unimatrix

I use Adobe Go-live, mainly because it comes with the Photoshop/Indesign suite and the fact that I have never liked Dreamweaver, but with Adobe's purchase of Macromedia, I'm not sure what Go-live's fate is going to be. (it may have been decided already...don't know) Also there is NVU, it's a good free editor for Windows/Mac/Linux. It is the old Netscape Composer with some major upgrades. Easy to use and lots of features. http://www.nvu.com/

Call me getting older, but $600 for the system and as much as $75 per game being rumored....no thanks. If I actually buy a next generation console it looks like it's going to be the X-box 360...or I might not buy one at all and play my PS2 until it dies. I'm not buying a Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD player either simply because I think both formats are going to get replaced by download services. Plus...which ever one I did buy, would end up being the looser. I refuse to pay more than about USD 25 for a game anymore. I'll wait a year and let it become a "Platium hit" and when they have a buy 2 for $30 deal, I'll get a couple new games. It's just I have a lot of other things I could spend that money on...

Will windows support Mac Drivers....not bloody likely. Now chances are someone will come along and hack a fix. I'm not too familar with the Mactels yet other than the beta machines I had a year ago to make sure our inhouse stuff would work and code to Universal Binaries. All the software I use on a regular basis is still PPC so I'm not likely switching anytime soon. From experience with most wireless devices over the years...they just don't seem to work as advertised. That's why we still use wired tablets, keyboards, and mouses on most machines still. There could be something wrong with the keyboard, even a bad battery. Are you close enough to the machine or trying to use them from across the room? Range is a factor as well.

I look more at Praxis rather than underlying technology theory, because the two often differ.I've been using Mac now for about 4 years and OSX has been increadibly stable during that time compared to when I used Windows projects for similar tasks. (Windows 2000 Pro was the last version I used and it wasn't too bad)The only time I had issues were in the early days of OSX when some of our apps had to be run in OS9 emulation (actuall those machines were dual boot so if we really needed to use Quark, we'd reboot). Sometime I can lock up and crash my Mac, but it's because I'm not paying attention to what all I have open, and when your trying to run Final Cut, Shake, PS, Lightwave, and then go to Open iTunes...yeah I deserve to have it become a paper weight...Overall I've been extremely impressed with my Mac not only for it's stablity, but for the software as well (I work in video production).

Now if I could just get Drupal to work nicely with postgresql around here....

I like Drupel for personal stuff. It has enough flexibilty and good features even if some things, like the menu system, isn't quite as straight foreward as other systems. I still like Joombla/Mambo for large complex sites, it makes managing such sites much easier, but for mostly what I do, it's operation overkill. Another system to consider is Xoops. The last site I deployed for a client: http://www.transfigurationchurch.org/ was based on Xoops. I had to go and hack some of the content module code and fix some issues with it's Dynamic HTML menu system, but over all it too is a nice system. The one thing I don't like Xoops, compared to Drupel, is the lack of a centralized topic system. You can't create your topics and subcatagories and then use for the rest of the site in Xoops, you have to do it for each module. It's just a pain to set up, once that is done though, it's not that big of a deal.

OS9 and OSX both allowed you to use a double mouse. I used my Microsoft optical mouse for years with my iBook when I was at home. now Apple has their mighty mouse, which is 2buttons+. As far as the new Mac Books and MacBook Pros, wait until 2007's January WWDC before buying any of them. First Generation Apple products, like first gen anything, typically have bugs. In fact I bought my friends's 1.33Ghz G4 Power Book (loaded with 2GB of Ram and the works) for $700 because he wanted the latest and greats MacBook Pro...I have his power book, all my software (final cut, lightwave, Composite Lab Pro, and Effects Lab Pro) all work wonderfully on it along with MS Office and Photoshop. He got his MacBook Pro and has some, not much, but some problems with running his old PPC apps in Rosetta. Got to wait for the software to catch up with the new hardware.

