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Index of Subjects > I think it will be several years yet before Community Nets can > move completely away from standard text logins. At this time it is > easy for the financially disadvantaged to get older computers (ranging > up to 386's and low-end 486's), since these are basically give-away > items. However, these machines are not suitable for running current > Internet apps. For that, you need a high-end 486 (486DX4/100 w/16M RAM > and 500M HD minimum), or more preferable, a Pentium class machine. As time goes by, give away items become more powerful. The traling edge of computer technology moves forward at a slightly faster rate then the bleeding edge. (because not only are new machines faster/bigger the per unit costs are decreasing) > These machines still cost real money, which a large portion of the > population can't afford. The whole idea behind Community Nets is to > bring the Internet to everybody, in particular the financially > disadvantaged. For this reason, I do not see the text interface going Yes, to /everyone/ not only the financially disadvantaged. I dont know about your paticular technical/philosophical implementation, but here at chebucto, "its only free if your time has no value" Aside from the low cost, I cant think of any reason to use (chebuto) over a "real" ISP. This is a bigger problem than a technicial issue: people new to the internet are getting fancy new machines and a DSL or cable modem connection. Dialup ISP in general are dying the slow death, and text login to lynx (hear anyway) are dying a faster death. > So far I have not seen a good reason for moving away from namedb > to a more complex SQL implementation. The limitations of a particular > scripting language (in this case, PHP) simply do not count. If a > language can not handle your needs, then use another. More complex? SQL would be far less complex, and more easily expanded on. A current real problem here is that weve gone to being a non-profit org, and we have to issue tax recepts back to Jan 1. Now I realy dont know anything about accessing namedb, and have little experience with shell scripts. But I could hack together a FoxPro prog to do that in less than an hour. Or (gasp) in Adm. Harpers little pet language as well. Thats just a fancy form writer, anyway. As you point out, frequently csuite is implemented by people who arent programers or sysadmins. All community nets are going to have to do a little bit of custom programing, and some data mining, and it a lot easier to learn SQL than namedb processing. You can get a bright yellow access or foxpro of SQL book for $50. You cant get any documentation for namedb processing anywhere, because it has /never/ been documented. "Read the source" dosent help because wer talking about people who cant read the source, afterall. > (basic software engineering principals come into play here). This > means that, as I mentioned before, the first step in changing the user > database is to abstract the interface to it. This makes the PHP issue Just write a bunch of common wrapper routines that one uses for talking to namedb, so you can change the internal structure of it and than you only have to chang your wrappers. Why not just abstrach it to SQL? Your rewriting evrything anyway, arent you? > machine, nevermind multiple machines. It is much easier and cheaper to > administrate one machine then it is to administrate a network with > multiple servers. There are a few larger sites that are lucky to be > run by professional system administrators (who usually have "day" > jobs), but that is not the norm. Well, if your not having logins (and prehaps even then) the only extra administration would be exporting some filesystems, and then spending a little longer setting up the new machine. After day one there is nothing eles to do. Nobody has one machine, its farms of clones everywhere.
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