Economic downturn? Perhaps, our service offering and pricing is such that we’ve actually only seen an increase in demand, which is of course great! So, we’re looking for additional skilled and enthusiastic co-workers. Open Query is not structured like your typical company, and this is quite on purpose. Our funding, business structure and approach, human [...]
Some offerings are just a complete fail. I’ll give you an example from my real world. Supermarket chains around here give out a voucher for a petrol discount when you spend more than $30 in one go. That’s kinda smart, since petrol pricing is something people care about so it can drive changes in customer [...]
Did you know that by banging your head against the wall you burn about 150 calories per hour? However, there are more effective and less painful ways to exercise (no surprise there). Personally, I like an early morning walk and playing some Wii games around lunch time. Most companies aim towards high(er) value offerings, sold [...]
Ben Balbo, of OSDC and Melbourne PHP fame and all round nice guy, got together with some workmates and over the space of a couple of days they worked around the clock to build an online service to assist with placing victims into short-term accommodation, matching those in need with people who have a spare [...]
I’ve been following the info from Kaj’s info/feedback session at FOSDEM. I was going to write my thoughts as a comment, but I think it can benefit from being a post by itself. What strikes me is that the items raised and “voted on by hand” are all existing and actually long-standing issues., most even [...]
Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? by Chris Duckett and Alex Sherpo of ZDnet (Australia). They go onto a Sydney street with KDE4 telling people it’s a demo of Windows 7. Take-away from responses may be that people really dislike Vista (that’s not news though But for me, the point is really that people [...]
As you may know, Open Query is entirely self-funded, which means the banks owe OQ and me money not vice versa. Things like interest rates are of little concern, which is helpful in volatile times! Of course I do rely on my bank staying in business, but that’s now subject to a government guarantee in [...]
This little project is quickly growing into a pretty big movement, the response at and after Linux.conf.au in Hobart was tremendous! Ah sorry, should tell what this is all about eh! Well, many among us have dealt with or are struggling with depression and related hassles. It’s not because we’re geeks, but because we’re all [...]
Did you know that MySQL has stated principles for its products as well as for its employees. It’s a bit more substantial than your average mission statement blah Every person who once signed up to be an employee of the original MySQL AB essentially also signed for upholding these principles, but perhaps you haven’t seen [...]
Consider the following query: SELECT substring_index(column_name, “,”, -1) AS blah FROM table_name WHERE blah=’something’ Naturally, that returns with ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column ‘blah’ in ‘where clause’, since you can’t have calculated columns in the WHERE clause (chicken & egg problem). Strictly speaking, you can easily resolve this by using HAVING instead of WHERE. The [...]