The review of this book doesn't make it obvious to me. Is this book really about refactoring or is it about query tuning?

IMHO, the former doesn't really need to be db vendor specific. Refactoring should encompass all code and not just the SQL. Looking for ways to refactor from an ORM perspective makes sense such as lazy evaluation and strategic caching.

Query tuning is an important topic with which there are already plenty of resources devoted to it.

This might be a stupid question but what about using the iphone mobile web app support in Aptana? Has anyone used that? Is it any good? No, it's not an app running natively on the iphone but do your users really care?

Amen, brother. I visited a Circuit City on the first weekend of the bankruptcy announcement to find the place absolutely packed but no noticeable decrease in the prices. That, and the fact that IMHO, they were the worst when it came to the "extended warranty extortion scam," makes it a happy day for me to see them go.

I agree. Get thee to a wiki.

I'm reading this same book now. I haven't gotten very far into it yet but so far so good. There is a somewhat intelligent use of diagramming including flowcharting and class diagrams. There are statistics formulas with examples. It's not all dry, though. There are screen shots of linked in and digg and descriptions of how to incorporate or embed collective intelligence style features.

This so-called new Internet isn't about privacy as it is criminalizing bad behavior. So, you get to face charges when your machine gets a virus and now you have to prove that it really wasn't your fault.

Are you ready to handle that? When your car or your gun gets stolen, you can report it. Then you're off the hook if someone commits a crime with it after you report the incident. Most folks won't be able to tell when their computer gets owned in a botnet. Most people would rather quit the Internet forever than risk criminal prosecution over something they don't really understand or have any confidence in managing.

I, too, believe that key/value is a sign of sickness. Obviously, systems where key/value stores appear to be a good fit don't have accounting modules to them. In addition to that, whenever I see a system where a key/value store appears to be a good fit, I look deeper and realize that what we have is a system where the designers were too weak to make a stand on how to capture data so they just delegate all decisions to the user.

That may be a great approach for photo sharing but with almost anything else, the user wants the program to serve as an authoritative source. The choice of fields on a screen should focus the user's attention, like an interview or a debriefing, on making relevant decisions. It shouldn't just be this waxy flexible "anything you want in the moment you can have" style of programming.

Wow, the OP asks for examples of applications that encourage innovation. There are over two hundred responses and none appear to actually answer the question.

Take a look at the Why Not? idea exchange. This one is most probably the best fit for stimulating ideas but is the least appropriate for corporate use.

The first of the challenge based innovation sites was most probably Innocentive. Please excuse the shameless self promotion but do take a look at Cogenuity (currently in beta) which does a better job than Innocentive at combining challenge based collective intelligence with social networking.

• Cogenuity has different types of challenges. The promoter can be the judge, anyone can be judge, or a select few (chosen by the promoter) can be the judge.
• In some challenges, there is only one winner who gets the entire purse.
• There are also challenges where there can be multiple winners who share the purse.
• Teams can be formed to work on solutions to challenges.
• Solutions are highly collaborative with support for document sharing, etc.
• Both teams and challenges have discussion areas (i.e. forum topics).
• There is also support for message in-box, blogging, and micro-blogging.

I have blogged about Cogenuity and about these and other problem solving applications elsewhere.

Good luck with your search!

Killing MySql won't send people to MS-Access. It is PostGreSql (which was Sun's original favorite OSS RDMS) that stands to benefit from the death of MySql. I had predicted this a year ago.

well said

You know how it is in a text based way of exchanging messages such as /. right? Everybody is real brave and confrontational on the keyboard but in reality that belligerent STFU probably came out of his mouth as "Yes sir. I'm sorry sir."

I think the point is something along the lines of that notable Abraham Lincoln quote about being able to please everybody. Whenever you institute any change, there is always going to be a group of people who are going to find something to complain about. So don't take it too personally. Just get on with the change. Try to mitigate the pain. And pretty much ignore the whiners. In this economy, they are more than welcome to seek employment elsewhere.

I use a Linksys network and their WAP54G can be configured as a repeater. That costs about $80.

I'd like to see /.'s predictions on that, especially with regards to VMWare. In my own ad hoc findings, it is true that Microsoft shops are leaning towards HyperV but isn't that to be expected? I find non Microsoft shops to be leaning towards VMWare. What are you finding?