Star Poll: Let's Evaluate Open Source's Jewels
Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 30th May 2003 02:18 UTC
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y Thursday here, a slow evening. Time for a new poll. This poll might require you to think a bit extra: it asks you to vote not for your favorite application, but which OSS application, in your opinion, has achieved high standards, performance, features and ease of use when compared to the best of breed of the closed source world. Read more for more explanation and voting.
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Boing (the sound of me bouncing off-topic)
by Good Grief on Fri 30th May 2003 07:21 UTC

Taras:

I didnt apologize cos mysql was crappier/better. I apologized for my choice of words.

I know -- I edited for length. My editing left to be desired, as I discovered immediately after hitting "submit" ;) And lots of websites use flat files instead of MySQL. They call them HTML files ;)

I'm a PG fan myself, but just because I design/implement apps more than websites.

Spark

I know it's a spreadsheet app. ;) I just never used a spreadsheet.

Aha! Well, a spreadsheet basically allows you to perform mathematical operations on groups of numbers. It's somewhere between a pocket calculator and a database in structure[1].

For example, let's say you have 5 employees (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Gertrude and Gertrudette) with salaries of 4, 5, 7, 12 and 16 chickens per fortnight respectively. Suddenly, you want to double their salaries.

With a calculator, you'd go:

Multiply 4 by 2, write down new salary for Alpha.
Multiply 5 by 2, write down new salary for Beta.
Multiply 7 by 2, write down new salary for Gamma.
Multiply 12 by 2, write down new salary for Gertrude.
Multiply 16 by 2, write down new salary for Gertrudette.

With a spreadsheet, you'd have the employee names listed in one column, and in the next column their salaries. To double their salaries:

Select "Base Salaries" column, and multiply by 2.

More complex operations are possible, obviously.

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[1] Gross oversimplification