But, for us "young" people, it's common to get out of the car without ever grounding. Happens to me all the time... 9/10 times when I go to shut the door, I expect to get a static shock. Happens so often that I'm now very careful at the pump. Discharge on your car, before you accidentally/unknowingly discharge into the pump.
I doubt you'd get a fire like that - unless there's pools of petrol giving off enough vapour nearby. The pump handle itself wouldn't provide a path to earth unless it's 'docked' in the pump. I wonder if the pumps are earthed or not - earthed would give sparks through grounding the user of course. I was assuming that the spark came from the user being grounded through the car at a point adjacent to the open filler which would be giving off a fairly rich fuel/air mixture. Does anyone know if these fires occur while pumping or while opening the filler?
Doh! Yes, of course. When I was contracting I never had to worry about it, everything I did was standard rated. That's no excuse though as I often contracted for companies who did have to worry about it. Long time ago now, thanks to IR35.
I was happier working then, I earned more and put more into the economy. Now I 'only' pay Income Tax, National Insurance (Employees) and VAT on most purchases. Back in the day I paid less Income Tax and Employees NI, but I (as myself and as my company) also paid Corporation Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Empoyers National Insurance. I paid more tax overall when I was effectively a company, but I also got more myself.</rant over>.
Which is why at one place I worked we spent a small fortune on accounting for what proportion of the charge to the client was service and what wasn't. I think they saved a slightly larger fortune in reduced VAT payments in the end.
Well at least GST is better than VAT, one rate for everything, not the 4 different rates as for VAT in the UK!
We did have multiple rates a while back, but not really any more, it'e either 17.5% or 0%.
NB it's actually 17.5%, 0% or 0% - apart from items taxed at the standard rate of 17.5% othet items are either zero rated (0%) or vat-exempt (0%).
The latter two cases at present would seem to be a distinction without a difference but that's tax law for you.
On my drive home from work I pass a farm selling "96% fat free milk". The first time I saw it I cracked up, now it depresses me.
I think it should be against the trade descriptions act (UK), but it'd probably be ok.
For those who don't realise normal full fat milk is 4% fat - hence 96% non-fat. Skimmed is c.1% fat, semi-skimmed is 1%-2%, iirc. I think 96% fat-free should have 4% of the fat of 'normal' full fat, not be full fat milk.
So maybe one day the dream of collabroatively
(sic)-filtered journalism will come true, and then only the ideas, and not the people who have them, will count.
I have a 5550, the screen is slightly bigger than a 19xx, a quarter of an inch or so. The quality is about the same with the nod going to the 19xx if pushed. (The local library lent me a 1910 for a while as an experiment). I was tempted by a 22xx (both cf and sd slots built in) but went for the extra features of the 5550. The 19xx is really sweet too, it fit nicely into a shirt pocket which the others wouldn't.
Not only can you get Acrobat reader for the Pocket PC, you can also get palmreader, which I prefer.
Acrobat reader is a pain, I don't like it much on a desktop but the format sucks on a qvga device - you either have to scroll sideways a lot or have microscopic (I pixel per char) text quite often. Not all pdfs are that bad but it's too much under the control of the person who made the file. Very few files look ok.
Microsoft reader is OK for legibility, but as the grandparent poster noted there'e a lot of white space and it's a bit of a mess from a usability point of view. Reasonable number of free books though, and it's fine on a windows desktop.
As I said I prefer the palmreader. Readable and no whitespace, can't remember if it autoscrolls. There's also lots of free books for this too. I also found an encoder to turn ascii files (with optional formatting) into palm docs which is very useful with the Guttenberg texts. It can have some weird side-effects though - some books have every 'br' missing which can prove a bit disorientating until you mentally put them back. I presume these are control sequences in the raw ascii, I didn't encode these myself.
Oh and before I get flamed, I'm in the UK and wanted a Zaurus in October. If I hadn't bought the iPaq I'd still be waiting, Sharp have really not shown much interest in selling here. My next PDA might be linux based, as I'd prefer, if anyone wants to sell me one. And yes I know I can now probably put linux on the iPaq but I'm a bit wary of ending up with a silver paperweight.
Correct, the history of Christianity in Europe has been littered with many shameful deeds, the Crusades and the loing persecution of the Jews being just two that spring to mind.
Even though I'm a Christian I agree with this.
