They dumped a few Ascent-stages (2 IIRC) after docking with the command module. The crew left in the CM to earth and the ascent-stages were dumped onto the moon's surface. The descent-stages (that stayed on the moon's surface) could register the "moon-quackes" caused by the crashing ascent-stages. Because of the low gravity they kept bouncing off the moon's surface for quite some time.
In Holland a minister is not allowed to wed a couple in church before that couple has been to their city-hall where a government-official weds them solely for the law.
This means that any wedding must be before the civil cervant and people can choose wether or not also wed in their church. The churches can choose wether or not to allow a marriage, based on their own criteria but the state must wed gays and straights alike.
This cuts the civil responsibilities from the ministers and pastors (who should not even want them) and it cuts the religious discussion from the state's duties and the rights that state grants to married people.
As a religious person you can call a gay married couple anything you like. For example: "a-gay-couple-that-thinks-they-are-married-but-the y-are not" but the state and the judiciary are going to have to treat them as a married couple.
I'm sorry i stepped on you foot (or whatever that may be). I did RTFA, the word "planning" that you quoted should probably be replaced with "preparing". But it doesn't really change the essence of my comment: with planning I meant more something like "all the complete steps that need to be taken in order to..." and part of those steps will also include a lot of planning since the details of a problem and thus the fix and it's circumstances (weather, remaining time: discovery of the "problem" can be anyware between emediatly after lift-off and just before re-entry)will only then be known.
Siggy.
Let's say there is a problem with the space shuttle. NASA sends the shuttle to the ISS and starts planning the rescue mission. Directly after the astronauts arrive at the ISS they ditch the old, probably damaged shuttle.
Now a month passes food, water and air run out. And all of a sudden NASA finds a problem with the rescue-shuttle, or some other circumstance (bad weather, hurricane that damages launch-facilities). And let's say that this situation is so severe that it is 100% sure that the shuttle is not going to be able to rescue the trapped astronauts (the rescue-shuttle exploding while taking off is of course also one of the possible scenario's, but not relevant to this idea). What are you going to do now? Draw straws deciding who is allowed to use the soyus rescue-ship and let the others (probably 6) starve to death?
Now if you delay dumping the original shuttle until the very last moment, just a few days before the rescue-shuttle arrives you give them a last resort. Yes, you are probably going to have to dump the shuttle before the rescue-shuttle arrives so it won't work as a backup in case the rescue-shuttle's launch fails, but in a lot of the other scenario's taking your chances in the damaged shuttle *is* going to be a viable backup-plan for the backup-plan. After all, taking your chances in a shuttle that might not make it, is better than staying up at the ISS where you know you're going to run out of oxygen or food.
The NASA people in the article claim that they feel good about at least having an option. "Any option is better than nothing". I don't agree. This rescue-mission is an option that should probably never be used:
It's expensive to prepare for
you are putting the lives of the ISS-crew in danger by letting a damaged shuttle dock the ISS and put it's crew in the ISS that can barely support all of them.
It's expensive to execute (400 million for a launch to save 7. How many cancer-patients could we save with 400 million? It's a question many of you would not want asked, but it's a valid one none the less)
You are also risking the lives of the rescue-crew. Although I'll assume that they'd only execute a rescue-mission if the problem was not a systematic one but an incident in an individual shuttle, there are always substantial risks involved in launching a shuttle.
You are killing off the space-shuttle program for certain. Add that to the costs. If a shuttle that *might be* or *is probably* damaged returns back to earth intact nonetheless you'd be able to repair and continue. It's debatable wether or not this argument alone can justify asking the astronauts to risk their lives on a return trip in a damaged shuttle, but it does strengthen the other arguments
With a rescue mission on hands NASA are probably off worse because they can now be coerced (by themselves or by others) to perform a rescue in situations that are relatively low-probability
A rescue-mission would probably be usefull once in the 100 mission failures. 50% Of all failures (while going up) is non-rescueable anyway: their only option is to abort. You do the math, this is not worth it. There are probably a hundred other safety-improvements that would increase their chances of survival more.
