Sometimes I use Thunderbird to handle large amounts of email.  All my email accounts are IMAP and I find that Thunderbird just handles them better than Outlook.  Thunderbird also removes deleted messages from my view and then purges them when I empty the trash saving me from that awful delete, purge deleted messages cycle.  When opening a folder that has 1000 messages in it, Outlook can take several minutes to respond whereas Thunderbird is immediately responsive.

However, this morning I was going through a folder with lots of emails and noticed something peculiar.  I read my mail threaded and I will often read the opening message of a conversation and, if I am not interested, delete the entire conversation without reading another message.  This time I was reading a conversation that came in from one of my mailing lists when the messages switched to a completely different lists.  The subject stayed the same and …

Ok.  Everyone else seems to be doing it.  You can google talk me at reggie.burnett@gmail.comm

http://www.dbazine.com/blogs/blog-cm/craigmullins/blogentry.2005-07-31.8211052778

I normally don't comment on links I find but I had to offer a second opinion to some of Craig's thoughts.

"So, will open source databases ever become popular enough to strongly compete against Microsoft, Oracle and IBM for the database consumer's dollar? I don't think so." 

Craig bases this opinion on the idea that open source databases cannot become robust and durable.  In fact, he states this just one paragraph above the preceding quote.  He implies that once a project reaches a point where it can financially justify a commercial db, it would not continue using an open source database.  Craig is forgetting the 80/20 rule.  80% of the users of a product only use about 20% of it's …

Are we the most popular database in the world? I'm not sure, but anytime I can check out at a local grocery store wearing my MySQL UC t-shirt and the cashier asks me if I went to that UC and tells me that it is cool, then we _must_ be pretty darn popular!

One of the reasons for this popularity is that MySQL runs on just about everything including Vista beta 1!!  While I haven't done much more than just fire up the last beta of 5.0 on Vista and run a few simple queries, it felt good seeing that work flawlessly.  There will be much work to do making sure MySQL plays nice with all the new security features of Vista.  We are working hard at MySQL to improve the user experience when running MySQL on Windows and this extends to Vista. 

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, complaints about the Windows builds of MySQL please let me know either directly or via the forums or lists. 

Seriously.  Now stay with me on this.  Take a spin around the blogsphere and you'll see what I mean.  I read blogs from hard-core Windows users and from equally hard-core Linux and Mac OS X users.  Most of the Windows users will use Linux if the need arises and make good use of tools such as Ruby, PHP, or Python.  Though they use Windows generally, they evaluate technology with little regard for the political angle.  They use what will help them get their work done faster.  Not everyone, but most.

Now, compare that to the hard-core Linux or Mac OS X users.  Instead of using the tools that work best on Windows (if the need arises), they will go through all sorts of gyrations to get their Unix tools on Windows so they can avoid knowing anything about the "beast".  While Windows devs have no problem admitting to the problems of the platform, Linux users will snicker at Windows boxes that are …