Glad to hear Ernie the Attorney made it out of Nola safe and has been reunited with his kids:
But they don’t fully grasp the enormity of this catastrophe. Probably they don’t want to. This is not the sort of thing that the human mind can assimilate in just a few hours, or even a few days.
Ernie The Attorney
Computerworld News notes Open-source databases grow. “Momentum around open-source alternatives is swelling, with a number of developments in recent months illustrating the market’s growing maturity.”
Yesterday, I “attended” a web seminar put on by the MySQL folks titled “MySQL for DBAs:
How to be Successful as a Scale-Out MySQL DBA” It was an excellent overview of the many ways in which MySQL can be configured with different data engines, settings, configurations, replication or clusters for various High Availability (HA) situations using OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP) or Data Warehousing scenarios. The web seminar was put on using WebEx, which gave the presenters the opportunity to maintain a Q&A and Chat off to the side during the presentation. WebEx supports Java clients in most browsers: I used Safari on my iMac. Audio, though, isn’t streamed, but rather delivered via a toll-free telephone connection. Overall, it was a good use of an hour of my time, getting me some good information and pointers on where to learn more. Sort of like a vendor presentation at a user group, but without the hours of driving on either end.
MySQL archives these presentations and makes them available at http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/on-demand-webinars/
Living not far from a large flood control project, Laura and I observe every spring that it’s not the rains and snow melt here that are the problem, but the many, many acres of upstream lands that drain through our nearby river.
Doc has an extensive commentary on The Katrina Tsunami. Key points: the networks aren’t reporting anything new or timely and the commercials are more obnoxious than usual. We knew what the potential catastrophe would be like years ago and Doc points to some recent computer modeling that’s chillingly accurate.
Want to help? Send money to the Red Cross if you can (1-800-HELP-NOW), or volunteer or give blood.
The Mercury MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) satellite took some spectacular pictures through the rear view window on the way to Mercury. On the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory site:
The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER‰s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.
Check out the movies here [Updated link, Ed.]
InfoWorld: Top News notes Microsoft offers preview of next Windows Server release. “(InfoWorld) – Microsoftæon Tuesday made available yet another in a seemingly endless stream of interim product updates with the release of Windows Server 2003 Release Candidate Zero (RC0).”
Love the snarky “seemingly endless” – how is it the press can complain when Microsoft ships something and complain when they don’t? Even worse, this isn’t really *shipping* anything – it’s just a beta.
It’s a beta of an “R2” product – Windows 2003 Server Release 2, apparently not deserving of it’s own year moniker (hey, how about Server 2005?) because Microsoft doesn’t want to take heat from the folks who don’t want to upgrade their servers every two years, but they still have features to ship, especially with Longwait, er, Vista Server, scheduled for 2007. Maybe.
R2? What’s the client going to be named? C3P0?
Useit.Com: Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents. “All these guidelines stem from the same underlying phenomenon: the non-Web documents are native PC formats. These formats have their own applications, each of which gives users a set of commands and navigation options that are completely different than the ones for browsing websites.” Liked via Tomalak’s Realm
OSNews points to Five Reasons NOT To Use Linux. “Linuxwatch.com is running a great story called “Five Reasons NOT To Use Linux.” It includes a nice list of reasons why one might want to steer clear of Linux, along with a nice comparison to how easily these reasons are addressed in Microsoft Windows.”
I always suspected that Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols was secretly a Linux-hater.
Slashdot reports Creative Zens Ship with Worms. An anonymous reader writes “Engadget reports about 3700 Creative Zen “Neeons” shipped with a virus. The virus in question was the W32.Wullik.B@mm worm. Creative released a statement today to help consumers pinpoint the possibly effected devices.” From the linked Babelfish-translated press release:
With the defectiveness of our company, we apologize the fact that very much annoyance was applied the customer and to the related everyone deeply.
I’m sure we all share those feelings.