A cristal-clear-scenario might be when one of the wings of the orbiter was clearly damaged beond repair. Now you know that this thing is not coming back in one piece. NASA-people want a way out. I say: go to a hospital and study dokters: they tell people that their lives have run out every day. It sometimes happens. If you can't deal with that (or even the posibility of that happening) you are not fit for managing a spacefaring organisation.
Now everytime a fly is squatted on the "windshield" some NASA-program manager is going to have to decide wether or not to start the rescue-sequence. And the decision-process in NASA is difficult and prone to error.
Siggy.
Hmmm... I think it's the other way around: the more you are sure that you are going to loose the shuttle and her crew, the more motivated you are going to be (and more willing to take chances) to rescue that crew. In other words: you see that your orbited shuttle is doomed. The rescue-shuttle also has the same weakness, but wether or not it will actually cause (catastrophic) problems on the rescue-flight is still a matter of chance. There have been tens (hundreds?) of succesfull launches en returns so the chances won't be larger than say 10%. The to-be-rescued is already doomed.
Launching a vehicle with a 10% chance of not surviving for the sake of "science" and/or feeding the ISS might not be a good idea. But when there's a crew out there in danger with (almost) certain death awaiting them without a rescue-mission it becomes justifieable.
If you want to migrate away from SQL-Server then you have MS DTS (at least for the time being).
DTS can pump your MS-SQL-database into postgresql with little problem i'd expect. Now getting the logic (triggers, functions) transferred is a whole other question.
Not only did they not warn that this only works in specific scenarios (eg. with SP2), but they also insinuated that by using an AMD processor the user would be totally free of virusses and needed to worry no more.
I'll try to sketch a radio-commercial: Voice of teenage girl: "Hi, I'm susan. When I come home from school Í like to chat with my girlfriends for an hour or so. If that darn brother of mine isn't gaming or doing something silly on our computer. ***But thank god that I don't have to worry about virusses.***" Voice of AMD-man that explains that the family enjoys their AMD-based computer with built-in virus-protection.
There indeed is no talk about "in addition to our processor you will still need a virus-scanner. And a supporting OS such as Windows-XP-SP2 and a firewall".
I always did find it misleading. Especially the idea that people might buy such a computer and never bother to install virus-scanners or a firewall (as it seems you need SP2 that has the firewall defaulted to on so that is actually only one step that can be forgotten, but I didn't know that at the time).
As a citizen of a very friendly nation, an admirer of your democratic principles and an enthusiast regarding travelling your beautiful country, I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts.
For starters let me offer you my condolences regarding the loss of sanity of at least 50% of your popular voters.
Four years ago I was able to comprehend that you chose the Grand Old Partie's nominee. You are after all quite a conservative country and I respect that. And the man did promise to reunite the country after the intense election-battles.
But that you, after the evidence of four years of Mr. Bush junior's presidency, could not be convinced of his being unfit for the job can only baffle me. No, baffling isn't the right word. It appals me. This result (and the race has not been decided as I write this) shows a total lack of commitment to basic democratic values such as "holding someone with power accountable for what he does with this power". Let me put it straight for you: The man lied.
He did not lie about having sexual intercourse. He did not lie about or try to cover up subversive activities by his re-election committee. He did not lie about covertly allowing drugs smuggling to occur in order to assure cash flow for a friendly guerilla-warfaring fraction in Nicaragua. He did not allow or turn a blind eye to armaments-shipments to a fanatic Islamic country in order to negotiate a release for US-embassy personnel.
No, he lied to get you, the American People, and your legislature to let him go to war. WAR! That is not a blowjob. It is not a break-in. Neither is it a CIA-operation. It is W-A-R. Total Destruction! Loss of human life. Theirs. AND YOURS. What does a normal democratically "checked and balanced" system do with its leaders that lie and mislead in such important matters? It removes them from office, by impeachment or by the casting of the ballot.
What you have done, my dear friends, is say to the American Politics: "You can lie. You can go to war. You can smuggle drugs. You can do any of the things that our high standard of moral justly finds reprehensible. And we are never going to hold you accountable as long as you handle politically petty details, such as the right to bear sub-machine guns, the way we like it." That's a nice exchange: sub-machine gun versus accountability for political officers. I think you are going to see much of those guns in the near future. And the good part is: you are not going to have to pay for them. They will all be subsidised by Uncle Sam. To be specific: by the department of defence that sends you or a loved one into one of the many combat zones that Uncle Dubbaya is creating.
