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Space going green!

Today, the only way to go in Space is to use rockets or fast planes (although the latter does not get you as far as needed to reach even the IST.) Either one of those uses a tremendous amount of quite poluting carburant.

In the future, however, we definitively need to find a way to build an elevator. The building of such a structure has not started though. At this time there are two main reasons why: (1) we think we do not have the technology, and (2) what we have thought about can break with the consequences of getting the debris all over Earth and that could be quite dangerous.

Now there ...

Commercial license for odbcpp

In June 2008, Made to Order Software created a new software library called odbcpp. This library is an Open Source C++ wrapper of the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) library started by Microsoft in 1988.

ODBC hides the details of back-end database systems. In other words, if you support ODBC, you can effortlessly connect to a very large number of database systems such as MS-SQL, Access, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL.

odbcpp is an extension for C++ programmers. It is easy to use and it is a great solution to avoid many bugs as it will automatically handle all the possible ODBC errors for ...

Software Consulting Services

Robot arm by Schilling RoboticsMade to Order Software Corporation offers software consulting, analysis, and development services at any stage of a project. Our analysts can provide you well-defined and thorough user and developer documentation for your project in a timely manner. We can determine the skill set necessary to accomplish the goals of the project, and maximize the number of workers on the project to shorten the development period.

From simple applications to complex e-Business solutions through realtime software and complex database systems, our people work at your convenience—in your office or ours.

ScreenWRITER television system ...

Made to Order Software Corporation

The Logo of Made to Order Software Corporation.

Made to Order Software Corporation specializes in corporate consulting, analysis and development services, as well as cutting-edge professional developer tools, libraries, training, and support. Our team of passionate developers are dedicated to uncovering your perfect software solution to analyze, enhance, or improve your critical computer systems—large or small.

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2008

This year, 2008, I decided to register and go to LinuxWorld. It is in August and my kids are not at school so it was easy to manage. Also, I had to go to the French consulate to get a birth certificate for my daughter. In other words, I had the chance to do two things at once!

I found it quite interesting to hear that many people were not too excited about the event. Many of the people walking around are like me: they themselves sell their own Linux solution. In other words, they are not going to be customers. I had the chance to talk with Roger Levi, the Vice President of the Open Platform ...

Is the Open Source costing us money?

More and more, enterprises make use of Open Source software. Why is this a good idea for your company as well?

Many people are scared to do the move. The result is very costly. When you use proprietary software, each time you need an upgrade, you need to pay for it. And in most cases, it is not just once, but a number of times equal to the number of computers you own or the number of staff that use the software. A $200 software may sound really cheap. But if you have 1000 staff, it makes it $200,000.

This is of course very good business for the vendors. However, many small companies just ...

Order Made!® version 1.7 featuring Google Maps™

The software engineers at m2osw have been hard at work developing and testing the next major release of Order Made!®, version 1.7 that has an incredible new feature! Order Made! is a premier turn key website for patrons of restaurants to place their orders online.

Recently, Wayne Mok of the New Rice Bowl Restaurant in Carmichael, CA told us that the best thing about Order Made! is that it keeps he and his wife off the phone. They love to cook, and talking on the phone is often difficult and time consuming. But for delivery orders, Wayne told us they were still spending time on the phone ...

The assert() macro in C/C++

 

This is a subject that comes back all the time in C/C++ boards.

Should you use assertions?

The answer is clearly yes. But the C/C++ assert() function is usually defined using a macro. Macros have several problems. The most common ones are: they offer no type checking, they do not warn you about weird side effects, they have a different syntax than the C/C++ language itself.

One good thing: for a fast program, the debug code used to check parameters, results, etc. is gone.

One really bad thing: if the expression in the macro has a side effect, the release program is different from ...

HTML Forms and the action attribute

Today I had to debug a set of HTML pages. One feature of a website would not work with Internet Explorer. The code was like this:

Increase Security with a Reverse Proxy Server

What is Reverse Proxy?

There are three excellent reasons to switch to a Reverse Proxy Server right away:

  1. Protect all of the sensitive data on your servers;
  2. Have only one gateway to the outside world;
  3. Ease the load on your web server by allowing the reverse proxy server to distribute the requests.

Figure 1 below presents a simplified setup of a Reverse Proxy Server.