He has been using Google's mail merge, but it has limitations e.g. can't send more than about 900 emails in a batch and he's got to get out 2000 plus several times a year. He needs something easier to manage than Google's and allows more messages to be sent out at a time.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I have a friend who cosponsors a conference every 2 years and manages the sending out of meeting notices and other items to the 2000 or so possible attendees via email. Can anyone recommend a Mail Merge type program, free or not?
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
In my opinion: On-line postings tend to bring out the worst in many people for some reason. Some times, because we can't see the facial expression or hear the tone of voice, the posting becomes negative even when not intended that way. The fact that we've now gotten to where some don't even use words, they've gone back to the per-literate days of pictographs (emojis and the like), is a major problem. They can't take the time to give a complete, unhurried answer while "keeping a civil tongue" in their heads. E-mail and postings tend to be done in a manner not consistent with proper written correspondence; they seem to encourage errors of grammar, spelling, usage and a lack of politeness. The writers appear to have not made it past 2nd or 3rd grade English class. However, I've been in the computer industry for 50 years and can state that people displaying all the negatives you mention have been behaving in those ways for at least as long as I've been involved. In fact even longer. My father started with these beasts in 1934 (Electronic Accounting Machines) and told of unpleasant, mean spirited, uncooperative, and unsharing people even then. I fully second your request for civil, cooperative behavior by those in all areas of computing.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I have been using ACCESS for 20+ years. I have a client whose entire business runs on Access based software and she has had no problems for 18 years except when MS decided to not have backwards compatibility with certain functions or features as it released new versions. I have used it to keep my consulting business client work status and billing records for most of the 20 years. A colleague and I have been using it in as part of a commercial science researcher utilized product (VB for code and Access for the database) for 10 years without any Access problems; VB has given us may more problems as MS changed, dropped, etc. functions, function calls, etc. I noted at least one commenter stated that is is a terrible product and that a great many terrible applications have been written by bad programmers using it. Well, I have done software quality assurance for JPL/NASA and I can tell you that I've seen terrible programs written in over 20 programming languages and some utilizing a number of databases for back ends. I've seen terrible Oracle and DB2 code. A terrible software architect will design terrible software; and it goes all the way down to the terrible coder creating terrible code. This is not the criteria to use when deciding if some language or database system is the correct one to use for some purpose. ACCESS is great for simple database applications. It can be used for some rather complex ones also. It depends on the design of the database, the design of the code, the amount of time you are willing to spend learning relational database design and learning to code in Access's programming language. ACCESS is worth taking a look at and getting a decent book is the first step. I've not bought a new ACCESS book since Office 2007, so can't recommend one to you.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I meet him at a couple of horse shows where his daughter was riding. He was a rather good horseman himself. A really nice man and a pleasure to talk with.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I have been a member since 1967. ACM is very diverse and there is some overlap with the IEEE Computer Society. As to it being another "management" organization, I think that commenter needs to do some homework. ACM has evolved and it has made Communications of the ACM over numerous times as the field has grown and fragmented. There are numerous publications and SIGs to meet every need. One does need to exercise some restraint is what publications and SIGs one adds to the basic membership. The Tutorial Series is still going and is a great way to learn about new fields and new concepts. Communications is diverse but no longer a detailed, lengthy research article journal - those now appear in either Journal Of ACM or a specialized journal. SIGs are a great way to keep up with a sub-discipline and meet fellow members who specialize to one degree or another in the same area of IT/CS/Computing...
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering Sylmar CA USA
As already noted, one can write terribly in any language, programming or "natural". If writing systems level code: C or C++ If writing business system code: Modern COBOL If writing science/engineering code: Modern FORTRAN. If a masochist (or given no choice): Assembler If writing modeling system: (Probably still) SIMSCRIPT If writing WEB pages: HTML/CSS, but many IDEs now available to make this easier. 50 years of programing using 30+ languages including BASIC, VB, JOVIAL, HAL, 15+ assemblers, PL/1, APL, ALGOL, C/C++, HTML, JAVA, PYTHON, PERL, etc.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
Thanks for the information. When I manage to upgrade the hardware, I'll give it a try.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I am staying with XP even at home for 3 reasons. First, cost of upgrading the hardware: Laptop requires at least another gig of RAM; desktop 1, 2 gigs or more; desktop 2 new CPU and so forth. Second, I have consulting clients who are running applications written using Visual Studio 2003. Neither Win 7 nor 8 will allow the installation of VS 2003. Upgrading several hundred thousand lines of VS2003, even to VS2010, is not a trivial undertaking. A third reason is common to many users: older peripheral devices for which there are probably no new drivers, for example: scanner, plotter, CNC machines, and various pieces of RS232 laboratory equipment.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I thought wire coat hangers are what socks became in the dryer: socks are coat hanger "caterpillars" that morph in to hangers. That's why there is almost always at least one sock missing from the dryer and a new coat hanger in a closet.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
Engineers were using the term "bug" for a problem or error in the late 1800s, maybe earlier (check the Oxford English Dictionary and other reliable sources such as Dr. Johnson). So, for Grace to use the term would not be not unusual. Also, she showed those who asked, the dead bug in the machine that had caused the electrical, not logical, problem she was talking about. The term caught on with those who worked with programming "and the rest, as they say, is history".