I'd add the Inquisition and the religious murder in England too (Bloody Mary etc.). It's what you often get when groups of humans organize into rival factions, be it religions, political parties, racial groups, nations, or sports fans.
There has been a lot of good too.
Not that I am saying christianity is bad. Just that religion in the hands of the state can be a powerful tool for evil
I'd be more likely to say that the State in the hands of organized religion can be a powerful tool for evil. Human beings are failible and very few are good in all areas all the time. Power corrupts - the only people who should be allowed power are those who don't want it, and then it may just take longer to corrupt them. IMHO one of the biggest problems with a theocracy is that , IIRC, in most organized religions the positions within the hierarchy tend to be permanent. It always seems to difficult to get rid of people if you need to - which is a disaster for a State.
NB the root for Hierarchy is the Greek for 'rule of a high priest'.
Democracy isn't perfect but's probably the least worst system available to run a State.
In Good Omens Pratchetts 'Inquisition' is a terrifying example of how the Organized Religion mentality may work: suspicion is enough of itself to prove heresy as God must have put it into the mind of the 'inquisitor' - sorry can't remember the actual names he uses.
Well I didn't before, but I might now; however I was referring to stereotype of bland British food rather than the...colorful...'traditional' meals of the Isles.
Most British food isn't bland, though sometimes you might wish it were (brains, tripe, haggis). It can be if it's badly cooked of course but that's true anywhere.
We have wonderful ingredients and some great recipes - if you look into historic foods theres lots of flavourings added. You could say things started to go downhill after Raleigh brought back the potato, but I woudln't agree.
The national dish these days seems to be curry anyway, it may not be historical (more than a hundred years anyway) but it isn't bland:-)
It's about as true as the stereotype of American Cuisine - that there isn't one! the US has lots of regional cuisines AIUI, but I'm mostly familiar with Cajun and Tex-Mex. But I do know that there's more. The US did give the world the burger chain though, so there's some excuse for believing that Americans are more concerned with quantity than quality. I'm sure it's not true for all though:-)
The material objects are hard disks, floppy disks, and arrangements of circuits (typically banks of transistors) such as RAM.
They're not fixed in those material objects, turn off the power and where's the copy? It's transient and not fixed. We probably now need a definition of 'fixed', but I really don't feel like going there.
Well, yes, that or reform the laws, or ignore the laws. It's the middle one that's best, IMO.
I quite agree, it's also going to be the hardest to get changed in any sane fashion, again IMHO:-)
The court agreed -- just _looking_ at something on a computer, due to the way a computer works, is capable of infringing copyrights
Which demostrates again that which needed no proof: namely that the courts often don't understand matters on which they rule, but they don't let that interfere with them. It brings to mind the hoary old chestnut about a law being passed to make pi three.
Well, the law defines a copy -- a fixed copy, rather -- as being a material object in which a work is fixed by any method and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, OR otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
That would seem to exclude files on a computer. There is no material object that is fixed. The file may be moved in the normal operation of the computer and can be deleted with no harm to the physical medium on which it is temporarily stored. Arguably a different thing with optical media, of course.
That includes a hell of a lot, since even all the little tiny copies made in the course of using a computer can be perceived since obviously they're then passed along to different bits of hardware or software that wouldn't be able to get them otherwise.
Hardly a fixed copy. You might even have some fun with fair use as often the use of a file involves reading only part at a time...
It's a stupid definition, as anyone familiar with mercury delay lines and the game of telephone will know. But it's what we're stuck with for now.
It's even more stupid when applied to computers.
That's right, provided that you're not talking about stealing the medium the electronic file is fixed in. That doesn't mean it can't be illegal, though, for a half-dozen different reasons.
Oh agreed, the fact that new laws on 'hacking' and electronic intrusion etc are introduced is evidence of that. IIRC when someone broke into Prince Phillip's mail box many years ago (before the 'net was spread wide, it was Prestel) the culprit was charge with stealing electricity. I would have thought a good lawyer could win that one!
The way you and I are going we're going to have have to stop using computers as you can't do anything useful without breaking several laws.
Well, now we get into the nitty gritty of how computers work. The bits on your hard drive are not the same PHYSICAL objects as the bits in your CPU or RAM or NIC or ethernet wire or whatever.
So anytime my hard disk is defragmented a new copy is created. If I move a file to a different location a new copy is created, the old copy is marked as deleted, and can be recovered.
