My department set up all us developers with a subscription to Safari Online. This allows us to search and access books. The interface is novel because the user is given 10 Bookshelf tokens per month. I can choose 10 books and put in My Bookshelf (shown). Then I can read these books through the online reader. I also have 5 download tokens. Each download token allows me to download a PDF of one chapter of a book per month. This is all from the education budget, instead of classes (LOL), for professional ......
As Captain Kirk says in Wrath of Kahn, the word has been given. But I am not talking about "Warp Speed". When evaluating expansion of systems and adding a database server for a new application, the question of money was, inevitably, raised. Other alternatives to Oracle Database were evaluated. MySQL, which sells for $5K per server (mainly for support), won out over Oracle, which sells by the CPU and was quoted over $100K. So now we are moving this new app to MySQL, even though we are an Oracle shop ......
Wow, everyone is getting worked up about Robert May's Vista posting. I didn't realize that we had so many zealots. I don't really have an opinion about Vista because I have not extensively personally used it. From a business standpoint, I think that it will take quite a while to be adopted. Let's face it, most business types are quite satisfied with Windows XP. Unless they are forced to switch (because of leveraged security concerns) or by new PC purchases, it will not be widely adopted soon. The ......
Wired has an article about Indie Games (George, take notice). Some of the games are older, and some quite lame (like the XCOM clone done by the original developers of XCOM who signed away their rights). But one stands out - Gish, which is a side scroller arcade game like Mario. The unique thing is that the character is a rolling ball of tar! The sprite oozes along the path, and you can cling to walls or wash down small drains, just by pushing a button. This creates some very interesting game play ......