Kimberly Allen

In the distant past, people entertained themselves by telling stories, singing songs or maybe fighting each other. To look at this in a very reductive way, you could say that little has changed. Instead of listening to storytellers, we watch TV and films; instead of singing songs, we listen to our favorite tunes using our smartphones; and instead of fighting each other, we shoot each other in virtual online arenas. In actuality, entertainment has changed significantly. In recent years, it has been the internet that has been the biggest driver of change in the entertainment industry.

Music

Until very recently, the internet was seen as the death of the music industry. Why was this? Well, the music industry hit its peak in 1998, when CDs dominated sales – the music industry made an absolutely enormous $27.8bn before the decline began. The phrase “Party like it’s 1999” comes to mind. The party stopped once physical music sales declined in the face of cheaper digital pricing and rampant piracy – do you remember file-sharing services such as LimeWire and Napster? Funnily enough, if you make it free for people to download their favorite music instantly (well, as instantly as downloads could be in 1999), then you might see a decline in sales of CDs.

However, it seems that the internet is both responsible for the music industry’s mortal wounding and its resurrection. In 2016, it was reported that the music industry finally grew after roughly 15 years of decline. Thanks to services such as Spotify, you can now listen to as much music as you like for free, either by paying a subscription or being forced to listen to adverts every so often. YouTube sees millions and even billions of people watching the latest music videos – television is no longer the home of music videos. This doesn’t mean that physical sales are in decline – people continue to buy CDs, vinyl and even cassettes.

Video games

Before the internet became widespread, video games were enjoyed either alone or with players sitting on the same couch. The popularization of online multiplayer in video games happened in the 1990s, as games such as Doom, Quake and Counter-Strike became genuine phenomena with players all over the world happily shooting each other.

As multiplayer became a real money-maker through the Halo and Call of Duty series, other game publishers and developers started tacking multiplayer modes onto their single-player games. Games with story-driven single-player modes such as BioShock 2 and Spec Ops: The Line were released with half-baked multiplayer modes. This is a trend that has died off a little and now multiplayer and online-only games are in the ascendancy, with games such as Destiny 2, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegroundsand Fortnite all reaching the heights of success. As well as video gaming, the internet has also changed the way that we play other games. You can now buy lottery tickets online here – see if you can get California Lottery winning numberstoday.

The internet has had other effects on gaming. The free-to-play model is something that cannot work without online because the games make their money from in-game transactions, which you need an internet connection to carry out. Additionally, updates and patches are things that the internet has brought about. Before the internet, when a game was released with a bug, there was no way for the developers to fix it. Now, developers can release patches for players to download to fix any bugs, and the same can be done for any new content that they release.

TV and film

The internet has introduced us to streaming services, allowing us the option of never going outside again. Before, you would have to buy a DVD box set if you wanted to waste an entire afternoon watching TV or films, but now you can simply go to your streaming platform of choice and look through large libraries of films and television. Netflix is starting to take on cinemas by producing films and then releasing them first on the streaming service instead of at cinemas. All of this makes finding and watching films and TV much more convenient for consumers.

Conclusion

The internet has had an enormous impact on so many things, even beyond entertainment – dating, politics, socializing, shopping, job searching and much more are forever changed. Films, TV, music and video games have all gone through upheaval and change thanks to the internet, with some products thriving and others not evolving to keep up.

Travelling has been made easy and convenient with the launch of various applications that people can use anywhere any time. Even the smart phone provide people with the ease of sharing location and GPS tacking so that one can inform other about the present location. Parents can always be aware of the location of the children if they wish to and hence safety and security is ensured with such applications. Locating a place and reaching the same in the shortest time period along the shortest path can be done easily.

One does not have to depend upon the road or street signs or on someone who is well aware of the locality for finding a location. One just open the my maps app, feed the destination and the application automatically find out the location and match with the current location and then suggest the user with the facilities like distance, road to be taken and even the conveyance in details that might be an option if the person is not driving himself.

All these features make the smart phone apps a must on every device. These apps work over the principles of satellite view but street view online is the new addition to this family that offers people with a panoramic view of the roads one need to have a look at. The various features of street view online are as follows-

• As instant street view online is the new member of the maps family, it inherits some existing feature of the maps app like it finds direction, helps ion navigating to a location and point out the destination easily but the new thing in this app is one can save all the directions and destinations so that one does not have to search for it again. One can simply open the asp and find out the saved things to navigate easily. Along with saving directions one can also save the map of a location or address to be viewed afterwards.
• It is one of the most convenient maps app t be used by the travellers as it provides one with the instant street view at any point of time. One can see the present view of the street along with other functions that a map is supposed to have for making things convenient for the users.
• It shows traffic conditions on the roads so that one can make a choice to reach the destination fast without having to get stuck in traffic.
• The app is easy to use and any person can learn to use it in no time. It is extremely user friendly and one can be sure about the results it shows. The app is designed to provide users with the correct result at any moment.

Install the instant street view online app to experience the next generation of maps and make all yo0ur travels far more convenient than it was ever before. Few clicks and one can land up with a personal guide for free.

 

Many of us know about Tor, but there are only few who know what it is and how it works. Many believe that Tor is illegal to use while a number of people are using Tor to keep their identity anonymous while browsing through the web. Tor is the abbreviation to the ‘The Onion Router’. It is a network of servers that was initially developed by the US army to help people browse through the internet anonymously.

