rather than using a new password each time. You can prevent users from reusing a password with the PASSWORD_REUSE_TIME and PASSWORD_REUSE_MAX tags.

ALTER PROFILE myprofile LIMIT
PASSWORD_REUSE_TIME 30
PASSWORD_REUSE_MAX 100;

Users with this profile will not be able to reuse a password for 30 days, or until after they change the password 100 times.

Finally, some users will use passwords that are easy to guess. It's possible to restrict a password's format (such as checking for a minimum width, letters, numbers, or mixed case, or verifying that the password isn't a variation of the username) by creating a PL/SQL procedure that validates passwords. You must format the procedure like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION verify_password
(
userid varchar(30),
password varchar(30),
old_password varchar(30)
) RETURN BOOLEAN
. . .

You can assign this function (which can be any name, but it must be owned by the SYS account) with the following:

ALTER PROFILE myprofile LIMIT
PASSWORD_VERIFY_FUNCTION verify_password;

Scott Stephens worked for Oracle for more than 13 years in technical support, e-commerce, marketing, and software development.

Projekt biblioteki GUI dla aplikacji Webowych

Elementy interfejsu graficznego i interakcji:

• menu hierarchiczne,
• menu kontekstowe,
• podpowiedzi opcji (dymki-ballon-hints)
• ustawianie fokusa na wybranym elemencie
• biblioteka obsługująca poprawność pola i poprawność pól (submit)
• elementy dhtml
• wybór z listy do listy
• wyszukiwanie na liście (zawężania zgodnie z postępem zgodnie z wybranym prefiksem)
• arkusze styli css
• raporty na poziomie korporacyjnym z serwera (Agata/PHP lub RL/Python)
• sposób zapamietania stanu (cookies/MS persistant)
• pobranie dynamiczne danych bez konieczności przeładowania strony wykorzystania HTTPXML (obsługuje już Firefox)
  

Wewnętrzne złączenie na jednej tablicy

Działa, tablica wygląda tak:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[hierarchia] (
[nr] [numeric](18, 0) NULL ,
[Nazwisko] [char] (10) COLLATE Polish_CI_AS NULL ,
[kier] [numeric](18, 0) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
select a.nr, a.nazwisko,b.nazwisko,b.kier from hierarchia a inner join hierarchia b
on a.nr = b.kier where a.kier=5 order by b.kier

Uawga: bardzo ważna, przy MS DTS i łączeniu się z bazą Oracle należy pamiętać o podaniu nazwy użytkownika dużymi literami (zawsze), hasło podajemy bez zamiany. Inaczej nie uda się przenieść tabel z MS SQL Servera na Oracle 9i

Programować można wszystko, nawet MS Office

Microsoft plans first Office System developer eventFebruary conference aims to train developers on Office System productsBy Paul Krill December 20, 2004
Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) is inviting approximately 800 specially selected developers to attend the first-ever Microsoft Office System Developer Conference from Feb. 2 through Feb. 4 in Redmond, Wash.
The conference is intended to help developers and architects build enterprise-class solutions using Office System products and enabling technologies, the company said.
“This is to train developers on Office System products and technologies, and it’s really an opportunity to learn about the Office System directly from those who built it,” said Adam LeVasseur, group product manager for the information workgroup product management group at Microsoft. The company’s message about Office is that it is “a genuine platform for enterprise solutions,” LeVasseur said.
Products such as the 2003 editions of SharePoint Portal, Exchange Server, and Visio are part of Office System. Tools being used with the Office System include Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework.
Prospective attendees at the conference are “field-nominated,” meaning Microsoft personnel will select them, according to LeVasseur. The event is being limited to about 800 persons because of the capacity of the venue, the Microsoft Conference Center.
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will provide a keynote address at the event. Partner solutions also will be showcased.

Czeski... case?

