Recent Posts

8226

General Software Discussion / Re: web clipping

« Last post by wraith808 on June 05, 2011, 06:11 PM »

I used to use Read it Later until I got annoyed with it crying about a page not being an article.

-daddydave (June 05, 2011, 08:20 AM)

Eh?  What do you mean?

8227

Living Room / Re: Should retailers be held accountable for recommendations?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 05, 2011, 03:23 PM »

I'm very surprised that they covered shipping! 

I've had a few things I've had to return, and they've never done that, no matter what!  But overall, I've had good success from them.

8228

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on June 04, 2011, 02:19 PM »

(Addition to Step Four: Database Management/Use section, and upgraded rating from 8/10 to 9/10)

8229

Living Room / Re: Should retailers be held accountable for recommendations?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 04, 2011, 08:05 AM »

Unfortunately, Newegg does have in their policies a bit about it being the responsibility of the buyer to make sure that the things that they buy are compatible. 

i.e.

We do not offer any technical assistance. We also do not offer advice on compatibility of items. We sell ONLY individual Hardware and Software items. We are not technicians, only quality retailers with low prices. Please contact the manufacturers for accurate answers to your technical questions.

and

All compatibility or technical issues should be directed to the appropriate developer or manufacturer. These resources are provided on an "as is" basis by Newegg as a supplementary service to you, the user. We offer these resources to you strictly for informative purposes as they may lend valuable insight into products you are interested in and clarify any associated benefits.

That said, they do have excellent customer service, so it's worth at least asking, though I know from experience they won't reimburse shipping.

8230

Living Room / Re: Are EULA's as negative as DRM

« Last post by wraith808 on June 03, 2011, 12:03 PM »

The link I posted has the community discussion beneath the PR blurb.

But the direct link to the discussion is http://www.gog.com/e...of_classic_ea_titles.

8231

Living Room / Are EULA's as negative as DRM

« Last post by wraith808 on June 03, 2011, 11:20 AM »

Good Old Games is a game site where DRM-free versions of games of old are sold.  There's quite a bit of negotiating that goes on behind the scenes, but they are good at what they do, and have scored games from Interplay, Ubisoft, Monolith, and many more.  Until now, their biggest score has been Activision.  But now they have hit the motherlode with Electronic Arts.

There's no System Shock or Syndicate, which makes me sad.  But even just the six game that they've revealed make me quite happy with the deal- I bought Privateer and Dungeon Keeper today (and the other already on sale is Ultima Underworld 1+2, which I *will* get).  The graphics may not measure up to today, but those old games from Origin and Bullfrog are heavier on gameplay than most games coming from the major studios today.

But there's been a bit of a discussion because of the EULA, which I personally think people are making a big deal about nothing.  I think it was a cut-and-paste job, as I know from personal experience, once a EULA gets drafted, unless something major happens, it's used for everything since they are so hard and so expensive to get into place.  And you can definitely see that as it says something about online features, but these old games are *way* before that became ubiquitous in games.  But some are saying that the EULA is as bad as DRM.

I really can't see the correlation, but want to see if anyone here had any opinions on the subject.

8232

Living Room / Re: General Poll: What should there be more of on DonationCoder?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 02, 2011, 09:00 PM »

Maybe someone should start a thread, since Mouser had indicated that he'd like the discussion on a different thread so as not to hijack this one?

8233

Living Room / Re: Is the Core i7 2600K really worth the extra cost over Core i5 2500K?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 02, 2011, 08:57 AM »

^ No I find the same thing.  I used to use NVidia for everything with my intel setups... I switched over to AMD/ATI for my video, and have noticed nothing but improvements.  And I also was in the AMD processor camp for a while- but that switched a while back, and while AMD might be less expensive, it seems that Intel has more staying power in terms of how long between upgrades the processor can take you, especially since the changes in architecture are now very easy to predict.

8234

Living Room / Re: General Poll: What should there be more of on DonationCoder?

« Last post by wraith808 on May 31, 2011, 10:38 AM »

Would TinyPortal work?  Or are we looking at integrating SMF with some other portal software?