Please don't see this letter as a piece of critique by a European that has no idea of what is going on in your country. I have visited your beautiful country a great many times and I will always respect your choices regarding your politics and your society. With this letter I only mean to show you my disappointment because I believed that you would be able to judge the ability of Mr. Bush to lead your country more -in my eyes- realistically. Maybe it's the way you have set-up your democratic system, but I feel that as a non-US citizen I am not in the position to lecture you regarding your electoral processes. If it needs change or evaluation, you have to do that.
I wish you the very best of luck, strength, wisdom and a touch of Gods subtle grace, I think you need it.
Just a little plugging for my own project (might be a little late, but...):
I've also found out that there are no good database-front-ends to work with open-source DB's. There might be a few, but in this whole set of articles over here I haven't seen a workable, FOSS, one.
So I got working on a web-based system. I even got my boss to subsidize a few weeks of development. What I've got is: a web-application portal that can: - use only PostgreSQL at this moment, but should be able to use other databases in the future - easily create forms, including master/detail forms - create reports: listings and graphics - very quickly create new modules for special functionality (if a database-form isn't enough) Thnings that need to be done: - create a lot more features for the report-generator - better support for "specialisation"-tables - generate complex reports off-line - write documentation (of course.....) - user needs to write SQL in various parts of the design-phase and has too litte help at the moment - translations - transaction-support (hard! since, AFAIK, current websystems do not support DBMS-transactions over php-sessions) - a good and easy way to share all development-files and data with others. - it's probably too slow: it doesn't run good on a 100 megaherz pentium for 1 person, so what would that mean if 25 users would try to use it simultaniously on a fast system?!?
That last point is the reason why nothing is at sourceforge at the moment....
But If anyone is interrested (and might be willing to put in some PHP-coding?!?) drop me a line...
When my employer retired an old sun they gave it to me. I was very fond of the thing because I, when I was a student, learned Unix and programming on that beast. It was the workstation all the (geek-) students wanted to use.
Anyway, I got home with the thing and found out I didn't have the root-password for the OS. So, install a new OS: OpenBSD. To do that, you need to be able to tell the thing to boot from floppy. You do that using a little command at bootup. And you need.... a password to enter that mode.
great.
No-one on earth was left that could tell me about those passwords, so I googled around and found the sollution: 1. Startup the sun 2. Press STOP-A (or something) to get into the OpenPROM / OpenBOOt/Whatever menu 3. When it askes for the password RIP OUT THE PROMCHIP FROM THE MOTHERBORD 4. Enter blank password. The machine will try to validate it against its non-existing memory. 5. It will accept the blank password and you can do "ALTER PASSWORD" 6. INSERT THE PROMCHIP JUST BEFORE YOU ENTER THE NEW PASSWORD 7. Enter the new password 8. It stores it in the now replaced memory-chip. 9. Install OS. Have Fun.
It really amazed me that this just worked. But it did.
I just used "(unintended) recipients of this message are respectfully reminded of applicable law and netiquette" until TODAY when my company decided to start using a disclamer. Thank you slashdot for providing me with amunition against that nonsense.
Reading this article I remember a time -when I was still an application-manager for a large hospital- when I went to a small department to instruct a group in using the application.
It went something like this:
- Me: "What are your usernumbers? "
- Women of the group: "xxxx, yyyy, zzzz, dddd, ffff"
- Women: "Do you want our passwords too?"
- Me: "No, I just need your login-info so I can fill in the necesarry forms."
- Women: "It's okay, we all share the same password, you can have it."
- Me [frowns]: "You shouldn't do that, and I don't want to know what your password is. If I don't know your passwords I cannot be blamed for anything that goes wrong when one of your accounts is used"
- Woman: "No, it's okay, the password is 'fill-in-a-simple-4-letter-word"
- Me: flabbergasted. Surrenders. Gets on with instruction.
Before I left that place I should have written a simple script that processed through all accounts trying just a few (not more than 10) password like diskette, floppy, computer, etc. etc.
It would have probably hit 25% of users. It wasn't part of my job though and would have probably led to me being suspected of cracking-activity.
luckily there were also other security-measures in place....