Um...Blender 3D...It's free, Opensource, and can produce professional quality results these days and getting better all the time. Yes, the program has a steep learning curve, but did I mention it's free. I think the DL size these days for Blender and the full version of Python 2.4.x is about 30MB. Python isn't a requirement, but highly recommended if your on Windows.Plus take your pick of OS's, it works on everything but OSX Intel (there are some test builds available though).

If Microsoft plays ball with the music industry, then this could spell some problems for Apple because they would loose their pricing power. Jobs has held firm about iTunes pricing policy. If MS plays with the RIAA, the RIAA could tell Apple "Raise your prices to $X.YY per song or your not going to get the license". Unfortunately, it's the consumers that are going to be the ones that loose on this deal...The only leverage Apple would have is the sheer number of iPod owners, however iPods do wear out and if the RIAA holds their catalogs as hostage....

You know, I've read and seen just enough Sci-fi to know that messing with DNA at random may not be such a good idea. Just like the government's reports about placing Army troops in trenches 5 miles from a nuclear blast in the 1950's was a good idea....I'm not totally against the field. I now run our family farms and a lot of the plants the farmer uses any more are gentically engineered to be round-up ready (soy beans and corn). We're even planting a hybrid (non GE) rice that is yielding nearly 195 bushels per arce. However, it's when they develop a Gm rice that is designed to produce a kind of anti-biotic for the drug industry and not meant for human consumtion, and they want to plant it in the wild...then I start to have issues. (Which they are doing here in Missouri this year after Texas, Calidfornia, Arkansas, and Louisana turned them down)Sorry, but once that stuff is in the wild, there is no controlling it. Birds and wind can carry those seeds anywhere. Back to the topic of the X-men...My friends working on the PhD's in genetics say...maybe, but not anytime in our lifetimes. However, the gentics factor of the X-men is not the point of the story. Hats off to Stan Lee and the folks that produced these last 3 movies. They captured the heart of the comic book on screen. and that is discrimination/what it feels like to be different. Now I will say that X-3 was more a rental than a see it on the big screen movie (I saw it on the big screen) as I found it to be 2 minutes of minutes of not so subtle "morality lessons" followed by 20 minutes of action. I left the theater feeling pretty um..wow...kinda like after seeing Serenity last fall because of what happens to so many characters. I think I had read that this was supposed to be the "last one"...but I hate it when hollywood says that and then leaves it open ended so that: "Well if it still makes money". There are just some movies where they start making way too many...

