jonoid - Slashdot User

Submission + - Remote-control copter to rescue Everest climbers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15, 2007 @06:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: An unpiloted helicopter that will function as an air ambulance on the highest mountain in the world is being developed in New Zealand. Once a stranded climber has been located, the Alpine Wasp communicates with them using an 8.5-metre extendable "proboscis" with a camera and a small speaker attached to its end. The proboscis also has a Kevlar loop on the end capable of supporting any injured person.

Submission + - Microsoft RDS Timeout

Submitted by

AT-Tom

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @06:35PM

AT-Tom writes: "I'm making use of Microsoft's Remote Data Services (RDS), which is a deprecated technology. Nonetheless, I have legacy software that hasn't evolved to something newer yet (such as .Net and Web Services), and — for the moment, at least — I still have to live with one foot in the RDS past. My problem is that I'm encountering a 30-second timeout in some link of the RDS component chain. There is an RDS.RemoteDataSpace.InternetTimeout property that I should be able to control, but it either isn't *really* implemented, or the timeout is occurring elsewhere. When retrieving data over RDS, I use the RDSServer.DataFactory.Query method. This method requires a connection string, which uses ODBC token=value pairs (e.g., "DATA SOURCE=xxx;UID=yyy;PWD=zzz"). Research has revealed several possible timeout tokens that could be incorporated into the connection string, depending on the flavor of ODBC being used (such as "Internet Timeout", "Connection Timeout", etc.). However, none of these has yielded an extension of the 30-second timeout I'm getting. I've also tried modifying various settings in IIS which appeared to have promise. But, alas, no joy. I'm aware that many of these timeout settings I've mentioned are specified in milliseconds, so I'm not blundering by mis-specifying in the wrong units. Just wanted to head off any suggestions on that tack. I have opened a support case with MSDN. Though Microsoft is reluctant to help support deprecated technology, they claim they are trying to find somebody who knows anything about RDS. Either they are paying me lip service, or they can find no RDS expert that remains in their knowledge pool (or nobody will admit to knowing anything about RDS)."

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