Keep It Simple Software (engineer) or whatever...

I went with the simplest possible solution. One that also allows me to recover even if a "database" becomes corrupted or obsolete, because all the "real" data is contained in the documents themselves.

I just scan to PDF and add tags in the Keywords field of the PDF metadata. For the keywords, I use unique words that aren't going to show up in an actual document. (Just tacking on a prefix or surrounding each keyword in brackets is good enough.) I also organize the files in a decent (but not too detailed) directory structure. (You can use any high-tech storage system you like. I just use a regular hard drive.) Then I installed the PDF iFilter so the Windows Indexing service could index the files, including that metadata (There are many. Google is your friend.) So, now, if I want to find all the tax files, say, that are related to my farm, for instance (totally made up example), I would just navigate to the directory that holds all my tax documents, then do a basic Windows search for [farm] and there are all my documents. No database to manage or learn how to use. Just the files and their metadata.

There are utilities that allow you to easily select a group of .PDF files and tag them all with the same keywords. I'm sure you can find one for any OS. And the beauty is: Once the file is tagged with the keyword, it doesn't matter if you just throw away the program you used to set that keyword, because the keyword is just a normal part of that .PDF file.

Because the keywords are standard PDF metadata, any OS should be able to read and index on them. If not, then you could find some program that would, I am sure. Again, the beauty of this system is: if you loose access to that indexing system, or move your files to a different platform, all you gotta do is reindex the metadata that is right there in the files. As long as you have your files, you have your keywords.

As someone who was in your situation years ago, I highly recommend spending at least a couple thousand of that money simply making your house an impenetrable fortress. Guns and dogs only do any good AFTER the burglar is IN your home. The idea is to simply make it impossible to get in without a chain-saw.

Steal doors. Reinforced door-jam with extra long dead-bolt. Bars on the windows or windows that have reinforced locks, reinforced glass, and the "grilles" between the panes are steel instead of wood or plastic. Extra long screws to screw in the hinges (both on the door and jam sides). Break resistant sliding glass doors and front storm doors (throw away and never use the screen). Be sure and beef up EVERY entry to your house, not just the one they broke through in the first place.

I guarantee you that the people who robbed you are watching your house and waiting for you to buy all new stuff. It is worth lots more to them. If they see you putting in all that extra security, they will not try to break in again.

In a way...

From what I know, which may not be enough, the network programmers succeed at this because they use virtual machines that have a standardized "machine." What I am also pretty sure of (though not positive) is that - other than Windows Terminal Servers and Citrix-type servers - most of those applications running on servers are, well, server applications. They have no user interface. The user interface part of the application runs on another machine or in a browser somewhere else. In many ways, it is that user interface that is "in charge" even though the server may do most of the work.

In most of the Model-View-Controller designs I have seen it seems that folks keep the View and Controller parts linked pretty tightly together. Only the model is separate. Sometimes, the model is then stored and ran from the server while the view and controller are remote. Even if they run in a browser and the code is fed to that browser from the server, the controller and view software are both still running in the browser together.

Now, perhaps this has already been done, but I like to think "out loud" as it were: What if you put the controller on the "server" too? What if the model and the controller were running in separate virtual machines that had been minimized to only include what that model and that controller needed to run? What if those minimized virtual-servers were designed to be live-migratable from one physical machine to another just like many virtualization managers can do? What if that controller were also in charge of where the user interface appeared? It could send a copy of the user interface to whichever physical machine could connect to it. Perhaps more than one at once. The controller would decide how to construct the UI based on a standardized specification it had been given indicating what "controls" were really needed on any particular device and some style guidelines, also specified in some standardized style language (similar to but more app-centric than CSS). Now, that controller would be in communication with another controller that works to keep track of which devices you are interacting with. You put down your tablet and pick up your phone. The app-controller would notice that you weren't interacting and ask the device-controller to let it know if you start interacting with a different device. The phone, which has been registered with the device-controller but has no inkling of the app already installed on it, indicates to the device controller that you are interacting with it. The device controller tells that app-controller and that app-controller sends an appropriate UI to the phone via an established interface. Initially, the UI is just a dialog that asks if you want to continue interacting via the phone. This could be nothing but a notification on the notification bar. Once you decide to continue interacting, the app-controller could send just enough of the UI to the phone as you need to interact appropriately. Only the UI. The model and controller stay where they are unless ... ... unless you take your show really on the road, where you normally wouldn't have access to that model and controller. Say on a car trip. So, the device detects that you have moved to some location where you may likely move away from the current location of access to the model and controller. Say, you walk out your front door, or start to move around in a manner that indicates you are putting on your coat. The device tells the device-controller which tells the model and app-controller. They tell their respective servers that they may need to move and their servers begin replicating them to a physical server that will be able to continue running those "virtual machines," even if only in an abbreviated manner. For instance, only a subset of the model may be replicated. Then, if you do actually start to move where you would loose access, the virtual machines containing the model and app-controller are live-migrated to the new location, perhaps a server in your car, or running in your laptop (which starts up in a headless server mode to save power), or even in the phone itself, if it has the horsepower. Because the model and app-controller have been ruthlessly minimized, they are much easier to replicate and migrate over wireless connections. Sure, it helps to have some forewarning so the virtualization server can have a head start on the replication process. But, once replicated, they could be live-migrated on very short notice.