The Best Day Ever To Design A Database StructureBy Vladimira SikorovaContributing WriterArticle Date: 2004-12-08Have you ever been faced with the challenge of designing a new database structure? Do you have to redevelop an existing database?The truth is that creating or developing a database structure requires at least basic knowledge of SQL scripts. If you have to design a very complicated database structure with a lot of tables (entities), plenty of information (attributes) and complicated relationships among them, it' s very uneasy... Overall, whatever you have to do with databases, it has always been difficult, time-demanding and expensive. Computer aided software engineering (CASE) is a technique that using some of its tools enables you to create softwares more easily. CASE tools assist software engineering managers and practicioners in every activity associated with the software process, e. g. in systematic analysis, design, coding, implementation, testing work, maintenance etc. Using CASE tools, the architecture and design of the software become more apparent and easier to understand and modify. Charonware, s. r. o., a software company based in the Czech Republic, specializes in designing high-quality database modeling CASE tools. Its flagship product CASE Studio 2 new version 2.18 has just been released. "CASE Studio 2 helps companies create or redevelop their database structures easily, quickly and at a very reasonable price in comparison to other similar competitive products," says Vaclav Frolik, Charonware's Sales and Marketing Manager. In other words, instead of many hours spent on writing SQL scripts, CASE Studio 2 allows you to draw large Entity relationship diagrams and generate SQL scripts automatically, even for various databases (and at a reasonable price). Other powerful CS2 features are: reverse engineering, generation of HTML and RTF documentation, data flow diagrams, export into XML format and many more. "CASE Studio 2 is a highly customizable CASE tool that respects individual requirements of each customer. It supports more than twenty databases and is being used in more than sixty countries," adds Vaclav Frolik. Key enhancements of the CS 2 new version 2.18 are: Full support for PostgreSQL 8.0, Sybase Anywhere 9 and MySQL 4.1, a new HTML report and new graphics of relationship lines. "The new version 2.18 includes more than 80 significant improvements, however, we expect that CS 2 users will mainly appreciate the possibility to move relationship lines and add break points", says Vaclav Frolik. With this feature, Charonware wanted to respond to its customers' needs. To get practical insight on how to work with CASE Studio 2 and its newly added features, Charonware offers very helpful instructional movies on its website. Other useful documentation like the CS2 White Paper and manual are also available. Finally, to consider whether CASE Studio 2 meets customer's requirements and runs without any problems, it is possible to test the CS2 demo version. Charonware provides time-unlimited, free demo version and at the same time free email support. "Charonware provides highly professional and customizable, smoothly integrated database modeling and reporting tool at unmatched price. Our aim is to make software products that would be beneficial for database designers, developers and all who want to accomplish all their database-related tasks with greater productivity and higher quality," concludes Vaclav Frolik. Well, it seems like it's a piece of cake to develop a database structure with CASE Studio 2!? I would give it a try.

Coroczne nagrody Cringely

The “Mission Accomplished” Award goes to Oracle for rescuing PeopleSoft from the throes of a brutal dictatorship … or is that the other way around? As part of the deal, PeopleSoft agreed to drop its poison-pill defense against the takeover, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison agreed to enroll in an ego management program.
The “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” Award goes to Dell Computer. The makers of the original flaming laptop continue a proud tradition with the recent recall of nearly a million AC power adapters, which ran so hot users had to wear asbestos skivvies.
The “Fire Down Below” Award goes to the researchers at the State University of New York at Stonybrook who discovered that using a laptop in your lap could cause infertility by, um, overcooking your eggs. And if you’re using a Dell laptop, get ready to serve up some huevos rancheros.
The “If It Wasn’t for Bad Luck” Award goes to SCO, which got ditched by its last remaining investor, saw its licensing revenue drop by more than 90 percent, and had its Web site defaced by fiendishly sardonic hackers. (“We own all your code. Pay us all your money.”) I think somebody needs to give CEO Darl McBride a hug.
The “No Such Thing as Bad Publicity” Award goes to the Motion Picture Association of America, which filed its first lawsuits against file swappers in November. Frankly, that seems a little harsh — don’t you think downloading and watching Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace is punishment enough?
The “Show Me the Money” Award goes to Microsoft, naturally. During the past year, the cash-rich Redmondites settled disputes with InterTrust ($440 million), Novell ($536 million), Sun Microsystems ($1.6 billion), disgruntled shareholders (a $32 billion dividend), and a host of others. Maybe money can’t buy you love, but it can produce new and improved forms of loathing.
The “Andy Grove Humanitarian” Award goes, not surprisingly, to Intel. In 2004, the $30 billion chipmaker canceled two planned processors, issued a recall of one chip, delayed production of another, and saw its CPU market share dip dangerously close to 82 percent. Thanks for giving the little guys a chance to catch up.
The “That’s Not Writing, That’s Typing” Award goes to the bleary-eyed denizens of the blogosphere. From the cadre of font geeks who ripped the lid off “Rathergate” to the congressional assistant who lost her job for writing about her bedroom escapades with Bush administration officials, America’s 4 million bloggers served with distinction. Please remove your tin-foil helmets and take a bow.
Got hot tips or eggnog recipes? Share them with cringe@infoworld.com; you may win a screaming yellow “I Spy 4 Cringely” messenger bag in 2004.

