I recently brought a new SanDisk Cruzer 4G USB thumb drive, partly because of the price ( $10/G) and partly because of this thing called U3. Take your applications with you! Oh, yeah, Firefox, cygwin, and winamp would disappear from my drive in a heartbeat.

I have learned that the reality is somewhat less than the dream. Plus, on further investigation, there are many out there in IT land who hate this little guy. Anyone else have any experience with this beast?

I bring U3 into the Arena! We who are about to die salute you!

At the risk of starting a classic flame war, I have a pressing request for assistance.

As a hobby, I blog about NHL hockey, in particular the extension of statistical analysis which until recent years has been about as sophisticated as ancient cave drawings. For the last year or so, I've pursued this by compiling data in spreadsheets for a series of ad-hoc analytical pursuits, but the time has come to formalize my data structures into a database with tables fed by scripts that parse game data as posted at NHL.com. But which free database should I use?

Some operational parameters to consider: I'm envisioning some basic data import tables (I'm developing scripts in Excel to pull the web data down and parse into columns), followed by a series of tables fed by programs which pull data together from a variety of sources (stored in table form for ease of reporting). Most of these tables would only run in the 1,000 - 100,000 range, while one in particular could run as high as 5,000,000 or so. There aren't many instances where multiple indexes over a given table would be required, but the reporting built off these tables could be computationally intense (i.e. exponential moving averages built off of subtotals).

So which DB should I choose? MySQL, PostgreSQL, Open Office's Base? I'm at a bit of a loss as to which direction to go in, and I'd rather not head down a particular path only to find it's not going to pan out.

A comparison between the "easy to use" MySQL and the "hard to use" PostgreSQL:

MySQL:

CREATE TABLE up_subjects_books (
BOOK_ID int(11),
SUBJECT_ID int(11),
KEY bo_id (BOOK_ID),
KEY su_id (SUBJECT_ID),
CONSTRAINT up_bo_fk1 FOREIGN KEY (BOOK_ID) REFERENCES up_books (id) ON DELETE RESTRICT,
CONSTRAINT up_sub_fk1 FOREIGN KEY (SUBJECT_ID) REFERENCES up_subjects (id) ON DELETE RESTRICT
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

PostgreSQL:

CREATE TABLE up_subjects_books (
BOOK_ID INTEGER REFERENCES up_books(id),
SUBJECT_ID INTEGER REFERENCES up_subjects(id)
);

Of course, many people don't bother with foreign key constraints and they do such things programmatically. Which, to my mind, makes nothing easier. It simply makes the programmer responsible for data integrity, which is a recipe for trouble.

If there's a better way to do this in MySQL I'd love to hear it. I can't find it in the official documentation, but to be fair I stopped looking when I finally found an incantation that fucking worked. "INTEGER REFERENCES up_books(id)" certainly works, but it doesn't establish a constraint, which makes the whole exercise silly in my opinion. Why on Earth would anybody pick MySQL? I certainly wouldn't, but the server where this Web app currently sits is dropping its Oracle license and they've only installed MySQL.

(Oracle has its own set of oddities and quirks which annoy me, but at least I had confidence in the engine. To my mind, PostgreSQL is so far superior to both MySQL and Oracle for small-to-large database projects it's not even funny. Easy, fast and predictable. For certain enterprise setups I can see where Oracle stomps all over the free software options, and if Oracle were more reasonably priced I wouldn't be opposed to using it. But you have to be a sadist to want to do something non-trivial in MySQL.)

Z1 is a simple, intuitive system for very rapid text input on a soft "qwerty" keyboard. The user simply traces a quick "connect-the-dots" path, roughly aiming to pass through each letter of a word.

The page after the first link has the videos.

The way I see it, this really is the replacement for 26-key keyboards on cell phones. Z1 comes from the same brains that made the T9 system for text messages. If handwriting recognition never becomes good enough, this will suffice and be faster anyway.

Now what I really want is these lengthwise-slider phones or a clamshell like the Nokia 9500 to get dual touch screens so I can properly surf the net or write stuff. The iPhone's screen is 480x320. What's really useful is 480x640.

How long before a reverse-clamshell phone comes out? Put two screens on the outside, rather than in. Then it folds out on a hinge for double the screen real-estate. If Apple thinks they can make one screen scratch resistant enough, then someone needs to do that to both screens.

Advantages:
1. Can check the time without having the flip the phone over.
2. Can use the camera for video conferencing or seeing what it sees when pointing it away from the user.
3. Hinged design means more space for the screen than on a slider.

"PBS' Bill Moyers sits down with The Nation's John Nichols and conservative constitutional attorney Bruce Fein from the American Freedom Agenda to discuss the crimes and abuse of power by George Bush and Dick Cheney and the need to impeach them both. While Nichols and Fein come from different ends of the political spectrum, they are in total agreement on this issue. Congress must put impeachment on the table because if they do nothing to stop Bush and Cheney now, we will see future presidents follow in their footsteps which would be a disaster for our country." - Crooksandliars.com

JOHN NICHOLS: "the Scooter Libby affair gets to the heart of what I think an awfully lot of Americans are concerned about with this administration and with the executive branch in-- general, that it is lawless, that-- it can rewrite the rules for itself, that it can protect itself.

And, you know, the founders anticipated just such a moment. If you look at the discussions in the Federalist Papers but also at the Constitutional Convention, when they spoke about impeachment, one of the things that Madison and George Mason spoke about was the notion that you needed the power to impeach particularly as regards to pardons and commutations because a president might try to take the burden of the law off members of his administration to prevent them from cooperating with Congress in order to expose wrongdoings by the president himself. And so Madison said that is why we must have the power to impeach. Because otherwise a president might be able to use his authority and pardons and such to prevent an investigation from getting to him."

