I was playing with a little red laser pointer (prior to 9/11) and observed that while the beam was only 2mm wide leaving the pointer it was about 6-10 feet across on the roof of a house about 900 feet away.
And, using reflectance off of dust in the atmosphere, is was easy to point at about anything I wanted to illuminate. However, the beam hitting the roof wasn't bright enough to be able identify, say, a person at 900 ft, and certainly not bright enough to 'blind' them.
Maybe you should review the efffects of the RICO Act. It is a law passed 30 years ago to help prosecutors fight the Mafia and "Organized Crime".
Police raid homes at 3 AM and confiscating 'guilty' property without due process more than 10,000 times per year, making the RICO Act the primary source of 'extra' funds and equipment for local law enforcement today. Even if the address the snitch gave was mixed up by the police and they hit the wrong house they often still keep the booty. The RICO Act is a license to steal and it is making theives of a good many police. Even if the victims prove their innocence the police do not have to give the property back, and many do not.
It is as aggregious as the Patriot Act and no doubt the PA will be abused even more, especially by politicians who do not want opposing views to be heard, or police chiefs who don't like to hear their work being critcized.
will continue to do so until Congress no longer wants to fund an aging shuttle fleet or purchase new ones. With the pending shortages in fossil fuels, over population and dwindling resources, manned space exploration does not have enough ROI and is not a top budget item. Any space exploration done after the shuttles are retired will be by robots and AI software. Space exploration should be left to corporations, if they can see a profit in it. They will risk their own money and lives, and they will do it at a minimum cost, as long as they can't get their hand into a government pocket.
It would make more sense to send people to the Moon to set up mining operations, power generation plants, heavy industry, etc..., and keep it on the back side, out of sight. Lunar orbits and L points could be staging areas. Rescue operations could be mounted from other Moon bases or from Earth if time allowed. Rescuing Mars explorers would be impossible.
This buring desire to find proof of life on Mars is motivated more on the religious idea that if life exists on other planets it proves that God does not exist, than on any putative science benefits. It's a really stupid reason to spend Billions of $$$.
My W2K workstation crashes on the average of once or twice per week. I often reboot it when I first come to work just to start 'fresh'. I dual boot with Fedora Core 2, which has never crashed once since I installed it. The other PC in my office runs Fedora Core 2 exclusively and has been up for several months without a reboot or an xserver crash. I use it heavily to develope cross-platform applications using PostgreSQL + Python + Boa_Constructor. I also browse the Web with my other PC because I don't have to worry about being 'owned', nor do I have to put up with countless patching and 'upgrading' to repair a miriad of security and stability holes.
At home my wife runs FC2 and I run SUSE 9.0. Neither has crashed, nor has the xservers locked up. They are networked together with NFS. Prior to SUSE I ran MDK 8 thru 10, but switched to SUSE when it became obvious that we are going to be standardizing on SUSE at work.
Ya, it's fair to say that in my experience Linux is CONSIDERABLY more stable and secure than any WinXX I've run. In fact, if Win95 hadn't been such a stinker I probably would never have installed RH 5.0 in 1997..... well, maybe not in 1997 but when Win98 came out, prior to 2nd ED, or when NT 3.5, or when... mmmm... come to think about it I was predestined to try Linux because I can't think of a single version of WinXX that doesn't crash frequently. Check out the OS section of http://www.bugtoaster.com for the numbers.
Nobody has ever brought together (for a fee) the world of documents (for a fee), media (for a fee) and structured information (for a fee) in giving you one simple set of verbs (for a fee) that lets you richly find (for a fee), move around (for a fee) and replicate those things (for a fee).
"I'm sorry but your LongHorn Word spellcheck license has expired. Do you wish to connect to Microsoft.com and renew your spellchecking for another 50 documents?"
and only time will tell if her new position is beyond her competence.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/gately/pp 01acec.htm
"Technical skills are necessary, but not sufficient, to predict future success as a manager when selecting an engineer for a management position. What is missing? The answer is Job Fit. Does the engineer have the right combination of mental abilities, personal interests and personality traits to allow for success as a manager?"
Even people with proper qualifications often mess up in their new position, but people promoted for political reason really make a mess of things, unless they hire a competent person to do their work while they set back and take the credit. You see this technique used by Saudi men in Saudia Arabia all the time, that's why there are so many foreign second level administrators and technicians over there.
Admittedly, Mandrake 10 is a train wreck at the moment
I found that out AFTER I paid $$$ for the MDK 10.0 DVD. I should have known better... MDK has grown progressively buggier since 8.2. One would have thought that after the LG cdrom fiasco they would keep their distro in beta a bit longer. (I know, it was LG's 'fault' but MDK should have caught it.) I gave up reporting bugs after a repeatedly reported video bug that followed me from 8.2 through 9.1 appeared again in 10.0
I ran SUSE from 5.3 to 8.0 and switched to MDK when 8.2 came out. I have abandon the remainder of my Club membership and installed FC2. I would have put SUSE 9.1 on my system but the personal version is only 1CD and lacks a lot of apps and I'm not buying any more full distros until the quality returns.
