Apache Web Server, GNU/Linux Operating System, MySQL Database, Mozilla's Firefox Browser.

All pillars among the open-source community.

Each of these deserves its imminent position as a venerated project. Each has changed the world, and not a little. Moreover, they are the projects that spring to mind when we seek to justify the brilliance of the open-source licensing and development models.

But if this is intended to be a list of the highest-impact and most significant open-source projects, there is a project missing from this list.

VA VistA.

VA VistA is arguably the best electronic health record (EHR) in existence. It was developed over the course of several decades by federal employees in a collaborative, open-source …

The history and accomplishments attributed to VistA, the Veterans
Administration's core administrative software, mark it as one of the
most impressive software projects in history. Still, lots of smart
people in the health care field deprecate VistA and cast doubt that it
could ever be widely adopted. Having spent some time with people on
both sides, I'll look at their arguments in this blog, and then
summarize other talks I heard today at the href="http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010">Open Source Convention
health care track.

Yesterday, as href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/07/day-one-of-the-health-care-it.html">I
described in my previous blog, we heard an overview of trends in
health care and its open source side in particular. Two open source
free software projects offering electronic health records were
presented, …

It's interesting that just as Apple announced surprisingly positive quarterly results, Microsoft announced their first decline in sales revenues in 23 years.  While Microsoft is not in any kind

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Background Knowledge

I have Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 with the following optical media drives. The system is approximately one year old.

• Manufacture: LG
• Model: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM_GDRH20N
• Firmware version: 0D04

• Manufacture: LG
• Model: HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H73N
• Firmware version: B103

Problem

There are two issues I’m experiencing all resulting in the fact that windows explorer is not refreshing the drive contents and/or drive volume label. Both issues occur on CD/DVD reader and CD/DVD writer drives. As well I’ve tried multiple discs from ones I’ve burnt to discs that were commercial produced and these discs all work fine on other computer systems.

1. My Computer/Windows Explorer is not refreshing the CD/DVD drive contents.
2. My Computer/Windows Explorer is not refreshing the CD/DVD …

This is a short post that might save someone some valuable time, if Google decides to rank it high enough.

I've tried to install a newer version of the MySQL Connector .NET, namely 5.2.3 instead of the old 5.1.3 I had installed.
When trying to install 5.2.3, I got this error message:


Apparently the connector does not support upgrades from 5.1.x to 5.2.x. We should just remove the old one.

Here lies the problem: when I tried removing the old 5.1.3, I got a weird error of which I took no screenshot. It consisted of a blank error message showing a computer screen with a icon of a moon on it. Something resembling a "sleep mode" icon. Huh?

…

I'm still working on getting all of my tools and apps onto my new laptop, which is running Vista Ultimate. I downloaded the latest version of MySQL Community Edition and proceeded to install it. I didn't consider the effects of User Account Control (UAC) on the installation. I should have, considering this is one of the gotchas when installing SQL Server Reporting Services on Vista. The installation looked successful until the point where I was prompted to configure the MySQL service. No error message, nothing. So I rooted through, found and ran the MySQL Server Instance Config Wizard, but received an error I hadn't seen before. I did a Google search and came across this blog post which links to a document on …