samh

Any universe in which a thinking being exists will be suited to the existence of that thinking being.

No one can claim "isn't it suprising that the universe suits me" because anyone who can say it, can say it :)

Yep That's the crux of it.

I wish the poster all the best, I just thought it was amusing.

Exactly. But there are legal issues with that, if you say "Here is our legal agreement, here is another agreement I want you to read" in court people will argue they should only be held to the agreement they were asked to read.

I agree with you, but we cant solve the problem with having a 'legal' and a 'human readable' version, we need the legal version to be human readable (ok ok lawyers are humans also :) )

It's claimed that legal language is needed because it's more precise, that's not true.

Take a relatively simple legal case in which no facts are in disputer, ask 5 highly paid barristers for an opinion on the case and compare.

People have claimed his videos are sped up, nope.

The analogy begins :

You have just come from your annual medical checkup, where your doctor assures you that you are in robust health.

Walking jauntily down the street, you bump into a practitioner of alternative medicine. He takes one look at you and declares “You have a serious tumour! It must be removed or you will die”.

You ignore him as you always have, and continue your merry way down the street. One day later, a stabbing pain suddenly cripples you, and you collapse to the pavement.

Well obviously I can't communicate the full idea of "The Greatest Book Ever Written" in a comment, but I'll try :)

Strange things happen when you have 'recursion' / 'strange loops' / 'self reflection' / 'mirroring' / 'strange entanglement' / 'entangled heirachies' etc.

What are some examples ?

- "This statement is false" is true or false ? - The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, position and momentum of a particle cannot both be known because they each influence each other. - Turing Halting problem proof when a program is executed using itself as input. - Human self awareness ? If I think about what I'm thinking about what am I thinking about ? - Godel's proof that any formal system strong enough to be useful is either incomplete or inconsistent, to use an analogy he proves this by stating in the language of the system the statement "this statement cannot be proved in this system". If it can be proved the system lied (is inconsistent) or if it cannot be proved the statement is a truth that the system cannot prove and hence the system is incomplete. (Obviously he doesn't use statements like that, he uses facts about the natural numbers but the same principle applies) - Chandelier cells in the brain, thought to contain an internal model of the brain's state. A model of the brain within the brain. Do they contain a model of themselves ?

Ok, so if this 'recursion' / 'strange loops' business is mysterious, present at the heart of all interesting systems it must be pretty special, it must require magic or devine intervention to come about, surely ? Nup, simple examples such as the 'game of life' can show amazing complexity and even this sort of 'self awareness' emerging from a simple initial state and a simple set of rules.

Best I've got at the moment.

I totally disagree. I mean for a start you seem to think the book was about Godel's theorem. It was about something more general, that's Godel's theorem was merely one instance of, what exactly that general thing is..... is probably the heart of almost all philosophy. But that's just my take :)

I remember the feeling of awe when I read it for the first time. My excitement was palpable.

Hofstadter has said that it's an often mis-described book, that to sum it up it is about how complexity and even self-awareness can naturally spring from simplicity.

If you are smart in an analytical way and haven't read this book, read it.

Noted : Add one Squirrel.

Are you Scott Adams ?

Thanks joez,

Of course! how did I miss adding a ninja reference :)

The links definitely make your point about the amount of text :)

Fair enough points blhack.

I guess your issues with the comic itself are why I want help to improve it, but I can see what you're saying about it taking a while for anyone to really understand it.

Maybe it was a bad idea to submit this :)

At the risk of being too much of a smart-arse maybe some self-referencing could work in the comic.

"Hey dude I hear you're appearing in a comic today.."

yes I see your point hughprime.

I guess the altruism motive is why I didn't mention the reward in the title, I didn't want that to be the main thing.

Attention for my startup is great but if I can get something really funny / interesting into the comic then it becomes more interesting and provides more value to people, so when I use it it's less spammy.

Hi,

I paid to have a 1 page comic drawn to help promote my startup product.

The artist did a great job but I think the concept / dialogue that I came up with is not as great.

Check it out and see if you can come up with something better.

Thanks SamH

Thanks again Amir, I appreciate all your ideas.

What do you think about this : http://www.querycell.com/captionMe.html

I need help with my Comic Ad.

Thanks for the ideas amih!

Thanks caffeine and frig.

I now understand what you is being suggested.

Yes it's true, that is not how QueryCell currently works.

I will have a think about this idea. My first impression is that it would be quite complicated to implement and get right but very powerful if done well.

Thanks Guys.

Thanks for the idea caffeine.

I don't quite follow though. To use querycell you load a normal Excel file into Excel. You can then open the QueryCell pane to query the regions of data in the open worksheet/workbooks.

The result sets returned from queries are then added to a new 'resultset' worksheet.

So as it stands you can pass around spreadsheets you have used with QueryCell to people without QueryCell.

Let me know if I misunderstand.

Cheers

That's great to hear. If once you've taken a look you have any feedback, positive or negative, I would love to hear about it. The contact details are on the site.

Cheers

Thanks for your honest opinion sfphotoarts.

I would say in defense that:

- The return time doesn't scale with the number of rows returned. I have just run a query that queried 6 tables, invoked numerous string concatenations, included 2 MOD functions, 2 RAND functions and returned 22,000 rows, it took 11 seconds. This is not up to database performance of course.

- There is a static overhead to running a query, and that's much greater in QueryCell than in a database directly.

- QueryCell is not meant to replace databases, just make life easier for people working in Excel.

It was pretty much the 'countless hours trying to use formulas' that made me think about QueryCell.

Cheers

Thanks for the suggestion, I will have a think about it.

The table names can be changed, you could click on the default letter name, 'A' for example, and rename it to SALES_NUMBERS for example.

I see the sense in using the worksheet name although there may be complications if there were multiple data regions on the same sheet or if the sheet name was long, as there isn't a huge amount of screen real-estate for the regions grid.

Thanks for the food for thought.

Thanks SpooneyBarger.

Thanks for these opinions all.

I can see the arguments both for and against wizards and gui query tools.

On the one hand I personally agree with the jcdreads and viggity. These sorts of interfaces are very difficult to get right and dilute the SQL focus.

On the other hand a number of people have suggested going this way, so people do think it would be useful.

I have no immediate plans to go this way but I intend to be responsive to what customers request.

Cheers

Thanks for the feedback all.

@smicallef

Yes the idea of Microsoft proving a similar functionality is scary, but I feel a little bit like "if they were going to do it they would have done it", also they have access to protect. But maybe I am in for an unpleasant suprise, certainly a risk.

@tzury

Yes there is an interesting marketing proposition here in my opinion. I can either market to heavy Excel users who don't use SQL yet or market to SQL users who occasionally find themselves using Excel. It's an interesting one. At the moment I am leaning more towards SQL users, they can immediately see the possibilities. hmmm.

Clickable Links

http://www.querycell.com/welcome.html

http://www.querycell.com