8235

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 30, 2011, 11:26 AM »

(Added section for Database Programmability in main review above)

8236

Living Room / Re: Which is more important: the gadget, or the software and apps that runs it?

« Last post by wraith808 on May 30, 2011, 10:40 AM »

In the same way capitalism is subject to abuse. Similarly, socialism has been abused horribly. Blaming "capitalism" itself, or "socialism" itself, or "whatever", isn't going to solve anything. The Aristotelian value of moderation seems to still have some 'value' in it.

-Renegade (May 29, 2011, 06:49 PM)

+1 for this.

8237

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Killing off Google Translate API & More

« Last post by wraith808 on May 30, 2011, 10:37 AM »

Nope... there was already a restriction on the number of calls, but this was easily circumvented by changing your requesting domain in the call (especially since these don't have to be domains at all).

8238

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 29, 2011, 05:20 PM »

VistaDB isn't a utility, it's a complete DBMS system.  The part above is more akin to SSMS - I'm getting to the crunchy parts in a bit.  And just like SQL Server Management Studio is just a tool to allow you to manage SQL Server, the tool above is for that purpose.  VistaDB as a database would be able to be used with Delphi (.NET) just as I'm doing now.

8239

Developer's Corner / Re: Alternative to recursive queries

« Last post by wraith808 on May 29, 2011, 12:32 PM »

VistaDB doesn't allow the use of recursive queries

-wraith808 (May 29, 2011, 10:59 AM)

Oh, well, not so great Transact-SQL compatibility then

-Ath (May 29, 2011, 12:11 PM)

Oh, yes... It actually *does* have great T-SQL compatibility... read the review for more on that.  It just has a few incompatibilities, and they're straightforward* with what isn't compatible, and why.  Sometimes, things just haven't been tested, but so far, a quick search on their forums or a post, and they've responded.  

*Ref:
1. Unsupported SQL Server Features and Syntax
2. Differences from SQL Server
3. Unsupported syntax
4. SQL Server Foreign Key Differences

8240

Living Room / Re: Which is more important: the gadget, or the software and apps that runs it?

« Last post by wraith808 on May 29, 2011, 11:53 AM »

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

-40hz (May 29, 2011, 07:21 AM)

See, this I totally disagree with.  For me to succeed doesn't mean that someone else has to fail.  It never has meant that, and it never will.  It can be achieved at such sacrifice, but that doesn't mean it requires such.

Ms. LeGuinn also wrote a beautiful parable about this sort of thing. It's called: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

You can read a copy of it online here.

And you really should. Because few authors can pack as much of a punch into 7 short pages as LeGuinn can.

-40hz (May 29, 2011, 07:21 AM)

There was a similar Doctor Who episode I just watched a bit ago, "The Beast Below".  I like the ending of that particular episode, because it makes the point that I do above- that though it is possible to take the easy way out of the morally ambiguous decision, it's not a necessity.

To squeeze another drop of money out of iPads, Steve Jobs is perfectly willing to let FoxConn workers die, or should I say, commit suicide. Really?! Necessities such as energy, food, healthcare, often government-sponsored, charge far more profit than they need to be richer than rich.

-zridling (May 28, 2011, 11:12 PM)

How do you know this?  The fact that it is happening doesn't mean that he has any desire to make such a sacrifice, or indeed any measure of control over the situation, other than pulling out of the relationship, and any pressures put on the relationship could indeed make conditions worse.  There's a reason that people go there for work voluntarily- because they don't have better options.  And if those options are taken away, what happens to them?  It's a lot less simple when you are actually in the driver's seat, as many have found out when pressed to such heights.  And it's a lot easier to criticize when you don't know the intricacies of the decisions that brought this to pass.

8241

Developer's Corner / Re: Alternative to recursive queries

« Last post by wraith808 on May 29, 2011, 10:59 AM »

No... VistaDB doesn't allow the use of recursive queries, so yours wouldn't work either.  The IsNull just packages up your case statement, but works fine.  The reason for that is that anything + null = null, so the first time through, it just adds an empty string to the query.

But thanks for verifying that for me

8242

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 29, 2011, 10:47 AM »

So I do not share the notion of databases being hard to install.