Just to clarify, the random lottery is used only during a draft. Currently there is no draft in the United States. The US military is a 100% professional volunteer force at this time. That being said, the west has no idea how to fight a war outside of contintel Europe. I will argue, and currently arguing in a Masters Thesis, that the Geneva Convention should be revisited internationally, because the likely hood of seeing an other conflict between two uniformed armies is unlikely. Even then, it's not like no side in any war has ever abided by any so-called "rules of war". Even back in midievil Europe, the Pope declared the Cross Bow to be illegal in combat...that didn't stop anyone from using it. The last General that understood how to fight a war got fired because he voiced his opinion, MacAuthur in Korea, because things were being controlled by politics and not the generals. Just like the United States lost very few battle tactically in Vietnam. The US lost that war politically. Gulf War I was one tactically, but not politically. Why? Saddam was left in power. If the international community was serious about emlinating threats to global stablity, they would have called for Saddam to be captured and turned over to the Hague. Sanctions don't seem to work. All they do is punish the people, not the regieme. I'm not sure how well argued that sanctions played in getting Libya to do a 180 after twenty years...from my understanding there was a new guy in charge of their economy that went to the Son of the dictator and basically said: "Look if we just pay this money now say we were wrong, and apologize to the west, the sanctions will be gone and we'll make far more money being able to trade again with those folks." I personally would argue that a missle through Quaddfi's bedroom window in 1986 and a new president that didn't look like he was going tolerate this crap renewing libya as a possible target helped change their opinion. I understand the idea, and still support it, of creating a free democratic Iraq. I knew back in 2002, and told folks, that if we suceed, we'll be there for the next 20 - 30 years. There was also a chance that the historical enthnic and religious conflicts would resurface and you'd get a balkanization. Before the 1940's and 1950's one could argue that there were no such thing as Iraqis...Iraq was just a line drawn on a map by some British guy. Setting up a democracy, and then leaving American troops in country (we could ask for some land for a couple bases out in the middle of no where Western Iraq for an Airbase and Army base and tell them we'll deal with external threats, you govern yourselves) is Pax Americana, but it seemed to work for Germany and Japan after World War II. It also seems to work for a couple dozen Latin American countries who have a small para-military police force, but no standing army. Why? They figure if anyone attacked them, there are enough US interests that we'd bail them out and chances are we would. I had several Germans argue with me when I lived there in 2002 that we were setting up a new Empire. Told them the same thing I'll say now: "The American people wouldn't stand for building an empire. Plus we suck at the whole occupation and colony thing. Why we never did it..." So what do we do now? People don't like to hear "stay the course" because politically it's vague and people want to see concreately what are the steps to win. We've never got out of the mind set of fighting asemtric wars with no front lines in the past century. The British fought such conflicts for centuries during the period of Empire. It is not a popular position, but the mentality of "We stick with it until things get stablized" is the right one. That's not to say we've made mistakes. That's not to say that we really do not understand the people and culture of the middle east. That's not to say that we may need to revisit the Geneva Convention and seriously have to ask ourselves, "Is this document really valid on the 21st century warfare?" My personal opinion is that War is war and it's pretty damned hard to find the moral high ground when both sides are stuck in the mud." I really don't know, despite asking Marines, National Guard, and Army troops I've talked back from tour, if the terrorist mentality in Iraq is the same as the Palistinian mind set or not. I may not be the same, but I think it is similar. The Palesitinian mind set is this: If one Israeli soldiger is killed, it is a victory no matter how many of their own they loose. Bin Laden has said since Somelia that we have no stomach for a fight. What really makes my stomach turn, and ever since 9/11, is that the SOB just may be right. And if we don't stop him who will? If we don't stop Iran who will?

I'm going to say that TDMA/GSM/Whatever is next based on this technology tree branch will be the winner. It's really no contest as very few use WCDMA outside of north america. The First GSM phone I had was in Germany through Vodofone. Then when I got back to the states Cingular offered a dual TDMA/GSM phone. I used that for a couple years then switched to a Motoroloa V60 series GSM (I think it was the 170 or 160, I can't remember). Now I have a Razer V3 through the Cingular Go service. Why I do the monthly plan linked to my debt card just as I did before with the 2-year plans. The nice thing is if I can get a really good deal through someone else, I'll join, if I need to go to Germany for 6Months, I can just cancel my month to month with no $150 fee...it works for me...

Yeah, the nintendo snub of sony over the NESCD is one of the most famous events in the video game industry. I remember it as a case study in business school (international business) that basically the folks at sony took it as a hit to their honor and being Japanese Sony did something about it. Now Sony is the #1 console in the world and Nintendo is a distant #2 (maybe #3) It's clear now that the PS3 is going to have some serious competition from Microsoft as the X-box 360 will have been out on the market a year and have more titles available including the first next gen Halo title. I've been saving my money for a while as I use Macs at home for work purposes and I think the Xbox 360 will be my choice later this fall. Until then my PS2 has been good for last three years...

