On Mar 17, 2010, at 9:57 AM, Joseph Ssekandi wrote:
Dear all,
Personally I was stung by this rude dutchman's post below and I had
decided to let it go only that a few interesting things have turned
up.
1. This isn't the first mailing list I am subscribing to and all
lists have a certain characteristic about them(rude, polite,
helpful, strictly expert, talkers etc). I decided to find out about
yours and guess what, no archives available at http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug
!!! Where are your archives?
Not only that but mailing lists usually have charters. This mailing
list is a Linux Users Group! Posting an excel question here is way off
topic! The "rude dutchman" you're talking about actually just
expressed the sentiments of a good number of other members of this
mailing list. I was about to tell you the same thing but then he beat
me to it. I personally know of a number of others who would have said
the same thing so do not assume that this was his stand alone.
2. Just after this post, one of the list members contacted me
offlist and we worked on this problem. Using MySQL!!!!!!! We created
the database, exported the excel file I posted into a CSV and
imported it into the database using the LOAD DATA INFILE command,
when it reached there we wrote a number of beautiful SQL statements
using order by, limit, multiple where clauses, creating subtables
from queries and so on. We only stopped because on other Excel
dedicated forums I had got the answers.
Which you could have done in any other sql database in any case. And
as you point out, you GOT answers on Execl dedicated forums. Please
ask the right question in the right fora. You don't see people posting
BGP/OSPF issues here and they probably would be more welcome than an
excel question since many of us in addition to being linux users have
been network admins for quite a while but we respect the purpose of
the list.
SIMPLE LESSONS IN THIS:
- Lets not be narrow minded, if a M$ problem comes up, we can solve
it in Open source and hence indirectly convert the poster.If we
can't atleast that will be a lesson learn. Lets not simply discard.
If the list had kept an open mind, believe me, what happened off
list would have been invaluable to any MySQL newbie. Throw in the
experts, it would have been explosive.
This is NOT a MySQL list. It is a linux list that happens to have
people who use MySQL and other OSS on their linux installations.
- Every forum has an elder, and many of them work hard to maintain
that status. I was made to understand that this Victor fellow is
highly respected on this forum but from such statements, its time
you challenged his stand and question his other postings and views.
They could be counter productive.
As for this "elder" nonsense..... People are respected for their
contributions. Regardless of position, duration of service, etc.
Everyone is entitled to his opinion. It's as free a list as the open
source OS we take pride in using.
Noah.
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