And then you get to the nitty gritty of physics - with a hard drive you are probably using the orientation of magnetic domains to encode the file (I'm not aware of any revolution in storage tech, with your RAM, CPU etc then you're using quantum states. If you consider electrons to have a physical existence then you're using different electrons to continuously re-create the copy in question. It is pretty metaphysical really which is not something you want courts to get involved in.
I'm struggling to come up with a pragmatic definition of 'a copy' here, so I'd take this as a sign that the law is going to struggle. NB I'm not saying I'm a genius or anything, and I'm not saying that there won't be legal rulings on any of this, just that there's going to be lots of room to argue this.
Importation involves moving physical objects. This means that the exporting place ends up with one object less, and you end up with one object more. That isn't happening here, as your ending up with a copy doesn't cause Russia to lose one.
By that logic it is impossible to steal an electronic file (without deletion of the original) as the owner still has it. You just have a perfect copy.
Three Dylan Hunts in different forms of suspended animation might be considered a bit much. I've even seen all three and IMHO Andromeda is the pick of the bunch, it's way better than Tremors for instance...
What would you expect them to do?
What do you think they are legally allowed to do?
I have a couple of domains from Gandi, and no I'm not a spammer. I went with them for two main reasons (three if you count 'not being verisign')- 1) they cost ten euro per year; 2) they clearly state that the domain is my property, unlike some other registrars.
Given the recent sex.com ruling on domains being propery in the US what do you think would happen to a registrar who stole a domain? How much did sex.com cost Verisign?.
Gandi are efficient and do actually require quite a lot of info, and it's not easy to transfer domains, I looked hard at registrars and web sites devoted to comparing registrars on policies, price etc and Gandi came out at or near the top on my criteria. I pay them to to host the records for my domain, they don't have a tos which says they can stop doing this if they feel like it, but they do say I can take it somewhere else if I want to.
BTW I sympathize with non-spamming TDE users but if this is like an UDP it wouldn't have got this far quickly. It's called peer pressure...
Re:Great software, bad hardware
on
Postfix 2.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Did 200MHz Pentiums have CPU fans, or just heatsinks?
Re:Great software, bad hardware
on
Postfix 2.1 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm sure someone can come up with a joke about beowulf clusters.... Shift some services to it, network monitoring, security scans. Stuff you can easily run somewhere else if it dies but it's handy not to. Or donate it to a charity that wants it. MP3 server, CD jukebox server. Write something spiffy to act as a voicemail system...
I don't know if this is true but I suspect that there is less brutality now than under Saddam. The difference being that it is now visible and (mostly) under public scutiny.
Agreed, that's pretty good.
What about in a multi-storey, how much height do you need - the old Lamborghini's didn't need any side clearance but had to have fair bit of headroom.
YMMV but normally the data is only a part (albeit a very large important part) of your app. If you've got a MySQL app then you're going to have to rewrite the parts of the app that access that data - data on its own isn't often much use. If you're migrating between most real rdbms then the rewrite shouldn't be too onerous, from MySQL it's a major undertaking. You referred to 'a subset of tools', I wouldn't take that to refer solely as being able to transfer the data. Using the tool analogy, try MySQL uses cross-head screws where 'real rdbms' use torx. If you're only concerned with holding data you don't need a database at all, stick it in a text file. It's only when you want to use the data you may have problems.
In your case fine. You seem to know the difference between MySQL and a rdbms but a lot of other people don't seem to. One point I would make is that if you suddenly start trying to develop something that actually requires a rdbms than you'll have a steep learning curve. If you think you'll ever need or want to write something complex then use a rdbms to develop your recipe book or web calendar.
You probably have a better understanding of your data model(s) now than when you started, so redeveloping (not converting) your MySQL apps to something else will let you learn a lot about your new db without too much worrying about the data/entity model which would otherwise prove a huge distraction. Then you'll have a head start on your financial app. Think of it this way - how many people write "Hello World" apps in a new language or jump straight into writing an office suite, alternatively why didn't the Wright brothers build a DC3/747/Shuttle?
Is there a reason for using MySQL? Otherwise as a Sybase DBA I'd expect you to be much more at home with other FOSS rdbms : Firebird,SAP,PostgreSQL etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't post your answers here, but you can imagine the replies he got!
