Like the original Liberator pistol that the US dropped all over France, etc.,

The FP-45 was a crude, single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly mass-produced. It had just 23 largely stamped and turned steel parts that were cheap and easy to manufacture. It fired a .45 caliber pistol cartridge from an unrifled barrel. Due to this limitation, it was intended for very close-in use, 1--4 yards (0--5 m). Its maximum effective range was only about 25 feet (7.6 m). At longer range, the bullet would begin to tumble and stray off course. As a result of its low quality, it was nicknamed the "Woolworth gun."

General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff never saw the practicality in mass dropping the Liberator over occupied Europe, and authorized distribution of fewer than 25,000 of the half million FP-45 pistols shipped to Great Britain for the French resistance. Generals Joseph Stillwell and Douglas MacArthur were similarly unenthusiastic about the other half of the pistols scheduled for shipment to the Pacific. The Army then turned 450,000 Liberators over to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which preferred to supply Resistance fighters in both theatres with more effective weapons whenever possible.

I wonder how many government offices -- the U.S. Federal government has long been Microsoft's biggest customer -- couldn't get along just fine with an open source word processor, even considering all the proprietary-format documents they're stuck with for now.

Microsoft has entered into a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Texas, a pact that carries much more weight these days after the HIPAA omnibus rule was released in January.

Implementing Office 365 for such a large network should serve as a sign that the state is comfortable enough with cloud computing that 100,000 employees, including the state Health and Human Services System, will be using the services.

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse"

Too often, a quote is attributed to Ford simply because its touches upon success in business or innovation: He has become a patron saint of the entrepreneur... One of the more popular of these quotations is, ''If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse,'' which has never been satisfactorily traced to Henry Ford. In fact, the quote only begins to appear in the early 21st century, ''quoted'' by modern-day business gurus using it as an object lesson.

So roughly speaking, if a judge tells you to do something, and you think it is nonsense, and you just say "no, I won't do that", then you are in contempt.

So, if something has been published 1000 times in works of fiction, can I still get a patent on it...

Always ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

They can be ignored as can email campaigns, the things we should be focused ob is term limits recalling "citizens united" and getting rid of lobbyist.

This works for most people.

That being said, I hope this is a lesson to communities, cities, and states that throw all their economic eggs into one industrial basket.

The first sentence answers the question.

So, offer THEM the choice of one person, to be drawn at random from a hat, being fired to pay for e cost of new PCs vs switching to Linux and everyone keeping their jobs. Then you'll find they like Linux lots.

Can you provide a link to a story in 2014?

I wonder if one could station units similar to these at strategic locations along fault lines, designed to pick up an earthquake's resonant frequency and generate a corresponding one tuned to cancel it out?

Infrared Night Vision

This is probably one of the least understood features available, and yet, it is one of the most important features. Although a high quality camera (especially a high quality CCD camera) can provide a picture under a wide variety of lighting conditions (including very low light), it can't provide a clear picture in near or total darkness. That's where the infrared night vision illumination LEDs (light emitting diodes) come in.

On a high quality night vision equipped camera, the infrared LEDs turn on automatically whenever the ambient (background) light drops to a level that's too low for the image sensor to produce a high quality picture. The infrared LEDs operate at a light frequency that is well beyond the human eye's ability to see, but the image sensor in the camera is designed to detect this light just like the visible light that we can see.

One big difference between a high quality rear view camera and a lower quality one, is its ability to illuminate the area seen by the camera. Ideally, the infrared illuminators will illuminate the entire field of view produced by the camera, and will illuminate out to a distance of at least 20 feet from the camera. The higher end cameras will typically illuminate out to a distance of 30 to 50 feet from the camera.

Automatic System Switching

Possibly the most important feature to look for when purchasing a rear view camera system, is that system's ability to switch on automatically whenever the vehicle's transmission is placed in reverse. This is accomplished by connecting a single wire to the vehicle's backup light circuit, sending a signal to the rear view camera system, causing it to switch on without any action by the operator.

Wide Angle Field of View

The field of view provided by any camera is determined by a combination of image sensor size and lens focal length. The larger the image sensor, the wider the possible field of view. However, a larger image sensor does not necessarily guarantee a wider field of view. Many rear view camera systems utilize a 1/4" image sensor and provide only a 60 to 90 degree field of view. While a 90 degree field of view may be sufficient for some smaller vehicles, a 120 degree field of view is strongly preferred. You should absolutely avoid any system that produces lower than a 90 degree field of view. Most high quality rear view cameras that utilize a 1/3" image sensor and produce a 120 degree field of view --- that is ideal for most applications.

On the other hand, there are some rear view systems advertised with fields of view as wide as 210 degrees. These super wide field of view cameras are not intended for use on rear view camera systems, and will generally produce a 'fish-eye' image that will be extremely distorted and very dangerous to use.

Mirror Image Capability

A rear view camera system should have the capability to produce a 'mirror' (or 'reverse') image through the camera and/or monitor.

Why do you want a 'mirror' image? In order to see the same type of image that you would see in a rear view mirror, the camera and/or monitor must be capable of reversing the image produced. This capability will provide the same type of image through a rear view camera system that you would see if you were looking into a rear view mirror, and that's exactly what you want for safe operation.

Audio Monitoring

Audio capability can be helpful when the driver needs the assistance of a helper while backing. While you may or may not require audio, it can also be useful when a camera is being used to monitor the interior of a trailer (carrying people or animals).

It wasn't market forces that did this, it was monopolistic forces.