A. Guy takes home corporate laptop. B. Plugs laptop into phone-line / uses internet C. Gets infected D. Takes his laptop back to the job E. Infects the entire LAN *FROM THE INSIDE* while the firewall hapilly keeps the fire "IN" (instead of out).
What's the "difference" between a 1-pixel difference and a 1-character difference?
You don't need to drop a page's rank for just a 1-pixel (of a square) diff just as you don't need to drop a page's rank for a 1-char/sentence diff. Random quotes and time-related content are going to be a problem in both sollutions.
Whell, it was just a question. Got answered. Satisfied.:-)
It is a bit of a stretch, but in my opinion so is the idea of "freedom of information".
If information is free then that means all the 14 year old muppets out there choose to wave certain freedoms. That is my opinion. They want their Britney. Britney (and the whole Brindustry) wants "some" money. They work out a way to make it work. Actually, it is mostly the Industry that is thinking up the "way" and that's why things are disintegrating right now.
It boils down to: 1. you get what you ask for. You may not ask for it. Neither do I. But, believe me, there are countless people who do.
2. Destroying the way and *any* way the industry can profit directy from pre-recorded music will stop it from being produced alltogether.
What I describe, can be put in your terms simply as a new contract, stating that performance of music is what is being paid
That is very true. Only problem is it takes two sides to make a contract stick. And if the information-producers don't like the terms of your contract they are going to stop producing in that specific playingfield (prerecorded music).
1. Live performances cost a lot. You need lighting, PA, extra musicians, security, etc. etc. etc. 2. The consumers *want* to here a live performance every now and then 3. So in order to be able to perform (and make a profit) the music-industry thinks of a way to "make this work": charge for tickets.
Now onto pre-recorded music:
1. Recording music costs a lot. You need equipment, studio-musicians, technicians, etc. etc. etc. 2. The consumers *want* to hear studio-music. They are the consumers, so they make the decisions. 3. The music-industry thinks of ways to make it work:
a. Put it on the radio/tv and let the commercials provide some revenu
b. Put it on a media and charge for that media
b. might not be the perfect sollution in your eyes, but it's what everyone wants: we want pre-recorded music and so (it should follow) we want to participate in the revenue-generation.
You are presenting this discussion as a fundamental discussion: is information free? You argue: Yes, you cannot charge for information and the right to reproduce that information for yourself only. I am not arguing about that; It might be true, it might nog be true. What I'm arguing is that we, the consumers, -IF FREEDOM-OF-INFORMATION AT ALL EXISTS- voluntarily wave our rights to certain specific information-freedoms because we realise that otherwise we would not be able to listen to that music at all.
To make this work we need a way, a set of rules, to govern the relationship between music-producer and music-consumer (or: information-producer and information-consumer). What rights are we willing to give up in what conditions? It's the contract between us, the consumers and them, the producers. That contract is of course a virtual contract. It is hidden in all the rules of the laws of copyright, trademarks, DMCA etc. etc. etc.
It's like state-theory. First, there was absolute freedom and everyone could do as (s)he damn well pleased. Then societies started to evolve in which people waived certain rights in order for the society as a whole to function. The contract-theory states that there is a virtual contract between the people and the society in which the specifics of the rights and duties for the people and the society/state are layed down.
What we have now is a dispute between the consumers and the producers over the virtual contract. We should rethink that contract (read: rethink the law). There could be other ways to make it work. Think communism: just let the government pay the artists, transfer all ownership to the state and let everyone enjoy it... might not be what you envisioned, but there may be yet other ways.
Abolishing the virtual-contracts is not in our mutual interrest: they want to produce music, we want to listen to it. If we abolish the contract altogether, a lot of information-production would not be possible anymore.
I agree with your statements, *but*: For such a translation to be build a company needs what? Yes: a developer. You could of course use the company Excel-guru but then would it really be a stable and trustworthy translation-process?
This leads to the conclusion that small companies need to rent-a-hidemydata-coder before they rent-a-production-coder. And what are you gonna send the rent-a-hidemydata-coder as example-data?