I was assuming that the spark came from the user being grounded through the car at a point adjacent to the open filler which would be giving off a fairly rich fuel/air mixture. Does anyone know if these fires occur while pumping or while opening the filler?
Doh! Yes, of course.
When I was contracting I never had to worry about it, everything I did was standard rated.
That's no excuse though as I often contracted for companies who did have to worry about it. Long time ago now, thanks to IR35.
I was happier working then, I earned more and put more into the economy. Now I 'only' pay Income Tax, National Insurance (Employees) and VAT on most purchases. Back in the day I paid less Income Tax and Employees NI, but I (as myself and as my company) also paid Corporation Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Empoyers National Insurance.
I paid more tax overall when I was effectively a company, but I also got more myself.</rant over>.
Which is why at one place I worked we spent a small fortune on accounting for what proportion of the charge to the client was service and what wasn't. I think they saved a slightly larger fortune in reduced VAT payments in the end.
NB it's actually 17.5%, 0% or 0% - apart from items taxed at the standard rate of 17.5% othet items are either zero rated (0%) or vat-exempt (0%). The latter two cases at present would seem to be a distinction without a difference but that's tax law for you.
I think it should be against the trade descriptions act (UK), but it'd probably be ok.
For those who don't realise normal full fat milk is 4% fat - hence 96% non-fat. Skimmed is c.1% fat, semi-skimmed is 1%-2%, iirc.
I think 96% fat-free should have 4% of the fat of 'normal' full fat, not be full fat milk.
Deceptive advertising at it's most obnoxious?
Well, maybe if everyone posted as AC...
I was tempted by a 22xx (both cf and sd slots built in) but went for the extra features of the 5550. The 19xx is really sweet too, it fit nicely into a shirt pocket which the others wouldn't.
Not only can you get Acrobat reader for the Pocket PC, you can also get palmreader, which I prefer.
Acrobat reader is a pain, I don't like it much on a desktop but the format sucks on a qvga device - you either have to scroll sideways a lot or have microscopic (I pixel per char) text quite often. Not all pdfs are that bad but it's too much under the control of the person who made the file. Very few files look ok.
Microsoft reader is OK for legibility, but as the grandparent poster noted there'e a lot of white space and it's a bit of a mess from a usability point of view. Reasonable number of free books though, and it's fine on a windows desktop.
As I said I prefer the palmreader. Readable and no whitespace, can't remember if it autoscrolls. There's also lots of free books for this too.
I also found an encoder to turn ascii files (with optional formatting) into palm docs which is very useful with the Guttenberg texts. It can have some weird side-effects though - some books have every 'br' missing which can prove a bit disorientating until you mentally put them back. I presume these are control sequences in the raw ascii, I didn't encode these myself.
Oh and before I get flamed, I'm in the UK and wanted a Zaurus in October. If I hadn't bought the iPaq I'd still be waiting, Sharp have really not shown much interest in selling here. My next PDA might be linux based, as I'd prefer, if anyone wants to sell me one. And yes I know I can now probably put linux on the iPaq but I'm a bit wary of ending up with a silver paperweight.
I'd add the Inquisition and the religious murder in England too (Bloody Mary etc.). It's what you often get when groups of humans organize into rival factions, be it religions, political parties, racial groups, nations, or sports fans.
There has been a lot of good too. I'd be more likely to say that the State in the hands of organized religion can be a powerful tool for evil.
Human beings are failible and very few are good in all areas all the time. Power corrupts - the only people who should be allowed power are those who don't want it, and then it may just take longer to corrupt them. IMHO one of the biggest problems with a theocracy is that , IIRC, in most organized religions the positions within the hierarchy tend to be permanent. It always seems to difficult to get rid of people if you need to - which is a disaster for a State.
NB the root for Hierarchy is the Greek for 'rule of a high priest'.
Democracy isn't perfect but's probably the least worst system available to run a State.
In Good Omens Pratchetts 'Inquisition' is a terrifying example of how the Organized Religion mentality may work: suspicion is enough of itself to prove heresy as God must have put it into the mind of the 'inquisitor' - sorry can't remember the actual names he uses.
We have wonderful ingredients and some great recipes - if you look into historic foods theres lots of flavourings added. You could say things started to go downhill after Raleigh brought back the potato, but I woudln't agree.