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
Kendall and Kendall, Systems Analysis for overall and the Social science parts e.g. interviews and questionnaires.In its 3rd edition, I think. McFadden and Hoffer (can't recall the third author's name at the moment), Systems Analysis and Design. A good book in its 3rd or 4th edition.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I have a VB application that updates one database using input from another database. The code looks like: Dim InputDC as OldDatabaseConnection Dim OutputDC As ... InputDC.Open OutputDC.Open For each table in Input Database Read data from old table Copy data to new table Write new table to Output database ... InputDC.Close OutputDC.Close Sometimes [often] the Output database does not close, that is the Output.ldb file is left hanging around for an indefinite time period. Sometimes the program runs fine e.g. 50 times in a row; then suddenly it will hang. I've been programming for 45 years and have done consulting and know the first rule is that "Users lie about no changes"; however in this case there ARE no changes to the code. The program wants to rename the data bases so that Input.mdb becomes Input_Old.mdb and Output.mdb becomes Input.mdb. With the control file (Output.ldb) hanging around, the Rename causes an exception. It is [almost] always the Output.ldb file that is still around implying that Output.MDB is still open... I have taken the code apart line by line; there is only one open and close per database. There are closes within Catch paragraphs. But, there is only one .Open per database. I've tried a variety of loops testing for the .ldb to go away, but this usually just results in the program running for a very long time doing nothing. When the program is terminated thru its main form's Exit button, the .ldb files go away almost immediately. I can watch the history of file creation, etc. in Windows Explorer as the program runs. Has anyone experienced this "feature"? If so have you figured out how to solve it?
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
Just remember that VS2003 will not install on VISTA! We've tried it and then knew we had to stay with XP for another (good) reason. For our project, there is no reason to "move on" to a newer version of Visual Studio. Outside of using the VS 6 serial port control, we have everything we need in VS2003 -- we actually had it all in VS6, but my partners said we "had" to catch up with the rest of the world. For what it's worth: I still use FORTRAN and have no problem with COBOL. Now C is language for OS writers and masochists.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
You don't state if you want a program you are writing to just die, or "any old" program that might encounter a "fatal" error. If any program, then you already have a solution given. If you are writing the program, you can trap this and just terminate your program. In the main program you need an error handler for Application.ThreadException. Of course if your program has multiple threads things get messier and I won't even try to address those.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
Just to add a bit to Pete's description of the problem -- I'm his "cohort" in crime... We had two VB.NET programs running on this particular machine. They suddnly stopped working with the indicated error messages. Nothing new was done to the programs or to the machine: no updates of the programs, no change to .Net, etc. The program's die on the following line, which they have in common. Dim sw As IO.StreamWriter = IO.File.CreateText(str_FileName) We tried reinstalling the programs using the install CD (.msi files, etc.). The installs were OK, but the same errors happen. It appears that something to do with StreamWriter or Scrippting in general has disapeared from the machine. We tried to copy the programs from another machine via Laplink: same error. We copied the entire subdirectory including the VB project and the installation project, etc. The copied folder on this machine had a dll missing from the Detected Dependencies. Why the dependency was lost is also a puzzle. Everything should have been identical in the copy folder as in the original. Don't know why not. This does seem to be a case where something got clobbered by, perhaps, cosmic rays, which changed something on the hard drive so the required dll is missing. We tried to find the "missing" .dll and then (re)register it. But there is no dll with the exact name shown. That is, we can't find a "bad" entry for the CLSID in the registry. And can't figure out which dll corresponds to the CLSID. We tried using Visual Studio Repair from Add/Remove Programs. We tried reinstalling XP SE. So at this point, we are fully frustrated. Is it time for Remove Visual Studio, Fully reinstall VS? All suggestions welcome. -- modified at 21:30 Tuesday 27th February, 2007
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
I've attempted to search the discussion groups for this topic and may have missed it. I need Office Extensions for Dot net 2003. Since Microsoft has removed them from its Web sites, does any one have a copy they can send to me or let me download. I particularly need Access 2003 runtime. I know I should have downloaded them some time ago, but our project has just reached the stage where they are needed... Please email me at cawolfe@verizon.net
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
Yes, a VB.Net application can can work with an Access database without a full version of ACCESS installed. The proper Access runtime must be present (installed) -- part of Office Extensions for .Net 200x. Note that Microsoft has removed the .Net 2003 Office Extensions from its Web sites so you can no longer easily obtain them. It becomes an interesting exercise in missing pages and pages that automatically send you back to themselves in infinite loops! As long as the proper ODBC, etc. drivers are installed and you are not trying to do anything "fancy", you may not need the Office Extensions. Hope this helps.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering
The URL http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/crnet\_deployment.pdf does not work. If one backs up to the .../CommunityCS/ level one finds out that only content authors and managers can view anything.
Charles Wolfe C. Wolfe Software Engineering