Slashdot Mirror
They dumped a few Ascent-stages (2 IIRC) after docking with the command module. The crew left in the CM to earth and the ascent-stages were dumped onto the moon's surface. The descent-stages (that stayed on the moon's surface) could register the "moon-quackes" caused by the crashing ascent-stages. Because of the low gravity they kept bouncing off the moon's surface for quite some time.
Like LSD: the only way it can kill you is if you'd be hit by a truckload of it.
In Holland a minister is not allowed to wed a couple in church before that couple has been to their city-hall where a government-official weds them solely for the law.
e y-are not" but the state and the judiciary are going to have to treat them as a married couple.
This means that any wedding must be before the civil cervant and people can choose wether or not also wed in their church. The churches can choose wether or not to allow a marriage, based on their own criteria but the state must wed gays and straights alike.
This cuts the civil responsibilities from the ministers and pastors (who should not even want them) and it cuts the religious discussion from the state's duties and the rights that state grants to married people.
As a religious person you can call a gay married couple anything you like. For example: "a-gay-couple-that-thinks-they-are-married-but-th
I see this as a very good thing.
Siggy.
I'm sorry i stepped on you foot (or whatever that may be). I did RTFA, the word "planning" that you quoted should probably be replaced with "preparing". But it doesn't really change the essence of my comment: with planning I meant more something like "all the complete steps that need to be taken in order to..." and part of those steps will also include a lot of planning since the details of a problem and thus the fix and it's circumstances (weather, remaining time: discovery of the "problem" can be anyware between emediatly after lift-off and just before re-entry)will only then be known.
Siggy.
Let's say there is a problem with the space shuttle. NASA sends the shuttle to the ISS and starts planning the rescue mission. Directly after the astronauts arrive at the ISS they ditch the old, probably damaged shuttle. Now a month passes food, water and air run out. And all of a sudden NASA finds a problem with the rescue-shuttle, or some other circumstance (bad weather, hurricane that damages launch-facilities). And let's say that this situation is so severe that it is 100% sure that the shuttle is not going to be able to rescue the trapped astronauts (the rescue-shuttle exploding while taking off is of course also one of the possible scenario's, but not relevant to this idea). What are you going to do now? Draw straws deciding who is allowed to use the soyus rescue-ship and let the others (probably 6) starve to death?
Now if you delay dumping the original shuttle until the very last moment, just a few days before the rescue-shuttle arrives you give them a last resort. Yes, you are probably going to have to dump the shuttle before the rescue-shuttle arrives so it won't work as a backup in case the rescue-shuttle's launch fails, but in a lot of the other scenario's taking your chances in the damaged shuttle *is* going to be a viable backup-plan for the backup-plan. After all, taking your chances in a shuttle that might not make it, is better than staying up at the ISS where you know you're going to run out of oxygen or food.
The NASA people in the article claim that they feel good about at least having an option. "Any option is better than nothing". I don't agree. This rescue-mission is an option that should probably never be used:
With a rescue mission on hands NASA are probably off worse because they can now be coerced (by themselves or by others) to perform a rescue in situations that are relatively low-probability
A rescue-mission would probably be usefull once in the 100 mission failures. 50% Of all failures (while going up) is non-rescueable anyway: their only option is to abort. You do the math, this is not worth it. There are probably a hundred other safety-improvements that would increase their chances of survival more.A cristal-clear-scenario might be when one of the wings of the orbiter was clearly damaged beond repair. Now you know that this thing is not coming back in one piece. NASA-people want a way out. I say: go to a hospital and study dokters: they tell people that their lives have run out every day. It sometimes happens. If you can't deal with that (or even the posibility of that happening) you are not fit for managing a spacefaring organisation.
Now everytime a fly is squatted on the "windshield" some NASA-program manager is going to have to decide wether or not to start the rescue-sequence. And the decision-process in NASA is difficult and prone to error.
Siggy.
Hmmm... I think it's the other way around: the more you are sure that you are going to loose the shuttle and her crew, the more motivated you are going to be (and more willing to take chances) to rescue that crew.
In other words: you see that your orbited shuttle is doomed. The rescue-shuttle also has the same weakness, but wether or not it will actually cause (catastrophic) problems on the rescue-flight is still a matter of chance. There have been tens (hundreds?) of succesfull launches en returns so the chances won't be larger than say 10%. The to-be-rescued is already doomed.