The technique is the same: file an open patent when a technology first appears (even if you didn't originate it) and keep amending it as the technology matures. Then, when enough major players are using/building on the technology, complete the petent application and start sending out 'cease and desist' letters to folks who have been using the technology longer than the new patent holders were aware of it.
The problem is, of course, the totally CORRUPT US Trade and Patent office, who will grant a patent to any corporation for any thing, as long as they willing to pay the $$$.
These proposed acts say volumes about the Far Left. Continually crying about their rights being suppressed, they take every opportunity to suppress the rights of others. It obvious that they have no more love of Free Speech (or Democracy) than the Taliban, Bin Laden, and other terrorists.
I find it much more secure, stable and affordable to install PostgreSQL 7.4 (with -i) on a Linux server (SUSE, FC2, Debian or Mandrake will do nicely) and access it from Linux or Windows clients using TCP on port 5432. That way I don't need a ton of expensive third party software to keep it stable and secure. I also don't need to pay Microsoft for each client that accesses the server on which PostgreSQL is installed.
Further, I can administrate the database from a WinXX or Linux workstation using the approprate veersion of pgAdminIII or pgAccess.
I can use Python + Boa_Constructor + ODBC to easily build GUI apps that are easily installed on client PCs without paying run-time fees for each client.
As a bonus you will discover that:
Python + ODBC + PostgreSQL is much faster than Java + JDBC + Oracle and just as fast as HTP.P + Oracle, or Python + ODBC + Oracle
Much of the Oracle's code can be ported to PostgreSQL with only minor to moderate changes
PostgreSQL can utilize database objects via inheritance
PostgreSQL is more ACID and interface compliant that MySQL. (read: not nearly as many nonfunctioning SQL stubs)
VC's and Investment Bankers DO NOT invest money in project unless they expect a return on the investment which would exceed the current interest rate. The MySQL shareholders expect the same on their investments, and they expect the corporate officers to act in ways which will insure such a return. The only way for that to happen is if MySQL shifts users away from the GPL to a commerical licen$e.
In the end, IMO, the only way they can do that is by either misconstruing the GPL (FUDing putative users toward the commerical licen$e) or forking MySQL into a GPL version and a propriatary version. Once investors and stock holders see that such a move only caused a large drop in the user base, not an increase in revenue, they will withdraw their investments to avoid futher losses.
Could one expect to see MySQL to file some "IP" patents sometime in the near future?
All users of Linux systems must have an account, or access to an account via name and password. After you log on to your account and then do 'psql' (without a db name) PostgreSQL will assume a database name exists that is the same as the account name, or it will default to 'template1'.
Doing 'psql somedatabasename' will allow access to a database that has a name different from the user who owns the database, assuming that the owner has been granted access rights to somedatabasename for the user who is attempting access. This security is similar to Oracle and other RDBMS.
I'd rather everyone stop coding strictly towards one database api, and use abstracted interfaces like PEAR, ado.net, jdbc, odbc, etc.
Exactly. Then, only those databases that are totally ACID compliant and interface compliant would be used. So, when I write a GUI app using Python and Boa_Constructor and connect it to Oracle using ODBC on Win2K, I have to change only a couple of lines to get that app to run under Linux against PostgreSQL. BTW, in my test Python + ODBC was much faster than Java + JDBC.
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I was playing with a little red laser pointer (prior to 9/11) and observed that while the beam was only 2mm wide leaving the pointer it was about 6-10 feet across on the roof of a house about 900 feet away.
And, using reflectance off of dust in the atmosphere, is was easy to point at about anything I wanted to illuminate. However, the beam hitting the roof wasn't bright enough to be able identify, say, a person at 900 ft, and certainly not bright enough to 'blind' them.
Maybe you should review the efffects of the RICO Act. It is a law passed 30 years ago to help prosecutors fight the Mafia and "Organized Crime".
Police raid homes at 3 AM and confiscating 'guilty' property without due process more than 10,000 times per year, making the RICO Act the primary source of 'extra' funds and equipment for local law enforcement today. Even if the address the snitch gave was mixed up by the police and they hit the wrong house they often still keep the booty. The RICO Act is a license to steal and it is making theives of a good many police. Even if the victims prove their innocence the police do not have to give the property back, and many do not.
It is as aggregious as the Patriot Act and no doubt the PA will be abused even more, especially by politicians who do not want opposing views to be heard, or police chiefs who don't like to hear their work being critcized.
It would make more sense to send people to the Moon to set up mining operations, power generation plants, heavy industry, etc..., and keep it on the back side, out of sight. Lunar orbits and L points could be staging areas. Rescue operations could be mounted from other Moon bases or from Earth if time allowed. Rescuing Mars explorers would be impossible.