Rozważania filozoficzne

The Scientific Revolution of the XVII century is a website devoted to developing a socio-political approach to the scientific revolution. Since Science is viewed as a social and political phenomenon like any other. Hence, pride of place is given to the social and political changes which formed the background to the Scientific Revolution: Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation, with its paramount educational reform. Europe's demographic growth and demographic migrations which determined an urban literate bourgeoisie.The Rise of Early Agrarian Capitalism, which brought about more literacy, and more bright minds.The secularization of thought and ways of life brought about by protestantism.Luther, Descartes and Bacon were all agreed on the fact that the human mind was enough to understand reality.Giordano Bruno's death at the stake on February 17, 1600, and his prior work, particularly in England did more to widespread Nicola di Cusa's ideas, Copernicus' heliocentric system, and a new approach to viewing reality free from the prejudices of Scholasticism. But more importantly, he shewed the world that the Roman Church was in actual fact a Papal Empire who used God and the other so-called 'divine' properties, such as the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Sacraments, anything that was seen as Holy to enhance its secular power, accumulate wealth to finance their own wars, such as the Crusades, and keep everybody under the yoke of the official clerical thought which had the effect to idioturn people imbeciletize people and prevent them from thinking with their minds. For Giordano Bruno, as well as for René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Christiaan Huygens and so many other philosopers and scientists of the XVII century, it was quite clear that the enemy to fight was the Church.Given a background of extended schooling and increasing literacy, particularly in the Protestant Countries, e.g., England, The fight against the Papal Empire started vigorously. Francis Bacon, for instance, states unambiguosly that scholasticism and Aristotelianism were the fiercest enemies of knowledge. He attacks the Aristotelian system of syllogistic logic from the outset in his New Organon (Novum Organum). René Descartes pronounces loud and clear that the supreme instance to acquire knowledge was human thought (cogito, ergo sum), and declares that no knowledge is never definitely proved (As against divine knowledge) in his 'methodic doubt'.Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, working together reformulate the constitution of matter and definitively do way with Empedocles famous 4 elements: earth, fire, water and air. They show that substances are much more complex than that and discover the first true elements, such as iron, magnesium, and so on. But most important, they debunk the scholastic myth that vacuum does not exist by developing a vacuum pump. By the way, they also debunked a scholastic fallacy which ran: "What is, exists. What is not, does not exist". Vacuum means the absence of everything and of anything. there is nothing in vacuum, nevertheless it exists.J.C. Garelli, M.D., Ph.D.Department of Epistemologyhttp://www.attachment.edu.arhttp://www.geocities.com/scirevolution

MS też ma blogg

IT-Director.com: Microsoft provides weblogging with MSN Spa
Microsoft provides weblogging with MSN Spaces
Published: 9th December 2004
By: Martin Langham [Contact Author]
Channel: Content and Collaboration

One of the interesting topics Bill Gates mentioned at the 2004 Microsoft CEO Summit back in May, was his enthusiasm for Weblogs and RSS as an efficient way to publish and share information without creating information overload. One result of his enthusiasm is Microsoft’s release of a new Blogging and RSS application for Microsoft MSN called MSN Spaces.

The essence of a Weblog is that you can publish information quickly and easily on the Internet using simple editing tools enabling anyone to create an online diary or sets of interesting links. RSS is another key innovation that makes Weblogs very effective. RSS defines an XML format for syndicating content over the Internet. (The acronym stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary depending on your preference). You can use RSS to subscribe to a Weblog and be notified when it changes. All you need to do is paste the RSS address into a free newsreader to see a list of the new items in a Weblog. You avoid email overload and you don’t have to revisit sites to keep up-to-date. Bloor Research first described this new collaboration tool here.

Microsoft is delivering its Blogging service later than most of its rivals but not too late to catch the first wave of adoption. America Online Inc has provided a Blogging service called Journals since the middle of last year. Google, a key Microsoft rival, offers a free Blogging service through Blogger.com.

Microsoft has invested considerable resources in MSN Spaces and released a beta version at the beginning of December. MSN Spaces is free and available in 14 languages and 26 markets worldwide. You can sign up to MSN Spaces through MSN messenger or by going to http://spaces.msn.com.

MSN Spaces allows users to create their own personal space on the Web, tied closely to MSN Messenger and Hotmail. Like all Blogging tools it is very simple to use so almost anyone can publish to the Internet. Because MSN Spaces supports RSS 2.0 it automatically notifies online contacts when you change your Space. MSN Spaces also goes beyond the basic Blogging facilities of text publication. Microsoft describes it as a dynamic online scrapbook where you can share photo albums, personal music playlists and other media.

