[thelist] client to post video

Richard Bennett richard.bennett at skynet.be
Mon Apr 3 20:13:51 CDT 2006


On Tuesday 04 April 2006 01:57, John Dowdell wrote:
> Richard Bennett wrote:
> > That's the difference between proprietary and open. the first has to push
> > their product exclusively whether or not it is the best solution, and the
> > second can use the best selection of tools for the job, and empower the
> > user to use what they prefer.
>
> As before, "??".
I really did my very best to explain it as clearly as I could, and illustrate 
it with an example.

> Maybe this thing I wrote three years ago can help:
> "Is 'Open' and 'Shut' really open-and-shut?"
> http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/jd_forum/jd026.html
It is not a technical question, it is a mindset.
Can you advise developers that your product might not be the best solution in 
some cases? Can you advise them that although your product is great, offering 
an alternative is a service to the user?
Or are you restricted to saying:
>>> Bottom line: Want to use video in a browser-based presentation? Use
>>> Flash... makes the most sense.
as though the rest of the world has no merit whatsoever.

> My theme: Using "But it's *proprietary*!" as a reasoning to cut off some
> of your choices may be doing yourself a disservice. Use what works for
> the job... no need to get all religious about it.
You seem to have misunderstood the sentence I wrote:
>> That's the difference between proprietary and open. the first has to push
>> their product exclusively whether or not it is the best solution, and the
>> second can use the best selection of tools for the job, and empower the
>> user to use what they prefer.
I am not talking about open source as such, but being open-minded.
Use Flash, or Mediaplayer, or Quicktime or whatever you want, and then offer 
the user an alternative in case your preference isn't suitable for them.
Simple.  
Advising developers to develop solely for one technology is simply bad advice.
It is nineties-talk. We would put up little badges saying "best viewed with 
netscape 4", and have anti-rightclick scripts on our shitty pages to stop 
people stealing our little tricks.
Times have changed. Your site should be a service to the user. You should do 
your very best to put the user in control - let them choose what they want to 
see, let them get there fast, without splash pages and intros, and offer them 
the data in several formats.
It is just commonsense.

Regards.

Richard

<tip>
In mysql, if you have a table like this:
id              |name
22             |red
12             |red
45             |red
3               |pink
35             |pink

and would like to export it to a spreadsheet looking like this:

ids             |name
22,12,45    |red
3,35           |pink

You can use the mysql PROPRIETARY extension GROUP_CONCAT, like this:

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(id), name
FROM tablename
GROUP BY name

</tip>











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