Launching a vehicle with a 10% chance of not surviving for the sake of "science" and/or feeding the ISS might not be a good idea. But when there's a crew out there in danger with (almost) certain death awaiting them without a rescue-mission it becomes justifieable.
Siggy.
If you want to migrate away from SQL-Server then you have MS DTS (at least for the time being).
DTS can pump your MS-SQL-database into postgresql with little problem i'd expect. Now getting the logic (triggers, functions) transferred is a whole other question.
Siggy.
Not only did they not warn that this only works in specific scenarios (eg. with SP2), but they also insinuated that by using an AMD processor the user would be totally free of virusses and needed to worry no more.
I'll try to sketch a radio-commercial:
Voice of teenage girl: "Hi, I'm susan. When I come home from school Í like to chat with my girlfriends for an hour or so. If that darn brother of mine isn't gaming or doing something silly on our computer.
***But thank god that I don't have to worry about virusses.***"
Voice of AMD-man that explains that the family enjoys their AMD-based computer with built-in virus-protection.
There indeed is no talk about "in addition to our processor you will still need a virus-scanner. And a supporting OS such as Windows-XP-SP2 and a firewall".
I always did find it misleading. Especially the idea that people might buy such a computer and never bother to install virus-scanners or a firewall (as it seems you need SP2 that has the firewall defaulted to on so that is actually only one step that can be forgotten, but I didn't know that at the time).
Siggy.
Acrobat would be the golden standard since it is a product by the organisation that defined .pdf.
If your OS software isn't reading the .pdf-file correctly then you know what you have to do!
Take out your tekst-editor and shovel some code!
A FOS-Zealot has to do what a FOS-Zealot has to do.
Siggy
Dear citizens of the United States of America,
As a citizen of a very friendly nation, an admirer of your democratic principles and an enthusiast regarding travelling your beautiful country, I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts.
For starters let me offer you my condolences regarding the loss of sanity of at least 50% of your popular voters.
Four years ago I was able to comprehend that you chose the Grand Old Partie's nominee. You are after all quite a conservative country and I respect that. And the man did promise to reunite the country after the intense election-battles.
But that you, after the evidence of four years of Mr. Bush junior's presidency, could not be convinced of his being unfit for the job can only baffle me. No, baffling isn't the right word. It appals me. This result (and the race has not been decided as I write this) shows a total lack of commitment to basic democratic values such as "holding someone with power accountable for what he does with this power". Let me put it straight for you: The man lied.
He did not lie about having sexual intercourse. He did not lie about or try to cover up subversive activities by his re-election committee. He did not lie about covertly allowing drugs smuggling to occur in order to assure cash flow for a friendly guerilla-warfaring fraction in Nicaragua. He did not allow or turn a blind eye to armaments-shipments to a fanatic Islamic country in order to negotiate a release for US-embassy personnel.
No, he lied to get you, the American People, and your legislature to let him go to war. WAR! That is not a blowjob. It is not a break-in. Neither is it a CIA-operation. It is W-A-R. Total Destruction! Loss of human life. Theirs. AND YOURS. What does a normal democratically "checked and balanced" system do with its leaders that lie and mislead in such important matters? It removes them from office, by impeachment or by the casting of the ballot.
What you have done, my dear friends, is say to the American Politics: "You can lie. You can go to war. You can smuggle drugs. You can do any of the things that our high standard of moral justly finds reprehensible. And we are never going to hold you accountable as long as you handle politically petty details, such as the right to bear sub-machine guns, the way we like it." That's a nice exchange: sub-machine gun versus accountability for political officers. I think you are going to see much of those guns in the near future. And the good part is: you are not going to have to pay for them. They will all be subsidised by Uncle Sam. To be specific: by the department of defence that sends you or a loved one into one of the many combat zones that Uncle Dubbaya is creating.
Please don't see this letter as a piece of critique by a European that has no idea of what is going on in your country. I have visited your beautiful country a great many times and I will always respect your choices regarding your politics and your society. With this letter I only mean to show you my disappointment because I believed that you would be able to judge the ability of Mr. Bush to lead your country more -in my eyes- realistically. Maybe it's the way you have set-up your democratic system, but I feel that as a non-US citizen I am not in the position to lecture you regarding your electoral processes. If it needs change or evaluation, you have to do that.
