My friends usually ask my advices for buying their new computer. They always ask me to recommend a set of configurations for them. Well, the first things I need to know is their budget. The major reason is they can get a better computer if they want to spend more money. I remember one of friends was putting a piece of paper with the components I recommended into a computer shop. And then he spent some time to talked a computer salesperson. The salesperson recommended some alternative recommendations with better performance and only cost a bit more. But $20 more for display, $30 more for motherboard, $10 more for case etc. End up, 50% over budget. My friend is a kind of person to like spending money. Finally, he paid 50% more and got a better computer.

Apple just launched iPhone in UK. O2 is the official carrier. I am disappointed that is still no 3G support.

Source: engadget

Software Prototype = Beta Version? No, 100% Not. Beta Version is a kind of pre-release version. This kind of software need to be passed the normal software development process. Moreover, This is really required to pass an internal testing. Normally, the purpose of Beta version software is to get some feedback from user community. On the other hand software prototype is to evaluate the feasibility. They are two different things.

I am using a lof of "Throw-away Software Prototype"."Throw-away Software Prototype" is a piece of software application which is not well engineered. It is not gone in a formal process for software development. It will be destroy after the initial stage of software life cycle.

I used this kind of software prototype to evaluate whether the requirements is possible to be implemented and verify whether my design is workable.

But there is very very important point, Don't try to improve the prototype and put that into a production. This is very high risk, because this type of prototype is not well design and analyzed. We don't know whether there are any hiding defects and design fault inside.

What is DML?
DML is "Data Manipulation Language". Simply, that are included "select","insert", "update" and "delete" in SQL.