I started with Slackware 2 on a 486DX with 8MB of Ram upgraded at a later point to AMD P75 chip that made the machine a 133Mhz 486DX and upgraded to a whopping 20MB of Ram. (I still have this machine since it the last one still with a functioning 5.25" disk drive. I did so because Linux was this uber leet thing for computer nerds and half the battle was getting it to actually install. And then as my dad said, "great you got it to install on the old computer, now what do you use it for?" I think I stared there with a blank face because I had no idea. And truth be told, unless you were running a server in those days, there wasn't a lot that Linux could do...Well that was good because I designed web-pages in High School ten years ago and make a lot of money, you could charge $150 a page back then, and eventually I learned the basics of Perl programming, SQL thanks to MySQL and then on to PHP. When I got into college, I thought about CS, but quickly found out after a couple real programming courses that computers were more of a hobby, not a career choice for me. Then I started doing consulting for a couple dot com start ups and got to reading about FreeBSD. Well I got both of those companies set up through Pair.com and got FreeBSD 3.4 to install on my then PII 450 with 256MB of Ram as a test server. About this time Apple made the switch to OS 10. 10.0 sucked, had a lot of problems like not being able to burn CD's and such so i waited. Then the Summer of 2002 I needed a new laptop, my Viao P233 was dying so I Ebayed and bought an iBook. I've been Apple ever since. To me, Linux was a stepping stone between Dos/Windows to the Unix world. It's like cheap coffee to me. It's okay and till you get a hold of the good stuff (real Unix) and then it tastes like crap. Anyhow, over the years programming and webpages (I still do a few, like the one for church and stuff) my interest in it wained quite a bit, but interest in 3D animation started to peak. That's how I landed my last job, I did a bunch of animation for our architecture students including setting up ScreamerNet and 3D Studio Max's network rendering cluster in the computer labs. One of the students went on to work for a small video production company and when I graduated they offered me a position based on his recomendation. They were all Macintosh and switching to OSX based machines and I knew the Unix background so.....I went Linux->FreeBSD->OpenBSD->Mac OS -> nice paying job right of out college at a fun place to work -> lived at home for two years to save a butt load of money -> now on to Lawschool and what I really want to do for a career. Funny now that I think about it...

I hve the video and love it. I've doing some work down on our farms helping move dirt to level one of the smaller fields. It's a lot of long tedious hours. So I have my video iPod and an older AM/FM cassette walkman in my cab. I can watch episodes of Battlestar Galactica I've downloaded, or listen to the audio mainly, and my itunes library and then when the battery dies, switch to my walkman and listen to talk radio or a cassettes I've recorded from way back when. Also, I just got an attechment where I can record onto my ipod. I create video biographies for folks, so I can have the show me photos and record them talking about it to use as voice over in the movies with surprisingly good quality. I do that on the side to help pay living expenses while going to law school. I also use the microhpone to record class session and then use a program on my PowerBook that does a fair job of converting the recording into physical notes in Microsoft Word that I can then print. This works out great for me because I am one of those people that are either listening to a lecture or taking notes, I can't do both. So this allows me to listen, and I have an excellent memory, and have notes to refrence to remember exactly who said what...etc. Battery life is still the one down side. Now at Law school, I have plug ins at all my desks so I can charge it there during class, but on the tractor...no such luck.I hve the video and love it. I've doing some work down on our farms helping move dirt to level one of the smaller fields. It's a lot of long tedious hours. So I have my video iPod and an older AM/FM cassette walkman in my cab. I can watch episodes of Battlestar Galactica I've downloaded, or listen to the audio mainly, and my itunes library and then when the battery dies, switch to my walkman and listen to talk radio or a cassettes I've recorded from way back when. Also, I just got an attechment where I can record onto my ipod. I create video biographies for folks, so I can have the show me photos and record them talking about it to use as voice over in the movies with surprisingly good quality. I do that on the side to help pay living expenses while going to law school. I also use the microhpone to record class session and then use a program on my PowerBook that does a fair job of converting the recording into physical notes in Microsoft Word that I can then print. This works out great for me because I am one of those people that are either listening to a lecture or taking notes, I can't do both. So this allows me to listen, and I have an excellent memory, and have notes to refrence to remember exactly who said what...etc. Battery life is still the one down side. Now at Law school, I have plug ins at all my desks so I can charge it there during class, but on the tractor...no such luck.

Yep. I probably still have it too somewhere in a box. It was the game that game with the original Genesis console (Which I still have that as well and it still works 15 years later....wow it's really been that long). It was good game, but my gradmother (used to take it to play at her house) hated the "rise from the grave" part. Good ole Southern Baptists lady bless her heart. But I still remember it.

