It's actually pretty amazing what has been accomplished with "Digital Command Control" (DCC) in this hobby in the past few years. Try Googling "DCC MODEL RAILROAD"
Have you ever noticed that one side of the "V" that geese fly in is always longer than the other side? The space junk tracking facility that Hadlock mentioned finally figured out why this is.
FWIW, this is the way a lot of us lawyer-types do it, by creating an OCR/PDF combo file. This is done all the time in litigation discovery. A stack of documents come in, they're scanned to PDF and OCR'd at the same time to create a searchable index while preserving the original appearance. Sometimes we auto-bate stampp them too via an Acrobat plug-in, to give a numerical index to a stack of otherwise non-indexed documents. But you'll have the original page number per book to work with, so this step won't be necessary. This gives you the dual benefits of having an identical page image (PDF) plus a searchable index (OCR). It doesn't matter whether the OCR is 100% accurate or not, as you'll likely catch most words and that'll be enough to lead you to the general area of the text where'll you'll find your answer. Plus, the PDF will allow you to still use the original publisher's page index and table of contents when you need it. Because you'll be working from nice clean page texts, your OCR accuracy rates should be pretty high, too.
ATTENTION ALL IOWANS: If you are in Iowa, this is especially timely, as the Iowa legislature is considering whether to allow citizens the so-called "private action" right. Iowa is just about the only state in the union that does not allow its citizens the right to sue directly, under their own name, companies that violate our consumer/trade protection laws. Contact your legislator and tell him/her that this is a great example of how your rights are dependent upon whether or not the Iowa AG decides a particular case is important to prosecute or not. Iowa's AG, Tom Miller, has taken an aggressive stance against MS and Iowans should be proud that he didn't back off like the feds did. Adding the private right of action would in no way detract from the AG's rights, but would simply give consumers another option.
The searches do not violate the 4th Amendment because the search is not being conducted by law enforcement. Your reasoning that "the only reason to search is to find something so as to prosecute in a court of law" would nullify EVERY single search by any person or entity, whether law enforcement or not, if that person then turned over any illegal/suspicious substance to the police, who then chose to prosecute based upon some fact or knowledge gained during the search. Further, the 4th Amendment only protects against "unreasonable" searches.
I agree that we must be very, very careful not to lose our freedoms in the rush to discover or prevent future plots. There is a fine line between paranois and prudence in this field and most public officials tend to rather quickly gravitate toward over-zealousness, and give our civil liberties short-shrift.
I think that the "HandyShopper" Palm app developer has got a desktop version of his list software out now that will actually use a CueCat to grab product UPC's, write the data into the app and it appears on your Palm. Finally, a productive use of the 'Cat.
Slashdot Mirror
That's already been done: http://www.iowafarmer.com/corncam/corn.html
It's actually pretty amazing what has been accomplished with "Digital Command Control" (DCC) in this hobby in the past few years. Try Googling "DCC MODEL RAILROAD"
Have you ever noticed that one side of the "V" that geese fly in is always longer than the other side? The space junk tracking facility that Hadlock mentioned finally figured out why this is.
:)
There's more geese in it.
FWIW, this is the way a lot of us lawyer-types do it, by creating an OCR/PDF combo file. This is done all the time in litigation discovery. A stack of documents come in, they're scanned to PDF and OCR'd at the same time to create a searchable index while preserving the original appearance. Sometimes we auto-bate stampp them too via an Acrobat plug-in, to give a numerical index to a stack of otherwise non-indexed documents. But you'll have the original page number per book to work with, so this step won't be necessary. This gives you the dual benefits of having an identical page image (PDF) plus a searchable index (OCR). It doesn't matter whether the OCR is 100% accurate or not, as you'll likely catch most words and that'll be enough to lead you to the general area of the text where'll you'll find your answer. Plus, the PDF will allow you to still use the original publisher's page index and table of contents when you need it. Because you'll be working from nice clean page texts, your OCR accuracy rates should be pretty high, too.
ATTENTION ALL IOWANS: If you are in Iowa, this is especially timely, as the Iowa legislature is considering whether to allow citizens the so-called "private action" right. Iowa is just about the only state in the union that does not allow its citizens the right to sue directly, under their own name, companies that violate our consumer/trade protection laws. Contact your legislator and tell him/her that this is a great example of how your rights are dependent upon whether or not the Iowa AG decides a particular case is important to prosecute or not. Iowa's AG, Tom Miller, has taken an aggressive stance against MS and Iowans should be proud that he didn't back off like the feds did. Adding the private right of action would in no way detract from the AG's rights, but would simply give consumers another option.
The searches do not violate the 4th Amendment because the search is not being conducted by law enforcement. Your reasoning that "the only reason to search is to find something so as to prosecute in a court of law" would nullify EVERY single search by any person or entity, whether law enforcement or not, if that person then turned over any illegal/suspicious substance to the police, who then chose to prosecute based upon some fact or knowledge gained during the search. Further, the 4th Amendment only protects against "unreasonable" searches.
I agree that we must be very, very careful not to lose our freedoms in the rush to discover or prevent future plots. There is a fine line between paranois and prudence in this field and most public officials tend to rather quickly gravitate toward over-zealousness, and give our civil liberties short-shrift.
I think that the "HandyShopper" Palm app developer has got a desktop version of his list software out now that will actually use a CueCat to grab product UPC's, write the data into the app and it appears on your Palm. Finally, a productive use of the 'Cat.