Tor is now used as a privacy tool that protects your identity while you browse through the internet. Tor moves your traffic through different encrypted servers making it impossible to track you. Anyone trying to track you will only see the traffic coming different sources rather than your computer.

Is it Illegal to Use Tor Network?

Though Tor is not illegal to use, still, if you are using it to access the dark web or a content that is banned in your country then you are a part of illegal activity. So, your usage of Tor decides whether it’s illegal to use Tor or not. However, Tor can be used to access the deep web data for research purposes. The best advantage is that no one can ever find what actually you are doing on the internet.

All you have to do is download the Tor browser and install it on your device. It comes with pre-configured settings, just ensure than you have disabled the JavaScript option on the browser. If your internet speed is slow, Tor sucks. Tor is a bit slow in processing and slow internet speed adds to it.

Facts to Know About Tor

• Tor hides the identity of the users with the technique called ‘Hopping’. This technique is responsible for hiding your identity worldwide and encrypts your traffic as well.
• You can browse the onion websites on Tor that are not accessible on normal web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc.
• 30% of people around the globe use Tor to access the dark web.
• You can volunteer your computer system to be the part of Tor Network.
• Tor can run on almost every operating system, but works fabulously well on Linux systems.

The Poor Side of Tor

Just like anything else in the world, Tor also has a poor side. Tor allows the users to access illegal content as well such as geo-restricted videos, dark web websites, and other stuff on the web. Moreover, due to relay servers, the speed of data transfer is much slower than expected. You need to keep patience while using Tor on your system.

The End Note

Tor is one of the best browsers to access the deep web content while preserving your online identity. It can be downloaded from its official website and that too free of cost. So, if you are looking to browse the web anonymously, Tor browser can turn out to be the best option. Using Tor is totally legal unless you are using it for illegal purposes.

One of the most important steps of database migration from Microsoft SQL server to PostgreSQL is processing views. Syntax of CREATE VIEW queries in MS SQL and PostgreSQL is similar but not the same. The primary challenge of conversion process is that these two DBMS have distinguished sets of built-in functions. Consequently, each CREATE VIEW statement must be converted into the appropriate equivalent before importing into the destination database. This article discovers the most important patterns of converting views from SQL Server to PostgreSQL.

1) There are embedded functions in MS SQL that have on direct equivalent in PostgreSQL. Such functions must be implemented manually as follows:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION datediff(date, date)

RETURNS int AS $$

SELECT $1 – $2

$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

/*

*/

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION isdate(text) RETURNS INT AS $$

DECLARE x TIMESTAMP;

BEGIN

     if ($1 is null) then return 0; end if;

     x = $1::TIMESTAMP;

    RETURN 1;

EXCEPTION WHEN others THEN

    RETURN 0;

END;

$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

/*

*/

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION isnumeric(text) RETURNS BOOLEAN AS $$

DECLARE x NUMERIC;

BEGIN

    x = $1::NUMERIC;

    RETURN TRUE;

EXCEPTION WHEN others THEN

    RETURN FALSE;

END;

$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

/*

*/

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION patindex(

pattern VARCHAR,

expression VARCHAR)

RETURNS INT AS $$

     SELECT

           COALESCE( STRPOS($2, (

                SELECT( REGEXP_MATCHES( $2,'(‘ ||

REPLACE(

REPLACE(

TRIM( $1, ‘%’ ), ‘%’, ‘.*?’ ), ‘_’, ‘.’ ) || ‘)’) )[ 1 ] LIMIT 1 ) ), 0

           );

$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

2) Function ISNULL($var, $expr) that returns $expr if $var is NULL in MS SQL, must be replaced by PostgreSQL equivalent COALESCE($var, $expr)

3) Function GETDATE() returns the current date/time in SQL Server, it must be replaced by NOW() in PostgreSQL

4) Function DATEADD($interval, $n, $datetime) is used to add specified interval to $datetime in SQL Server. PostgreSQL allows to implement the same using operator ‘+’ as follows:

If $interval=’day’ then SELECT ($datetime + $n * interval ‘1 day’)::date

If $interval=’month’ then SELECT ($datetime + $n * interval ‘1 month’)::date

If $interval=’year’ then SELECT ($datetime + $n * interval ‘1 year’)::date

5) SQL Server provides multiple functions to extract particular part of the date/time value such as DAY(), MONTH(), YEAR(). These functions must be replaced by DATE_PART() in PostgreSQL as follows:

YEAR(datetime) -> DATE_PART(‘year’, datetime)

MONTH(datetime) -> DATE_PART(‘month’, datetime)

DAY(datetime) -> DATE_PART(‘day’, datetime)

6) In SQL Server function CHARINDEX get position of substring in the specified string, it has direct equivalent in PostgreSQL called POSITION

The guide above indicated that converting MS SQL queries into PostgreSQL format is not an easy procedure. It is reasonable to use special tools to automate the conversion, especially for large databases with a lot of views. One of such migration tools is MS SQL to PostgreSQL converter offered by Intelligent Converters, software vendor working in database migration field more than 15 years. The tool handles more than 80% of all possible syntax constructions used in CREATE VIEW queries. The price for the product is $49 that includes lifetime license, 1-year subscription for updates and 24/7 support.

More details about MS SQL to PostgreSQL converter can be found on the official page:  https://www.convert-in.com/mss2pgs.htm