You can control access to your Space with three levels of security. You can display and share your music playlists and, when visitors click on playlists, they are taken to a MSN Music site to sample clips or to (Microsoft hopes) buy songs. When you want to update your MSN Space you are not limited to your own PC. You can do it remotely using email or mobile phone. And in common with many of Microsoft’s collaboration tools you can tailor the appearance of your MSN Space using various templates.

The introduction of blogging spaces by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft coupled with massive increases in online storage for Web mail from these vendors, marks a pronounced shift from desk-based to internet-based working. It is early days yet, but it is clear from the popularity of these networked services that people, especially young people, are increasingly happy with the security and reliability of the Internet as a repository of information. The centre of gravity of information is inexorably moving towards the Internet.

Kolejne curiosum Linuksowe

Today's focus: Database options widen for Linux users
By Phil Hochmuth
There was good news for Linux enthusiasts from the database
front last week, as enterprise Linux suppliers and database
vendors made some deals.
Oracle announced that its key wares for business data centers -
database software, clustering tools and collaboration apps -
will now run on Novell's SuSE Enterprise Linux 9.
The move gives Oracle another major Linux distro to play with -
it was primarily associated with Red Hat in the past. It also
gives Novell's emerging SuSE Linux platform a major boost as an
alternative to Unix and Red Hat Linux in data centers. SuSE has
a slight edge on Red Hat as it is, since its introduction of a
Linux version based on the 2.6 kernel this summer. Red Hat is
expected to have a 2.6 kernel for enterprises next quarter.
In another, more curious announcement, IBM said it would start
supporting Sybase database products on its Linux servers. This
is a bit weird, since IBM's DB2 is a direct competitor to
Sybase's Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) offering. But the move
is not that much of a stretch, since IBM had previously resold
Sybase on its AIX Unix boxes.
IDC says that the market for Linux database software licenses
will be up by around 150% this year, reaching $522 million. The
research firm says a migration from Unix to Linux servers for
running databases is the main driver

Products -- VMware P2V Assistant -- Features

Products -- VMware P2V Assistant -- Features: "nterprise-Class Tool for Physical to Virtual Machine Migration

Dodatek ten pozwala na przeniesienie maszyny fizycznej do środowiska wirtualnego

What Is VMware P2V Assistant?
VMware P2V Assistant is an enterprise-class migration tool that transforms an image of an existing physical system into a VMware virtual machine. This easy to use market proven tool enables fast and reliable physical to virtual machine migration for Microsoft� Windows� operating systems ranging from Windows NT 4 to Windows Server 2003. Having pioneered the automation of physical to virtual machines in 2002, VMware has now released a new version of P2V Assistant that builds on the experiences and feedback of more than 300 enterprise customers.

The solutions that benefit from this best in class virtual machine creating tool include:

* Fast and Clean Migrations of Existing Applications to VMware Virtual Machines. By eliminating the need to re-install software and configure complex application environments, VMware P2V Assistant cuts down on set-up time and delivers value on investments in VMware software in the shortest timeframe possible. Enterprises can quickly migrate legacy systems to a consolidated VMware virtual machine environment and, in doing so, upgrade these servers to new hardware.

* Efficient QA and Debugging. VMware P2V Assistant can capture images of production systems into VMware virtual machines and redeploy these images in a consolidated 'sandbox' environment. Enterprises can minimize disruptions to production servers by troubleshooting problems and testing changes in this exact replica of the production environment.

* Disaster Recovery and Backup. With VMware P2V Assistant, users can periodically capture production systems into a library of 'offline' virtual machines that can be activated in the event of a disaster to minimize service disruption.

* Standardizing on Virtual Infrastructure. VMware P2V Assistant simplifies migration to VMware virtual infrastructure, the foundati"

Everest do zbierania informacji o sprzęcie

BetaNews | Inside Information; Unreleased Products: "Everest Home Edition is a system information and benchmarking tool with full hardware & software information. It comes with a built-in hardware database and physical information for CPU, motherboard, hard disks, optical drives, chipset and much more. The information can be displayed on-screen, printed, or saved as a report in HTML or text format. The built in diagnostics module can help you find potential problems, by higlighting them in the report and also includes links to manufacturers web sites, driver updates and more. An easy to use report wizard allows you to create detailed reports in the format of your choice."

CMS w wydaniu MS wsparty przez projekt open source firmy Artemis

BetaNews | Inside Information; Unreleased Products