comp sci kid

Execute SQL Tasks: Using Stored Procedures

2009-05-25T15:05:00.001-04:00

This post is a continuation of the series of posts that we have done in the past on SSIS. You can access those here:DTS vs SSIS, Execute SQL Task Introduction, Running parameterized queries using Execute SQL Task - I and Running parameterized queries using Execute SQL Task - II.

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Obama seeks new wave of derivatives regulations

2009-02-27T03:47:00.001-05:00

Obama is seeking a host of new regulations amid a historic meltdown to prevent a future financial crisis.

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Obama seeks new wave of derivatives regulations

2009-02-27T03:46:00.001-05:00

Obama is seeking a host of new regulations amid a historic meltdown to prevent a future financial crisis.

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How Much Work Should Washington Put Into Social Media?

2009-02-21T01:00:00.001-05:00

The General Services Administration has put out a request for a research firm to look into how the public views Facebook, YouTube, and other social media.

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Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

2009-02-13T20:23:00.001-05:00

Twitter beginners need to understand the rules of etiquette for the service. So before you stick a foot measuring 140-characters-or-less in your mouth, learn how to follow and un-follow, share politely, direct message appropriately, and more.

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President Bush: Automakers to get $17.4B

2008-12-20T05:55:00.001-05:00

The Bush administration came to the rescue of the U.S. auto industry Friday, offering $17.4 billion in loans in exchange for concessions from the deeply troubled carmakers and their workers.

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Obama: A Continued Economic Decline Is Not Acceptable

2008-12-20T05:41:00.001-05:00

Barack Obama, addressing the press for the fifth straight day, offered perhaps his gloomiest assessment yet on the current economic situation.

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Auto bailout talks COLLAPSE in Senate, Bill fails.

2008-12-12T03:01:00.001-05:00

A $14 billion emergency bailout for U.S. automakers collapsed in the Senate Thursday night after the United Auto Workers refused to accede to Republican demands for swift wage cuts.

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New Deal: Business likes Obama plan

2008-12-10T05:14:00.001-05:00

Big business is lining up to support President-elect Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy with the biggest spending spree on roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects since the Eisenhower administration.

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Bailout watchdog confirmed by Senate

2008-12-10T05:03:00.001-05:00

Senate drops opposition to Neil Barofsky's appointment as TARP auditor.

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Obama Says U.S. Economy Will ‘Get Worse’ Before It Recovers

2008-12-08T04:11:00.001-05:00

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama said the U.S. recession will worsen before a recovery takes hold and that he will offer a plan to boost the economy “equal to the task” without worrying about a short-term widening of the budget deficit.

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GM, Chrysler warn Congress of doom

2008-12-04T03:14:00.001-05:00

In a series of grim reports, General Motors Corp. and privately-held Chrysler LLC told lawmakers they will be in serious peril by the end of this month and certainly the first quarter of 2009. Given GM’s size, its failure could pull down Ford Motor Co. despite its better cash position.

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Auditors fault Treasury oversight of bailout funds (AP)

2008-12-03T03:01:00.001-05:00

The government must toughen its monitoring of the $700 billion financial bailout to ensure that banking institutions limit their top executives' pay and comply with other restrictions, federal auditors said Tuesday in the first comprehensive review of the rescue package.

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The death of America as we know it.

2008-12-01T02:52:00.001-05:00

We need to abandon the antiquated notion that corporate executives are entitled to millions of dollars without being held accountable for their actions because it's killing our economy.

How Obama Will Stoke the Economy

2008-11-29T04:24:00.001-05:00

He may spend up to $500 billion on stimulus. Lobbyists are already angling for a piece of the action.

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ABC News: Financial Bailout Balloons to the Trillions

2008-11-28T03:48:00.001-05:00

The credit bailout will be the most expensive single expenditure in American history, potentially costing around $7.5 trillion -- or HALF THE VALUE EVERYTHING PRODUCED BY THE UNITED STATES LAST YEAR. In comparison, the total U.S. cost of World War II adjusted for inflation was $3.6 trillion.

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Lenovo kills notebooks with a text message

2008-11-26T08:26:00.001-05:00

You lost your notebook? You are worried about the data that might be exposed. No problem: Kill the notebook with a text message...

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Paulson pulling more tricks to bolster US economy

2008-11-26T04:49:00.001-05:00

With the economy showing further signs that it is headed into a steep swoon, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is pulling more tricks out of his bag to try bolster the country's battered financial sector.

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Obama Eyes $500 Billion in Stimulus

2008-11-24T23:32:00.001-05:00

Obama and Bush are rushing to craft measures to bolster financial markets and prevent a policy vacuum during the transition. Meanwhile, Paulson is considering tapping the second half of the government's rescue fund.

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Congress is planning a six-week vacation?!?