-Shades (May 28, 2011, 10:59 PM)

Hard to install is a pretty relative thing.  If I'm dealing with something that needs the overhead of a client/server architecture, then I'm willing to deal with the headaches that come from supporting unusual events that come from such a complex installation.  But dealing with a desktop application that I'm going to distribute for free/donations/very little, the reduction in hassle that comes from a minimal install involving only an xcopy is pure gold- made even more valuable by the fact that you can bypass even this by embedding it in your application.

Going back again to my wife's school curriculum, I installed it with absolutely no problems.  The first time my wife did it, she had problems, that if it wasn't for me being there, would have resulted in some sort of support time.  After I showed her a couple of things that the installation manual didn't go over, she was able to install the next years with no problem.  But that initial hump would be completely eliminated if the database engine was such a low impact installation that all of this was eliminated.

8243

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 28, 2011, 09:34 PM »

wraith, this is something I have been thinking about also.  You mentioned giving MS Access a go, and I'm in that phase right now.  What did you feel was disappointing about Access?

-superboyac (May 28, 2011, 07:35 PM)

1. The need for some sort of access runtime
2. The use of SQL that is different from T-SQL, which I am used to
3. The efficiency in large database operations
4. The lack of support for triggers, stored procedures, and functions
5. The lack of ability to use SQL CLR procedures/functions

In short, VistaDB is limiting in some ways next to SQL Server, but Access is limited in almost every way next to SQL Server.  As Renegade says, it's a valid option in the limits of what it's built for.  But building custom applications, I find myself too often limited by it, and I really don't want to do a full scale installation just because I'm using a database.

<snip />

EDIT: or, as you mention, you might be able to do it with a recursive CTE, but that's (a) nonstandard SQL, and (B) non-supported here anyway.

<snip />

Anyway, thanks for this review. I've considered VistaDB, so seeing a step-by-step in-depth review is very interesting to me.

-CWuestefeld (May 28, 2011, 09:25 PM)

Yeah... I use that bit of code (or something similar) to do this in SQL server, so I can do it there, and because this is just *so* close to SQL Server, not having it was a bit more jarring than not seeing that facility in Access, for example.  The penalties of expectation, because everything else so far is *so* good.

And thanks for the suggestions/feedback.  If there's anything in particular you're interested in, let me know!

8244

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 28, 2011, 05:05 PM »

(Updated with a response on the recursive queries problem)

8245

Developer's Corner / Alternative to recursive queries

« Last post by wraith808 on May 28, 2011, 03:32 PM »

I've been evaluating/using VistaDB on a project I'm writing, and ran into a problem, as I detailed in the ongoing review.

I wanted to use a function to return the result of a query on a pivot table as a comma delimited list.

Code: Text [Select]

1. DECLARE @r VARCHAR(200)
2. SELECT @r = ISNULL(@r+',', '')
3.         + gt.description
4. FROM GameTags gt JOIN Game2Tag g2g ON
5.         gt.keygametag = g2g.keygametag  
6. WHERE g2g.keygame = 1
7.  
8. SELECT @r

But it only returned the last row. 

The (relevant) structure of the tables is as follows:

Games

KeyGame int

GameTags

KeyGameTag int

Description varchar(50)

Game2Tags

KeyGame2Tag int

KeyGame int

KeyGameTag int

So, I wanted to return the a comma-delimited string of the Description fields for all of the matching tags, but it returned a string with only the description of the final record.  First, does anyone see anything wrong with the SQL?  I'm pretty sure it's right, but don't have any quick way to test it currently against any other dbs.  And second, does anyone know of another way to do the same thing without cursors?

8246

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 28, 2011, 03:23 PM »

(Added section for Database Management/Usage in main review above)

8247

Living Room / Re: Which is more important: the gadget, or the software and apps that runs it?

« Last post by wraith808 on May 28, 2011, 02:26 PM »

Why socialism?

A lot of profit lies in the mismanagement of waste. Profit is one of the main ingredients of capitalism, last time I heard.

<rant>
Many US citizens are immediately up in arms when their sacred short-term profit mantra is being questioned.
The current crisis is in my point of view a good reason for adapting the thinking style to long term profit and resource management.