Might sound funny, but there is one thing Google lacks: Steve Jobs.iTunes would not have been possible without Jobs' substantial links to the entertainment companies thanks to his ownership of Pixar and now a seat on the Disney Board of Directors. Remember, it was a techie (jobs) who was able to get the record companies to make a fair deal on electronic music sales online. It was a failure by the RIAA because they couldn't figure out how to make such a system work. Even now the record companies are trying their own thing of getting used to the idea of "renting music" instead of "owning" it. I think that is a model that Entertainment in general is trying to get people to buy into now. Think about it: 30 years ago there was cable and very few people had it. Today, just about everyone pays some kind of fee for their television service whether it be through a Dish or Cable. Google may have a following and branding power, but I am unsure how that will give them the same leverage as a Steve Jobs. A lot of Apple is driven by his personality like it or not. Personally I wonder when Google is going to become a bad word. Twenty years ago Microsoft and their products Office were great innovation that challanged the dominence of IBM in the business world. Today MS is the devil, and I have a feeling in 2015 Google will become the bad guys in public opinion.

I just bought a friend's 1.33Ghz G4 Powerbook with 2GB of Ram. He wanted to get the new Macbook Pro, and all my software is PPC based. I know there is rosetta, but since I am using Pro Apps (Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, etc) and not all my hardware have drivers for OSX Intel (like my video capture device and scanner) I needed to buy a new laptop to use for the next 18 months or so when I plan to get a new OSX-Intel system with all the bugs worked out. He sold me the unit for USD 850 since it needed a new battery. Now is the unit as powerful as either my Dual 1.25 Ghz G4 PowerMac at home? No, but it's good enough for the video editing I do. Typically I will do all my editing work, save to an external firewire drive, then use my big tower to render while I start on the next project at my favorite coffee shop. It works out better for me too, because when I'm in my condo, I don't do work. I watch TV, play on the internet, post here, do everything, but work. Since my Cell phone is my business line, I can work from anywhere with an electrical outlet. Granted, is FCP or PS quite as responsive as my tower? No, but I can live with that in exchange for the mobility.From time to time I do go in the road. Not much else to do in the hotel room so I can usually have my rough cuts done by the end of the day. I create memior/biographical videos for people, so being able to scan in their pictures for use in the documentry is a nice thing to have on the road. I don't have to worry about taking them to my condo, them getting lost in the mail, me loosing them, etc. I can do it in their own home while I'm there to shoot video. Chances are when this tower is useless, I'll be hard pressed to by another one and sometime fall of 2007 I plan to buy a new Mactel. These days, for me, laptops just make more sense. I'll take slightly less power for the mobility trade off anyday.

I think xbox was thining of the Macbook Pro (Intel based Powerbook) with the "Macbook" being the replacement for the iBook. I know they are supposed to be out before the new school year starts this fall. Still I'm not buying. I just purchased my friend's powerbook for $800 with new battery (1.25Ghz G4, 1GB Ram, Superdrive, Airport Extreme) because he wanted one of the new Macbook Pros. (ones of those "must have latest and greatest)However, still the bulk of the software I run is PPC based and until the Pro Apps get their ports and Lightwave has a Mactel port, there is no reason to spend the money. I figure that the $800 I spent will last me another 18 months at which time I'll see what the options are then. But for now I'm sticking with the PPC.(oh not to mention drivers for my video capture devices, scanners, etc...)