2008-11-19T03:00:00.007-05:00

the US is experiencing its worst economic crisis since the great depression, and congress wants time off from the end of this week until january 2009. i can understand thanksgiving week off and the week between christmas and new year's off, but not six weeks! the mere fact that they're even considering this is an utter outrage. the american people need congress now more than it has in many generations.

i already let senator harry reid and speaker nancy pelosi know how i feel about this. i sometimes wonder what they added to the "kool aid" in washington.

$700 Billion isn't enough

2008-11-15T01:39:00.001-05:00

now that the recession of 2008 is in full swing, i figured this would be a good time to add my "two cents". as many of you already know, the US congress approved a $700 B bailout bill, which was signed into law by president bush. notwithstanding that fact, the US (and global) economy continues to decline. what happened? the US home mortgage crisis led to a freezing of the credit markets. lenders became very reluctant to make new loans because they feared that they won't be repaid. but why is that a problem? this is a very big problem because many businesses need credit to maintain their day-to-day operational expenses -- these businesses cannot continue as a going concern without it. so, what about it? such businesses that have employees may not be able to make payroll without credit. this leads to layoffs, which then leads to delinquent mortgage payments, which then leads to home foreclosures, and the vicious cycle continues until all of the money supply is drained out of the economy and financial depression ensues. now what?

the solution is to place a block in front of the vicious cycle that's big enough to grind it to a halt. essentially, it would need to be more than enough to stanch the bleeding. in other words, something would need to happen to keep the money supply flowing. that something is more money. there would need to be enough money in the market place to prevent the problem from growing. lenders would need to become more confident that any new loans they make would be repaid. but this would only happen if they could write off the bad loans they have on the books. this can only happen if they get a large enough infusion of cash to cushion themselves against future losses.

based on the way things look right now, $700 B isn't nearly enough to prevent a global depression.

microsoft bi tutorials

2005-08-12T05:08:00.000-04:00

bi consultant bill pearson put together a pretty good set of tutorials for access and sql server 2000.

my take on service oriented architecture

2005-08-08T05:19:00.000-04:00

if implemented optimally, soa can lead to huge efficiency gains for a wide variety of businesses. certain criteria must be met for this to happen. it is imperative that the services involved be loosely coupled. by design, loosely coupled software components easily lend themselves to reuse -- which is key in gaining efficiency. creating services that aren't loosely coupled defeats the notion of soa because such services can't be easily combined in an ad-hoc way to solve business problems. so, having loosely coupled services is the key to easier soa implementation. it's also imperative that such services scale well as individual units. the number of clients that a particular service may need to serve in the future cannot be determined with absolute certainty. thus, it is imperative that any such service be designed to easily scale in order to serve a potentially unlimited number of clients. finally, such services should be designed with platform interoperability in mind. it cannot be determined with absolute certainty that such a service would not be useful in serving any number of clients on disparate platforms.

sql server 2005 data mining team site

2005-08-08T00:26:00.000-04:00

i just discovered that the sql server 2005 data mining team has its own site.

the "almighty" oracle gets the .NET "religion"

2005-08-08T00:05:00.000-04:00

believe it or not, in an amazing reversal of corporate policy, the oracle corporation has adopted support for microsoft's .NET platform (religious references notwithstanding).

free labs for microsoft developers

2005-08-06T05:57:00.000-04:00

all microsoft developers should love this!

Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

2005-07-30T05:39:00.000-04:00

here's the site link.

Top Companies View Business Intelligence (BI) as Key to Future Growth

2005-07-30T05:13:00.000-04:00

i chuckled a little at the title of this article which appears at dmreview.com. i suppose that common sense isn't very common.

What Makes an Enterprise Data Warehouse?

2005-07-29T04:44:00.000-04:00

this article attempts to delineate the hallmarks of enterprise data warehouses.

Database Change Management Tips and Techniques

2005-07-29T04:39:00.000-04:00

this article is a must read for production DBAs and IT project managers who work on database related projects.

Budgeting for a Data Warehouse

2005-07-29T03:01:00.000-04:00

this article is a must read for anyone looking to save money when implementing a data warehouse.

How To Leverage Business Intelligence Tools

2005-07-29T01:58:00.000-04:00

here's the link to an excellent article on getting the most out of business intelligence tools.

Top 20 Tips for OLAP Success

2005-07-29T01:46:00.000-04:00

recently, i've been spending a lot of time researching the business intelligence space. while doing this, i came across a very good article on implementing OLAP entitled Top 20 Tips for OLAP Success. i highly recommend it to anyone involved in doing business intelligence.

my ipod mini crashed

2005-06-16T02:35:00.000-04:00

holy smokes! i almost couldn't believe it. my beloved ipod mini crashed...and it was pretty ugly. no, this wasn't a typical garden variety crash where one can just restore the OS and keep plugging along. no amount of restoring would bring my ipod mini back from the depths of crashdom. i'm not sure exactly what was caused the problem, but it appeared that the hard drive was hopelessly corrupted. perhaps this had something to do with the fact that it was a 1st generation 6 GB ipod mini. fortunately, the device was still under warranty which caused me to breathe a huge sigh of relief. i usually don't praise corporate america's something to be desired customer service, by i must say that apple's exceeded my expectations. i submitted a service request online and received a return mailing box and shipping label the next day! in short, i received what appeared to be a new ipod mini within a week! kudos are in order to the folks that run apple service support.

