ycom13__

There was this underwater datacenter https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54146718 see also here: https://natick.research.microsoft.com/

I remember buying a Visual Basic 4 (Oreilly) book in the Barnes and Noble that was in that building

I had to laugh at this https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast...

----------------------------------------- John Carmack's .plan for Jan 31, 1997 -----------------------------------------

I went down to the ferrari dealership today with Ann and American with the intention of buying a new f355 as a "sensible" car (in contrast to my other twin turbo monstrosities).

There was an F40 sitting out front.

Umm. Sensible car. F40. Sensible car. F40. Hmmmm.

American played the evil conscience and Ann played the good conscience. For a while. Then Ann got infected by the Dark Side. :-) I bought the F40.

Ok, I now have too many ferraris. I have a plan to fix that. This hasn't gone through all the legal crap necessary yet, but it is my intention to give away my first ferrari as the grand prize of a Quake tournement.

Yes, I am serious.

DO NOT SEND ME ANY MAIL ABOUT THIS! When we have more to say about it, we will make a formal announcement. This would be a good time to start a heated debate in the newsgroups about what the fairest tourney rules would be, though.

The specs:

1987 328 GTS with turbocharged engine. Feature in the january, 1994 issue of Turbo magazine. Made 360 HP at the rear wheels on a chassis dyno. New engine (I melted the first one...), new paint. The interior could use a little work.

I plan to also include enough cash to cover tax and insurance.

I had Windows NT 4.0 with SQL Server 7.0 running for 6 years... never restarted (or patched)... This was our dev/qa server. Uptime from 1999 till October 2005.... then some fool shutdown the power to the whole dev cage....

Still remember the credentials too... sa and password Nimda

No issues ever... HP hardware....

Same is true in the Netherlands

Was it the Windows Plus! feature pack or was that 98 as well?

These came to mind

On Demand tv

DVR

SSDs versus regular hard drives

windowing functions in databases

MP3s vs CDs or minidisks. (Suddenly I could hold 1000 songs in my pocket)

Columnar databases (Sybase IQ, SQL Server, Redshift)

20 tools on 1 device in your pocket.. replaced flashlight, magnifying glass, calculator, maps, notepad etc etc

Multicore CPUs.. Oh I can do 2 or more things while stuff is compiling in the back ground.. and of course async

Ajax.. no more refreshing the whole page

Automated tests and builds..

My 5 favorite ones I read this year

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

On my list for next year as well.....

I liked it a lot, it is really good. I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about WW I. Also highly recommended is Dan Carlin's 6 part podcast series Blueprint for Armageddon Here is the link to episode I http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...

Here are all the ones I read this year

  A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin
  A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin
  The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth
  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender
  George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade
  Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  Finders Keepers: A Novel by Stephen King
  The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
  Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
  The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
  Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
  The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  Robopocalypse: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Daniel H. Wilson
  Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson
  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Updatable CTEs are great, for example if you want to set a column to 1 where the date is the latest day for each value in a different column, you would do something like this

  ;WITH cte AS(SELECT   
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY SomeVal   
                  ORDER BY SomeDate DESC) AS row,  
                * FROM SomeTable)

  UPDATE cte  
  SET id =  CASE WHEN row = 1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

  CREATE TABLE SomeTable(id int,SomeVal char(1),SomeDate date)
  INSERT SomeTable 
  SELECT null,'A','20110101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'A','20100101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'A','20090101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'B','20110101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'B','20100101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'C','20110101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'C','20100101'
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null,'C','20090101'