>The first patent looks kind of interesting, inasmuch as it seems like they are applying it to a database, and I know of no database that actually does a single query in parallel, but I'm not sure it would be any more efficient, because there is only one disk. Having two threads isn't going to speed anything up there, and might actually cause the disk to thrash.

Hm, you obivously never heard of either Teradata or DB/2? I worked as a Teradata DBA as early as 1988
(version 2.0 of the Teradata Operating System). DB/2 has had automatic parallel processing of
partitioned tablespaces at least since version 7. That's just two DBMSes I can name.

Obviously, there is plenty of prior art out there, and these patents should be rejsected immediately, and Micrsoft is not going to fight
IBM over this.

Toshiba T1200 Laptop - DOS 3.3, 640K memory, 20MB hard drive, 1200 baud modem (that was an option), monochrome screen. My first
laptop and it still ran last time I fired it up - last year. Everything older then that went to the public schools at some point.

"By the way, when you copy a file across a file system, from one drive to another, it gets a new creation time, so if all the files were "created" on a single day, that was when they were migrated over."

Not on a Windows system it doesn't. The only time you get a new date on it is when you download from an external system, or you manually change the date/time stamp.

Now me? All my music files (all legal, btw) are already on a USB portable drive anyway, because it takes 15GB off the active drive I need the space on. And my wife's machine? Re-loaded with WIN XP PRO over the top of WIN XP Home about a month ago. Memory chip went bad, and garbled part of the registry - right after I got a full backup of the files.....

So, how are we going to certify Forensics experts? Obviously the Anonymous Coward above wants to be one, but certainly doesn't qualify, if he makes such a basic mistake. (And to double check, I tried it just before I posted this message. Copied a file to another dirve and it retains the 2008 creation date).

This same bit of rhetoric happens ever time there is a downturn in the IT economy. It never happens the way it is predicted because coding ends up being harder then the authors think.

As for Agile - another fad, this too shall pass. (We called it prototyping last time around and it failed then too.)

>I am not entirely sure what you are saying? Do you not recall Bush? The tool that gave Angela Merkel (the prime minister of Germany) a back massage at a meeting? How about the time he winked at the Queen of England? Or when he addressed a room full of donors by saying something to the effect of: "Quite an impressive room of people here, the haves, and the have mores...". The same guy who got us involved in two wars and ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

As for the two wars - right you are, and WHO was attacked first? And we were attacked because a previous weakling of a president let things go for too long - Clinton .... As for who brought in this economic downfall, look no further than the Democrats. Barney Frank, Bill Clinton and even all the way back to Jimmy Carter are the ones who did this to us. Bush tried to head it off several years ago and was stopped by Pelosi, Reid and Barney Frank.

>And YOU have the gall to call Obama a "clown of a president" who needs to be impeached? Seriously? If you were marked troll, I would have let your comments go and not even read your post. The fact that somehow, you ended up listed as insightful absolutely astounds me. Given the stark contrast of character between the two men, a grass roots community organizer vs. a man who shirked his military duties, you must need a wheelbarrow to carry your balls around in.

As for the crack about shirking his duties. Shows where your sour grapes are. George Bush served his time honorably and has the paperwork to prove it. Where was Obama? Won't even produce his proper birth certificate to prove that he actually is a Native born American!

Obama has no character, associate of terrorists that he is. No experience doing anything --- and it shows. He is in contention for worst president of all time - after how many days? As for 4 or 8 years. Don't be ton him getting re-elected. He has shown so many characteristics of a one term president already. And Congress will probably swing back to the GOP in 2010, after PElosi and Reid are shown for the buffoons they are.

>Finally, as a general rule, anyone who finds a need to use the term "class" in the same context you did in your post typically has none themselves.

We see now why you don't have any mod points.

It goes to show the lack of class in the man and his administration. The two gifts mentioned from the British were classy gifts, and were well thought out.

The gifts from the Obama administration don't have a clue what class is.

Expect more of the same until we impeach and fire this clown of a president.

So, at what point do you cut off low 6 digit UID?

Try TSO editor and Wordstar for me.

We look at the facts. For every $ we pumped into the space program $100 came back. Not to mention all the EMPLOYMENT we got for high tech jobs. You don't think all that computer technology came from the internet do you?

It is about time we take on another LARGE task to help get this country somepride again, and to kick of a technological boom again.

As for Obama? Let's send him on a one way mission.....

Regular crappy products. I never entered them on my EVIL company list, because they were already on my "Products don't work as advertised" list.

I had three products of theirs out of the first four I encountered that plain just didn't work as advertised. After that, I marked them "Don't buy".

I still have a functioning CH Products trackball at home. Still works after 15+ YEARS as a tool. Sure, I had to open it up and clean it inside a couple of times, but I have to do that more often with mice at work, so that shouldn't matter. I also had to get a PS/2 to USB convertor for the one I have (cheaper then buying a new trackball).

Got news for you, there are still active Wordstar users out there.

Wordperfect did nothing to win the war, Wordstar shot itself in the foot. Then, Wordstar died with the original author.

I have not one, but two different piece sof backup software in operation.

As I found out during the last time I had a major crash, the one piece of software was fine for the data, but did not backup the system. And the newest backup was 12 days old at the time. The good news is I was able to recover all the data, and it only took a week to rebuild all the software. And in case anyone wants to try and blame the OS, it was a mother board failure i.e. HARDWARE during the warrenty period.

I stil have that piece of software and do periodic backups with it. I also went out and go another piece of software to try and get better results form. It is scripted and does an incremental backup every night. (And it starts a new full backup once a month, unless I force it sooner.) If an when I do a restore from this one and it works, I may discontinue the other software, but not before!

Backup early and often.

Maybe it is my training as a DBA showing thru, because I have to backup everyone's mistakes at work....