The best use of Antimatter to get useful power maybe as a trigger for a fusion reactor. It would take a realtively small amount to start the reation, which we have the technology today to sustain and draw power from a fusion reactor. The problem is it takes a lot of energy to get the reaction started at this point. The problem with Anti-matter is containment. It is destroyed almost as soon as it's created. Now the other edge of that sword is that it antimatter could also be used to create a 4th generation Clean Fusion weapon. Again remove the current fission trigger (a standard atomic bomb) and replace it with an anti-matter trigger and you have a nice large (or small) thermonuclear weapon without all those nasty lingering after effects such as radioactive fall-out. (our current generation of fusion/thermonuclear/h-bombs are Fission-fusion hybrids. The fission reaction is what produces the fall out)Now a pure fusion bomb is a relatively clean weapon. Most of the radiation released is thermo radiation (heat) and gamma rays. Both are short lived with no long term after effects. In fact, the gamma rays produced in low yeild pure fusion devices might have some good uses, such as sterilizing large areas contimanted with biological agents. The only long term radioactive conquences would be from the neutron-flux (shower of neutrons released by any thermonuclear/fusion reaction) that can be absorbed by several materials making them radioactive, but mostly short term. For instance: Gold will turn into AU-198 which is radioactive for about a week, but there are some other materials that could have some problems like cobalt. Cobalt turns into Cobalt-60 which produces ionizing radiation for about a decade. (7 years half-life) Currently there are "salted nukes" that are laced with Cobalt-59 just to make more fall-out. (enhanced radiation devices). These are Fission-Fusion-Fission weapons (3rd generation nukes). Because pure fusion devices would have the lower side effects, there is an increased chance that they would actually be used since you could make devices from 10 tons upto many megatons and in cases, like eliminating a stockpile of Chemical or biological weapons. So it is a double edged sword. like Atomic energy, it can be used for peaceful power purposes or to create weapons and would be used for both.

If it wasn''t for a couple plug ins I need for work that are photoshop only, I could easily get by with just GIMP. For somethings, I think GIMP has more features than Photoshop. So I use both.

For the record, I've hated DHTML scripting since day one. Why: it never works on all browsers...and probably never will. With that said here is the site: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ The CMS is Xoops 2.x.x (I can't remember the exact version). Anyway, I am using the Content Module's DHTML Site Menu...correct that, the client wants to use it over the static version (which works, but is boring). I would like to use something that is already intergrated into the CMS so that they can use it in the future without having to know any programing. (whole point of setting up a CMS in the first place, make it easy for staff and members to update and use the site more). Here are the problems: FireFox/Mozilla/Netscape - The Menu has the large bullets and places a space in between the bullet and the text making them two lines. Very annoying and looks horrible. MSIE - The Menu text is extremely small. General Problems with Xoops - There are the main CSS files and then each block has its own CSS files. Pain in the rear to find and trouble shoot stuff. ****************** Now this is a well known, and documented, problem with the module and I exhausted xoops.org's web forums for solutions so I am going to try and fix it even if I have to make a bastardized solution. Here is the code from the DHTML Site Menu CSS file: <div class="blockTitle">Main Menu</div><div class="blockContent"><style type="text/css" media="screen"> @import "tanfa.css";/**************** menu coding *****************/#menu {width: 100%;} /* Width of Individual Menu */#menu ul ul { border:1px solid #FF9933; background-color:#C3CEE1; margin-top:5px;} /* style of submenus *//*******No Need To Edit Below Here***********/#menu ul {list-style: none;margin: 0;padding: 0;}#menu li {position: relative;}#menu ul ul {position: absolute;top: 0;left: 100%;width: 100%;}div#menu ul ul{display: none;}div#menu ul li:hover ul{display: block;}/***** General formatting only ****/</style><!--[if IE]><style type="text/css" media="screen">body {behavior: url(http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/; 100%;} #menu ul li {float: left; width: 100%;}#menu ul li a {height: 1%;} #menu a, #menu h2 {font: bold 0.7em/1.4em arial, helvetica, sans-serif;} </style><![endif]--> In the main style.css file called, there are no defined #menu options. *********** I've been thinking of ways around this. Option #1 Change all the #menu options to #dhtmlmenu in the Site Menu CSS file. Then in the StyleNN.css (where you can place optional code for NN/FF/Moz/etc) define all the #dhtml.menu variables for NN users. Then in the other file for MSIE users: create #dhtmlmenu settings for IE. Any other ideas or thoughts or solutions? Isolated MSIE problem to this part of the code: <!--[if IE]><style type="text/css" media="screen">body {behavior: url(<{$xoops_url}>/modules/content/csshover.htc);font-size: 100%;} #menu ul li {float: left; width: 100%;}#menu ul li a {height: 1%;} #menu a, #menu h2 {font: bold 0.7em/1.4em arial, helvetica, sans-serif;} </style><![endif]--> does those [if] tags and brackets look odd to anyone else?