I know I have seen videos of how wonderful it would be if you could just put down one device and pick up another and pick up where you left off. But do "they" really have a mechanism in mind to enable this. Or is it just hype and science-fiction? I don't know. Does VMware have a strategy that includes virtualization managers running in cars or in background mode on laptops and phones, with the ability to live-migrate between disparate devices? I don't know.

Too bad I am not a wiz with the code. I am more of a data-standards guy. So maybe I could work on the standards for UI specification and communication between the various controllers and devices.

I say, go with the old homesteading laws. Someone has to move to the asteroid, live there seven years and "prove it up," as in: make significant improvements to the property.

You know how it is. If you eat everything on your plate then children won't starve in Africa. If most people are overweight, then everyone should eat less because it would be politically incorrect to tell only the fat people to eat less.

I have to admit, what Izuzan said sounds like homeopathy bullshit. However, where is your empirical evidence that "'Flesh' doesn't "draw nutrients" from anything applied to it." As a matter of fact, "flesh" does draw nutrients from something applied to it all day every day. That something is blood. Other than oxygen bound to hemoglobin, as far as I know, all other nutrients are simply dissolved in the blood serum. The primary nutrient is glucose. Honey is loaded with glucose. Human tissue "draws nutrients" from the substrates they are grown on in dishes in labs all the time. Wounds, by their nature, have a reduced blood supply, thus less glucose for cells to live on. A honey poultice could conceivably make up for some or all of that lost glucose supply, plus some trace nutrients. Keep in mind, honey "evolved" as a way to provide nutrients to baby bees. While they aren't human, the basic nutrient requirements of cells is approximately the same for all living things other than some bacteria.

I am all about science. But true science is not about ridiculing something just because it doesn't sound like what you read in a science book in third grade. True science is about taking a hint from the experience of yourself or others, building a hypotheses and TESTING that hypotheses. Science only stops when arrogant blowhards decide they know everything there is to know.

... in some areas.

But it is also being raised in others. Some engineering and math programs seem to be cramming two and three semesters into one and expecting the students to still learn the same amount of material. Some courses become a test of who can afford the most tutors. If you are working your way through school, it can be very difficult to keep up.

Either way, it doesn't seem to me that many people are actually retaining much from their time in college. The people who do actually remember things seem to me to be the ones that would have learned those things anyway if they had been given adequate time to work on them on their own.

Nope, no hard evidence. Just my observations. But this is /. after all.

Yet another person proving me wrong with actual evidence. What ever am I to do, other than to admit defeat and thank you for the information.

I am curious as to whether these "men of letters" considered their "republic of letters" to be outside of the normal law. Did they think that if they lied to someone in a letter and got that someone to send them money that it was somehow less of an offense than if they had lied to that person directly?

See! Finally someone proving me wrong with actual evidence. I knew about wire fraud but completely ignored it all these years when I have been ranting about this crap. So, the government already set the precedent of requiring different laws just because you are using a different communication medium. Now that I think of it, there is such a thing as "mail fraud" too. Not that it excuses people for thinking that they could get away with anything on the internet and then complaining when the government finally starts passing the same types of laws. But considering it a different jurisdiction is now justified. Or at least has a precedent.