If I may be so bold, the lack of this simple wisdom brought the US economy (almost) to its knees. And it negatively affected the position of the almighty dollar as global currency. That is also why the powers at Wall Street are busy to hurt the IMF with baiting Strauss-Kahn , which will hurt Greece (in getting/paying their loans), which will cause a lot of trouble for the stability of the Euro as a whole. A currency that grew to a very important important position on the global market in a very short time. Very much to the chagrin of Wall Street.

Businesses in China think about 25 to 50 years ahead. A trait similar to good chess players. And something future generations will appreciate. That the US should learn (again). The US is a lot like Bobby Fischer...(in his day a genius, to become insane destroying everything in his wake.

Fortunately though, the DC crowd has their heart and mind in the right place.

Sorry, I saw yesterday the documentary 'Inside Job'. That doesn't help my view on the world.</rant>

-Shades (May 28, 2011, 12:49 PM)

It was a simple question, especially as he espoused that <quote>Capitalism has always been far too wasteful with resources<unquote> rather than the people that make up the system.  It's one thing to say that some of the decision makers have been wasteful with resources... even always.  Quite another to say that a system is too wasteful with resources.  The other thing that bothers me is <quote>excessive profit</quote>.  What is excessive profit?  Who decides that?  One can ask these questions without being up in arms about the decisions that led to the current economic state.  And that had little to do with capitalism, and a lot to do with the stupidity of investors, and the mentality that there's always someone that will come along that's stupider.  Everyone was trying to ride the wake, instead of realizing that the wave's natural tide was being spurred by their actions, rather than this becoming the new norm.

My "allergy" to Socialism in it's purest form has to do with the implicit statement that makes that the government is my provider.  I do believe in providing for the citizenry, but not at the expense of the individual.   There's a middle ground that very few seem to be willing to see or espouse in the current global climate.

8248

Living Room / Re: Which is more important: the gadget, or the software and apps that runs it?

« Last post by wraith808 on May 28, 2011, 08:03 AM »

Two snips from the post:

companies are after excessive profit

-zridling (May 28, 2011, 01:51 AM)

Capitalism has always been far too wasteful with resources

-zridling (May 28, 2011, 01:51 AM)

Sounds like advocacy for socialism?  Just curious...

8249

Living Room / Re: Which is more important: the gadget, or the software and apps that runs it?

« Last post by wraith808 on May 26, 2011, 02:15 PM »

Neither.

Which is more important, the tool or the product?  Without the tool, the product would not get built.  Without the product, the tool has no purpose.  Either without the other (or some permutation of 'the other') doesn't really do you any good, now does it?  If you have the idea for GDT, and no computer to build it on, aren't you a bit FUBAR?  And the same the other way around... if you want to use your computer to help with your mad guitar skills, but don't have any software to do so, your computer's pretty useless at that point...

8250

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on May 24, 2011, 07:32 AM »

Unfortunately, Oracle Express Edition is still client server, and that's not what I was looking for.  And SQL Server 2008 Express, while it would be ideal, is a bit too intrusive for the types of applications that I'm developing.  The school curriculum my wife is using in home schooling, while very good, uses SQL Server 2008 Express, and it's a real pain to install.  And that ups the requirements quite a bit for the application, not to mention taking out the ability to ever be portable.  One of the things I like about VistaDB (that I'll get to in the deployment options) is that its single assembly, and just an xcopy will install it.  Can't get too much simpler than that!

But, yeah... I should have been more explicit.  And thanks for the suggestion of the other database, but having gone down this path (and with the amount of investment it takes just to do the evaluation/write a review) I'm sticking with one option to start... if it doesn't work out, I might try something else, but so far this *really* looks like a great option, though I'm trying to approach it objectively.  Also, just with a quick look at Alpha Five, it doesn't really look like a direction I'd want to go in.  It doesn't seem to support standard database development, but try to make things easier.  I haven't tried it, so I can't say for sure, but the information I see leads me to believe that, and they don't really give a lot in the way of information.  But that's a discussion for a different thread, just to keep this one more useable.