My Dad found that out earlier when he went to get new antivirus software and none of them supported Win 98 and got a notice from the Tax people that his accounting program will no longer support Windows 98 after its last release. As far as support for outdated systems, DEC and SUN are two names that come to mind. I was working at a business once that was still running it's inventory software on Solaris 2. When it broke, Sun sent someone out to fix it. That was in 1998 or 1999 (can't remember now). I think they installed the computer system back in the in 1980's. Granted, you pay through the nose up front and later for those support contracts.Win 98 has been around for 8 years. Most consumers have upgraded their systems by now or will be forced to soon as their systems have been obsolete for quite sometime. My Dad will be buying a new computer this year and proably will be another Windows box. I use Macintosh myself, but with the current switchover to Intel chips and software lagging, I'm not sure if Quicken has new versions out for Mactel yet.

MS Access would be my first choice. It comes with a large set of tools to create a custom program from within the application. If you need more customization, then you can get a few books on Visual Basic, which is the language of choice for writing business applications. The last version VB I used was VB6 about 5 years ago and was able to do a lot of things using VB in conjuction with Access 2000. (For the record, since that time I've moved to working in an *iux enviroment [bSD server side, OSX workstation] with Perl, PHP, MySQL and PostgreSQL)Again, your likely to find more people with Access experience than any other database system. Someday any system you create is going to have to be used and supported. Anyone that takes an Office Application class has at least exposure to Access. Here in the states, Access classes are widely (and cheaply) available through junior/community colleges and there are a number of companies that offer more costly training programs. Likewise, Visual Basic can be found at many tech school/community colleges that offer night classes. In fact I learned VB in college. Took it as my Comp Sci 101 class required for my business degree. I got to take it in place of the normal "how to use Office" since I had been an Office beta tester and written a couple Excel macros back in the High School days. (yeah big computer nerd back then...not quite as much today)At first I would try creating something around the Tools built in to Access and if you can get what you want there: learn VB.Net (or whatever the latest version is these days)

Remember this: You can have cheap, fast, and good. Pick two. Here is the simple truth about databases and the task your looking for: any major Database is going to do the job pretty well. The key is finding the software package you need that will fit your needs, not the database it runs on. Now if the software has the option between different databases, then there are some questions to ask like: Can I get tech support for Access or *SQL easier? Will I ever have more than 100k people through my office(s)? Etc. I glanced over the program the other poster recommended, and it looks like it will fit most of your needs, however one big problem: it's designed for use in the United States. How is that a problem? Well Accounting and tax laws in the United States is not the same as in Israel. The other possible problem is that the program is written in English and I doubt it has support for Hebrew. Also possible problems with the way phone numbers are inputed, addresses and postal codes, etc.. As far as a system that meets all your demands...if you want that your going to have to hire a programmer or custom software company and have them code something for you. Especially if you want it to work in any enviroment. It will either have to be JAVA based or a web-based system hosted on an Intranet-server. Both are quite doable. Now if your willing to stick with Windows, then the problem becomes easier to solve because there are just more business programs written for windows. Likewise, you decide on OSX, then you can find something or have something developed for that platform. Now where to look: Frankly, you may have better luck with searching through European software offerings rather than American. Especially for SMS support because we don't use it in the States. Therefore, most software packages don't have it. Also, ask other dentists you know. They have to use something. And then if they all hate what they are using, contact me and I'm sure I can put a team together to create something. Sounds like to me that there is a need to be filled. (yeah, that's the International Business degree talking) Some sites to look at https://www.dentisoft.com/ - US site http://www.science.co.il/Electronics-Companies.asp - Israeli electronics companies/software companies. http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Medicine-HOWTO-2.html - list of Linux based applications (some including web-based solutions that any platform could use)