This buring desire to find proof of life on Mars is motivated more on the religious idea that if life exists on other planets it proves that God does not exist, than on any putative science benefits. It's a really stupid reason to spend Billions of $$$.
At home my wife runs FC2 and I run SUSE 9.0. Neither has crashed, nor has the xservers locked up. They are networked together with NFS. Prior to SUSE I ran MDK 8 thru 10, but switched to SUSE when it became obvious that we are going to be standardizing on SUSE at work.
Ya, it's fair to say that in my experience Linux is CONSIDERABLY more stable and secure than any WinXX I've run. In fact, if Win95 hadn't been such a stinker I probably would never have installed RH 5.0 in 1997..... well, maybe not in 1997 but when Win98 came out, prior to 2nd ED, or when NT 3.5, or when... mmmm... come to think about it I was predestined to try Linux because I can't think of a single version of WinXX that doesn't crash frequently. Check out the OS section of http://www.bugtoaster.com for the numbers.
Unfortunately, the Lizards will continue submitting billable hours until SCO runs out of cash or the court throws out the case.
Any bets as to which comes sooner?
"I'm sorry but your LongHorn Word spellcheck license has expired. Do you wish to connect to Microsoft.com and renew your spellchecking for another 50 documents?"
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/gately/pp 01acec.htm
"Technical skills are necessary, but not sufficient, to predict future success as a manager when selecting an engineer for a management position. What is missing? The answer is Job Fit. Does the engineer have the right combination of mental abilities, personal interests and personality traits to allow for success as a manager?"
Even people with proper qualifications often mess up in their new position, but people promoted for political reason really make a mess of things, unless they hire a competent person to do their work while they set back and take the credit. You see this technique used by Saudi men in Saudia Arabia all the time, that's why there are so many foreign second level administrators and technicians over there.
I found that out AFTER I paid $$$ for the MDK 10.0 DVD. I should have known better... MDK has grown progressively buggier since 8.2. One would have thought that after the LG cdrom fiasco they would keep their distro in beta a bit longer. (I know, it was LG's 'fault' but MDK should have caught it.) I gave up reporting bugs after a repeatedly reported video bug that followed me from 8.2 through 9.1 appeared again in 10.0
I ran SUSE from 5.3 to 8.0 and switched to MDK when 8.2 came out. I have abandon the remainder of my Club membership and installed FC2. I would have put SUSE 9.1 on my system but the personal version is only 1CD and lacks a lot of apps and I'm not buying any more full distros until the quality returns.
The technique is the same: file an open patent when a technology first appears (even if you didn't originate it) and keep amending it as the technology matures. Then, when enough major players are using/building on the technology, complete the petent application and start sending out 'cease and desist' letters to folks who have been using the technology longer than the new patent holders were aware of it.
The problem is, of course, the totally CORRUPT US Trade and Patent office, who will grant a patent to any corporation for any thing, as long as they willing to pay the $$$.
These proposed acts say volumes about the Far Left. Continually crying about their rights being suppressed, they take every opportunity to suppress the rights of others. It obvious that they have no more love of Free Speech (or Democracy) than the Taliban, Bin Laden, and other terrorists.
is envoked, or an IP lawsuite filed, to get the device off the market? A few days to a few weeks?
Further, I can administrate the database from a WinXX or Linux workstation using the approprate veersion of pgAdminIII or pgAccess.
I can use Python + Boa_Constructor + ODBC to easily build GUI apps that are easily installed on client PCs without paying run-time fees for each client.
As a bonus you will discover that:
In the end, IMO, the only way they can do that is by either misconstruing the GPL (FUDing putative users toward the commerical licen$e) or forking MySQL into a GPL version and a propriatary version. Once investors and stock holders see that such a move only caused a large drop in the user base, not an increase in revenue, they will withdraw their investments to avoid futher losses.
Could one expect to see MySQL to file some "IP" patents sometime in the near future?
All users of Linux systems must have an account, or access to an account via name and password. After you log on to your account and then do 'psql' (without a db name) PostgreSQL will assume a database name exists that is the same as the account name, or it will default to 'template1'.
Doing 'psql somedatabasename' will allow access to a database that has a name different from the user who owns the database, assuming that the owner has been granted access rights to somedatabasename for the user who is attempting access. This security is similar to Oracle and other RDBMS.
Exactly. Then, only those databases that are totally ACID compliant and interface compliant would be used. So, when I write a GUI app using Python and Boa_Constructor and connect it to Oracle using ODBC on Win2K, I have to change only a couple of lines to get that app to run under Linux against PostgreSQL. BTW, in my test Python + ODBC was much faster than Java + JDBC.
so SCO starts making noise again? This is too much just to be a coincidence. It seems M$ is yanking Darl's strings again.