Comment 2K9 to 2010? (Score 1) 206
I used to sometimes write the "00" years as 2K1..2K9.. now I'll have to waste another char and make it 2010...
ugh!
Comment Any other alternative to the high speed chase? (Score 2, Insightful) 194
I would think that is is preferable to track a suspects car (at a distance) using one of these devices than to persue them at close range causing a "high speed chase". A number of innicent persons have been hurt as a result of police persuits. Not every police department can have a helicopter ready for these due to cost constraints.
Comment Pretty easy to get list data out of sharepoint (Score 1) 275
I used the technique below to get all my list data out. It's pretty easy to extend that to pull out the document blobs from SQL as well:
http://solitarysoftwareguy.blogspot.com/
http://solitarysoftwareguy.blogspot.com/
Comment Re:Still Humans? (Score 4, Funny) 409
Burma Shave
Submission + - Deep Impact Probe to Look for Earth-sized Planets (eurekalert.org)
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "NASA has given University of Maryland scientists the green light to fly the Deep Impact probe to Comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft will fly by Earth on New Year's Eve at the beginning of a more than two-and-a-half-year journey to Hartley 2. During the first six months of the journey to Hartley 2, they will use the larger of the two telescopes on Deep Impact to search for Earth-sized planets around five stars selected as likely candidates for such planets. Upon arriving at the comet, Deep Impact will conduct an extended flyby of Hartley 2 using all three of the spacecraft's instruments — two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer."
Submission + - Slot Machine with Bad Software: Players To Jail? (yahoo.com)
dcollins writes: Numerous Slashdot threads turn into a debate over who's liable for faulty software: the programmers, the publisher, etc. Here's a new option: perhaps the users are themselves criminally liable. From the AP: ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/ap_on_fe_st/ge nerous_slot_machine ): "Prosecutors are considering criminal charges against casino gamblers who won big on a slot machine that had been installed with faulty software... A decision on whether to bring criminal charges could come in a couple of weeks, said John Colin, chief deputy prosecutor for Harrison County. He said 'criminal intent' may be involved when people play a machine they know is faulty."
Submission + - Is winning on faulty slot machine crime?
richardoz writes: "Yahoo has an interesting news article about a slot machine that credited it's users with ten dollears for each dollar they inserted."
Submission + - Destroying Sandboxes (beskerming.com)
SkiifGeek writes: "Many anti-malware applications use a sandbox as a tool to help identify potentially malicious software. It appears that knowledge is slowly spreading about techniques and methods that can allow sandboxed software to target the sandbox itself (and by extension the application that applied it).
While attacks that specifically target sandboxing applications are probably a little way off, this technology can be considered the logical extension of techniques and procedures to identify the presence of hosted systems (VMWare, Virtual PC, etc)."
While attacks that specifically target sandboxing applications are probably a little way off, this technology can be considered the logical extension of techniques and procedures to identify the presence of hosted systems (VMWare, Virtual PC, etc)."
Submission + - IT Job Bidding Software
Corbets writes: "As is so often the case with people in the IT field, I find myself doing a fair amount of "side" work such as systems consulting, intranet building, that sort of thing. I typically do rough estimates with a bit of paper and a pen. My latest quote was a little more complex, however, so I pulled out OmniPlan and started putting together a project plan from which I intend to bid the job. I realized then that I've never seen any software designed for IT job bidding, although there is some excellent stuff available in other areas like construction. An admittedly quick search of Sourceforge didn't turn up much, though I'm sure someone will point out that I used the wrong search terms. What do you use to bid your small-scale IT jobs? What do you recommend?"
Submission + - Message in a Bottle
theodp writes: "At the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills, where rooms start at $500, the minibar in all 196 rooms contains six bottles of Fiji Water. Back in Fiji, where a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market, more than half the people do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Fast Company takes a look at the economics and psychology of America's $15 billion-a-year bottled water business, and what it says about our culture of indulgence. Perhaps you'd enjoy a $55 bottle of Bling H2O while you read it."
Submission + - Ice Block Air Conditioning (yahoo.com)
JumperCable writes: The AP has an interesting article on the use of ice blocks as air conditioning in New York high rises. The concept is pretty basic. Overnight during off peak energy pricing hours & during the coolest part of the 24 hour day, the system freezes water in storage tanks into giant blocks of ice. These storage tanks are located in the basement (coolest location). They are frozen with ethylene glycol.
Given that most of the brown outs occur during the summer months due to high electric demand for air conditioning, I wonder how much of an effect this system would have in reducing brownouts if it's use was more wide spread. The article mentions it is only cost efficient for large companies. But how much of this is profit padding? Couldn't a smaller system be worked out for home use? CALMAC is one of the producers of these systems.
Given that most of the brown outs occur during the summer months due to high electric demand for air conditioning, I wonder how much of an effect this system would have in reducing brownouts if it's use was more wide spread. The article mentions it is only cost efficient for large companies. But how much of this is profit padding? Couldn't a smaller system be worked out for home use? CALMAC is one of the producers of these systems.
Submission + - Southern Utilities Resist Renewables
cagrin writes: From the article: "Six of the nation's 10 largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions are coal-fired power plants in the South, but year after year Southern lawmakers balk at pushing utilities toward cleaner renewable energy." Link: Southern Utilities Resist Renewables
Submission + - The obesity epidemic fueled by fructose (abc.net.au)
drewtheman writes: According to this interview with Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology from University of California, San Francisco, the fructose, once touted as diabetic friendly because it doesn't raise your insulin directly, could be a major culprit for the obesity epidemic, high blood pressure and elevated blood levels of LDL. The fructose constitute 50% of table sugar and up to 90% of HFCS, both found in high quantity in most prepared foods. And if it was not the fat that makes you fat?
Submission + - Oracle Introduces Btrfs Filesystem for Linux (techsww.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Oracle recently introduced a new Checksumming Copy on Write Filesystem named Btrfs. According to Brtfs's home page,
"Linux has a wealth of filesystems to choose from, but we are facing a number of challenges with scaling to the large storage subsystems that are becoming common in today's data centers. Filesystems need to scale in their ability to address and manage large storage, and also in their ability to detect, repair and tolerate errors in the data stored on disk."
Btrfs is released under a GPL license and is currently under heavy development. Btrfs is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review but this is certainly something we should look forward to in the future.
"Linux has a wealth of filesystems to choose from, but we are facing a number of challenges with scaling to the large storage subsystems that are becoming common in today's data centers. Filesystems need to scale in their ability to address and manage large storage, and also in their ability to detect, repair and tolerate errors in the data stored on disk."
Btrfs is released under a GPL license and is currently under heavy development. Btrfs is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review but this is certainly something we should look forward to in the future.