essential asp.net

2005-04-02T04:50:00.000-05:00

for those who don't know, asp.net is microsoft's solution for dynamic, scalable, database driven web pages. although many might disagree, i believe that asp.net is better than java-based web pages for the following reasons: a more simple programming model, a first-rate integrated development environment (ide) in visual studio .net, and better scalability. i'll concede that java-based web pages are a tad bit faster than asp.net, but i believe that's its only advantage. anyway, i'm currently reading an excellent book on asp.net programming entitled essential asp.net by fritz onion. essential asp.net goes in-depth to explore the nuances of asp.net and is loaded with code examples and best practices. this book is truly essential for asp.net developers and i highly recommend it. btw, essential asp.net also available in a vb.net version.

linksys wireless hardware

2005-03-28T03:56:00.000-05:00

i've now been part of the 802.11 wireless revolution for the better part of the last year. i can honestly say that things have worked out very well. i have a linksys router and access point. i also have 3 computers using linksys wireless adapters. for those who don't know, linksys products rock. if anyone knows of a company that makes better home networking products, please let me know. the latest edition to my wireless network family is a usb adapter. installation was a breeze and i had it working in about 5 minutes. needless to say, it exceeded my expectations. sorry if i sound like a commercial for linksys -- i just wanted to express how great i think their products are.

microsoft plans to end support for vb 6

2005-03-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

according to news.com, microsoft plans to end support for vb 6 at the end of this month. well, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone following the microsoft development platform. vb 6 has been a dying language since the advent of vb.net. it's no secret that microsoft has wanted vb developers to switch to vb.net for quite some time. as a matter of fact, microsoft would like c++ developers to switch to c# as well. i think that microsoft became frustrated with the slower than anticipated adoption rate of vb.net, thus decided to "help it along" ;). i happen to share the view that vb.net and c# are far more elegant and less error prone languages than vb 6 and c++ for desktop and web applications. now, i feel much better about beginning to learn c# in 2001.

.net design guidelines for class library developers

2005-03-14T04:13:00.000-05:00

in the world of programming, consistent programming style within an application is very useful in terms of readability, productivity, and maintainability. to this end, microsoft has published design guidelines for .net class library developers. guidelines, as such, are not to be taken as rules cut in stone, but rather suggestions that could lead to better code.

honing up on c#

2005-03-14T03:30:00.000-05:00

c# is a programming language created by microsoft. i've been teaching myself c# (on and off) since 2001 i've been re-reading a book entitled c# class design handbook. it's a pretty good book for intermediate c# programmers.

i suppose i should explain what my blog name means

2005-03-14T00:11:00.000-05:00

i wanted to name my blog comp_sci_kid, but blogger wouldn't let me do that :(
i think of "comp sci kid" as a cool, but nerdy nickname that i gave myself. i majored in computer science at brown university, so the moniker is somewhat fitting.

i finally joined the revolution

2005-03-14T00:06:00.000-05:00

in hindsight, i suppose i had to get on the blogger bandwagon sooner or later. the timing is right because i didn't have much to say before now. you'll see what i mean in due time.

comp sci kid

Execute SQL Tasks: Using Stored Procedures

Obama seeks new wave of derivatives regulations

Obama seeks new wave of derivatives regulations

How Much Work Should Washington Put Into Social Media?

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

President Bush: Automakers to get $17.4B

Obama: A Continued Economic Decline Is Not Acceptable

Auto bailout talks COLLAPSE in Senate, Bill fails.

New Deal: Business likes Obama plan

Bailout watchdog confirmed by Senate

Obama Says U.S. Economy Will ‘Get Worse’ Before It Recovers

GM, Chrysler warn Congress of doom

Auditors fault Treasury oversight of bailout funds (AP)

The death of America as we know it.

How Obama Will Stoke the Economy

ABC News: Financial Bailout Balloons to the Trillions

Lenovo kills notebooks with a text message

Paulson pulling more tricks to bolster US economy

Obama Eyes $500 Billion in Stimulus

Congress is planning a six-week vacation?!?

$700 Billion isn't enough

microsoft bi tutorials

my take on service oriented architecture

sql server 2005 data mining team site

the "almighty" oracle gets the .NET "religion"

free labs for microsoft developers

Blogrolling.com

Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

Top Companies View Business Intelligence (BI) as Key to Future Growth

What Makes an Enterprise Data Warehouse?

Database Change Management Tips and Techniques

Budgeting for a Data Warehouse

How To Leverage Business Intelligence Tools

Top 20 Tips for OLAP Success

my ipod mini crashed

essential asp.net

linksys wireless hardware

microsoft plans to end support for vb 6

.net design guidelines for class library developers

honing up on c#

i suppose i should explain what my blog name means

i finally joined the revolution