I've recently been tasked with leading the integration effort for a large systems implementation here at work, and am facing a challenge more daunting than any mere technical obstacle; how does one best get hardcore old-school programmers to embrace a new way of integrating our applications?

We're replacing a large, homegrown COBOL application on a mainframe with a more modular, Java-based ERP on a midrange platform. The kicker is that we need to replace over 100 interface points between other internal systems and the legacy app, and the direction we're headed in is to leverage a GUI-based middleware product to accomplish that task, and take initial steps towards establishing a more loosely coupled, flexible systems architecture. I'm convinced this is technically feasible and will reap many benefits going forward (particularly as other major projects come along), but our developers have a hard time letting go of their point-to-point, custom programs with lots of embedded information directing processing for specific customers or situations.

This group is throwing every conceivable objection to the middleware approach, and most of them are failing to make much headway as we develop some pilot projects to build expertise, despite having had ample training and the services of a consultant to provide mentorship as they work their way up the learning curve.

The bottom line is that they are resisting this new method by any means available: submitting lots of trouble tickets for minor issues, not digging through the documentation and throwing up their hands in futility, etc. Has anybody else here in the /. community dealt with such a generational change in development technique with existing IT staff? We're all sympathetic for experienced workers getting pushed aside for younger talent, but if the old dog can't learn new tricks, perhaps it's time to head to the pet store...

Just when you thought managerial spying was the exclusive field for tech-savvy firms like HP, the details are now coming out about an electronic spying scandal that brought down the head of the National Hockey League Players Association, Ted Saskin. Over the course of fifteen months, Saskin and an associate regularly accessed the email accounts of NHL player reps who wanted to have Saskin's hiring investigated. In addition, the results of a secret ballot ratifying the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement were provided to Saskin by members of the NHLPA's IT group - so watch out for any resumes listing NHLPA Network Security as a working experience!

I'm heading off to Summit 2007 this weekend, running Monday through Wednesday in Vegas. It's the user conference for Information Builders, and I'm attending to check out sessions regarding iWay, their software integration tool. I just thought I'd see if any other /.ers would be attending...

This morning's Indianapolis Star profiles a local programmer who is raising funds to put Tux on a race car for the Indianapolis 500, which runs in later this month. His website has already raised over $11,000 for the cause, which hopes to promote Linux during one of the world's most-watched sporting events. If he can raise $350,000, a primary sponsorship would be available, which would mean a larger logo featured on the side of the car.

CompUSA has the wide screen Envision G22LWk 22-inch LCD monitor for $220 after two rebates totaling $90. After taxes it should be $260. My friend bought one yesterday and I went with him to compare. I'm need a new monitor and might get one today.

So far I'd rate if four out of five at the $250 price. Compared to a Samsung next to it I'd say visually they tied. That's after turning off color enhancement on the Samsung, and using paint.exe to draw blocks of colors. It has a very poor viewing angle though. Two people standing side by side three feet from it will see the same colors, but three people would not. Especially if there's a height difference. Tilting the monitor a bit up or down from the viewer noticeably darkens the colors. My friend bought it because he's going to sit at his desk and face it just where he should. HP has one for about $350 with a viewing angle that lives up to it's claims much better. So does Apple's 23" but it's hundreds of dollars more.

We checked in the store and found no dead or stuck pixels. At home next to my six years old 19" Viewsonic PF790 CRT I hooked it up digitally and messed with the controls on it and my Radeon for an hour or so before getting it remarkably close to match my screen. In fact I'd say it looks like the dark greens on my screen are a bit weak.

I made up the blocks of color test pattern again. On the Envision the blue and red match pretty well, the green is maybe a touch strong. But after playing The Rundown simultaneously on both and comparing the flesh tones as well as the jungle, I think it looks really good. I turned the brightness on the LCD down to 7 out of 100, the contrast to 66, and on my Radeon the brightness down to -69 on a scale of -100 to 100. At those levels the white wasn't causing eye strain on websites, and black was acceptably black. There's a little bit of light-bleed mostly in the bottom half-inch, but when watching a movie that's a black bar that wouldn't bother me.

So I'm wondering if anyone has opinions on, seen, heard, or read about the competition? I know there's 19" models with better colors and probably contrast too. I really like the 22" size, but if someone knows of a 19", or 20" that's visually great and has a fast refresh, I'd like to hear about it.

In order to follow the rest of the herd and see what the new pasture looks like, I've set up a profile over at Multiply. Instead of "TopShelf", I'm going by Forechecker over there, as that's the nic I'm using for my blog and assorted other online venues now (TopShelf comes from a column I wrote over 10 years ago)... so if you see a Forechecker knocking on your Multiply door, you know who's coming.

After getting delayed a week, Sunday's hockey article at the NY Times cites my hockey blog, in a piece discussing the relation (or lack of one) between physical play and scoring. It's nice to get that kind of recognition after having just gotten this blog rolling in the last six months...

This is nice, I just got off the phone with a sports editor at the NY Times, and they'll be mentioning my blog in this Sunday's hockey article, focusing on the lack of any correlative link between NHL teams that out-hit, and teams that out-score their opponents.

The video.

Has Israel been disproportionately targeted for criticism compared to other human rights issues going on around the world?

The fan on a friend's 7600GS is dying. I added a drop of oil but that's not good enough. It's a tiny 30mm surrounded by almost 60mm x 60mm of aluminum. I have a quiet 60mm fan but I don't think it'll stay on the existing heatsink, which is held to the board with two spring-loaded pins. I'm considering removing all that, then gluing to the chip an unused Athlon 1.2GHz heatsink. The quiet fan can go on that. Clearance shouldn't be a problem, but I'm concerned about weight pulling on the chip since the assembly will hang upside down.