The national dish these days seems to be curry anyway, it may not be historical (more than a hundred years anyway) but it isn't bland :-)
It's about as true as the stereotype of American Cuisine - that there isn't one! the US has lots of regional cuisines AIUI, but I'm mostly familiar with Cajun and Tex-Mex. But I do know that there's more. The US did give the world the burger chain though, so there's some excuse for believing that Americans are more concerned with quantity than quality. I'm sure it's not true for all though :-)
I of course use emacs...
It brings to mind the hoary old chestnut about a law being passed to make pi three.
The way you and I are going we're going to have have to stop using computers as you can't do anything useful without breaking several laws.
And then you get to the nitty gritty of physics - with a hard drive you are probably using the orientation of magnetic domains to encode the file (I'm not aware of any revolution in storage tech, with your RAM, CPU etc then you're using quantum states. If you consider electrons to have a physical existence then you're using different electrons to continuously re-create the copy in question. It is pretty metaphysical really which is not something you want courts to get involved in.
I'm struggling to come up with a pragmatic definition of 'a copy' here, so I'd take this as a sign that the law is going to struggle. NB I'm not saying I'm a genius or anything, and I'm not saying that there won't be legal rulings on any of this, just that there's going to be lots of room to argue this.
By that logic it is impossible to steal an electronic file (without deletion of the original) as the owner still has it. You just have a perfect copy.The other two refrerred to are Genesis II and Planet Earth.
What do you think they are legally allowed to do?
I have a couple of domains from Gandi, and no I'm not a spammer. I went with them for two main reasons (three if you count 'not being verisign')- 1) they cost ten euro per year; 2) they clearly state that the domain is my property, unlike some other registrars.
Given the recent sex.com ruling on domains being propery in the US what do you think would happen to a registrar who stole a domain?
How much did sex.com cost Verisign?.
Gandi are efficient and do actually require quite a lot of info, and it's not easy to transfer domains, I looked hard at registrars and web sites devoted to comparing registrars on policies, price etc and Gandi came out at or near the top on my criteria. I pay them to to host the records for my domain, they don't have a tos which says they can stop doing this if they feel like it, but they do say I can take it somewhere else if I want to.
BTW I sympathize with non-spamming TDE users but if this is like an UDP it wouldn't have got this far quickly.
It's called peer pressure...
TINC
Did 200MHz Pentiums have CPU fans, or just heatsinks?
I'm sure someone can come up with a joke about beowulf clusters....
Shift some services to it, network monitoring, security scans. Stuff you can easily run somewhere else if it dies but it's handy not to. Or donate it to a charity that wants it. MP3 server, CD jukebox server. Write something spiffy to act as a voicemail system...
I don't know if this is true but I suspect that there is less brutality now than under Saddam. The difference being that it is now visible and (mostly) under public scutiny.
I'd have the TVR Tuscan from Swordfish, thanks.
Agreed, that's pretty good.
What about in a multi-storey, how much height do you need - the old Lamborghini's didn't need any side clearance but had to have fair bit of headroom.
YMMV but normally the data is only a part (albeit a very large important part) of your app. If you've got a MySQL app then you're going to have to rewrite the parts of the app that access that data - data on its own isn't often much use. If you're migrating between most real rdbms then the rewrite shouldn't be too onerous, from MySQL it's a major undertaking.
You referred to 'a subset of tools', I wouldn't take that to refer solely as being able to transfer the data. Using the tool analogy, try MySQL uses cross-head screws where 'real rdbms' use torx. If you're only concerned with holding data you don't need a database at all, stick it in a text file. It's only when you want to use the data you may have problems.
One point I would make is that if you suddenly start trying to develop something that actually requires a rdbms than you'll have a steep learning curve. If you think you'll ever need or want to write something complex then use a rdbms to develop your recipe book or web calendar.
You probably have a better understanding of your data model(s) now than when you started, so redeveloping (not converting) your MySQL apps to something else will let you learn a lot about your new db without too much worrying about the data/entity model which would otherwise prove a huge distraction. Then you'll have a head start on your financial app.
Think of it this way - how many people write "Hello World" apps in a new language or jump straight into writing an office suite, alternatively why didn't the Wright brothers build a DC3/747/Shuttle?
Is there a reason for using MySQL?
Otherwise as a Sybase DBA I'd expect you to be much more at home with other FOSS rdbms : Firebird,SAP,PostgreSQL etc.