I are a idiot!

Personally, I still think mail fraud and wire fraud laws should be abolished and we should just have one law against plain old fraud. But that would be too easy.

Still no. Just because a certain subset of people are using a technology does not mean that that technology now constitutes a new space. Back to all my telephone examples. It was only rich people who were actually getting most of the use out of the new phone system. Just because it was mostly used by a subset of the population, who obviously feel some comradery, did not make it a new legal jurisdiction or "space" in which different laws should apply. I am sure the first advertisement on the radio shocked a few people.

"Feel like" are the key words. How people feel about it has no bearing on the legality. It has always boggled my mind that the government truly thought they had to make up different laws to apply to the internet just because some people gave it a catchy name.

I support the EFF as well. We all need freedom in how we are allowed to use this wonderful means of communication. But we do not need to "protect our cyberspace freedom" because it never existed as a separate entity. If you can't tell me who I can call on the phone and you can't make my phone service be worse because I am calling someone you don't like or who doesn't pay you money, then you can't do it on the internet either. Case closed.

It is precisely because people convinced everyone that "cyberspace" was an entirely different place, requiring an entirely different set of laws, that those big corporations you complain about now have a lever to use to pry your freedoms out of it. They can make special laws that apply only to the use of the internet that they would never be able to get away with if it were the US Mail. They can read your e-mail with impunity, while it is still a felony to take junk mail out of someone else's mailbox.

Put that in your philosophy-is-real crack-pipe and take a few puffs.

Very good point.

Unfortunately, I could say exactly the same thing about The Flying Spaghetti Monster (who I am a big fan of, by the way) or the Easter Bunny (not so big of a fan) or the Star Trek future (still crossing my fingers).

ANY concept we have imagined or could imagine (even if we currently can't quite imagine imagining it) is equally valid. It is a great thing to imagine the possibilities. Just because one possible imagining became more popular amongst people in the position to make it appear to be the norm, does not give it more validity.

Look, I have always thought this kind of stuff is boring. I use my own name on Slashdot for crying out loud. I have always used my own name on all the bulletin boards and newsgroups and web forums I have ever been on. Because I don't like pretending that it is a different world. You are certainly not going to change my mind about how mystical it may or may not be now.

But... you know ... you have fun with that.

A little touchy are we?

Philosophically, I admit it is a different "head space." But that is not what this post is about. It is about law. And, legally, cyberspace is not a different legal jurisdiction. That is when all the philosophical rationalization starts to sound stupid.

People used to talk anonymously to strangers on the new phone system when it was first put in place. I heard a report on NPR or something like that about the early history of the phone system. You would be amazed at how creative and inventive they were about ways to connect people together. So, yes, they could have said, "On the phone, no one knows you are a dog." Remember, dogs typing is as improbable as dogs talking.

It sounds to me as if the best thing you could do is use your open-source project work to improve your skills in something you are interested in. Then work on getting a different job or just a transfer and raise. Work a little harder now, then do the same amount of work for more money later, not have to spend all your free time "working." It's kind of like, the best "investment" most people can make is to simply pay off their credit cards. It is so simple, many people overlook it.

I have been saying this for decades. Yes, since even before the internet became popular. Since I was dialing up at 300 baud on a pay-phone in the barracks to get on bulletin boards with my TRS-80 Model 100. The internet is nothing more than a means of communication. Did people claim to be doing things in "phone space" when they first started using the telephone? (And they did some pretty interesting things with phones, like pipe concerts to whole towns at once.) Did people claim to be doing things in "Paper Space" when they first started writing letters back and forth? What about "telegraph space" or "radio space"? Seriously?

When you order something "in cyberspace" it is nothing more than another way to do mail order. Easier and faster, yes. But fundamentally no different. If you insult someone "in cyberspace" it is no different from picking up a party-line-telephone and cussing at whoever happens to be talking at the time. You are still insulting a real freaking person.

All the same laws should apply and DO apply. Pretending that "cyberspace" is an entirely different realm is just marketing speak made up by techno-hippies who wanted to get away with breaking the law. Now, a lot of the existing laws may suck. But claiming to be "in cyberspace" doesn't get you away from the suckyness. It just lets you pretend and rationalize until someone comes knocking on your very real door.