I wish you the very best of luck, strength, wisdom and a touch of Gods subtle grace,
I think you need it.
Siggy.
Communications error?!? You mean, like;
Just a little plugging for my own project (might be a little late, but...):
I've also found out that there are no good database-front-ends to work with open-source DB's. There might be a few, but in this whole set of articles over here I haven't seen a workable, FOSS, one.
So I got working on a web-based system. I even got my boss to subsidize a few weeks of development. What I've got is: a web-application portal that can:
- use only PostgreSQL at this moment, but should be able to use other databases in the future
- easily create forms, including master/detail forms
- create reports: listings and graphics
- very quickly create new modules for special functionality (if a database-form isn't enough)
Thnings that need to be done:
- create a lot more features for the report-generator
- better support for "specialisation"-tables
- generate complex reports off-line
- write documentation (of course.....)
- user needs to write SQL in various parts of the design-phase and has too litte help at the moment
- translations
- transaction-support (hard! since, AFAIK, current websystems do not support DBMS-transactions over php-sessions)
- a good and easy way to share all development-files and data with others.
- it's probably too slow: it doesn't run good on a 100 megaherz pentium for 1 person, so what would that mean if 25 users would try to use it simultaniously on a fast system?!?
That last point is the reason why nothing is at sourceforge at the moment....
But If anyone is interrested (and might be willing to put in some PHP-coding?!?) drop me a line...
Siggy.
All of a sudden, Microsoft will be in the "unix"-business.... and has a dire need to protect "it's" IP.
When my employer retired an old sun they gave it to me. I was very fond of the thing because I, when I was a student, learned Unix and programming on that beast. It was the workstation all the (geek-) students wanted to use.
Anyway, I got home with the thing and found out I didn't have the root-password for the OS. So, install a new OS: OpenBSD. To do that, you need to be able to tell the thing to boot from floppy. You do that using a little command at bootup. And you need.... a password to enter that mode.
great.
No-one on earth was left that could tell me about those passwords, so I googled around and found the sollution:
1. Startup the sun
2. Press STOP-A (or something) to get into the OpenPROM / OpenBOOt/Whatever menu
3. When it askes for the password RIP OUT THE PROMCHIP FROM THE MOTHERBORD
4. Enter blank password. The machine will try to validate it against its non-existing memory.
5. It will accept the blank password and you can do "ALTER PASSWORD"
6. INSERT THE PROMCHIP JUST BEFORE YOU ENTER THE NEW PASSWORD
7. Enter the new password
8. It stores it in the now replaced memory-chip.
9. Install OS. Have Fun.
It really amazed me that this just worked. But it did.
See Google Mirror about Boinc.
....
(karma be damned)
I just used "(unintended) recipients of this message are respectfully reminded of applicable law and netiquette" until TODAY when my company decided to start using a disclamer. Thank you slashdot for providing me with amunition against that nonsense.
>> Sound, by its very nature, travels through the air very well
Sollution to all your noise-pollution-problems in one word: work in vacuum.
Reading this article I remember a time -when I was still an application-manager for a large hospital- when I went to a small department to instruct a group in using the application.
It went something like this:
- Me: "What are your usernumbers? "
- Women of the group: "xxxx, yyyy, zzzz, dddd, ffff"
- Women: "Do you want our passwords too?"
- Me: "No, I just need your login-info so I can fill in the necesarry forms."
- Women: "It's okay, we all share the same password, you can have it."
- Me [frowns]: "You shouldn't do that, and I don't want to know what your password is. If I don't know your passwords I cannot be blamed for anything that goes wrong when one of your accounts is used"
- Woman: "No, it's okay, the password is 'fill-in-a-simple-4-letter-word"
- Me: flabbergasted. Surrenders. Gets on with instruction.
Before I left that place I should have written a simple script that processed through all accounts trying just a few (not more than 10) password like diskette, floppy, computer, etc. etc. It would have probably hit 25% of users. It wasn't part of my job though and would have probably led to me being suspected of cracking-activity.
luckily there were also other security-measures in place....
Siggy.A. Guy takes home corporate laptop.
B. Plugs laptop into phone-line / uses internet
C. Gets infected
D. Takes his laptop back to the job
E. Infects the entire LAN *FROM THE INSIDE* while the firewall hapilly keeps the fire "IN" (instead of out).
If you fire anyone, please fire the laptop-owner.
What's the "difference" between a 1-pixel difference and a 1-character difference?
You don't need to drop a page's rank for just a 1-pixel (of a square) diff just as you don't need to drop a page's rank for a 1-char/sentence diff. Random quotes and time-related content are going to be a problem in both sollutions.
Whell, it was just a question. Got answered. Satisfied. :-)
Run the bitmap image through an OCR program to extract the real text seen by the user
Wouldn't it be smarter to just render both versions and compare bitmaps? No need to OCR then...
It is a bit of a stretch, but in my opinion so is the idea of "freedom of information".
If information is free then that means all the 14 year old muppets out there choose to wave certain freedoms. That is my opinion. They want their Britney. Britney (and the whole Brindustry) wants "some" money. They work out a way to make it work. Actually, it is mostly the Industry that is thinking up the "way" and that's why things are disintegrating right now.
It boils down to: 1. you get what you ask for. You may not ask for it. Neither do I. But, believe me, there are countless people who do.
2. Destroying the way and *any* way the industry can profit directy from pre-recorded music will stop it from being produced alltogether.
Siggy
What I describe, can be put in your terms simply as a new contract, stating that performance of music is what is being paid
That is very true. Only problem is it takes two sides to make a contract stick. And if the information-producers don't like the terms of your contract they are going to stop producing in that specific playingfield (prerecorded music).
Siggy
1. Live performances cost a lot. You need lighting, PA, extra musicians, security, etc. etc. etc.
2. The consumers *want* to here a live performance every now and then
3. So in order to be able to perform (and make a profit) the music-industry thinks of a way to "make this work": charge for tickets.
Now onto pre-recorded music:
1. Recording music costs a lot. You need equipment, studio-musicians, technicians, etc. etc. etc.
2. The consumers *want* to hear studio-music. They are the consumers, so they make the decisions.
3. The music-industry thinks of ways to make it work:
a. Put it on the radio/tv and let the commercials provide some revenu
b. Put it on a media and charge for that media
b. might not be the perfect sollution in your eyes, but it's what everyone wants: we want pre-recorded music and so (it should follow) we want to participate in the revenue-generation.
You are presenting this discussion as a fundamental discussion: is information free? You argue: Yes, you cannot charge for information and the right to reproduce that information for yourself only. I am not arguing about that; It might be true, it might nog be true. What I'm arguing is that we, the consumers, -IF FREEDOM-OF-INFORMATION AT ALL EXISTS- voluntarily wave our rights to certain specific information-freedoms because we realise that otherwise we would not be able to listen to that music at all.
To make this work we need a way, a set of rules, to govern the relationship between music-producer and music-consumer (or: information-producer and information-consumer). What rights are we willing to give up in what conditions? It's the contract between us, the consumers and them, the producers. That contract is of course a virtual contract. It is hidden in all the rules of the laws of copyright, trademarks, DMCA etc. etc. etc.
It's like state-theory. First, there was absolute freedom and everyone could do as (s)he damn well pleased. Then societies started to evolve in which people waived certain rights in order for the society as a whole to function. The contract-theory states that there is a virtual contract between the people and the society in which the specifics of the rights and duties for the people and the society/state are layed down.
What we have now is a dispute between the consumers and the producers over the virtual contract. We should rethink that contract (read: rethink the law). There could be other ways to make it work. Think communism: just let the government pay the artists, transfer all ownership to the state and let everyone enjoy it... might not be what you envisioned, but there may be yet other ways.
Abolishing the virtual-contracts is not in our mutual interrest: they want to produce music, we want to listen to it. If we abolish the contract altogether, a lot of information-production would not be possible anymore.
Siggy.
I agree with your statements, *but*:
For such a translation to be build a company needs what? Yes: a developer. You could of course use the company Excel-guru but then would it really be a stable and trustworthy translation-process?
This leads to the conclusion that small companies need to rent-a-hidemydata-coder before they rent-a-production-coder. And what are you gonna send the rent-a-hidemydata-coder as example-data?
Siggy